~
If you think you can say a word, tell a person a single word, without telling the person everything you know, you are wrong.
~
I think a sink skirt is going to look bad in there. I would rather just go out and spend the money and get a proper cabinet. But Tutti has all the money locked away in investment certificates.
~
Tutti scissored the blinds again to have another look.
“Cliff’s lights sure are screwed up,” she said.
“Why?” I said.
“They’re on now,” she said.
“He probably wants them on,” I said.
“At 6:30 in the morning?”
“Sure,” I said. “Not on Saturday,” I said, “but you can’t set those timers that way. People are up for work at 6:30 on a weekday.”
Tutti shrugged and drank some coffee.
“You sure you want to drink that stuff?” I said. “You won’t be able to go back to sleep.”
“Yes I will.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
41
THE THING with Tutti gets more and more real, so it’s as though nothing happens until the words are on paper. It’s as though there is nothing going on in my life, there is no real person who is my wife, there is only Tutti. Tutti is the person who does the same things my real wife does, but it’s as though I don’t pay attention until Tutti does them. As if Tutti watches my wife and sees what my wife does and then comes along and does it better.
~
Some people died while I was in high school. A girl named Florence got hit by a car. Another guy, Dan, got cancer. Dan was away for a long time. When he came back, he was wearing a hat.
~
I remember one time I came home from school and I could not get the front door of our house to open. I couldn’t get the key to turn in the lock. I tried for a long time, until it seemed I would never get into the house. Then I stood on the front walk outside the house for a long time looking at the front door. I didn’t know what to do.
Dad was living at his new home at this point, with his new wife, and I phoned him there.
When I think back to that time, what I remember is my arms. I think of how my arms hung down at my sides.
I stood in the driveway, waiting for Dad, and when Dad came into the driveway I ran over to his car and waited for him to turn off the engine and get out of his car.
Dad went over to the front door and opened it. I was standing beside him, looking around him into the front hall. I told Dad to go home.
~
Tutti says, “Want me to show you how to iron those things?”
“No,” I tell her.
Tutti goes to bed.
After I finish doing the ironing, I go over to the window and look out and see all the lights. I think, Each light represents a possible other place I could be living right now.
I go in the kitchen and move things around in the fridge.
~
Tutti says the last time she was in the sewing machine shop there was a man in there yelling. The man said he would never buy another Singer and he walked out of the store. When Tutti was telling me the story, I pictured the man. The man I pictured looked much like the man who lives across the street from us, only in my mind the man was wearing a hat, and the guy across the street never wears a hat. I pictured this man walking out of the sewing machine shop, with this hat on his head, walking into the cold winter air, and what I pictured was the way the man’s breath came out, how you could see the man’s breath, because it was winter and it was cold outside. What I pictured was the man just standing there outside the shop, with his breath coming out of his mouth, just standing there trying to think what to do next.
~
You need to try to cover all the spaces, each space being a section on the grid, covering the various aspects, each aspect being a moment in the body’s life, with the life being composed of such activities as defecation, bereavement, and, finally, dissolution of the grid.
~
When I first met Tutti, I was skinny. I could put my hands around my waist and touch fingers on both sides. I only went to see Tutti once or twice a week back then. I would leave work at the grocery store, my hands smelling of lettuce, and I would walk up Tutti’s street, the one with the ditches on both sides. I could walk to Tutti’s house from where I worked. I would go up to where Tutti’s old man’s car was parked, and I would hardly be able to breathe. Tutti would be there at the door, with that hair of hers that goes out all over the place.
~
Dad would say, “Try not to hit those cows over there, dear.” And then he’d turn in his seat and wink at me and I would giggle. This was the year we rented the cottage on Lake Huron and we drove up one Saturday afternoon. We stopped in a small town and went into Kresge’s and Dad bought me a plastic bucket and a small plastic shovel. We stopped in another small town and Dad bought Mom a beach towel with seagulls on it. Dad wanted to stop in each town we passed through.
~
Tutti will get rid of that couch eventually. Right now she can’t get rid of it because we don’t have enough money to buy a new one. The one we have now looks like an old dog. Those pillows down there look like floppy ears. It sheds, too. It gives off little crusty balls, and you get them all over the carpet when you get up from lying there and these crusty balls are stuck to your socks.
I tried to get some of those balls off with that little machine Coco uses for getting the fabric balls off her clothes, but I only ended up wrecking the machine. After I wrecked the machine, Coco got mad. She told me those machines are only meant for clothes. She said you weren’t supposed to use those machines on couches. She went out and bought a new machine. She told me this time if I wanted any of my clothes fixed I could give her the clothes and she would fix them. She said she was not giving me the machine again.
~
First I had a milk shake. Then I went to bed. Then I got back up. I had raisin toast. Then I got a yogurt and stuck a spoon in it. I listened for any sounds from the bedroom.
~
I am never going to leave my wife.
42
My DAD was born in 1929. My mom was born in 1936. In 1956, Dad and Mom got married. I was born in 1959. In 1965, Dad and Mom got a divorce. In 1971, Dad married another woman. In 1974, he had a daughter from this other woman. In 1976, he had a second daughter from her. In 1993, Dad phoned me to see if I wanted to go for coffee.
~
Most of the time you couldn’t see my sister’s eyes because of her glasses. She had those glasses that look like butterflies.
~
Walking over to the mall, he was talking about Kyle.
“You know why Kyle is my friend, Daddy?” he said.
“Why?” I said.
“Because I like his name.”
~
I think eventually, for whatever reason, you have to give up everything. You have to say, I am not this and I am not that. Then, after that, you can sit back and wait to see what happens.
43
THIS GOES way back to the time Dad bought me a steak at a steak house. Back, even, before that. Before I was born. To the year Dad was in England. Or before that even, to the year my grandpa was in the war.