The night he got down on his knees, when Olivia was around one and sleeping in a crib, and he practically prayed his apologies to her. Closed his eyes, clasped his hands, said “I’m sorry, my sweetheart, for acting so horribly to you. I don’t know what gets into me sometimes, I swear. Please forgive me.” Cried. Then for another year continued to treat her badly, though maybe less so and not as cruelly. He doesn’t want it to be like that with Eva. Wants to stop now. This moment, the end. Has to tell himself that yesterday was the last time he’ll treat her like that, squeeze and shake her hard and drop her on the bed and so on. Also has to tell Denise what he’s done with both children. That he knows he won’t do. But if he stops, he won’t have to tell her anything, unless he later finds out Olivia or Eva has been physically damaged in a way he could have been responsible for. Then, since it’s possible if the doctors know how it happened they might have a better chance of correcting it, he thinks he’d admit what he’s done, but isn’t sure. Probably not.
He looks at the manuscript. Doesn’t like the title now. Needs one before he can start completing a piece. It’s part of its completeness. That’s always been the case and he doesn’t want to start changing his work habits now. Maybe by the time he gets to the bottom of the page he’ll have come up with a title. But he’s never done it that way. Just call it “Jobs,” that’s all. “Just Jobs” is even better, for that’s what it’s about. A man’s jobs. Just about an endless series of them for forty years with no end in sight. Just tired old age in sight, with maybe some savings and pension for him and his wife to get by but little energy left to start or complete any creative work anymore. He writes “Just Jobs” at the top and starts typing. It starts: “I start, deliver, come back, sort, pack, box, wrap, deliver, get a little tip, back, sort, pack, box, wrap, again and again for a couple-years. My first job. I’m ten.” Awful, and he tears it out of the typewriter and throws it into the wastebasket, rips the manuscript up and dumps it into the basket. A ripped piece stays on the basket lip and just as he reaches over to tip it in, drops on the floor on the other side. Always something sometimes; where it never goes just right. He leans over. Paper’s just out of reach and he doesn’t want to get up to get it. Too tired. But he likes a neat room, always has, everything in its place, something about visual aesthetics and also if things look too chaotic, which doesn’t take much for him, he gets disoriented and begins thinking he can’t find anything and even starts typing the wrong keys. Won’t even put up with a small paperclip or piece of paper the size of a small paperclip on the floor. Maybe a staple or two, pulled out of paper with his thumbnail or that had been jammed in the stapler, is about all the disorder he can put up with on his floor or desk. Stands, picks up the paper and puts it in the basket. “Now don’t try to climb out. You do—” Why’s he talking like that? Fun, that’s all, having some, but suddenly it sounded too strange to him. Not that if Denise overheard him through the door he couldn’t explain it to her. “I was having a heart-to-heart with my heart.” No, that would make it worse. But to himself, he just doesn’t like it. Wasting time too. Sits.
Never ripped up a first draft of anything and felt regret after. If a piece doesn’t feel good — if he’s not excited by it after he’s done the first draft — it’s just no good or not worth working on to finish it. Something will replace it. Always has. Either something new, which he’d try now if he had the time, or the other first-draft manuscript.
He puts that one on the table where the first one was, paper into the typewriter, likes the title, types it at the top and starts typing from the manuscript. It starts: “So he goes down. Went down. That’s the right expression. Babies are ‘put down,’ which has nothing to do with it, just what he’s been doing lately. The expression we always used about him and is most common. Quite common. Just very common. His brother Lon. Twenty years ago and more. Much more. Twenty-five. Twenty-six to be exact. But here he is, back. Just rang the bell downstairs. I said into the intercom ‘Yes?’ He said ‘Lon.’ I pressed the button to let him in and he came up. ‘Lonathan, Lonald, Lonnie, why hello. I want you to meet my family. That’s what I’ve regretted most about your not being here all these years and having gone down in that ship. Is that the right expression, I mean, term?’ ‘It’ll do,’ he says. ‘That you never met my wife, my first child and now my second. I’m not saying my first child is my second but that I have one. Two to be exact. Daughters. You always said you wanted sons. Lonsons, you called them. Oh Lon, I’ve missed you so, which goes way beyond any regrets I’ve had that you never met my wife and kids.’ I take his hand and kiss it. It’s made of sand, falls apart while I’m spitting.”
Rips it out of the typewriter. No good and never will be, and throws it into the basket. Where was his mind when he did it? Worries him. Never did anything this bad, so maybe something’s now missing. He rips up the manuscript and drops it into the basket. Never ripped up two first drafts at one sitting before. They were written back to back shortly after he finished the last piece, so maybe something’s been missing awhile without him knowing it. Maybe the last finished piece is nothing what he thinks it is. No, don’t overdo it. These two as first drafts and possible finished manuscripts, stank and should have been dumped right after he did them. All he needs is some time to do a good one, but maybe the next sitting.
He writes on the back of a thank-you card. “Dear Aunt Louise. Thank you for the lovely”—What did she give Eva? The acetate stretchie they gave a few days later to their super for his daughter’s baby? He’d ask Denise now but doesn’t want to waste even more time. Because he really could still begin a new piece. A quick first draft of a very short one or the beginning of a longer one. Puts the thank-you aside, paper into the typewriter, thinks who else hasn’t he thanked yet whom he’s supposed to? Denise writes all the thank-yous for presents from her friends and family, he does the ones from his, and friends they both have but didn’t come into the relationship with, she’ll write or ask him to. Lily and Ruben. “Dear Lily & Ruben,” he types. “You know how I hate these printed thank-you cards. Know from the note I inserted in the thank-you card for the gift you gave Olivia. But Denise felt, and I kind of go along with, that as long as we had them for O, we should for E, or else she might take it as some sort of rejection slip. Blip that slip. Just: Eva will feel quilty — what am I talking ‘guilty’? Rejected if she happens to find out later on. When she’s 4, 14, even 24. Anyway, thanks for the silver baby cup. I hope it lasts longer than the one someone got Olivia when she was born. Hope it wasn’t you, by the way. Be an awful way to find out what happened to it. Like all good silver, it wasn’t indigestible. Indestructible. Unintentional. Trying to write this too fast. It was soft silver. That one I stepped on in the dark and squashed. The dark unlit room at night. I wasn’t in the dark figuratively. Meaning, my figure was but my mind wasn’t. Some thank-you. But really, thank you. This cup 111 keep off the floor, or at least when it’s on the floor, the room in light. And I know the last cup didn’t come from you. You gave that nice tartan wool crib blanket that Olivia sucked a few fringes off of but which Eva can still now use. See what a memory I gots?” Xes out the last sentence. “Both gifts were very generous of you. But you know, when we had the birth announcements made, something Denise also wanted and I only eventually went for, I wanted to have printed on them ‘Please, no gifts. Our apartment’s one filled closet just from the gifts we got for Olivia’s birth. At the most, have a cedar planted in Lebanon in Eva’s name or give what you would’ve spent on a gift to your local right-to-abort clinic, no slur, smear, swipe, sneer or stigmata intended to our kids or any national or natal strife.’ Should I also X those three sentences out? And the last plus this? Denise vetoed it. Not the Xing or to get gifts but because — lots of reasons. Smothering natural good-natured-ness, for one thing. Maybe making those, who hadn’t planned to give gifts, self-conscious that they hadn’t planned to, for another. More. That it might seem like a hidden signal, for those who were wavering or hadn’t planned to, to give gifts. How? Some way. People know me by now? But Denise is well, Olivia’s taking baby and banishment (confined to her own room for the 1st time in 15 months) pretty well, and I’m barren and wasted but fare-thee-well. What the hell’s he mean by that? Time will tell. This’s becoming a no-note. Beg-pardons, thanx, loves & bests from us all around, H.” Pulls it out, folds it up and sticks it in the card and looks for his address book. Not on the table where it usually is, so he’ll look for it later, and puts the card on Aunt Louise’s.