From four blocks away I could see that the flock had a kind of group-life, a recognizable intelligence; no doubt in its random flutters there were patterns, but alone any one of those black birds would not have known what was up. Alone, as people live, they would crash their heads against walls.
I walked slowly, away from Marini Street, and understood this small shred: Between large and small, between near and far, there was no wisdom or truce to be had. To be near was to be blind; to be one among so many was to own no shape or say.
"There must be things that can save us!" I wanted to shout. "But they are just not here."
i got an abortion. Later I suffered from a brief heterosexual depression and had trouble teaching my class: I would inadvertently skip the number three when counting and would instead call out, "Front-two-four-five, Side-two-four-five." Actually that happened only once, but later, when I was living in New York, it seemed to make a funny story. ("Benna," said Gerard, the day I left. "Baby, I'm really sorry.")
Because of the pregnancy, the lump in my breast disappeared, retracted and absorbed, never to sprout again. "A night-blooming-not-so-serious," I said to the nurse-practitioner. She smiled. When she felt my breast, I wanted her to ask me out to dinner. There was a week in my life when she was the only person I really liked.
But I believed in starting over. There was finally, I knew, only rupture and hurt and falling short between all persons, but, Shirley, the best revenge was to turn your life into a small gathering of miracles.
If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.
And so before I left, I phoned Barney and took him out for a drink. "You're a sweet girl," he said, loud as a sportscaster. "I've always thought that."
Yard Sale
there are, i've noticed, those in the world who are born salespeople. They know how to transact, how to dispose. They know how to charm their way all the way to the close, to the dump. Then they get in their cars and drive fast.
"Every time I move to a new place," Eleanor is saying, "I buy a new shower caddy. It gives me a nice sense of starting over." She smiles, big and pointed.
"I know what you mean," says Gerard, bending over in his lawn chair to tie a sneaker. We are in the side yard of the house, liquidating our affections, trading our lives in for cash: We are having a yard sale. Gerard straightens back up from his sneaker. His hair falls into his face, makes him look too young, then too handsome when he shakes it back. My heart hurts, spreads, folds over like an omelette.
It's two against one out here.
Eleanor is trying to sell her old shower caddy for a quarter, even though the mush of some horrible soap has dried to a green wax all over it. Eleanor is a good friend and has come to our yard sale this weekend with all of the mangy items she failed to sell in her own sale last weekend. I invited her to set up her own concession, but now I wonder if she's not desecrating our yard. Gerard and I are selling attractive things: a ten-speed bike, a cut-glass wine decanter, some rare jazz albums, healthy plants that need a healthy home, good wool sweaters, two antique ladderback chairs. Eleanor has brought over junk: foam rubber curlers with hairs stuck in them; a lavender lace teddy with a large, unsightly stain; two bags of fiberglass insulation; three seamed and greasy juice glasses, which came free with shrimp cocktail, and which Eleanor now wants to sell for seventy-five cents. She's also brought an entire crate of halter tops and an old sound track of Thoroughly Modern Millie. She spreads most of this out on one of the low tables Gerard and I have constructed from cement blocks and two old doors hauled from the shed out back. Magdalena, our dog, has a purple homemade price tag somehow stuck ("like a dingleberry," says the ever-young Gerard) to her rear end. She sniffs at the shrimp glasses and knocks one of them over. Gerard smooths her black coat, strokes her haunches, tells her to cool it. Eleanor once described Magdalena as a dog that looked exactly like a first-grader's drawing of a dog. Now, however, with her ornamented rear end, Magdalena looks a bit wrong — dressed up and gypsied, like a baby with pierced ears. Her backside says "45 cents." Magdalena has the carriage of a duchess. I've always thought that.
Eleanor places various articles of clothing — some skirts, a frayed jacket, the wounded teddy — in the branches of the birch trees next to us. Now we are truly a slum.
"That is just lovely, Eleanor," says Gerard, pointing to the birch trees. Magdalena has run over and started woofing up at Eleanor's clothes.
"Oh, go off and be a yuppie puppy," says Eleanor to the dog. Sometimes, like a spooky ventriloquism act, Eleanor assumes, and overassumes, my anger. Gerard is a tired lounge pianist who is leaving in two days to start law school in California. He is taking Magdalena. He is not taking me. He says he needs to make Law Review so he can get some wonderful job somewhere. Eleanor likes to define yuppies as people who buy the expensive mustard and the cheap ketchup, while the rest of the world gets it the other way around. "Gerard, you're too old to become a yuppie," she says, though she is wrong. Gerard is one year younger than Eleanor, and almost two years younger than I.
Eleanor strolls over with a paper bag and sits down. "A watershed moment!" she announces, and reaches into the bag and pulls out an opened box of Frost 'N' Tip for Brunettes Only and places it on the table next to my beautiful Chinese evergreen and my wine decanter, which my brother gave me; I'm willing to pawn more than I realized. "My entire past, right here, and I'm only asking a dime." Eleanor grins. She has recently rinsed her hair red. She and her husband, Kip, are moving in ten days to Fort Queen Anne, New York, where Kip got a better job, and Eleanor wanted to start over. "Dead town," she said, "but you can't beat the money with a stick."
I stare at the frost kit. The lettering is faded and there are coffee cup rings, like an Olympics insignia, on the front. "Eleanor," I say slowly. People walk by, look at the clothes in the trees, smile, and keep walking. I'm about to tell her her sense of retail is not ours. "Eleanor," I begin again, but then instead I dig a dime out of my change cup and give it to her. "How do you think I'll look?" I smile and hold the frost kit next to my face like a commercial. I'm the only one here who's not moving out of town, though I am taking a vacation and going to Cape Cod for two weeks to think about my life.
"The terror of Truro," she says. "You'll dazzle." She rips off a hangnail with her teeth. "Gerard'll rue the day."
It's two against one out here.
Gerard sits back down next to me on the other side. Eleanor, suspecting she's been overheard, reaches over and pats Gerard on the thigh, tells us again about the ketchup and mustard.
Gerard isn't smiling. He stares off at the trees. Magdalena has settled at his feet. "Looks like someone was murdered in that thing, Eleanor," he says, pointing at the lace teddy.
I reach next to me, under the table, and clasp Gerard's hand, in warning, in rescue. It's two against one out here; we just keep taking turns.
"no, we're not getting married," I told my mother on the phone when she asked. "He's going to California and I'm staying here." Usually she doesn't phone. Usually she just does things like send me notes with histrionic scrawlings that read, "Well, you know, I can't use these," and along with the notes she encloses coupons for Kotex or Midol.
"Well," said my mother. "The advice I hear from my women friends nowadays is don't get married until you're thirty. Just take your time. Have fun gallivanting around while you're young. Get everything out of your system."
Gallivanting is a favorite word of my mother's. "Mom," I said slowly, loudly. "I'm thirty-three. What on earth do you think I'm getting out of my system?"
This seemed to stump her. "You know, Benna," she said finally. "Not every woman thinks like you and I do. Some just want to settle down." This yoking of mother and daughter was something she'd taken to doing of late — arbitrarily, without paying attention. "No, you and I are kind of exceptional that way."
"Mother, he said he thought it would be hell to live with me while he was in law school. He said it already was a kind of hell. That's what he said."
"I was like you," said my mother. "I was determined to be single and have fun and date lots of men. I didn't care what anyone thought."