30 Pieces of a Novel (67 page)

can see, and she also may decide—may have already decided last night—that he's way too old for her and not that intelligent or exciting or attractive in any way or good in bed, as it wasn't an especially successful sexual encounter, besides being too damn difficult to get. And he shouldn't write her either, which he always does to the reading coordinator after a reading, thanking her for inviting him and the courtesy and hospitality showed and also something complimentary about the students: very bright and stimulating, some of the best questions asked of him that he's ever heard, the audience responses to the nuances and humor of the works he read were right on the button, so of course heartening to him. Oh, what a phony he is. In the past all these things said partly out of his own courtesy and genuine gratitude for having been invited, but also so he might be invited back. “Hey, what a great guy, because how many of our invited readers have written their thanks and said the wonderful things he did?” So he's not going to tell his wife. Sure of it? Sure, positive. But he doesn't have to decide now. He can arrive home, walk into the house, kiss her as if nothing's happened, not tell her till later: tonight after the kids are asleep, tomorrow while the kids are in school, next week, even a few weeks from now. He could say then, or tonight or tomorrow, that he didn't know how to tell her till now, that he had in fact spent the entire car trip right till the time he got home thinking of how and when he'd tell her; and why? Because he knew that what he did with this woman was so wrong, and so on. No: he's sure, positive. It just isn't worth the risk. He doesn't know how she'll take it. It could end up being the worst thing that ever happened between them in their marriage. Of course it'd be the worst thing, for what in the past that he's done was worse? Some mean thing said, some mean thing done, but nothing like this. If Sheila, for some reason, does try to contact him or tells some people what they did and it gets out to his wife but not through him—she finds or receives a letter, for instance—he'll just have to explain in the best way he can why he did what he did that night and why he didn't tell her himself. But he doesn't see what's to be gained by talking about it to her before then—he's never going to do again what he did last night—except as continued lip service to honesty in their marriage, if that's the right use of that expression. Is it? Anyway, he knows what he's trying to say, and it's close enough.

He thinks: My keys. Where the hell are they? Usually when they're not on their hook by the door to the carport they're in one of his pants pockets. Feels in the pockets again. Looks around the kitchen counters and shelves, at the hook again, though knows they can't be there, but maybe by mistake on another hook near it, and looks at the other hooks and then yells out, “Anyone see my keys?” “Why, they missing?” his wife says from her studio, and his younger daughter says from the dining room, “I'll help you look, Daddy, I'm good at it,” and comes in and starts looking around. “Thanks, because I'll be late for class, but I think I've looked every place here,” and his wife says, “Take from all the duplicates we have. And you don't need your keys for school that much, do you?” and he says, “What? I can't hear you. And I don't like talking through a closed door if I don't have to,” and opens it. “I said,” she says from her desk, “use our duplicates. And if it's only your office door you're concerned about, get a dupe from your department; you've done it before. By the time you come home I'm sure they'll have turned up. What are they on, so we've a better idea what to look for?” and he says, “You know; from seven to ten keys on a ring with my pocketknife. And I don't want to ask for a dupe to my office. I've done it too much. And my bicycle-lock key's also on it, and that's my only one left and the bike's now locked,” and she says, “Your bike you don't need now, and if you have to you can cut the chain. As for the house key, when do we ever lock the place? If we do, though I don't plan to go out except around the house, then, as I said, take one of the spares. If you can't find one right away, borrow it from one of the kids.” “I need my own keys. That's what I'm saying. Where the goddamn crap are they?” and she says, “Don't be irrational, Gould. If you have to leave now because you're running late, take the spare car key out of your wallet. It's sealed in plastic there, isn't it?” and he doesn't nod or say yes but she's right, he thinks, that's where it is. He's slit the tape around the plastic several times over the years when he left the key ring attached to the ignition or on the dashboard and locked all the car doors before he left the car. “If you no longer have a spare in your wallet, I've one in my purse, which I only keep there to turn the radio on if we're parked and you leave the car with your keys.” “Listen, I don't feel comfortable unless I have my keys, all of them on that ring, because there's also the key to the anti-car-theft bar on it and to the seminar room on the top floor, if I have to use it, and to the school building if it's locked, which it won't be. But the point is I don't want the department thinking I'm always losing or forgetting—” and his younger daughter shouts out, “I found them, I found them!” and he runs to her voice—she's in the hallway bathroom holding out his keys—and he says, “You found them here?” and she says, “On the tub.” “What the heck they doing there?” and she says, “Don't look at me; I didn't put them there,” and he says, “I know, but I surely didn't. Or if I did, why would I? I don't get it,” and she says, “Have you gone to this bathroom recently?” and he says, “Yeah, but more than a half hour ago,” and she says, “Did you pee or poop?” and he says, “The latter,” and she says, “Maybe when you were sitting on the toilet they dropped out of your pocket, and you picked them up and put them on the tub instead of back in your pocket because it was too hard to from where you were sitting down and you thought you'd put them in your pocket when you stood up,” and he says, “You're right, that's what I must've done, though I don't remember. But how did you know?” and she says, “Same way I knew they'd be in this bathroom; I figured it out.” “Oh, what a mind,” and kisses the top of her head and says, “You deserve a fifty-cents reward, not just my thanks,” and she says, “No, that's all right; I liked doing it.” His wife says to him after he kisses her goodbye and is about to leave the house, “At least you only got a little excited over your keys and didn't start cursing crazily and tossing things around looking for them as you've done most times. Maybe because you found them so soon.”
“I
found them,” his daughter says. He thinks: My pen. Why am I always losing the damn thing? Not in his shirt pocket where he usually keeps it clipped to the top if he's wearing a shirt with a pocket, or any of his pants pockets, and he's checked them twice. It's a hybrid of the same kind of make but different models: newer maroon cap from a pen he lost the writing part to—cap was clipped to his inside jacket pocket but rest of the pen was gone—and black writing part that he had to throw away the cap to, though screwed off the clip for future possible use, when he dropped the pen and the cap cracked. It's a good-luck pen in a way, so much stuff written with it, and he's had it for more than five years, longer—maybe twice as long—as he's had any other pen, and now pens of the same make, even the cheapest model, have become too expensive for him. He also likes its odd look: cap for a larger pen fits snugly, but farther than normal down the writing part, and the different colors. He's had about ten other fountain pens in the fifteen years before he put this one together: Parkers, Sheaffers, mostly Montblancs, two of which he got in Munich at half the American price, thinking he'd someday give one to someone as a gift; lost them all. Fell through pants pocket holes he didn't know were there till it was too late or he'd told himself to sew up to avert losing things like change and keys and his pen but never got around to it, though keys he'd think he'd hear clang on the ground. Two lost in his previous house and never found. Searched for each on and off for weeks and often went over the same places. “It's gotta be around, gotta be around,” kept telling himself as he looked. One of the last things he told the couple who bought the house was to call him if they found one of his pens and not to be surprised if the pens were found together. Best explanation he could come up with a year or so later—after a pen had fallen out of his shirt pocket into the kitchen garbage bag he was tying up, and a few weeks later the same pen had dropped out of his shirt pocket into a carton of newspapers he was carrying in the dark to the end of his driveway for the next day's recycling pickup—was that they'd either fallen out of his shirt pocket into a kitchen garbage bag he was bending over to tie or drop something in or dropped into a carton or shopping bag of newspapers and other papers he was carrying at night down the front yard or porch steps to the sidewalk for the next day's recycling pickup. Three to four of them slipped out of his shorts side pockets during the summer. Once lost two in a week: same shorts, shallow pockets. Dumped those shorts after he bought another pen because he was afraid he'd lose it the same way and has since made sure all the shorts he buys have normal pockets. One pen bounced out of his bathing suit back pocket while he was jogging. Thought the pocket was buttoned but it wasn't or had come undone. Ran back instead of completing the loop—a mile or so, always scanning the ground, figuring there was a good chance he'd spot it, asking the few joggers coming his way if they'd seen the pen and they kept jogging while shaking their heads, till he saw it had been run over by a car. My poor pen, he thought, picking it up, seeing if any part of it could be retrieved. Thirty bucks it cost, a lot then. If it had only stayed on the dirt path where it must have fallen rather than rolled onto the road, if that's what happened. A couple of the joggers had unleashed dogs and one could have picked it up in its mouth, run around with it, and then dropped it on the road hundreds of feet from where it had bounced out of his pocket. This time he reacted as he usually did the moment he thought his pen might be missing: slapped his pants and shirt pockets hard, stuck his hands all the way in them and fingered around, took everything out of them and went through the pockets again. Thinks, Okay, where'd you last use it? and thinks, When I was working this morning, I think, and goes to his bedroom and inspects his desk and lifts the typewriter to look under it and checks under the desk and then the entire bedroom: on and under the dresser, bed, chairs, night tables. Bathroom off the bedroom: might have absent-mindedly set it down on the sink or shelf above it or toilet tank cover or window ledge when he went in to pee or wash his hands. Waste-basket by his desk: pen might have rolled off the desk into the scrap paper in the basket without his hearing it. Kitchen: checks the countertops and washer and dryer and shelf above the stove where he often keeps his checkbook and memo and appointment and address books. Checkbook and appointment book are there, address book, he remembers, is by the phone on the dresser, but the memo book! and feels his rear right pants pocket and it's there. Doesn't want to lose that too. Year of notes is in it he hopes to use on his next project. Checks the living and dining rooms and hallway bathroom, quickly, since he doesn't think he's stopped or been in those rooms the last few hours, and then says through the door to his wife's studio, “Sally, excuse me, I don't mean to disturb you, but have you seen my fountain pen?” “Yes, I'm writing out my shopping list for you with it right now. You need it?” and he says, “Please, always tell me when you borrow my pen. I get distracted if I think it's missing, and don't say that's irrational. I'm attached to it, feel I need to hold it sometimes, always know it's there to use in case I suddenly have to write down something important. Anyway, I'm surprised at you, because you know by now what it means to me,” and she says, “No, not really. Why is it so important? It's an ugly misshapen pen, the area underneath the thing that holds the clip is a little chipped, and it doesn't write that well either.” “The point's a bit bent. I straightened it out best I could and the guy at the store I bought the nib part at said it couldn't be repaired any better and to replace the point would run around fifty bucks and the whole pen would cost eighty. The prices of Montblancs of this kind, their cheapest models, have become ridiculous. And if I just wanted to buy a cap to match the nib part, if the Montblanc service place in New Jersey had it in stock, would cost thirty to forty. So unless I make a lot of money, which doesn't seem probable till I don't know when, this is going to be my last fountain pen, for new Sheaffers and Parkers and Watermans are priced just as absurdly, or twenty to thirty dollars cheaper. After I lose this one—mind if I open the door?” and she says no—“and I will lose it, I know it, it's going to be good roller pens and two-dollar markers and that sort from then on.” “I'll get you a Montblanc, if that's the kind you prefer, for your next birthday,” and hands him his pen and the shopping list. “I don't want a new pen. And did I say ‘eighty'? The cheapest now must be a hundred, a hundred-twenty, since the salesman told me this a few years ago. I'd only lose the new one too and then I'd feel lousy, not just because I lost it but that it cost so much. I like this one”—holding the pen and running his thumb up and down it—“I've had several years with it, and it's done a ton of writing. And I like that it's ugly and misshapen, a one-of-a-kind hybrid, though I'm sure other people, because of the damn cost of these things, have put different Montblanc pen parts together of the same or close models to make one pen. And probably even a Montblanc coupled with a Waterman, and so on. Where'd you find it?” and she says, “On the black leather chair you say you never sit in.” “What was it doing there? Not only do I never sit there, so it couldn't have slid out of my pants pocket, but I never leave it there.” “All I know is I was passing through the living room, saw it, wanted to give you the health food store shopping list before you left, so I picked it up and got a sheet of paper off my desk and started to write with it here.” “Why'd you close the door then, if it was just for that?” and she says, “Must be something I do automatically. And I was going to tell you I had it, if I heard you come into the kitchen, since I actually did know you'd be concerned if you thought it missing. But I felt I could write the list quickly, there were only supposed to be a few items on it, but it grew. Next time I'll remember to keep my door open, if it's only to write something like that, and tell you sooner,” and he says, “Best there be no next time. You see my pen on a chair or someplace, just assume I dropped or forgot it there, unless it's on my desk, and let me know you found it. And you have your own pen, the Parker I gave you, which writes better than mine. Why didn't you use that one?” and she says, “I couldn't find it and still can't—not for a day now—but as you see, it's not worrying me, since I'm not as attached to it as you are to yours and I feel confident it'll turn up eventually. We're different that way, about pens and certain things, though unlike you I'd never tell you to be like me.” He thinks: My wallet. Now where in God's name is it? Always takes it out of his pants pocket when he gets home—doesn't like the bulk, just as he doesn't like the sharpness of his keys, which is one of the reasons he hangs them on a hook first thing when he gets home—and puts it on his dresser. That's his spot for it, on top of a thick file folder of his manuscripts. In their other house he kept it on the living room shelf that held the stereo, and in their apartment before that—well, he forgets where: he thinks it was on this same dresser or his night table. In his previous apartment in New York he hid it under some clothes in a dresser drawer. He knew that'd be the first place a thief would look, but he thought, once he started putting it there, that he'd forget where he put it if he put it anywhere else. In his wife's apartment in New York, before they were married and whenever he stayed the night there, he thinks he kept it in his pants pocket. It's not on the folder, nor did it fall off it to the dresser or behind it or to the floor. Not in his pockets, either, and these are the pants he's been wearing since this morning. He remembers, when he left the house, putting the wallet in what would be the right side pocket—that's always the pocket he puts it in if he doesn't stick it in one of the back pockets—but doesn't remember taking it out while he was away. Change, yes, for a parking meter, and some cash he had stuck in his shirt pocket and still has the change from there. Also his pen several times, to write a couple of notes with, and his keys, of course. Did he put it in some other place when he got home? Can't call up a picture of it, though that doesn't mean he didn't. It could have slipped out of his pocket when he was in the car. It's done that. Pen's done it more than any other thing in the car except change. Keys have never done it. The car key's always in the ignition lock and if he happens to take it out for some reason but is still going to sit in the car, he throws the keys into the dashboard well. Memo book's also never slipped out. Maybe because it's always wedged into his back pocket, since all his pants, because of some gain or shifting of weight, are a bit tight. Weight gain, a few pounds around the middle; why kid himself? He either has to lose weight there or go up another size, but if he does, the memo book will have a better chance of falling out. Watch has slipped out once or twice but he rarely keeps it there, only when he's in a rush to leave the house and hasn't time to put it on, so he sticks it into a side pocket, and at the first red light or some other kind of prolonged stop he'll take it out and put it on. If it's not on his wrist it's usually on his night table when he goes to bed, on the window ledge above his desk when he works there, or sometimes near his checkbook and those other books on the shelf above the stove. It's slipped off his wrist a few times when he didn't fasten it right or did it too hastily, but he always heard it fall and picked it up. But his wallet! Now this could be serious. He goes outside. It's not on his car seat or the floor or in the narrow space between his seat and door or in the box between the front seats where he keeps tape cassettes and a coffee mug and bungee cord and pad and cheap pens and penlight and guide to all the public radio stations in America and a couple of poetry and story anthologies and some other things. He's found the fountain pen in all those places but never the memo book or watch or his glasses. Glasses he's lost he doesn't know how often and once never found. There have been times when he went around looking for his glasses while he was holding them in his hand. He once asked his wife, while the glasses were on his face, “Have you seen my glasses?” and she said, “Is this a joke?” and touched one of the temples, and he said, “Of course, what do you think?” when it wasn't, “but not one of my funnier ones, I suspect.” Goes back to the house and looks on shelves, tables, bookcases, their dresser, everywhere he thinks he could have left it. Bathroom: maybe it dropped out of his pocket while he was on the toilet or pushing down his pants and sitting down. Not there. Nobody's home, so nobody could have picked it up and neglected to tell him. Cat has a way of walking off with things, but a sock or scarf, not a wallet. Once lost one for a few days and had to call all the companies he had credit cards with. Actually, he only had one credit card, and they still only have one, partly because he's so anxious about losing them, but there were ATM cards he had to call about, both for here and their bank in New York, and the phone card he had to get a new