30 Pieces of a Novel (85 page)

Dreams he's sitting at the desk downstairs. “There's a pen,” he says, “and there's a paper.” Takes the paper and starts writing with it on the pen. Looks closely at the pen and nothing's written on it. Directs the gooseneck lamp to it and holds his city dictionary magnifying glass to where he wrote, and still there's nothing. What happened? he thinks. Why does he always lose his best ideas because of malfunctions or personal blunders or because they take place in his sleep? “You don't write it that way, that's why,” he says. “Nothing will come out of paper. It only comes from the bed. I mean, that too can be true though not absolute, but for what you want to do, words only come out of the pen onto the paper.” (The bed remark was a slip he's going to keep and probably same with what followed it.) He writes with the pen on the paper but nothing comes out. He inspects the nib and sees it's straight. It's last summer's pen, he thinks. She must have left it on the desk over the winter, and the ink froze. But it would have unfrozen by now so either the pen's dry or the nib's bent or there's no reservoir or the pen's just here for decoration, like the old spice products and loose-tea boxes in the kitchen, a holdover from the cottage's owners, who last summered here ten years before Sally started renting it. Tries straightening the twisted nib but sticks himself with it and bleeds blue-black blood that quickly turns red. Symbols, symbols, he thinks in the dream. Wants none of them, and sticks the nib into his finger cut and looks for something in the pen to draw the liquid up but no part of it opens or unscrews. Searches the desk drawer for another pen and then his pants pockets. Everything's empty. Slaps his shirt but he isn't wearing one with a pocket. All the pens are in New York, he thinks, and he wants to start something new that'll carry him through the next two months. First draft first, which should take him about as long as it takes him to scribble it out—maybe an hour, maybe two—and then he'll work on it page to page as he always does, refining and perfecting it, building it, no doubt expanding it and adding rooms and maybe a second john and definitely a new shower stall, for the one that's here is rusty and cracked. But he has to put in a real cellar first; the one they have is just earth. And before that, a foundation, which will be an enormous undertaking, with him hand-digging a vast hole with only manual tools. All this labor will give him something useful to do this summer and also keep him fit and out of her hair. Forget constructions. Rule one: stay seated and start writing and something will come from it as it has for the last thirty years. Where'd he get “thirty”? Barely twenty, but first he needs something to write with. He'd normally use a typewriter, but he left his in the city. She said there wasn't room for it in the car. That to take it would mean leaving behind one of the cats, and they're a family she reunites for a month or two every summer and they thrive for the rest of the year because of their time up here. That's not what she said. (And “that's not what she said” and then saying what she or he really did say and then possibly contradicting that is something he's done so much in his writing that he should stop doing that, too.) She knows the first thing that goes with him for even a weekend away is his typewriter. He thinks she even reminded him in the car before they set out: “Did you remember to take your manual?” and for some reason he said yes. But he left it because he thought that for one man he's done more than enough writing for a lifetime, if that's to be gauged by the number of pages, or more than the most ardent reader of a writer would ever want to read, and he wants to take a long and maybe even an endless break from it. No, he forgot his typewriter: got to be honest. He often sets a time he wants to get something done or leave a place by and then rushes like mad to meet that deadline and usually makes it or is late by just a few minutes, but messes things up and causes bad feelings with any other person involved with him in it. (Mouthful? You bet, but he's so close to the end, go on.) The typewriter's still in its case on her living room floor, standing on its end and waiting to go. If it could speak it'd probably say, “Why'd he abandon me? Haven't I been a faithful and helpful servant for years, and don't I only break down when he abuses me? And doesn't he think that after working continuously for ten months in the city that I could also use a change of scenery? What does he think the humidity here does to my keys?” Typewriter abuse, he sees himself being charged with, if that typewriter brought him to court, his other no-longer-used broken-down typewriters over the past twenty years acting as corroborating witnesses against him. He banged away on them mercilessly sometimes, often kept them uncovered and unclean. Took out his aggressions on them, and there were plenty of those—forget what he says about his soft spot for manuals and how he prefers them to all other writing machines because of their simplicity and portability and pianolike keyboard action—till they were broken beyond repair. He'll have to drive to New York for it, there's no other way. Head out later today and start back early tomorrow, so only missing a night's sleep with her and one more workday. Bunglers and malefactors. Wishes he had the dough to buy a new one up here. Or could arrange for someone to get into her apartment and pack his typewriter and send it to him. But that might take days and be too much to ask of anyone, and the typewriter no matter how well packed could get damaged along the way. He has two reams of paper and plenty of typewriter ribbons, correction tabs, and eraser pencils, which he forgot to take out of his suitcase before he left, but nothing to write on. She comes into the room and says—

He wakes up, isn't holding her, pats around the bed; she isn't there. “Sally?” he whispers. He feels over the side of the bed, since she once rolled off it and continued to sleep on the floor. Maybe she went to sleep in another room because he was keeping her awake with his noises. Or she suddenly couldn't see herself with him for even a few days this summer and didn't know how to tell him or didn't want to wake him to tell him or wait for him to wake up, so got in the car and quietly drove off, or drove off normally but he was sleeping so hard he didn't hear. She could be driving around aimlessly now, thinking of what to do about him—not say anything or ask him to leave?—or drove back to New York or to a friend's place around here. She knows how hurt and disappointed he'll be. What it also means is their relationship's finished and with it all his plans of marrying her and having kids and coming here every summer with her and them for years. But she didn't know how to tell him in any other way but leaving while he was asleep and hoping he'll understand what's happened when he awakes and doesn't see her. (He knows he's repeating himself and could tighten this a lot but don't stop.) She probably left a note. It probably says—it could say this, in other words, though it could also say
Please be out of here tomorrow
or even
by late today—Feel free to stay here for a week. That'd only be fair after what I've done and all the trouble you went through in getting here. You can rent a car if you want. The rental companies—you'll find several of them listed in the local directory by the kitchen phone—will drive the car to the cottage and do all the paperwork here. But you don't have a credit card, so renting a car's out of the question even if you have the cash. Whatever you do, please be out of here by Thursday at the latest, six days from today, so I can come back. Don't worry about the various house and car expenses I incurred, since it'll cost you plenty to return to New York unless you get a ride. I'm so sorry. What I've done is wrong and contemptible and
(find the word later, but something to do with pusillanimousness, so maybe the adjective for that)
as anything I've done to anyone in my life
. He wakes up, has been dreaming she left him alone here. When he's fully awake he realizes he's not holding her anymore and he can't feel her near him in the dark. He pats her side of the bed just as he did in the dream, looks over that side to the floor, though she's never fallen off a bed that he knows, and says—

He's dozing off again when he hears a buzzing by his ear. He slaps at it and hits his ear, which starts ringing. Oh, Jesus, he thinks, cupping his ear and rubbing it, the city fool in the country. Suppose he goes deaf in that ear because of the slap, how'll he explain it? “I didn't think.” Listens for the mosquito, doesn't hear anything, so maybe he got it, and shuts his eyes. Minute later the buzzing's by the other ear, almost as if in it. Same mosquito—different?—they zooming in to torment him one at a time? Turns on the ceiling and bed lights, waits a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to them, can't see or hear the mosquito, stands on the bed naked and will just stay there, giving the mosquito as big a target as he can so he'll have more of a chance of slapping it and also be in a better position to, or at least till Sally starts back upstairs. Doesn't want to look the fool, standing on a bed with his penis flopping. Then he hears one. (Is he going on too long about this? Just finish it.) Turns around and sees it coming toward him, holds his hands out, aims and slaps them together, and thinks he got it. He did, and rubs it off onto his thigh and then flicks it off with his finger. In the light, he thinks, I'm one for one, batting a thousand, though the ear still hurts. The mosquito lands on the bed instead of the floor. Tries flicking it off the bottom sheet and leaves a bloodstain there an inch long. She's coming up. He'll have to say something about the stain. Is there some protocol for this? No slapping mosquitoes on rented sheets or someone else's walls because of the possible bloodstains? He could say—well, lots of things. That's what he does, makes things up or fools around with the truth. “The first mosquito I faced in years, so lost my head when it bit me—that's my blood there,” and so on, “and I think it also got me inside the ear, or one of its sisters did, for something in there itches and hurts.” He says to her, the moment her head gets above floor level—

Back in bed, lights out, he's holding her from behind, his left arm under his pillow. She's clutching his right hand, kisses it several times, each time a little lighter, then lets go. Maybe that means she's falling asleep. He should have started rubbing her buttocks and back soon after she turned over on her side—something she likes done because it relaxes her and it's one of his signs he wants sex—but too late. If he did that now—well, like he said before (well, he said it, just as he's done this routine before, so no more). Okay, there'll be many nights and days for it, and it's not as if this one's an absolute must, so now just go to sleep. Closes his eyes. (“Shuts”? Prefers “closes” but “shuts” has only one syllable in its favor. Either, then; does it matter? Does. In this case, “closes” sounds better in relation to the sentences that preceded it. “Preceding sentences”?) After a minute, things—presleep things; he recognizes them, though they usually come when he hasn't had anything or has had only a little to drink—flit through his head. The road, major highway, other cars alongside, some zipping by, cutting in front, tailing too close, kid in the passenger seat of a car next to his giving him the finger and saying something derisive. In this presleep it's an exciting ride. Rest stop, like the one they were at a few miles into Maine, pulsing cups of coffee, counterman who got Sally her extra-crisp french fries. The road again, but as if the car's stationary and the trees on both sides are flying past. Then some unfamiliar people on a conga line, a couple of cartoon characters from his youth on it and everyone laughing, and at the end of it the woman who a month ago invited him to the Magical Kingdom or whatever it's called—he'd never heard of it before—in northernmost Vermont. On the phone—this isn't in his head but actually what happened—knows people always say this in these circumstances but she's been thinking of him … it's been almost ten years. True, they didn't part amicably, but she still has good memories of them and if anything he was always good for a laugh and intellectually energizing, and she bets things like that don't change. Got his phone number from Information—lucky he's the only Gould Bookbinder in New York, maybe the whole world. “Think of it,” she said. “If the world had its own Four-One-One, and you had to give the country, state, city or village, and street, and so on, I could just say ‘Gould Bookbinder, Earth,' and get hold of you if you were listed.” “There's got to be a few others somewhere out of four or five bil, and maybe even one with my middle initial.” Suddenly so bored in this kingdom, she said, but she's made it her home and art studio and will never again set foot in loony-bin New York, and thinks he'd love it here for a week and pep her up and again be a good figure model, no matter how his physique and scalp's probably changed, that is—and his only expense would be the bus fare; she grows all her own food and chops her heat—if professional and personal commitments permit it. He said his job's not crucial—he's a lowly teacher in poorly paid continuing ed—but he is seeing someone seriously and thinks it might lead to marriage and kids, and she said, “So, screw you, Gould; who needed to hear that?” and hung up. She hung up last time they spoke also after saying, “Who needs a cock to only crow after midnight?” Image of her fades, tries to bring her back nude because he remembers she had a big beautiful body, can't, and in his head says goodbye. Another woman, this one much younger, dark-skinned from sun, which he liked then—and the white marks—but would now find unhealthy, hasn't thought of her in maybe twenty years. Artie, her name was, on the first student ship he took to Europe. Slept with her the second and third nights of the trip and then started up with another girl, after they'd planned to youth-hostel and Eurorail around together for a month, and dropped this one for her. (Not quite clear and tough line, he sees, to make right, but it'll come if he works on it; so far he thinks all of them have.) She sulked and looked away whenever she saw him after that, wrote him love notes and poems and had her friends or the cabin steward pass them on to him or leave them on his bunk bed.
Penned in tears
, one note or poem said at the end of it. So what did he think then? Probably very little or wished she wouldn't be on the same deck as him so much or that her dining room sitting wasn't the same as his and her table so close. Did she intend a double meaning with that “penned” which he wasn't able to see at the time? Doubts it, but wouldn't have made much of a difference to him. Wishes he could make it up to her in some way. If only to say it was nothing she did or could have prevented; that he was a two-faced bastard then, fickle as hell and out for what he could get. And if he couldn't think of anything better to say—he can't now, but he's not giving himself the time—then something about his not deserving her one bit and adding that he's being thoroughly sincere about it. He hopes when she thought of him after the voyage that she nailed him as a bastard too, not worth a minute of her sadness and regret…. His father, mouthing “Sing
‘God Bleth America, ‘
Juney Boy. You know yours is my favorite rendition of one of my all-time great tunes, and I'll pay you a dime this time,” and picks up a boy who doesn't resemble Gould and stands him on a kitchen counter as he used to do, usually when he had a few of his cronies over. Mimicking Gould's speech impediment then, and the nickname he gave him when he was around five and teased him with another twenty years and was always evasive as to where it came from. “Not out of my inside coat pocket” was one of the things he said. In bathing trunks, no shirt on, brown chest and head hair instead of white and gray, since his face is old and has the same near-death look it had just before he sunk into his last coma. Then he stands back to listen, folds his arms, big biceps appear, and is gone…. His brother, sitting on the floor playing with Gould's blocks. Gould in his head saying something to him, he can't make out what, and his brother looks up and holds out a block with the letter T and mouths “Say it: ‘today,'” and crumbles the block in his hand and disappears…. Mr. Rich, his eighth-grade homeroom and music teacher, wanted him to take voice lessons and become a lieder and opera singer, sitting at the piano in class and about to crash down on the keys … but jump tr his mother: rocking in a regular chair, then sitting on a swing in his dream at what looks like the Central Park playground at West 77th Street she took him to a lot when he was a kid. (Did he make that shift to the dream okay? Maybe too wordy.) Saying, “She's a genuine doll and a knockout, Sally, and I wholly approve of your sleeping together before you marry. Your dad and I didn't and look what it got us: two boys who became one and all four hands unhappy. You don't want to mismanage things; she could have her pick of the cream. I want to dance at your wedding before my knees dry up, and have grandchildren: two girls; boys will kill you. Even where I am they'd be mine by name and I'd watch over them as I still do you, though you didn't know that till now.” “You're not dead, if that's what you're saying. You're in relatively good health and have plenty of reasonable years left,” and starts pushing her from behind. “Pump, pump; use your legs if you want to fly higher. You could even remarry, you're still a very handsome woman. Though do what you want—you will anyway—but don't make me even think you can die.” “Oh,” she says, rising more than six feet into the air, “I haven't felt so giddy and free since you took me for a walk in the blizzard at night in this park. Higher, higher,” and he pushes her harder. “That's more like it, Mom. And you like her, right? So I'll do my best not to botch it.” “The others were so-so to very nice, but her I adore like my own daughter. Some unasked-for advice? Be smart, carry a stopwatch, think before you walk, keep your ears clean and fingernails spotless, and don't talk tough or snipe, and then enhance your chances even more by not being a doormat for anyone to wipe his hands on.” “I don't know what you mean, for when have I done that? Explete to me, Mom; I know it's for my own good and you don't want me to lose her,” and brings the swing to a stop and twists the chains around till she's facing him. Wakes up, is still holding Sally. She's blubbering in her sleep, then says, “Nustling and muscling”—or “musseling”—“Can't fed up and gotta quid go. Help ham.” Maybe this is a good time to speak to her. If she says why'd he wake her, he'll say she seemed to be having a troubling if not a scary dream and he thought he'd be helping her—she even said the word “help” in her sleep—by getting her out of it, and now that she's awake he wants to tell her something. Shakes her shoulder a little. She's not talking or blubbering anymore. Shakes it harder. Leans over, and her right eye seems to be open and she says, “What, a storm?” and he says—