How Should a Person Be? (5 page)

•
chapter
2
•

FATE ARRIVES, DESPITE THE MACHINATIONS OF FATE

I
f a literary man feels like going to the zoo, he should by all means go to the zoo,” E. B. White once wrote, so after working one day at the salon, I did what I most felt like
doing: I took a stroll down the longest street in the world.
I walked past stores with slutty dresses out front, past second-
­
rate jewelers, novelty shops, and arcades, when a silver digital
tape recorder in the window of an electronics shop caught my eye.

It has long been known to me that certain objects want you as much as you want them. These are the ones that become important, the objects you hold dear. The others fade from your life entirely. You wanted them, but they did not want you in return.

Though I had vowed not to spend more than seven dol
lars a day, since I was hardly making any money, I went into
the store. I actually rushed in, as though everyone ­else in the city was about to have the same idea as me. I asked the old man what the tape recorder cost, knowing full well that I would buy it, no matter what it cost. I gave him my credit card and signed a slip of paper on which I promised to pay one hundred and twenty-­nine dollars and thirty-­two cents. Then I went across the street into the oily, red-­awninged croissant shop, where I ordered an almond croissant and sat on a tall stool by a wall of windows.

As the beginnings of a shower mottled the street, I whispered low into the tape recorder's belly. I recorded my voice and played it back. I spoke into it tenderly and heard my tenderness returned.

I felt like I was with a new lover—­one that would burrow into my deepest recesses, seek out the empty places inside me, and create a warm home for me there. I wanted to touch every part of it, to understand how it worked. I began to learn what turned it on and the things that turned it off.

•
chapter
3
•

SHEILA WANTS TO QUIT

Later that same week, after buying the tape recorder, Margaux and Sheila sit in the front window of a neighborhood diner. They order a breakfast to share and two coffees. The midday sunlight filters onto Margaux's peroxide hair. They both wear dirty sneakers. They both wear dirty underwear.

SHEILA

Do you mind if I record?

Sheila pulls out her tape recorder, puts it on the table, and turns it on.

MARGAUX

What?

SHEILA

I need some help with the play
,
and I thought that maybe by talking it over with you—­I thought maybe you could help
me figure out why it isn't working. Then I can listen to what
we say, and think it over at home, and figure out where I'm going wrong.

Margaux shakes her head.

MARGAUX

First, I ­haven't read your play. Secondly, I don't have any answers.

SHEILA

It's okay that you ­haven't read the play. I think the problem is with what happens, so I'll just tell you the plot.

MARGAUX

Why are you looking to me for answers? I don't know anything you don't know!

SHEILA

I'm not looking to you for answers! Why would you say that? I was just hoping that if I—

MARGAUX

Don't you know that what I fear most is my words floating separate from my body? You there with that tape recorder is the scariest thing!

SHEILA

But the answer might be in something
I
say! Besides, who's going to hear it?

MARGAUX

I don't know! I don't know where things end up! Then what­ever I happen to say, someone will believe I really said it and meant it? No. No. You there with that tape recorder just looks like my own death.

Sheila sighs deeply and looks out the window. Margaux looks out the window, too. They do not talk for several minutes. Sheila brushes some sand from the tabletop onto the floor.

As Margaux and I sat there, I tried to be compassionate. I thought about how difficult it is to live in this world without any clothes on. I know it's the gods who determine who among us is fated to go through life with her clothes off. When the gods gather around a baby in its cradle and dole out their gifts and curses, this is one aspect of things they consider.

Most people live their entire lives with their clothes on, and even if they wanted to, ­couldn't take them off. Then there are those who cannot put them on. They are the ones
who live their lives not just as people but as examples of
people.
They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be a human.

Most people lead their private lives. They have been
given a natural modesty that feels to them like morality, but
it's not—­it's luck. They shake their heads at the people with their clothes off rather than learning about human life from their example, but they are wrong to act so superior. Some of us have to be naked, so the rest can be exempted by fate.

MARGAUX

(
sighs
) All right. You know I have more respect for your art than I do for my own fears.

SHEILA

Thank you! Thank you!

MARGAUX

Just promise you won't betray me.

SHEILA

(
reassuringly
) I don't even know what that means.

Sheila beckons to the waitress, who comes over.

Can we also get some jam?

The waitress nods and leaves.

Is it too much that I asked for jam
and
water?

MARGAUX

(
suspiciously
) No.

Sheila clears her throat.

SHEILA

Okay. So what happens in the play is this: There are these two families, the Oddis and the Sings. And they each have a twelve-­year-­old kid. The Oddis have a twelve-­year-­old girl named Jenny, and the Sings have a twelve-­year-­old boy named Daniel. So both families are vacationing in Paris, and in the first scene of the play, the two families meet at a parade—

MARGAUX

Wait! ­Were they always meeting in Paris?

SHEILA

By accident. It's an accident. So they meet in Paris by accident because the kids recognize each other at a parade, and there's this sort of inexplicable hostility between the two mothers. They hate each other instantly, right?

MARGAUX

Right.

SHEILA

And at the end of the first scene, Daniel goes missing, 'kay?

MARGAUX

Okay.

Margaux takes some potatoes with a fork. They fall. She eats them with her fingers.

SHEILA

Then the next scene's back at the hotel. Now the problem of the play is: The kid's gone missing. But nobody reacts in a conventional way to it. Jenny really wants to find Daniel, but she becomes a more minor character in the play, and the real central character of the play becomes Ms. Oddi, Jenny's mother, who sort of realizes through the course of things, really quickly, that she's completely dissatisfied in her life and has never reached her full potential, blah blah blah. In the first draft of the play she runs away to the beach—­to Cannes.

MARGAUX

Wait! Why does she run away?

SHEILA

She feels she's kind of been oppressed by her family.

MARGAUX

I guess she has no feelings for them. Or how ­else could she run away?

SHEILA

Huh? I guess she's distracting herself. Oh, and then she has this affair with the Man in the Bear Suit. At the end of the play, Daniel comes home, and it turns out he actually
ran
away. He has grown up in this really weird way, and he speaks this weird monologue about how great it is to be a grown-­up. Anyways, now Ms. Oddi ­doesn't go to Cannes.

MARGAUX

(
disappointed
) Oh, she ­doesn't?

SHEILA

No. 'Cause the director, Ben, thought it would be better to localize the action at the hotel—

MARGAUX

Oh, I guess that
is
how theater works.

SHEILA

Yeah. So
now
what sets Ms. Oddi off is that they're in the
hotel room and she's playing the flute, and Jenny never knew
that she played the flute, and somebody from the hotel comes
and asks if she'll play for dinner to­night—

MARGAUX

Yeah?

SHEILA

And
.
.
. she ­doesn't.

MARGAUX

(
disappointed
) Oh.

SHEILA

'Cause she realizes she hasn't been playing all these years. She loved it but never took it seriously, and now she's afraid she's not good enough.

MARGAUX

Wait. Where did the flute come from?

SHEILA

The suitcase.

Margaux laughs.

So
now
­we've got Ms. Oddi, who somehow—­she feels she has to change her life—­but she just keeps getting embroiled
with all these various men from the hotel when all she wants
to do is play her flute!

MARGAUX

The flute's my favorite part.

SHEILA

It's stupid!

MARGAUX

(
laughing
) It's just an autobiography.

Sheila puts her head in her hands.

SHEILA

I know, I
know
! But my life keeps changing. My life keeps changing!

MARGAUX

Well, it's too bad she never plays the flute. It's like when in
films there's a painting that's being discussed, but you never—
­and all you want is to see this painting—­but you never get
to see it. It always seems nice to never see the painting because
then it becomes so much more amazing than you could ever
imagine!

SHEILA

(
unhappy
) Yeah.

Margaux picks up a thing of jam.

MARGAUX

Did you take one of these already?

SHEILA

Yes.

Margaux puts the jam on her plate.

In fact, I should pull the play.

MARGAUX

Pull the play?

SHEILA

(
miserable
) Too late now. Oh my God, Margaux, what am I going to
do
? The play's never made any sense! It's nonsense!

MARGAUX

How is that possible? You've been working on it for
years
!

SHEILA

I should have totally fucking never agreed to write this play
in the first place! Oh my God. Maybe I can go into our studio
and just spend all day
.
.
.

MARGAUX

I mean, I guess you
could
spend all day
.
.
.

SHEILA

But I ­can't fix the play in one day! If I ­can't fix it in three years, I ­can't fix it in a day! I have a real psychological block! I ­haven't been able to bring myself to finish it or work on it—­I don't know why!

MARGAUX

Oh, it's so scary. Maybe you could come up with an alternative to the play. Maybe you could think of an alternative—

SHEILA

(
panicked
) An alternative
what
? An alternative way of writing it, or an alternative for what they could do?

MARGAUX

Maybe something about it being theater is really, like, blocking you. Maybe you could say, “What I've written is
not interesting—­here is something ­else you could do. If you
don't want to do that, I'm sorry, but maybe you should pick someone ­else.”

SHEILA

But they don't
want
to pick someone ­else! And they want a production! They want a
play
. There are so many
interesting
things one could do with a theater in three weeks. That I would
love
to do! That would be really interesting!

MARGAUX

Yeah, they want a play. Man, are they missing out. I really feel like theater hasn't caught up from a 1930s awareness. Do you want some of my toast? 'Cause this is a lot of toast.

SHEILA

Oh my God. Why are we
doing
this? I should have totally fucking said no last September!

MARGAUX

So what? They want to start getting actors and stuff?

SHEILA

They want to have a workshop in February and a main stage production in the spring. I should pull the play. There has never been a draft that anyone's been happy with. Not me, not the producer, not the director, not the other director we had.

Margaux eats the toast with jam.

MARGAUX

It still seems like you might do something in the next day that's remarkable. Maybe that's what the play could be about.

SHEILA

(
anxiously
) What? Saving the day?

MARGAUX

Something remarkable.

SHEILA

(
uncertain
) Yeah.

Long pause. Margaux is staring out the window.

What? What are you thinking?

MARGAUX

Sorry, sorry, I'm just trying to think of—­of things I've given up on.

Pause.

No. I ­can't think of anything.