Time to Go (18 page)

I couldn't put it into words at all or just about. But what I meant to say was that it doesn't have what my instincts tell me a story must have to be a good story. Good meaning, well, Good. Meaning what? Now I've lost the line or thread or whatever it is that also keeps a story from continuing. Not From but just Keeps it continuing. Maybe if I write that first line from the first paragraph again or just start to write that whole first paragraph or even this paragraph from the beginning I'll eventually come to a good beginning and can start the story from there. Is that what I'm aiming for or am I aiming to just write a story with a whole bunch of beginnings and rewriting of beginnings and rewriting or pretended rewriting of paragraphs, etcetera? For this is the first story I've started in more than a month. Actually, the first thing I've written, except for a letter to my mother and about three dozen postcards, several to my mother, in more than a month. I've been away. Explored prehistoric caves. Not so much Explored as Visited these caves. Paid the full admission fee if the ticket sellers wouldn't, when I showed them my faculty card, charge me a reduced fee or let me in free, and went in with groups of ten to twenty people and once with about forty French schoolchildren and their chaperons and teachers and was guided through various caves with prehistoric paintings and engravings on the walls and one cave with both those and another with the painter's hand stenciled on several of the walls, in the Dordogne region of France. The Department of France. Or maybe the Dordogne region in the Perigord Department of France. I left my map of that region or department in the Paris hotel we stayed in our last day in France and there isn't an atlas in this summer cottage we rent in Maine. Anyway, all that has little or nothing to do with what I'm writing now except to say I haven't written a stitch of fiction in a month because I've been away and wanted to start writing today, the day after we got back from France, and this is what I've written so far. I should have started today's writing with a letter or postcard to someone, but I usually do that first thing after I've been away from writing for a week or more and I thought I'd try something different this time to see what would come out. This is what did. Not much for sure. I'll probably put it away uncompleted or just throw it away, and if I don't throw it away now, pick it up in half a year or so and see its worthlessness and then throw it away. But first see if something can come out of it now. Start, as an exercise, from the beginning of the last paragraph and see what happens. Or just start, since you already started from the beginning of the last paragraph, which was the beginning of the first paragraph you started, and as an Experiment, not an Exercise, from any place of the three written pages you blindly put your finger on. You've never done that before. So do it. I'm going to. Not because I never did it but because it seems like a good idea. I'm going to do it right now.

To other things. That's what my finger landed on. I closed my eyes, shuffled the three pages and spread them out on top of the dictionary on my right side and put my finger down on page one's second to last line. It actually landed on To other, so maybe I should have been true or something to what I said I'd do and just put down To other. Nothing much has come of the experiment so far, so maybe that's what I'll do right now.

To other. To other what? Two other what? Not either of those Whats but just To other. But To other what? That wasn't a good idea. Or maybe it was but I just happened to land on the wrong words or one of the grouping of words least conducive or adaptable or malleable or whatever to start something going on the page. Maybe no grouping of words from those three pages would have started something going just then, but how could I ever know? I couldn't. So it's ridiculous thinking about. All I can conclude is that something might have started some other time with that grouping or any grouping of words from those three pages or even a single word my finger might have landed on, but didn't when I tried it before. So try it again. Not blindly putting your finger on one of the pages, though I could also do that, but with To other, as now might be that Other time.

To other. Tother. Tuther. Tether. The wind is wet. I like that best. Or rather, I like it better than the rest. Wind is wet. I am wet. I am not. Not wet. I'm. Writing The wind is wet. I'm sitting here writing The wind is wet and Wind is wet. Magna's downstairs writing whatever she's writing. She's writing something. Her typewriter's going. She's angry at me, or rather, she still might be if she's still thinking about the spat we had about half an hour ago and which was most if not all my fault. Seems difficult for something to be All my fault. Anyway, I lied. The wind is wet wasn't the first thing I wrote since I came back from France—I wrote—where is it?—I wrote—I'm going to look for it now—I wrote—just before I started this piece—This time I'm going to make it work. I've ruined all my other relationships. I know what I did. I knew it while I was doing it I didn't even put in a period. I just stopped writing it and threw it away. I didn't throw it away though would have if I had a waste basket or large paper bag or something like that here to throw it in. I put it at the right end of this table thinking that later I'll go downstairs and get a paper bag, as the one waste basket in this cottage we've rented the last three summers has been beside Magna's desk, and put in all of today's trash: eraser pencil shavings—first thing I did when I sat at this table was sharpen two eraser pencils—and discarded manuscript pages and the like. Used tissues and pieces of toilet paper, since I've the start of a head cold and know I'll be blowing my nose. In fact I'm going to blow my nose now with a tissue, not because what I just wrote gave me the idea to but because I suddenly have to.

I just blew my nose and put the wet tissue at the right end of this table and will put it in the paper bag along with the page that starts with This time I'm going to make it work, and probably along with these six awful pages I've written so far and whatever I might add to them. The tissue is wet. The wind is wet. This awful piece or whatever it is is wet. The ground outside's wet. Coffee I'm drinking or just was is cold and wet. I just dried my nose and eyes, which were wet, with a dry tissue I made wet. I'll also put that tissue in the paper bag when I get it. Oh, put on your glasses, tie the laces of your wet sneakers so you won't trip going downstairs and the two cats when you come downstairs won't think the flicking lace tips on the stair boards are the nails of a dog as they've thought several times before. Or just take off the sneakers, since they are wet, and put on your loafers and go downstairs and say something nice to Magna. Say you apologize. Say you're sorry, very sorry. Say you'll try to see that it won't happen again. Say you'll do your very best. Say you had a dream last night you want to tell her, Is it all right? If she says yes, say in the dream she said An FBI man told me they've done a thorough report on you and that you are fou, and I said A fool? and she said You know what I mean: that vous êtes fou, crazy! and I said So what does that mean to you: that you don't want to continue living with a fouy man, a crazy man? and she said Yes, you being fou is just one of the many things that make me not want to live with you anymore, and I said Ah, the hell with it and walked out of the hotel and along one of those narrow barge roads by the Dordogne feeling very depressed and thinking what will I do, commit suicide here in France? Because I can't live without her. I need someone like her to tell my dreams to and many other reasons and she's the last one left, and the dream ended then. I woke up. The room was black. I didn't think it was a room but a cave. I felt for Magna. She was on her side, her back to me. We had what I thought was an animal hide over us and were lying on soft ground. I looked at the ground. There was a little light on it now and it looked like water or mud. I reached out to feel it. It felt like water. I felt the small rug on the floor though didn't think yet that the floor was a floor and rug a rug and the rug felt like grass. I don't remember falling asleep here, I thought, but maybe everything I remember before waking up was a dream. Then how'd I get here? How do I get my food? Who's Magna? I turned to her. The hide became the top sheet covered by blankets, the soft ground a bed. I could see windows now. We were in our rented summer cottage, not a cave. All this while I was awake. I pressed into her from behind. Got or had an erection. I wanted to talk to her about my dream and maybe to make love, but she seemed to be sleeping. I pressed the erection against her thighs from behind and put my arm over her under the blanket till my hand covered her breast. She didn't move. I pressed into her a little harder, put my lips against her neck and blew softly on it, thinking that might awake her. Few seconds later she said I can't right now, what are you doing? What do you mean what am I doing? I said. I didn't get closer to you to make love, just to be warm and safe. I want to go back to sleep too. You have no consideration, she said. I didn't know you were up, I said, So I didn't think you'd feel me. Not feel what, she said, Your blowing on me? How could I not feel it? Who blew on you where? I said. I didn't blow. If you felt my breath on your neck it was probably because I was breathing through my mouth while falling asleep, that's all. No consideration, she said. Oh, none at all? Then little, she said. I'm sorry, I said, I'll move away and stop breathing, and I moved to the other side of the bed. All you want to do or just about always when you're in bed, no matter how I feel or what state I might be in, is make love. Because you knew I was sleeping. I'm exhausted. I've jet lag. We're six hours behind. It's really six or eight in the morning, not midnight or two or whatever time the clock says. I know and I'm sorry, I said. Christ, she said. Oh the hell, I can't sleep with you constantly complaining when I didn't mean what you think I did and making me feel even worse than I should, and I got out of bed, said We'll work it out in the morning, went downstairs and fell asleep on the couch with my raincoat and one of the cats on top of me. About an hour ago she said I think we better speak about last night. We were having breakfast, hadn't talked much. Polite talk. Pass the this, etcetera, while she read and I looked out the window. Oh, skip all that. Talk, argument, anger, tears from Magna, I walked out of the room, up here, she left the cottage and came back twenty minutes later and went to her desk and started typing, is, I'm typing, and that's where I am now. The wind is wet. It sounded so nice. I thought it would be a good beginning. I wanted to write, when I sat down, something about why I'm always fighting and lying on and off with women and making myself so hard to live with. I wanted to explore that particularly and why I want those characteristics in me to stop. But I wrote slop: This time I'm going to make it work. Then nonsense: The wind is wet. Then what followed right up till this. Forget the writing: I should go downstairs now to try to work things out. Not because I can't work well up here so long as I know Magna's sad and getting if she's not already fed up with me, though if my work did improve because of it I'd certainly be glad, but because I want more than anything and as much if not more than I've wanted with anyone to stay with her and be loved by her and because I eventually want to find out why I do some of the wrong things I do and what I can do to change them. Something like that. But I'm going to do it. Meaning, I'm going to go downstairs now.

I went downstairs. Magna was still upset. I said I hate for her to be so upset. I said lots of things. I'll skip most of it. I said I know I must change. She said she thinks so too. I said if I changed somewhat does she think she'd still want to live with me? She said maybe only if I changed more than somewhat. How much more? I said and she said A little more than a little more. One very important thing though, she said, No, two: you have to think more of me than you do. Not to dote on me, but just to be more considerate of my feelings than you've been and, this is the second thing, more aware or just more truthful of your own. All right, I said, And I'm not saying this just because it sounds good: I'll do everything I can to be that way and do what you say. I will, I said, I promise, okay? Okay, she said. I then wanted to kiss. She said Not quite yet. She asked what I've been typing upstairs and I said The beginning of something. It's not working out. I started it several times. I think I was feeling too miserable because of what happened between us and what I knew you were feeling. It includes something of what we recently went through, I'm afraid: last night, my dreams, our breakfast, that I want our relationship to work out so much. She asked if she could see it. That she knows I don't like anyone but editors and agents to see my work till it's published, but could she? It'd give her the assurance, she said, that I trust her more than I seem to and value her opinion of my work more too and even if I might not agree with what she says about it each time, that I'm at least able to listen to it. And also that she can perhaps be of some use to me in my work more than just as a fictional character, just as she likes it when I give good advice in the work she does. I said You know I don't like to show my work—but you already said that. Okay, but you have to realize it's junk. That it's something I'm almost sure I won't be able to or just won't want to end. That I started it, and probably in the wrong mood for such a piece—a dejected mood or just about—to be something, started it to, but nothing much materialized. That I'll probably dump it into a trash bag in a few minutes to an hour if I don't save it for half a year and then look at it and dump it then. She realizes all that, she said. She knows most of my work habits by now and also that I've occasionally searched frantically through garbage bags and cans for the beginnings of stories I threw in and then worked on them and finished a few and one even got published and became if she's not mistaken my only major anthologized piece. Which reminds me, I said. While I'm down here I should get a paper bag for my trash, because I've a cold coming on—You do? she said. I'm sorry, you must've gotten it that last rainy night in Paris when I insisted we see St. Chapelle and Notre Dame—And I already have two wet tissues upstairs that should not only be in a trash bag but for your sake probably burned. She laughed. I smiled. I took her hand. I said Please let's just have one small kiss? It'll mean a lot to me. How much is a lot to you? she said. A lot more than a lot, I said—I don't know, but a whole lot, which should be enough. Sure, she said, Fine by me. We kissed. Kissed several times. I love you, I said, You know that. Sometimes I don't, she said, But I love you too. Oh Christ, she said, Let's be good to one another and helpful and truthful as two people can be to one another, though I know you must think this is all garbage psychotherapy talk, or at least work towards what I'm asking for and not so often hurt one another and all the other good things? All right, I said. You are right and as my dad used to say, though that's not to say he practiced it. In fact—well anyway, When you're right you're right, he used to say, and you are right. That'll be the program from now on: truth, help, not hurt, all the good things together, etcetera. Good, she said. Will you now let me see your upstairs' work and even let me comment on it if I feel my comments might help it? Yes, I said. And your comments couldn't do anything but help this work, not that it'll end up to be anything—the work, that is—and I think your comments could probably help all my work. So get it, she said. The bag first, I said. I got a large paper bag from the kitchen, went upstairs, got the ten pages, brought them downstairs, she read them, said I don't mind The wind is wet. It's in a way, well, poetic. And the wind can be wet, so why are you fretting so much over it? Sure the wind can be wet, she said. A foggy wind. A rainy wind. The kind of wind with rain in it we get so much of around here. Wind with rain in it, I said—I like that. I don't know why, but I really like that line. Wind with rain in it. Wind with rain in it. And the truth is, she said, If you rewrite this as it is, or without, if you'll permit me, adding much more to it except maybe a quick curious finish, it might to a lot of readers be an original story; if that was your original intention. If it wasn't, well, accidents happen, so think about making it your intention. Not of course that a work has to be original to be good, though I think this one would have to. Wind with rain in it, I said. The wind is wet. This wind with rain in it is. I don't know about all that, she said. Nor, if you want my advice, about including all those, if that's what you have in mind, for the purpose of originality or not. But if this turned out not to be a story or not quite one or not quite much of anything publishable, let's say, original or not, or whatever happens to a story once you think you've finished it, it had some purpose. It helped you think about us, if I got it right. It brought you downstairs to talk things out with me. So it served a very useful purpose, or just a useful one, and that's as a reconciliatory story for us. So maybe it only deserves two readers, you and me, and for our purpose the story's finished, and for the story's purpose—well, it might not have one except for the reconciliatory reason I gave. And so actually, and without much regret for the work you put in and the time I did right now, it could be thrown out, depending on how important you think that reconciliation is. Very important, I said. Wind with wind with wet with rain in it this is. That makes a lot of sense, she said. Oh, it doesn't? I said. And if you are planning to keep this piece and maybe even add to it, she said, I suppose you or both of us should try to recall if others might not have done something of the same order as this. Maybe you know but you're not saying. No I don't, I said, though I don't read as much as a lot of others do. Wind with with with wet with rain within it is this. Whatever, she said, But I have to get back to my work. Want to go for a run in an hour or so? If I'm not too busy with my wet wind writing, I said. See you then, she said and handed me my ten pages and I went upstairs and recorded or tried to record as close as I could what went on since the end of the last paragraph, or rather, since I went downstairs to try to work things out with Magna. Things seem to have worked out. I feel good about that. Now to finish and later read it over—say in a few hours or tomorrow morning or after my run with Magna, if she still wants to run and if I want to—to see if I have anything here. I did bring up the bag—I mentioned that—and will now put in it those tissues and eraser pencil shavings and a third tissue, because I have to blow my nose again, and that page which begins with This time I'm going to make it work.