This All Happened(14)
6 Max Wareham says he fell for Daphne Yarn because her eyes watered whenever it was windy. He noticed an inner light in her eyes that mirrored her external being. I said, Are you saying she has a serene beauty? No, he says, she has a deep laugh that undercuts the composure. But I’ve found a connective force, some adhesion, and this force pushed me to commit.
Max says, I’m crazy enough for two people. I need someone anchored.
He says his mother married his father after he asked her to dance to Hank Williams. They waltzed and he told her of his dog opening doors with its teeth, and she laughed.
He says, Now you with Lydia. I’ve never seen a man so cuntstruck.
I thought about that word all day. Cuntstruck. I had to go out for a walk with it. It was a little dog that I put on a leash and let wander ahead of me. It was one oclock, the night’s first puny hour. I stepped outside, preparing for it to feel like the furthest thing from summer. But a wind from the Gulf of Mexico had drifted in off course. You could smell the heat. Redolent and cuntstruck. It’s true. Tonight should have been the coldest night on earth, and yet the soft wind reminded me of summer. I thought of the wind in sexual terms. That this wind was having an affair with my little dog.
7 I write three pages on an old man who lives in Frogmarsh, near Brigus. I’m calling him the remittance man and I’m basing him on Wilf. He’s done a bad deed in England and fled to the colony. A novel needs evil men. While driving, the remittance man sees a car broken down, a couple, and stops. He gives the man a lift to the nearest gas station. The man’s wife stays with the car. At the station, the man says he can find his way back. But the remittance man, instead of continuing on, doubles back. He picks up the wife. He says, Your husband asked me to bring you to the gas station. She gets in, but the remittance man drives past the station. He pulls in to a dirt road that leads to a salvage yard.
This is all plot and action. And invented. It doesnt interest me.
8 When I think of God I think of a voice in my chest I tell promises to. I will not lie. I will give away a hundred dollars this month. I will not read Lydia’s journal. I will praise others and not myself. I will steal only from corporations. I will not fool myself about the truth of my actions.
This type of promise builds you. It is the moral foundation.
I do not want to write another word on couples. On the words they tell each other. On detail. I have no interest in this. I want insight. So often my interests are prurient and carnal. I want to leap, rather than be hemmed by the drudgery of copying down rote event. There is nothing wrong with deluding yourself. I must pinpoint motive and repercussion.
9 Lydia calls and she’s full of love, but I’m irritated. She was inviting me to come down for supper, but I declined. I said I’d already eaten when I hadnt. I declined because she had thought of me at the last minute. But that’s her nature. Lydia lives with the evidence that surrounds her. She was oblivious to my existence right up until the moment she called me.
I walk to the pizza joint and order a slice. I have made a date with Max to play racquetball. I realize I’ve been volatile all week. I’ve been tight in the shoulders. I understand it has to do with the marriage proposal, how the proposal has been stored away in a cupboard behind Lydia’s ear while she prepares for roles and a film this summer. The word that best describes my plight is anguish. The word comes to me while I’m whacking a racquetball. Max is exasperated. Anguish, he says, is something most people cannot afford to have (he smacks a low shot into the back corner) . It is a self-made dilemma. Most people are dealing with forces beyond their control. Anguish implies a position of your own doing.
But what’s wrong with suffering from your own hand? Everyone, he says, gets into moods and it’s no big deal. But there is no room for me to have a bit of a mood. Lydia gets angry at me.
Just tell her youre in a bit of a mood.