It’s so funny, as I write this I think, but of course that won’t really happen. Death. It won’t really happen to me. This is just in case.
I’ve decided to stay here in Minnesota one more night. Then I’ll be moving on. As always, I’ll write from where I am.
It seems to me that your physical exam with Dr. Singerman was scheduled for some time around now. Don’t think you can cancel it just because I’m not there to make you go.
Love,
Nan
I am writing this by flashlight, which makes each word seem so important, so intentional. It is an odd feeling; a stage play by one to an audience of the same one.
I have built a bed in the woods, and it is very dark, no moon that I can find, no stars, only the very dim outline of the foliage nearest me, and then the rest of the world drops off. I can feel fear in me but it has stayed at the level of my throat: my head is clear and calm. The air is close, humid. There is the high whine of insects dive-bombing, full-time residents here who do not respect the rights of those who are not. Tomorrow I will have plenty of bites to scratch. Sometimes it is a pleasant thing; it feels good to scratch a bad itch, three bites in a neat row at the ankle can offer an odd sort of bliss.
There are the sounds of moving leaves, twigs snapping for this reason or that, a rare call from an owl or, even better, a loon. I have sat for some time trying only to be still. It is so much harder than it seems. I have always hated the notion of stillness, of meditation. It seemed, on the surface at least, colossally boring. Empty of anything I might be interested in. I tried meditation once. I bought a loose white outfit, I bought a book, I sat in a prescribed position; and my singular longing the whole time was for a watch I could sneak a look at. The book had said not to wear any jewelry, especially a watch, that time would become irrelevant. Not for me. After ten minutes, I was up looking at the clock on the dresser, thinking surely that my half hour was up. I was so resistant, nothing could enter my head: I saw no instructive images, I heard no wise words from a blurry source. No dramas played themselves out; no lighted center of peace was created inside me. All that happened in my head is that some huge foot began impatiently tapping away. Fingers drummed. My mind was straining at the leash, saying, oh, please, let me at least make a grocery list.
I put my meditation outfit in the bottom of my underwear drawer and I gave the book away. I thought, this meditation, it’s a fad. A foreign import, like falafel. We are Westerners, and we cannot do this right, no matter what anyone says. Our specialty is rock-and-roll, cars, blue jeans. Ice cream. We are not inner-oriented. We are oriented toward sofas and television, convoluted politics, escalating sizes of popcorn at movies featuring escalating levels of violence.
Something just happened here.
I undressed, in the dark. I stepped out of my sleeping bag and took off my clothes to lie down on the earth. I lay on my back and I rested my hand on my belly, then moved it downward slowly until I came to the slight rise of my pubic bone and the tangle of rough hair there. I could see nothing, and so the feeling was more intense; and I felt more the toucher than the one being touched. I moved my fingers down farther, then pushed one inside myself, pushed up high until I found the tip of my uterus. I held my finger there for a long time, pushed across a message from me to me. Thanks. And forgiveness. Then I pulled my finger out and rubbed it along the inside of my thigh. It felt like blood, what I rubbed there. I was sure it was blood, it felt too thick to be anything else. I turned on my flashlight, excited, to look; but no, it was not blood, it was just dampness, colorless and not magical. Only of course magical. I could smell ocean. I tasted my own self’s salt. And saw there was nothing to forgive myself for.
I lay down again, turned onto my front. I spread out my arms and my legs, and I thought, here. Here I am. I felt a pine needle dig into my thigh, and then I didn’t feel it. I smelled the rich smell of black dirt; I felt something else’s pulse in my chest; I understood with my belly that the sun was on the way within the next few minutes. I stood up and large hands moved into me and then separated themselves inside me, making me wider. I breathed in all I could take. And was, suddenly, myself again, overly aware of where the night space ended and I began. I sat down, waited for the pink of dawn to slit the bottom of the black horizon.
So.
So.
There is a feeling you have coming home at night when you are tired, and the key turns so easily in the lock, and your sheets are fresh from your having changed them that morning. There is a feeling you have after your baby has nursed and now falls asleep on your shoulder. That is something like what I just felt. Only, the me-ness seemed to be removed, so that other things could enter in. It was a feeling of finding one’s real place, I mean in the scheme of things. I felt as though I had, for once, the right perspective on death. It was a matter of the water drop seeing the falls, of losing the ego to the Wheel. But it was fleeting. I could feel my own longing for my own self return, my insistence on my own importance, at least to myself. It’s funny; I always thought that to lose one’s sense of self would be a horrible, disorienting thing. But it’s not. It is a movement toward the deepest kind of relief I have ever known.
I feel as though this was a holy and personal event I will never share with anyone. That it cannot be shared, and should not be. Occasionally, one learns quiet, and then how to keep it. Even me, who has always felt that everything must be shared, in order for it to be.
Late morning. I am still here, outside, being inspected by squirrels and birds high up in the trees. I am sore and creaky, and a thin line of pain runs from my shoulder into the middle of my back. But I am exhilarated. I can roll up my bed and go back to the cabin for coffee and then I can drive to a new place. And then to another new place. I am only fifty.
Dear Martin,
Today, on the way out of town, I stopped at a Kmart. After I was done getting what I needed, I went to look at the gardening equipment. I always enjoy doing this; it’s so hopeful, seeing all the spades and trowels hung up in shiny rows, all the big bags of lawn cures stacked neatly on the floor. Standing by the hoses were a man and a woman, a married couple somewhere in their early thirties, I’d say. They were discussing a coupon the woman held. Well, the woman was discussing it. The man was yelling about it. Apparently the woman wanted to go to another store to get the hose, because it would be cheaper there. The man was acting as though she’d suggested eating poison. “It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get there!” he said. “Time is money, you know. Has that ever occurred to you?” The woman stood still, looking into his face, her own empty of expression. This kind of thing was not new to her. “I just thought …” she said. The man grabbed a hose, flung it into their shopping cart. Then he stormed off toward the checkout lane. I was happy to see that one of the wheels of his cart had been damaged, so the thing made a very loud, rhythmic, clacking noise that caused other shoppers to stare after him, smiling.
The woman stood there watching him go, the coupon at her side. And I thought, okay, Nan, this is the time you get to do something. Remember, Martin, when I called you from the airport and told you about the man who was yelling at the woman there? She was sitting in a plastic chair in an empty row, her head down, and he was pacing back and forth, just screaming at her, calling her a bitch, saying she was stupid, what the fuck was the matter with her? He went on and on and she never looked up. Her hair was long and blonde and parted in the middle, very fine, like baby hair. Her hands were in her lap. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t doing anything. Everyone around was upset, you could see people start to do something, then walk away. I had a notion to go up and poke the guy with my umbrella, saying, “Leave her alone!” but he was so huge and muscular and angry—and clearly a little crazy. I looked helplessly at other people across the room, who were looking helplessly at me. And then I thought, Martin will know what to do. I called you and you said to get the hell away from them, it wasn’t my business. You said not to speak to the man, to remember I was in New Yor
k, the guy would probably shoot me if I asked for the time.
After I hung up, I put my umbrella under my arm and started toward that couple. I wasn’t going to mind my own business. When I got close to them, though, I saw that a security guard was coming toward them, too. I thought, oh good. The security guard talked in low tones to the man and the man nodded as though he were ashamed. Then, as soon as the guard was out of sight, he started in on the woman again, and although he had lowered his voice, his fury had clearly escalated. I thought, later, she’ll really get it, because someone told the security guard to go over there. It will be her fault, just like everything else is her fault: a button that falls off his shirt, slow service at a café, the level of humidity. The woman’s legs were crossed, and as still as the rest of her. Her ankles were long and slender, thoroughbred-looking, and there was a tattoo around one of them, like a bracelet. It looked like roses and thorns. And I remember thinking, First, we’ll get rid of that tattoo. But then my flight was announced and I walked away. And I have always regretted it.
So when I saw this incident at the Kmart, I thought, not this time. I’m not walking away this time. For one thing, the husband was short, a half-bald guy, nerdy-looking in his checked pants and knit shirt. I figured, if need be, I could probably punch him out.
I nodded to the woman and she, embarrassed, nodded back. And then I said, “Would you like a ride home?” She looked at her husband, standing in line and glaring across the room at her. Then she looked back at me. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. But not home, if you don’t mind.” I said, “No problem. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” I put down my shopping basket; I’d get deodorant and gum and toothpaste somewhere else. When we walked past her husband, he said quietly, “Hey. What are you doing?” And then, loudly, as we continued walking toward the door, “Hey! What are you doing?” The cashier said, “Sir? Are you buying this?” And the guy pushed his cart up and got his wallet out. I led the woman to my car.
I started driving and she started talking. Her name was Lynn; she’d been married for five years; the kind of treatment I’d witnessed was not unusual. I asked if he hit her and she said oh no, never. She said that might be better actually, then she could watch something heal.
I took her to a Wendy’s. We had a Coke and talked a little and she seemed to feel better—when she smiled, I saw that her teeth crossed endearingly in the front. She asked if I would mind if she got herself a burger as long as we were there, she loved Wendy’s hamburgers. I said no problem, I was in no hurry. I said I had a fondness for singles with cheese myself, I’d join her. When we came back to the table again, she asked if I had just moved here—she’d seen my out-of-state plates. I said no, I was just passing through. And then I said, “How come you married him?”
There was a long moment. She stirred her Coke with her straw, then said, “You really want to know?” I said yes. She said it was a rebound situation, that she had been dumped by someone she really loved and it hurt so bad she just wanted to marry someone else quickly and be done with it. She said she had tried so hard to get her old lover back but the last time they were together, she’d made a fool of herself, flung her head into his lap and wept and felt only the slight movement of him trying to pull away. She said, “I thought, anything is better than this.” Her husband had always had a crush on her, he’d lived on the same block when they were growing up and he was always trying to get her to go out with him. So she called him and they went out a few times and then he proposed and she said yes. “I felt numb,” she said. “I felt like I was watching someone else do this. The last week or so before we got married I would wake up every night crying. I knew it was wrong. But I did it anyway.”
I asked if she had children. She said no. And then she said, I know what you’re going to say. But I can’t leave him. Every time I try, I just end up coming back. I don’t see that there’s anything that special out there. Everywhere I look it seems to me that even the women who are supposedly happy, they’re just pretending. I said oh no, you’re wrong. She looked at my wedding ring, asked me, are you happy? I said well yes, that we had our problems, but I would say I was happy, I was glad I’d married my husband and I’d do it again. (I would, Martin, only I would not wear that dumb dress, I would wear a nice white two-piece suit.) Lynn said, so you never get that thing, where you’re saying, here is the wife, making dinner for the husband. I said what do you mean. She said oh, you know, that thing where you feel outside yourself, you’re watching yourself, and you’re not sure at all where you really are. I said, well. I said I guess I feel that sometimes. And I realized that of course I do. That I watch my hands peel the carrot and realize I am not quite there. And oftentimes, then, I look up out of the kitchen window and there is a dull pain in me. I never know what the hell it is, really. I look out the window, watching for birds, and wait for the ache to pass, and it does.
I don’t mean to say this is your fault, this pain that comes, because it’s not, Martin. I do mean to say that this trip has made me aware of so much I’d kept hidden from myself. And now that these things are out, there’s no putting them back, they’re like those sponge things that grow forty times their size.
I guess this sounds like a warning. And perhaps it is. But I want you to know that I want to live with you, I don’t want to be without you, it’s not that. You’re the only one whose driving I trust enough to go to sleep in a car. Every time I ride with someone else, I feel I have to watch the road, too. Blinker, I’m thinking. Brake, brake! It’s kind of exhausting.
Oh, Martin, and you’re the one I want to watch television with, I don’t mind folding your socks, we can fart in front of each other, that means more than a new bride thinks. And you’re the one I always want to show things to. I always need to show you. Remember the last time I went to the grocery store and I called you into the kitchen to show you the smoked turkey I’d bought? Oh, you said. Uh-huh. That was gentle of you. I realized after I’d done it that you could have said, Nan.
I had a thought the other day, What if Martin is keeping a journal too? I got so excited by the idea. I saw your neat handwriting in a brown leather journal, a handsome, manly thing. I thought, boy, would I love to read that. I like it when I get a peek at your insides. Of course whenever I tell you that, you close up like the takeout window at that ice-cream stand we go to every summer. I always think of that, when I ask you to reveal yourself more, that you are like the man wearing that little white paper hat, sticking his face out the window to ask what you want and then slamming it shut when he hears your request. I have to come at you in more indirect ways. I remember once we made these lists that were a suggestion from some woman’s magazine. I’d bought the magazine so I could make the roast pork tenderloin shown on the cover. But there was an article I found in it, things to do to bring couples closer. We were to write the five things we prized about each other, and then the five things we’d like to change. You were in a rare, cooperative mood that night, and you agreed to do it with me. We got shy about telling each other what we prized and then we got in a fight over what we’d like to change, remember? We went to opposite ends of the house and then, an hour or so later, you came up into the bedroom where I was reading and said, “I’m going out.” I said I could not care less. You said, “I’m going to Gallagher’s.” I said, for a steak? Yes, you said. Well, wait, I said, I’m coming.
Martin. We have a lot. Some people have so little. I took that woman home and I watched her pick a few weeds out of the cracks in the sidewalk on her way up to her door. She said her husband would probably be too scared to be mad anymore. He always thought she was going to walk out on him. I said, well, you’d think he’d change how he treats you then. And she shrugged. There were no tears in her eyes. There was no frustration. There was only a flatness, which I found so frightening.
It’s six-thirty. I’m in a little town in South Dakota. There’s a great-looking movie theater here, the Grand-view, it’s called, all old-fashioned looking, an old lady
with cat-eye glasses selling tickets, a blue cardigan sweater hanging on to her skinny shoulders. There’s an ice-cream shop next door, stools lined up at the counter, menu on the wall in a curly black script, and I saw they have patty melts. My night is cut out for me.
Tomorrow I’m driving exactly one hundred miles west. Then I’m turning around. Please make an appointment with that builder we like, Peter Quigley. Make it for a few weeks from now. Please.
Love,
Nan
Eight-thirty P.M. I’m staying at a turquoise-blue motel, a neon sign in front that’s a pink flamingo, his wing waving you in. How could I resist such a place? There’s a bathtub-sized pool, a family of four enjoying it as though it were Olympic-sized, as though it belonged to Esther Williams herself. The mother, her hair piled on top of her head, sits on the edge of the pool and occasionally dips her baby girl, maybe eighteen months old, into the water, then out again. I can hear that baby’s squeals even through my closed windows, and I smile every time. Her diaper drips happily; her legs kick the air. The father is playing ball in the water with his son, an exuberant blond boy maybe four years old, whose bright-orange trunks hang on to hips that look like little folded wings. When he gets out of the pool to retrieve the ball, his knees knock from the cold; he wraps his sticklike arms uselessly around himself, and his teeth chatter. Close up, I know, you would see that his lips have turned a bruised color, requesting warmth. Twice now I’ve heard his mother say, Timmy? Aren’t you too cold, honey? Don’t you want to go in, now? And twice I’ve heard him say No!