Stray Reprints

Thursday, December 9, 2021

THEM'S THE RULES

The most important meal of the day for a thin person is breakfast. The most important meal of the day for a strong person is lunch. The most important meal of the day for a rich person is dinner. The most important meal of the day for a pious person is dinner at six. The most important meal of the day for a creative person is an early lunch. The most important meal for a louche person is breakfast taken on the tail of twenty sleepless hours. The most important meal of the day for a vicious person is lunch, at which breakfast is savaged. The most important meal of the day for a jubilant person is it doesn’t matter. The most important meal of the day for a philosophical person is a single piece of bread, taken with some kind of not-quite-sweet-enough preserve and coffee spiked with rum, in the midnight hour.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Something about Dr. Raskin stuck in Kathleen’s mind the second she first saw him in the hall, even before he excused himself to the restroom and then met her at the bedside of her Aunt Rhetta, who had surfaced from unconsciousness only once in the two days since she had been admitted, and that time was to stare penetratingly into middle distance and cry out the name of her long-dead husband Arthur as if she was seeing him right there next to the chair, and who’s to say she wasn’t, and Raskin didn’t flinch at the scream, didn’t lose his cool at the alarming expression on Aunt Rhetta’s face, just reached into his pocket for a small notebook, jotted something down, then turned to her, and said — and this was what stuck in her mind — “have lunch with me?” The extraordinary calm in his tone infused her with certainty that one day they would marry.

AN IMPERFECT MAN

The news that Gerald Furness had died was met with the same reaction in New York City, where he was born; in Berlin, where he studied under Hoffner and then Matz, impressing the former, infuriating the latter; in Paris, where he developed what no less an authority than Canguilhem called “an entirely original take on epistemology”; in Boston, where he taught for two decades, sharpening some minds, rounding others, demonstrating an imperious manner in either event, earning acclaim, courting controversy, leaving only when his health failed him; in the small torn in Central California where he recovered from a series of mini-strokes and, in his own words, “played out the string,” deceptive words, no doubt, as a more candid account would have also mentioned his purchase and management of a small pistachio farm and his concurrent acquisition, finally, after frustrating false starts in Paris and Boston, an (again, in his own words) “agreeable domestic locus,” one that must be attributed largely to his second wife, Sandra, and the three daughters born to her in quick succession, Holly, Molly, and Mabel; in Reno, where he spent his final half-decade working on a “philosophy of chance,” estranged from his entire family save Mabel, who moved to be near him, who bought him clean clothes and brought him the fast food he craved, who sketched a series of moving charcoal portraits of her father in decline even as she acknowledged that the anger that taken root in her mother and her sisters was not only justified but incumbent upon them: silence.

TUESDAY MORNING

She was almost ready to break up with him. She just needed the right metaphor. That was everything to her and soon he would be nothing to her. “Those are generalities,” she said to herself on the drive over, “misleading binaries.” The car was rattling a little and so was she. She went through all the options. The relationship was like a dinner plate glued to the table. The relationship was like a shoe with no sole. The relationship was like an umbrella held at the wrong angle so it filled up with rain. Finally she found it. “This relationship is like trying to put a folder inside itself. The ghost of the icon moves and then moves back but there’s no consequence. Not a change in architecture, not a click.” She imagined his face getting the point. Either the car was running more smoothly now or she was.

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

TERHUNE MUST BE TOLD

Margie returned from the park worn and almost as wretched as she had been the day before, which she had believed at the time to be the worst day of her life. Months below, her marriage had gone up in smoke. She had walked away from Harry without a dollar. That was their agreement. Don’t hang on, no hang ups. The divorce was finalized in the office of a man with cigar stench. A sickly bird teetered on the sill outside the window. That was noon. By two, she had discovered that Harry had not only moved on to another woman, but that they had set their wedding for whatever day Harry’s union with Margie officially dissolved. She had slept fitfully, waking to drink, and woken early the next morning. The new start she had conceptualized pushed her to the park. The sun made the air limpid. A man there was standing in the sandbox, ranting loudly on the phone. “I must tell you, Terhune,” he said, “that you will not have my countenance. You are a fool.” The man on the other end must have parried briskly. The man’s face colored beet red. He pointed at Margie. “Are you laughing at me?” he said. She was. He kicked sand. “Everyone is falling away from me,” he said. Her hand flew to her mouth. The previous night, four gins in, she had said the exact same thing. The light of the sun went out. Who was she? The man kicked sand again and went running around the perimeter of the sandbox, his hands behind his back. “We are the same,” he said to her. Had he heard her thoughts? She cursed at him, damned him to hell, told the devil to take him, though she did not know his name. Then she went home to no Harry at all.

BLOCK THE GATE

Traffic report on the radio, echo in the intro, “-affic,” “-affic,” after which the blather show returned behind a vortex of guitars. Norma pulled in to her complex. The young man at the guard house was new. She does not yet know his name but she knew his manner: a theatrical and ironic adherence to the letter of the law. On his first day she had stopped at the gate expectantly. Tap hands on gear shift. Open up, Jack. He leaned out of the shack. “As you know, madam, I can’t let you in until you hold your card up to the pad.” She frowned. “In that case wouldn’t it be the pad that’s letting me in?” That folded up his sense of things and also doubled it. “Wonderful, madam,” he said. “Wonderful.” She wondered if she’d sleep with him eventually. It had happened with the one before, and another one about a year earlier. She could probably forgo this one or would that be a denial of frenzy. That’s what Angela was chiefly composed of, had in fact always been. She had been that way at fifteen, scorching the mores of her high school. She had been that way at twenty, marrying twice in that calendar year. She had been that way at twenty-five, founding a company that blew up big, made her millions, made her furious. And now at thirty, what? How could she explain that she felt both pitiful and powerful, neither of which was true, that she started dozens of books a week but never finished a single one, that her foot hurt from she way she had tucked it under herself at lunch? She pulled forward so that her car was directly under the gate and stopped. “What are you doing, madam?” the guardhouse guy said. “You tell me,” she said, and meant it. Only those with an unusually high tolerance for confusion went forward in the world.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

NOT COMPREHENSIVE

He was shocked by the forwardness of the woman in the car. He wanted to reach out to touch her outstretched hand. He imagined that sparks would appear in the air between then, maybe more so if he did not reach out. He had a cassette tape in his back pocket. It included songs about pain and nature. The car drove away. Some lines are omitted from this story.