30 Pieces of a Novel (69 page)

it. “There has to be some mistake; nothing can go up so quickly,” and the salesman said something like, “The retail price you quote I last saw on this item fifteen years ago, so if any mistake was made it was then and to your benefit,” and he said, “Oh, sure.” But how'd it end up on the floor? Out of a jacket or coat pocket perhaps, where he's also carried his pens. But in all the times he's searched here, for it and other things—and the boots he packs away every spring—how come he never found it? Just no explanation. Washes out the cartridge, cleans the nib and puts the pen in the dresser drawer he keeps an old watch in. Watch there because when he lost it for a few days he bought a new one, a cheap Timex just as that one's a cheap Timex, and when he found the old watch he pulled out the stem and stored the watch in the drawer for a time when he might lose the new watch. “I found them!” his younger daughter yells. “On a bookshelf in my room!” “How'd they get there?” and she says, “I didn't do it; that's where they were.” “Oh, now I remember. Thanks,” and takes the glasses and puts them on. A lens is smudged—his finger or hers—and he wipes both lenses and puts the glasses back on. “How?” she says, and he says, “What?” and she says, “You said you remember how your glasses got there,” and he says, “I was straightening out your room before—you neglected to, and you also left several wet towels around from your shower this morning—and I had to strip your bed to make it and must have taken off my glasses. I have difficulty seeing sometimes when—well, making a bed and things like that is an action in the middle visual layer of my glasses that bifocals don't cover well … where there's sort of a no-man's-land blur of some kind … oh, today's a day I can't even find the right words or way to say anything. But that's why, which could be a good reason why I also didn't find the glasses in your room, except I didn't look there.” “Next time put them in the red case I told you to buy and the case into your pocket every time you put the glasses inside,” and he says, “Too much trouble to remember each time, though it turned out to be a lot more trouble in finding them, so maybe I'll do what you say. But where am I going to find a bright red case like that?” He gives her a dollar in change from his pocket, says, “I owe you a dollar,” and she says, “That's okay,” and he says, “No, it'll be an inducement for you to look for my glasses again in case I lose them, which we both know I will,” and goes to the kitchen, hoping the wallet's on the shelf above the stove; it is, and he takes a dollar from it and gives it to her. My memo book, he thinks. Not in his back pocket or any of his pants pockets, though he never puts it in any of them but the back ones, or on the shelf where he keeps it when it's not in his back pocket or by his bed. Runs to his bedroom and checks his night table and desk. Looks everywhere in the room, pats down the back pockets of several of his pants hanging up in the closet, even if he knows two of them he hasn't worn for a month, and gets on his knees and checks the floor. This would be the second memo book he's lost in a year. First one he didn't actually lose; it had two years of notes in it for the manuscript he's currently writing, just as this one has all the notes he's written for the same manuscript since he lost that memo book. Searched all over for it and like now started to panic. It was the most important thing he had, he decided then. Hell with the pen, watch, glasses, and wallet. Well, the glasses are important and cost a lot to replace, he told himself then, and the wallet's also important and several of the things in it take a lot of time to replace, but many of the notes in the memo book are irreplaceable and absolutely needed for his manuscript. He'd told himself to photocopy all the pages with notes and keep them somewhere. Told himself to do this lots of times. Told himself several times he'd do it when he got to the copy machine at work, but always forgot or was too busy that day or the machine was tied up. Even told himself to make two copies of the notes and keep one set in his office and the other at home. It ended after he searched for it for about an hour and then shouted, “Oh, no, the washing machine!” and ran to the wash he'd done that morning and took his wet pants out—the machine had stopped long before—and the memo book was in the back pocket. All the notes had run. Maybe three to four were faintly legible and he copied them down and tried using them when he finally got back to his writing, but they weren't any of the important notes. Everything else in the memo book was unusable. He couldn't even make out a note where the letters were an inch high, something he probably jotted down while he was driving the car. He was depressed about it for days. Waited for the memo book to dry, tried to help it along with a hair dryer but the writing faded further; bought a strong magnifying glass to read some of the writing that had run but could only make out a few isolated words, nothing that made any sense or could help him remember what he was saying. He still has that memo book, in a small cardboard box in the dresser drawer that also has in it his old Timex watch and chrome pen and some Kennedy half dollars he's collecting for the kids and an 1880s silver dollar his mother gave him for good luck when he was taking his first plane flight and a few French coins and bills from his last trip to France and the pocket watch his mother's parents gave his father as an engagement gift more than seventy years ago and his mother gave him soon after his father died, maybe the most valuable thing he owns. It's in its original leather sack and has what his mother called a platinum chain and it must be worth by now a thousand dollars—when he took it in to get it fixed twenty years ago (and it worked for a couple of months after that), the watchmaker offered him five hundred dollars for it. But he still thinks, if it were at all possible to do this at the time—the thought's ridiculous but shows how important the memo book was to him once he knew it was permanently ruined—he would have traded that watch for a completely legible memo book. Anyway, he told himself then, his project's dead, he can't go on with it without the notes, but went back to it in a week and wrote more notes and after about half a year of compiling them in the new memo book while he was writing this manuscript, he told himself not to make the mistake he did with the other memo book: get these notes photocopied, do it when you have some free time at school or just come in an hour early to get it done. And he almost did do it, but several things stopped him. This is the day, he thought when he opened the door to the copy machine room and saw it was empty, but that was because the machine was broken. Another day it was being repaired, and another day someone was using it and said she'd be photocopying for at least an hour, and so on. Now he thinks: Is he going to think his project's dead if it turns out he
has
lost this memo book? Doesn't think so, though like the last time there'll be a major setback. Then he says, “The washer,” and thinks, No, can't be in it, because he's wearing the only pants he put on today and he remembers slipping the memo book into the back pocket when he put them on. Besides, he didn't do a wash today, maybe the first day in a week he hasn't, nor did he throw any clothes in, but goes to the washing machine anyway and it's empty. Dryer? and looks in that, though knows he didn't put any clothes in it last night or today, and it's empty. Memo book's got to be around; he couldn't have lost this one too. Something like that just doesn't happen. Sure it does, but he doesn't think it did this time. There's a place he hasn't looked yet and that's where he'll find it. Or a place he has looked but it was too dark there or he didn't look carefully enough. He goes through the house, finds a few things to throw out, dumps some things of his kids that he maybe shouldn't, says to his wife, “Why do we have so much superfluous useless space-occupying junk in this house?” and she says, “Like what?” and he says, “Like everything,” and she says, “Now there's a reasonable response. You must be mad again because there's something important of yours you can't find. Which is it this time?” and he says, “Whatever it is, I'll find it; don't worry, I'll find it. But when I say ‘like everything,' I mean why are we always buying and buying and never dumping and dumping or giving away and giving away, especially when we don't, or find that we don't, need these things, can you answer me that?” and she says, “Yes, I can,” and he says, “For instance, the closets. And not just ours, though God help me when I try to find on our closet floor a match to a shoe. Or when I try to get a shirt out of the closet but it's squeezed in so tight on the hanger rod, or doubled or tripled up with one or two other shirts on one hanger so I can't pull it out, and that also goes for my pants. But all the closets are crammed tight and all the closet floors are filled with things too. And not just things that are supposed to be there but we have too much of, but boxes and boxes stacked in back and other crap piled high on the closet shelves. Same with all the drawers. The kids' especially are so stuffed with clothes that they won't open, and if you can wrench them free then they won't close,” and she says, “There's only one closet—Fanny's—that has a few boxes in it. Tell me what it is you're looking for,” and he says, “My goddamn memo book,” and she says, “It's sticking out from under the telephone in our room. At least that's where it was the last time I was in there,” and he says, “It is? What's it doing there?” and she says, “Don't ask me, it's not my memo book,” and he runs to the phone, it's under it as she said, a corner of it sticking out, and goes back to his wife and says, “I can't tell you how many times I checked that dresser for it, and for all I know I might have even picked up the phone to look under it. I'm telling you, I don't know if I'm seeing right these days. Anyway, thanks. And I apologize for blowing up before, although I meant it about all the things we have in this small house. We got to get rid of a lot of it, stuff we'll never again use. In the long run it'll save us time looking for more important things. Or thinking, and then trying to pull it off, Where am I going to cram this damn thing in? And also yanking out a drawer for a pair of stupid socks and dropping it on your stupid foot when you yank it out too far, and so on,” and she says, “All right, we will. I don't know how we'll find the time for it, but we'll comb the entire house looking for things that could be discarded. As for the kids' drawers and closets, they have to go through them themselves and take out what no longer fits them or they don't want. For Fanny's rejects, unless it's absolute junk, Josephine will have to see if she wants them first. Then we'll give everything we've collected and packed to Disabled Vets or Purple Heart or whichever organization next calls us to see if we have anything for a pickup,” and he says, “Let's not wait for them to call. We get the job done, we call them. So, deal; great. And I got something worthwhile out of temporarily losing my memo book; couldn't be better. I ought to lose my things more. Only kidding.” My book, he thinks. Now where is it? Always reads one for a few minutes to an hour before he goes to sleep, and he wants to do that now. He's all set for bed—glasses, pen, watch, memo book, and handkerchief on his night table—but can't find the book. He can't just start a new one. Never does till he gives up on or finishes the one he's reading. Now it's
An Outcast of the Islands
. He's about halfway done. He'll probably finish it—it's not that long—though he doesn't like it as much as a lot of other Conrad. Keeps hoping to come upon as good a description as hit him on page two or three and made him think maybe Conrad's the greatest fiction writer in English. “Ragged, lean, undersized” or “underwashed men of various ages, shuffling about in slippers,” and so on. And in the same paragraph—the same sentence, broken up by a semicolon—“motionless old women who looked like monstrous bags of pink calico stuffed with shapeless clumps of fat,” he thinks it is, but like that: tight, strong, raw, clear, but so far nothing's matched it. If he's lost the book, he thinks he can get a copy from his school's library tomorrow—nobody's taught Conrad there for years so most of his books are probably in the stacks. Or a new one from a bookstore—knows of a huge one ten minutes' drive from here that carries most of Conrad in paperback—but it's too late tonight, though if he had thought two hours ago he'd lost it he would have gone to that store. He doesn't like to read anything in bed but a book. Not a newspaper; too unwieldy, managing the pages from a sitting-up position. And the newsprint or something from the paper gets on his fingers and then the fingers stain the bed linen and just feel funny till he washes them, which means he has to get out of bed, when once he's in it he likes to read till his eyes get tired, force them to read a bit more, and then turn off the light. Nor magazines. There actually aren't any he likes to read anytime except a few literary quarterlies, and he doesn't have a new one of those. “Have you seen my book, the Conrad I've been reading the past week?” and his wife says, “No, is it any good?” and he says, “So-so.” Kids are asleep or at least shut off their lights an hour ago after he read to the younger one and said good night to them both. Goes into her room, a little light from the hallway shines in, and looks around. Not here, from what he can see, and why would it be? Because lots of times he's left things in places he doesn't remember leaving them in. Because he's often picked something up from its regular place and left it some other place without realizing he'd picked it up. Because he's constantly losing or misplacing things, constantly, maybe once every two days, maybe more. Whatever book he's reading for pleasure is usually on his night table, bookmark in it—usually a scrap of paper or his eyeglass case or pen, but never his fountain pen—except the three days a week he goes to work. Then he sticks it into his briefcase, though he also takes it in the car when he picks up his older daughter at her school, neither of which he did today. Goes into her room—light from the same hallway, though less of it—and this time, because she's a light sleeper, tiptoes while he looks and feels around. “What do you want?” she says from bed, and he says, “Excuse me, darling, I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm looking for the book I've been reading. The Joseph Conrad,” and she says, “Why would it be in here?” and he says, “It shouldn't be, but I was just thinking, and you know me: I'm pathetic when it comes to losing