Cities I've Never Lived In: Stories
Read Cities I've Never Lived In: Stories Online
Authors: Sara Majka
Copyright © 2016 by Sara Majka
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Stories from this collection first appeared, in earlier forms, in the following literary journals:
“Reverón’s Dolls” in
Jerry
“Boy with Finch” in the
Gettysburg Review
“White Heart Bar” in the
Massachusetts Review
“Saint Andrews Hotel” and “Strangers” in
A Public Space
“Settlers” and “Four Hills” in
American Short Fiction
“The Museum Assistant” in
Brick
“Nashua” in
Virginia Quarterly Review
“Cities I’ve Never Lived In” in
Longreads
“Travelers” in
Catapult
The quoted lines of poetry in “Settlers” are from three Hayden Carruth poems: “The Cows at Night,” “Homecoming,” and “Almost April.”
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Published by Graywolf Press
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Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-731-3
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-924-9
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2016
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953592
Cover design: Carol Hayes
Cover art: Kathy Collins / Photographer’s Choice RF / Getty Images
for my mom
Maybe ten or eleven years ago, when I was in the middle of a divorce from a man I still loved, I took the train into the city. We were both moving often during this time, as if it were the best solution to a shattered life: to move from place to place, trying to thread together, if not our marriage and our lives, then something in ourselves. Richard was teaching in the Hudson Valley, and I had moved back to Maine, but would go sometimes to see him, and we would take long walks through the estates along the river, and drive up to Hudson, where there was a café that we liked, with an outside patio made of concrete. The croissants were carefully made there, though they served everything on paper plates.
Richard would order while I waited at the table, and when he returned we would eat and often complain about the waste of paper. After a time I would get in my car and find my way back to Maine, though I didn’t know the roads well and I’d have to pull over to call him. The wood signs had road numbers neither of us knew, but we would piece it together and tell each other small jokes.
During one of these trips I took the train into the city. I wasn’t well in the way that I would be several years later, and the wave of the power lines in the midday sun seemed alive to me. I watched them for the better part of the journey—the way the lines threaded up and down, and passed through sun and shadows. It felt as if there was only me and the distant spectacle keeping pace with me.
The train was dirty, with few people on it. We passed empty lots and warehouses. When we pulled into Grand Central, I entered the station and stood against the wall, so that I could look at the ceiling without being noticed. The exhibit was in the new MoMA, which seemed that day like a church built to disorient. A large white space, with escalators that took you from floor to floor, and every floor looked like the one before it. I was there to see the work of a Venezuelan artist named Armando Reverón. The
Times
had run an article with photographs of his life-sized dolls and of his self-portraits with the dolls. The exhibit took up one gallery, with the paintings in front and the dolls in back. For a time I sat on a bench, then I left the gallery.
In the spring I saw Richard again, him in his lightweight coat, standing in the parking lot near his office at the college. He was dating someone by then, someone who lived in town. He looked at me—a small, unseasonably dressed woman—and what he saw I didn’t know; probably he felt sorry for me, but I also imagine it—my discomposure—made him happy, standing there, holding his cup of coffee.
After the divorce, I went to a cottage along the water that belonged to a friend. Richard and I had gone there several times when we were together, always in odd seasons, during odd weather, when no one else wanted it. I planned to be there all winter, unless someone else came. Richard came one day. There was a cafeteria-style restaurant that served cheap fish meals, where people ate together at long tables, and we met there. He sat down with me and looked at the people at the tables—they were fishermen, and women who cleaned hotel rooms during the season, and men who cooked during the season, and now it was out of season and no one had much to do—and said it hadn’t changed much. After, we walked through the town. I felt like a caretaker showing a house that I loved but that had been more neglected than it ought to have been. We could go clamming, I said. He asked after the tide and I said, 3:00 p.m., and he said, That’s a good tide. I thought of my body underneath my coat, of what it would feel like to take my coat off in the kitchen while he was there.