Scissors (10 page)

He wiped away his tears, retraced his steps, and after banging into the laundry contraption, got out of there fast.

As she was going home from work, Emma had a bad premonition. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the highway, but the drive seemed longer to her than usual. Robert worried her. Ever since he’d dedicated himself to gardening, he hadn’t been the same. His obsession with medicinal plants indicated—she was certain of it—that some grave malady was afflicting her husband.

Why had he stopped writing? Did he want to be a horticulturist? The idea made her giggle and inadvertently
sound her horn. She gripped the steering wheel and went on thinking. Even if he busted his butt for years on end, Robert would never be a patch on …

Her thoughts turned to him. She regretted having allowed him to paint her portrait in the greenhouse. If by some awful chance Robert ever came across that painting, she refused to answer for the consequences. She’d told Nikos so. “You don’t know Robert,” she’d said. “You’d best keep a rifle within reach.” Nikos replied that he owned almost as many guns as flowers. Emma had shivered when she heard that.

She pressed down on the accelerator. No, this Nikos, he hadn’t been a very good idea. She’d gone too far. And then there were the kids, Cathy and Victor. Would they forgive their mother if she told them the whole story?

For the first time, Emma glimpsed what had pushed her husband toward drink. Delight and remorse. Guilt. She felt full of understanding for him. But fear of the irreparable continued to torment her.

She parked in the driveway and rushed to the house. For a moment, she thought she had the wrong keys. Had he swapped them? Had he had the locks changed? These hypotheses vigorously exercised her mind before she finally managed to turn the key.

A pair of overturned sneakers—Robert’s—lay on the carpet in the hallway. She ran to the living room, calling out for Cathy and Victor. Why them? Why didn’t she call Robert? He was the one she was worried about. Robert, the children, the house … they were all part of a single whole. She’d never felt that so strongly.

Cathy and Victor stood at the sliding glass door with their backs to her. The two of them were staring out into the garden.

She couldn’t see what they were looking at.

Cathy shifted her eyes toward her mother and said, “What’s got into him? Why is he doing that?”

Emma went closer, put a hand on her son’s shoulder, and looked out.

There was no more garden. The soil had been turned over. In the entire yard, nothing green remained.

What she saw was a coarse and dismal expanse, marked here and there by earthen mounds. Under those mounds, the roses, the columbine, and the petunias lay buried. The medicinal plants hadn’t been spared, either. Petals were strewn on the ground, but all flowers had disappeared. It was as though a mole, a hundred moles, had gone wholeheartedly to work, had dug their burrows under the roots and made so many openings in the soil that every growing thing had been swallowed up.

Now it was a field of compost, and you could inhale, along with the earthy smell, the potpourri of efforts Robert and Emma had made to replant their garden.

In the midst of the disaster, there he was, on his knees. He wasn’t wearing his overalls, just an undershirt and a pair of boxer shorts. His sweaty body was spattered with earth. No shovel or spade or any other tool could be seen near him. He’d turned over the soil in the yard with his bare hands.

He was staring wide-eyed into space; he seemed to be elsewhere.

Emma turned to Cathy and Victor and figured it was too
late. They’d seen the spectacle of their father pulling up and demolishing what he’d planted. Cathy had tears in her eyes. A vague smile was playing on Victor’s lips.

Emma opened the sliding door and hurried over to Robert. She knelt down, removed a clod of dirt that fell on her thighs, and placed her hands on her husband’s shoulders.

Robert sniffed a dense, sweet fragrance that drew him out of his torpor. He didn’t hear what was being said, but it was his wife’s voice. It was Emma’s voice, beyond any doubt. And he was conscious of being solidly planted with her, with Emma and their children, planted together in the same compost, moved by the same shocks and the same quakes, like some of the very tenacious roots he could see around him but had been unable to pull up.

DOUGLAS

*

If Raymond hadn’t existed, I would have invented him. He’s had all the experiences I missed out on. Never had the time. Never had the temptation, or the bad luck. There are so many lives out there. So many opportunities to suffer. I’ve always had … It’s funny. I’ve always had the feeling I wasn’t made for suffering. I imagined I could exempt myself from that. Even as far back as when I was in school, I didn’t think collective punishments concerned me. The whole class would get an F in something, and I’d look at the others and think, “Poor mutts, they’re really in for it now.” I’d be surprised to see that grade on my report card too. In my case, it was a mistake.
And I always found a way of canceling the F, of coming out unscathed.

Raymond: a compost of experiences I haven’t lived through.

“Compost.” Sounds a lot better than “Petunias.”

If I’d known suffering, if I hadn’t exempted myself from it by becoming one of the three editors who count in this town, I would have been a writer like Raymond. Maybe even better than Raymond.

His life, the giant screw-up he’s made of it—the two kids by the age of twenty, the debts, the booze, the wife who loves him and weighs him down, the domestic drama of the working-class guy who stubbornly keeps on writing—that’s what I was looking for. The chronicle of an absurd ambition. Prometheus chained to the corner mini-mart. That’s me, that’s you, if we hadn’t had a choice.

Raymond and I talk on the phone and write to each other. Since I started publishing his short stories, he calls me his friend, he calls me his brother. I know as much about Marianne as I would if we lived together. Sometimes I wish she would just fuck off. Take care of the kids and let me write. It’s come to this. I have to pinch myself to remind me that he’s the one who lives with her.

I feel empathy. My scissors aren’t for cutting so deep that what’s left is unrecognizable. Their work is to make the resemblance total. I look in the mirror, and who is it I see? Him or me?

*

I don’t like the Greek. I don’t like Nikos Kalifatides—a carnival name if I ever heard one. Raymond has too much imagination, it harms his stories. And then alcohol gives him a kind of sludgy melancholy. It’s a style, yes, I see that. But the problem is it already exists. When it comes to whining short-story writers, there’s a whole clan of them. Give me … I could name twenty.

But the most serious problem is that Raymond believes in the happy ending. “No happy ending, no sudden fall, no reprise of the opening motif.” I tell my students that again and again. “Your stories must have the metabolism of an electric pencil sharpener.” If they don’t, the result is …

“Petunias.” Five thousand words to say a very simple thing. “We can’t eradicate our faults any more than we can the roots that bind us together. This is our garden, this is our compost.”

Why use more words?

And now to clear away some brush.

RAYMOND

No, I’m not narrow-minded. I don’t see anything narrow-minded about my reaction. Douglas, I’d very much like … I’d very much like to understand how a short story entitled “Petunias,” fifteen pages long, becomes a fragment called “Compost.” Yes, a fragment! I know what a fragment looks like. Two and a half pages is a fragment.

And where’s the Greek? What happened to him? I’m talking about Nikos. Nikos Kalifatides. “No one has a name like
that”? Yeah, I can think of someone. The garage mechanic in my hometown. “That doesn’t matter”? All right, fine. Except Nikos matters to me. “Petunias” matters to me.

And I don’t recognize Robert. No, I didn’t say “myself.” Robert has nothing to do with me. I’ve never gardened in my life.

Look, I’ve got nothing against a little pruning, some touching up here and there. And you know how to do that, there’s no doubt you know how to do that … but two and a half pages, that’s going too far!

Mm-hmm. No, I haven’t showed it to Marianne. I just opened the package a few minutes ago. I took a quick look at it. I didn’t have to read it all to recognize the damage.

Huh? Oh yes, yes, I got it. No, thank
you
. I figured that was a lost cause, getting a writing grant. Taxable, but all the same … It’s thanks to you, to your letter of recommendation. No, you wrote
that
? “A writer of the stature of …” They swear by him, you knew that, didn’t you? And to think, I just hate his flowery style …

Back to “Petunias.” “Comp …” “Petu …” I don’t agree with you.

“Who wants to read five thousand words about gardening?” But it’s more than that! It opens slowly, like a … The end is like a … a renewal for them.

“Compost” talks about love. “Petunias,” I mean.

You moved it back to the fall? It doesn’t take place in springtime anymore? In autumn, but you don’t point it out? “Everything happens implicitly,” you say? I suppose so, when you cut four thousand five hundred words! Don’t give me that, Douglas. I know your Hemingway spiel by heart.
You
could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood
. I know that by heart. It’s not an excuse. It doesn’t justify your cuts.

I disagree.

A collection? You’re thinking about … How many stories? Between fifteen and twenty? Who’ll publish it? A small publisher. Your own imprint. Terrific. Your name in big letters. You negotiated for that? Of course I’m game. What do you think? My own collection …

About the story …

To summarize, if we reduce it to … If I keep your cuts and approve the ending … The story will …

Listen, Douglas. Listen to me, please. That story … it won’t be mine anymore. Do you understand?

What do you mean, what story are we talking about?

RAYMOND AND
MARIANNE

“ ‘You sign the short story, I sign the magazine. It’s one inside the other, Raymond. One inside the other.’ ”

“He said that?”

“Word for word.”

“ ‘One inside the other.’ What does that mean?”

“He sees the climax of the story as a happy ending. That’s a problem for him.”

“But it’s not your problem.”

“According to him, the ‘fictional continuity,’ the … the ‘sequencing of the narrative’—I can’t remember the exact formula
he used, but in any case, that aspect of a story necessarily falls within the editor’s domain. That’s what he said.”

“And you understood him?”

“No.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“…”

“Give me ‘Petunias.’ ”

“ ‘Compost.’ ”

“Give me ‘Compost.’ ”

“Wait till I read it.”