Scissors (11 page)
“Raymond … where are you going?”
“The kitchen. I can’t read my story in the bathroom.”
“It’s not your story, it’s whatever he made out of it.”
“Did I tell you he’s going to put them all together? In a collection?”
“What?”
“He announced that, as casual as could be.”
“He’s really too much …”
“I’m lucky to have him. First the grant, and now a collection.”
“You could have gotten the grant without his help.”
“I don’t think so. I’d still be trying to—”
“We can manage very well without him.”
“… to place my stories in little magazines.”
“That’s better than …”
“Than what?
Than what?
You want Sarah and Leo to think it was all for nothing? The debts, the doing without, the house that got taken from us? Our house was taken from us!”
“I know that. I know it better than anyone.”
“For God’s sake, Marianne. You’re a teacher
and
a waitress.
You bust your butt day and night because we need your tips.”
“You think that doesn’t bother me?”
“Then what are we talking about? Why are we fighting?”
“We’re not fighting. We’re talking about your stories. They’re the reason why we—”
“
Our
stories.”
“That’s what I’m saying. If you surrender to Douglas—”
“But I’m not surrendering anything!”
“If you accept his cuts, if the stories … Even if they seem better after he’s through with them, you’ll regret it. One day you’ll regret it.”
“Where did I put ‘Petunias’?”
“Listen. Listen to me. Stop pacing around like that. Even if the collection’s a success, you’re going to feel you’ve failed. Because you’ll know you gave in to him. You’ll know you took the best you had and surrendered it to Douglas.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I see things differently.”
“Differently how?”
“I’m going to succeed
because
I gave in to him.”
“…”
“I see beyond his cuts, Marianne. Well beyond them.”
“You do?”
“And you’ll benefit, too. You’ll have your share of … of the success.”
“Make a note of it, then.”
“Do what?”
“Write it down in a notebook.”
“Of course …”
“I’ll have my share.”
“You haven’t seen ‘Petunias’?”
“Make a note of it.”
It’s the tale of a guy who wants to be forgiven.
That’s my subject. I’m not going to call it “Compost.”
The story’s full of hope. Like everything I write. Hope isn’t to be found on every page, but you
do
find the possibility that … in the course of the … when you get to the end …
Happy endings are out of fashion, but hope remains. It’s the hardest thing to grasp.
I was fourteen when I met him.
I was making pocket money by selling doughnuts. It was in a convenience store outside of town. Raymond’s mother worked the counter. Ray made deliveries. We said hello and good-bye to each other. One day he asked me if I felt like seeing King Solomon’s mines. I was dying to shuck my apron and run off with him, but after a few seconds I said, “My parents would never let me go on such a long trip.”
He frowned and then after a few moments smiled. “It’s a movie,” he said. “It’s just a movie. It’s playing real close to here.”
“Ah. In that case …” I said, and then I went silent.
“Is that a yes?” he asked me, frowning again. I nodded.
In the very instant when he smiled at me in front of the doughnut stand, I knew I was going to marry him. Crazy, huh?
The movie was good. We went back to see it because we started kissing and missed the end. In fact, we went back several times. We tried not to kiss during the last fifteen minutes, but it was stronger than we were. Raymond wound up going to see it by himself. “I need to know how it ends,” he told me, frowning. I was hurt, but I didn’t insist. Sometimes you have to know when to give way. At the time, “sexism” didn’t exist. We just said, “You have to know when to give way.”
I gladly gave way to him because he was different. The other boys were con artists. Not him. Except for the time he made me believe he knew how to dance.
In those days, when I was almost fifteen, I read a novel about a hypnotist. He controls a young girl and makes her what he wants her to be.
Svengali
—that was his name.
Douglas is a Svengali.
The first time I talked to him on the telephone, I made a mistake: I thanked him. I said, “Thanks for buying Ray’s stories and publishing them in your magazine.”
“Each of us can help him,” the voice in the receiver said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you.”
“Me?”
“You most of all,” Svengali said.
“Me?”
“You …” He drew out the word.
“And how can I help him?”
“By freeing him.”
“Freeing him from what?”
“From familial constraints,” he said. The words I thought I heard under his voice were “By freeing him from you …”
I hung up on him.
He called me back and said he was having trouble with his phone line. Douglas would never let anyone else cut
him
.
My husband’s not going to sell himself, he’s not going to compromise his integrity for a con artist like that. Raymond’s on the verge of making an immense discovery about himself. If he can quit alcohol, if he can manage to stop drinking.
“Compost.” Two and a half pages of con artistry. Some cunning tricks to take the reader in, hypnotize him with silences, with threats, with things unsaid. Nothing sincere, nothing real. A cold wind blows through it from beginning to end.
Raymond read “Compost.” He couldn’t get over it. I’d never seen him in such a state. He felt like he’d been swindled, cheated of his story. Our story—all he ever writes about is us.
He read those two and a half pages twenty times over.
The living-room carpet is strewn with empty beer bottles. Ray’s stamping on the pages, blackening them under the soles of his shoes. The children wake up, come downstairs, and enter the living room. They look at their father, who pays them no mind. Raymond’s shouting, “What does that mean,
one inside the other
?” He snatches up the pages and rips them
to shreds. “It doesn’t mean anything! All it means is I’m getting fucked!” I put my hand on my son’s shoulder.
I don’t think Svengali stands a chance.
RAYMOND
“I’m sorry, Raymond. I’m terribly sorry … I thought you didn’t want to talk to me anymore … I had no way of knowing …”
“It’s my fault, Douglas. I should have called you.”
“… that you’d had a relapse.”
“I’m better. I just spent three weeks in a dry-out clinic, and I’m better.”
“You have to give up alcohol for good, Ray. It’s the writer’s poison.”
“…”
“Liquor killed your father, didn’t it?”
“It was a work accident in a sawmill. His drinking just precipitated things.”
“But you’re different. You don’t want to precipitate anything.”
“I was proud of him. Right to the end.”
“You don’t want to die at the age of fifty, do you? Listen, I’ve got some good news.”
“You’re backing down?”
“You’re not going to eat your chestnut puree?”
“You can have it.”
“I’ll finish it for you.”
“You’re backing down about my stories?”
“Moving forward, you mean. I always go forward, that’s how I am.”
“You want to keep ‘Compost’ as it is?”
“No, I cut the scene in the bar. It was too much. Say, check out the little blonde.”
“I thought I told you … Douglas. I don’t want you changing my titles or the names of my characters. I don’t want you chopping up my stories anymore.”
“ ‘Chopping’? Editors aren’t woodcutters, Ray. Check out that little blonde—”
“Douglas!”
“You splashed my jacket.”
“Sorry.”
“
Chestnut Puree on Linen Jacket.
”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Sounds better than the crappy paintings in the office … Thanks, honey. My friend’s got the shakes. Has anyone ever told you you look like Sissy Spacek?”
“Douglas. I want my short stories to be published as I wrote them. Unchanged. Even if you find them too explicit.”
“I think they aren’t explicit enough.”
“You do?”
“You believe you’re telling one story. In fact, you’re telling ten at the same time. It must be the alcohol that does that.”
“What if that’s what I’m describing? The effects of alcohol?”
“You have something to say but too many words to say it with. That’s where I come in.”
“Why don’t you write your own short stories? Instead of cutting other people’s.”
“I know where my talent lies.”
“In vampirism.”
“You’ve been drinking, Ray. You wouldn’t say that if you were sober.”
“I
am
sober.”
“But you lack humility. Did Marianne put you up to this?”
“I haven’t seen her for ten days. She … she’s left the house … What’s in that envelope?”
“The contract for your collection … Can’t you say anything? Well, I need your signature. When’s Marianne coming back? Well? Why are you crying? Why cry when I’m giving you a contract? Be happy, Ray. Be happy and sign it with me.”
We used to play a game when we were around twenty or so. We’d write down bits of movie dialogue, learn them by heart, and amuse ourselves by performing the roles.
It’s night. Ray’s borrowed his father’s van. The radio’s tuned to a jazz station. I’m in the passenger seat. I recite from memory: “ ‘I happen to love my husband. Perhaps that’s an emotion you are incapable of understanding.’ ”
Ray puts on his grouchy voice and says, “ ‘Perhaps.’ ”
“ ‘Perhaps you’ve never known a woman truly in love,’ ” I say, like Deborah Kerr.
“ ‘Perhaps!’ ” Ray growls between his teeth. “ ‘But I have
known people to make elaborate sacrifices for reasons they themselves don’t quite understand.’ ”
“I adore that line,” I say, taking the notebook from him. “Shall we switch? That way I can say it.”