Scissors (5 page)

There aren’t any blinds on the windows in this motel. I lie unmoving, with my eyes wide open. The neon sign projects a turquoise-blue light onto the ceiling. Unless it’s the reflection of the swimming pool.

I call up Marianne every hour. I leave a message and wait for her to pick up. When she does, even if she doesn’t say anything, even if she just breathes into the phone, I’ll know I can go back home.

I can’t sleep. I turn on the TV. A film about a blind skater, a young girl. The story’s easy to follow, with or without the sound. But my thoughts are elsewhere. I’m thinking about “Compartment.” I don’t call it “Who Needs Air?” anymore. I imagine my story in Douglas’s version.

The one that stops in the middle.

End of the story. Three cuts with the scissors, a few sentences moved around. And Marianne and I are a little more separated, a little more cut off from each other.

Is that the way you see us, Douglas? You’re mistaken. Some hope has to remain, some source of light. Even if it’s only a neon sign on the side of the highway.

It’s a good thing he didn’t want my story.

Even though I could’ve used the money … I could have … I could … He edits the most widely read magazine in the country.

I can send him other stories. What have I got to lose?

MARIANNE

Why did I pick up? Why did I pick up that telephone?

I’m not sure they pulled all the bottle fragments out of my head. A shard must have remained under my skin. And now it’s circulating through my veins, poisoning me in small doses. I’ll spit it out one day. I’ll spit out the debris of our love.

But I’m not ready. The proof is what I thought when I heard him:
How’s he going to tell the bottle story? What will he weave around it? What name will he give me? Emma, I’d like to be called Emma. Or Rita, why not? The story he tells had better be successful. In case it’s our last
.

That’s what I thought, and then I picked up the phone.

RAYMOND

A stranger in my house, that’s what I am.

I’ve been sleeping in the living room ever since I came back home. Marianne has quarantined me. Sarah’s back home too. Until the next time she runs away. Meanwhile she leaves early in the morning for the drugstore, where she works as a cashier. She tells us her classes begin at noon. We know it’s not true, but we don’t say anything. It’s still early when Marianne starts moving around the kitchen and wakes me up. Sleeping on the sofa hurts my back, but I don’t complain. A man must earn his place in the marital bed.

Leo’s a tranquil teenager. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t run away. The complete opposite of his sister. Maybe at twenty he’ll become a psychopath. “You should have more fun,” I tell him. “Enjoy life.” His reply: “Don’t have time for that. I’m in too much of a hurry to get the hell out of here.” That kid’s got ambition. He takes after his parents.

Marianne and I haven’t shelved our hopes. I’ve done some arithmetic: For eleven years we’ve been going from one little job to another, from town to campus, from training courses
to night school. By this time, I could have a medical degree. I could be—who knows?—a cardiologist. Except that I’ve never examined any heart but my own, and I give no prescriptions. My sole recommendation: “Keep the faith, and a bottle within reach.”

I go out into the yard. I run my eyes over the house, peering through the sliding glass doors. People are moving about from one room to another. They speak to one another and occasionally address me. They move their lips as though warning me of some danger.

I’ve come back but I don’t feel at home.

*

I had another call from Douglas. He’s clamoring for more short stories. He thinks I’m talented, he thinks I’ve got something in my belly, but he can’t say what. “Guts?” I said jokingly. There was a silence, and then he tossed out, “If you’ve got some guts, send ’em to me.”

I looked over my stories again. Some are more than ten years old. I’m capable of lugging a short story around for years and years. I correct it, I grow older with it, and most of the time, it improves. My life remains the same or goes into a little more of a spin, but my stories improve.

Perfection in what I write; chaos in all the rest.

I sent Douglas the lot. Even if he takes only one, I’ll be happy. Let him put just one of my stories in his magazine and pay me for my efforts. Let me finally be paid for something I’ve written.

That’s all I hope for. The guy isn’t God. Just an editor.
Someone who has a vital need to hear good stories. He’ll go looking for them all the way to the end of the night.

I looked outside. All the lights were off. I imagined a map showing our house, our yard, a wilderness, and then the city—the metropolis, streaked by the moving headlights of its traffic. High up, one window, one single window, shines in the darkness. It’s Douglas, reading my stories.

That window hasn’t left my mind since.

I put my typewriter on the kitchen table and started typing.

The refrigerator was vibrating so hard it seemed it would die. I got up and struck it a heavy blow. It went back to its ordinary hum.

In all likelihood, it’s not long for this world.

MARIANNE

Raymond? An envelope came for you. It filled the whole mailbox and all my mail wound up on the ground. Mom’s letter was lying in a puddle. What’s in this envelope? Did you order some magazines? The sender is … “Douglas.” Douglas something. Who’s he?

Raymond, will you please stop typing for five minutes? Click clack click clack! I’m going nuts from so much clicking and clacking.

Open it, my hands are wet.

Well?

You’re about to burn yourself with your cigarette.

RAYMOND AND
MARIANNE

Marianne and I are in the kitchen. She’s holding my stories in her hand. My stories, revised and corrected by Douglas.

“So what do you think?” I ask her.

“He did more than just cut. I read the first two and skimmed the others.”

“Well, you know them.”

“As if I’d written them. Do they all do this?”

“Who?”

“Magazine types. Book editors don’t take so many liberties, do they?”

“A magazine has more constraints.”

“What constraints?”

“Advertising. They need space for the ads.”

“You mean to say this guy cuts down your stories to make room for ads?”

“He didn’t cut all of them. Look at ‘Why Are You Crying?’ It’s intact.”

“Except that now it’s called ‘Biscuits.’ ”

“He loves one-word titles.”

“And ‘Excuse Me’ has become ‘Collision.’ ”

“One or the other, he said. I can keep it ‘Excuse Me’ if I want.”

“Are you going to keep it?”

“Marianne, he knows his job.”

“You told me they call him ‘Scissors.’ ”

“It’s a compliment. It means he has a good eye.”

“Do
you
think he does?”

“Nothing’s definite. He’s proposing some cuts. I can do what I want about them.”

“That’s my question. What are you going to do about these proposed cuts?”

“Marianne, I don’t believe you realize what’s going on. Getting published in that magazine—I know some people who would crawl on the earth for that.”

“But not you. Right?”

“He knows his job.”

“ ‘Biscuits’ … ‘Collision’ … ‘Scissors.’ ”

She kept on muttering. I got up and opened the fridge. I took a beer, the only one left.

Her voice suddenly got louder: “Did he really say you have too much heart?”

DOUGLAS

The throes of departure
. I’m accustomed to them. All writers know the feeling. At the moment when they’re about to jump on board, they imagine the worst. As if I was going to shipwreck their stories.

Raymond got worried. The cuts frightened him. He thinks his short stories are going to turn into … very thinly sliced Raymond.

That’s not what my scissors do. The writers I bring on board know it. They know it, and they thank me.

Take Raymond, since we’re talking about him. Take his story about a woman who feels repulsion for her husband. She’s lying down in her bedroom. When her husband climbs
into bed and scoots close to put his arms around her, Raymond writes that she “moves” her legs. Too predictable, much too timorous. I strike “moves” and put “spreads.”
She spreads her legs
.