couple scrounge up eight dollars, give it to me, and then take the plants in their arms, like kindly rescuers of children.
“Thanks,” they say.
The branches of the ficus tree bob farewell, but the Chinese evergreen screeches, “You’re not fit to be a plant mother!” or something like that all the way out to the couple’s car. I put the eight dollars in my cup. I’m wondering how far you could go with this yard sale stuff. “Sure,” you might say to perfect strangers. “Take the dog, take the boyfriend, there’s a special on mothers and fingers, two-for-one.” If all you wanted to do was to fill up the cash cup, you might get carried away. A nail paring or a baby, they might all have little masking-tape price tags. It could take over you, like alcoholism or a religion. “I’m upset,” I say to Gerard, who has just sold some records and is gleefully putting cash in his cup.
“What’s the matter?” Again I’ve unsweetened his happiness, gotten in the way, I seem to do that.
“I sold my plants. I feel sick.”
He puts one arm around my waist. “It’s money. You could use some.”
“Gerard,” I say. “Let’s run off to New Hampshire and wear nothing but sleeping bags. We’ll be in-tents.”
“Ben-na,” he warns. He takes his arm away.
“We had a good life here, right? So we ate a lot of beans and rice.”
“Take your eight dollars, Benna. Buy yourself a steak.”
“I know,” I say. “We could open a lemonade stand!” The evergreen still shrieks in the distance like a bird. In the birch trees the stain on Eleanor’s teddy is some kind of organic spin art, a flower or target; a menstrual eye bearing down on me.
I know what will happen: He will promise to write every other day but when it turns out to be once a week he will promise to write once a week, and when it becomes once a month and even that’s a postcard, he’ll get on the phone and say, “Benna, I promise you, once a month I’ll write.” He will start saying false, lawyerly things like “You know, I’m extremely busy” and “I’m doing my best.” He will be the first to bring up the expense of long distance calls. Words like
res ipsa loquitur
and
ill behooves
will suddenly appear on his tongue like carbuncles. He will talk about what “some other people said,” and what he and “some other people did,” and when he never specifically mentions women it will be like the Soviet news agency which never publicizes anything containing the names of the towns where the new bombs are.
“Sure, I’ll take a check,” Eleanor is saying. “Are you kidding?” Miraculously, someone is buying
Thoroughly Modern Millie
. A man with a swollen belly and a checkbook but no shirt. The hair on his chest is like Gerard’s: a land very different from his face, something exotic and borrowed, as if for Halloween. He picks up the wine decanter. It’s ugly, a hopeful gift, expensive and wrong, from my lonely and overweight brother. “You can have it for a dollar,” I say. Once I found a fairly new book of poems in a used bookstore, and on the inside cover someone had written, “ForSandra, the only woman I’ve ever loved.” I blushed. I blushed for the bitch Sandra. Betrayals, even your own, can take you by surprise. You find yourself capable of things.
The man writes checks to both Eleanor and me. “Is the dog for sale?” he chuckles, but none of us responds. “My wife’s crazy about Julie Andrews,” he says, holding up the record. “When she was little she wanted to grow up to be a nanny, just so she could sing some of her songs. Doe a deer and all that.”
“Ha! me too,” I say, a ridiculous nanny, a Julie Andrews with a toad in her throat. The man toasts me with the wine decanter, then takes off down the sidewalk.
“The taste of a can opener,” mutters Eleanor.
And on the phone in California, in one final, cornered burst of erotic sentiment, he will whisper, “Good night, Benna. Hold your breasts for me,” but
“Thanks,” they say.
The branches of the ficus tree bob farewell, but the Chinese evergreen screeches, “You’re not fit to be a plant mother!” or something like that all the way out to the couple’s car. I put the eight dollars in my cup. I’m wondering how far you could go with this yard sale stuff. “Sure,” you might say to perfect strangers. “Take the dog, take the boyfriend, there’s a special on mothers and fingers, two-for-one.” If all you wanted to do was to fill up the cash cup, you might get carried away. A nail paring or a baby, they might all have little masking-tape price tags. It could take over you, like alcoholism or a religion. “I’m upset,” I say to Gerard, who has just sold some records and is gleefully putting cash in his cup.
“What’s the matter?” Again I’ve unsweetened his happiness, gotten in the way, I seem to do that.
“I sold my plants. I feel sick.”
He puts one arm around my waist. “It’s money. You could use some.”
“Gerard,” I say. “Let’s run off to New Hampshire and wear nothing but sleeping bags. We’ll be in-tents.”
“Ben-na,” he warns. He takes his arm away.
“We had a good life here, right? So we ate a lot of beans and rice.”
“Take your eight dollars, Benna. Buy yourself a steak.”
“I know,” I say. “We could open a lemonade stand!” The evergreen still shrieks in the distance like a bird. In the birch trees the stain on Eleanor’s teddy is some kind of organic spin art, a flower or target; a menstrual eye bearing down on me.
I know what will happen: He will promise to write every other day but when it turns out to be once a week he will promise to write once a week, and when it becomes once a month and even that’s a postcard, he’ll get on the phone and say, “Benna, I promise you, once a month I’ll write.” He will start saying false, lawyerly things like “You know, I’m extremely busy” and “I’m doing my best.” He will be the first to bring up the expense of long distance calls. Words like
res ipsa loquitur
and
ill behooves
will suddenly appear on his tongue like carbuncles. He will talk about what “some other people said,” and what he and “some other people did,” and when he never specifically mentions women it will be like the Soviet news agency which never publicizes anything containing the names of the towns where the new bombs are.
“Sure, I’ll take a check,” Eleanor is saying. “Are you kidding?” Miraculously, someone is buying
Thoroughly Modern Millie
. A man with a swollen belly and a checkbook but no shirt. The hair on his chest is like Gerard’s: a land very different from his face, something exotic and borrowed, as if for Halloween. He picks up the wine decanter. It’s ugly, a hopeful gift, expensive and wrong, from my lonely and overweight brother. “You can have it for a dollar,” I say. Once I found a fairly new book of poems in a used bookstore, and on the inside cover someone had written, “ForSandra, the only woman I’ve ever loved.” I blushed. I blushed for the bitch Sandra. Betrayals, even your own, can take you by surprise. You find yourself capable of things.
The man writes checks to both Eleanor and me. “Is the dog for sale?” he chuckles, but none of us responds. “My wife’s crazy about Julie Andrews,” he says, holding up the record. “When she was little she wanted to grow up to be a nanny, just so she could sing some of her songs. Doe a deer and all that.”
“Ha! me too,” I say, a ridiculous nanny, a Julie Andrews with a toad in her throat. The man toasts me with the wine decanter, then takes off down the sidewalk.
“The taste of a can opener,” mutters Eleanor.
And on the phone in California, in one final, cornered burst of erotic sentiment, he will whisper, “Good night, Benna. Hold your breasts for me,” but
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