knew that I’d found a way to capture his attention, though I wasn’t sure what use I had for his attention.)
In the days that followed Mrs. Bridge attempted to suppress this fact. Her reasoning was that nothing could be gained by discussing it; consequently she wrote to Ruth that there was some doubt as to what had been the cause of Mrs. Barron’s death but it was presumed she had accidentally eaten some tuna-fish salad which had been left out of the refrigerator overnight and had become contaminated, and this was what she told Douglas and Carolyn.
(The imagined bartender kept listening and I thought, as I read, inside my thought, that maybe in another dimension this bartender was my child and this was our alternate-universe bedtime story, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a bar, in the middle of my head.)
Her first thought had been of an afternoon on the Plaza when she and Grace Barron had been looking for some way to occupy themselves, and Grace had said, a little sadly, “Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale—the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?”
The idea of my alternate-universe bedtime story dissolved and I left money on the bar and I got up, denied myself a glance at the woman who owned those legs, and wandered away, first to the library where an email from my husband let me know he’d canceled all my credit cards and closed my bank account and that explained it, so I went back to the hostel and counted the money I had: two hundred American dollars in traveler’s checks, twenty-seven New Zealand dollars, thirty-eight New Zealand cents, and one American nickel. I thought about this, remembering that when he took over all our finances after the wedding I somehow hadn’t considered any of the ways that it might become a problem, then lay on the bunk and saw that on the underside of the mattress above mine someone had written THIS PLACE SUCKS.
13
In the morning I checked out of the hostel and walked slowly down the street. Three Japanese girls were posing in front of a mailbox; one pretended to kiss it while a fourth took a picture with her phone. I walked into a bookstore, half-intending to buy a book so I didn’t have to read Mrs. Bridge again, but I noticed a flyer by the door:
What Do You Need? A Home? A Job? Advice?
In smaller letters it asked:
Do You Need To Know Something? Do You Need To Know Someone? Are You Wandering? What If You Had A Place To Stay? Are You Out Here Reading A Flyer And Saying Yes, That Is Me? Some People Are In Need Of Giving; Do You Know Any People Like That? Would You Like To?
There was a name, Dillon, and a number. I wondered for a while why he had capitalized every word on his flyer, then I memorized the number, left the bookstore, found a phone booth, and called.
This is Dillon; may I help? he said after one ring.
I saw your flyer.
And what would you like to tell me?
I’m traveling and need to make some money.
Did you know that no one ever calls from that flyer?
No, I didn’t know that.
Has it ever occurred to you that no one wants to ask for help?
Well , I said, wondering if that was what I was doing—asking for help. That was supposedly the first step in something, in making progress, in becoming a better person with fewer problems. Or wait—was it admitting you have a problem? But doesn’t everyone have problems? Isn’t waking up or drinking water or eating lunch admitting you have a problem? There was a long silence going on. I realized I had stopped talking in the center of a sentence.
Do you have a pen? Can you take down this address?
I was happy he let me stay in my other world where sentences didn’t have endings.
The neighborhood I walked through on the way to Dillon’s seemed like nice families lived inside all the houses, like there was always a woman cooking something inside them all and these nice houses reminded me of a story I’d heard about a woman who’d had enough of her children: One
In the days that followed Mrs. Bridge attempted to suppress this fact. Her reasoning was that nothing could be gained by discussing it; consequently she wrote to Ruth that there was some doubt as to what had been the cause of Mrs. Barron’s death but it was presumed she had accidentally eaten some tuna-fish salad which had been left out of the refrigerator overnight and had become contaminated, and this was what she told Douglas and Carolyn.
(The imagined bartender kept listening and I thought, as I read, inside my thought, that maybe in another dimension this bartender was my child and this was our alternate-universe bedtime story, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a bar, in the middle of my head.)
Her first thought had been of an afternoon on the Plaza when she and Grace Barron had been looking for some way to occupy themselves, and Grace had said, a little sadly, “Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale—the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?”
The idea of my alternate-universe bedtime story dissolved and I left money on the bar and I got up, denied myself a glance at the woman who owned those legs, and wandered away, first to the library where an email from my husband let me know he’d canceled all my credit cards and closed my bank account and that explained it, so I went back to the hostel and counted the money I had: two hundred American dollars in traveler’s checks, twenty-seven New Zealand dollars, thirty-eight New Zealand cents, and one American nickel. I thought about this, remembering that when he took over all our finances after the wedding I somehow hadn’t considered any of the ways that it might become a problem, then lay on the bunk and saw that on the underside of the mattress above mine someone had written THIS PLACE SUCKS.
13
In the morning I checked out of the hostel and walked slowly down the street. Three Japanese girls were posing in front of a mailbox; one pretended to kiss it while a fourth took a picture with her phone. I walked into a bookstore, half-intending to buy a book so I didn’t have to read Mrs. Bridge again, but I noticed a flyer by the door:
What Do You Need? A Home? A Job? Advice?
In smaller letters it asked:
Do You Need To Know Something? Do You Need To Know Someone? Are You Wandering? What If You Had A Place To Stay? Are You Out Here Reading A Flyer And Saying Yes, That Is Me? Some People Are In Need Of Giving; Do You Know Any People Like That? Would You Like To?
There was a name, Dillon, and a number. I wondered for a while why he had capitalized every word on his flyer, then I memorized the number, left the bookstore, found a phone booth, and called.
This is Dillon; may I help? he said after one ring.
I saw your flyer.
And what would you like to tell me?
I’m traveling and need to make some money.
Did you know that no one ever calls from that flyer?
No, I didn’t know that.
Has it ever occurred to you that no one wants to ask for help?
Well , I said, wondering if that was what I was doing—asking for help. That was supposedly the first step in something, in making progress, in becoming a better person with fewer problems. Or wait—was it admitting you have a problem? But doesn’t everyone have problems? Isn’t waking up or drinking water or eating lunch admitting you have a problem? There was a long silence going on. I realized I had stopped talking in the center of a sentence.
Do you have a pen? Can you take down this address?
I was happy he let me stay in my other world where sentences didn’t have endings.
The neighborhood I walked through on the way to Dillon’s seemed like nice families lived inside all the houses, like there was always a woman cooking something inside them all and these nice houses reminded me of a story I’d heard about a woman who’d had enough of her children: One
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