Reversible Story
NECESSARY EXPENDITURE
A concrete mixer has come and gone from the house next door. Mr. and Mrs. Charray are renovating their wine cellar. If they improve their cellar, they will pay less for fire insurance. At the moment, their fire insurance is very expensive. The reason for this is that they own thousands of bottles of very good wine. They have very good wine and some fine paintings, but their taste in clothes and furniture is strictly lower middle class.
EXPENDITURE NECESSARY
The Charrays’ taste in clothes and furniture is dull and strictly lower middle class. However, they do own some fine paintings, many by contemporary Canadian and American painters. They also have some good wine. In fact, they own thousands of bottles of very good wine. Because of this, their fire insurance is very expensive. But if they enlarge and otherwise improve their wine cellar, the fire insurance will be less expensive. They are doing this: a concrete mixer has just come and gone from their house, next door.
A Woman, Thirty
A woman, thirty, does not want to leave her childhood home.
Why should I leave home? These are my parents. They love me. Why should I go marry some man who will argue and shout at me?
Still, the woman likes to undress in front of the window. She wishes some man would at least look at her.
How I Know What I Like (Six Versions)
She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might like it.
She is like me. She likes the things I like. She likes this. So I might like it.
I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.
I think I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.
I think I like it. I show it to her. (She is like me. She likes the things I like.) She likes it. So I might really like it.
I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. (She says the other one is “just plain awful.”) She is like me. She likes the things I like. So I might really like it.
Handel
I have a problem in my marriage, which is that I simply do not like George Frideric Handel as much as my husband does. It is a real barrier between us. I am envious of one couple we know, for example, who both love Handel so much they will sometimes fly all the way to Texas just to hear a particular tenor sing a part in one of his operas. By now, they have also converted another friend of ours into a lover of Handel. I am surprised, because the last time she and I talked about music, what she loved was Hank Williams. All three of them went by train to Washington, D.C., this year to hear Giulio Cesare in Egitto. I prefer the composers of the nineteenth century and particularly Dvo?ák. But I’m pretty open to all sorts of music, and usually if I’m exposed to something long enough, I come to like it. But even though my husband puts on some sort of Handel vocal music almost every night if I don’t say anything to stop him, I have not come to love Handel. Fortunately, I have just found out that there is a therapist not too far from here, in Lenox, Massachusetts, who specializes in Handel-therapy, and I’m going to give her a try. (My husband does not believe in therapy and I know he would not go to a Dvo?ák-therapist with me even if there was one.)
The Force of the Subliminal
Rhea was here for an overnight visit and we were talking about birthdays. I had asked her when her birthday was. She told me it was April 13, but that she never received any cards or gifts on her birthday, which was just as well because she did not want to be reminded of it. I remarked that one person who never let anyone forget her birthday was our mutual friend Ellie.
Ellie was far away, in another country, where it was harder for her to remind people of her birthday. Then I thought, Why, it’s October: this is the month of Ellie’s birthday! I could not remember which day in October it was, so I went and looked it up where I had written it down in my address book. I discovered it was this very day, October 23. I told Rhea and we exclaimed over the fact that I had started talking about birthdays on Ellie’s birthday. Rhea said I must have known it all along, subliminally.
I did not tell Rhea how I had come to think of birthdays: that as I was putting napkins on the table for dinner I remembered a story she had told me, how she was once, long ago, giving dinner to a group of our friends who were rather difficult to entertain since their standards were very high where food and wine and table service were concerned; how Rhea, who in those days did not usually care much about such things as table settings, but was capable of embarrassment in the presence of certain people such as these friends, discovered first that she had no napkins of any kind in the house, then no paper towels either, then no Kleenex tissues either; and how, a few minutes into the meal, one of the guests politely asked for a napkin; how Rhea explained the problem and another guest suggested using toilet paper; and Rhea’s embarrassment as the guests did continue the meal using toilet paper; so that I was moved to want to send Rhea a set of cloth napkins for her next birthday so that she would never find herself in that situation again. But it was true that I might not have thought of Rhea’s story if I had not remembered, subliminally, that today was Ellie’s birthday.
Later, after Rhea had gone to bed, while I was washing the last of the dinner dishes, I thought about the conversation and said to myself, with a feeling of mild satisfaction, Well, this is one year that Ellie has not been able to remind me of her birthday, because she is too far away. But then I thought, Wait a minute, the fact is that I have somehow remembered Ellie’s birthday. And then I realized that because she never lets anyone forget her birthday, and because I know this so well, it was not I who had subliminally known it all along, as Rhea and I had decided, but in fact Ellie who had managed, in the end, to remind me, though not as directly as usual, and also, with her characteristic efficiency, to remind Rhea at the same time.
Her Geography: Alabama
She thinks, for a moment, that Alabama is a city in Georgia:
it is called Alabama, Georgia.
The Funeral
story from Flaubert
I went to Pouchet’s wife’s funeral yesterday. As I watched poor Pouchet, who stood there bending and swaying with grief like a stalk of grass in the wind, some fellows near me began talking about their orchards: they were comparing the girths of the young fruit trees. Then a man next to me asked me about the Middle East. He wanted to know whether there were any museums in Egypt. He asked me: “What is the condition of their public libraries?” The priest standing over the hole was speaking French, not Latin, because the service was a Protestant one. The gentleman beside me approved, then made some slighting remarks about Catholicism. Meanwhile, there was poor Pouchet standing forlornly in front of us.
Oh, we writers may think we invent too much—but reality is worse every time!
The Husband-Seekers
Flocks of women attempt to land on an island, seeking husbands from a tribe of very beautiful young men. They blow across the sea like cotton buds or seeding wild plants, and when rejected they pile up offshore in a floating bank of woolly white.
dream
In the Gallery
A woman I know, a visual artist, is trying to hang her work for a show. Her work is a single line of text pasted on the wall, with a transparent curtain suspended in front of it.
She is at the top of a ladder and cannot get down. She is facing out instead of in. The people down below tell her to turn around, but she does not know how.
When I see her again, she is down from the ladder. She is going from one person to the next, asking for help in hanging her artwork. But no one will help her. They say she is such a difficult woman.
dream
The Low Sun
I am a college girl. I tell a younger college girl, a dancer, that the sun is very low in the sky now. Its light must be filling the caves by the sea.
dream