title:
like alice munro and the rural canadian girl, i am destined to tell the same story over and over, the same characters, the same plot, the same pain. itll be subtly changed each time, but those little cracks and dents will make all the difference- no one will be able to tell.
it starts with a woman with a french bun and open toed high heeled shoes. it starts with her love affair with a decent man whose name will later be spat upon. it starts with her egg, and his sperm, and a baby boy. they get a divorce by the time the boy is 2. the boy wont ever read the letters his father sent to him, the boy will be told that his father was a mean man who hit him, who drove them away. soon, the woman will be married to a german man, a man with cashmere sweaters, who insists that the two of them, he and she without the boy, move to venezuela. while the boy is left with his grandparents, while the boy is left to gather sticks which his stern, cold grandmother will slap his bare bottom with, the woman and her german husband will be collecting jewels and jewelry, they will be cultivating a lifestyle of verandas, chauffeurs, of cigarette holders and weekly calls back to georgia. the boy will write letters to his mother about washing the dog, about upcoming spelling tests. he writes sentences that will one day haunt his children, that will one day be the forgiveness they are desparately searching to give him.
the boy grows up. he is in the army, he is in the choir. he is well liked, he is handsome. his mother moves back to georgia after her husband had a heart attack when he stepped off the plane, the instant his feet once again touched german soil. she will tell her son that he died from an abrupt end to homesickness.
the boy meets a girl, a friend of a friends, and they get married. eggs and sperm meet again, and they soon have a son, a son who will one day look at their wedding pictures and cry, cry on the cold hard floor of a storage unit, because his mom was so beautiful, and his father so valorous. their child will have curly hair, and poor eyesight. she will become religious, look down upon her husband's drinking, and they will fight. they divorce when their child is 2.
their child grows up constantly having a job. he was a paper boy, he was a pizza deliverer, he worked in a tire store, in a supermarket, in a bookstore. he is not close to his father, but when he is 10 and his father tells him, over davenport's pizza cut in squares not triangles, that he is getting remarried, the son is pleased. he imagines her looking like annie hall, and when he meets her, she kind of does.
before the boy, now grown and once divorced, tells his son about his fiance, he meets her. he recites poetry to her over dinner, he loves to touch her hair, and he can see himself spending the rest of his life with her. she, this woman with the touchable hair, had decided just months before that she was destined to not have a child, and that in order to go on, she must be ok with that. and as soon as she was, he came along, and neither one of them knew their fathers and both of their mothers had one sister, and he knew lines of poetry by heart.
they got married in the botanical gardens, in birmingham, alabama, and at the reception a picture was taken, of him holding up her hand (her eyes were closed and she has her mouth open, laughing- her teeth are a bit crooked) to show the ring, and their daughter will look at that picture and wonder how it must have felt, to have lived through that day, not having any idea what was in store.
eggs and sperm meet again, in new york city, after the cramps played on saturday night live, and they sat in the front row and laughed because they had never heard of this band. their daughter is born 9 months and 2 weeks later, after the expectant mother went to a concert in the park, down the street from their craftsman home, and had a glass of wine and a too tight hug from one of her best friends. it was over a hundred degrees that summer, they only had air conditioning upstairs. she was ready.
the daughter grows up. her father shaves his mustache on valentines day. she plays teacher and doctor with imaginairy playmates, she walks three houses down to visit with ms.ellington, a lady so old the daughter thinks she was alive when george washington was president. they make steaks and watch hee haw every saturday night. the father drinks, like all fathers do. then he takes a job in atlanta, and leaves on sunday afternoons and comes back on friday nights, and its the beginning of what it always was- the mother and the daughter, alone, but not.
then the bank fires him, and he is back with them in birmingham, and it takes some time to rearrange. as soon as they are resituated hes drinking all day, and the girl doesnt have friends over, because shes seen her friends' fathers drink, and it never ends up with them passed out on their favorite chair, in the robe theyve been in all day, watching aladin on mute because he has the words memorized.
there is one big fight that she can remember. she thought at the time that thats pretty normal, she was glad to hear them yell because everyone elses parents seem to fight all the time, about silly things like the garbage or forgetting to lock the car door. when her friends ask what do her parents fight about, she thinks and says, nothing. they dont fight. her friends think her parents are still "in love," which to them meant, they still hold hands on the couch in front of tom brokaw's the nightly news. she doesnt tell him that though they dont fight, they dont hold hands either.
they get a divorce. he moves to atlanta, into the one story house of a woman with two huge dogs, who tries too hard to be someone the daughter can talk to. the daughter stays silent on the weekends when shes sent there, via the airport express, a red shuttle bus between the birmingham and atlanta airports. shes in 8th grade now, and she dreads it. her father and this woman with the purple bedroom think that shes rude, insolent, greedy. shes just scared, and uncertain of things. shes not sure how some places can feel so rotten, and others so warm. shes not sure how shes supposed to act, and shes exhausted, embarassed, and heartbroken about some boy. shes also terribly depressed, becuase she had to miss the 8/9th grade dance that weekend, just to come to a place where people talk to her like they would an animal- like the most they're expecting is a bark.
years pass. the daughter and the son, though they have very different mothers, have had very different lives, and are 11 years apart, get closer and closer every time they see each other. the son lives in california, where he builds spiral staircases, rides motorcycles, and writes her emails about how he met a girl who "takes really good care of herself." she wants to grow up and be exactly like him- she wants to write "will work for food" with masking tape on the top of her college graduation cap.
the father quits drinking, then starts again. he never gets another job, he only comes up with ideas for businesses with a friend of his, makes and hands out business cards for it, and then slowly eases into a new idea before the first one has a chance to really fail.
he dies. one day in the shower, he falls and dies. the daughter gets dropped off from school, with a note from a boy in her pocket that she is dying to show her mother, and her mother opens the door with a face she had never seen before. she guesses her cat has died. she was always worried about that.
she grows up. shes working on it, shes doing her damndest. shes vulnerable and scared, shes strong and tough and she gives a little when you touch her. her brother wears all of his fathers clothes, including his socks, and says it feels "wonderful." its been 6, almost 7 years, since he died, and thats where the story begins.
change the year
the story stays the same.
it starts with a woman with a french bun and open toed high heeled shoes. it starts with her love affair with a decent man whose name will later be spat upon. it starts with her egg, and his sperm, and a baby boy. they get a divorce by the time the boy is 2. the boy wont ever read the letters his father sent to him, the boy will be told that his father was a mean man who hit him, who drove them away. soon, the woman will be married to a german man, a man with cashmere sweaters, who insists that the two of them, he and she without the boy, move to venezuela. while the boy is left with his grandparents, while the boy is left to gather sticks which his stern, cold grandmother will slap his bare bottom with, the woman and her german husband will be collecting jewels and jewelry, they will be cultivating a lifestyle of verandas, chauffeurs, of cigarette holders and weekly calls back to georgia. the boy will write letters to his mother about washing the dog, about upcoming spelling tests. he writes sentences that will one day haunt his children, that will one day be the forgiveness they are desparately searching to give him.
the boy grows up. he is in the army, he is in the choir. he is well liked, he is handsome. his mother moves back to georgia after her husband had a heart attack when he stepped off the plane, the instant his feet once again touched german soil. she will tell her son that he died from an abrupt end to homesickness.
the boy meets a girl, a friend of a friends, and they get married. eggs and sperm meet again, and they soon have a son, a son who will one day look at their wedding pictures and cry, cry on the cold hard floor of a storage unit, because his mom was so beautiful, and his father so valorous. their child will have curly hair, and poor eyesight. she will become religious, look down upon her husband's drinking, and they will fight. they divorce when their child is 2.
their child grows up constantly having a job. he was a paper boy, he was a pizza deliverer, he worked in a tire store, in a supermarket, in a bookstore. he is not close to his father, but when he is 10 and his father tells him, over davenport's pizza cut in squares not triangles, that he is getting remarried, the son is pleased. he imagines her looking like annie hall, and when he meets her, she kind of does.
before the boy, now grown and once divorced, tells his son about his fiance, he meets her. he recites poetry to her over dinner, he loves to touch her hair, and he can see himself spending the rest of his life with her. she, this woman with the touchable hair, had decided just months before that she was destined to not have a child, and that in order to go on, she must be ok with that. and as soon as she was, he came along, and neither one of them knew their fathers and both of their mothers had one sister, and he knew lines of poetry by heart.
they got married in the botanical gardens, in birmingham, alabama, and at the reception a picture was taken, of him holding up her hand (her eyes were closed and she has her mouth open, laughing- her teeth are a bit crooked) to show the ring, and their daughter will look at that picture and wonder how it must have felt, to have lived through that day, not having any idea what was in store.
eggs and sperm meet again, in new york city, after the cramps played on saturday night live, and they sat in the front row and laughed because they had never heard of this band. their daughter is born 9 months and 2 weeks later, after the expectant mother went to a concert in the park, down the street from their craftsman home, and had a glass of wine and a too tight hug from one of her best friends. it was over a hundred degrees that summer, they only had air conditioning upstairs. she was ready.
the daughter grows up. her father shaves his mustache on valentines day. she plays teacher and doctor with imaginairy playmates, she walks three houses down to visit with ms.ellington, a lady so old the daughter thinks she was alive when george washington was president. they make steaks and watch hee haw every saturday night. the father drinks, like all fathers do. then he takes a job in atlanta, and leaves on sunday afternoons and comes back on friday nights, and its the beginning of what it always was- the mother and the daughter, alone, but not.
then the bank fires him, and he is back with them in birmingham, and it takes some time to rearrange. as soon as they are resituated hes drinking all day, and the girl doesnt have friends over, because shes seen her friends' fathers drink, and it never ends up with them passed out on their favorite chair, in the robe theyve been in all day, watching aladin on mute because he has the words memorized.
there is one big fight that she can remember. she thought at the time that thats pretty normal, she was glad to hear them yell because everyone elses parents seem to fight all the time, about silly things like the garbage or forgetting to lock the car door. when her friends ask what do her parents fight about, she thinks and says, nothing. they dont fight. her friends think her parents are still "in love," which to them meant, they still hold hands on the couch in front of tom brokaw's the nightly news. she doesnt tell him that though they dont fight, they dont hold hands either.
they get a divorce. he moves to atlanta, into the one story house of a woman with two huge dogs, who tries too hard to be someone the daughter can talk to. the daughter stays silent on the weekends when shes sent there, via the airport express, a red shuttle bus between the birmingham and atlanta airports. shes in 8th grade now, and she dreads it. her father and this woman with the purple bedroom think that shes rude, insolent, greedy. shes just scared, and uncertain of things. shes not sure how some places can feel so rotten, and others so warm. shes not sure how shes supposed to act, and shes exhausted, embarassed, and heartbroken about some boy. shes also terribly depressed, becuase she had to miss the 8/9th grade dance that weekend, just to come to a place where people talk to her like they would an animal- like the most they're expecting is a bark.
years pass. the daughter and the son, though they have very different mothers, have had very different lives, and are 11 years apart, get closer and closer every time they see each other. the son lives in california, where he builds spiral staircases, rides motorcycles, and writes her emails about how he met a girl who "takes really good care of herself." she wants to grow up and be exactly like him- she wants to write "will work for food" with masking tape on the top of her college graduation cap.
the father quits drinking, then starts again. he never gets another job, he only comes up with ideas for businesses with a friend of his, makes and hands out business cards for it, and then slowly eases into a new idea before the first one has a chance to really fail.
he dies. one day in the shower, he falls and dies. the daughter gets dropped off from school, with a note from a boy in her pocket that she is dying to show her mother, and her mother opens the door with a face she had never seen before. she guesses her cat has died. she was always worried about that.
she grows up. shes working on it, shes doing her damndest. shes vulnerable and scared, shes strong and tough and she gives a little when you touch her. her brother wears all of his fathers clothes, including his socks, and says it feels "wonderful." its been 6, almost 7 years, since he died, and thats where the story begins.
change the year
the story stays the same.
posted by Jessica Baxter | 9:12 PM
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