Self-Help (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Lorrie Moore

  “I mean the opera promotional.”

  “The singers?” He looks at his watch. “They packed it in a while ago.”

  Say thank you, and wander over to Cinema 1-2-3 to read the movie posters. It’s when you turn to go that you see Moss and Bob coming out together from the bar by the theater. They look tired.

  Adjust your packages. Walk over. Say: “Hi. I guess I missed the promo, so I was thinking of going to a movie.”

  “We ended it early,” says Moss. “Sonia wasn’t feeling well. Bob and I just went into Sammy’s for a drink.”

  Look and see the sign that, of course, reads SAMMY’S.

  Bob smiles and says, “Hello, Trudy.” Because Bob says hello and never hi, he always manages to sound a little like Mister Rogers.

  You can see some of Moss’s makeup and glue lines. His fake beard is sticking out from his coat pocket. Smile. Say: “Well, Moss. Here all along I thought it was Sonia, and it’s really Bob.” Chuck him under the chin. Keep your smile steady. You are the only one smiling. Not even Bob. You have clearly said the wrong thing.

  “Fuck off, Trudy,” Moss says finally, palming his hair back off his forehead.

  Bob squirms in his coat. “I believe I forgot something,” he says. “I’ll see you both later.” And he touches Moss’s arm, turns, disappears back inside Sammy’s.

  “Jesus Christ, Trudy.” Moss’s voice suddenly booms through the mall. You can see a few stores closing up, men coming out to lower the metal night gates. Santa Claus has gotten down from the gazebo and is eating an egg roll.

  Moss turns from you, charges toward the exit, an angry giant with a beard sticking out of his coat pocket. Run after him and grab his sleeve, make him stop. Say: “I’m sorry, Moss. What am I doing? Tell me. What am I doing wrong?” You look up at his face, with the orange and brown lines and the glue patches, and realize: He doesn’t understand you’ve planned your lives together. That you have even planned your deaths together, not really deaths at all but more like a pas de deux. Like Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in An American in Paris, only older.

  “You just won’t let people be,” says Moss, each consonant spit like a fish bone.

  Say: “People be? I don’t understand. Moss, what is happening to us?” You want to help him, rescue him, build houses and magnificent lawns around him.

  “To us?”

  Moss’s voice is loud. He puts on his gloves. He tells you you are a child. He needs to get away. For him you have managed to reduce love, like weather, to a map and a girl, and he needs to get away from you, live someplace else for a while, and think.

  The bag with the cat food slips and falls. “The opera’s in three days, Moss. Where are you going to go?”

  “Right now,” he says, “I’m going to get a hamburger.” And he storms toward the mall doors, pushes against all of them until he finds the one that’s open.

  Stare and mumble at the theater candy concession. “Good and Plenty. There’s no Good and Plenty.” Your bangs droop into your vision. You keep hearing “Jingle Bells,” over and over.

  In the downtown theaters of your childhood, everything was made of carved wood, and in the ladies’ rooms there were framed photographs of Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner. The theaters had names: The Rialto, The Paramount. There were ushers and Good and Plenty. Ushers with flashlights and bow ties. That’s the difference now. No ushers. Now you have to do everything by yourself.

  “Trudy,” says a voice behind you. “Would you like to be accompanied to the movies?” The passive voice. It’s Bob’s. Turn to look at him, but as with the Good and Plenty, you don’t really see, everything around you vague and blurry as glop in your eye.

  Say: “Sure. Why not.”

  In Cinema 3, sit in seats close to the aisle. Listen to the Muzak. The air smells like airplane air.

  “It’s a strange thing about Moss,” Bob is saying, looking straight ahead. “He’s so busy with the opera, it pushes him up against certain things. He ends up feeling restless and smothered. But, Trudy, Moss is a good man. He really is.”

  Don’t say anything, and then say, finally, “Moss who?”

  Stare at the curtain with the rose-tinted lights on it. Try to concentrate on more important matters, things like acid rain.

  Bob taps his fingers on the metal arm of the seat. Say: “Look, Bob. I’m no idiot. I was born in New York City. I lived there until I was four. Come on. Tell me: Who’s Moss sleeping with?”

  “As far as I know,” says Bob, sure and serious as a tested hypothesis, “Moss isn’t sleeping with anyone.”

  Continue staring at the rose lights. Then say in a loud contralto: “He’s sleeping with me, Bob. That’s who he’s sleeping with.”

  When the lights dim and the curtains part, there arrive little cigarette lighters on the screen telling you not to smoke. Then there are coming attractions. Bob leans toward you, says, “These previews are horrible.”

  Say: “Yeah. Nothing Coming Soon.”

  There are so many previews you forget what movie you’ve come to see. When the feature presentation comes on, it takes you by surprise. The images melt together like a headache. The movie seems to be about a woman whose lover, losing interest in her, has begun to do inexplicable things like yell about the cat, and throw scenes in shopping malls.

  “What is this movie about?”

  “Brazil,” whispers Bob.

  The audience has begun to laugh at something someone is doing; you are tense with comic exile. Whisper: “Bob, I’m gonna go. Wanna go?”

  “Yes, in fact, I do,” says Bob.

  It’s ten-thirty and cold. The mall stores are finally closed. In the parking lot, cars are leaving. Say to Bob: “God, look how many people shop here.” The whole world suddenly seems to you like a downtown dying slow.

  Spot your car and begin to head toward it. Bob catches your sleeve. “My car’s the other way. Listen. Trudy. About Moss: No matter what’s going on with him, no matter what he decides he has to do, the man loves you. I know he does.”

  Gently pull your sleeve away. Take a step sideways toward your car. Headlights, everywhere headlights and tires crunching. Say: “Bob, you’re a sweet person. But you’re sentimental as all get-out.” Turn on the nail of your boot and walk.

  At home the cat refuses to dance to Dionne Warwick with you. She sits on the sill of the window, rumbling in her throat, her tail a pendulum of fluff. Outside, undoubtedly, there are suitors, begging her not to be so cold-hearted. “Ya got friends out there?” When you turn off the stereo, she jumps down from the sill and snakes lovingly about your ankles. Say something you never thought you’d say. Say: “Wanna go out?” She looks at you, all hope and supplication, and follows you to the door, carefully watching your hand as it moves for the knob: she wants you to let her go, to let her go and be. Begin slowly, turn, pull. The suction of door and frame gives way, and the cold night insinuates itself like a kind of future. She doesn’t leave immediately. But her whole body is electrified, surveying the yard for eyes and rustles, and just to the left of the streetlight she suddenly spots them—four, five, phosphorescent glints—and, without a nudge, without ever looking back, she scurries out, off the porch, down after, into some sweet unknown, some somehow known unknown, some yet very old religion.

  12/21. Every adoration is seasonal as Christmas.

  Moss stops by to get some things. He’s staying with Balthazar for a few days, then after the opera and Christmas and all, he’ll look for an efficiency somewhere.

  Nod. “Efficiency. Great. That’s what hell is: efficient.” You want to ask him if this is all some silly opera where he’s leaving in order to spare you his tragic, bluish death by consumption.

  He says, “It’s just something I’ve got to do.” He opens cupboards in the kitchen, closets in the hallway, pulls down boxes, cups, boots. He is slow about it, doesn’t do it in a mean way, you are grateful for that.

  “What have you been doing tonight?” he asks, not looking, but his voice is urg
ent as a touch.

  “I watched two hours of MacNeil-Lehrer. You can get it on channel seven and then later on channel four.”

  “Right,” says Moss. “I know.”

  Pause. Then say: “Last night I let the cat out. Finally.”

  Moss looks at you and smiles.

  Smile back and shrug, as if all the world were a comedy you were only just now appreciating. Moss begins to put a hand to your shoulder but then takes it back. “Congratulations, Trudy,” he murmurs.

  “But she hasn’t come back yet. I haven’t seen her since last night.”

  “She’ll come back,” says Moss. “It’s only been a day.”

  “But it’s been a whole day. Maybe I should put in ads.”

  “It’s only been one day. She’ll come back. You’ll see.”

  Step away from him. Outside, in front of the streetlight, something like snow is falling. Think back again to MacNeil-Lehrer. Say in a level tone: “You know, there are people who know more about it than we do, who say that there is no circumnavigating a nuclear war, we will certainly have one, it’s just a matter of time. And when it happens, it’s going to dissolve all our communications systems, melt silicon chips—”

  “Trudy, please.” He wants you to stop. He knows this edge in your voice, this MacNeil-Lehrer edge. All of the world knotted and failing on your tongue.

  “And then if you’re off living someplace else, in some efficiency, how will I be able to get in touch with you? There I’ll be, Moss, all alone in my pink pom-pom slippers, the entire planet exploding all around, and I won’t be able to talk to you, to say—” In fifth grade you learned the first words ever spoken on the telephone: Mr. Watson, come here, I want you. And suddenly, as you look at him, at the potatoey fists of his cheeks, at his broom-blonde hair, it hits you as it would a child: Someday, like everybody, this man you truly love like no other is going to die. No matter how much you love him, you cannot save him. No matter how much you love: nothing, no one, lasts.

  “Moss, we’re not safe.”

  And though there’s no flutter of walls, or heave of the floor, above the frayed-as-panic rug, shoes move, and Moss seems to come unstuck, to float toward you, his features beginning to slide in downward diagonals, some chip in his back dissolving, allowing him to bend. His arms reach out to bring you close to his chest. The buttons of his shirt poke against you, and his chin hooks, locks around your neck. When he is gone, the world will grow dull as Mars.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers, his lips moving against your hair. Things grow fuzzy around the edge like a less than brilliant lie. “It’s okay,” says Moss.

  HOW TO BECOME A WRITER

  First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age—say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She’ll look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a donut. She’ll say: “How about emptying the dishwasher?” Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.

  In your high school English class only at Mr. Killian’s face. Decide faces are important. Write a villanelle about pores. Struggle. Write a sonnet. Count the syllables: nine, ten, eleven, thirteen. Decide to experiment with fiction. Here you don’t have to count syllables. Write a short story about an elderly man and woman who accidentally shoot each other in the head, the result of an inexplicable malfunction of a shotgun which appears mysteriously in their living room one night. Give it to Mr. Killian as your final project. When you get it back, he has written on it: “Some of your images are quite nice, but you have no sense of plot.” When you are home, in the privacy of your own room, faintly scrawl in pencil beneath his black-inked comments: “Plots are for dead people, pore-face.”

  Take all the babysitting jobs you can get. You are great with kids. They love you. You tell them stories about old people who die idiot deaths. You sing them songs like “Blue Bells of Scotland,” which is their favorite. And when they are in their pajamas and have finally stopped pinching each other, when they are fast asleep, you read every sex manual in the house, and wonder how on earth anyone could ever do those things with someone they truly loved. Fall asleep in a chair reading Mr. McMurphy’s Playboy. When the McMurphys come home, they will tap you on the shoulder, look at the magazine in your lap, and grin. You will want to die. They will ask you if Tracey took her medicine all right. Explain, yes, she did, that you promised her a story if she would take it like a big girl and that seemed to work out just fine. “Oh, marvelous,” they will exclaim.

  Try to smile proudly.

  Apply to college as a child psychology major.

  As a child psychology major, you have some electives. You’ve always liked birds. Sign up for something called “The Ornithological Field Trip.” It meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at two. When you arrive at Room 134 on the first day of class, everyone is sitting around a seminar table talking about metaphors. You’ve heard of these. After a short, excruciating while, raise your hand and say diffidently, “Excuse me, isn’t this Bird-watching One-oh-one?” The class stops and turns to look at you. They seem to all have one face—giant and blank as a vandalized clock. Someone with a beard booms out, “No, this is Creative Writing.” Say: “Oh—right,” as if perhaps you knew all along. Look down at your schedule. Wonder how the hell you ended up here. The computer, apparently, has made an error. You start to get up to leave and then don’t. The lines at the registrar this week are huge. Perhaps you should stick with this mistake. Perhaps your creative writing isn’t all that bad. Perhaps it is fate. Perhaps this is what your dad meant when he said, “It’s the age of computers, Francie, it’s the age of computers.”

  Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.

  The assignment this week in creative writing is to narrate a violent happening. Turn in a story about driving with your Uncle Gordon and another one about two old people who are accidentally electrocuted when they go to turn on a badly wired desk lamp. The teacher will hand them back to you with comments: “Much of your writing is smooth and energetic. You have, however, a ludicrous notion of plot.” Write another story about a man and a woman who, in the very first paragraph, have their lower torsos accidentally blitzed away by dynamite. In the second paragraph, with the insurance money, they buy a frozen yogurt stand together. There are six more paragraphs. You read the whole thing out loud in class. No one likes it. They say your sense of plot is outrageous and incompetent. After class someone asks you if you are crazy.

  Decide that perhaps you should stick to comedies. Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a “really great sense of humor” and what now your creative writing class calls “self-contempt giving rise to comic form.” Write down all of his jokes, but don’t tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend’s name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have.

  Your child psychology advisor tells you you are neglecting courses in your major. What you spend the most time on should be what you’re majoring in. Say yes, you understand.

  In creative writing seminars over the next two years, everyone continues to smoke cigarettes and ask the sam
e things: “But does it work?” “Why should we care about this character?” “Have you earned this cliché?” These seem like important questions.

  On days when it is your turn, you look at the class hopefully as they scour your mimeographs for a plot. They look back up at you, drag deeply, and then smile in a sweet sort of way.

  You spend too much time slouched and demoralized. Your boyfriend suggests bicycling. Your roommate suggests a new boyfriend. You are said to be self-mutilating and losing weight, but you continue writing. The only happiness you have is writing something new, in the middle of the night, armpits damp, heart pounding, something no one has yet seen. You have only those brief, fragile, untested moments of exhilaration when you know: you are a genius. Understand what you must do. Switch majors. The kids in your nursery project will be disappointed, but you have a calling, an urge, a delusion, an unfortunate habit. You have, as your mother would say, fallen in with a bad crowd.

  Why write? Where does writing come from? These are questions to ask yourself. They are like: Where does dust come from? Or: Why is there war? Or: If there’s a God, then why is my brother now a cripple?

  These are questions that you keep in your wallet, like calling cards. These are questions, your creative writing teacher says, that are good to address in your journals but rarely in your fiction.

  The writing professor this fall is stressing the Power of the Imagination. Which means he doesn’t want long descriptive stories about your camping trip last July. He wants you to start in a realistic context but then to alter it. Like recombinant DNA. He wants you to let your imagination sail, to let it grow big-bellied in the wind. This is a quote from Shakespeare.

  Tell your roommate your great idea, your great exercise of imaginative power: a transformation of Melville to contemporary life. It will be about monomania and the fish-eat-fish world of life insurance in Rochester, New York. The first line will be “Call me Fishmeal,” and it will feature a menopausal suburban husband named Richard, who because he is so depressed all the time is called “Mopey Dick” by his witty wife Elaine. Say to your roommate: “Mopey Dick, get it?” Your roommate looks at you, her face blank as a large Kleenex. She comes up to you, like a buddy, and puts an arm around your burdened shoulders. “Listen, Francie,” she says, slow as speech therapy. “Let’s go out and get a big beer.”