A photograph of a lavish bed of red and yellow tulips. Thoughts of you brighten my day…So glad you’re part of my life.
A drawing of a dolly, the kind used to move heavy furniture. You move me…in unusual ways.
A silhouette of a telephone against a dark pink background completely covered with the words You have no new messages, repeated in small black print hundreds of times. Inside: That about sums up my life. How are things with you?
There was also the only card you ever sent me. Last year for my birthday. A cartoon of a cake on the front, with the words: Did you make a wish? I did. Inside it said, My wish for you is that you always have reasons to smile, favorite memories to look back on, and the very best of times ahead of you. Even at the time, this struck me as something you could just as well have sent to your sister or your mother or one of your old aunts. But I pushed this thought away and thanked you as profusely as if you’d sent me a diamond ring. I said, You are so thoughtful and kind, you are so good to me, you are the most wonderful man in the world! I can only conclude that you are…a doll!
I piled all these things on the kitchen table and sat there staring at the heap for an hour. Trying to decide what to do with them: these once-treasured mementos now become nothing more than detritus, these scraps and fragments of yet another misbegotten romance, the flotsam and jetsam of yet another broken heart. Trying to decide how to dispose of all that was left of my dream of me and you.
I considered hauling everything out to the backyard and setting it on fire. Symbolic and satisfying though this might be, it still seemed a bit melodramatic even for me. Besides, there’s a burning ban in effect in the city just now and, with my luck, one of my neighbors would call the police or the fire department or both.
I considered tossing the lot into a big green garbage bag and putting it out with the trash, but that didn’t seem ceremonial enough, and besides, most of it was recyclable.
Neither of these options, the fire or the trash, satisfied the pack-rat side of my nature anyway.
Although I’d said I hoped you would throw away everything I’d ever given you, everything you had that had anything to do with me, I had no serious intention of doing the same myself.
So I went downstairs and rummaged around in the basement until I found a big blue plastic storage tub that could be easily divested of its current contents (a macramé plant hanger, a set of kitchen canisters with ducks on them, three old sweaters, an inflatable bath pillow, and a see-through shower curtain) and used as a repository for all this junk.
I packed the items into it, one by one.
The photographs.
The e-mails, all fourteen pounds of them.
The four letters from thirty years ago and the cigar box in which I’d kept them.
The Dancing in the Moonlight CD.
The books.
The cards.
The Tuscany calendar.
The train schedule between my city and yours.
The three stalks of purple freesia that I’d taken from the luxury hotel the first time we slept together. I had tried to dry them properly, but now they were all just crumpled and rotten.
The ticket stub for an art exhibit we were supposed to attend together but at the last minute you couldn’t make it and I went alone and cried in front of Tom Thomson’s famous painting of a northern forest with black pine trees in the foreground and a still river shimmering in the background. A security guard watched me impassively the whole time, with his arms folded across his chest.
A brochure from the hotel. Also monogrammed writing paper and notepads, four empty matchbooks, three blank postcards, and half a dozen monogrammed envelopes, into one of which I’d slipped the ace of hearts playing card I’d found in the corner store parking lot.
A bar of fragrant wild honey soap you gave me that I never used because I wanted to keep it forever, and an empty bag that had contained a pound of expensive gourmet free-trade coffee on which you’d written, Hope this tastes good! These, the soap and the coffee, were the birthday gifts you’d given me with that card last year.
An empty box from a dozen handmade chocolate truffles that we had shared mouth to mouth.
The bottle of Obsession perfume, almost empty now, used as a pillow spray at first, and then as a bathroom deodorizing spray.
The special notepaper I used whenever I sent you something by regular mail. Prettily patterned in four different styles, each bearing an inspirational message:
Believe in the wisdom of your heart.
Sweet Destiny: There is significance in every moment.
Life Is a Journey: Dream, explore, and find peace in life’s adventure.
Time brings a kind of wisdom only the heart can understand.
I also put in two shirts you’d admired: the turquoise silk one I’d bought especially to please you and had worn the last time I saw you, and the beige one with the rhinestones and the French phrase that I’d bought because our song came on the store Muzak. And then I put in a third, because one day on the phone you said you’d had a dream about me wearing a blue shirt and sure enough, there I was in a blue shirt. At the time, I took this as yet another sign of how psychically connected we were.
Now I think: Everybody owns at least one blue shirt.
At the last minute, I took all three shirts out of the box and hung them back in my closet. I like them too.
I briefly considered putting in the bottle of Fever nail polish, but then I remembered that you had never actually seen it on my toes anyway. And besides, I’ve become quite fond of it and seldom go now with naked toenails.
I also thought of putting in my fancy-dancy high-heeled black leather boots that you liked so much, but they cost three hundred dollars and so they remain in my front hall closet.
I put the lid on the box and lugged it back down to the basement. I stashed it in the back room with a dozen other identical plastic tubs containing Christmas decorations, old curtains, jigsaw puzzles, board games, two dozen first-edition Nancy Drew books, twenty years’ worth of old calendars, the guest books from both my parents’ funerals, and my extensive collection of Barbie dolls.
I turned off the light and closed the door. I reflected on how much larger the box I kept you in now was compared to how small it used to be.
I went back upstairs and had a nap. I turned on the fan, stretched out on the couch, and fell instantly asleep.
I did not awaken until almost four hours later, during which time I did not move, I did not dream, and I did not cry.
Of course, I no longer send you the newspaper horoscopes. In fact, I don’t even read yours anymore. Now I only read my own, and I still save the best ones in my Day-Timer for future reference.
MINE: Always look forward. Never look back. Tomorrow’s new moon in your sign is a wonderful omen of success, but the level of success that you enjoy will be in proportion to your willingness to move on. The limitations and restrictions that have been such a predominant feature of your life recently will slowly begin to fade. No matter how many times you have deceived yourself in the past, you can see with utmost clarity now.
MINE: What’s done is done and cannot be undone. If you accept that today, you will feel a great sense of peace and an even greater sense of freedom. Recent events have opened up a world of possibilities and if you can’t see them yet, it is only because you are still thinking of the past instead of the future. Remember that it is the future that matters, and the future begins here and now.
MINE: It’s a good job you are not the sort to give up easily, because something you have struggled with in the past will start to come easily to you today. By the end of the week you will be flying. A project you lost enthusiasm for a while back will start to interest you again and this time, it seems, you will make a huge success of it.
I am thinking about how in one of your last letters, you said, I am beside myself if I have had an impact on your writing too…I, please, urge you to write…If what we have gone through can be some of what giv
es you subject matter to write about…perhaps that would be one path out of this…
At the time, I did not reply.
At the time, I was at a loss for words, struck dumb by an acute case of aphasia, a condition that my dictionary defines as: the loss of the ability to express or understand language, owing to brain damage.
But now I say: You are arrogant and patronizing.
Now I say: Your grammar is bad.
Now I say: Hell hath no fury.
Now I say: Be careful what you wish for.
I am thinking about your wife.
I am thinking about the one and only time I met her, and you were so uxorious, so solicitous, so obsequious. You were like a gymnast, turning yourself inside out and upside down to please her.
This was long before things got complicated.
But even then, we were none of us meeting each other’s eyes.
Maybe even then, she knew what was coming.
Maybe she knew before we did.
Maybe she knew you better than you thought she did, better than I did, better than you knew yourself.
Now I say: It would appear that I am no longer at a loss for words.
Acknowledgments
The particulars of crossword puzzles, horoscopes, cartoons, and newspaper articles were drawn from my daily reading of the Ontario edition of The Globe and Mail.
The writer’s block books listed on page 8 are all actual books and, although I make some fun of them here, they are interesting and useful, each in its own way. The various instructions and exercises that appear here in italics have been culled from these books.
The addresses of the websites mentioned on pages 65 to 66 are as follows:
The Sound Archive of the British Library: http://www.bl.uk/
collections/sound-archive/nsa.html
Save the Mustangs Foundation: http://www.savethemustang
foundation.com
The Archive of Misheard Lyrics: http://www.kissthisguy.com
The information about the passive-aggressive man was originally found on the Passive Aggressive Helping Hand website at http://www.passiveaggressive.homestead.com. For further reading, see Dr. Scott Wetzler’s book, Living with the Passive Aggressive Man: Coping with Hidden Aggression—From the Bedroom to the Boardroom, published by Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Also by Diane Schoemperlen
Red Plaid Shirt
Our Lady of the Lost and Found
Forms of Devotion
In the Language of Love
The Man of My Dreams
Hockey Night in Canada and Other Stories
Frogs and Other Stories
Double Exposures
Copyright
At A Loss For Words
Copyright © 2008 by Diane Schoemperlen.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-1-554-68957-6
A Phyllis Bruce Book, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Grove/Atlantic, Inc: Excerpt from “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver from Dream Work by Mary Oliver, copyright © 1986 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd: Excerpt from Our Lady of the Lost and Found
by Diane Schoemperlen, copyright © 2001 by Diane Schoemperlen.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd and the author.
House of Anansi Press Inc.: Excerpt from Liar by Lynn Crosbie, copyright © 2006 by Lynn Crosbie. Reprinted by permission of House of Anansi and the author.
Lyrics from The Archive of Misheard Lyrics used by permission. Access this website at: http://www.kissthisguy.com.
Riverhead Books: Excerpt from “Sam’s Dad” from Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by
Anne Lamott, copyright © 2005 by Anne Lamott.
Reprinted by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Schoemperlen, Diane
At a loss for words : a post-romantic novel / Diane Schoemperlen.
I. Title.
PS8587.C4578A8 2008 C813’.54 C2007-906394-2
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