Seen Reading

by Julie Wilson

  SEEN READING

  Julie Wilson

  For you.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Regret had never been the thing he did, but the thing he did next.

  Tin Can

  After Joe Brainard

  Undertow

  Cherry Tree

  Girl’s Dorm

  A Quick Peek

  One Boy In

  Dress Rehearsal

  (In)digestion

  Legal Limits

  He Didn’t See It Coming

  She’d thought no pain, no joy, was exempt from fading, until this lingered.

  Breaking Ties

  Six Spin

  Morning Glories

  House Rules

  Complementary Colours

  Surplus

  Small Talks

  Lots and Lots

  Woman and Parrot

  Dreams of a Would-Be Government Employee

  Simple Sandwiches

  Soon her son will have nine teeth and know how to walk, the memory of eight teeth a distant luxury.

  Tho. Shelton

  Bagged Lunch

  Miss Popular

  Riding the Rails

  It Begins the Same

  Pillow Talk

  The Health Hustle

  Swedish Berries

  Mercy

  Clearcutting

  What had their love been if not the exception?

  Love Noted

  Ends

  The Young Lovers, Part I

  The Young Lovers, Part II

  Biopsy

  Cherry

  Love Will Tear Us Apart

  Divorced Before Thirty

  Flat

  Side Tables

  The temptation of her acceptance, a lure.

  Sticks and Twigs

  Intrusion

  Simmer

  Cursive

  Winter Wonderland

  Indiana Summers

  Pinhead

  ’86

  Jelly

  Red

  Visitor

  For rent: white wedding.

  Irlsgay

  A Room of His Own

  Sugar Bowls

  Esther

  If This Buick Could Talk

  Grace

  Creature Feature

  The more things strayed, the more they stayed the strange.

  Girlfriends

  The Curious Collector

  Sailor

  Reception

  Like Mother, Like Son

  Glory, Glory

  Rumble Row

  Put to Pasture

  Of Age

  When You Least Expect It

  Secret Santa

  To have and to scold, toward a day far worse, or better.

  XXX-XXX-XXXX

  Monsters in the Bones

  Wedding Dress

  Wearing Her Indoor Face

  Pricks

  Counting Cars

  Procession

  The Birth of a Handsome Nose

  Pink

  Hero

  Holding

  Twisty Ties

  Endmatter

  Author’s Note

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I’m a literary voyeur. Like the wanderer who steps off the predictable path, I set out most days in the hope that I’ll encounter a new way of seeing the spaces in which I live. I’m also a collector. Years ago, I began to collect sightings of readers, because I thought I might gain awareness of how our urban lives are mapped out in the books we choose to read in public, particularly on transit. Many people, for instance, read on transit to place a wall between themselves and fellow passengers; others don’t know how to be alone in a crowd. For the rest of us, that commute is the only time we get to retreat into an extended private conversation with ourselves as we dive into another’s world.

  A question began to persist: If I’m a voyeur, are you, the reader, an exhibitionist? How do readers perform the private act of reading within the public realm, their preference for the written word on full display. The book becomes an invitation to look closer. And, just think, you have no idea what emotions may floor you from one sentence to the next, and when they do, I’m there, watching. I began to imagine who each reader might be, and how the text they read would ultimately impact the spaces in which they live.

  The reader sighting that started it all was at The Old Nick on Danforth Avenue. At the bar, a woman neared the end of a book. Visibly distraught, she placed the book down from time to time, only to pick it up again moments later. This continued for some time, until she stood suddenly, slapping her money on the bar as she readied to leave. She was so distressed, in fact, that I asked if she was all right, noting the title of the book before it disappeared into her bag. She said that this wasn’t the right time or place to end the book, that when it came time to say goodbye to the protagonist she’d need to be at home. After she left, I ran to the nearest bookstore where I purchased a copy of the book she’d been reading: A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. I read it that night in anticipation of the final pages, where I would once again meet this reader within the book that moved her so.

  I began to look for readers everywhere. You may be the woman I see who, each week, is deeper into yet another book. You may be the man whose weathered copies of science fiction novels betray multiple readings. It’s likely that the book you carry bears the splatter of last night’s dinner or the crumbs of this morning’s breakfast, the vague odour of your bed sheets or your partner’s cologne. Under my observation, the reader both reads and reveals a narrative, the act of reading in turn inspiring an act of writing.

  My work is performed on Toronto’s subways, streetcars, and buses. In Toronto, transit riders are decidedly introverted. Courtesy aside — removing my knapsack so you can pass, standing up so you can sit, wearing fitted earphones so you don’t have to hear my music — fellow passengers enter into an unspoken agreement that it’s not rude to sit in silence, gesturing only in the rare instant that you’re sitting on my jacket, or I’m standing on your purse strap. Perhaps this is why readers feel safe to pull out a book, turning the average subway car into a cultural cocoon. With little effort, the average forty-five minute trip yields at least twenty reader sightings.

  During downtown Toronto rush hour, shoulder-to-shoulder I’m often able to note a book’s title and author, and most often the page number at the time of the sighting. Armed with this information and only a brief physical description of the reader, I craft a fictional response to the entire scene, ending each sighting with a poetic short fiction about the reader and who he or she may be. The online blog Seen Reading — www.seenreading.com — is the forum in which I posted my reader sightings. To date, there are over seven hundred sightings, and the project earned me the moniker “Gossip Girl of the Book World” among my regular visitors. Early versions of some of the stories that appear here originated there.

  The pieces are bite-sized, reflective of an age in which communications are disseminated through texts, tweets, and status updates. Twitter, for instance, places constraints on the user, one hundred and forty characters per tweet, to be exact. It’s taught us how to be mindful of our words. In a venue where every character counts, complete words and entire sentences take on a whole new meaning. How and why we place importance on each character, word, and sentence becomes a craft. What’s followed is an increase in the popularity in online microfiction, postcard fictions, poetic short fictions — whichever term you prefer. The economy of a tweet, by way of contrast, however, should not be mistaken for a creatively constrained art form. Take Ernest Hemingway’s infamou
s short story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” When I read this the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a sentence that had been cut from one of his novels, or a rushed scribble on a napkin intended as the starting point for another. Mostly, though, I wondered if the first draft had been seven words. Or seventeen. Do we say more when we say less?

  I’m far from alone in my impulse, the Seen Reading Movement alive in any person who has ever wanted to ask a complete stranger how he or she is liking a book as they rumble down the track together to their final destinations. While commuters may feel anonymous on public transit, the vehicles are structured in such a way that we face one another, always in the line of someone else’s view. Public transit situates us so that we are given license to accept what’s right in front of us, but will likely arouse our desire to compare our narrative to someone else’s, to give ourselves permission to speculate upon a person’s private space, or life, with no fear of recourse or punishment. Where did you come from? How did you get here? Where are you going?

  After five years of watching readers, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that as there is no one way to read a book, there is no one way to know a reader. To that end, I address each character only as He or She to invite many readings of the text.

  Be seeing you.

  Julie Wilson

  How often have you sat in a restaurant, theatre, or bus and wondered who the people around you are? This novel will give you the illusion that you can know — indeed, that you are Godlike and omniscient. This can be a very pleasurable sensation.

  GEOFF RYMAN, 253

  REGRET HAD NEVER BEEN THE THING HE DID, BUT THE THING HE DID NEXT.

  Tin Can

  In the train tunnel for five minutes, a young mother has let her child go to the front. Here he presses his face to the glass inside cupped hands, eyes adjusting to the dark, bobbing headlamps crossing in the distance, workers on the track. The mother reads while the woman beside her watches a telenovela on a portable player, Malhação or Patito Feo, she wouldn’t know.

  The passengers get tense, the train showing no sign of moving. The banter from the soap opera is rapid-fire, the audio hollow and far away, like tiny people yelling inside a tin can. We are in a tin can, the mother thinks. What would our voices sound like from the next station? How much longer before we’ll break down and talk to one another? She looks over the forearm of the woman to see what drama is unfolding. Her son jumps unsteadily on one foot, hands stuffed into his back pockets.

  READER

  Caucasian female, late 40s, with long blond hair, wearing leather pants, black fleece, and large gold necklace.

  The World to Come

  Dara Horn

  (W.W. Norton, 2006)

  p 10

  After Joe Brainard

  He remembers a bump to his forehead, the cat ten minutes before the alarm.

  He remembers the police, thirty-one arrests, the deep voice on the clock radio sounding morning.

  He remembers remembering, a surge in his stomach, reaching out for the cat. The cat is gone.

  He remembers his bare toes touching the cold floor, how once it would be followed by a warm hand on the back of his neck.

  He remembers the empty drawers, one less toothbrush, and the extra set of keys taking up space in his loose change bowl.

  READER

  East Indian male, 40s, with shaved head, wearing black wool coat, collar up, and blue striped scarf.

  I Remember

  Joe Brainard

  (Granary Books, 2001)

  p 117

  Undertow

  Breakfast was strawberry Pop Tarts. The boy and Uncle sat in the kitchen blowing on the filling, rolling the toasted pastry around in their mouths. Uncle threw his down on the paper towel, switching it out for coffee. The boy walked his fingers across the table and grabbed the leftover, holding it to his chest like he was planning to store it for the long season ahead. Uncle straightened to scold him, but the boy had started nipping away at the tart like a beast, revelling in his tiny victory.

  He saw a glimpse of the boy’s mother in those mischievous eyes.

  He recalled living on the beach when they were young. His mother had called it a vacation, a summer down by the lake, but they’d lost their home and Mother was ill. He’d gone out into the surf, far too far, his sister’s job to make sure he didn’t go astray, but he giggled, wading further. A succession of waves had come in and he struggled to stay above water, sucked under and spit out, over and again, scanning the shore each time he broke the surface.

  She would come get him. His sister would come get him.

  When he finally came ashore safe, his sister was standing by the tent, their mother inside, fading, her eyes as murky as the lake water. His sister would raise him.

  Uncle caught himself glaring at the boy. Lord in heaven, he thought. Please don’t let the kid have it too.

  READER

  Caucasian male, mid-40s, with wide part in greying hair, wearing worn leather motorcycle jacket, black jeans, and brown hiking boots.

  The Inheritance of Loss

  Kiran Desai

  (Penguin Canada, 2006)

  p 56

  Cherry Tree

  It’s late afternoon, almost time for dinner. She dangles a bottle of cream soda beside her, out of sight of her nearby daughter who plays beside the barn. She doesn’t usually like carbonated beverages — cream soda is her daughter’s treat — but she could use one now, something unexpected.

  She acknowledges her neighbour, walking over from the next farm. She rents out all the land to him for cattle. She only wanted the barn. She raises her eyebrows in the direction of what’s left of the cherry tree newly planted in memory of her late husband. Today, the bull arrived and she and her daughter stood near the electric fence to see which cow he would pick. He picked the cherry tree.

  The neighbour inspects the tree’s trunk, hopeful there’s something he might do to make it better. Instead he nods and shrugs. She shrugs too. What can you do? He starts toward the porch, scratches the inside of his forearm. But then he thinks better of it, crossing back over the long field home, minding he doesn’t lose his footing in a gopher hole.

  Beside the barn, her daughter lies on the bench, legs up, arms outstretched, eyes shut, imagining what it would be like to fall through the clouds with no parachute, no place to land.

  READER

  Black female, early 30s, wearing sleek, long coat, high boots, and black-framed glasses.

  The Perfect Circle

  Pascale Quiviger

  Translated by Sheila Fischman

  (Cormorant Books, 2006)

  p 70

  Girl’s Dorm

  She wakes up on her half of the twin bed. The dorm room sways with each tilt of her head. The roommate came in at some point, she remembers now, then left.

  She pulls herself up against the wall and surveys the room in light, a Rolling Stone tear of Sinead O’Connor thumbtacked to the wall, curling at the edges. Balls of clothes, some of them hers.

  The girl beside her is beautiful. Wavy dark hair, arms laced over her head, a Kafka t-shirt riding up to reveal her runner’s core. An emptied twenty-sixer of lemon gin sits atop the bar fridge, their first mistake, a tray of Tops Friendly Market’s powdered doughnuts beside it, their second. No other mistakes followed. Now, as the sober thoughts pour in, she remembers she’ll need to change her tampon soon and begin to think about what to say to her boyfriend.

  READER

  Caucasian female, early 50s, with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a navy blue wharf coat, collar upturned, faded jeans, hiking boots, and a silver ring on her right pinky

  The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

  Patricia Highsmith

  (Norton, 2001)

  about three quarters through

  A Quick Peek

  She undoes her passenger seat belt to fumble with the buttons of her sweater top. “Slow down a bit; I’m not ready.”


  Every Christmas morning, she and the Wednesday night bingo caller at the community centre, her best friend since high school, pack a cooler of champagne and orange juice and hit the highways looking for lonely truckers. They take turns — driver and passenger. While one pulls up beside a rig, the other rolls down the window to flash her naked breasts. If the guy isn’t a creep, and they are drunk enough, they let him finish off. Otherwise, it’s a quick peek and a perky smile, before they roar ahead to the next rig.

  She adjusts the satin scarf around her neck, an early gift from her boyfriend, tightening the knot, packaging herself to look like a stewardess.

  “Okay, make this one fast,” she says. “I gotta put the turkey in the oven.”

  The bingo caller bursts into schoolgirl giggles and leans on the horn.

  READER

  Caucasian female, early 50s, with short blond hair, wearing red fleece jacket, dark blue jeans, and bright white sneakers.

  Bel Canto

  Ann Patchett

  (HarperCollins, 2005)

  p 22

  One Boy In

  The tranquility of his morning coffee fractured by peeling squeals, neighbourhood kids roughhousing too far out on the ice without their parents’ knowledge. He doesn’t have kids, doesn’t want them. Would serve them right, he thinks, scratching behind his ear while the bread browns in the toaster. Just enough to scare them, he thinks. The clock chimes, the Black-Capped Chickadee announcing 10:00 a.m. The toast is stuck. He tries to free it with the nail of his index finger. The squeals outside reach near mania and he jumps, burnt. Lunging out to the back porch, he scans the lake, pulling his robe tight to his body one moment, throwing it off the next. Sprinting in slippers over frozen goose shit. One boy in, two on the edges.