The Things
He thinks: My keys. Where the hell are they? Usually when they’re not on their hook by the door to the carport they’re in one of his pants pockets. Feels in the pockets again. Looks around the kitchen counters and shelves, at the hook again, though knows they can’t be there, but maybe by mistake on another hook near it, and looks at the other hooks and then yells out, “Anyone see my keys?” “Why, they missing?” his wife says from her studio, and his younger daughter says from the dining room, “I’ll help you look, Daddy, I’m good at it,” and comes in and starts looking around. “Thanks, because I’ll be late for class, but I think I’ve looked every place here,” and his wife says, “Take from all the duplicates we have. And you don’t need your keys for school that much, do you?” and he says, “What? I can’t hear you. And I don’t like talking through a closed door if I don’t have to,” and opens it. “I said,” she says from her desk, “use our duplicates. And if it’s only your office door you’re concerned about, get a dupe from your department; you’ve done it before. By the time you come home I’m sure they’ll have turned up. What are they on, so we’ve a better idea what to look for?” and he says, “You know; from seven to ten keys on a ring with my pocketknife. And I don’t want to ask for a dupe to my office. I’ve done it too much. And my bicycle-lock key’s also on it, and that’s my only one left and the bike’s now locked,” and she says, “Your bike you don’t need now, and if you have to you can cut the chain. As for the house key, when do we ever lock the place? If we do, though I don’t plan to go out except around the house, then, as I said, take one of the spares. If you can’t find one right away, borrow it from one of the kids.” “I need my own keys. That’s what I’m saying. Where the goddamn crap are they?” and she says, “Don’t be irrational, Gould. If you have to leave now because you’re running late, take the spare car key out of your wallet. It’s sealed in plastic there, isn’t it?” and he doesn’t nod or say yes but she’s right, he thinks, that’s where it is. He’s slit the tape around the plastic several times over the years when he left the key ring attached to the ignition or on the dashboard and locked all the car doors before he left the car. “If you no longer have a spare in your wallet, I’ve one in my purse, which I only keep there to turn the radio on if we’re parked and you leave the car with your keys.” “Listen, I don’t feel comfortable unless I have my keys, all of them on that ring, because there’s also the key to the anti-car-theft bar on it and to the seminar room on the top floor, if I have to use it, and to the school building if it’s locked, which it won’t be. But the point is I don’t want the department thinking I’m always losing or forgetting—” and his younger daughter shouts out, “I found them, I found them!” and he runs to her voice—she’s in the hallway bathroom holding out his keys—and he says, “You found them here?” and she says, “On the tub.” “What the heck they doing there?” and she says, “Don’t look at me; I didn’t put them there,” and he says, “I know, but I surely didn’t. Or if I did, why would I? I don’t get it,” and she says, “Have you gone to this bathroom recently?” and he says, “Yeah, but more than a half hour ago,” and she says, “Did you pee or poop?” and he says, “The latter,” and she says, “Maybe when you were sitting on the toilet they dropped out of your pocket, and you picked them up and put them on the tub instead of back in your pocket because it was too hard to from where you were sitting down and you thought you’d put them in your pocket when you stood up,” and he says, “You’re right, that’s what I must’ve done, though I don’t remember. But how did you know?” and she says, “Same way I knew they’d be in this bathroom; I figured it out.” “Oh, what a mind,” and kisses the top of her head and says, “You deserve a fifty-cents reward, not just my thanks,” and she says, “No, that’s all right; I liked doing it.” His wife says to him after he kisses her goodbye and is about to leave the house, “At least you only got a little excited over your keys and didn’t start cursing crazily and tossing things around looking for them as you’ve done most times. Maybe because you found them so soon.” “I found them,” his daughter says. He thinks: My pen. Why am I always losing the damn thing? Not in his shirt pocket where he usually keeps it clipped to the top if he’s wearing a shirt with a pocket, or any of his pants pockets, and he’s checked them twice. It’s a hybrid of the same kind of make but different models: newer maroon cap from a pen he lost the writing part to—cap was clipped to his inside jacket pocket but rest of the pen was gone—and black writing part that he had to throw away the cap to, though screwed off the clip for future possible use, when he dropped the pen and the cap cracked. It’s a good-luck pen in a way, so much stuff written with it, and he’s had it for more than five years, longer—maybe twice as long—as he’s had any other pen, and now pens of the same make, even the cheapest model, have become too expensive for him. He also likes its odd look: cap for a larger pen fits snugly, but farther than normal down the writing part, and the different colors. He’s had about ten other fountain pens in the fifteen years before he put this one together: Parkers, Sheaffers, mostly Montblancs, two of which he got in Munich at half the American price, thinking he’d someday give one to someone as a gift; lost them all. Fell through pants pocket holes he didn’t know were there till it was too late or he’d told himself to sew up to avert losing things like change and keys and his pen but never got around to it, though keys he’d think he’d hear clang on the ground. Two lost in his previous house and never found. Searched for each on and off for weeks and often went over the same places. “It’s gotta be around, gotta be around,” kept telling himself as he looked. One of the last things he told the couple who bought the house was to call him if they found one of his pens and not to be surprised if the pens were found together. Best explanation he could come up with a year or so later—after a pen had fallen out of his shirt pocket into the kitchen garbage bag he was tying up, and a few weeks later the same pen had dropped out of his shirt pocket into a carton of newspapers he was carrying in the dark to the end of his driveway for the next day’s recycling pickup—was that they’d either fallen out of his shirt pocket into a kitchen garbage bag he was bending over to tie or drop something in or dropped into a carton or shopping bag of newspapers and other papers he was carrying at night down the front yard or porch steps to the sidewalk for the next day’s recycling pickup. Three to four of them slipped out of his shorts side pockets during the summer. Once lost two in a week: same shorts, shallow pockets. Dumped those shorts after he bought another pen because he was afraid he’d lose it the same way and has since made sure all the shorts he buys have normal pockets. One pen bounced out of his bathing suit back pocket while he was jogging. Thought the pocket was buttoned but it wasn’t or had come undone. Ran back instead of completing the loop—a mile or so, always scanning the ground, figuring there was a good chance he’d spot it, asking the few joggers coming his way if they’d seen the pen and they kept jogging while shaking their heads, till he saw it had been run over by a car. My poor pen, he thought, picking it up, seeing if any part of it could be retrieved. Thirty bucks it cost, a lot then. If it had only stayed on the dirt path where it must have fallen rather than rolled onto the road, if that’s what happened. A couple of the joggers had unleashed dogs and one could have picked it up in its mouth, run around with it, and then dropped it on the road hundreds of feet from where it had bounced out of his pocket. This time he reacted as he usually did the moment he thought his pen might be missing: slapped his pants and shirt pockets hard, stuck his hands all the way in them and fingered around, took everything out of them and went through the pockets again. Thinks, Okay, where’d you last use it? and thinks, When I was working this morning, I think, and goes to his bedroom and inspects his desk and lifts the typewriter to look under it and checks under the desk and then the entire bedroom: on and under the dresser, bed, chairs, night tables. Bathroom off the bedroom: might have absentmindedly set it down on the sink or shelf above it or toilet tank cover or window
ledge when he went in to pee or wash his hands. Wastebasket by his desk: pen might have rolled off the desk into the scrap paper in the basket without his hearing it. Kitchen: checks the countertops and washer and dryer and shelf above the stove where he often keeps his checkbook and memo and appointment and address books. Checkbook and appointment book are there, address book, he remembers, is by the phone on the dresser, but the memo book! and feels his rear right pants pocket and it’s there. Doesn’t want to lose that too. Year of notes is in it he hopes to use on his next project. Checks the living and dining rooms and hallway bathroom, quickly, since he doesn’t think he’s stopped or been in those rooms the last few hours, and then says through the door to his wife’s studio, “Sally, excuse me, I don’t mean to disturb you, but have you seen my fountain pen?” “Yes, I’m writing out my shopping list for you with it right now. You need it?” and he says, “Please, always tell me when you borrow my pen. I get distracted if I think it’s missing, and don’t say that’s irrational. I’m attached to it, feel I need to hold it sometimes, always know it’s there to use in case I suddenly have to write down something important. Anyway, I’m surprised at you, because you know by now what it means to me,” and she says, “No, not really. Why is it so important? It’s an ugly misshapen pen, the area underneath the thing that holds the clip is a little chipped, and it doesn’t write that well either.” “The point’s a bit bent. I straightened it out best I could and the guy at the store I bought the nib part at said it couldn’t be repaired any better and to replace the point would run around fifty bucks and the whole pen would cost eighty. The prices of Montblancs of this kind, their cheapest models, have become ridiculous. And if I just wanted to buy a cap to match the nib part, if the Montblanc service place in New Jersey had it in stock, would cost thirty to forty. So unless I make a lot of money, which doesn’t seem probable till I don’t know when, this is going to be my last fountain pen, for new Sheaffers and Parkers and Watermans are priced just as absurdly, or twenty to thirty dollars cheaper. After I lose this one—mind if I open the door?” and she says no—“and I will lose it, I know it, it’s going to be good roller pens and two-dollar markers and that sort from then on.” “I’ll get you a Montblanc, if that’s the kind you prefer, for your next birthday,” and hands him his pen and the shopping list. “I don’t want a new pen. And did I say ‘eighty’? The cheapest now must be a hundred, a hundred-twenty, since the salesman told me this a few years ago. I’d only lose the new one too and then I’d feel lousy, not just because I lost it but that it cost so much. I like this one”—holding the pen and running his thumb up and down it—“I’ve had several years with it, and it’s done a ton of writing. And I like that it’s ugly and misshapen, a one-of-a-kind hybrid, though I’m sure other people, because of the damn cost of these things, have put different Montblanc pen parts together of the same or close models to make one pen. And probably even a Montblanc coupled with a Waterman, and so on. Where’d you find it?” and she says, “On the black leather chair you say you never sit in.” “What was it doing there? Not only do I never sit there, so it couldn’t have slid out of my pants pocket, but I never leave it there.” “All I know is I was passing through the living room, saw it, wanted to give you the health food store shopping list before you left, so I picked it up and got a sheet of paper off my desk and started to write with it here.” “Why’d you close the door then, if it was just for that?” and she says, “Must be something I do automatically. And I was going to tell you I had it, if I heard you come into the kitchen, since I actually did know you’d be concerned if you thought it missing. But I felt I could write the list quickly, there were only supposed to be a few items on it, but it grew. Next time I’ll remember to keep my door open, if it’s only to write something like that, and tell you sooner,” and he says, “Best there be no next time. You see my pen on a chair or someplace, just assume I dropped or forgot it there, unless it’s on my desk, and let me know you found it. And you have your own pen, the Parker I gave you, which writes better than mine. Why didn’t you use that one?” and she says, “I couldn’t find it and still can’t—not for a day now—but as you see, it’s not worrying me, since I’m not as attached to it as you are to yours and I feel confident it’ll turn up eventually. We’re different that way, about pens and certain things, though unlike you I’d never tell you to be like me.” He thinks: My wallet. Now where in God’s name is it? Always takes it out of his pants pocket when he gets home—doesn’t like the bulk, just as he doesn’t like the sharpness of his keys, which is one of the reasons he hangs them on a hook first thing when he gets home—and puts it on his dresser. That’s his spot for it, on top of a thick file folder of his manuscripts. In their other house he kept it on the living room shelf that held the stereo, and in their apartment before that—well, he forgets where: he thinks it was on this same dresser or his night table. In his previous apartment in New York he hid it under some clothes in a dresser drawer. He knew that’d be the first place a thief would look, but he thought, once he started putting it there, that he’d forget where he put it if he put it anywhere else. In his wife’s apartment in New York, before they were married and whenever he stayed the night there, he thinks he kept it in his pants pocket. It’s not on the folder, nor did it fall off it to the dresser or behind it or to the floor. Not in his pockets, either, and these are the pants he’s been wearing since this morning. He remembers, when he left the house, putting the wallet in what would be the right side pocket—that’s always the pocket he puts it in if he doesn’t stick it in one of the back pockets—but doesn’t remember taking it out while he was away. Change, yes, for a parking meter, and some cash he had stuck in his shirt pocket and still has the change from there. Also his pen several times, to write a couple of notes with, and his keys, of course. Did he put it in some other place when he got home? Can’t call up a picture of it, though that doesn’t mean he didn’t. It could have slipped out of his pocket when he was in the car. It’s done that. Pen’s done it more than any other thing in the car except change. Keys have never done it. The car key’s always in the ignition lock and if he happens to take it out for some reason but is still going to sit in the car, he throws the keys into the dashboard well. Memo book’s also never slipped out. Maybe because it’s always wedged into his back pocket, since all his pants, because of some gain or shifting of weight, are a bit tight. Weight gain, a few pounds around the middle; why kid himself? He either has to lose weight there or go up another size, but if he does, the memo book will have a better chance of falling out. Watch has slipped out once or twice but he rarely keeps it there, only when he’s in a rush to leave the house and hasn’t time to put it on, so he sticks it into a side pocket, and at the first red light or some other kind of prolonged stop he’ll take it out and put it on. If it’s not on his wrist it’s usually on his night table when he goes to bed, on the window ledge above his desk when he works there, or sometimes near his checkbook and those other books on the shelf above the stove. It’s slipped off his wrist a few times when he didn’t fasten it right or did it too hastily, but he always heard it fall and picked it up. But his wallet! Now this could be serious. He goes outside. It’s not on his car seat or the floor or in the narrow space between his seat and door or in the box between the front seats where he keeps tape cassettes and a coffee mug and bungee cord and pad and cheap pens and penlight and guide to all the public radio stations in America and a couple of poetry and story anthologies and some other things. He’s found the fountain pen in all those places but never the memo book or watch or his glasses. Glasses he’s lost he doesn’t know how often and once never found. There have been times when he went around looking for his glasses while he was holding them in his hand. He once asked his wife, while the glasses were on his face, “Have you seen my glasses?” and she said, “Is this a joke?” and touched one of the temples, and he said, “Of course, what do you think?” when it wasn’t, “but not one of my funnier ones, I suspect.” Goes back to the ho
use and looks on shelves, tables, bookcases, their dresser, everywhere he thinks he could have left it. Bathroom: maybe it dropped out of his pocket while he was on the toilet or pushing down his pants and sitting down. Not there. Nobody’s home, so nobody could have picked it up and neglected to tell him. Cat has a way of walking off with things, but a sock or scarf, not a wallet. Once lost one for a few days and had to call all the companies he had credit cards with. Actually, he only had one credit card, and they still only have one, partly because he’s so anxious about losing them, but there were ATM cards he had to call about, both for here and their bank in New York, and the phone card he had to get a new PIN number for. He also had to replace his driver’s license, car registration certificate, school library card (which also serves as his ID there), and lots of other cards that were in his wallet: car and medical insurance cards, daughters’ library cards he holds for them, Sears charge card his wife gave him when she sent him to buy something there and he’d never returned to her, Staples member card—but he didn’t replace that one since he’d never saved any money with it—and check cashing cards for three supermarkets. He now keeps them in his checkbook and they periodically drop out, but he’s never lost one. The money in the wallet isn’t that important—he rarely keeps more than forty dollars in it. He searches the places he searched before in the car and house. Sometimes he’s looked through his pants pockets for something, didn’t find it, went through the same pockets fifteen minutes later, and it was there. How to explain it? Hands had gone inside each pocket, fingers had felt around. What did he do right the second time that he didn’t the first, since he felt he was as thorough each time? No answers. Same with looking for something in a medicine chest or refrigerator, and this has happened countless times. Actually, those two can’t be compared with looking for something in his pockets. He gets confused, or his eyes do—and the bright bathroom and kitchen lights make it worse—by all the things of various sizes, colors, and shapes and in different stationary positions in the refrigerator and medicine chest and sometimes several things on top of each other, and he’d also trust his fingers over his eyes any day. Photos. There are several of them in the wallet, of his wife, mother, and kids, and they’re irreplaceable in a way. He and his wife have never systematically stored the negatives to all the pictures they’ve taken, and it’d be hard to go through so many of them to find the ones he was looking for. He has to have other wallet-size photos of his wife and kids that are just or almost as good, or he could have them made up for that size, but he only has a few individual photos of his mother, and two of the best are in the wallet and he has no negatives of them. Knew he should have got reproductions made of those photos. Opens the bedroom closet he shares with his wife. No, wallet couldn’t be in any of his pants on hangers or on the floor below them if it had dropped out, since it was in the pants he has on. Feels all the pants pockets there anyway, and the jeans hanging upright on hooks, and then gets on his knees and canvases the floor with his hands and eyes. He has to leave for work in a few minutes but shouldn’t without his driver’s license. He can call his department’s office and ask someone there to put a notice on his classroom door that he may be a half hour late: emergency. Won’t cancel the class for a lost wallet if he doesn’t find it in the next half hour. He’ll drive to school without the license, go extra cautiously to avoid drawing attention from a patrol car. Or not extra cautiously or too slowly because that could draw attention. But stop when he sees the light turn amber rather than go through it as he usually does, and things like that. Same when he comes home. Then tomorrow drive to the MVA for a new license. But he thinks he’ll find the wallet in the house in the next couple of days if he keeps looking and has the family look for it, so he’ll hold off canceling his credit and ATM cards and changing his phone card PIN. He goes over most of the places he’s looked already: tub, counters, desk, dresser top, et cetera. Think: Did he put it in a drawer or kitchen cabinet or medicine chest by mistake? He’s done things like that a few times without knowing it, but so far only an empty plate inside the refrigerator or a frozen food, when he wanted to defrost it, inside a kitchen cupboard or the oven. He’s in the bedroom so he looks in his night table drawers, his wife’s top dresser drawer, thinking he might have unconsciously whisked the wallet into it, then his two drawers in their dresser. It’s in the bottom one on the right in front, on top of a sweater. He put it there when he was thinking of putting away something else? If he was trying to hide the wallet, and he doesn’t see any reason he would since there are no workmen or strangers in the house, he would have stuck it in the back of the drawer under something. Mystery, though he’s relieved to find it. He checks inside it. Of course everything’s there, and it is. Checks his back pocket: memo book’s there. His wrist: watch is on it. Shirt pocket: pen’s there, and a couple of dollar bills from change this morning, and he puts them into his wallet. Should he fill his pen? Hasn’t time and he can do it from the ink bottle in his office during his class break. Keys: on the hook by the kitchen door and he gets them, briefcase off the coat rack, makes sure his class-work and mail to be sent through his office and novel he’s been reading are in it, and leaves. He thinks: My glasses. Always losing the damn things. Looks in all the places he usually puts them when he takes them off for some reason or mislays and later finds them: dining room table, side table near it that doesn’t seem to have any purpose and he wishes they’d get rid of it to create more space in the small room, stove, counters, shelf above the stove, ledge below the kitchen window, stereo, chairs, typewriter, manuscript pile, dresser, desk, night table, window ledges, sinks and water tanks in the bathrooms when he took something there to read while he sat on the toilet, tub rim, temples sometimes straddling it. Bed: he’s often thrown them there, even though he’s told himself lots of times not to. Sat on them twice that way—different pairs—once cracking the frame around a lens and other time snapping off a temple. Can’t read without them and after a while gets a headache and eyestrain if he doesn’t have them on. “Where the freaking hell are they?” he shouts, looking in one of the bathrooms again. “Someone ought to invent an alarm to go off on eyeglasses if they’re off your face for more than five minutes,” he says to his wife. “Why, you lose them again?” “You know me: glasses more than any one thing other than my temper and mind; I’m exaggerating somewhat about the latter,” and she says, “No, they’re both true, especially when you’re in a rush to get to school and can’t find something like your wallet or glasses.” “Okay, but I am serious about the alarm. Here’s where we make our meager fortune. Think of the millions of people who habitually lose their glasses. And from it I could then afford to buy several pairs of glasses and, if we really do well from this invention, maybe have my own live-in optician for those times when I lose all of them in one day. It shouldn’t be too hard to get someone to design and make it. A little buzzer or beeper or blinking light hooked up to a timer and a watch battery in the frame. Or buzzer and blinking light combined, in the more expensive model, but where you can also use only the light if you’re in some kind of situation, let’s say, where you don’t want the buzzer disturbing anyone,” and she says, “And where would that be: a theater, a courtroom? If you lost your glasses in a place like that, how far could they have gone?” “Someplace, then. I’ll have to think of one, though, if it’s to be one of that model’s selling points. One’s house late at night in the dark when you don’t want to wake anyone with a regular light or the alarm sound. And this device could also be installed in key rings and wallets and pen caps, even, of valuable pens, though that might be more difficult because it’d seem the alarm would have to be installed when the pen was made, or maybe not. It could be like an adhesive tab and you just stick it on. All that for later after the initial planning. But to set the timer for your glasses, as an example: something like an alarm clock. Instead of for one o’clock, for instance, you set it to go off after one minute if your eyes are so bad you’ve been declared legally blind. Five to ten min
utes if you have eyes like mine. An hour or five to ten hours if you only use your glasses occasionally—for the fine print on medicine bottles or because you have so many pairs you’re not concerned if one’s lost. And at night, when you go to sleep, you just turn off the alarm, as I said, unless you want to reset it to wake you up in the morning. Obviously, if you can set it for five to ten hours ahead, you can get it to do that too. In addition—something I just thought of—why wait for the alarm to go off in a minute or five to ten hours? Another invention can be a device like an electric lock—you know, the ones that people use to unlock the driver’s door before they get to the car—that activates the other alarms for your glasses, wallet, key ring, pen, memo book … anything you want it to. A different button for each of these things on this one remote control unit, and which can work through walls—I don’t know if the car one does—and from a hundred feet away. It can even be connected to a radio satellite, for the most expensive models, like the ones small sailboats have when they’re crossing the ocean. If you lose this remote control you can have another less expensive one only to find it. And if you lose that one too, or if you only have one—and you wouldn’t want to keep either of them on your key ring the way people do with the electronic lock if, like me, you’re prone to losing the ring—then you fall back on just the original alarm device that starts beeping or buzzing or blinking in a minute to ten hours after one of those things is lost. So what do you think of my idea?” and she says, “What do you want me to say? Not bad. I wish, though, I could help you find your glasses now. You looked in all the—” and he says, “First thing after I realized I’d lost them and then the next thing and the next. Three times already,” and she says, “Then I’m sorry, I know how you need them, and I’ll keep my eyes open.” He wants to read. Has this good novel he’s half through with, and he’d planned to sit outside with it for an hour before the kids came home. Has a pair of old glasses but they’re from a prescription of about five years ago, and whenever he’s used them as a spare, when the newer glasses were lost or being repaired, they always hurt his eyes after five minutes. “Can you help me look for my eyeglasses?” he asks his older daughter when she gets home from school. “I’ll give you a dollar if you find them,” and she says, “I don’t need incentives to look. Where do you think you last had them?” and he says, “Really, sweetheart, if I knew that … anyway, I’ve covered many times all the places I normally leave them: tables, desk, phones, bathrooms, bed, and so on. You know I’m practically helpless after a while without them and I also can’t start my work,” and she says, “I know. I’ve heard you yell plenty when they were missing,” and he says, “This time I’m not, right? I’m calm and optimistic, for one reason because I think I’ll find them with your help. Your eyes are much younger and better than mine, even if you wear glasses, and you might either see them in the same places I looked or you’re so smart you’ll think of places I haven’t.” His younger daughter comes home from school fifteen minutes later and the other says to her, “Daddy says he’ll give a dollar to anybody—” “Two dollars now,” he says. “That’s how much I need them.” “Two dollars to anybody who finds his glasses. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of, so I’m giving up.” “Damn,” he shouts, banging his fist on the kitchen counter. “How stupid can I be? I’ve wasted more than an hour already looking for them. When will I learn that when I put them down I should make a mental note of where I’m putting them? I should probably even write it in my memo book with the date and time I’m putting the glasses down. But that’d take too much trouble and I don’t always have my pen and memo book on me. And if I temporarily lose the memo book after I put this mental note in it—well, then it’s not a mental note, right?—then what? I’ll be relying on the memo book for where the glasses are rather than my mind, and the mind’s the thing I always have with me and should train and trust.” “You ought to get one of those string things that hang the glasses around your neck when you’re not using them,” his younger daughter says, and he says, “I don’t like the looks of them. They make you look like some stereotype of the prissy lips-all-pursed old-fashioned librarian or grade school teacher.” “But they help you, so why care how they look?” and he says, “I also don’t want anything hanging around my neck and swinging and getting in my way, and I’m sure I’ll also break them faster that way, which is worse than losing them temporarily.” “Then don’t use one and don’t take your glasses off your face. Just keep them on,” and he says, “I have to take them off if they’ve been on too long. That’s the paradox: my eyes get tired if my glasses are off my face for ten minutes or on it for three hours,” and she says, “Then buy a bright red eyeglass case and always put the glasses in it when you take them off, even for a minute. With the red you can find them better,” and he says, “Good idea, but for later. That is if I could ever remember to have the case with me at all times and also to put the glasses in it every time they leave my hands. Though it’d only be one more thing to fill up my already stuffed pants pockets when I go out, or shirt pocket if the shirt I wear at the time has one. But now let’s see if we can find my glasses.” She goes into the living room, that’s the last he sees of her, and he spends the next half hour looking for the glasses. Comes across lots of things of his he’s going to throw out or give away: old pair of sneakers, shoes, sport jacket; unmatched socks and two shirts in his dresser drawer; Jockey briefs he doesn’t wear anymore; looked in the mirror with them on a year ago and thought, They’re only for younger and slimmer men, and now only wears boxer shorts. Wants to clear the house of everything he never uses; that way it’ll be easier finding things in all these storage spaces and also the things he loses. Pulls books out of the bookcases, dupes of copies he and his wife brought to the marriage. Then other books he knows they and the kids will never read, so that the ones lying on top of books can be inserted vertically into the shelves, though he won’t tell his wife he’s doing this. Old toothbrushes and medicines and a mattress cover from the linen closet, chipped mugs and saucers from a cupboard, a bent fork from the silverware tray, rusty or blackened aluminum pans and a pot from the stove drawer, goes back to his dresser for a pair of cutoff jeans that had become too frayed, and puts it all into the same box with the shirts, shoes, sport jacket, and mattress cover, and when the box and maybe another box are filled he’ll call a charity group that sells these things to pick them up, might even get a tax deduction for the stuff if the IRS still gives it. The nonelectric drip coffeepot—hasn’t used it for years—and, while he’s getting it out of a top cupboard, several plastic glasses and cups the kids have picked up from fast food places over the years, and he puts these in the box too. Fork, briefs, sneakers, socks, toothbrushes, and medicines he drops into the garbage can. His wife would like him to save the briefs as rags because they’re all cotton, but he doesn’t want the cleaning woman to use them. He would, on his knees every three to four days to wash the kitchen floor and the Thursday after the one the cleaning woman comes the bathroom floors, commodes, and toilet bowls, but doesn’t want to mix them in with the other rags. Several of his budget CDs whose pieces he’s since bought better recordings of, and a couple of the nostalgic pop ones his wife got for the kids and they never showed any interest in, into the box—and then tapes it up so his wife won’t see what’s inside. She asks what’s in it, he’ll say … well, something that’ll get him off the hook. He seems always to be emptying the house of things after he’s looked for something for a while. “This place is too cluttered with unnecessary crap,” he tells his wife, and she says, “Then put some of it in the basement.” “Then that place will get cluttered with crap and it’ll only encourage you to buy stuff to fill all the spaces I’ve created by getting rid of the clutter up here. We should throw a lot of it out,” and she says, “Before you throw away anything of mine and the kids, let us know. Probably a lot of what you call clutter and crap isn’t, and some of it could also contain a certain sentimental value. Did you find your glasses?” and he says,
“How can I with all the junk around? To clear away some of it I’ve packed a box of my things for Purple Heart,” and she says, “Let me know when they’re coming. I might have a few things for them too.” He resumes looking, and on the guest closet floor in back under a snow boot of one of his daughters he finds a pen he must have lost three years ago, maybe four. Sheaffer, chrome, possibly the best American pen he ever owned—just the right weight and a larger-than-usual cartridge, and because it was metal it could never crack—so a great loss. When he went to a store to replace it he found it had tripled in price from when he’d bought it. “There has to be some mistake; nothing can go up so quickly,” and the salesman said something like, “The retail price you quote I last saw on this item fifteen years ago, so if any mistake was made it was then and to your benefit,” and he said, “Oh, sure.” But how’d it end up on the floor? Out of a jacket or coat pocket perhaps, where he’s also carried his pens. But in all the times he’s searched here, for it and other things—and the boots he packs away every spring—how come he never found it? Just no explanation. Washes out the cartridge, cleans the nib and puts the pen in the dresser drawer he keeps an old watch in. Watch there because when he lost it for a few days he bought a new one, a cheap Timex just as that one’s a cheap Timex, and when he found the old watch he pulled out the stem and stored the watch in the drawer for a time when he might lose the new watch. “I found them!” his younger daughter yells. “On a bookshelf in my room!” “How’d they get there?” and she says, “I didn’t do it; that’s where they were.” “Oh, now I remember. Thanks,” and takes the glasses and puts them on. A lens is smudged—his finger or hers—and he wipes both lenses and puts the glasses back on. “How?” she says, and he says, “What?” and she says, “You said you remember how your glasses got there,” and he says, “I was straightening out your room before—you neglected to, and you also left several wet towels around from your shower this morning—and I had to strip your bed to make it and must have taken off my glasses. I have difficulty seeing sometimes when—well, making a bed and things like that is an action in the middle visual layer of my glasses that bifocals don’t cover well … where there’s sort of a no-man’s-land blur of some kind … oh, today’s a day I can’t even find the right words or way to say anything. But that’s why, which could be a good reason why I also didn’t find the glasses in your room, except I didn’t look there.” “Next time put them in the red case I told you to buy and the case into your pocket every time you put the glasses inside,” and he says, “Too much trouble to remember each time, though it turned out to be a lot more trouble in finding them, so maybe I’ll do what you say. But where am I going to find a bright red case like that?” He gives her a dollar in change from his pocket, says, “I owe you a dollar,” and she says, “That’s okay,” and he says, “No, it’ll be an inducement for you to look for my glasses again in case I lose them, which we both know I will,” and goes to the kitchen, hoping the wallet’s on the shelf above the stove; it is, and he takes a dollar from it and gives it to her. My memo book, he thinks. Not in his back pocket or any of his pants pockets, though he never puts it in any of them but the back ones, or on the shelf where he keeps it when it’s not in his back pocket or by his bed. Runs to his bedroom and checks his night table and desk. Looks everywhere in the room, pats down the back pockets of several of his pants hanging up in the closet, even if he knows two of them he hasn’t worn for a month, and gets on his knees and checks the floor. This would be the second memo book he’s lost in a year. First one he didn’t actually lose; it had two years of notes in it for the manuscript he’s currently writing, just as this one has all the notes he’s written for the same manuscript since he lost that memo book. Searched all over for it and like now started to panic. It was the most important thing he had, he decided then. Hell with the pen, watch, glasses, and wallet. Well, the glasses are important and cost a lot to replace, he told himself then, and the wallet’s also important and several of the things in it take a lot of time to replace, but many of the notes in the memo book are irreplaceable and absolutely needed for his manuscript. He’d told himself to photocopy all the pages with notes and keep them somewhere. Told himself to do this lots of times. Told himself several times he’d do it when he got to the copy machine at work, but always forgot or was too busy that day or the machine was tied up. Even told himself to make two copies of the notes and keep one set in his office and the other at home. It ended after he searched for it for about an hour and then shouted, “Oh, no, the washing machine!” and ran to the wash he’d done that morning and took his wet pants out—the machine had stopped long before—and the memo book was in the back pocket. All the notes had run. Maybe three to four were faintly legible and he copied them down and tried using them when he finally got back to his writing, but they weren’t any of the important notes. Everything else in the memo book was unusable. He couldn’t even make out a note where the letters were an inch high, something he probably jotted down while he was driving the car. He was depressed about it for days. Waited for the memo book to dry, tried to help it along with a hair dryer but the writing faded further; bought a strong magnifying glass to read some of the writing that had run but could only make out a few isolated words, nothing that made any sense or could help him remember what he was saying. He still has that memo book, in a small cardboard box in the dresser drawer that also has in it his old Timex watch and chrome pen and some Kennedy half dollars he’s collecting for the kids and an 1880s silver dollar his mother gave him for good luck when he was taking his first plane flight and a few French coins and bills from his last trip to France and the pocket watch his mother’s parents gave his father as an engagement gift more than seventy years ago and his mother gave him soon after his father died, maybe the most valuable thing he owns. It’s in its original leather sack and has what his mother called a platinum chain and it must be worth by now a thousand dollars—when he took it in to get it fixed twenty years ago (and it worked for a couple of months after that), the watchmaker offered him five hundred dollars for it. But he still thinks, if it were at all possible to do this at the time—the thought’s ridiculous but shows how important the memo book was to him once he knew it was permanently ruined—he would have traded that watch for a completely legible memo book. Anyway, he told himself then, his project’s dead, he can’t go on with it without the notes, but went back to it in a week and wrote more notes and after about half a year of compiling them in the new memo book while he was writing this manuscript, he told himself not to make the mistake he did with the other memo book: get these notes photocopied, do it when you have some free time at school or just come in an hour early to get it done. And he almost did do it, but several things stopped him. This is the day, he thought when he opened the door to the copy machine room and saw it was empty, but that was because the machine was broken. Another day it was being repaired, and another day someone was using it and said she’d be photocopying for at least an hour, and so on. Now he thinks: Is he going to think his project’s dead if it turns out he has lost this memo book? Doesn’t think so, though like the last time there’ll be a major setback. Then he says, “The washer,” and thinks, No, can’t be in it, because he’s wearing the only pants he put on today and he remembers slipping the memo book into the back pocket when he put them on. Besides, he didn’t do a wash today, maybe the first day in a week he hasn’t, nor did he throw any clothes in, but goes to the washing machine anyway and it’s empty. Dryer? and looks in that, though knows he didn’t put any clothes in it last night or today, and it’s empty. Memo book’s got to be around; he couldn’t have lost this one too. Something like that just doesn’t happen. Sure it does, but he doesn’t think it did this time. There’s a place he hasn’t looked yet and that’s where he’ll find it. Or a place he has looked but it was too dark there or he didn’t look carefully enough. He goes through the house, finds a few things to throw out, dumps some things of his kids that he maybe shouldn’t, says to his wi
fe, “Why do we have so much superfluous useless space-occupying junk in this house?” and she says, “Like what?” and he says, “Like everything,” and she says, “Now there’s a reasonable response. You must be mad again because there’s something important of yours you can’t find. Which is it this time?” and he says, “Whatever it is, I’ll find it; don’t worry, I’ll find it. But when I say ‘like everything,’ I mean why are we always buying and buying and never dumping and dumping or giving away and giving away, especially when we don’t, or find that we don’t, need these things, can you answer me that?” and she says, “Yes, I can,” and he says, “For instance, the closets. And not just ours, though God help me when I try to find on our closet floor a match to a shoe. Or when I try to get a shirt out of the closet but it’s squeezed in so tight on the hanger rod, or doubled or tripled up with one or two other shirts on one hanger so I can’t pull it out, and that also goes for my pants. But all the closets are crammed tight and all the closet floors are filled with things too. And not just things that are supposed to be there but we have too much of, but boxes and boxes stacked in back and other crap piled high on the closet shelves. Same with all the drawers. The kids’ especially are so stuffed with clothes that they won’t open, and if you can wrench them free then they won’t close,” and she says, “There’s only one closet—Fanny’s—that has a few boxes in it. Tell me what it is you’re looking for,” and he says, “My goddamn memo book,” and she says, “It’s sticking out from under the telephone in our room. At least that’s where it was the last time I was in there,” and he says, “It is? What’s it doing there?” and she says, “Don’t ask me, it’s not my memo book,” and he runs to the phone, it’s under it as she said, a corner of it sticking out, and goes back to his wife and says, “I can’t tell you how many times I checked that dresser for it, and for all I know I might have even picked up the phone to look under it. I’m telling you, I don’t know if I’m seeing right these days. Anyway, thanks. And I apologize for blowing up before, although I meant it about all the things we have in this small house. We got to get rid of a lot of it, stuff we’ll never again use. In the long run it’ll save us time looking for more important things. Or thinking, and then trying to pull it off, Where am I going to cram this damn thing in? And also yanking out a drawer for a pair of stupid socks and dropping it on your stupid foot when you yank it out too far, and so on,” and she says, “All right, we will. I don’t know how we’ll find the time for it, but we’ll comb the entire house looking for things that could be discarded. As for the kids’ drawers and closets, they have to go through them themselves and take out what no longer fits them or they don’t want. For Fanny’s rejects, unless it’s absolute junk, Josephine will have to see if she wants them first. Then we’ll give everything we’ve collected and packed to Disabled Vets or Purple Heart or whichever organization next calls us to see if we have anything for a pickup,” and he says, “Let’s not wait for them to call. We get the job done, we call them. So, deal; great. And I got something worthwhile out of temporarily losing my memo book; couldn’t be better. I ought to lose my things more. Only kidding.” My book, he thinks. Now where is it? Always reads one for a few minutes to an hour before he goes to sleep, and he wants to do that now. He’s all set for bed—glasses, pen, watch, memo book, and handkerchief on his night table—but can’t find the book. He can’t just start a new one. Never does till he gives up on or finishes the one he’s reading. Now it’s An Outcast of the Islands. He’s about halfway done. He’ll probably finish it—it’s not that long—though he doesn’t like it as much as a lot of other Conrad. Keeps hoping to come upon as good a description as hit him on page two or three and made him think maybe Conrad’s the greatest fiction writer in English. “Ragged, lean, undersized” or “underwashed men of various ages, shuffling about in slippers,” and so on. And in the same paragraph—the same sentence, broken up by a semicolon—“motionless old women who looked like monstrous bags of pink calico stuffed with shapeless clumps of fat,” he thinks it is, but like that: tight, strong, raw, clear, but so far nothing’s matched it. If he’s lost the book, he thinks he can get a copy from his school’s library tomorrow—nobody’s taught Conrad there for years so most of his books are probably in the stacks. Or a new one from a bookstore—knows of a huge one ten minutes’ drive from here that carries most of Conrad in paperback—but it’s too late tonight, though if he had thought two hours ago he’d lost it he would have gone to that store. He doesn’t like to read anything in bed but a book. Not a newspaper; too unwieldy, managing the pages from a sitting-up position. And the newsprint or something from the paper gets on his fingers and then the fingers stain the bed linen and just feel funny till he washes them, which means he has to get out of bed, when once he’s in it he likes to read till his eyes get tired, force them to read a bit more, and then turn off the light. Nor magazines. There actually aren’t any he likes to read anytime except a few literary quarterlies, and he doesn’t have a new one of those. “Have you seen my book, the Conrad I’ve been reading the past week?” and his wife says, “No, is it any good?” and he says, “So-so.” Kids are asleep or at least shut off their lights an hour ago after he read to the younger one and said good night to them both. Goes into her room, a little light from the hallway shines in, and looks around. Not here, from what he can see, and why would it be? Because lots of times he’s left things in places he doesn’t remember leaving them in. Because he’s often picked something up from its regular place and left it some other place without realizing he’d picked it up. Because he’s constantly losing or misplacing things, constantly, maybe once every two days, maybe more. Whatever book he’s reading for pleasure is usually on his night table, bookmark in it—usually a scrap of paper or his eyeglass case or pen, but never his fountain pen—except the three days a week he goes to work. Then he sticks it into his briefcase, though he also takes it in the car when he picks up his older daughter at her school, neither of which he did today. Goes into her room—light from the same hallway, though less of it—and this time, because she’s a light sleeper, tiptoes while he looks and feels around. “What do you want?” she says from bed, and he says, “Excuse me, darling, I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m looking for the book I’ve been reading. The Joseph Conrad,” and she says, “Why would it be in here?” and he says, “It shouldn’t be, but I was just thinking, and you know me: I’m pathetic when it comes to losing things. I’ve checked everywhere else—just now Josephine’s room—so I thought I’d give yours a try,” and she says, “What’s it called?” and he gives her the title and she says, “What’s it about?” and he starts telling her and then says, “This sounds too much like a tropical bedtime story, when it’s a bit late for one. I’ll continue with it in the morning if you refresh my memory that we spoke about it tonight. Go to sleep now,” and tries to reach her bed to kiss her forehead but there are heavy shoes and some other small hard objects in his way, one he accidentally kicks, and he says, “If you’re missing the mate to the sneakers or shoes you want to wear tomorrow, look under the bed for it. Now I’m blowing you a kiss good night,” and blows one. Checks the bookcases in the living room. Must be a thousand books, most of them his wife’s, and he scans every one except the big art books and atlases on the bottom shelves. After he’s done with a book, and if his wife isn’t interested in reading it and he doesn’t think one of the kids will be in the next few years, he usually gives it to the town library or a friend or student or sticks it on a shelf in his department’s reading lounge, even the ones inscribed to him, unless the author’s in his department. I give up, he thinks. I’m just going to start something else and, if I don’t like it, go to a bookstore tomorrow and find something new—and looks at the fiction shelves and sees the Conrad. “I don’t understand it,” he says to his wife, and she says, “Still looking for your book?” “No, I found it. Polly didn’t clean today, did she?” and she says, “She can only give us every other Thursday, so next week. Why, is the house so
filthy to you?” “Not at all. I’ll tell you about it later: this book”—holding it up—“a big big mystery,” and washes up, gets into bed, and starts reading. Oh, God, why can’t I ever remember this? and gets up and turns the bathroom light on and leaves the bathroom door ajar so his wife will be able to see when she comes in and he can fall asleep without a bedroom light on. Gets back in bed and resumes reading. I think I’m going to give up on this one, he thinks, after a few more pages, and drops the book on the floor without a bookmark in it, puts his glasses in their case, brings his pen, watch, memo book, and handkerchief closer to him on the night table, lays his pillows flat, and turns off the light. His things, he thinks. Where are they? This is ridiculous. Put his pen, wallet, memo book, checkbook, book, and handkerchief down somewhere and now can’t find them. Keys are on their kitchen hook; he puts them in his pocket. The rest shouldn’t be hard to find. So big a pile, thick novel on the bottom, how can he miss it? First place he looked was the tops of the washer and dryer in the kitchen, where he usually puts things he’s going to leave the house with. Now he looks at all the tables and sideboards and flat surfaces of furniture in the dining and living rooms. On his bed?—because he remembers collecting everything together so he could leave for work—and looks in his room. Not there or anywhere in the room or in his briefcase hanging on the coat rack in the living room. He takes it off and puts it on the dryer so when he does find all these things he can set off right away. They couldn’t be in the bathrooms or either of the kids’ rooms. Single things, yes, but not a big pile of his stuff. Wife’s studio? Doesn’t think so, but check—“Excuse me”—and goes in and looks around. “What are you looking for?” and he says, “Something.” “I know, something, but what? Perhaps I can help,” and he says, “Several things, actually. Not important; I’ll find them.” “Don’t you have to go to work soon?” and he says, “That’s why I’m looking. But if I don’t find them before, no big deal.” “Maybe I saw them. Your wallet and notebook and pen?” and he says, “Yes, you’ve seen them?” and she says, “Not recently. Just that those are what you tend to lose with some frequency.” “And my glasses, I just realized. They’re with the other things I’ve misplaced and that I have to find before I go. Keys I know I have,” and sticks his hand into his pocket to make sure. “It’s a big single pile of things. I’m sure it’s right under my nose somewhere, but not here,” and she says, “If I see any of them I’ll give a yell.” Didn’t leave them in the car. You’re so sure? and he goes out to the car and they’re not there. He knows he put them all together: glasses, pen, wallet, memo book, handkerchief, checkbook, novel, and also his address and appointment books. The last four go into his briefcase. Keys are in his pocket. He just checked, but check again, and touches his pocket. He’s lost a couple of things at once—pen and wallet when he used to keep the wallet in his side pants pocket—but found them after a long search on his car seat. That’s when he thinks he started putting his wallet only into his back pocket. And one time three things—pen was one of them, forgets the rest—but not as many things at once as today: five, six; not even close. And he remembers they were in a neat pile, handkerchief on top, glasses in their case right underneath it. Blue hanky, too, or black. That might be the reason he can’t find the pile: hanky’s covering it and he was looking for something entirely different, and goes through the house looking for a folded handkerchief on a mound. “Still can’t find it?” his wife says, and he says, “It’s not just two or three things and my glasses in their case, it’s many. Checkbook, address and appointment books, book I’ve been reading for pleasure,” and she says, “What are you reading these days?” and he says, “Whatever it is, I’ve no time to discuss it. It’s the whole stack of things that’s important. And what did I say before, the stuff wasn’t important? That’s crazy. My memo book. You know how I feel about it, particularly since I lost the last one.” “You never got your new notes copied? You said you would,” and he says, “No. And same with my hybrid pen. It has some mysterious importance to me, as if without it I couldn’t continue with the work I’m on. Don’t ask me why—something there crazy too—though the pen’s of less importance than the memo book, just as the novel, even if it were the best one I’d ever started reading, and address and appointment books…. Well, the novel, since I can always get another copy of it in a day at a library or bookstore, is the least important of all except for the handkerchief, which is of no importance other than it might be hiding this very important pile. As for the checkbook—I’m not sure how it compares with the others in importance,” and she says, “It’s extremely important, possibly the most important item to me of everything you spoke about so far. It has the register of all the checks you wrote this year. You lose that, we’d be in serious trouble when I started doing our income taxes. When you find it you should photocopy every page of the check register too.” “I will, though maybe not right after I find it; and I don’t care what you say, the checkbook’s not more important than my memo book or wallet or pen. How am I supposed to leave the house without them, at least the wallet and memo book?” “You didn’t mention your watch, was that in the pile too?” and he says, “Jesus, my watch,” and feels his wrist. “Where the hell is it?” Goes through his pants pockets. Touches the keys, couple of coins, but nothing else in them. Runs through the house looking at all the places he thinks he could have left the watch. Goes back to her room and says, “Watch is probably in the pile too. So, if I’m right, watch, wallet, pen, handkerchief, checkbook, all those other books, maybe even some other things, though I can’t imagine what,” and she says, “Is it possible your appointment and address books and checkbook are on the wooden shelf above the stove? I know I’ve seen them there before,” and he says, “I looked; or did I? I could be thinking of something else I looked for there today, like the pile with my handkerchief covering it, and not for any of those books specifically, so missed them. But I’ll look again. Anything to find them. And maybe finding one will lead to another, and so on, though I don’t see how. I’ll be satisfied for the time being to just find one of those things, though of course, best of all, the most important one either to you or me,” and goes into the kitchen. On the shelf are an old tuna-fish can of coins, several pencils, lots of Visa receipts, bottle of aspirins, two subway tokens from New York, one of them the old one or maybe even the token before that, paper clips, rubber bands, seashell from the summer, jar of red food color (so his wife probably mixed a solution for the hummingbird feeder and set it out or is planning to or else planned to and forgot about it), dried-up marker he’s been meaning to dump for a month, and tosses into the garbage can. Turns around to get a carrot from the refrigerator, something he often does—chomps carrots—when he’s frustrated at some work he’s having a hard time getting done or can’t find something he’s been looking for for a long time, and sees what seems like the missing pile on top of the refrigerator. No, can’t be, and gets up close and finds under the handkerchief everything he’s been looking for and a nail clipper he didn’t know was in the pile and which he usually keeps in the coin can on the shelf. He thinks he intended to clip his nails later, either during the drive to school while he was waiting for for a long red light to turn or between classes. But how’d he miss looking here for the pile? he thinks, putting his glasses on and their case into his back pants pocket. Well, his eyes, first of all, without the glasses; handkerchief is navy blue, he sees, and rubs his nose with it and puts it into a side pants pocket. And he never turned the ceiling light on while he was looking and there’s not much natural light in the kitchen around this time, and really only in the morning for an hour or so does it get some sun when there’s sun. Otherwise, because the entrance is under the carport, it’s the darkest room in the house. He also never looked on top of the refrigerator because it never entered his head the pile could be there. He can’t remember putting anything on it before except empty jars and rolls of paper towels and things like that if he couldn’t find room for them in the kitche
n cabinets. So why’d he put the pile there today? Doesn’t know, though is sure he did it. Kids had gone to school before he made the pile and his wife can’t stand by herself and anyway would have remembered and told him if she’d put the pile there. Next time he loses something important he’s going to look on every flat surface in the house even if he has never put anything on some of them, though not something like the top of a bookcase seven feet high. “I found them,” he yells out, and she says, “Everything, including the checkbook?” and he says, “The works, plus a nail clipper I didn’t know was among them.” “The regular one for fingers or the big one for toes?” and he says, “Fingers,” and she says, “I could use it now, if you don’t mind; I’ve been hunting for it myself,” and he goes into her room and gives her it. While she’s clipping her nails, a sound he hates so he says, “Excuse me,” and shuts her door, he puts the memo book into the back pants pocket his eyeglass case isn’t in, rest of the books into his briefcase, pen and wallet into his side pants pockets, and straps the watch around his wrist. “Listen,” he says through her door, and she stops clipping, “I have to go now. But I’m glad the whole thing’s over with,” and she says, “I can imagine. I know what not having some of those things around means to you. And everything at once? It would have been a catastrophe if they were lost even for an entire day. And all of them lost forever? I won’t even begin to imagine.” “Oh, I’m not so sure anymore”—pushing her door open—“everything can eventually be replaced or considered not that relevant, when you think of it. Nothing should be that important where it’s going to seriously disturb you if it’s permanently lost. Take the wallet, for instance. It’d take some time and maybe a little expense, but I could replace everything in it except a few photos. And the pen? Dammit, some markers are just as good, or almost. And the pen I have runs or just stains my fingers every time I fill it up. And why should I attach to it some mystical significance, almost, for my work? And the memo book? A big loss, if I could never find it again. But then I’d try to remember what notes in it are important. And if I couldn’t remember them—well, then maybe they weren’t so important. So it ends up being a not-so-bad thing in losing it, since I’ve weeded those notes out. And then, if I still felt lousy about losing some of the notes, and I probably would, I’d sit down and force myself to think up new ones that I never would have thought of if I hadn’t lost the memo book in the first place, or something like that, but you know what I mean,” and she says, “You’re only saying that because you found everything. But if one of the more important things, like your memo book or wallet or even your pen, was permanently lost and you knew it was, you wouldn’t be so easygoing about it,” and he says, “I’m telling you, it’s true, except perhaps for the memo book a little and, for you, my checkbook.” “Then photocopy all the important memos in it and also the entire check register, and set both our minds at rest,” and he says, “I will, definitely, at work today,” but is almost sure he won’t have time to or that he’ll forget.
30 Pieces of a Novel Page 58