Disasters in the First World

by Olivia Clare

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said.

  It’s a mystery how she lives, Lee had once told me. She had some unknown income, savings, a pension from Max. When she retired from unsteady office jobs and moved to the mountain house, remoteness afforded her independence. Pride. No one there, with the exception of a few neighbors who kept to themselves, no others to exert their will, to snatch parts of her away. And there was the house to fix up, things to buy.

  “You should be careful talking to her the way you are,” Lee said.

  We were on the pullout sofa bed in the spare room.

  “Why would I be careful?” I said.

  “She starts talking about everything,” he said, sitting up. “She says what she wants.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just don’t give in to her. She’ll tell you all kinds of things. About everything.”

  “Listening is giving in?” I said.

  “She likes to tell stories,” he said. “You shouldn’t listen every time.”

  He was taking her for granted.

  “I wish my mother talked like she did,” I said. My mother didn’t like stories, not in books or films. Because they were untrue, she said. Because they lied. My own mother astonished me with her normalcy, the easiest thing to inherit. But I wouldn’t, would not let myself.

  “Let’s have another walk,” Dora said. “Just the three girls.” Dora, Marina, me.

  Christmas Eve. We’d all been on so many walks. Lee had put up a little tree by the woodstove, and we’d decorated with ornaments made from wallpaper samples and wrapping paper. We’d had cinnamon tea.

  “Tell me the story about Jack,” I said to her. We were going down the mountain with Marina on her leash. Dora had on earrings she’d made from wallpaper. She used to sell her wallpaper earrings at farmers’ markets. “Tell me what you said last time. About revenge. Nothing ever in this life could what?”

  “Honey, I don’t remember what I was trying to say,” said Dora. “But Jack. Jack was sick. Verifiably sick. He wouldn’t let anyone touch him. He wouldn’t let any doctor touch him, and no nurse in the house with him. Not that we could afford one. So he kept bending metal the way he was.”

  “For his sculptures.”

  “His sculptures,” she said.

  “The globe,” I said.

  “Yes, the globe.” She sighed.

  “And then what?” I said.

  “And then one day we couldn’t afford his studio. And we had no room in the house. We got a storage area. We rented one. And we packed all his sculptures and we put them in there. But nothing ever in our lives could stop us from making things. He started bending metal at home and making things and putting them in the rented place.”

  “You can’t be stopped,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Some of us can’t. We just go forward like nothing ever. Some of us do. Like with my film. I never stop with it.”

  “I know you don’t,” I said.

  “It’s how you make anything. Something from nothing.”

  We were coming up to the house again, the yard: chickens in a wire enclosure, two cats sleeping beneath jasmine and spearmint, planted fruit trees. A dishwasher on its side, a bicycle. She patted each cat on the head as we passed. I petted the smaller one, the female.

  “You keep forward. Nothing ever in your life,” she said, “keeps you from it. Tell me,” she said, “you understand.”

  I said, “I understand.”

  And I did.

  “Jack died,” said Dora. “It was very drawn out. It was terrible. I made him have a doctor at the end, at the house. The doctor was a friend and didn’t charge. Jack was on meds, lots of them.” Marina stopped and shook herself on the leash, then started walking again. “Nothing ever in this life should be that,” said Dora. “It’s so hard waiting for it and delaying your grief. I can’t tell you. You feel like a jellyfish.”

  “You felt like a jellyfish?” I said.

  “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I miss work,” she said. “I miss the film. It’s really coming along, but I need to work more.”

  Her quiet life, the sphere of cold metal. I imagined her, resident of that globe, playing piano on a metal planet.

  “You’ve got to stop,” Lee whispered, when we were back in the spare room. “You’ve got to stop letting her take you in.”

  “She’s not taking me in,” I said.

  “Don’t get so excited,” he said. “I know how you think of her, what you want from her.”

  “That’s because you already have it. Can’t I want a thing? Or wish it?”

  “Pay attention,” he said.

  She was right by our window, talking to her animals. I could hear the chickens beating wings, and I thought something I haven’t repeated—I wished to live with Dora and work for her and feed the chickens, the cats. The dog barked right then.

  “Oh, Marina,” I said. “That dog.” I said it, trying it out, as if she were mine.

  “That isn’t her real name,” said Lee. “That’s not the name we gave her.”

  “What is it?” I said.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He looked at me.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “I’ll ask Dora.”

  It was Christmas. Colder in the house than ever, blankets around us, sitting on the mattress in front of the woodstove, unwrapping a book from Lee, a necklace, boxes of tea from Dora, a lace scarf from Lee for Dora, Marina playing in the red cellophane. Jack’s globe on the piano. I gave Dora a candle. She lit it immediately, and I wanted her to save it. I wanted her to wait until it was the two of us.

  Lee went into the kitchen. Dora pulled her dog into her lap and kissed her on both eyes and swaddled her tightly in her scarf. She looked at me.

  “Ask me what happened,” she whispered. “That’s not the end.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “And then,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “And then I buried him. His wife even came to the cemetery. The day we buried him I went back to the storage room to see our things. Nothing ever in this life could keep me from that.” She looked around. “And I’ve got to tell you this. The storage place had filed for bankruptcy. That’s what they told me at the front desk. And you know what they did? I’m serious now. You know what they did?”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “They’d gone into our storage room and someone had scrapped all the metal.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “No, they did, they’d taken it all away,” she said. “There I was in a black dress, a widow.”

  Lee had come into the room with an open package of cookies.

  “I almost don’t believe it,” I said.

  “What happened?” said Lee.

  “That would be your choice,” Dora said to me. “You believe what you have the will to believe.”

  “They took everything?” I said.

  “Oh, everything. Everything. I swear to you, Emily. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  I started to stand and go to her but stopped myself.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Lee. “I know the story she’s telling. It’s the sad one about her aunt.”

  “No.” I looked at him. “Jack.”

  “Oh,” he said, chewing a cookie irreverently but touching the globe gently. “Of course. Jack.”

  “Oh, poor us,” she said, watching him. “Nothing ever was like that.”

  She was crying now.

  “Poor us,” I said. I was starting to feel sick. I cried instead.

  “I couldn’t believe it,”
she said to me.

  We were just crying. Crying what we could.

  “Poor us,” she said. “Poor all of us.” She looked at Lee. “Poor everything all of us. Poor everything everything all of us. Everything everything poor poor never not never everything.”

  Lee went to her, put an arm around her, still chewing his cookie. She laid her head on her son’s shoulder. She swaddled Marina tightly in the blanket.

  “I told you,” he said. “She starts talking about all of it. Everything, everybody.”

  “It is about everybody,” Dora said.

  Lee hugged her. Told her nice things, and she smiled at him and kissed Marina on the head. Kissed Marina again. They had what they needed. Nothing from me.

  This is how you love a mother: you resent her. You lightly scold her when you believe she’s comically quaint or false. Her tasks and complaints, you must look after. Similarities between you should flatter and frustrate. You must never admire her without wishing to be unlike her. You must hate when someone else loves her.

  Things That Aren’t the World

  Dear Stell,

  Kim Il-Sung, our dear fish, is dead. Mother says you’ve been very unhappy lately, and only an idiot would tell you that the dying fish (hundreds of miles away) somehow knew. Nevertheless, my roommates and I (you’ve met one of them, the one with the, as you say, cavern nostrils), we were all very worried when Kim migrated to the bottom of the bowl and would not get up, not even when I read to him from my Tremendous Textbook regarding recent earthly ills, such as the problems of storing coal slurry. He lay there, but alive, for two days, and I sang to him Battle Hymn and Wenceslas, the way you used to like, groaning in bed when you were a kid with some mumpy lumpy head cold. Then Kim’s end came—it must have happened at night, since I only noticed the very hung morning over after. So I fittingly buried him in the miniature flowerpot you bought and painted and left here by mistake. That was during your visit, when you bought Kim Il-Sung, Eternal President of the Republic, just a wee sperm of a goldfish then. Mother says you’ve been unhappy a long while and do not leave bed. This happens to fish, too.

  My roommates—do you know what they do while I write this? They play elaborate video games that tell them they’re combat soldiers. Graham, for example. Graham is only five foot four, but here in our living room he believes he’s an expert at shooting foreign enemies from a tank. Maybe he is killing them, real men, somewhere, by remote, and I sit watching him on our crusty plaid couch in my underwear drinking milk and eating a sliced orange. Graham is one of those “guys” who’ve been plunked down in the middle of the universe without any knowledge or concern as to any historical fact of, or before, their own existence. In other words, to him the origin of the egg is the frying pan. And so, my egg, please write.

  Fin.

  Finn—

  This is a problem you should take seriously.

  Here’s a quick summary:

  She’s been in bed a week now—she won’t come out . . . I have no idea what’s going on.

  I asked her if it has something to do with a boy but I know it doesn’t.

  I was up with her all last night as she recounted a bad dream . . . something to do with an eclipse turning us into polyurethane.

  I saw her early this morning and she was still sleeping.

  Unless you have anything nice to say to her, pls say nothing . . . I wish you’d help—she’s supposed to go back to school soon, etc. I don’t even know what time it is.

  Gd night,

  M.

  finn-fish,

  it isn’t funny. it isn’t funny at all.

  stella

  ps: i didn’t like kim.

  Stella and Finn—

  Don’t worry . . . Stella, don’t worry. What you’re going through is perfectly natural. It’s a problem, like anything else.

  Here’s a good example:

  I have a thyroid problem. My thyroid produces too much hormone, and I take pills for it every day . . . I’m saying I take pills for a problem, and it’s okay. Neither of you has said to me, Mother, Stop taking those pills. Never. You wouldn’t want me to. You need to be thinking about this, about the possibility—

  We’ll talk later bc I’m e-mailing from work . . . I have patients, patients who have heart problems or stomach or liver, and they acknowledge that and take action.

  Lv.

  M.

  dear Finn and Mother,

  dear Finn, dear Mother.

  your stell

  Dear Stell,

  Mother says you haven’t left your room. It’s a perfect middle-class privilege to be staying inside all day, the way you do. (It’s a perfect middle-class privilege to go to college, the way I do.) And what do you do exactly? Eat and sleep, like a good middle-class girl waiting for (ah!) something else.

  I know you enough to make guesses—guesses much closer than Mother can make—about what’s been wrong for so long. Last Christmas (christ what a ridiculous christmas of a christmas), I already saw this happening. I saw you feared where you live, in Mother’s little nesty house that looks like all the nesty-rest on the block. I saw you feared what you think you’ll become. You even told me you feared your choice for college, feared a choice already made. And now you won’t leave your canopied bed. Is it that you, at the post-sweet age of seventeen, fear granite countertops and flat-screen televisions and walk-in closets and stainless steel appliances? Maybe, in a few years, you fear you will meet a nice young man—perhaps a computer programmer, a teacher or lawyer (by the way, I tolerate any of these)—and you’ll have some job somewhere, or not, and there you’ll be (living in that same town where you and I grew as much as we could), cleaning your granite countertops with cleaning spray (bought for seven dollars out of your joint checking account). You’ll post pictures on the Internet—pictures of yourself, your home, your salty-Thursday-afternoon margaritas on your umbrellaed porch. Pictures designed to garner praise, affirmation. (But, Stelly, you’ll have central air-conditioning in your starter home! I have only this little fan on my desk that dries out my eyes.) Maybe you’ll be so far gone as to put up photos of your children toilet training. (Unthinkable!) What will you do with yourself? Many children? A dog? Watch television? Have a happy hour date with the girls from work? What work? Train for half-marathons? Remodel the house? Do you fear this?

  You fear your choices have been made. You think you’re a buoy that goes where the water takes you, and you are not wrong to think it. I am that, too. But I have distractions—namely, this damned education I’m after, and, yes, girls, girls, girls—but, Stelly, these are merely places in the water that keep calm enough, places where I can rest. And then the waves come again, and the buoy (myself, a speck) goes where it will.

  I still see you as a child, which isn’t fair to us. You told me those creatures, those things with the turtle-like shells, the Reebles, you named them, were alive in the hedges. They’re poisonous, you said. You were afraid of them.

  If I had you here now, I would tell you about this ancient culture I’m reading about. They must take care of providing food and shelter for their children. I think they’ve established an order to things.

  Fin.

  Dear Finn—

  Pls let me handle your sister—she shared your e-mail—I’ve always respected and loved your extremely rare bird brain, but you aren’t helping. You should remember that many meals you’ve enjoyed in my house were cooked on those bourgeois granite counters which you so heartily despise—

  when’s the next time you’re coming home?

  Lv.

  M.

  dear mother and finn-fish,

  i am writing you now i want to at the moment and that is all. i watched a bumblebee outside my window just now and all i wanted was for Bee to stay. it was black completely and buzzing THROUGH to me and are these black bees the kind of bees that sting? i
don’t know who knows (YOU would, finn) . . . and i worried. it flew in then out, then worried, then darted at a little hole by my window maybe it thought the hole was a hive. but then (SILLY BEE!) thought better of the whole thing and flew away, and i didn’t think about IT anymore. how many minutes was that? maybe that bee being here was five minutes. a thing that took up five minutes of my life.

  stell

  Dear, dear Stella,

  I’m writing you from work bc you won’t listen to me . . . you won’t pick up the phone . . .

  When I left this morning, you’d eaten nothing and were pretending to sleep. I knew you weren’t sleeping . . . your poor mother is much more aware than you think—

  You’ve been in bed 10 days, and I’ve let you have your time, but that’s enough . . . I’ve seen various changes in you for months . . . many changes, gradually, and so has Finn. I want you to see someone, a psychiatrist, a friend of mine . . . I really think you should talk to someone who’s trained in addressing your symptoms . . .

  Second, you should know that there are many different kinds of medications that may help. I’ll never push anything on you—you know that—but in the same way I take medication for my thyroid, medication in your case might help. For example, there’s fluoxetine, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, it’s extremely popular and effective someone told me. There’s also sertraline . . . and other things . . . point being, there are options, and these are just kinds of treatment, Stella. We’ll talk about this later. Don’t worry—I’ll call you after 4:15—

  Lv.

  M.

  Dear Finn,

  Update on your sister. She couldn’t sleep again and then finally she slept a little and so I did. Then she woke suddenly with one of those dreams . . . where does a seventeen-year-old get these images? In this dream there was plastic again . . . and she said she was salt in the dream and that a strange man was throwing her, just some white salt, against the bottom of a plastic tree.

  She asked me, What’s the purpose of my life? I said, to be a good person, a good citizen . . . Which you are, I added. And you can do or be whatever you want to be. You’re seventeen—

  I wanted you to know that all of this is going on—I’m at work. I know you’re busy and work hard.