The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  I have to go to the bathroom.” How real that seemed, its sensational banality. My hands trembled, making the flame jerk when I tried to light my cigarette. Why did I light it? Was it a way of collecting the minutes we’d lost? She straightened her skirt, and then, with a quick wiggle, hoisted her pants. Odd not to have straightened her skirt last, but like her.”What are you laughing at, you?“ she said.

  Ortega says men are public, women are private. Montaigne says if you want to know all about me, read my book. “My book has made me,” says Montaigne, “as much as I made it.” In the same spirit, a man writes a letter, then decides not to mail it. He thinks it’s himself, a great letter, too good for just one person. It should be published. One of Byron’s letters was made into a poem. Real intimacy is for the world, not a friend.

  The woman wakes beside me and tells me her dream. She might forget otherwise. Nothing is easier to forget than a dream, or more difficult to remember. Her voice — I’m half asleep — twists into my skull, trailing a residue of strange events. This is always irritating, but I wake, listen, urge her to see more, see the whole dream. Frightening, sad, funny, her voice remains neutral, as if it mustn’t interfere with what she sees. The secret of writing.

  Writers die twice, first their bodies, then their works, but they produce book after book, like peacocks spreading their tails, a gorgeous flare of color soon shlepped through the dust.

  I phoned my mother. She said, “You sound happy. What’s the matter?”

  They say “Hi” and kiss my cheek as if nothing terrible happened yesterday. Perhaps they have no memory of anything besides money or sex, so they harbor no grudges and live only for action. “What’s up?” Just pleasure, distractions from anxiety and boredom. Impossible to sustain conversation with them for more than forty seconds. The attention span of dogs. Everything must be up. They say you look great when you look near death. They laugh at jokes you didn’t make. They say you’re brilliant when you’re confused and stupid.

  I phoned Boris. He’s sick. He gets tired quickly, can’t think, can’t work. I asked if he’d like to take a walk in the sun. He cries, “It’s a nice day out there. I know it, believe me.”

  Feelings come for no reason. I’m tyrannized by them. I see in terms of them until they go away. Also for no reason.

  Bodega Bay. Want to write, but I sit for hours looking at the dune grass. It is yellow-green and sun-bleached. It sparkles and changes hue with the changing light. It is more hue than color, like the whole northern coast. Now the dune grass has the sheen of fur. I need to be blind. Only the blind can write.

  Anything you say to a writer is in danger of becoming writing.

  The poets reading their poems.

  The critics reading their criticism.

  The him reading his me.

  The Cedar River, the woods, the fields.

  I prefer the houses and barns of Iowa to what knows it prefers.

  Boris tells me, apropos of nothing, that he has been rereading certain novels and poems. It’s as if he is talking to himself, yet he is curious to hear my opinion. He says the novels and poems mean different things whenever he returns to them. As he talks, he picks up a small lacquered bowl which he brought back from Japan. It is very old, very good. It has the aura of a museum object whose value has emerged over time and declared itself absolutely, but he studies it with a worried, skeptical, suspicious eye.

  Dinner party. Mrs. R. kept asking Z how her son got into Harvard, as if it had nothing to do with his gifts. Z laughed, virtually apologizing, though she’s very proud of her son, who is a good kid and also a genius, which I tried to suggest, but Mrs. R. wouldn’t hear it because her son didn’t get into Harvard and she was too miserable or drunk merely to agree that Z’s son would be welcome at any university. Mr. R. left the table, went to the piano, and started banging Haydn on the keys so nobody could hear his wife raving about Harvard, but she raised her voice and talked about her glorious days in graduate school when she took seminars with Heidegger and then she asked Z, “When exactly did you stop loving your kids?” Instead of saying never, and never would, whether or not they got into Harvard, Z sat there laughing in the sophisticated style of Mrs. R. and feeling compromised and phony and intimidated. Mr. R.’s Haydn got louder, the sweetness torn by anguish and humiliation.

  Natural light passes through murky glass windows in the office doors and sinks into the brown linoleum floor. It is scuffed, heel-pocked, and burned where students ground out cigarettes while waiting to speak to their professors. The halls are long and wide, and have gloomy brown seriousness, dull grandeur. You hardly ever hear people laughing in them. The air is too heavy with significance. Behind the doors, professors are bent over student papers, writing in the margins B+,A—.

  Henry comes to my office. “Free for lunch?” I jump up and say, “Give me a minute.” He glances at his watch. I run to the men’s room, start pissing, want to hurry. The door opens. It’s Henry. Also wants to piss. He begins. I finish. Seconds go by and then a whole minute as he pisses with the force of a horse. He would have gone to lunch with me, carrying that pressure.

  Boris asks my opinion of a certain movie that has been highly praised. I know it isn’t any good, but I’m unwilling to say so. He’ll ask why I think it isn’t any good. I’d have to tell him, which would mean telling him about myself, becoming another object of endless, skeptical examination. I prefer to disappoint him immediately and not wait for the negative judgment, the disapproval and rejection, like one of his women who never know, from day to day, whether they are adored or despised. I confess, finally, that I disliked the movie, but I understand why many others loved it. The woman I live with has seen it several times. He laughs. He approves. I feel a rush of anxiety, as though I’ve said too much. I’ll be haunted later by my remark, wondering what I told him inadvertently.

  Boris had been very successful in Hollywood, but he didn’t have one good thing to say about the industry or his colleagues. Producers were conniving, directors were bullies, stars were narcissistic imbeciles. Given his talent and brains, a little contempt for his colleagues was understandable, but he was bitter, he was seething. He went on and on, as if to prove that an emotion perpetuates itself, and then he told a story which I promised not to repeat, but I don’t feel bound. Others heard him. He’d been invited to L.A. to meet a group of wealthy people who wanted him to write a movie on a loathsome subject. This was neither here nor there. Any subject, he said, can be made worthwhile. What matters is the way it’s rendered. I disagreed, but he became impatient, he didn’t want to discuss “art.” He was too upset by life. He’d been offered for writing the movie a stupendous sum, endless cocaine, and a famous beautiful woman. “They treated me like an animal.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What do you think? I took the next plane home.” Looking sullen, he said, “You think I’m a schmuck?”

  “You’re lying. Who was the woman?”

  “I can’t tell you. She’s famous. You’ve heard of her, believe me. Everyone has heard of her.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It would be wrong.”

  “If that’s how you feel, don’t tell me. I’d rather not know.”

  “Marilyn.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  “Well, she’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “It was Marilyn. I saw her.”

  “Amazing. What did you do?”

  “We did everything. You hate me now.”

  Annette didn’t want to go to Danny’s. I followed her from room to room, cajoling, arguing. Not to go was not to live. It wasn’t her idea of living. She didn’t want to go, but she bought a few yards of silk and began to make herself a dress, working on it at night after the kids were in bed. None of her dresses was good enough. What about the dress she wore last week, the green dress, or what about the black dress? Anyhow, look, I’ve known Danny since we were kids. We played basketball together in the neighb
orhood. His mother knows my mother. It makes no difference that he’s prospered and everyone at his party is likely to be rich except us. Who’ll care about your dress? It’s a dinner party, not a fashion show. More to the point, who will be as beautiful as you?

  I didn’t say anything like that. She didn’t want to go, let alone talk about it. She was making a dress. That was a sign. She hadn’t actually said she was going, but why else would she make a dress? So I phoned the babysitter. She didn’t tell me not to phone the babysitter. Saturday came. She hadn’t said she was going, but she moved more slowly than usual. That was a sign. I didn’t ask if she was going. She might have felt challenged and said no. She took much longer than usual with dinner for the kids, much longer putting them to bed. I helped, but nothing I did seemed to speed the process. She was moving slowly, as if with weighty business on her mind. I couldn’t just say, “If we’re going, let’s move a little quickly, all right?” The babysitter arrived, a cheery girl, not too stupid. I read to the kids, then shut the lights and said good night, and went to our room and saw that she had put on the dress she made. Rose-colored silk. Extremely simple sheath. I looked at her looking at herself. She could tell what I felt, since there is every sort of silence. My voice asked, “How does it feel to look like you?” She said, “It’s all right.”

  I imagined seeing myself like that. The surprise; the little delirium. It must be frightening, pleasing. She’d never admit she liked it. Me, I looked all right, but not good enough for her. I wasn’t rich enough either. If I were rich, or an older man, we might connect better. We’d have moral pathos; delicate binding sorrow. I said, “Are you ready?”

  We drove to Danny’s place, from flats to hills, from sycamores to Monterey pines. She didn’t say a word, but she was in the car. She didn’t have to talk. What did she owe the world? The evidence was in. Like a flower or a painting, her existence was enough. I wished she’d talk, just the same. I’d have been happier even if she complained, or if she were happier. But this was a lot. I didn’t need more; except maybe a cigarette. She never objected to my smoking, but she was doing something for me. I could forgo.

  There were twelve people at Danny’s party. We knew some of them. Sooner or later, I’d slide up beside her and whisper, “What’s that guy’s name, the bald guy with the mustache?” She’d whisper it to me. She was talking to Danny’s wife, doing fine, even if she was uncomfortable. She looked better than anyone in the room. Or California. Or the planet. I’d have whispered that to her, but she’d get annoyed, the way she got annoyed in bed. I had the wrong effect. I liked her too much. Always a mistake. You can’t expect a woman to want you to like her too much.

  The things I’d done in my frustration. I never dared think about that. I’d have denied it under torture. It wasn’t a question of getting laid, only how. The ferocity. Could one live without it? Or with it? How was everyone living, anyway? It was a secret. The secret.

  She seemed to be having a good time. I always had a good time, being cruder stuff. Later in the car, still high, I’d say something like “Well, didn’t you have a good time?” She’d say,“No. Neither did anyone else.”All the people laughing and talking, they’d been miserable. They didn’t know it, but they’d had a truly lousy time. I’d want to scream and pummel the steering wheel, but I just drove more quickly. She’d say, “You’ll hit a dog. Then you’ll be sorry.” I never hit anything, but I’d feel as if I hit a dog. It was lying in the street behind me, blood sliding from its mouth like an endless tongue. I was a good driver, fifty times better than she, but I slowed down. She slowed me down.

  I was having a splendid time, drinking and eating like a king, feeling free to enjoy myself. A completely bullshit feeling, but it refused to be questioned. She seemed to be doing better than all right, sitting obliquely opposite me at the dinner table between a lawyer and a gay stockbroker, new friends of Danny’s. I was his only old friend in the room. He wanted me to see his crowd, enjoy his new life. I was proud of him, happy for him. She turned to the lawyer, then to the stockbroker, whom I could see she preferred. No sexual tension. They could talk easily. She was a column of rose silk rising toward gray eyes. I’d have made a pass at her, the girl at the party, the one I was still dying to meet.

  After coffee and dessert, somebody lit a marijuana. I was surprised, then figured it was the right touch. There was a Republican judge from San Diego at the table. A marijuana couldn’t be more inappropriate, more licentious, but this was Berkeley. We were The People, finishing off a two-thousand-dollar dinner party with a joint. Danny knew how to make a statement.

  The marijuana was moving around the table, everyone taking a drag, even the judge, consolidating our little community in crime. It would soon reach her. What would she do? She didn’t even smoke. I tried not to stare, make her nervous. She took it with no sense of the thing in her fingers, as if it were a pencil, and tried to pass it straight on to the stockbroker. He urged her to take a drag. She looked from him to the lawyer. He, too, offered friendly encouragement. She lifted it to her lips and sipped a little, not to any effect, not really taking a drag. The ash was long and needed to be tapped off, or it might fall of its own, which it did. She jumped up, slapped at her lap. There was a black hole, the size of a penny, in the rose silk. The ash had burned through instantly, ruined her dress. Now the drive home, my speeding car, the bleeding dog.

  That quick efficient feeling in the hands, plucking the shaft free of the pack, dashing a match head to perfection. Fat, seething fire. You pull the point of heat against tobacco leaf and a globe of gas rolls into the tongue’s valley, like a personal planet. Then the consummation, the slithering hairy smoke. Its danger meets the danger we live with in the average street, our lethal food, poisoned air, imminent bomb. In Morocco and Berlin, in Honolulu’s sunshine or the black Siberian night, in the cruel salons of urban literati, in the phantasmagoria of brothels, in rain forests full of orchids and wild pigs where women bleed to phases of the moon and men hunt what they eat, in the excremental reek of prison cells, or crouched beside a window with a gun in your lap, or sitting in your car studying a map, or listening to a lecture at the Sorbonne, or waiting for a bus or a phone call, or just trying to be reasonable, or staying up late, or after a meal in some classy restaurant, hands repeat their ceremony. The shock of fire. The pungent smoke. Disconnection slides across the yellowing eye. True, it’s very like but morally superior to masturbation; and you look better, more dignified. We need this pleasing gas. Some of us can claim no possession the way a cigarette is claimed. What wonderful exclusiveness. In company a cigarette strikes the individual note. If it’s also public suicide, it’s yours. Or in the intenser moment after sexual disintegration, when the old regret, like a carrion bird, finds you naked, leaking into the night, a cigarette redeems the deep being, reintegrates a person’s privacy. White wine goes with lobster. What goes with bad news so well as a cigarette? Imagine a common deprivation — say, a long spell of no sex — without a cigarette. Life isn’t good enough for no cigarette. It doesn’t make you godlike, only a little priest of fire and smoke. All those sensations yours, like mystical money. Such a shame they kill. With no regard for who it is.

  Boris said that his first wife was a virgin. She came the first time they had sex. Worse, he says, she came every time after that. He watches my eyes to see if I understand why he had to divorce her.

  The pain you inflict merely trying to get through the day. Pavese talks about this great problem. He had a woman in mind. Pavese does his work he kills her … Pavese reads a newspaper he kills her … Pavese makes an appointment to see an old friend … Finally, he killed himself. Sartre says to kill another is to kill yourself. He spent hours in coffee shops and bars. He liked to carry money in his pocket, lots of money. He compared it to his glasses and cigarette lighter. So many companions. He’d never have killed himself.

  Self-pity is a corrupt version of honesty.

  I tell Boris my grief. He says, “I know I’m supposed to hav
e a human response, but I’m hungry.”

  Annette claimed Dr. Feller “worked hard” during their sessions. “I trusted him,” she says. “So many therapists sleep with their patients.” As if it were entirely up to him. That hurt my feelings. Later we met his girlfriend at a party. I was friendly, as usual, but Annette was furious, confused, depressed. I asked, “What’s the matter?” She wouldn’t answer, but then, in bed, unable to sleep, she announced, “I will confront him, tell him off.” I ask, “Why?” She hisses, “I trusted him.” I begin to wonder if I’m crazy. Dr. Feller took a fifth of my income. I feel a spasm of anger, but fall asleep anyway, imagining myself taking a three-point shot from the sideline with no time on the clock. The ball feels good as it leaves my hand.