Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

by David Sedaris

  The bottom log of the fire, which had been threatening to burn through, now collapsed. Red winking sparks flew up the black column of the chimney as the fire assumed a new pattern. Bernie squatted in front of it raking the embers into place. He spoke without turning around.

  You know, I read that piece you had in—what was it—the one about the schizophrenic?

  “The Lunatic.” He sat up a little straighter in his chair, adopted the carefully pleasant expression with which he received criticism.

  Ted was very happy with that piece, Lee informed everyone. And the magazine did a good production job. She beamed at him, sweetly proud of making a contribution to the discussion. He wished she hadn’t spoken, had left him free to frame his reply after listening to Bernie. But she was only repeating what she’d heard him say.

  That’s it, “The Lunatic.” I admire the language use, the control in the thing. The way you managed to milk images. But—

  that terrible pause—

  I felt there was a kind of slickness in the thing, almost glibness. I mean, you’re talking about a man who’s having a mental break-down. And you treat that rather flippantly. Perhaps you intended it, but I wondered why.

  There were a number of replies he could make. He settled for the most general: The story is something of a satire, Bernie. Think of all the literature that’s dealt with madness. It’s an extremely well-trodden path. You simply can’t write about the subject straightforwardly anymore. People expect something new.

  Bernie frowned and rubbed his jaw under the dense beard. Ted knew, watching him, that Bernie had thought his argument through. Had prepared it carefully, step by step, like he did everything.

  I thought, Bernie continued, that your complaint against avant-garde fiction was its emphasis on form over content. Blank space on the page, tortured syntax, that sort of thing. The writing screaming for attention. Aren’t you agreeing with them now? Saying, in effect, rather than exploring the individuality of this character or situation, I’ll dress it up in a different package. Pretend not to take it seriously.

  Both women were watching rather helplessly, as if they realized their little store of soothing words and social graces would be of no use. And the defense that came to Ted’s mind (Nobody writes like Henry James anymore. Or, more crudely, Your aesthetic is outdated) sounded like a small boy’s taunts. So he said, I do take the character and situation seriously. That doesn’t mean one can’t experiment with form, depart from rigid storytelling conventions. Otherwise you wind up repeating what’s already been done. Repeating yourself too.

  Bernie shook his head. Again that gesture of judgment. I’m sorry, but I see it as a response to the market. The thing I was talking about earlier. You tailor the writing to what the editors are buying. Maybe unconsciously. You’re certainly not writing about the giant sharks. But it’s still a form of corruption.

  And what, in particular, is being corrupted?

  I hope I can put this right. It’s like, that increased self-consciousness, that authorial presence that’s always thrusting itself between the reader and the page—see, I’m telling this story, you’re reading it, I’ll try to amuse you, watch this—is rather paralyzing. What you’re doing, a general you (a parenthetical smile), is making disclaimers for the piece, covering your tracks. I’ll play this a little tongue-in-cheek so I won’t be called to account for it.

  You might as well dispute abstraction in painting, Bernie. Form can’t be entirely neglected in favor of content. Otherwise we might still be seeing those Victorian pictures of blind children and noble hounds.

  It runs the danger of shallowness, Ted.

  Well, I suppose the only way to avoid the dangers is not to write anything at all.

  He hadn’t realized how angry he was until he heard himself speak. Damn the whiskey, damn his own thin-skinned hatred of criticism. He was too quick to take things as insults. Now, having said the one unforgivable thing, there was no retreat. The four of them sat without looking at each other. Bernie plunged into a fury of pipe-cleaning, tamping, lighting, as another man might have cracked his knuckles. The rain filled the silence, gusting against the windows and shrinking the warmth of the fire.

  Finally Paula said, I’m going to see what there is for dinner. Ted stood up as soon as she did, muttering about another drink. He paused in the kitchen only long enough to slosh the liquor in his glass. Paula opened the refrigerator and said, Hm, fried chicken maybe? He said, Fine and walked out the back door.

  The rain had brought an early blue darkness. He could still make out the shoreline, the agitation of the lake as the rain pocked its surface. Far away on his left shone one point of light, a white feeble thing that he could not imagine indicated human companionship, laughter, warmth. Even though he stood under the ledge, moisture beaded his clothes like dew. He gave himself over completely to the melancholy of it all. The only consolation he could find was the thought that argument was a form of intimacy.

  When he came back inside, both women were busy in the kitchen. Can I peel potatoes or something? he asked. They sat him at the kitchen table with a bowl of strawberries to hull. A little boy hiding behind women. He didn’t want to go back to the living room where he knew Bernie would be sitting. Lee and Paula seemed determined to speak of nothing more serious than gravy making. He watched Lee as she moved between stove and sink, a little surprised at her vivacity. As if she had formed some alliance without his being aware of it. Her hair had dried in soft waves with a hint of fuzziness; a looser style than she usually wore. Although she spoke to him occasionally, she did not meet his eye. It didn’t seem that she was avoiding him; rather, she was busy, he was extraneous, incidental…

  But he was projecting his injured feeling onto her, his gloom and self-pity. Snap out of it, he told himself. You’re going to be here another thirty-six hours.

  That realization must have been shared, must have been what got them through the evening. The act of sitting down to food together restored some tenuous rhythm. Afterward Paula suggested Monopoly. They let the bright cardboard, the little mock triumphs and defeats, absorb them. Ted thought how harmless all greed and competition were when reduced to this scale, then he berated himself for facile irony.

  At midnight Bernie yawned and said, I’m down to thirty dollars and Marvin Gardens. Somebody buy me out.

  Who’s ahead? Add it up, Paula suggested.

  It turned out to be Ted, who felt hulking and foolish raking in his pile of paper money. Flimsy pastel trophies. He was duly congratulated. He did a parody of the young Lindbergh acknowledging cheers. Modestly tugging his forelock. The tycoon needs some rest, he said, and they all agreed.

  Good night. Good night, and if you need extra blankets they’re at the top of the closet. I’m sure we’ll be fine. Bernie latched the door and said, Maybe it’ll clear up tomorrow.

  It took Ted a moment to realize he was speaking of the rain.

  He waited until everyone was settled before he used the bathroom. No use risking more sprightly greetings. When he got back Lee was in bed, her fair hair spilling from the rolled sheets like corn silk.

  He wanted her to start talking first, but her eyes were squeezed shut against the bedside lamp. Well, he said. Too neutral, inadequate.

  Would you turn that light off?

  He reached, produced darkness. She sighed and said, Much better. He lay for a moment accustoming himself to the black stillness, the smell of the rough pine boards. The mattress was sparse, lopsided. It seemed to have absorbed the dank cold of the cabin. He burrowed into its thin center. Then the even sound of Lee’s breathing told him she was falling asleep. Almost angry, he shook her shoulder.

  What? She was more irritated than sleepy.

  Don’t fall asleep. I wanted to talk to you.

  Go ahead.

  He waited a moment to control himself. You’re not making it very easy.

  She twisted inside the sheets until she rested on one elbow, facing him. All right, I’ll make it easy. What t
he hell were you arguing about? I hate it when you start talking like that. All that rhetoric. You take it so seriously. Was any of it worth snapping at him like that?

  Of course I take it seriously. He was accusing me of shallowness. Corruption.

  Oh boy. Lee drawled her sarcasm. And you couldn’t forget your literary reflexes for one minute.

  No. I guess I couldn’t.

  Her hand emerged from the darkness and gave his shoulder a series of small tentative pats. Poor Ted. Her voice was kinder. The pats continued, light but persistent, as if a moth were battering itself against him. He supressed the impulse to brush it away.

  Why poor Ted?

  Because sometimes I think you don’t enjoy what you’re doing at all. The writing I mean. You get so upset.

  Don’t be silly.

  I know. The Agony and the Ecstasy. She yawned. Well, I hope you two make up. They’re nice folks.

  Her lips, seeming disembodied in the blind darkness, found his chin, his mouth. Good night.

  Good night.

  He waited until she was asleep or pretending to be asleep. He got up, put on his pants and sweater, and padded into the kitchen. Turned on the fluorescent light over the sink.

  Her cruelest words spoken in her softest voice. Her revenge, thinking or unthinking, for all the times he’d shut himself away from her. He’d had his work to do. His sulks and tantrums. His insistence on the loftiness of his purpose, the promise of his future. His monstrous self-importance. The whole edifice threatened.

  He didn’t enjoy it.

  Of course you were gratified at the high points. The little recognitions and deference. Of course you made a point of bemoaning the labor involved. Saying it drove you mad with frustration. That was expected. But enjoyment? Where was the enjoyment?

  The pines still rattled in the wind. The rain was a dim silver fabric without seam or edge, unrolling from the sky. He thought of walking into it, losing himself in all that fragrant blackness, in the thick gunmetal lake. Oh he was tired of his cleverness, his swollen sensitivity. Better to crouch under a rock in the rain and reduce yourself to nerve, skin, and muscle. But his self-consciousness would not allow this either. It told him it would be melodramatic, a petulant gesture. Bad form.

  Something, some weight, passed over the floorboards behind him and he turned, his nostrils cocked. It was the ticklish perfume of pipe smoke that reached him first.

  H’lo, he said, and Bernie’s mouth curved around the polished wooden stem of his pipe. He managed to walk to where Ted was standing by the back door without seeming to advance in a straight line.

  Foul weather, he said, nodding. He too had resumed his clothes.

  I’ll say. They watched the faint movement of water on water. Then Bernie said, Drink?

  Sure.

  While there was still tension perceptible in their cautious responses, in Bernie’s stiff-wristed pouring of drinks, it seemed a formality. The simple fact of coming together like this was a promise of reconciliation. When Bernie was seated across from him, Ted began with the obvious. I’m sorry about tonight. I was way out of line.

  I guess I provoked you, Ted. I’m jealous. I admit it.

  And I am insecure and narcissistic.

  Would it be too maudlin to wish we were kids again?

  Ted shook his head. In some ways I think I’m still twenty. The prize student who’s always fawning for approval, pats on the head.

  You’re too hard on yourself.

  Yes, I am. He blinked at the checked tablecloth, trying to get his eyes to focus on its pattern.

  And I’m not hard enough. Bernie smiled. Such confessions.

  They’re necessary. Who else can absolve us of our sordid pasts?

  Now the room has the contours and atmosphere of all rooms in which people stay awake talking. The fluorescent light is grainy, staring. The clutter on the kitchen table—ketchup bottle, sagging butter dish, tin of Nestlé Quik, the rowdy crudded ashtray—the world is narrowed into these, a little universe that the eyes return to again and again. Now it begins, the sorting and testing of words. Remember that words are not symbols of other words. There are words which, when tinkered with, become honest representatives of the cresting blood, the fine living net of nerves. Define rain. Or even joy. It can be done.

  I Know What

  I’m Doing About

  All the Attention

  I’ve Been Getting

  Frank Gannon

  I was really worried about what to wear. It was like an anvil on my brain, just beating and beating and never stopping. Earlier that afternoon I saw someone walk into a clothes store and come out with a package. I knew what was in that package.

  NEW CLOTHES.

  It was like, Somebody bought some clothes, why can’t I have some clothes too?

  I went into my closet and got down on all fours and started to breathe really heavy. I was trying not to get nervous. I nudged a pair of brogans with my nose. Why not wear everything that’s fallen off the hangers? It was a desperate, Hans Arp type of gesture, but what was left me? Yesterday I went to buy dog food in absolutely the worst thing: green shorts, gray socks, white sneakers. A brown shirt with the numeral “16” on the back. As soon as I walked into the grocery store I knew right away: wrong, wrong, WRONG!

  But what could I do? It was too late then. I was trapped. I went through with it, but when I got to my car my heart was pounding and my face was flushed. My throat was dry and my hair was wet. My feet were bent and my back was twitchin’.

  I’ll never do that again.

  I’m a quirky dresser. I’m absolutely fearless about what it is that I believe in. My shirts are incognizant and my socks—you must be completely unaware of my socks, that’s, like, my approach to socks. My pants can be wily or even dishonest on some days if I just get up and feel that. But I have to feel it. When I wear a tie—and believe me, sometimes I really wear a tie—it can be porcine, strait-laced, odious. I have a certain little-boy quality, but there’s also that big-fat-sweaty-guy thing in there too.

  I’ve stopped taking myself so seriously. I can take a step back and laugh at myself. Sometimes I can get a really big charge out of what an absolute idiot I am. I’ll have this big intellectual stumbling block right in my way, and suddenly I’ll realize, Hey, who put the damn stumbling block there in the first place? That’s right: Mister Serious Artist Person!

  Whoa, I just crack up when that happens. Actually I’m a real easy laugher. I’ll laugh at anybody who’s being phony or pretentious. I’ll laugh at anybody who’s trying to make it the best they know how. I’ll laugh at anybody. Before I started getting all this attention, I was completely invisible. I could go where I wished and do what I liked without fear of being seen because I was completely invisible. I’m not making this up or being metaphorical here. I have the power to just completely turn off whatever it is in human beings that causes us to reflect light on the visible spectrum. So some nights I just make myself completely invisible and go for a walk. It’s just this power I have. It’s not like it was my life’s dream or anything.

  Anyway, people seem impressed by it. People would come up to me at parties and ask me about it. It made my girlfriend so mad. It was like she was really jealous or something. She finally told me that I had to choose between her and my ability to turn off whatever it is that causes human bodies to reflect visible light. That pretty well did in the relationship.

  We still lived together, but it was like I was a sterilized needle and she was a little sliver of wood stuck in your finger. We could both tell what was going to happen so we decided to end it.

  Now I’m in a whole new place. That other, older part of my life seems like some sort of surrealist joke that a bunch of my old buddies got together and pulled on me. Like they all got behind the furniture and waited until they heard me drive up, then they all jumped out and hit me with that part of my life.

  But now I have to deal with now. I need some help on my clothes, so I just go manic and call everybo
dy I can think of. They give me a lot of advice, but ultimately I’m the person under the hammer. It is I who have to wear the clothes, not all these well-wishers and hangers-on. Not the current artist of the month. Not all these vapid, air-brained media types. It will be me putting on the pants. It will be me pulling up the socks. I know how to do this. I’ve been at it for quite a while. I dressed myself for a long time before anybody was paying attention, and I’ll dress myself a long time after everybody’s paying attention to the way somebody else dresses himself. I know how these things go.

  So what do I do? First I admit that I don’t know what to do. Then I tell myself that I’m not alone, nobody else knows what to do either.

  Once I’ve got that out of the way, I can start.

  First I get out a big baggy pair of boxer underwear that is sort of right on the line between a lime and a grassy green. Then I go with the socks. They’re white, but get this: they have this really thick black ribbing about an inch down from the top. Then I go with some gray trousers that really don’t have anything to say, but I know that and that’s what I want. Then I can tell that it’s time for a black T-shirt. Don’t ask me why, that’s just the way I’m feeling. I put on some white sneakers, tie them quickly, and walk right out the door without a second thought.

  That night I mingled. Everything went well because everybody was thinking that I had planned to look that way all along.

  There’s nothing permanent about this. I know that now. Tomorrow I’ll be faced with more problems, but they won’t be today’s problems, they’ll be newer, different problems. I can deal with it. I know what I’m doing.

  Where the Door Is

  Always Open and the

  Welcome Mat Is Out

  Patricia Highsmith