The Collected Stories of Diane Williams

by Diane Williams

  The dog had his leisure hours and Dan and I had been together longer than I expected and I was all tired out because we had indulged ourselves in every desire.

  Although, occasionally, we still had a lustrous sunny day with lots of time in it, more than usual.

  These days, when we tie up the dog in the yard we can barely bend to weed.

  The weeds and the dead flowers—clumps—are like the stacks of our used dishes with the dribs of jelly and bite-marked bread crusts that are hardly ever put away.

  So how much more describing is necessary to assess if we’re done expecting something even more fortunate to turn up?

  I was stepping into a corridor. It was empty except for Dan. He moved backward awkwardly, but then his face rose toward me like a steel magnet and it landed on my face with a bump. He has an enormous head and pale-pigmented skin.

  I ran into him again later.

  And then there was a long, long time without my seeing another human being.

  And after the last years were over, we were dead.

  The Mermaid Pose

  The mother had fought a small cause to prevent the little girl from sticking her hand into the pond to try to catch a fish, but the child fell in and went under. Which of them did the wrong thing?

  The father wrapped his hands around the crying child’s neck as he lifted her up and out and the mother shook droplets from the wetted front of her own skirt.

  A rose of Sharon—like an old Chinese, hand-painted lac­quer screen—obscured the sight of anything more of them, as the group left. But the mother, I could hear her saying—“The what? I will not!”

  But to get back to the pond!—we were at the Burnett Fountain in the Conservatory Garden where a bronze boy toots on a flute at the feet of a bronze girl who holds her overflowing bowl high.

  Legs together—the boy reclines in a mermaid pose—and people in other mermaid poses had been taking turns being photographed on the stone pavers at the edge of the reflecting pool that was filled with the blue lilies and the fish.

  I also lowered myself so that I was elongated and bent at the waist.

  I watched a creamy madcap one ploughing among the others that were, most of them, too good to be true.

  I felt an unimaginable touch. Oh, to be sweetly signaled.

  A hand pressed against my back. “Come along, Kitty. We’re late. You wanted a bath.”

  He kissed his fingers in tribute to me as I turned. And I got up with slow progress, trying for a look of extreme gladness, brushing off the back of my clothing.

  A dead or disabled raccoon on the sidewalk, near the hospi­tal, en route home, was attracting several lookers-on—partially on its side—with its legs opened up like scissor blades.

  We’ve heard these animals in the trees and guessed what they were doing up there that always sounds so beyond the pale.

  This was just going to be a sponge bath, God willing.

  “You’re clean enough already,” my husband said.

  So that was dear of him and the lineaments of his face are stamped with his best intentions whether he has any of those or not.

  I am teal and gray and added colors. I’ve done nothing to hide the ugliness of my elderly body. And let others regret that my character has no allure, because I am worn-out with that also.

  We have a roll-top bathtub I had stepped into. I tried to sit. I was angled painfully and wedged on top of one foot—as if I am intent to prove the impossible—that I don’t fit in.

  Greed

  Each child had a claim to a pile of jewelry when my paternal grandmother died—and how did they determine who was to have which pile?

  The heirs were sent into an adjacent room and a trustee called out loudly enough to be heard by all of them—“Who will have this pile?”

  My father said he shouted—“August Wilhelm will have this pile!”

  Thus, my mother eventually received two gem-set rings that she wore as a pair until she achieved an advanced age and then she amalgamated the two of them into one—so that the diamonds and the sapphires were impressively bulked together.

  I had to have it. It was a phantasmagoria. I selected it after my mother’s death, not because I liked it, but because it offers the memory of my mother and of the awkward, temporarily placed cold comfort that she gave me.

  It’s hard to believe that our affair was so long ago.

  The Skol

  In the ocean, Mrs. Clavey decided to advance on foot at shoulder-high depth. A tiny swallow of the water coincided with her deliberation. It tasted like a cold, salted variety of her favorite payang congou tea. She didn’t intend to drink more, but she did drink—more.

  The Thickening Wish

  Typically, he walks far enough north so that he sees the bridge and he appears to be so casual as he passes objects, the people, rusticated arcades, and heavy keystones.

  Here’s how it is—he had just gotten as far as Childs & Son Excavation Company, which has a colonnaded façade.

  His wife, back at home, sat in front of their hole-in-the-wall fireplace.

  If her husband is delayed, she’ll prepare for herself a nice shirred egg.

  Has he anything in mind when he nears Mitchell’s Sheet Metal and the Nelson Fuel Company?

  You have got a lot of nerve! comes to mind. Somebody in his childhood said that frequently, but who was it who said it?

  His wife is thinking, I am usually in a rush, but I am not in a rush today.

  She stows a spool of thread and a needle threaded with the thread. And didn’t she put away her ring? It had been prized and placid on the bureau top, with its many little rough points—the prongs—that in the course of time had never gone and worn themselves down smoothly.

  This is how her husband’s feet move his body—it’s a spring-­like action.

  His wife hunts for more objects to put away. Many are made of cheap metal—boat-shaped or cube-shaped.

  She enjoys their real fireplace, sitting by it, studying the in-and-out curve of it and the projecting stub of its mantel.

  She tells herself, “Take all the time to clean up that you need.”

  By chance, her husband has not yet come up against the bridge he seeks—but he has seen many towers and domes, porches and arches and doors, and he always enjoys the step-gabled build­ings in the old town.

  Then at last, he sees the bridge that seems to him to be sink­ing. The bridge has become a boob, or a drunk, or a bum.

  His wife puts an egg into a greased custard cup, dots it with butter, salt and pepper, and a drop of milk. She slides the egg—which had spent nearly the entirety of its life stone-cold and refrigerated—into the hot oven.

  Her husband is now uncomprehending. The road he’d been on was pointing toward the bridge, so now how did the road suddenly take a sharp turn away from the bridge and head over toward this warehouse?

  His wife begins to eat, but she cannot swallow.

  You blockhead, you ass!

  And her husband is back at the business of piling up the sights that have been left lying around.

  Typically, her husband has had an air of daring while he attempts—at each important stage of the trek—to take everything in.

  Lamb Chops, Cod

  She had stopped insisting that they have heart-to-heart conver­sations, but for stranded people, they had these nice moments together, and he had his professional enjoyment at the newspa­per. He approved the issues there with a scientific mind and he made quite a contribution. He was a consultant in the field of efficiency.

  She should have appreciated that, I guess. I don’t know—she felt lonely.

  After dinner, he would go into his room and sometimes read or do his engraving or follow up on his stamp collection or solve math problems from that year’s baccalaureate examination. Once he told me that on
ce a year he reread Our Man in Havana. It had something to do with Havana. You know—petty things—I guess my mother wanted full attention, not for him to have private time by himself. I don’t know what my mother did when she was in her room. She was working. She was work­ing a lot. She devoted herself to family matters, making trouble. But I am convinced that she did love him extremely and after he died she said that that was the fact.

  Then they had golf together and they did trips. There was a French newspaper that would invite him to solve a technical problem. He was amazing that way.

  They would playact around the occasion of having dinner. I’m not sure, but I’m afraid that they did it for every dinner. She would put on her best gown and wear the diamond ornament, which she felt free to pin anywhere on her garment if it was nec­essary for the brooch to cover up a soiled spot.

  He wore black lacquer pumps, silk stockings that went up under the knees. His breeches were tied under the knees and he would have tails and white tie on. My mother would provide the basic meal—cod or lamb chops. He would provide—he loved to go to the store that was similar to Fortnum and Mason and buy smoked salmon, cheese, fruit in season, asparagus. They had cocktails at five o’clock. They would listen to the news and then they’d sit down to the table, light the candles. They would have their little feast together. Then after the meal, he’d sit down and do work in his room. His French was very good, so sometimes he translated manuals from French or the other way around. And before bedtime, they’d have a cup of tea together with a cookie.

  He loved an existence of this kind and to eat food.

  He died while he was still glossy and smooth at the dinner table between the fish with dill—a great favorite—outstanding with butter—and the boiled blue plum dumplings.

  Of the True and Final Good

  The gimcracks were set out on a jutting surface and the woman listened to the indoor crowd that made the sound of a storm in a dry forest.

  Upon entering the mansion—referred to as “the castle” by the locals at that time—she saw the carvings in wood and in stone—and among them a white wolf with an open mouth, made from white limestone.

  There was a broad blown cry from the woman that expressed her satisfaction.

  By contrast, a man and a boy found the air inside difficult to breathe and they did not view the staircase or the urns in the niches as among the finest in the world. Nor had they walked in there with the notion that this will do.

  But other people arrived who could be benefited by observing the luxury—so that the big place didn’t rub them the wrong way.

  The woman eyed swords and sabers hung on the wall, all exceptional. Next to these was an oil painting in a bulky frame featuring a copper pot and eucalyptus leaves.

  The woman stayed briefly in a location close by it.

  The true state of things inside of the painting was unclear. The painting needed cleaning. The woman could not sufficiently experience either the fragrance of the leaves or the copper pot’s heavenly glow.

  “Oh, sorry!” the man with his boy said to the woman.

  Something had startled him also. He was a thin little man who held his face in his hands. “I don’t like this place do you?” he said.

  He didn’t approach too closely. But the woman reached out and laid a hand on his arm and she gripped it.

  Then both of her hands were pulling at his sleeve.

  People who saw her putting a lot of effort into it wondered why.

  She was carefully fashioned, vivid and polished, but should her desired result fail to be obtained—she’ll fade.

  Girl with a Pencil

  The girl’s predilection is to trace her hand with a pencil on a piece of paper.

  The mother made a rule that her daughter was responsible for something. And what could that be?—to be sulky and disap­pointed?—to be heavy and club-like? To be backward?

  When the child finished her early education, she drew a pic­ture of her future that consisted of a pair of legs, column-shaped, and just above them, the hem of a skirt in bright orange. The legs were decorated—as if wrapped in wallpaper—in pastel blue with red posies and their green leaves. The shoes were clumpy, earthy.

  But about the child’s later life, how did she fare?

  The child showed her picture to her mother.

  “And where is her head?” her mother said. “I see legs!” she pointed. “Shoes.”

  It was just a few words, but more than the child needed to consider.

  The child was handed more paper.

  And so was invented a kind of brute—a brunette with long-ish hair, who must love her enemies—who acts responsibly.

  Perform Small Tasks

  “One second!” I said—for everything can go cold in a day

  or hot. For a man like me, there’s an on-and-off bulb that does the deciding. I had to find a red, little glowing button—that I was able to find—that was on a timer switch, to get more light on. The furniture—like worn-out stumps sticking up—had turned into shadows.

  I could then see her better—the woman I had settled upon to have intermittent leisure with—Evangeline. How clean she was and how calm. I saw clearly the receptacle for logs by the fireplace filled with firewood that I knew to be far too fine for a fire.

  It takes some ability to get close to the extraordinary in life, and I was at the peak of my ability back then.

  Back then, Evangeline had informed me that her eldest son, having survived into adulthood, had returned to the States.

  I heard the click upon his entry and saw the jump of the flat door.

  The boy’s girlish mother—who could look secretive with plans wherever you put her—withdrew and then she reappeared.

  She glanced affectionately at the boy.

  Why was I afraid? Earlier she had informed me he was one of the kindest and one of the most thoughtful boys in all the world.

  She carried an appliance in from the kitchen that I did not recognize, and she put it on the credenza.

  Such an omen. I have asked myself what darker purpose is being served when a magician pulls his rabbit out of the hat.

  I felt a tap on my back, in the middle of my back, as I hurried away, past the woman and her son, with apologies.

  I had the long, uneven road to drive.

  Evangeline showed up in her sporty car, where I live, on the morning of the following day.

  There was something wonderful in this—it’s the whole point of the story.

  And we had become good friends, occasionally, for normally about an hour and a half at a time.

  She said, “I am not blaming you.”

  My father came down the stairs, my mother, too.

  Evangeline was addressing me lovingly.

  Mother said, “She was married to Jerry! She’s talking nonsense.”

  Dad said, “I didn’t think you wanted us to see her.”

  My kitchen, where I went off to, has an island range and the beauty of this island is difficult to convey, but pesty problems can seem irrelevant when I am in the vicinity of my Viking.

  I was thinking Evangeline had had her say, that she could depart now with a light heart.

  When I returned to the foyer, my father was holding the newel-post, my mother—in her short, striped robe with her bare legs—was going back up the stairs.

  Evangeline—and I was very moved by this—was still wait­ing for me and I wondered if I would rise to my own occasion.

  Then my mother shouted, “They’re going to clean the air conditioners first!” The Best Air van had arrived.

  Eventually, Evangeline gave up with some hostility and she drove herself home.

  In the meantime, I got a few payments recorded, made out bank deposits, and checked cash accounts. I think I’ll be an ideal ally for somebody someday. This belief is borne in
magic.

  Am I not like the vanishing bead? Presto!

  Place me inside of any paper cup. In due course I am in my own pocket, when I cap—carry through, or when I conclude.

  Removal Men

  You have people nowadays—the men in general, who were helping the woman—and that which they should not dis­turb, she had put into a crate.

  She put a yellow-flowered plant into the crate.

  The men’s names were embroidered on their shirt pockets, but truly, there was no need to address one or another of them. A question could just be asked of one—without use of a name.

  The pockets of their garments were needleworks with thread in bright white. But for Marwood, somebody had devised an orange and mustard-yellow embroidery.

  The woman was standing a step aside and didn’t have much to contribute, but she looked at a man—at what he was making ready to take—and she held her hands with her palms turned away from her body with her fingers spread, as if she had dirt­ied herself.

  At the curb, the woman’s car was an Opel, and the hood was up, and the door to the car was out, and what was its color? It was a butterscotch and a man, up to his elbows, was under the hood. Now and again he’d go back into the car and try the starter engine. Ted—that was that one.

  It could be lovely, the woman was thinking. It was already lonely and there were mountains and mosses and grasses and violent deaths nowadays, and injuries and punishments, and the woman finds the merest suggestion of cheerful companionship and carousal—a bit too dramatic.