Lying in Bed

by J. D. Landis

  Daisy Chain

  I just got around to reading Lancelot by Walker Percy, which I can’t remember where I got it and I found in a stack of old books in the back of my closet. It’s about a very strange marriage and has “hard-ons” and “cunts” in it, which are words I’d rather think than read, and the hero, whose name is John, puts hidden cameras around to catch his wife fucking. I would like to see me and Johnny doing it. But there’s no way we’re going to get a camcorder. We don’t even have a TV or a VCR to play it on. We don’t even have the kind of still camera my father used! Johnny reminds me of the John in the book, who says all you need is a room with a tiny window and one other person. As soon as you add the world, he says, like other people and TV and the news, you go crazy. While I was reading it I asked Johnny because this comes up in the book, “Would you say you’re John the Baptist or John the Evangalist?” He shook his head at my book and said “Neither.” But later when I told him how the hero of the book stops talking just the way he did, Johnny said, “Oh, well then, you tell your Mr. Percy that he should have used Juan de la Cruz—toda sciencia transcendiendo. There was the John who understood what Steiner calls the abandonments of speech as ancient as those of the Stylites and Desert Fathers. Anything else I can be pretentious about?” I told him that this man said that when his wife wasn’t with him it was like being without oxygen. “And when you’re not with me,” Johnny said, “it is like being without …” He stopped. “What?” I asked. “There is no way to describe the emptiness,” he said. I closed my book.

  Beloved Flag

  Truro. Johnny watches me from the bed the way he does at home. The room’s so small, I can feel his breath between my shoulder blades. I love to write in here with his eyes on me. I love to feel him try to see right through me.

  The ocean sounds like traffic. When you live at the top of the city, it feels like the whole world rushing by between your legs.

  We left New York early this morning. Johnny had not been out of the loft for a couple of weeks. That’s how strong he is. He wouldn’t go pick up the rental car without me. He won’t go anywhere without me. Except when he buys me a present I guess. He loves me so much he’ll do things he never does to do them for me.

  We took 95. You have to get past New Haven around Guilford before you feel New York let go of you. Everything until then’s a suburb. You think you might die at any moment. Then around Guilford you smell the sea. Or you hear it. Even over the music. At least in your mind. This morning we played Mozart flute quartets and George Thorogood. Traveling music we call it. We never listen to it at home. Johnny likes Bad To The Bone. Everybody who hears it ends up singing it. They probably don’t even know what they’re singing. But Johnny does. That’s what he does. He takes things apart. He always says, “But don’t call me a deconstructionist.” “I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re a diaskeuast.” He makes me laugh. He makes me laugh at him. When a man does that, he kills my fear. I’ve never for a second been afraid of Johnny.

  We hit traffic going over the Cape Cod canal. For a while we just sat there on the swell of the bridge. I looked down and thought about dying. Actually, I looked down and thought about our car falling off into the water. When you’re on it it looks like the highest bridge in the world. But I don’t die. Johnny makes his way to me through the water and claws open the window and presses me against him and we swim up into the sunlight.

  I look at him while I’m seeing this. He’s in the driver’s seat. I won’t drive over these bridges. One of them has a sign about calling the Samaritans if you’re thinking of killing yourself. It’s on the side of the bridge leading back toward the city naturally. Johnny knows. He’s just staring straight ahead with his hands on the wheel. But he knows he rescued me.

  6 was crowded all the way. When we hit the single lanes past Hyannis with all the white crosses bunched together it got even slower. If I died in an accident on that road, and somebody insisted on sticking up a cross to make an example of me, I’d want it on the spot where I went.

  We still got to the flea market before it closed. Homer was there. “Clara,” he said. “John.” He remembers everything. “How’s that Hole in the Barn Door you bought 5 years ago?” he asks me. “And that shirred rug with the flowers?”

  “Sold them,” I tell him.

  Johnny gets interested because we’re talking about a time before he knew me. I could feel his heat come out of the heat of this huge drive-in. No shade. But he was hotter. He wants to possess me possessed. He creates me for himself. Other people just erase you. They want to make all the difference to you. They don’t. This guy would watch me getting nudged around by my father’s dick in my mother’s womb if he could.

  “How do you remember these things, Homer?”

  “I can picture her buying them.”

  Johnny wants to be Homer now. He wants to be standing there 5 years ago looking at me.

  I was just happy to be standing there with him today.

  He was in awe of Homer. Just like of me. We see things. Johnny can’t. He has nothing in his mind but words and sounds. He taught me how to hear. I’m teaching him how to see. But he won’t. You can learn to see things outside but you can’t learn to see things that aren’t there.

  He has other gifts.

  Don’t you Johnny?

  I went through Homer’s old van and found some pieces. I knew I would. Homer goes back to the midwest every winter and scours the farms. Quilts rise from the earth as people are buried in it. He likes to get them before they make it into the inventory of the estate. He won’t wholesale them, but New York prices are so high it would shame me for Homer to see them. So I never haggle. People in New York will pay anything for something “authentic.” Anything.

  He’s got a Circular Album buried near the floor of the van. The van’s so hot I sweat on the quilt.

  “You found it,” he said.

  “Where did you get this?”

  I could tell he’d been saving it for me. I told that later to Johnny.

  “You adore it when men save things for you.”

  Of course I do.

  “See you next year. Or whenever.”

  I like Homer. He’s a vagabond. Once a year’s enough for most people. My husband’s the only one I want to see repeatedly.

  When we got to this motel I spread the quilts out on the bed. Johnny knew I would. He was patient.

  “They’re beautiful,” he said.

  “I hope I can find the right people to sell them to.”

  I barely got them folded when he gathered me up.

  Pinwheels

  Possible Names For My Store

  Quilts USA

  Take Me To Bed

  America The Beautiful

  Is Never Done

  Ladies Delight

  Trapunto

  Sew Sew

  Stairway To Heaven

  Quiltuplets

  Quality Quilts

  Quiltessence

  How They Hanging

  Manhattan Pavement

  American Artistry

  Hole In The Barn Door

  Quilts For Quickies

  Quilt Pro Quo

  Lying In Bed

  Handjobs

  American Treasures

  Native Born

  Fragility

  A Stitch Out Of Time

  Dead Women Don’t Sew

  Grandmother’s Flower Garden

  Belzidas

  Fuckable Fabrics

  How Can This Bee

  Call It Quilts

  Bell’s Bottoms

  In Stitches

  Public Hangings

  Virgin Territory

  Ike And Clara’s

  Crosses and Losses

  Contemplations

  Pieces On The Ground

  Quilt And Innocence

  Counterpain

  Farmer’s Wife

  A woman came into the shop. She looks around. But I know she’s not here to shop. She doesn’t touch a thing.
/>   Finally she must figure enough time has past.

  “Are you married to John Chambers?”

  She isn’t bad looking. Too much silk but not too much flesh so the silk lies flat. She takes care of her body. Her shoes are fine, they shine like a black apple. With straps that start up her calves because she knows she’s got good legs. She’s not my type. I mean she’s not one of me. But I can see Johnny with her. East Side. Short hair too but blond. This is definitely not Cosima who I picture with curly hair and unenviable eyebrows and by this time, 12 years after the fact, a fat ass.

  “Yes,” I say.

  She looks at my left hand. Don’t you just love women who can’t help searching for the evidence. If God came down like Zeus for a quick one they’d ask It for a sign. Make the wind blow. Calm the seas.

  “Poor thing,” she says.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I used to date him.”

  “Oh really.”

  “If you could call it that.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I never dated him. I just married him.”

  “So I heard. It was very fast. I don’t suppose you’re pregnant.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s hardly the most virile man I’ve ever met.”

  “Did you try?”

  Finally she touches a quilt. She rubs the back of her hand along it the way her mother must have done with her. “I don’t see what business that is of yours.”

  “It’s not.”

  Now I think she’s about to touch me. “Admit it. He’s the strangest man you’ve ever met.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She does touch me! Her cardinal nails come to rest on my sleeve. “I knew it! God, how can you stand him?”

  “Sometimes I can’t.”

  “Oh you poor thing.”

  “Sometimes he’s too much for me.”

  “For me too! A friend of mine fixed us up. He’s rich, she said. He’s handsome, she said. He’s got 16 rooms in the 60s, she said. Great, I said. I was ready, believe me. Aren’t we all. I should have listened to my father. Before he died he ran a brokerage house and the only thing he ever taught us because he said it was the only thing we’d ever have to know was if something’s too good to be true it’s too good to be true. And of course he was right. He drove me crazy.”

  “Your father?”

  “Of course not my father. Him. Your husband. John Chambers.”

  “How so?”

  “How so! How can you of all people ask me that! He’s from another planet, that man. He’s up in the stratosphere. He’s so busy looking for the meaning of life that he doesn’t have a life. I tried everything. I cooked meals for him. I went to Merkin Hall with him. I opened up a charge at Brooks Brothers. I spent hours sneezing from the dust on the bottles at Garnet. I read Thus Spake whatever his name is. I even asked him to marry me.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “To see what he’d say.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said he couldn’t.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “Oh yes he certainly said why. He said he couldn’t because he’d already had sex!”

  I shouldn’t have laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” she said.

  “Maybe it wasn’t then but it is now.”

  “I pity you,” she said.

  Not as much as I pity you.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I thought you might need someone to talk to.”

  “I have someone to talk to.”

  “A shrink I hope.”

  I thought that was her exit line until she said from the door, “So what is he like to be married to?”

  “Too good to be true,” I said.

  Union Square

  I showed my diary to Ike.

  “What the hell is this, Clara?”

  “My diary.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It looks like you wrote it with your toes.”

  “That’s my handwriting.”

  “Just keep using the computer, Clara.”

  “Don’t you want to read it?”

  “Nobody could read this, Clara. It’s sick. I don’t know what it says in here but you ought to marry the first man who can read it. You’d be meant for each other.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I want to marry you.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you too much.”

  Tree of Temptation

  Is it possible to be so happy that you want to destroy either yourself or the person who makes you so?

  Johnny told me the story of a political philosopher named Louis Althusser who strangled his wife to death. He said he had always loved her.

  Johnny says he can’t understand that. But I can. There is something about being married that sometimes makes me want to kill him. I don’t know if it’s to make him go away or to keep him forever.

  I look at him next to me and I try to imagine life without him. I blot him out. I don’t see him. He’s not there. And I feel a terrible mixture of sadness and relief.

  I gave myself to him forever because I thought he was the only innocent person left on earth. I am haunted by him. I am in love with his suffering. And his silence. No matter how much he talks there’s always that silence, somewhere behind his voice. I can climb inside my husband and find peace. He’s my grave.

  Why is it so painful to love somebody? Why is it so easy to imagine losing the most precious thing you have that you think you would rather destroy it than lose it?

  Goose in the Pond

  I stopped on the way home today at Crotch Veneer on West Broadway and bought Johnny some new underpants. They’re plain. They’re white. They’re briefs.

  “I can’t wear these,” he said when he unwrapped them. I could see from the pain in his eyes l. that he was trying hard not to hurt my feelings and 2. that he was frightened of his new underwear.

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because I’ve never worn anything like this in my life. I’ve always worn the same kind of underwear.”

  I couldn’t stand it any more. He is so conservative. He is so old-fashioned. He is so unaware of how beautiful he is. All I really wanted was to see him in a normal pair of underpants with his buns outlined and his basket full.

  So I said, “Well I hate your underwear.”

  “You hate my underwear?”

  “Yes. I have always hated your underwear.”

  “You have? But why?”

  “Because they’re so drab. So boring. So ugly.”

  “I see.” He looked down at himself with a painful expression in his eyes. Like he can see his underwear right through his pants.

  “At least try them on.”

  “Am I allowed to return them if I don’t care for them?”

  “Of course not! God, are all rich people like you. Don’t worry. If you don’t like them, I’ll wear them.”

  The fear left his eyes. He smiled. “Now I understand what this is about.”

  “What?”

  “You know as well as I.”

  “No I don’t. And get that smug look off your face.”

  He kept right on smiling and put on the underpants. “These are monumentally uncomfortable,” he said. “I think my testicles are becoming one. Here, you wear them.”

  He put them on me. “How do I look?”

  “Ridiculous,” he said. “May I?”

  He put his hand in through the fly. Oh my.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “But you’re a woman.”

  “I meant that we had our first fight.”

  “We did?”

  “Over underpants no less.”

  “I like these,” he said.

  “But I thought …”

  “On you.”

  “So do I.”
The fly is like a door that’s meant to be opened from the inside only. Why don’t they make these for women.

  Shoo Fly

  This guy knows more things. He thinks I’m a Bell so he tells me about the Bells. I know I once read A Room Of My Own by Virginia Woolf just because of the title. But now I don’t remember anything else about it. That’s what happens to me with books. It’s completely different with things I see. Or even things I think I see. Or things I see on the inside that don’t even exist on the outside. I see them once and never forget them. Beautiful things, I mean. Ugly things I don’t see even once. I can stop them between my eyes and my brain. They never register. But beautiful things last forever. I remember every good quilt I’ve ever seen. Even ratty ones. If you ask me about a pre-Depression Bullseye made in Pennsylvania by Alverba Herb I can tell you that it’s got a green and red little circle in the middle that’s a bullseye exploding into either 8 or 9 concentric circles of diamonds and triangles. What I like best about it is the contrast of the simple appliqued flowerpots in the corners. It has a cyan blue ground and a rope-stitched murrey border. There are hearts in the ground quilting. It will go with me to the grave.

  I don’t remember words the same way. He does. But he doesn’t seem very good with images. His mind’s a blank. Which I notice is what scares him. Blankness, I mean. Like the quarter he told me about with nothing on it. Like the silence he went through. He talks a mile a minute now, but it’s that silence I keep thinking about. How it must have purified him. He’s like a saint. I want him to save me.

  After Virginia Woolf’s sister Vanessa married Clive Bell, Virginia said, “God made her for marriage. And she basks there like an old seal on a rock.”

  “She makes it sound so comfortable,” I say.