A short series of little prose sketches, a poor man’s attempt at various styles.
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On a Wednesday morning Emily woke from bed in a quiet house. The curtains were not pulled to the bottoms, and so at the edges of the windows sunlight was coming in. In the quiet house Emily sighed and pulled a blanket above her head and made to enter into dreams. But being as she had slept the entire night through, she could sleep no more, willing or no, and gave herself over to the idle awakeness that aspires to slumber, for that was the best she could do. It was a dark and a small space, under the blanket, oh it is only in darkness and aloneness that these thoughts ever come, thought Emily; or closer to it, that I ever allow them to come. For Emily was some small master in self-discipline, and kept her mind an empty space, pure, when wandering out in public, at the library or riding in cars, say. She was nearly deadened by a fear of invisible skulls, invisible heads. It was irrational, a little charm, but she performed the act of censorship as a secret testament to her self-denial, to her private crusade for the pureness of things.
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I was walking down the street, y’know, when a bucket of thoughts just blugeoned me over the head. Just like that, drop of the old hat, not too polite and all. I was standing by this big clump of flowers – all clustered, y’know, purple and snowy and kind of dripping petals and all – by the old cat lady’s house. So I wasn’t but two or three steps from the old park, really, and I had a pretty little view of that nice brown bench and all. That kind of view just kills me. Or it just about did, then, at any rate. Sweet Molly, was I mad in love! I must’ve known it before, I figure I must’ve known, but it wasn’t so obvious then, y’know. Or maybe it was, and I was just too busy loafing around with my thick skull and all and didn’t notice. At any rate, there I was, stinking of these very sweet flowers and all, and kind of stuck to the pavement, y’know, just like my shoe was stuck on some rotten gum or something, and there I was, sick to the old stomach with love. I couldn’t call it anything else, really, since that’s what it was. Love, I mean.
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There is hardly a thing I know anymore. Although that somewhat implies that I knew nothing in the beginning. I suppose it’s true. My mind is a mess now, and was never perfectly neat at the start. I am attempting to write, but what a meager attempt it is. I am at the coffeehouse, alone and apart on a stool by a mirror, and I am lonely as ever. I might as well try to regain some semblance of self-sufficiency – living all right in my own right, and all – but, then again, I might as well not. If I did not so stupidly play the coward, and could speak up from time to time, well possibly things would be panning out in a prettier sort of way. Perhaps I will work at a poem. Perhaps I will play some cards.
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Half a year later, and she was pining still. She was the natural pining type, lean and bone-faced and with a pale cheek, and she liked to write poems in the dark. A girl who to all appearances was very small, very diminutive, but in truth there was independence in her teeth and everybody said she was bright. But she was living in a dark winter now, making her either frantic or sluggish, and so she worried or slept, and she did the second only to forget the first. These days she read little. She picked like a hen at a crossword puzzle, a poem by Yeats, the entries L thru M in an old World Book. And she could not read unless she ate, and most often she read while eating tangerines.
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School was letting out, I gathered my things in a bag, it was heavy as rocks, people pushed by and mouths went chattering and made a buzz and overhead the bell was sounding in B-flat. It was Friday in the springtime, and the noise swelled in accordance with the peculiar loveliness of circumstance. I supposed half the world was off to the park or the baseball diamond or the chocolate shop, practically. I walked toward the end of the hall where light was coming in. The window was spotty, though, and I bet no one had taken a rag to it in years. But the best was the window down the English corridor, old Jimmy Buckets had taken a bat to it, but he had just been coming out of pneumonia then, so he was sort of sickly and all, and the bat had only made a measly fracture. You could still see it, it was pretty funny. I liked to trace my finger along the pathetic thing, sometimes, for luck.
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I wager I’m in love. Except it’s not a betting game, because the thing is certain. I mean it’s pure knowledge, Mr. Jones. I know I’m in love. But am I humble to say it? Possibly I am, possibly I’m not, it’s all depending on your philosophy of love, I suppose. I gave some thought to it, for a while now I’ve turned it over, but I can’t speak my opinion any too well, seeing as I can’t ever articulate what I really want to, especially when I’m tired or hungry or, what happens half the time, I’m both. Especially on paper. I’m a miserable writer, you know. It’s bad enough getting through English class and all, but naturally I’ve got to be born to a librarian and a teacher on top of that. What a perfectly beautiful, bookish pair. They read a hundred books every day between them, I promise you. I don’t know how they even spared the time to give birth to me and all. Probably made sure the hospital had a library inside before setting down to deliver. Hey, I can just see it. My mother in labor, cramped and sweating and all, turning up her nose at the City Hospital just next-door, because, sin of sins! they won’t put Chekhov on the little white table beside her bed.
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