At a Loss For Words Read online

  But then, just as they were bound to, the lilies began to die: single petals falling to the tabletop or slipping to the floor, dropping silently in the night, and each morning when I awoke, there were fewer and fewer petals left, until finally all that remained were headless stalks and crumpled leaves, which also then ended up in the compost with the blueberries.

  I did not take this as a sign.

  I knew it was simply the natural, ruthless order of things.

  Write about your favorite flower.

  Write about your favorite fruit.

  Write about your kitchen.

  Write about lunch.

  Write about bedrooms.

  Write about what you see when your eyes are closed.

  Write about what was left behind.

  Write about what you are waiting for.

  What am I waiting for now?

  The morning after we ate chicken and cherries in my backyard, I wrote you an e-mail in which I said, After you left, I could think of a hundred more things I wish we’d had time to talk about. But later I felt sad because I know it will probably be a long time before we have a chance to get together again. Alas.

  I said, But thanks for such a wonderful day! There’s just nothing better than spending time with you!

  In your immediate reply, you said, What an amazing and incredible woman you are! I feel so humbled and privileged to have this connection with you. Life is complex enough, and relationships that are special and based on trust are so rare…ours is a gift that must be treasured. I have to confess, though, that the original attraction I felt for you is still there…

  I said, Yes, it’s still there for me too.

  You said, It feels so very great to have this open and honest exchange with you. A relief, in fact…for I realize now that I have kept my true feelings inside.

  You said I was an angel.

  You said I was a treasure.

  You said I was an inspiration.

  You said I was a breath of fresh air.

  You said, You are a gift to all of us who know you.

  I said, I’m flattered by the way you see me.

  At various times you said I was wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, captivating, expressive, smart, remarkable, generous, genuine, talented, brilliant, wise, and patient.

  I said, All the wonderful things you say to me make me feel like a million bucks!

  Sometimes you adored me in French, which, we agreed, isn’t called a “romance language” for nothing. You said, Tu est merveil-leuse, magnifique, très très belle…

  I, apparently, am a sucker for flattery.

  How do you say that in French?

  It’s so noisy in the neighborhood this morning. It’s very distracting.

  The people next door on the left are having their bathroom gutted and completely redone. I’ve been inside their house and I know their bathroom is exactly like mine. Personally, I can’t see anything wrong with it. However…this costly and prolonged project involves an industrious chorus of hammering, sawing, and drilling, with faint radio music in the background. Their old toilet now sits in the middle of their front yard. The bathtub is in the back.

  The people next door on the right are having the exterior of their house repainted. It used to be plain white stucco like mine…a little boring maybe, but I can’t say as how I’m all that keen on the new color, which is a smudgy yellow with olive undertones. The painters are a jolly crew of shirtless muscular young men. There’s much laughter and calling back and forth, much shouting along with the CD player they’ve set up on the front porch. All those rap songs sound the same to me: lots of swear words mixed in with the singer’s pledges of undying love for God and his mama. Yesterday the young painters all had beer with their lunch.

  There are also the crows, which have been squawking at each other since daybreak. If I had a gun, I would shoot them. Yes, I would. A murder of crows.

  And now, to top it all off, here comes the street sweeper to make my morning complete.

  Later in the day, no doubt, the rest of the neighbors will decide to mow their lawns, whip out their weed whackers, hammer a few nails, fire up their barbecues, have all their friends over, fill up the inflatable swimming pool for the kids, and play some loud music too. The fellow at the corner will probably get out his chainsaw to cut down that big branch that is hanging right over his garage.

  Of course, I could close the windows against all this racket, but then I would die of heatstroke.

  Of course, I could buy a small window air conditioner. And one of these days I will. My resistance to doing so before now is not based on environmental or economical objections, but rather on some chauvinistic pioneering notion that one should be tough enough to weather the heat without assistance.

  You said, I do not want to ever complicate your life. I can appreciate how unique this is, me coming back into the picture some thirty years later.

  I would never want to upset the balance of your life.

  I said, You haven’t complicated my life. You’ve made me so very very happy.

  You said, When you are happy…I feel happy too.

  I said, I consider myself an unbelievably lucky woman to be loved by you. I am so grateful to have you back in my life. You will be forever in my heart.

  You said, I echo your thoughts there. I am so very thankful for having been able to reconnect with you, and for us to have the time and opportunity to reveal our true feelings and emotions, and to give to each other the truest nature of who we really are.

  Later: I said, Sometimes I wish I could just put you back in the box where I used to keep you. But I can’t seem to manage it. I guess I’m going to have to cut off your legs to fit you back in there.

  You said, What!!!

  I said, Just kidding.

  You said, One of the aspects of a true and deep relationship like ours is that it all takes time…and communication. This is part of what makes it so rewarding, fascinating, complex, energizing, and terrific for the soul!

  I said, Yes, you’re so right.

  You said, As challenges come before us, we will deal with them…together…as we have been doing each day, and will for all time…

  I said, Yes, we will.

  Write about small injuries.

  Write about a justifiable sin.

  Write about a fragrance.

  Write about the color blue.

  Write about breasts.

  Write about teeth.

  Write about being underwater.

  Write about the fault line.

  Write about never and always.

  You said I was the one person in your life with whom you could always be open, honest, and revealing.

  You said I was the last person on earth you would ever want to hurt.

  You said I meant so much to you…so very much…and always would.

  You said, I would never never never want to hurt you.

  I said, If I didn’t already love you so much, I would love you even more.

  Now I’m almost out of cigarettes. Only two left. This makes me very anxious. I can’t concentrate. Yes, I know I’ve been smoking too much lately. Much too much. Yes, I know I should quit. Everybody who smokes knows that.

  Yes, I will quit someday.

  But not today.

  Right now I have to make a quick trip to the corner store and buy another pack.

  Right now.

  One day a few months back when I made my daily visit to the corner store to buy cigarettes and a Pepsi, I found a playing card in the parking lot, facedown on the asphalt. It was raining. Several cars had run over it. When I picked up the card and turned it over, lo and behold, it was the ace of hearts.

  I took this as a sign: a good sign, an excellent sign. I took this as a sign that everything was going to work out right, a sign that in the end you would indeed come live with me and be my love.

  I put the card in my wallet for safekeeping.

  The very next day, when I went to Tim Hortons for my dail
y iced cappuccino, I found myself waiting in line behind a young woman with neon pink hair who was nuzzling the tattooed neck of a young man with a shaved head and a pierced nose. He was carrying a large black shoulder bag. I didn’t especially want to watch them kissing and cooing, so I kept my eyes down and concentrated on his bag instead. On it, there was a drawing of a gun in gold, a row of six red stick-on skulls, several Metallica decals, and, in the bottom right-hand corner, held in place by four large safety pins, a real playing card.

  It was the ace of hearts.

  Of course, I can see now that neither of these were signs. They were just playing cards, coincidentally the same.

  Or if they were signs, they were bad signs.

  Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the tire tracks on the first one, to the gun and the skulls on the young man’s shoulder bag, and maybe also to the safety pins.

  Or maybe if the cards had been the queen of hearts instead…

  In addition to the actual writing exercises, the writer’s block books also offer dozens of prescriptive diversions intended to free a person’s mind from the tyranny of trying to write and failing.

  Writer’s block, it seems, is like impotence (now politely called “erectile dysfunction” or “ED”). Performance anxiety: the more you worry about it, the worse it gets. In this way, writer’s block is also, I realize, a lot like insomnia.

  Instead of staring at your computer or your notebook with hooded, drooping, bloodshot, bleary, and/or owlish eyes for hours on end, the books recommend doing something else for a while…in the hope, I presume, that the ability to write again will sneak up on you when you least expect it.

  Take a bike ride.

  I do not own a bicycle.

  Bake a cake or a batch of cookies.

  Too hot.

  Go for a walk around the block.

  Too hot.

  Take a long shower.

  I prefer baths.

  Take a bubble bath.

  Too hot.

  Clean the bathroom.

  Did that yesterday.

  Mow the lawn.

  Too hot. The grass is all brown and dying anyway, due to heat and lack of rain.

  Lie on your back in the grass and stare at the clouds.

  Grass too prickly. No clouds, just polluted haze.

  Sit on the floor and build something with Lego.

  No comment.

  Visit a bookstore.

  Much as I’ve always loved bookstores, lately, when faced with their banks of overloaded floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall shelves, I cannot help but think that maybe there are already too many books in the world.

  I am thinking about how, early on, I was always trying to find ways to entertain and amuse you.

  On a frigid Monday morning in January, after a solid week of below-normal temperatures with record-setting windchills, I downloaded a photograph of a cruise ship and attached it to my e-mail.

  I said, This morning I’m writing to you from my first-class cabin on this lovely little ship in the Caribbean. Soon we’ll be docking in the Bahamas for a couple of days. But in the meantime, I’ll either be in the spa enjoying the Jacuzzi, in the dining room savoring yet another gourmet meal, or out on the promenade deck admiring the ocean views…

  Then I said, No, no, don’t worry…I’m right here at home where I always am! But it doesn’t hurt to dream…right?

  You said, Dreaming is good…yes…a cruise would be divine. Someday we will do that together. Won’t that be wonderful?

  We also talked of going to Tuscany. Neither one of us had ever been to Europe but, judging by the prevailing stereotypes, we figured Tuscany must be the most romantic place in the world: those Tuscans were so passionate and hot-blooded…just like us.

  I rented the DVD of Under the Tuscan Sun and watched it twice. After discovering her husband is having an affair, a thirtysomething writer played by Diane Lane divorces him and then succumbs to a crippling case of writer’s block. She takes a trip to Tuscany at her friends’ insistence. There she buys a decrepit villa from an ancient contessa who is at first reluctant to sell her the place, but then a pigeon poops on Diane Lane’s head and the contessa changes her mind because this is a very good sign! Much construction and romance ensues. It all ends happily ever after for everyone.

  I suggested that you rent this movie too, but you said you thought it would be too much for you: all that steamy romance.

  Recently I watched this movie again (either because I liked it a lot or because I wanted to torture myself) and laughed out loud at a line I seem to have missed in my first two viewings: What is it about love that makes us so stupid?

  I sent you the address of a website featuring Tuscan villas for rent, and I bought myself a Tuscany calendar that featured a small color photograph for each day.

  There were statues and gargoyles, church domes and steeples, picturesque doorways, windows with blue shutters, endless fields of sunflowers.

  A full moon floating in an inky Italian sky.

  One perfect red hibiscus flower.

  Clusters of blue grapes still on the vine, large toothed leaves in sun and shadow.

  Dozens of loaves of bread packed on end in rough wooden shelves.

  Rusted and battered metal signs: Touring Club Italiano, Lampo Benzina Superiore, Trattoria Dell’Orso.

  Rows of tall narrow cypress trees, evenly spaced and pointy-topped, somehow ghostly-looking and eerie to North American eyes (the ones about which Sandra Oh in the movie says, “There’s something strange about these trees…it’s like they know…creepy Italian trees.”)

  Three hundred and sixty-five photographs and not a single person visible anywhere in any of them. Certainly not us.

  I am thinking about that time we were on the phone and you said you were making quiche for dinner, and I said, Mmmmm, delicious, I love quiche! (Thinking, Mmmmm, delicious, I love a man who can cook!)

  You said you’d love to make quiche for me someday.

  I said that would be heavenly.

  (If, at the time, the old cliché “Real men don’t eat quiche” crossed my mind, I don’t remember it now.)

  I remember that later that night I had an extended and detailed fantasy of you and me together in my kitchen, side by side at the counter, chopping green peppers and celery while something savory sizzled in the oven, and then you moved behind me and put your arms around my waist and pressed your front against my back and your lips against my neck, and then I turned gracefully into your embrace and we were kissing and swaying slowly to the music that had suddenly started playing softly out of the ceiling.

  When I told you this fantasy the next morning, you said you’d been awake most of the night too, tossing and turning with your head full of similar dreams of our future together.

  I really should go to the grocery store. This too I’ve been procrastinating. At the moment, I’m fresh out of eggs, dish soap, bread, lettuce, laundry soap, orange juice, paper towels, baking soda, and oregano. Plus I’m running perilously low on cheese, bagels, vinegar, and toilet paper.

  If I went right now, I could get one of those delicious frozen President’s Choice Chicken Tortilla soups for lunch. They only take six minutes in the microwave. This is what currently passes for a home-cooked meal at my house.

  (And what about dinner? What on earth am I going to have for dinner tonight? Maybe the President’s Choice 100% Whole Wheat Rotini with Chicken Pesto or what about the Indian Lamb Rogan Josh? Really…it’s much too hot to cook.)

  To tell the truth, I’ve been avoiding the grocery store lately, mostly because of the music. While other such stores favor generic Muzak that renders all tunes nondescript and easily ignored, my grocery store plays real music. Whoever is in charge of the selection prefers vintage rock-and-roll and sappy love songs from the seventies. Sometimes this is fun, as on the day they were playing that old Ted Nugent song “Cat Scratch Fever,” and men and women with hair like mine (that is, salt-and-pepper) were singing along and swaying their hi
ps behind their grocery carts. But more often than not, the music makes me tearful. More often than not, it leads to sniveling in the cereal aisle, whimpering in the baked goods department, and, once, to downright sobbing in the produce section.

  To tell the truth, between the heat and the heartbreak, I don’t have much of an appetite anyway.

  I haven’t lost my appetite for coffee, however. I have to go and make another pot right now.

  Yes, I know I’ve been drinking too much coffee lately. There’s also my afternoon Tim Hortons iced cappuccino habit and too much Pepsi, which is my evening drink of choice.

  Yes, I know this is a lot of caffeine. (Do you think this might have something to do with my insomnia?)

  Yes, I know I should switch to decaf or herbal tea or to that very healthy, very green drink that my friend Kate likes, although even she says it looks like pond scum.

  (Actually, I’m beginning to acquire a taste for this thick and complex concoction, which contains, among other things, apple, pineapple, lemon, and lime juices; mango, banana, and kiwi purées; broccoli, spinach, spirulina, barley grass, wheat grass, Jerusalem artichoke, and odorless garlic. I still find though that it’s better swallowed with the eyes closed to avoid that “pond scum” effect.)

  But right now I’m going to the kitchen to make another pot of coffee. Right now.

  And while it brews, I might as well have another go at that damn puzzle.

  What is an eight-letter word for “TENACIOUS”?

  Every time I open the fridge door to get milk for my coffee, I see the comic strip I’ve posted there at eye level with two ladybug magnets. In the first frame, a young woman sits on the couch reading a book. A young man stands at her feet with a basket full of folded clothes. He says, All our laundry is now clean. In the next frame, he says, Of course that’s only because I should be writing my novel and I’m procrastinating like mad. In the final frame, she, from the couch, says, Fridge needs cleaning, and he says, Ooooh. Good one.