At a Loss For Words Page 7

  Her tall round-shaped expensive gun calms down. Whose white silver mouse shows its value the time that our children’s soft green table adheres. Her daughter’s expensive carpet lies. The white t-shirt falls. A given golden carpet is thinking. The smart gun adheres. Our green golden eraser looks around. Mine purple round house is thinking. Her brother’s fancy car is angry as soon as their silver white book fails. His small magazine lies. Our round-shaped sofa is angry and perhaps their red bed is thinking.

  What, oh what, oh what does it mean? Is it a secret message written in a code accessible only to the initiated? Or maybe this Desirée person is also suffering from writer’s block and has been reading the same books I have. Maybe this is her response to one of the writing exercises: Write random words. Just type without stopping. Write any words that come to mind without trying to make sense.

  I am thinking about how unfortunate it is that your first name is so popular and so common. It would’ve been much easier for me in the aftermath if your name were Aloysius or Cornelius, Engelbert or Elmo.

  But as it is, I hear your name everywhere.

  On the radio: announcers, musicians, interviewers, interviewees, they all share your name.

  On the television in both commercials and programs: a buffoonish but charming husband who’s always getting himself into silly escapades and trying to play tricks on his wife in a way that makes me think of him as a male Lucille Ball; an FBI agent not-so-secretly in love with his partner and the sexual tension between them is palpable, but you know they’ll never actually get together because it would ruin the whole show; a rugged-looking man touting the best new denture cleaner, the best new car, the best new refrigerator, the best new antidepressant, or the best new erectile dysfunction medication.

  Once a man who shared your name was a five-time champion on Jeopardy!, and for a whole week I had to listen to Alex Trebek saying his name over and over again with growing enthusiasm as he racked up the dollars, before eventually being bested by a grim-faced woman in a black-and-red striped turtleneck that vibrated on the screen.

  On a downtown street, I hear one man calling out your name to another across the way.

  In the checkout line at the grocery store, the cellphone of the woman in front of me rings and when she answers, it’s someone with the same name as you, and she is overjoyed to hear from him, saying your name over and over and over again, a dozen times in a three-minute conversation.

  One of the men who installed my new furnace had your name too, embroidered in red on a little white patch on the left breast of his blue coveralls. I’m sure he wondered why I kept staring at his chest.

  For a while, it seemed that every novel I read included a character with your name: sometimes he was the hero and sometimes he was the villain. Sometimes he was just a minor character: dog walker, next-door neighbor, waiter, store clerk, ex-husband, nasty little boy, demented grandfather, a horse (once), and a dog (twice).

  At first, every time I heard or read your name, my stomach would do a happy skipping loop and I would grin like a silly goose. Later, every time I heard or read it, my stomach went into a knot and I could not catch my breath. Once or twice, on an especially bad day, my chin began to quiver and my eyes filled with tears.

  Now when I come across your name, I can only sigh and roll my eyes.

  One of these days I’ll come across your name, and it will be just an ordinary name, one shared by millions of other men (and animals), a popular and common name that is nothing special to me.

  One of these days I’ll go to bed at night without thinking of you.

  One of these days I’ll wake up in the morning without thinking of you.

  One of these days I’ll go all day long without thinking of you, and I won’t even notice that I haven’t.

  Many times I’ve googled you, and I’ve found that, in addition to your usual self, you are also an evangelical pastor who writes hymns and other sacred songs, a bookseller specializing in fantasy fiction, a collector of Civil War firearms, the owner of an asphalt company, the owner of an antique store, the vice president of a communications corporation, a risk analysis consultant, a jazz saxophonist, a forensic accountant, a disc jockey, a filmmaker, a Web designer, an oncologist, a psychiatrist, a criminal lawyer, and a high school football coach. You are also a street in Seattle, a road in Wyoming, a hiking trail in Oregon, a lake in New Mexico, and a mountain in Alaska.

  Complex?

  Indeed.

  One in a million?

  I guess not.

  You said, I love to hear the sound of the train whistle off in the distance…it always makes me think of you…of the train bringing you to me.

  At this point we had not actually seen each other for four months.

  I said, You are so romantic. I love trains too, always have, and now yes, at night with the windows open here, I can hear the whistles too, and I always think of you. A haunting sound, filled with a potent mixture of joy and melancholy, happiness and longing. On a clear night I can even hear the wheels humming on the silver rails.

  I did not say, When I hear the train, me here alone in my bed, wide-awake in the middle of the night as usual, I put my fingers in my ears and the pillow over my head. Sometimes I also hum.

  Later: I said, These past few weeks have been an utter train wreck for me.

  Apparently the irony of this was lost on you.

  Chronicle the longest amount of time you have ever gone without sleeping.

  Chronicle the longest amount of time you have ever gone without sex.

  Chronicle the longest amount of time you have ever gone without love.

  You said, It’s going to be another one of those weeks…I’ll be out of the office every day, plus I have to attend three evening meetings in the outlying areas! So I will be charging around the region again. Did you know that last year I drove close to 80,000 kilometers?

  I said, Good God! Did you know that the circumference of the earth is 40,076 kilometers? This means that last year you drove around the world twice!

  You said, I was only away for three days, but when I got in this morning, my voice mailbox was full and locked, and there were 183 e-mails waiting for me!

  I said, Only six of them were from me!

  You said, I will have to knuckle down here and get caught up on these. I only have two hours to do so and then I have to attend a meeting on the other side of town.

  I said, You are an amazing man who will indeed be able to complete in just two hours what would take anybody else all day!

  I said, I admire your dedication to your work.

  Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the fact that, while my newspaper horoscopes were almost always about love and romance and high emotion, yours were almost always about work.

  YOURS: This may be an unsettling time in your career, but it is also a time of great opportunity, so keep your eyes and ears open, and keep telling yourself that you were born to succeed. If you say it often enough, you will start to believe it, and if you start to believe it, strange and beneficial coincidences will begin to occur.

  MINE: Yours is one of the most emotional signs of the zodiac, and today’s aspect between Venus, planet of affection, and Jupiter, planet of excess, will exaggerate your feelings, both good and bad. Try not to go over the top in what you say and do today, because it is likely to cause you some embarrassment later on.

  YOURS: If you are not exactly sure what is expected of you at work today, don’t be afraid to ask a few questions. It is better that others think you are a little slow than that you plow ahead without really knowing what you’re doing and make a serious mistake that will have tremendous repercussions later on.

  MINE: As Venus moves into the most dynamic area of your chart today, you will find you can persuade almost anyone to do almost anything. Don’t waste this precious gift: use it to get whatever, and whomever, you most deeply desire.

  YOURS: Your work colleagues seem to think you will do anything they ask of you. It�
��s true that you like to be helpful, but if your work gets to be too much for you today, you must call a halt. You’ll be no good to anyone if you do too much and have some kind of breakdown.

  When not actually at my computer sending you an e-mail, I was always writing to you in my head. Every day I was looking for things to write to you about the next morning.

  I wanted you to know I was fine, just fine, busy, always busy, going on about my business with pleasure and enthusiasm. I wanted you to think I was a strong and independent woman having a full and happy life without you.

  Sometimes this was actually true.

  But not always.

  I didn’t want you to know that sometimes I was just moping and mooning around all evening, sprawled on the couch in front of the television in my housecoat before eight o’clock, clicking through the channels like a robot, eating coffee-flavored Häagen-Dazs right out of the container with my hair in an uproar and my eyes blurry with unshed tears, occasionally scribbling notes in the margins of the TV Guide of things to write to you the next day: too lazy in my malaise, too tired from my emotional exertions, too paralyzed by my own wretchedness to get off the couch, walk across the room, and get a proper piece of paper.

  I didn’t want you to think I was miserable…at least not all the time.

  Early on you once said, I find it so totally rewarding and gratifying to learn about all that you are doing, thinking, and observing!

  So I told you about art show openings, poetry readings, book launches, choir concerts, plays, and movies I’d been to.

  I told you about the books I was reading and sent you quotes I thought you would enjoy. Sometimes, if I especially loved a particular book, I’d buy another copy and mail it to you. For these, you thanked me profusely. You said you now had a special bookshelf just for my books and these others I had given you.

  You said, I never have as much time to read as I would like…but don’t you worry…I promise I will get to all of them eventually!

  Frequently my e-mails began with a weather commentary. Our cities were in close enough proximity that we were sometimes suffering through the same weather systems. So then we could commiserate.

  In the fall I complained about the endless raking of leaves, the need to turn the furnace on already, and the increasingly early darkness.

  I said, Why do the days seem to get shorter so much more quickly in the fall than they get longer in the spring…inquiring minds want to know!

  In the winter I told you about shoveling snow (over and over again!) and how it was so cold here that my back door had been frozen shut for four days in a row. I said, Let’s call this “The Winter That Wouldn’t Die”!

  On a glorious Monday morning in mid-April, I said, After complaining about the weather all winter, I guess today it would be only fair to give Mother Nature her due and sing her praises. I worked outside all weekend cleaning up the yard, and I also found a little time to sit in a lawn chair with my feet up and my eyes closed. The feel of the sun on your face at this time of the year is so particularly wonderful!

  Through the spring and early summer I told you about gardening, planting, pruning, and the joys of mulching, which I had just discovered. I told you that an infestation of white grubs had almost totally destroyed my front lawn, and then the rest had been dug up by rodents searching for those fat tasty grubs. I had to reseed the whole thing.

  As the summer wore on, I complained repeatedly about the heat, the humidity, and the lack of rain.

  I said, I’ll be so glad when summer ends. Let’s call this “The Long Hot Summer from Hell”!

  You said, I love summer so much and I always get so melancholy when it ends. I try and hang on to the feeling of this season for as long as possible.

  I said, Last night I succumbed to the heat and the temptation of summer sloth. I spent the entire evening sitting out in the backyard, eating a whole pint of Häagen-Dazs and reading the latest issue of Glamour magazine, which is filled with important and instructive articles like “10 Beauty Mistakes Everyone Makes,” “How to Find Your Body’s Perfect Jeans,” “The Importance of Doing…Nothing,” and “Men’s 99 Unspoken Sex Secrets: The Man Manual Every Woman Should Read.”

  You said, They are forecasting a break in this heat wave tomorrow. Hopefully some relief from the high temperatures and the humidity will be more conducive to your writing.

  I told you about finding a giant moth attached to the back wall of my house, laying eggs on the stucco. I got out my insect book and identified it as a Cecropia moth. I downloaded a picture from the Internet and sent it to you, along with the following information: In northern climates the Cecropia moth emerges from its cocoon in late May or early June. Late at night, the female emits a scent called a pheromone that attracts the males. With his sensitive antennae, the male can find a female from over a mile away.

  I said, Wow…isn’t that impressive?!

  You said, It is indeed a rare pleasure to see these moths. I’ve seen one only twice in my life so far, once when I was just a boy and then again about ten years ago.

  Apparently you did not want to discuss the sex life of moths.

  I told you about helping my neighbor make a photo collage for her friend’s seventieth birthday. I told you about my other neighbor cleaning out my eavestrough for only twenty dollars! I told you about yet another neighbor who was celebrating her ninetieth birthday. For the occasion, her daughter had hired a bagpiper who came down the street in full regalia, his kilt and sporran swinging while he played “Scotland the Brave,” and everyone up and down the block came out of their houses and cheered him on. I told you how, although I have only a smidgen of Scottish blood in my ancestry, as always the sound of the bagpipes made my heart swell and my eyes fill with tears.

  I told you about playing a vigorous and rousing game of Ping-Pong with my friend Kate. I said, Now there’s a sport I really like! Besides all the shrieking and leaping about, what I especially like is the sound the ball makes when it hits the table. Do you like Ping-Pong?

  I told you about going out for Chinese food with Kate and Michelle and some of our other friends, and after ample helpings of sweet and sour chicken balls, ginger onion beef, and almond guy ding, my fortune cookie said, You never show your vulnerability. You are always confident and self-assured. (I said, Ha!) After dinner, we all went bowling. Having not bowled since I was a kid, I was definitely the weakest player of the group, but I enjoyed myself anyway and the others tolerated my clumsy ineptitude with good humor. I asked you if you liked bowling, but you didn’t answer.

  I told you about having lunch every Friday with Kate and Michelle, usually at Kate’s house, often in her big backyard if the weather was good, and how sometimes we went for a long rambling walk afterwards and how much we all enjoyed this. I told you about what we ate and what music we listened to and what books and movies we talked about. I didn’t mention how much we also talked about you.

  I told you about having my new furnace installed, and one of the workmen had the same name as you. I told you that the bathroom sink was clogged up again. I told you about my electrician not charging me for installing a new ceiling fan in the kitchen and asking for a signed copy of one of my books as payment instead. I told you about one of my kitchen cupboard doors falling off because of a broken hinge and how then I couldn’t find a replacement hinge that would fit. I told you about the city workers’ strike going on here and how my garden shed was full of stinky garbage and my laundry room was overflowing with recy-clables, but the good thing about the strike was that parking all over the city was free! I told you about eating President’s Choice Multigrain Alphabet Pretzels, spelling out your name and then gobbling it up with glee. I told you about seeing a fox calmly crossing a six-lane thoroughfare in rush-hour traffic right in front of a convent and how everyone stopped and patiently waited while he made his way to the other side. I had never seen a fox in the city before. I told you I thought it must be a sign, a sign from God, a sign from you too, of course,
and that made me very happy.

  I told you about hitting a huge pothole so hard driving home from a choir concert on a blustery rainy night that the rim of the front passenger-side tire was bent and I had to take it in for repairs. You said your car was in for repairs that day too: a broken fan belt. Two days later I told you that my toilet needed to be replaced and the plumber would be coming to do the job tomorrow morning. You said you were having plumbing problems that day too: a pipe in the basement had sprung a leak in the night and the plumber would be coming this afternoon.

  The following Tuesday you called and I missed it because I was putting out the garbage, lugging two heavy bags to the curb for collection the next morning. I called you right back. You said your garbage day was Wednesday too!

  I said, Isn’t it amazing that we had car repairs on the same day and then plumbing problems too! And now it turns out that our garbage is collected on the same day! Coincidence? I think not!

  When you’re in love, there is no such thing as mere coincidence. Every little thing becomes weighty with meaning and significance. Even the trivial domestic exigencies of car repairs, plumbing emergencies, and garbage collection become fodder for further proof of your miraculous and unshakable psychic connection.

  When you’re in love, every little thing furnishes further evidence of the fact that the two of you are indeed fated to live together happily ever after. Amen.

  All the writer’s block books advocate varying your normal writing habits and routines as a possible way of breaking through your current impasse. They are especially keen on the idea of writing elsewhere, anywhere other than at your desk.