You've Got to Read This (83 page)

school where she was one, she was lost, she was a drop; suffering over her unpreparedness, stammering and unsure in her classes.

There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded down.

She would struggle over books, always eating (it was in those years she developed her enormous appetite that is legendary in our family) and I would be ironing, or preparing food for the next day, or writing V-mail to Bill, or tending the baby. Sometimes, to make me laugh, or out of her despair, she would imitate happenings or types at school.

I think I said once: "Why don't you do something like this in the school amateur show?" One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable through the weeping: "Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; they clapped and clapped and wouldn't let me go."

Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in her anonymity.

She began to be asked to perform at other high schools, even in colleges, then at city and statewide affairs. The first one we went to, I only recognized her that first moment when thin, shy, she almost drowned herself into the curtains. Then: Was this Emily? The control, the command, the convulsing and deadly clowning, the spell, then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this rare and precious laughter out of their lives.

Afterwards: You ought to do something about her with a gift like that—

but without money or knowing how, what does one do? We have left it all to her, and the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing.

She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step, and I know she is happy tonight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call did not happen today.

"Aren't you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his mother in a rocker. I'd have to paint mine standing over an ironing board."

This is one of her communicative nights and she tells me everything and nothing as she fixes herself a plate of food out of the icebox.

She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you concerned? She will find her way.

She starts up the stairs to bed. "Don't get
me
up with the rest in the morning." "But I thought you were having midterms." "Oh, those," she comes back in, kisses me, and says quite lightly, "in a couple of years when we'll all be atom-dead they won't matter a bit."

She has said it before. She
believes
it. But because I have been dredging the past, and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I cannot endure it tonight.

I will never total it all. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I had to work her first six years when there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were years she had care she hated. She was dark and thin and
466 « I STAND HERE IRONING

foreign-looking in a world where the prestige went to blondness and curly hair and dimples; she was slow where glibness was prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother. There were the other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister seemed all that she was not. There were years she did not let me touch her. She kept too much in herself, her life was such she had to keep too much in herself.

My wisdom came too late. She has much to her and probably little will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear.

Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom—but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know—help make it so there is cause for her to know—that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.

W a n t s

by Grace Pa ley

Introduced by Janet Kauffman

THE WOMAN WHO SITS ON THE LIBRARY STEPS AT THE BEGINNING OF

Grace Paley's short story "Wants" doesn't want anything—that's her problem, according to her ex-husband. And she doesn't want things, purchases, that's true. Her wants are political, so deeply political they can look whimsical in these United States. She wants to be "the effective citizen" in "this dear urban center." Well, when I first read this story, in 1980, I just plain cheered.

I was writing fiction for the first time then, and it wasn't only the narrator's political mindfulness that made me happy but also Paley's writing of the story that encouraged me: the way it begins on the steps of the library and doesn't go farther than through the door, returning books; the nerve and confidence of the sentences, straightforward, talky, a woman's voice that made me think the simple thought—Here is a person.

Before reading this story—it's the opening one in
Enormous Changes at
the Last Minute
—I'd never run across, or noticed, writing like Paley's spare, free-wheeling sentences and the play of story from here to there, with the meander I recognized as the way things really go along. The "plumber's snake" sentence in this story is a sentence, along with the two sentences after it, I still often read to students. The paragraph sounds simple; it just goes along and yaks. But for me, it's wild and drastic writing—the way it keeps going "through the ear down the throat." The paragraph twists and turns, easy and painful, comic and devastating. It's a knowing paragraph, comprehending more than it claims, embodying things we think of as personal or political or cultural in the plain tones of a speaking voice, the shaped air out of that woman's mouth.

In this story, Grace Paley clearly doesn't want a fancy narrative or anything "choking with equipment." She's one of the writers whose work, early on, convinced me I don't want much in a story either. Not the big purchases, the fine finishes. "I'm short of requests and absolute requirements," as the woman says. Paley's story opens up and pares down a woman's voice to the bare bones of her politics and imagination. It's a story that convinced me then, and still convinces me, that fiction doesn't need, even if it wants, large events or epiphanies or dramatic turns. At least, some of us don't want them, don't require them, don't trust them. These are political issues as well as writing issues, and Paley's match of these matters in "Wants" made me want to shake her hand, kiss her hair. "Take some appropriate action"—in words, finally, here.

W a n t s

Grace Paley

I
saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.

Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.

He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

I said, O.K. I don't argue when there's real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.

The librarian said $32 even and you've owed it for eighteen years. I didn't deny anything. Because I don't understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.

My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.

That's possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began. Then we didn't seem to know them any more. But you're right. I should have had them to dinner.

I gave the librarian a check for $32. Immediately she trusted me, put my past behind her, wiped the record clean, which is just what most other municipal and/or state bureaucracies will
not
do.

I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I'd read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were
The House of Mirth
and
The Children,
which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago.

A nice thing I do remember is breakfast, my ex-husband said. I was surprised. All we ever had was coffee. Then I remembered there was a hole in the back of the kitchen closet which opened into the apartment next door.

There, they always ate sugar-cured smoked bacon. It gave us a very grand feeling about breakfast, but we never got stuffed and sluggish.

That was when we were poor, I said.

When were we ever rich? he asked.

Oh, as time went on, as our responsibilities increased, we didn't go in need. You took adequate financial care, I reminded him. The children went to camp four weeks a year and in decent ponchos with sleeping bags and
469

470 " WANTS

boots, just like everyone else. They looked very nice. Our place was warm in winter, and we had nice red pillows and things.

I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn't want anything.

Don't be bitter, I said. It's never too late.

No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger. I'm doing well this year and can look forward to better. But as for you, it's too late.

You'll always want nothing.

He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber's snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, halfway to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.

I looked through
The House of Mirth,
but lost interest. I felt extremely accused. Now, it's true, I'm short of requests and absolute requirements. But I do want
something.

I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.

I
had
promised my children to end the war before they grew up.

I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn't exhaust either man's qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.

Just this morning I looked out the window to watch the street for a while and saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives.

Well! I decided to bring those two books back to the library. Which proves that when a person or an event comes along to jolt or appraise me I
can
take some appropriate action, although I am better known for my hospitable remarks.

I n D r e a m s B e g i n

Responsibilities

by Delmore S c h w a r t z

Introduced by Tim O'Brien

I
'VE TRIED AND TRIED TO THINK UP SMART THINGS TO SAY ABOUT

this wonderful story by Delmore Schwartz. But the story is so much better than anything I can tell you about it. Irving Howe, who was also asked to say smart things about the story, came up with some very good ones for his foreword to my copy of
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories.

Howe explains that the title story is "distinctively urban," that it has "tragic force," that it is a "protest against life itself," that it appeals to Howe's "deepest feelings." I agree wholeheartedly with each of these insights. The story appealed to my own deepest feelings. (I might add that, by way of contrast,
Moby Dick
strikes me as distinctively marine. Otherwise, Melville's novel and Schwartz's story share a great deal, especially when it comes to tragic force.) Howe also does a fine job of describing the plot of "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities." In fact, in Howe's foreword, the story gets pretty much told in its entirety; the most memorable and beautiful and inventive lines are helpfully quoted in advance; the story's conclusion receives special detailed attention, which is a smart idea, since readers might experience unnecessary shivers and shock when they get there for themselves.

After much thought, I did finally arrive at three smart things to tell you about "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities." The first smart thing is this.

Dreams are real. The second smart thing is even smarter. If you don't love this story, I'm not responsible. The third smart thing is fabulous. If you do love it, I'm not responsible. Your dreams are.

In D r e a m s B e g i n R e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s
Delmore S c h w a r t z

I

I think it is the year 1909- I feel as if I were in a moving-picture theatre, the long arm of light crossing the darkness and spinning, my eyes fixed upon the screen. It is a silent picture, as if an old Biograph one, in which the actors are dressed in ridiculously old-fashioned clothes, and one flash succeeds another with sudden jumps, and the actors, too, seem to jump about, walking too fast. The shots are fall of rays and dots, as if it had been raining when the picture was photographed. The light is bad.

It is Sunday afternoon, June 12th, 1909, and my father is walking down the quiet streets of Brooklyn on his way to visit my mother. His clothes are newly pressed, and his tie is too tight in his high collar. He jingles the coins in his pocket, thinking of the witty things he will say. I feel as if I had by now relaxed entirely in the soft darkness of the theatre; the organist peals out the obvious approximate emotions on which the audience rocks unknowingly. I am anonymous. I have forgotten myself: it is always so when one goes to a movie; it is, as they say, a drug.

My father walks from street to street of trees, lawns and houses, once in a while coming to an avenue on which a street-car skates and gnaws, progressing slowly. The motorman, who has a handle-bar mustache, helps a young lady wearing a hat like a feathered bowl onto the car. He leisurely makes change and rings his bell as the passengers mount the car. It is obviously Sunday, for everyone is wearing Sunday clothes and the street-car's noises emphasize the quiet of the holiday (Brooklyn is said to be the city of churches). The shops are closed and their shades drawn but for an occasional stationery store or drugstore with great green balls in the window.