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Authors: Brian Morton
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sake.”
“She wasn’t jumping down my throat.”
“Exactly,” Florence said. “I wasn’t jumping down her throat. And you stay out of this.”
Emily couldn’t quite tell whether her grandmother had been jumping down her throat. Florence always made you feel as if you’d just said something dumb. It was impossible to tell whether she was more irritated than usual.
28
Janine felt oddly . . . what was the word? Not exonerated, but something like exonerated. Passed over? Let off the hook? She was usually the object of Florence’s scrutiny, but life was coming at the old lady so fast now that she didn’t have any spare energy to conduct her usual inquisition.
But this didn’t leave Janine feeling relieved. She was infected with a spirit of restlessness. She couldn’t wait for Florence to leave, but when Florence did leave, Janine felt lonely, even though her husband and daughter were still there.
In the evening, she and Daniel went to the movies downtown. After that, he wanted to walk around in the East Village, where both of them used to live.
She’d visited New York often enough in the years since they’d moved to Seattle, but she hadn’t gone back to the East Village. She hadn’t set foot here in more than twenty years. By the time they got to Cooper Square, she felt like a ghost, haunting her own life.
Here was the street where she’d spent her first summer in New York, just before she started at NYU. Here was the bar where she met that sad, sweet boy she’d once thought she was destined to spend the rest of her life with. What was his name? Here was the bench where she’d kissed that girl with the purple hair. She’d thought of herself as such a daring soul back then.
Here was the spot where she made that desperate and humiliating phone call to that boy she had a crush on in her sophomore year. The phone booth, of course, was gone. Here was the club where she used to listen to her friend Spider play guitar. It was a shoe store now. And here was the spot where she met Daniel.
“What do you think?” she said to Daniel.
“That was the place, right?”
“That was the place.”
Each of them had been traveling with friends that night. Some of her friends knew some of his friends. They’d met on the street corner, and while their friends were talking about what to do that night, the two of them launched into an argument about the country versus the city. Pure flirtation. He, who had grown up in the city, was denouncing it as prisonlike; she, who’d come from a suburb, couldn’t understand how anyone could ever be unhappy or bored here. She had pointed to some random apartment building and said, “Every brick in that wall is alive with human intention!” Later he had told her that when she’d said that, he’d decided that he wanted to go out with her.
They went out for a year, broke up after they graduated, and got together again a few years later.
“I wonder what we would have turned into if we’d stayed here,” she said.
“You would have become exactly what you are. Questing, self-questioning, deeply involved in your work. And I would have remained a snot-nosed would-be poet.”
“You think so?”
“I’m not sure I would have had the guts to give up.”
29
The young man finding the courage to live the life of an artist: that’s an oft-told story, a story people are fond of. For Daniel, it had been a question of finding the courage not to. During his childhood, living with two obsessed parents, the background music was a duet for typewriters, and he took it for granted that he’d become a writer himself. In high school he’d seen himself as Byronically romantic; during one spring, besotted with poetry and marijuana, he strode around in a cape. In college he studied literature and writing. During the week before commencement, his poetry teacher, an ex-marine who wrote poetry marked by a sort of burly anguish and who seemed to regard the academic world with a genial
“She wasn’t jumping down my throat.”
“Exactly,” Florence said. “I wasn’t jumping down her throat. And you stay out of this.”
Emily couldn’t quite tell whether her grandmother had been jumping down her throat. Florence always made you feel as if you’d just said something dumb. It was impossible to tell whether she was more irritated than usual.
28
Janine felt oddly . . . what was the word? Not exonerated, but something like exonerated. Passed over? Let off the hook? She was usually the object of Florence’s scrutiny, but life was coming at the old lady so fast now that she didn’t have any spare energy to conduct her usual inquisition.
But this didn’t leave Janine feeling relieved. She was infected with a spirit of restlessness. She couldn’t wait for Florence to leave, but when Florence did leave, Janine felt lonely, even though her husband and daughter were still there.
In the evening, she and Daniel went to the movies downtown. After that, he wanted to walk around in the East Village, where both of them used to live.
She’d visited New York often enough in the years since they’d moved to Seattle, but she hadn’t gone back to the East Village. She hadn’t set foot here in more than twenty years. By the time they got to Cooper Square, she felt like a ghost, haunting her own life.
Here was the street where she’d spent her first summer in New York, just before she started at NYU. Here was the bar where she met that sad, sweet boy she’d once thought she was destined to spend the rest of her life with. What was his name? Here was the bench where she’d kissed that girl with the purple hair. She’d thought of herself as such a daring soul back then.
Here was the spot where she made that desperate and humiliating phone call to that boy she had a crush on in her sophomore year. The phone booth, of course, was gone. Here was the club where she used to listen to her friend Spider play guitar. It was a shoe store now. And here was the spot where she met Daniel.
“What do you think?” she said to Daniel.
“That was the place, right?”
“That was the place.”
Each of them had been traveling with friends that night. Some of her friends knew some of his friends. They’d met on the street corner, and while their friends were talking about what to do that night, the two of them launched into an argument about the country versus the city. Pure flirtation. He, who had grown up in the city, was denouncing it as prisonlike; she, who’d come from a suburb, couldn’t understand how anyone could ever be unhappy or bored here. She had pointed to some random apartment building and said, “Every brick in that wall is alive with human intention!” Later he had told her that when she’d said that, he’d decided that he wanted to go out with her.
They went out for a year, broke up after they graduated, and got together again a few years later.
“I wonder what we would have turned into if we’d stayed here,” she said.
“You would have become exactly what you are. Questing, self-questioning, deeply involved in your work. And I would have remained a snot-nosed would-be poet.”
“You think so?”
“I’m not sure I would have had the guts to give up.”
29
The young man finding the courage to live the life of an artist: that’s an oft-told story, a story people are fond of. For Daniel, it had been a question of finding the courage not to. During his childhood, living with two obsessed parents, the background music was a duet for typewriters, and he took it for granted that he’d become a writer himself. In high school he’d seen himself as Byronically romantic; during one spring, besotted with poetry and marijuana, he strode around in a cape. In college he studied literature and writing. During the week before commencement, his poetry teacher, an ex-marine who wrote poetry marked by a sort of burly anguish and who seemed to regard the academic world with a genial
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