David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

“Look,” I said. “First thing, you need to go to a doctor. Forget the kit thing. Until you actually see a doctor and actually find out something concrete, we don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

Now she looked at me. “I know what we’re talking about.”

I woke up Friday morning, not to the alarm itself, but to the click you get just before the alarm goes off; I reached out and preempted it. Eight o’clock. In Greenfield, Carrie must have been out in the winter air, waiting for the school bus. Bundled up, I hoped. For all the good my hoping did. And on Eldridge Street, a twenty-three-year-old woman, vomiting perhaps, perhaps thinking, Dear God, what now.

I lay there, pain in my head, pain in my back, and stared at the ceiling fixture I would never have chosen: convex disc of frosted glass with this kind of wheat-looking design around the edge. I thought, Surely there must be some good somewhere in the world that wouldn’t exist if not for you.

Well, Carrie, of course.

Problematic.

“How the hell do you live?” I’d asked Jane during our first long talk. Like a plutocrat indignant over slum conditions and about to start pressing ten-dollar bills into trembling palms. Jonathan, she said, made a little money each time they aired one of his pieces; that plus what she made working part-time in Graduate Records got them through. Later, when we’d begun taking cabs to my place at noontime, she told me Jonathan sometimes moved a little coke for people. One look at my shithole of an apartment should’ve put me in context for her. But maybe after Eldridge Street, Thompson Street looked passable. If you were twenty-three. Middleaged lovers, listen up: if you’re too depressed to change your sheets, at least stick the pillowcases in with the clothes you drop off on the way to work. The fresh-laundered smell will tell her, if only subliminally, that you’re hanging onto your self-regard.

That first afternoon, in a student bar stinking of beer and pizza, I’d bent her ear about what I called “my band.” She’d said, “Oh, neat.” No italics, no exclamation point. “Did you know Woody Allen was into that?”

I knew.

“Do you believe he really did all that stuff to the little girl? I don’t.”

“I believe anything of anybody,” I’d said. I mean, who had the luxury to give a fuck about Woody Allen?

“Ooh,” she’d said. “Cynicism alert.”

“Myself included,” I’d said.

“I assumed,” she’d said.

She, in turn, had bent my ear about how she wanted to transfer to NYU to do her thesis with some guy who’d done a biography of Cotton Mather. She hated our department’s Early American guy, who — horrors! — had made a pass at one of her friends.

“Pretty late in the game,” I’d said. “You know, to be changing.”

“Sometimes people commit before they know what they really want,” she’d said. I read this as being about her and her husband.

“I’ll drink to that,” I’d said, then thought to add, “he said tritely.”

She wanted to do her thesis specifically on The Wonders of the Invisible World. Some feminist take, as far as I could make out. At least she wasn’t deconstructing it, or I guess maybe she was. “It’s like he wrote the thing, but as he’s writing it you can tell he doesn’t want to write it?” she’d said, setting down her beer to pull one of the straps of her tank top back onto her shoulder. “And of course he ends up getting incredible grief for it anyway.”

“Least he had his fifteen minutes,” I’d said. “You know, I’m embarrassed not to know this, but what are the wonders of the invisible world?”

“Well, basically devils,” she’d said.

I rolled onto my side, worked my legs over the edge of the mattress and sat up. My headache seemed to balance my backache, as intellect balances emotion in the well-regulated soul. The one pain didn’t exactly cancel out the other, but having both ensured that I wouldn’t be homing in on just one, so there was that to be thankful for. I decided to skip the shower for fear warm water would make the backache better, which would make the headache seem worse. The way things were shaping up, I wouldn’t need to be date-ready. Which didn’t excuse me from shaving, though I wondered fleetingly (being half-awake) if it did. I went into the bathroom, ran some hot water and washed my face, trying not to look at Mr. Detestable. Then pushed the top of the can of Colgate: white lather came hissing out into a globule on my fingertips. The usual childish thought that this was like ejaculation. The related thought of bad boys in my high school masturbating their Adam’s apples and making spit appear at their pursed lips. Particularly unwelcome thoughts this morning.

Obviously, if Jane did the sensible thing ( I know what we’re talking about ), one should offer to cover it, considering her meager budget. Their meager budget. I pictured limp bills tucked into a coffee can. A Maxwell House can, in honest workaday blue. But how does one make such an offer? How, for that matter, would one swing it on one’s own meager budget if the offer was accepted? Beg off on child support for a month? I mean, since old Walt seemed to have things so well in hand up there in Greenfield. The alternative was unthinkable: another child of mine in the world, more lost to me even than Carrie, secretly scrutinized by its mother for signs of my features twitching up out of its generic baby face, as if in a horror-movie transformation. On the one hand, life forever with a mystery child; on the other, an abortion forever hidden from your husband. Not a choice I’d care to make. And guess what.

To dress and drink coffee by, I stuck in a Jimmie Noone CD. He’s always intimidated me, and the idea, crudely put, is that if I listen every morning I’ll somehow absorb Jimmie Noone, like learning French in your sleep. Of course it might also help to fucking practice. I was flipping through my shirts — the white with maroon stripes? the Classic Fit Poplin from the Gap? — when “My Daddy Rocks Me” came on, Jimmie Noone backing some tenth-rate singer. Chippie Hill or somebody. I looked at the clock, the clock struck one / I said Daddy ain’t we got fun. And I thought it would be a natural for Andy to sing — just change “Daddy” to “Mama”—so I hustled into the living room to put my clarinet together and figure out what key they were in. Not because Andy would sing it in her key necessarily. Just so I could say, Well, they do it in whatever.

But where the bloody hell was the clarinet? Not on the table where I’ve taken to dumping stuff. Not in the coat closet where I used to put it. Not among the clutter on the floor. Bedroom closet, for some reason? Then of course it hit me: You left the thing in the goddamn bar, for Christ’s sake. Fucking J. M. Barrie’s, whatever it was. Third Avenue and something. I remembered sticking the case under the table, and I must’ve just up and walked out of there without it. Not hammered, by any means, but a decent buzz. Oh, Jesus, and marijuana in there, too. My name and address on the little card hanging off the handle.

Phone book. Except what was the goddamn name? Call Jane and ask? Right. Eight-thirty in the morning anyway; place wouldn’t open up until lunchtime. Great. Well, this day was certainly shaping up. Christ, if only I’d left when Jane did instead of — well, no use. What I’d told her was, I hadn’t had any dinner and I wanted to get a burger or something before the kitchen closed. What I’d told myself was, another Jack Daniel’s wouldn’t hurt a bit. Moreover, since we were both going downtown, I would’ve had to offer to drop her, in the cab I meant her to think I’d be taking. And moreover: my staying behind put her on notice that she was in this alone.