Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia

Perhaps that really is the reason I seem to have such bad recall. Maybe I threw too much out. Maybe I should have kept a few souvenirs. Or maybe I should have been making an accounting of some kind, not just ridding myself of it all so quickly.

So the day started as an unremarkable New Year’s Day, and I have no doubt I have fused other New Year’s Days with 2004, other jars of moldy preserves and other stacks of unread Vanity Fairs . But I do remember the rest of the day, or at least one very specific thing from the rest of the day. It wasn’t even anything that happened to me, it was something I saw on the news in the evening. Actually, I first saw the photo and read about it on the internet. Does that count as a memory of mine? I’m afraid so, particularly this past year, when I felt myself an observer of events more than a participant. But that isn’t accurate. I was an absorber of events. They seeped into me, and the first indication of this was on the very first day of the year.

I saw a picture of a pale red-haired woman on the front page of a news website I frequently visit. She looked dazed and older, maybe forty, but a rough forty. The headline was “Mother Arrested After Bringing Baby to Bar in Blizzard.” I clicked through the link. I had to — her expression was so raw. The story wasn’t anything all that unusual, a banal tabloid tale. She brought her two-week-old baby to a bar on New Year’s Eve. She got very drunk at the bar and someone called the police, who then took her baby away. But somehow the story opened up to me. I could picture her walking in the cold, the half mile to the bar, the baby in her baby carrier under her parka. She wants to drink, it is New Year’s Eve, she is just starting to feel like a person after the birth. She takes her baby out into the bitter snowy cold — a half-mile walk with a newborn. How unthinkable. But maybe she knows she’s a drunk, and she imagines she is being prudent by walking instead of driving to the bar. Maybe she believes she is even being responsible. Or she simply had no ride, no car, no booze. She just pretended to herself she was getting some fresh air. She told herself the walk would be soothing to the baby, that it would be good for them both to get fresh air. And maybe she just “found” herself at her favorite bar and then she stopped in to show off the baby, and she never thought too clearly or directly about how she would proceed to get drunk. Maybe.

I could see her at the bar, cradling her baby against her chest with one arm, lifting her glass with the other. (The short article said “she held the baby in her arms as she drank, alarming some of the customers.”) This is what kills me: as she proceeded to get drunk, she was no doubt feeling buzzed and cheerful at first. The bartender and others in the bar coo over her baby. Perhaps someone even buys her a drink to congratulate her. She is feeling high and enjoying the attention. She clutches the baby, who is sleeping, and downs another drink. Then she goes further. I can see her, red hair falling in her face as she starts to talk too fast, too loud. She slurs her words slightly, she doesn’t notice the discomfort on the faces of the others. She sways a bit, she has a hazy smile, her face ruddy and her breath sour gin. This is what gets me: she doesn’t realize the room is turning against her. She has become this terrifying, appalling display, and she thinks something else is happening. Her misapprehension, then the exact moment she might sense the disconnect. She is now stumbling, and the baby’s woken up, and she says she’s got to go home and she’s got to feed her baby. Some concerned person calls 911. The article also said the woman was breastfeeding the baby when the police arrived at the scene. I can’t help picturing that, the baby crying, the woman drunkenly breastfeeding to soothe the hungry kid, the baby rejecting the clumsy nipple and the off milk, the long walk home in the cold waiting for them, and the entire room witnessing her fiasco. And then the cops come and rescue the child. And the mother can barely walk. A tiny piece of broken-human shame.

A little story like that can make me crazy. It just breaks me down. I’ve never done anything as egregious as this woman, but I can so easily imagine that I am the woman. Something about the need for company, the inadequate mothering, the total collapse of self-protection and dignity. I clicked on the photo and enlarged it so I could study her face. I felt my own face getting red and I could feel the choke building in my throat. I searched her name and found another article at another tabloid site. This one had the same photo of the woman — the only photo ever of this woman, forever. But it wasn’t just her — the poor cop who had to take the kid, the poor bartender who served her and then felt queasy as he watched her, the people who sat next to her in the bar — but mostly the woman herself with her pale, bony face and long red hair. And yes, of course I felt sorry for the baby, but everyone feels sorry for the baby. I’m sorry for all those compromised adults, bloodshot and guilty and telling the story later to their friends, just not quite honest about what role they each played in its unfolding.

I’m only at the end of the first day of the year and I am already exhausted and defeated.

Nothing, I remember nothing about this day.

Nothing at all.

The Chronicles never have any blanks. Ever. Nik would’ve inserted photos here, all flattering. Or a fanzine questionnaire, like this one from his prehistoric teenage Chronicles of the seventies:

I’M WITH THE BAND

The Back Page Vital Stats

Nik Worth tells us his fervid faves and frustrations

Name: Nik Worth

Real name: Nikolas Theodore Kranis

DOB: May 25, 1954, Hollywood, California

Hair color: black

Eye color: brown

Fave song: “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”

Musical influences: SELF. Okay, here: Bowie, Bee Gees, Donovan (see above), J. Lennon, Faces, John Cage, Velvets & Lou, Macca sans Wings, the Residents, Can, John Fahey, Miles, Incredible String Band, Otis Redding, Carl Stalling, La Monte Young, Eno

Pastime: taking walks with my dog Martha

Marital status: single (!!)

Things you look for in a girl: quick smile, patience, love of music, patience, hygiene, patience, pretty hands, patience, trust fund, patience, good sense of humor!

Food: yes [Nik won’t admit it, but he has a weakness for sweets. In an interview with another, unnamed mag ( Melody Maker ), Nik once mentioned how he loves Mars bars. His fans then sent thousands of Mars bars to his studio. More get thrown on stage at every gig. Says Worth, “I appreciate the thought, girls, but please — no more!”]

Gear: my gorgeous old Gretsch, my Goldtop Gibson, and my bike, a ’65 Triumph Bonneville

Calendar: Julian, but also Sumerian

Quote to live by: Orbis Non Sufficient (James Bond)

Building: The Bailey Case Study House #21 by Pierre Koenig

Book: Deuteronomy. No, Ecclesiastes.

Biggest frustration: I can’t hear infrasound

Monoaural or stereophonic: Quadrasonic

It is easy to fill up the space when you get to make everything up.

My forty-seventh birthday. Ada called me in the morning from New York. She made me promise to look at her blog. She had posted a photo of us, and it said “happy birthday to my mom,” just like that, no caps or anything. Not “happy birthday, mom” but “to my mom” because it was really reportage to some audience beyond me. It wasn’t a personal message to me but a public announcement about me. The picture was from the mid-nineties. We clutch each other in front of a homemade birthday cake. I would guess Will took the photo. No doubt he gave it to us to keep, but I was sure I had never seen the photo before. I could see our house, the lemon sofa, the sliding glass doors. She was so young, maybe eleven? I studied the picture posted on Ada’s blog and felt a surge of hot tears, which I feel all the time over nothing, then sniffed and made myself some coffee. I was wearing my terry-cloth bathrobe, and I felt lumpy and tired. Matronly, may-tron-lee, I said out loud, gleefully trying to fuck with myself, but I knew there was more to what I felt than that. I sipped at my coffee. I kept thinking about posting a comment. I should’ve posted a comment, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t ever post a comment. I knew how, that wasn’t it, I just couldn’t say something spontaneous and pithy and then have it hang there for all eternity. Those are opposite pulls — eternity and pithy — and if I thought at all about what to say, it was even worse. So I never posted, even though I knew Ada wanted that and expected that. Other people would post. Later I would read “Aww, sweet!” from grl4gravity and “Mom’s hot!” from mitymitch, which would actually please me in a pathetic birthday-malaise kind of way, an elegiac feeling of my former beauty getting its due or something equally tiresome and full of self-pity.