Joy Williams: State of Grace

In the early morning, alone, eating, I push back the curtains and watch the birds. The curtains are old and streaked with the sun. They must have been brought here from another place. The cloth is rotten. It seems to come off on my hands. I use our binocular. I recognize the osprey naturally, the little blue heron, the flicker, titmouse and kingfisher. I have difficulty with ducks and hawks. I have a guide book. I have lists and charts and know proper terminology and range. Nonetheless, I am able to identify very little. The birds I often see can never be found in the book. The eye ring is incomplete or the shading of the primaries is wrong or the pattern of flight. Everything might be in order except for the silhouette. It is annoying but not surprising. Perhaps the artist who drew all these colorful pictures that appear in my book is untalented or anarchistic.

I like birds although I realize that they are dull-witted. That is part of the reason. Birds are uncompromised by their surroundings and never react differently, an ideal, I believe. I am like them with my inflexible set of instincts. It seems I cannot improvise. For I have been through this before. I have seen these things.…

… The important thing is to consider the significance of things and not to worry about their authenticity. This is the way I have lived my life but I really cannot comment about the efficacy of the method. It’s difficult to tell at the end of the day whether it was theory or need that got you through it. I try not to judge or feel responsible for events. I try not to make decisions. This often causes problems. For example, I’m five months pregnant. It’s only as big as a man’s palm, it’s true, but it turns and feeds inexorably. I don’t look at all pregnant and never would have thought of it myself, but I’ve been told firmly that it’s so. I peed into a paper cup and now I know.

I would like to go off with Grady, to be with him while he is going but I lack the courage or even the ability. He has a journey to make as does the baby. I will not accompany either of them. I remain, as I will say, still. I try not to be intrusive. And I conduct myself not only carefully but hardly at all. Who could prove the life of such a creature? And who would think it necessary to deny it?

Yes, Grady and the baby, all those people with things to do, moving through their landscapes, victimized by their sceneries. Even Daddy once took a trip. Even I years ago made a trip, which it is difficult for me to reconstruct as I was quite sick, I believe, at the time. It was on the bus. I slept for forty-seven hours on the bus. Abandoned in the seat beside me was a plastic orange, filled with disgusting perfume, purchased at a roadside rest. Also a complimentary three-inch bale of cotton. I changed seats several times, usually to free myself from unpleasant companions. One was a man with a tan reading aloud from his Bible. A real doppelgänger though cruddy and with a speech defect. “Oh remember that my life is wind,” he kept bringing up like yesterday’s breakfast. Wind, wind — we’ve all heard that line before. Well, I want to tell you something.

Here there is not even wind. There is scarcely any air at all in these woods where Grady and I live. There is no wind or sound and nothing moves. My boy husband lies flat and prim beneath the sheets. He looks two-dimensional. When he opens his eyes, I may find that they are painted on his head. Perhaps I can dress him myself, cutting out paper trousers, shirt and Levi jacket, bending the cardboard tabs to pass and cling to his ankles, hips, waist and shoulders. Perhaps I can press some tea down his throat or drive to the coast and place him in the sun. I don’t care to watch him sleeping and always leave the room immediately. It confuses me, his lying there, his mouth dry at the corners, foam from a punctured pillow gathered round his damp cheek.

Time does not move here. I do not change. Only the baby changes. I want to be rid of them all. I want to be rid of this terrible imposition of recall.

One wants and wants … I used to lie constantly, but now, I assure you, I’ve stopped.

I listen to the radio. I sleep only a few hours every night and spend the rest of the time listening to the airwaves. It is very tiny, a transistor, and rather weak. I can only get one station. From midnight until six, I listen to “Action Line.” People call the station and make comments on the world and their community and they ask questions. Music is played and a brand of beef and beans is advertised. A woman calls up and says in a strangled voice, “Could you tell me why the filling in my lemon meringue pie is runny?” These people have obscene materials in their mailboxes. They want to know where they can purchase small flags suitable for waving on Armed Forces Day.

There is a man there that answers the question, almost always right away and right on the air .

A woman calls. Yes. She asks, “Can you get us a report on the progress of the collection of Betty Crocker coupons for the kidney machine?” The man can and does. He answers the lady’s question. He complies with her request. Astonishing.

I think sometimes that this man can help me.

And I live by the airport, what is this that hits my house, that showers my roof on takeoff? We can hear it. What crap is this, I demand to know. My plants are green, my television reception is fine but something is going on without my consent and I am not well, my wife’s had a stroke and someone stole my stamp collection and twenty silver dollars.

Yes, well, each piece of earth is bad for something. Something is going to get it on it and the land itself is no longer safe. It’s weakening. If you dig deep enough to dip your seed, beneath the crust you’ll find an emptiness like the sky. No, nothing’s compatible to living in the long run.

Next caller, pulease.

See, look, I begin, we can see it all. I want to flatter him. It’s all prerecorded. They can cut it out but now I have his ear, he’s mine. I can’t make you out, he says. I speak more firmly. See, look. There’s the chamois running, the cutlet nursing, the sandwich cropping grass. The bleeding baby seal capes. And the smells are overwhelming as we know. The limbs adrift in hospital incinerators. The race horse pies at the yearling auction swept up by those men in tuxedos.

Right, he says.

All those trees being made into publishable lies, I say. The mucus under the leaves …

I must correct you there, he says. That’s humus. Essential to the fertility of the earth. Humus.

I know I don’t have much time left with him. He’s getting off the track. Listen, I say, the spinal tap was only a partial success, leaving me dead from the knee to the foot and the waist to the bridge of the nose. There’s no recourse for they never made me any promises, although they spoke frequently and in depth.

You’ll acclimate, he says.

But the death I thought I’d died is back now for a slight correction and they’ve given me a cornea injection and now I’m only useless in the eyes and the loving parts. I’m perfectly able to do all the things I couldn’t do before. I can eat and drink, bite my nails, take a walk and bend for prayers and toilet. They’re pleased.

I can well see that, he says.

I was immediately released, I say hurriedly. Not for one day was I in Intensive Care which is reserved for outpatients, ordinary seamen, phronemaphobiacs and the like.

Un-huh, he says. There is static and humming. On the radio, while he is listening to me, he is playing the mystery tune which I can tell him is “Sapphire” and win myself two free tickets to the drive-in movie. But I don’t want admission. I want to know my hour! When is the fatal hour and when will the truth come to me?