Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin

“I have them read Joyce and Kafka and other junk, but I give them a solid Definitist perspective.”

“But is a Definitist perspective only looking at whether or not a story concerns happy themes and strong characters?”

“Strong characters, yes. Happy themes, no. Shakespeare is great even though he deals with disaster and betrayal and the worst aspects of human nature because his characters are strong and you can feel something for them when they fall. They at least try for the heroic. When a man tries the heroic and fails, it’s a great tragedy. Telling about a man going through a boring day, sitting on a toilet, watching a girl expose herself — what is that?” Max held out his hand and let it drop. “It’s nothing. It’s antilife.”

“But mundane things and even miserable things are a part of life.”

“They’re not a part of life I aspire to.”

The Rationalist classes were held in the rented classrooms of a local community college. The fourteen young Definitists sat on their tailbones, their spines outlined under their shirts. Justine sat in the back of the room, legs crossed and note pad open. Max paced before them, his enthusiasm protruding from him like an invisible spear.

“So what kind of guy is Jake? He’s a nice guy, a smart guy. The kind of guy who’d sit for hours in a parlor in Boston and talk about social problems and try to come up with solutions. He’s an intellectual, in other words. A liberal in fact. But he’s not a phony!” Max’s voice went up in register and became both conciliatory and probing, as though he were verbally peeling away the slightly ridiculous outer layer of Jake’s character and revealing his deeper, truer nature, while at the same time pleading with the listener to take a peep at this more genuine Jake and not merely laugh at his outer manifestation. “He’s really after the truth in life, he wants to experience it instead of just talking about it. That’s why he’s signed up for this voyage, he doesn’t have to go, he’s not like the rest of these guys.”

Justine looked at the boys and again imagined Bryan, only this time as a young boy, sitting in this classroom listening to Max. What would he be thinking? How would it affect the daydreams he would doubtless be having, sitting on his tailbone in the heavy sun? She remembered Ricky Holland and his gang on a heartless expanse of playground standing in a circle around a trapped fourth-grader who had been forced to lift her skirt. She remembered Emotional and felt a pang of sensitivity and remorse which was so painful it was immediately stamped out by a ferocious burst of internal rock music which, if it had a face, would’ve been sticking out its tongue.

“So,” concluded Max, “that’s what you have to do when you read a book. I know it may seem hard at first, but if you practice it, say, when you go to the movies, you’ll get the hang of it. Movie after movie, break it down — plot, character, theme, resolution, message. Pretty soon you’ll be doing it automatically, and then you’ll be able to defend yourself from the crap they’ll throw at you in college.”

Justine returned to Manhattan depressed and nauseous from the treats she had consumed on the train. As soon as she entered her apartment, the phone rang. He said “Hi” as though she was supposed to know who he was, and annoyingly she did.

“How did you know my number?”

“I got it from you last night, don’t you remember? Well maybe you were drunk.”

I was at the gym doing lat pull-downs when I thought of my mother: she and I baking cookies, hula dancing in the living room, making crayon heavens, or together in my bedroom, her tender presence taking me into the night. As I felt these images, weakness spread through my shoulders and the weights became heavier. I thought instead of my mother’s voice as I’d heard it from my bedroom in Painesville, telling my father how terrible I had been that day, punctuating and goading his bursts of anger. The strength came back to my arms, and again I pulled down, pushing my breath out between my teeth with a hiss. I remembered her at the dining table, her eyes covered with impenetrable film, her forkful of salad frozen in space. My father told me I was sitting on my fat ass while he worked and slaved with bastards. I pumped at twice my usual rate. A hirsute Hispanic fellow in a leopard-skin leotard glanced, alarmed. “Take it easy,” he said. “Don’t overwork.” I checked my body for stress in mid-pump and felt none; my blood beat like a marching band. My father gesticulated and showed his teeth. My mother’s eyes remained unseeing. Then, like the hand of a phantom, a palpable feeling of love and longing extended itself to me. It touched my cheek. Superimposed over my indifferent mother, another mother leaned towards me with tears in her eyes, wanting to protect me, to console me. A chemical release bathed my muscles. I pressed my weight for the last time and let it go. Pain shot up my back and sides. I slumped on the bench, trying to rotate my shoulders.

“Ma’am,” said the Hispanic fellow, “I know you’re big and strong, but are you trying to kill yourself or what? They ain’t gonna pay your hospital bill, you know, remember that paper you signed? Hey, are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said, “thank you.” He helped me off the machine and advised me to take a steam bath and stretch out. It was only with the faintest twinge of pride that I registered the incredulous remark made by the muscle boy who’d stepped up behind me and seen how much I’d pressed.

I walked into the dressing room, pain and adrenaline vying for bodily dominance. I pulled off my wet clothes with effort, not even trying to hide the grotesque display of cellulite crushed by spandex. The girl next to me was a homely little thing anyway.

I had never used the steam room before, mainly because I had been too embarrassed to sit there unsheathed. Now discomfort overruled embarrassment, and besides I was in no mood to care.

I entered the steam room clutching defiance to my body as well as one of the gym’s skimpy regulation towels. I quickly dropped both; there was no one in the room, and even if there had been, I was partially obscured from critical eyes by billows of hot steam. I stood for a moment absorbing the experience and decided it was pleasant. I eased myself onto the wooden bench, leaned back and had the novel sensation that the world was a safe, gentle place.

I had last seen my mother in a coffee shop in Hoboken, New Jersey, where I had lived briefly. Her face had aged shockingly since I’d seen her last; there were dark circles under her eyes. Our conversation had ended with her collapsing onto the table, her head hidden in her folded arms as she wept, the fingers of one hand blindly groping my arm across the table in pitiful supplication. I had sat silent and immobile. She had asked me to come home and see my father who was very ill, and I had refused.

That was not the first contact I’d had with her since I had left home. There had been letters and phone conversations, some of which were with my father. I had seen my mother twice before that last meeting. The first time was in Philadelphia. She had put aside a portion of her weekly allowance over a period of weeks to hire a private detective to find me.

The encounter occurred one afternoon as I returned home from work early, compensating as I sometimes did for a long night of conference transcription. She was sitting on the steps with a newspaper folded on her lap. The crossword puzzle, on which she was writing with a stubby pencil, sat on her knee. When she saw me she stopped, her pencil suspended. If I hadn’t been stunned I would’ve run; I was paralyzed by the certainty that my father was nearby. My mother rose, came forward, and embraced me. “Dotty,” she said. “Dotty, darling, thank God you’re safe.”