Rivka Galchen - American Innovations - Stories

* * *

At the puppet stand I lingered. I was hoping that one of my parents would take notice of the puppets, pick one up. My dad, standing a few paces away, stood out from the crowd in his button-up shirt. He looked weak, sunbeaten. My mom was at my side, her arms folded across a tank top that was emergency orange. It struck me, maybe for the first time, that they came to this fair just for me.

“I’ve never wanted anything this much in my whole life,” I confessed in a rush, my hand on the unfinished wood of one of the puppets. “I want this more than a crown.”

My mom laughed at me, or at the puppet. “It’s so ugly,” she said, in Hebrew.

“That’s not true,” I whispered furiously, feeling as if everything had fallen silent, as if the ground beneath me were shifting. The vendor must surely have understood my mom, by her tone alone. I looked over at him: a fat bearded man talking to a long-haired barefoot princess. He held an end of her dusty hair distractedly; his other hand he had inside the collar of his shirt. He was sweating.

“It’s junk,” my mom said.

“You don’t like anything,” I said, nearly screaming, there in the bright sun. “You never like anything at all.” My mother turned her back to me. I sensed the vendor turn our way.

“I’ll get it for you,” my dad said, suddenly right with us. There followed an awkward argument between my parents, which seemed only to heighten my dad’s pleasure in taking out his rust-stained wallet, in standing his ground, in being irrevocably on my side.

His alliance struck me as misguided, pathetic, even childish; I felt like a villain; we bought the puppet.

That dumb puppet — I carried it around in its wrinkly green plastic bag. For some reason I found myself haunted by the word “leprosy.” When we watched the minstrel show in the little outdoor amphitheater, I tried to forget the green bag under the bench. We only made it a few steps before my mom noticed it was gone. She went back and fetched it.

At home I noticed that the wood of one of the hands of the puppet was cracked. That wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t give the puppet to Roy. Looking at that mute piece of wood, I saw something. A part of me that I’d never chosen, that I would never control. I went to the bathroom, turned on the loud fan, and cried. An image of Roy came to my mind, particularly of that tooth. I felt my love falling off, dissolving.

He was my first love, my first love in the way that first loves are usually second or third or fourth loves. I still think about a stranger in a green jacket across from me in the waiting room at the DMV. About a blue-eyed man with a singed earlobe that I saw at a Baskin-Robbins with his daughter. My first that kind of love. I never got over him. I never get over anyone.

They say no one reads anymore, but I find that’s not the case. Prisoners read. I guess they’re not given much access to computers. A felicitous injustice for me. The nicest reader letters I’ve received — also the only reader letters I’ve received — have come from prisoners. Maybe we’re all prisoners? In our lives, our habits, our relationships? That’s not nice, my saying that. Maybe it’s even evil, to co-opt the misery of others.

I want to mention that, when I sold the movie, my husband had just left me. I came home one day and a bunch of stuff was gone. I thought we’d been robbed. Then I found a note: “I can’t live here anymore.” He had taken quite a lot with him. For example, we had a particularly nice Parmesan grater and he had taken that. But he had left behind his winter coat. Also a child. We had a child together, sort of. I was carrying it — girl or boy, I hadn’t wanted to find out — inside me.

I searched online for a replacement for that Parmesan grater because I had really liked that Parmesan grater. It was that kind that works like a mill, not the kind you just scrape against; it had a handle that was fun to turn. There were a number of similar graters available but with unappealing “comfort” grips. Finally, I found the same model. Was it premature to repurchase? Two days passed basically like that. Then, on Wednesday, my brother called. I gave him the update on my life.

“Wow, that’s really something,” he said.

“Yeah. It is something.”

Then he said, “I thought it was a work of fantasy, Trish. I mean, I guess I should have told you about it—”

“What?”

“The blog,” he said. “His blog. I–Can’t-Stand-My-Wife-Dot-Blogspot-Dot-Com—”

“Are you going through one of your sleepless phases again?”

“Trish, I know it makes me sound snoopy, but Jonathan always seemed a little off to me, you know? So after he left your apartment one time, when I was alone there, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I opened up his laptop, and I looked through the browser history. I was curious about his porn. I thought maybe there would be some really weird porn—”

“There was weird porn?”

“None at all. Which in itself was kind of weird. No porn. Just his blog. And—”

“All right. Well. I’m thinking of buying a new Parmesan grater—”

“I thought it was satire, Trish. It’s pretty funny. Look, I knew you could never have said some of that stuff. I mean, you are kind of critical, Trish, but still. How could I have known Jonathan was serious? I thought, Maybe these things can be healthy. Funny is healthy. Maybe this is a healthy way for Jonathan to vent some anger, some hurt feelings. Healthy fantasy, you know? I didn’t know what to do, Trish. I asked my shrink. He wouldn’t weigh in! I decided not to interfere. Look, don’t be mad at me, Trish, I’m just the traumatized bystander here—”

“You keep saying Trish. You do that when you’re trying to avoid something. You should just come out and say whatever it is you want to say instead of saying Trish all the time.”

“I’m going to come over and we’re going to read it together. Or not. If that’s what you want. Whatever you want.”

I wasn’t going to read the blog. So much writing out there in the world and who wants to read it? Not me.

* * *

All of this was not long after the publication of my first novel, and I had some money, even a bit of dignity, as the novel had been somewhat successful; at least, I’d been given a decent advance and some money from foreign rights, too — it was a dream! — but I didn’t have lots of dignity and I didn’t have lots of money, either, just some. The novel was a love story, between a bird and a whale. Why was I already low on money? Partially because money just flies, as they say, or I guess it’s time they say about that, the flying, but money, too. Very winged. Still, one of the main reasons I didn’t have much money was that I had been paying my husband’s way through business school. At least, I’d thought I was doing that, but it turned out he wasn’t enrolled in school — I went to look for him, of course — and he had just been making those “tuition” withdrawals for himself. He did have many nice qualities, my husband. His hair unwashed was a heaven for me. He never asked me what I’d gotten done on any particular day. We’d fallen madly in love in three weeks; that had been fun. He used to call me little chicken. I still miss him.

But back to the point. I had some money but not lots of money. Prison bars of not-money grew around me in dreams, like wild magic corn. My agent called — so nice to be called by a friend!.. or, no, not a friend … but sort of a friend! — to see if I was interested in taking a meeting with some “movie people.” I started crying, and then we got past that. The meeting would just be to talk over a few notions, no biggie, but maybe. They had liked the screenplay adaptation of my novel — I hadn’t written a screenplay adaptation, this seemed to be a confusion — but thought it would be too expensive to have underwater filming and also flight filming. They wanted a cheaper love story. What if it was two land animals? Anyway, a meeting was proposed. My agent acted as if I might find it beneath me, like only another novel was serious work, and even though I know he didn’t really think that my writing was too serious to be set aside for a movie, I thought it was nice of him to pretend as if that might be the case.