Lorrie Moore - Anagrams

It is All Saints Day evening. I sit on the edge of the bathtub, drying off Georgianne, marveling that the human race has managed to create such comforts for itself as the warm fluffy nubs of towels, the squirming, nearsighted silk of daughters.

“We’re going to Beruba for Christmas, I know,” she says, fogging the air with baby powder. She’s trying to bully me.

“How do you know?” I look at her and squint my eyes into small incisions.

George shrugs.

“Do you want to go?” I ask, rubbing her head dry, fishing for affirmations.

Beneath the moving towel she scrinches up her face. “Do you want to?” she squeaks, in imitation of someone, something, I don’t know what, and she tweaks my nose, my skinny merink, my bony pumpkin.

“Whatever happened to that little niece of yours?” asks Gerard.

“Niece?” I ask, disoriented.

“Yeah. Anna or Annie. The little one, your brother’s kid who used to come visit you.”

“Oh, Annie.” I’m quiet, take inventory, and then zip on ahead. “She and my ex-sister-in-law are off in Michigan. My brother Louis couldn’t even get joint custody. It’s very mysterious. Everybody misses her.” I lower my eyes. There’s a long silence. Gerard leans over and tweaks my nose. “What is this nose-tweaking jazz?” I grumble. I toss back orange juice like a gargle.

I am sitting at home with a pile of student poems. I have put the more interesting ones, usually the housewife poems, on the bottom, with Darrel’s at the very bottom, as a sort of reward. But now I’m looking at them in front of me, on the dining-room table, and I can’t read any of them. I have nothing to say, nothing to write, nothing registers in my brain. All these student lines fly away from me, scatter like pigeons in Venice, rise up around me like locusts. I can’t begin to get through this pile of poems. I would rather eat them than read them. I would rather do anything than read them.

Today is my husband’s birthday. He would have been thirty-six. I wonder what he would have looked like. I wonder if he would have been happy, if we would have been friends. I go right to Darrel’s poem. It is called “Dolphin.”

With my clicks and whistles

and 30,000 years

of history, the Iliad

and Minaoan prayers

and kisses hardened, curled

inside me like a coral reef ,

it is music, the waves ,

not the grinning angularity

of corners, coroners, sandwiches ,

that washes, courts, and wins

me and my child’s rhymes. We

glide and scarcely touch for now ,

desiring just the slick, silk share

of speed, the drink of seas ,

oh love, the drink of seas .

I wonder if it’s about sex. If it’s about me. If it’s about why he’s not in love with me yet or never. Words, I think, words are all you need for love — you say them and then just for the hell of it your heart rises and spills over into them. My idea in a love affair is that if everyone makes enough declarations, one of them is bound to come true. Words are interesting that way.

But these words — I don’t know. I circle Minaoan , which he’s spelled wrong, and write “Good!” at the top; then I turn off the light and, terrified of literature, go straight to bed.

The teacher was at her office hours in the Union, sipping coffee, staring off into space. She leaned over to get something out of her bag on the floor — a pen wrapped in a Kleenex in case it leaked. Looking up from her bag, she saw a young black woman in jeans and a red sweater, standing beside her.

“Ms. Carpenter?”

“Yes?” Benna sat up. She had never seen this woman before.

“I’m Ruby Olson. Can I bother you for a minute?”

“Sure. Have a seat.”

Ruby sat down. “This really will only be for a minute.” Ruby placed her own bag on the floor. “I’m here as a sort of emissary from the Black Women’s Equality Group.”

“Black Women’s Equality Group?”

“Yeah. BWEG.” It sounded like someone spitting out food. Ruby smiled. She was pretty. Dancing, almond eyes and good jewelry. “There’s only twelve of us, but we’re devoted.”

The teacher smiled back.

“The reason I’m here is this,” continued Ruby. “Do you know how many white women at FVCC are going out with black men?”

The teacher resisted the urge to look quickly into her coffee. She hated Fitchville. She hated this college. She hated coffee in Styrofoam cups. She could feel her cheeks burn. She took a deep breath and stared back at Ruby, stared at her with an intent to poison, wither, dismantle the eyes and jewelry. “Nohowmany,” she said, flat as medicine.

“Six,” said Ruby. “Do you know how many white men are going out with black women?”

“What is this, a quiz?”

“Zero. It just doesn’t happen. With white women taking virtually eighty percent of the black men on this campus, and white men just plain not interested in anything but a white girl, we black women are stranded.”

The two women glared at each other.

“Maybe your complaint should be with the black men,” said the teacher. “Or with the white men. Maybe you shouldn’t be taking this out on other women.”

Ruby shifted in her seat impatiently, then shouldered her bag as if to leave. “Sociologically it’s complex. Look, Ms. Carpenter, you’re a cool teacher. I’ve heard you are. I just thought I’d come to you with this. My basic point is that we women have to stick together.”

“And that,” announced the teacher, as Ruby stood up to go, “would be exactly my point as well.”

“Ruby Olson’s right,” says Eleanor.

“Oh great,” I say. “I’ll stop seeing Darrel because he’s black.” Perhaps everyone, when you got right down to it, was a racist.

“I’m not saying that,” says Eleanor. She inhales and blows smoke out through her nose. “I’m just saying think of the black women on this campus, that’s all. All twelve of them. I mean, this town is an Aryan breeding ground. Think of their situation.”

“But what about my situation?”

“Kill two birds with one stone. Dating a student, Benna, you’re probably the talk of dozens of impromptu department meetings held in the restrooms of both sexes.”

“You mean, kill one bird with two stones.” Everything conspires. Everything feels dizzy to me now. My voice has shrunk to a gaspy whisper. “Besides,” I say, helplessly. “Darrel’s way too old for Ruby Olson.”

“Look, you know how awful everyone is here. You should just watch yourself. The tenured shall inherit the earth. And even the crummy courses you’re teaching.”

“What should I do?”

“Actually,” says Eleanor, walking over to where I’m seated and putting her hand on my shoulder. This is what I need. This is what I have her do. “I’m not sure.”

· · ·

I’m in bed with Darrel. On a cold night a bed is a warm recoil, it is a pearly place, like heaven.

I am average in love. I say things like “I love you” and “I need you I really do.” I say them too quickly, like an asshole.

I don’t tell Darrel about things Ruby, Eleanor, or George have said. I don’t want to discourage him. I want us to figure things out for ourselves. We have become nocturnal animals. We coo wise things out into the night like owls.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I say in the dark. We can’t see each other. He doesn’t want to hold me. I wonder if I should get a bunk bed, a bed full of bunk — why not: The truth never sets you free.

Darrel is stalled. Stalled out and away from me, paces away from words, from love, from love words. God, only someone with no imagination would get stalled out there.