Кейт Браверман - A Good Day for Seppuku

“I’m better than Plath,” C.C. informs him, hand on her hip. “I got more experience. I’m wiser.”

Sometimes a monosyllable is unnecessary. In fact, it would be excessive. Malcolm nods his head.

Her trailer rests uncertainly on a low muddy rise surrounded by rusting bicycle and appliance parts. Gutted mattresses and plastic bags of rags decorate the yard. It’s returned to its original condition, reedy weeds and shoulder high thorny thistle cover the scarred metal remains of what might have been a playground. She wears a mini skirt, red stiletto heels, lipstick and perfume. Chickens pass blindly near her right foot.

“Free range,” C.C. says, laughing heartily.

Chickens poke through the corroded swingset tilting above punctured car tires, rusting wires and pieces of children’s toys. Afternoon is like dusk. It’s an unusual demarcation of the day and it contains an austere gravity. C.C. leans against a slat of barn, smoking, and beckoning him into the trailer with her fingers.

“Beer?” She studies him. It’s abstract, but not entirely impersonal. “No. You’re a coffee man. And you’re on duty.”

She produces an inappropriate smile. Her lips are distorted from Botox injections and emphasize her sullen pout. Despite decades of cynicism and disappointment, real and imagined, her mouth is prepared for the kiss that isn’t coming.

She puts a spoon of instant coffee in a Star Wars mug and fills it with warm tap water. He places her application form on the table. The Women’s Club secretary has filled out the difficult areas, like social security number, date of birth and address. All C.C. needs to do is sign. Yellow post-its are attached to the signature lines.

“My ship’s come in,” C.C. says, immediately turning to the financial aid package page.

Yes, it’s your ship, dear, Malcolm thinks. But it hasn’t anchored. It’s on the horizon. Contagion stalled it at sea. It’s abandoned but for caskets in rows like April Hyacinths.

C.C. applies her signature and recites her list of difficulties. She must be transported to and from campus by car. There’s no bus service in the hollows. She doesn’t have a phone and her electricity is shut off. Naturally, it was someone else’s mistake. She uses her hands for emphasis as she speaks. Malcolm notices her fingernails. They’re broken and discolored.

Some women are like old lamps, stained, discarded in thrift stores and attics. Two bucks. Professor Malcolm McCarty knows these women. They have insomnia, run red lights drunk and collect divorces and abuse. They’re bad swimmers with a diabetic’s thirst. They swallow bilge, oily kelp, and a colossus of salt. Bloat shuts them up. He wants to stitch her lips closed.

“I got books of poems already done,” C.C. informs him. She points to a stack of three-hole binders. Eight, Malcolm guesses, maybe more.

“Patricia told me. Women’s Club is sponsoring you.” He takes a symbolic sip of tepid coffee. “Proudly. Everyone is delighted to have you on board.” Malcolm replaces his mug on the table and stands up.

“You don’t look all that pleased,” C.C. notes, stabbing out her cigarette and lighting another.

She drinks beer from the bottle. Typical aggressive confrontational tilt of the hip. Too much noise in the eyes. She falls asleep with the TV on. She never turns it off. It’s her sole companion, the one pal who doesn’t let her down.

Some women scar everyone like radiation. Husbands. Neighbors. Infants. Failure makes them narrow and raw. Some women smell like cancer. Their skin is the texture of disaster. Rashes. Lice. That’s what Patricia brought home from her volunteer year at Wood’s End Hospital. But there was something intangible that couldn’t be scrubbed off — a sense of ruined linoleum, of trailer park faux wood plastic paneling, and food from a can like a dog.

“See, you don’t know me like Women’s Club,” C.C. begins, voice simultaneously a rebuff and a plea. “I was married up to a soldier twelve years. I lived in Okinawa. Texas. Germany. I’ve seen things.”

“Yes, of course you have.” Malcolm is almost at the car. He keeps walking.

“Hey, mister professor,” C.C. calls. “I was global from the jump. Think the bang’s in Bangkok? Wrong. They got porn in Berlin you wouldn’t believe. Think Plath knew that?”

It’s a rhetorical question, he decides. He drives recklessly fast and Harmony Hollow is behind him.

Professor McCarty is holding office hours. C.C.’s sister extends four more notebooks. “She wanted me to give you this,” the sister says. “It’s her final paper.” The sister pauses. “Women’s Club’s coming to visit. They sent a real big flower arrangement. You know, real flowers, not plastic. She’d sure appreciate you visiting.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll be out of town.” Malcolm picks up his calendar and manufactures an obstacle. “A conference in Chicago.”

He rides his bike home to Maple Ridge Road. Afternoon settles on him like a soiled blanket. He isn’t prepared for Patricia. How could he be? Patricia is suddenly agitated and abrasive. He’s twice repeated the story of Candy Carlson’s epic journey to campus. She was walking in snowdrifts with her Norton’s Anthology in a plastic bag and her grade school rhymes printed in pencil. She doesn’t know cursive or how to type. He feels cold. His hands. Perhaps he should start wearing gloves.

“C.C.’s in the hospital?” Patricia is stricken.

“Yes, C.C.,” Malcolm McCarty clarifies, wondering how well his wife knows her and the extent of her misguided emotional involvement. Good old C.C. She expected him to drive her to campus, as if he were a bus service or butler. Her condition was so exceptional it necessitated private squiring. This after the Lieberman affair, when no male faculty would even have a brief conference with a female unless a secretary was stationed on watch.

“These women feel themselves coming apart like the landscape,” Patricia informs him. “They have a capacity for lyricism”

Malcolm nods his head. The table is set for tea. He sits down.

“C.C. was transcending her circumstances,” his wife says.

“Transcending her circumstances? I think not. In point of fact, she was walking an icy road in high heels. Smoking, no doubt.” He replaces his teacup carefully in the saucer’s floral center. Another domestic bull’s eye.

“She was hiking to your class. She was carrying your books,” Patricia raises her voice and glares at him.

“Transcending her circumstances,” Malcolm repeats, annoyed. “That’s a soundbite. Her situation required decades. It’s a process, for Christ’s sake.” All at once he’s unexpectedly frightened.

Malcolm walks into his study. C.C. needs more than decades. She needs divine intervention and electric shock. He’s unsteady and angry. This is the new order. One wishes to be a singer, a TV show hostess, an architect or engineer, and the whole mechanism of struggle and revelation is extinguished. The planet is succumbing to magical thinking. He’s seen the global village. It’s a millennial cargo cult under an atrocity of lurid neon.

“You were born with a stick for a spine,” Patricia says, pushing his study door open without knocking. “That stick is up your ass. Don’t mistake it for a backbone.”

Malcolm is stunned. He hasn’t heard Patty say ‘ass’ before. He thought her genetic code precluded forming a certain strata of words. The inexplicable vulgarity was shouted with intensity.

“Is it focus, Malcolm? Or are you blind?” Patricia positions herself next to his desk and leans into the wall. She’s obviously prepared to stay.

Malcolm McCarty remembers graduate school, the books, the eyestrain in libraries with inadequate light, and the relentless deprivation. How hungry he was, filling his pockets with crackers and packets of ketchup from cafeterias. He ate this later, reading, underlining and memorizing. What did he fail to notice?