Diane Williams - Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

I said, “Would you like a rope? You know that haul you have is not secured properly.”

“No,” he said, “but I see you have string!”

“If this comes into motion—” I said, “you should use a rope.”

“Any poison ivy on that?” he asked me, and I told him my rope had been in the barn peacefully for years.

He took a length of it to the bedside table. He had no concept for what wood could endure.

“Table must have broken when I lashed it onto the truck,” he said.

And, when he was moving the sewing machine, he let the cast iron wheels — bang, bang on the stair.

I had settled down to pack up the flamingo cookie jar, the cutlery, and the cookware, but stopped briefly, for how many times do you catch sudden sight of something heartfelt?

I saw our milk cows in their slow parade in the pasture and then the calf broke through with a leap from behind — its head was up, its forelegs spread.

“Don’t leave!” Mother screamed at me, and she had not arrived to help me.

She tripped and fell over a floor lamp’s coiled electrical cord.

There’s just a basic rule of conduct that applies here — also known as a maxim — so I held out my hand.

She gripped and re-gripped my palm hard and all of my fingers before hoisting herself by pulling on me.

She kept tugging on my hand on her deathbed also for a long stretch, until she died. For don’t little strokes fell great oaks?

A girl from the neighborhood rang the bell today to ask if I had a balloon. I didn’t have any and I hadn’t seen one in years.

“That’s all you need?” I asked her. “How about some string?”

I noticed that the girl’s eyes were bright and intelligent and that she was delighted, possibly with me.

I went to search where I keep a liquid-glue pen, specialty tape, and twine. I kept on talking while I pawed around for some reason in the drawer.

It should have been nicer — our friendships, our travel, our romances secretly lived — if we weren’t so old. But still it was an interesting situation to be in.

We all but ignored the wife’s tears — which could have filled a small bottle.

And the wife was petite and well groomed and I knew why she was crying. She thought her trials were all about adultery at that time.

As the evening proceeded, the wife cheered up for some of it and her conversation was drawing us in with topics she knew we would feel comfortable talking about, because potentially our relationship could be adversarial and her husband was tending to pontificate, showing off his legal wings with paragraphs upon paragraphs.

You find yourself in a situation where you have agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed and you realize this is not such a good agreement.

How did all this end? Oh, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine — although our process of digestion — they’d served us kartoffelpuffer and sauerbraten —was not yet complete — when the husband said finally about his wife, “Bettie’s tired.”

To my mind — she’s hysterical, sincere, easily distracted, and not adaptable. I remember when I wanted to know even more about her.

They lived only on the ground floor — the rest was rented out. A trestle table, where you could put your gloves, stood in the long hall that had stone floor tiles set on the diagonal.

Bettie’s thumbs were as I remembered — heavy and clubbed — and she wore the eye-catching turquoise ring, circa 1890, with three pearls, that I knew she was proud of because I had given it to her.

“Bettie’s tired,” the husband repeated.

“I am tired,” Bettie said.

And there was no polite way for him to tell us, “Fuck off now.”

There’d be no more condescending talk, no fresh subjects, never likely an opportunity to privately reminisce with Bettie about the times when we were side by side, experiencing that alternating rhythm forward and back.

“Can we give you a lift home?”

“No, that’s not necessary, we drove,” we said.

I went into their bathroom to urinate before we left. I am a man, if that wasn’t clear before this, and not a drunken one, not cruel — and I was holding myself then, gently — somewhat lovingly, to relieve myself.

I washed my hands and face and looked into the mirror. My face has changed so much recently. The lines of age were drawn everywhere like the marks made by a claw, and they looked to me freshly made. Then there are those growing fleshy abutments around my jaw and under my chin.

It was rainy outside and we were significantly dampened by the time we reached our car. And, in addition, a smelly ailanthus tree tossed a pitcherful of storm water — as if from a sacred fount — all over my head. There were continuing showers — it was dripping, gushy.

Still it was all so charming and heartening — that is — the summer storm, and the trees and our sky, alongside those several memories of Bettie and me.

My wife said to me en route, “Well, I suppose I’m on the wrong track, too.”

Of course, it took a long time for her to go downhill, all the way down it.

Meanwhile, we became very friendly with the DePauls — Clifford and Daisy.

They lived in an apartment crammed with blue-and-white china, for one thing. I thought Daisy usually looked pensive and sad and my wife thought that her scowl meant that she detested us.

A large oil painting of a female nude — hands together as if prayerful — had been suspended over their mantel. Their apartment was in disarray.

But, there’s always a moment before it all becomes okay.

The creature had come absurdly close to our window. It had lifted its chin — face — specifically toward mine while we were at breakfast in the country.

I’d say the animal looked and looked at me and looked, ardently.

I was reminded how to fall in love by meeting its eyes and by how long the rendezvous lasted — until doomsday, say.

I am unhappily married. Today I was dressed up in red-fox orange — orangutan orange — apricot orange, candlelight orange. I had on a wool plaid coat and had been racketing around my city precinct doing errands.

Returning home, while in the elevator of our building, facing the closed door, I combed nearly every hair — all that thinning hair along the sides of my skull.

That massive man that I didn’t know at all, who had a stiffness of manner at the back of the elevator, he acknowledged me. And the doorman Bill had not averted his eyes.

No, not the sort of thing that I usually report. No, that I had withdrawn the tortoiseshell comb from my purse to do the smoothing with and then re-stowed it on the way to 3A, our apartment.

The comb I keep in the quilted sack, where I also conceal a tiny toothpaste, the easy-to-carry traveler’s toothbrush, and my eyeglass-lens polishing cloth.

The carpet was unmarked by dirt, but one important thing in our foyer was missing — the color with the green leaves in a vase. The old floor gets better with age, but boy it needed to be cleaned up — then it will shine.

I also have affectionate and friendly wishes for the brass, crystal, silver dishes, vases and pitchers.

My conversation with my husband was as follows: “Are you all right? What do you want? You’re looking at me.”

In the park I had wanted to talk today to a bird who wasn’t interested in talking to me.

Lust and temptation are sometimes personified. I heard the bird cry— Chew! Chew! I took pains to say Chew! Chew! — loudly, too.

It is a pity there is also the nature of the surface of the skin — combined with the error of her eyes and the divots at the centers of her breasts.