The Most of It Read online

  THE BENCH

  My husband and I were arguing about a bench we wanted to buy and put in part of our backyard, a part which is actually a meadow of sorts, a half- acre with tall grasses and weeds and the occasional wildflower because we do not mow it but leave it scrubby and unkempt. This bench would hardly ever be used and in the summer when the grasses were high would remain partially hidden from view. We both knew we wanted the bench to be made of teak so that it would last a long time in the harsh weather and so that we would never have to paint it. Teak weathers to a soft silver that might, in November or March, disappear into the gray hills that are the backdrop of our lives. My husband wanted a four foot bench and I wanted a five foot bench. This is what we argued about. My husband insisted that a four foot bench was all we needed, since no more than two people (presumably ourselves) would ever sit on it at the same time. I felt his reasoning was not only beside the point but missed it entirely; I said what mattered most to me was the idea of the bench, the look of it there, to be gazed at with only the vaguest notion it could hold more people than would ever actually sit down. The life of the bench in my imagination was more important than any practical function the bench might serve. After all, I argued, we wanted a bench so that we could look at it, so that we could imagine sitting on it, so that, unexpectedly, a bird might sit on it, or fallen leaves, or inches of snow, and the longer the bench, the greater the expanse of that plank, the more it matched its true function, which was imaginary. My husband mentioned money and I said that I was happier to have no bench at all, which would cost nothing, than to have a four foot bench, which would be expensive. I said that having no bench at all was closer to the five foot bench than the four foot bench because having no bench served the imagination in similar ways, and so not having a bench became an option in our argument, became a third bench. We grew very tired of discussing the three benches and for a day we rested from our argument. During this day I had many things to do and many of them involved my driving past other houses, none of which had benches, that is they each had the third bench, and as I drove past the other houses I could see a bench here and a bench there; sometimes I saw the bench very close to the house, against a wall or on a porch, and sometimes I saw the bench under a tree or in the open grass, cut or uncut, and once I saw the bench at the end of the driveway, blocking the road. Always it was a five foot bench that I saw, a long sleek bench or a broken-down bench, a bench with a slatted back or a bench with a solid, carved back, and always the bench was empty. But I knew that for my husband the third bench was only four feet long and he saw always two people sitting on it, two happy or tired people, two people who were happy to be alive or two people tired from having worked hard enough to buy the bench they were sitting on. Or they were happy and tired, happy to have reached the end of some argument, tired from having had it. For these people, the bench was an emblem of their days, which were fruitful because their suffering had come to an end. On my bench, which was always empty, nothing had come to an end because nothing had begun, no one had sat down, though the bench was always there waiting for exactly that to happen. And the bench was always long enough so that someone, if he desired to, could lie all the way down. That day passed. Another day followed it and my husband and I began, once more, to discuss the bench. The sound of our voices revealed a renewed interest and vigor. I thought I sensed in him a coming around to my view of the bench and I know he sensed in me a coming around to his view of the bench, because at one point I said that a four foot bench reminded me of rough notes towards a real bench while a five foot bench was like a fragment of an even longer bench and I admitted it was at times hard to tell the difference. He said he didn’t know anything about the difference between rough notes and fragments but he agreed that between the two benches there was, possibly, just perhaps — he could imagine it — very little difference. It was, after all, only a foot we were talking about. And I think it was then, in both of our minds, that a fourth bench came into being, a bench that was only a foot long, a miniature bench, a bench we could build ourselves, though of course we did not. This seemed to be, essentially, the bench we were talking about. Much later, when the birds came back, or the leaves drifted downwards, or the snow fell, slowly and lightly at first, then heavier and faster, it was this bench that we both saw when we looked out the window at the bench we eventually placed in the meadow which continued to grow as if there were no bench at all.

  MONUMENT

  A small war had ended. Like all wars, it was terrible. Things which had stood in existence were now vanished. I had come back because I had survived and survivors come back, there is nothing else left for them to do. I had been on long travels connected to the war, and I had been to the centerpiece of the war, that acre of conflagration. And now I was sitting on a park bench, watching ducks land and take off from a pond. They too had survived, though I had no way of knowing if they were the same ducks from before the war or if they were the offspring of ducks who had died in the war. It was a warm day in the capital and people were walking without coats, dazed by the warmth, which was not the heat of war, which had engulfed them, but the warmth of expansion, in which would grow the idea of a memorial to the war, which had ended, and of which I was a veteran architect. I knew I would be called upon for my ideas in regards to this memorial and I had entered the park aimlessly, trying to escape my ideas, as I had been to the centerpiece, that acre of conflagration, and from there the only skill that returned was escapement, any others died with those who possessed them. I was dining with friends that evening, for the restaurants and theaters and shops had reopened, the capital was like a great tablecloth being shaken in mid-air so that life could be smoothed and reset and go on, and I had in my mind a longing to eat, and to afterwards order my favorite dessert, cherries jubilee, which would be made to flame and set in the center of the table, and I had in my mind the idea of submitting to the committee a drawing of an enormous plate of cherries, perpetually burning, to be set in the center of the park, as a memorial to the war, that acre of conflagration. And perhaps also in my mind was the hope that such a ridiculous idea would of course be ignored and as a result I would be left in peace, the one thing I desired, even beyond cherries. And I could see the committee, after abandoning my idea, remaining in their seats fighting over the designs of others, far into the after hours of the work day, their struggles never seeming to end, and then I wanted to submit an idea of themselves as a memorial for the war, the conference table on an island in the middle of the pond, though at least some of them would have to be willing to be cast in agony. And then I saw on the ground an unnamed insect in its solitary existence, making its laborious way through tough blades of grass that threatened its route, and using a stick that lay nearby I drew a circle around the animal — if you can call him that — and at once what had been but a moment of middling drama became a theater of conflict, for as the insect continued to fumble lop-sided in circles it seemed to me that his efforts had increased, not only by my interest in them, but by the addition of a perimeter which he now seemed intent on escaping. I looked up then, and what happened next I cannot describe without a considerable loss of words: I saw a drinking fountain. It had not suddenly appeared, it must have always been there, it must have been there as I walked past it and sat down on the bench, it must have been there yesterday, and during the war, and in the afternoons before the war. It was a plain gunmetal drinking fountain, of the old sort, a basin on a pedestal, and it stood there, an ordinary object that had become an unspeakable gift, a wonder of civilization, and I had an overwhelming desire to see if it worked, I stood up then and approached it timidly, as I would a woman, I bent low and put my hand on its handle and my mouth hovered over its spigot — I wanted to kiss it, I was going to kiss it — and I remembered with a horrible shock that in rising from the bench I had stepped on and killed the insect, I could hear again its death under my left foot, though this did not deter me from finishing my kiss, and as the water came forth with a low bub
bling at first and finally an arch that reached my mouth, I began to devise a secret route out of the park that would keep me occupied for some time, then I looked up, holding the miraculous water in my mouth, and saw the ducks in mid-flight, their wings shedding water drops which returned to the pond, and remembered in amazement that I could swallow, and I did, then a bit of arcane knowledge returned to me from an idle moment of reading spent years ago, before the war: that a speculum is not only an instrument regarded by most with horror, as well as an ancient mirror, and a medieval compendium of all knowledge, but a patch of color on the lower wing segments of most ducks and some other birds. Thus I was able, in serenest peace, to make my way back to my garret and design the memorial which was not elected and never built, but remained for me an end to the war that had ended.

  BEAUTIFUL DAY

  I was walking to the post office when I happened to pass R——, a slight acquaintance on account of our having the same last name, as was discovered one year — oh, many years ago — at the voting poll. We were standing in line next to one another and I remember our conversation vividly. Actually we did not speak to one another, but when you are standing in line next to a man who precedes you into a narrow booth with a thick curtain hung on rings over a pole, and he is lost from view for a full five minutes which must be a terror for him as it will be for you, who can never remember the many names of the remarkable persons running for office, to the extent that on the previous evening I had written them in ballpoint on the palm of my hand, which was now sweating to the degree they had become illegible — well, as I insinuated, though we said nothing, how could we forget one another, thrown into circumstances like that? R—— came out of the booth, a volunteer called my name, and I think not a person in the room, which was overflowing with people, failed to note a person of one name preceded a person of the same name, or at the very least a person of one name following a person with the same name. Since our introduction then, almost nothing — an occasional nod, a nod of the head, yes, but a nod that is at once personal and touching, a charming, open, benevolent nod, this we sometimes exchanged, sometimes he initiated the nod and sometimes it was I, but I am a shy person, as is, I believe, constantly observed by those who live in this town. I was walking to the post office, I had walked all the way in fact and was now standing in front of it, when R—— said quite distinctly — I do not think I was imagining it — hello. I do not think a nod preceded this unexpected and curious addition to our relationship but I was shocked by its intimacy to the degree that I do not remember if a nod preceded it. Perhaps a nod came after? I cannot recall. Taking great care not to lose control over my faculties altogether I said to R——: hello. This word, following so soon after the first, stunned me with the power of communication possible between two souls who have heretofore labored so intently to keep their human capacity for passion latent. At that moment I realized it was a beautiful day — indeed it was a very beautiful day, overabundant, radiant in all aspects of itself, the flag flying like a certificate of rapturous appreciation for the clouds, which were sailing directly overhead across a clear blue sky, and in the window boxes attached to the brick façade of the building pert crocuses stood in a bright array, it seemed to me they were like responsive ears, alert to whatever R—— or I might venture to say next; perhaps it was on account of this fantasy that I hesitated, I hesitated to speak what I felt and say what I knew to be true: it is a beautiful day. But would such a confession, I asked myself in my hesitation, be too prompt, too rash, coming so soon after the two hellos, which had already fallen in such rapid progression that R—— might, like myself, be quaking from an inability to keep up with all that had already happened? Might R—— feel I was pushing the day forward at an alarming and unjust rate, even if part of its undeniable beauty was that very quickening? These thoughts and more like them prevented the spontaneous expression I should have liked so much to make before R—— was gone. R—— did not hesitate, that is for certain — he sailed like a cloud into the post office, nod or no nod (why wasn’t I paying more attention?) and I was stuck fast by the crocuses, the flag unfurled over us all, when the decision came over me to begin my way home, immediately and with brio, that I might lose no further step with the day, which was beautiful, and with the future which had shown itself to be quick but kind, allowing me these little moments to catch up with it, and keep pace with it when I could.

  MY SEARCH AMONG THE BIRDS

  Aug 19 It took the little birds — are they wrens? — about a week to find the seeds.

  Aug 23 One day a pigeon joined them, he was larger and seemed “superior,” the wrens seemed “respectful,” as if they were deferring to him.

  (later) I saw a bird in the bushes near Dairy Queen. It looked thin to me.

  (later) There were about ten little wrens at work on the seed when someone on the street revved up a motorcycle — nine of the wrens instantly flew to the nearest tree, all together, but one little wren did not — he just stayed and kept on eating.

  a) was he smarter than the others?

  b) was he dumber than the others?

  c) was he simply deaf?

  A minute later all the wrens in the tree flew off together and when the wren who stayed behind to work on the seed saw them (with his eyes) he instantly joined them — he didn’t want to be left behind! But when they were just going to the tree he hadn’t minded one bit.

  Aug 24 A hawk circling very high up in the heavens.

  Aug 25 Some of the birds have told me their names; the rest are so far quiet.

  (later) I dare not log the amount of time I spend sitting on the ledge of the kitchen window, watching the wrens on the flat black asphalt roof where I have placed a red frisbee of water and a blue frisbee of seed.

  Aug 26 They come for breakfast and they come for dinner. WHERE DO THEY GO FOR LUNCH?

  Aug 28 Bought a pair of opera glasses to facilitate my search among the birds.

  Aug 29 I replace the little golden seeds, for I have run out of them, with black oiled sunflower seeds, which everyone knows are superior and preferred by all birds. I do this in the middle of the night so as to “surprise” the birds in the morning. But in the morning they don’t act “surprised” at all, they act as if nothing’s changed. But then again, they may be “acting.”

  (later) They ARE acting — the wrens don’t like the new seed, they are ignoring it! Do they KNOW how much work it took to lug that bag up the stairs?