A. has been a saint.  Forget what I’ve told you privately, he has.  He’s been a saint.  I’ve been neurotic and panicked and aghast and alarmed and unkempt and seriously rattled.  All week.  And he’s been a saint.  Why have I been rattled?  Because I want.  to finish.  this BOOK.  I hate it.  I hate my book, it’s why I have to send it away — out, out of this house book, get out!  Every time I look at it, it gets worse how can that happen?  Even when I sneak up on it, open it quietly while it’s not looking, it still catches me at it and gets worse! 

Yesterday I made a grievous mistake, I read my “cut” files.  I save everything I cut, you know, my cut files are brilliant — yes, brilliant.  No, no, that’s not good, that’s terrible!  I read through the cut files yesterday, and they were brilliant and so much better than all the crap I kept.  So what do I do about that?  Sigh.  I put them back in, I guess.  Or I just send the cut files out with a synopsis and hope anyone who reads them is drunk. 

This book is a story about a woman, her name is Ellen.  It’s about a marriage, too, their name is Jenks.  (It doesn’t have to be Jenks, I’m not wedded to these names, if you want me to use your name I’ll use yours, send it in!) 

It’s a story about the maddening isolation of life.  Or maybe insulation.  You see?  How can I write a synopsis in these conditions, I still have no idea what it’s about.

It’s mostly about terror, actually – the terror of loneliness, of insects, of loss and love and connecting, and also not knowing how to ever connect again.  It’s about the terror of doorbells during the day, and home repair and back pain.  It’s about the terror of Repetition — (shudder) — of doing the same thing day after day, after day after day after day.  Yes, it’s mostly about Terror.  And also the futile pursuit of everything, we’re all chasing the wrong dream.  We are.  

Ellen cannot connect with her husband in a way that feels good to her, he cannot connect with her.  He comes home and pulls into the garage and shuts the automatic garage door behind him then clomp-clomps up the stairs.  “Do I have time to change?” he asks.  “Yes,” she says.  She is usually stirring something on the stove with a spoon, desperately wishing she were stoned. 

He smiles, she smiles, and that way they go on.  Later, sitting down, he will tell her about a client and the traffic.  He’ll be secretly thinking about Tara Bauer, the new sales rep on Team 2.  She’s never stirred a thing on the stove, he bets.  She wears nice clothes.   

Ellen will tell Howard things, too.  Mundane items, usually, concerning the kids.  She won’t tell him about her own work, it’s dull.  She edits technical papers for engineers, she wrote a proposal for a fish screen that day.  A fish screen, they go on dams – no plot, no character, no narrative thread, thus nothing to tell.  About that, anyway. 

On the other hand, Howard may, or may not, be interested in how she spends her days — at least one, and sometimes two of them per week at the Raintree Rehabilition and Care Facility with a former lover, Reed.  Reed lives at Raintree, in a persistent vegetative state.  Ellen misses him when she’s not there.

Anything else and I’m spoiling the end.  I can tell you it’s happy, though.  It has what my screenwriting instructor calls a “button.”  There’s a big surprise, and a button, and in the end you’ll feel good. 

There is a shrink named Dr. Head (Jacqui Head).  There are neighbors, there’s a feud.  There are an alarming number of spiders. 

Sigh.

Pre-order copies here.

I’ve decided I want Maira Kalman to illustrate my book.  There.  So can you call her for me?  I can’t call her right now because I’m very busy at the beach finishing it.  Call her and tell her what my book is about:  suburban angst, the cat throwing up, the futile pursuit of happiness … you know, the clumsy yet beautiful thing we call ‘marriage’, that sort of thing.

I’ll need drawings of crane flies, they should be misshapen and misunderstood.  They should provoke fear but up close, also empathy.  There should be one nice shot of Ellen banging her piano, of Howard leaning against a wall like Bogart – I’d like him tired, long-suffering, lost.  There is the opening scene, Fellini night; I’ll need a dejected rendering of that. 

And, of course, Claire.  Maybe stepping out into the street around the giant truck or on the phone in the dark in Kandahar, her arms directing her words.  Oh, and Dr. Head in her powder blue suit and platinum hair and bright-colored lips; she’ll be fun, I think, to draw.  Oh my goodness, the possibilities.  I must take an art class right now, there’s too much for Maira to do all alone.  How about if we all draw one page?  I’ll give you the scenes for depiction, you can choose.  First let me eat my yogurt, it’s getting warm.

I need one of you to edit my book.  I’m stuck cold on my book.  I like all the parts but some of them must go and also there are gaps that I don’t have the slightest idea how to fix.  My book and I should be in therapy. 

Oh, I’m exaggerating, just for attention; it’s barely anything.  But I need one of you to read and edit it and get me back on the road, again, to fixing it up.  To wrapping it up, actually.  I want to be through with it, I want to send it out.  I want to chew bubble gum while poring through glossy magazines deciding which glittery, glam, hopped-up movie star will play whom in the movie of my book.  I want to be done, and doing that, not this, and so I need you to read it and edit it and be happy with my leftover backyard blueberries as your payment.  I’ll also try to think of a good joke. 

A. has a good joke, that one about the doctor, and this guy’s doing this thing and the doctor makes him stop because he’s trying to examine him. 

I’ll tell you that one, plus blueberries, if you edit my book.

You’ll have to put thought into it, you’ll have to have revelations.  You’ll have to praise it wildly and still come up with new ways to add brilliance.

Ugh.

Some days work sucks.

Send your love for my book here.

Seriously, I would.  I’d rather eat beets (full disclosure:  I happen to like beets quite a bit) than do my job today.  In fact, I’m eating beets right now, while trying to do my job but doing it poorly. 

My job is hard today.  I’m having what you people in office jobs call a “bad day at work” or “at the office”.  Or whatever it is you say.  If I had an office job, I’d have made plans by now, to have martinis with Janet and Mark at 5-sharp.  Funny.  When I worked with Janet and Mark I don’t remember having martinis.  Aside from all-exclusive company paid fancy business trips.  We had bad days, though, so we must have.  Bad office days are when you sit through too many meetings and no one gets how smart you are, and your boss makes you work, plus asks for stuff to prove you worked.  Like flowcharts.  Or reports, or an update, or graph.  That’s how I remember them anyway.

Bad writing days are when you can’t write.  When the idea of it makes you light-headed, makes you gasp, makes you feel weak.  Some call this “writer’s block,” I think I told you I loathe that term.  Blocks are for pussies and preschool kids, I’m just having a “bad day.”  At work.  Big deal, a bad day at work. 

H. has them, it’s when half her staff calls in pregnant or sick or caring for sick mothers.  Right H.?  Or their hand hurts or no one can find them and she has to scramble all day to keep things going.  Which she does.  But it’s annoying when she’d rather be doing 500 other things. 

A. has them, too.  It’s when employees call from jail.  Or pass out in the bathroom.  Or don’t come in, or smell bad, or call his phone over and over without leaving a message.  Or when potential clients — you know who you are, Mr. so-and-so from blank! — do not return calls and pretend they’re busy and have ridiculous reasons for not choosing you when you know they’re just inept and lazy. 

So here’s mine.  My bad day is when I have a big fat book to fix.  Some of it’s good, but it’s hard to pick up a big fat book, one that’s not quite done … and read it and re-read it and cut and fix, and fix it some more.  It’s hard and I don’t want to do it and so the day’s floating by and I’ve done very little.  Well more than little, but less than lots.

This has nothing to do with that, but when I leave Scruffy’s food outside during the day, the ants attack with abandon.  When it’s out at night, a slug comes.  I’d like to think the same one, I’d like to name it.  Every night, under the glow of the moon, I peer into Scruffy’s dish and see the same slug, thick and viscous and latched onto an inside side wall of his dish.  No trace of it in the morning. 

That’s all.  I have to work, people, even if it’s mediocre work, I still must do it. 

My editor from here thinks I have comma issues.  I happen to like commas, I think perhaps it’s he with comma issues, I think the rest of the world doesn’t appreciate them enough.  (Sorry, D., if you’re reading, I’m exaggerating for effect.  I think your issues are perfect, I’m in comma rehab, thanks, again, for referral.) 

This.  Is what I’m equipped with.  To make a book. 

(Note to publishers:  Don’t let me fool you, it’s genius!  The self-deprecation is all part of my brilliant marketing plan!  Buy me, buy me!)

So.  What’s in your wallet? 

Writer’s Almanac printed my favorite Theodore Roethke poem today (send me yours!) — the lovely bones one:

I knew a woman lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:

Etc.  Don’t you wish you’d married the woman lovely in her bones?  For my part, when the fat piggy bluebirds eyeball me from their perch on Scruffy’s dish, I eyeball back at them. 

Here’s a long passage for your Friday thrills.  My tense is inconsistent.  You’ll have to suffer through it until my copyeditor returns from Tahiti.

Howard said an eight-word sentence to her the second week they were married.  They were back from the sandy honeymoon, it was their first day officially living together in one jointly shared space.  A place that was no longer hers, or his, but theirs.  (For the record, it had first been his.  His and then theirs.)

Ellen had showered and left her wet towel hanging on the door and then made the coffee and left the filters out, next to the can.  (Yes, the can.  In her defense it was horrible coffee and she’d left both the filters and can out as admonition — look at this! — hoping Howard would see and be embarrassed and then replace; she hadn’t signed up for canned coffee.)

She continued the morning this way leaving a trail of misplaced items, cupboard doors open, crumpled bed sheets and loose change.  The newspaper was even left undone, spread haphazardly out on the floor and there’d been a glimpse of the entomophobia.  She’d gone into hysterics, had been about to cry – or was she seriously crying?  Jesus, Howard thought — when a harmless waterbug climbed up in the sink. 

None of this was exactly breaking news.  Howard had on several occasions disposed of various insects so they could proceed.  He’d also closed up cupboards and knew the coffee was a finicky issue and that things were occasionally left on the floor.  But of course the lighting isn’t as soft once you’ve uttered (on video, no less) “’til death.”  These small things lose their charm.

So at the end of a long day of towels and filters and newspapers, Howard let out a laugh — a forced, insincere laugh to hide the irritation Ellen hadn’t yet learned to detect.  He put his long arms clear around her, maybe instinctively to protect her from the blunt edge, and then he said, “You’re going to take some getting used to.”

You’re going to take some getting used to, that’s what he said.

Ellen was still kicking herself eight years later for not saying something right back, “Well, so are you!”  Because by not saying it she’d handed everything over, she’d let Howard define them from the get-go.  Their marriage, and Ellen, were things he’d have to get used to.  His life was something she had disturbed, had upset.  (It was his place before theirs.)  And Ellen caught off guard, it not having occurred to her she would be something he’d have to get used to, had conceded it with her silence.  She had agreed with Howard in her failure to rebut, apologized with her lack of retort. 

Howard, they’d established, was fine.  Ellen would take getting used to.

.. and I’m a little scared.  This facebook stuff is a bit fancy for me.  But I was just asked to be another “friend”, so while I was over there I decided to poke Lisa.  I hope it didn’t hurt her, or violate my marriage vows.  I’ll find out in due time, I suppose. 

The Good Wife is going horribly slow.  But here’s a clip.

The Jenks, like everyone else on their block and the next block and the blocks on either side of those, lived in a four-bedroom house with 2.1 baths.  It boasted a “great room” with sliding glass doors that opened up to a small white-fenced yard.  There was wood in the kitchen, on the floor, it was light brown.  Everywhere else there was carpet; white in the “blue” room, berber where they kept the tv.   

They had a two-car garage, half of which was kept clear for Ellen’s minivan, the other half for bicycles and wagons, the lawnmower, and things Howard brought back from Home Depot. 

They parked a Camry outside, in the driveway.

You can bring me lunch if you want, I’m almost hungry.  A big salad with some spinach and maybe greek-y with olives and feta. 

Tonight I’m making a souffle.  I never have before and I want to, I should have by now.  I have three days, still, to accomplish stuff before I’m 40.   That’s it for now.   

Birthdays are fun, with their cakes and ice cream and singing.  I like A.’s birthday, I wish it was back. 

But sailing on, here’s a little ditty I think A. will like.  I apologize right now for the cursing, it’s art remember.  I’m cursing for the sake of art.  By the way, in the early part of A.’s birthday, he read to me from Calvin Trillin, it was sweet.  Fatherhood, I think, is the book, H. gave it to him.  He read a passage about how writers are ruthless in getting material –going so far sometimes as to provoke family members into arguments or scenes that will render it. 

Sick, isn’t it?  But bills.  They have to get paid. 

Anyway, here’s a passage I’m working on right this second, it needs a decent bit of work.  Ellen has a fear of doors — the knocking and ringing of them and what happens here doesn’t help. 

Monday the doorbell rang and it rattled Ellen, even though Howard was home.  A doorbell was rare in their cul-de-sac, up on their hill, there was little foot traffic.  Neighbors didn’t borrow sugar and church memberships had peaked, their ambassadors had stopped coming round. 

Ellen opened the door to an unshaven man in sleeveless t-shirt and jeans.

She smiled at him, Ellen smiled when she was confused.  She tried to pull an image or name out of her head — who was this man, how did she know him, it was clear she should. 

“So, listen, if you have a problem with me you should just talk to me directly.”

“Hi,” she said, still smiling.

“Where’s your husband?” Sleeveless t-shirt said back, more directive than question, he wasn’t smiling.  Then she placed him.  It had been weeks; she’d forgotten.  Howard.  He must have called the town, must have reported him, they’d written a ticket, now Sidewalk Blocker was here. 

“Where’s your fucking husband.”

“Fuck” in the middle of the day, on her porch, in the sun.  It did nothing to ease Ellen’s fear of doors. 

more »

I’m getting A. new ant traps.  I’m going shopping at Lowe’s after work if you want to come. 

If you can’t meet me at Lowe’s you can bring your presents to our house tonight.  He’ll be home.  He’ll have his present-opening pants on. 

Hey, I just realized that although TGW takes place over the course of a year, Howard does not have a birthday.  Ellen does but not Howard.  That is so like Ellen!  Anyway, he needs a birthday.  If you have ideas for Howard’s birthday, after you’ve purchased your presents for A.’s, please send them here (the ideas for Howard’s birthday). 

Update:  I just made Howard a Scorpio if that helps.

Now it’s freezing.  15 Celcius if you must know.  It’s 13.3 C where I’m going so cold there, too. 

I have a cake to pick up and a dog to drop off and there may or may not be a game, which dictates when to pick up Tessa.  I feel like Mrs. Dalloway. 

I’m working for a short time more and then the kitchen must be cleaned and last-minute things done to prepare us to leave.  I know what very few of them are.  I have until night. 

I’m at 128,394 for those of you counting.  Those are words, I’d like to have 80 (thousand).  There’s one whole terrible scene, it’s probably about 3,000 words, it goes on and on and I can’t seem to cut it.  I keep reworking it, like there’s a chance.  I don’t know why I’m so determined, it’s about a pipe that bursts, does that sound interesting to you?  No, of course not, still it’s there it won’t go away. 

Here’s a thing about bugs to hold you until I come back.  I don’t expect you to hear much from me in New York. 

Howard swatted the spiders down for three days straight but grew tired of it.  They were back within the hour, it was futile.

The exterminator was impotent.  “Spiders are your friend,” he told Ellen, very serious, standing on her porch with his bottles and tiny hose.  “They keep out the pests.”

“I don’t want so many friends,” Ellen said and then he told her a story about his neighbor and a fence, but she missed the point.

One Thursday she stepped out the front door and walked face first into three of them.  She batted them off but their stringy, sticky ooze clung to her face.  It was too much, she stopped going outside.  She watched the yard grow wild through the sliding glass doors, she opened the wine now by 4:00.  She let the kids out to play, watching them from behind a screen.  Everywhere she moved, every moment, Ellen felt things crawling on her, felt tiny spindled legs shuffling over her shoulders, rappelling off her knees, ambling daintily — plip, plip, plip — from her neck to her back.  She tried to dismiss it, she recognized paranoia.  But then on the few times she gave in and looked, there one was, pale yellow and thin-legged sidling nonchalantly up her calf.  Even the pretty ones terrified her.  She swatted, then smashed furiously with a sandal, her heart raced ridiculously high. 

Terror, Ellen thought.  I am terror-filled.  No good can come of the pure hateful relish I bring to their murder. 

See you later cats and dolls. 

Okay, then, you asked for it.

He thought of her stories as a television that didn’t shut off, buzzing and humming in the background from show to show from break to break, but then suddenly without warning demanding he interact.  “Did you hear me?” 

What to do when the television demands participation?  It violates every rule.

What to do if the television insists, while you’re in the room with it, that you talk back?  That you respond to what it says, that you keep up with every thread, the laugh-track of its sitcoms, its documentary of a bronze foundry, its Clint Eastwood movie, its cooking show, its Pro Bowl football game, its commercials — what if the television asked at the end of every plug for Diet Coke, “So, Howard, what do you think, do you think you’ll buy it?  Did that make you thirsty for Diet Coke, will you stop drinking Pepsi?  Are you listening to me?”

This was his problem with Ellen’s stories, they didn’t shut off and they demanded activity.  He lived in fear of entering a room where she stood, having no power over the controls.  She turned on and off, she switched channels and volume at random. 

He wouldn’t have minded listening to her if he weren’t required to account for so much of it.