I Adjust to Autumn

The weather is fine, or it rains. The dog needs me, or sleeps. The children are joyous, or upset. My husband is near, or in Miami.

Music means too much, or is noise. My dreams stick, or dissolve. I am a beauty, but I am fat. My hair is too long, then too short.

My mitten is lost, or is found. I’m doing too much, or not much. I don’t spend a thing, or I splurge. I did, but I don’t have a jacket.

I am soaked, or dry as a bone. The leaves go, but don’t worry about it. We broke our bed, we still have a mattress. I am in love, or I am alone.

One morning last week Henry wore my socks to school. You would think that socks would be, like clouds or waves, anonymous things, too nondescript and numerous to keep track of, but in fact I have some favorite socks and I could tell, just looking at the ankle trim of his socks, that these were they. “Mmmm, they’re so comfortable,” he said. “I really like them.” One day a long time ago, some anonymous day, in fact, unmarked, two gametes joined to produce a zygote, which became a morula and then, of course, a blastocyst. Then, after the proper amount of time, plus, it seemed, a few extra days, a boy. Then the boy started wearing my socks, and waking up at 6:30 on a Sunday morning in the Berkshires to watch the mist, which filled the valley, burn off, and to see three deer eat at the crab apple tree, stooping to pick fallen apples from the ground. “You know,” he said, “these socks are a little tight. Do they really fit you?” And he ran off to class, away from me and John. We are a drag on his great spirits in the morning.

Yesterday I ripped my contact in half and removed half my contact from my eye. Then our bed broke. Then, today, I took the boys and the dog for a walk around a lake. As we walked, and the dog strained at her leash, the boys posed questions to me that all required immediate answers, which then inspired other questions. Their goal, it seemed to me, was to force me into an insupportable answer, or to concede that my rule-making was essentially arbitrary, or to become a tyrant. Can I throw a stone in the lake? You may. Can my brother? He may. Can we destroy lily pads with our stones? I think so. If we can destroy one or two lily pads with our little stones, may we now heft enormous boulders into the lake? May we heft four or five apiece? No, you may only throw one more, each. Fine, two more. Now you may never throw another rock in the lake again.

Tyrant. At the optometrist’s office, after we left the lake, the doctor dyed my eye yellow, and turned my eyelid inside out. I had stared, since I broke the contact, at my own eyeball for fifteen minutes at a time, trying to locate the clear scrap that was causing me so much pain. It was hidden from me, and only the doctor's methodical searching, his light, the thing that you rest your head in to immobilize it, this dye, was able to discover it. When he did, what relief I felt! But even as relief flowed through me, I had questions for the doctor.

I.

David was in Japan, so I took the boys to the Intrepid, hot and crowded on a summer weekend. I hadn’t, previously, focused on this, but one thing I enjoy is militaristic sight-seeing. I visit the places where people killed each other, and look at the instruments they used to do so. I take my children with me, so they can play with the guns that have been disarmed but left for us to handle. We imagine ourselves officers, pilots, bombers, grunts.

What should we do? Should we look away?

II.

Outside the library one afternoon this week, women sorted donated books that had been left out in the rain. They set them up along the wall, in the sun, to dry. Two older folks, a man and a woman, sat sleeping in their wheelchairs while their aides sat behind them on the bench, then walked over to look at the books. I imagined that David and I were there, asleep, in the wheelchairs. That we were out in the sun, in public, unaware of our surroundings, but watched after, cared for, together. This was almost unbearable. I went to my car and drove home. When I came back to the library, after lunch, the older couple was awake, and being helped into a car. The man waved at me, friendly and insistent, as I drove by, so I waved back.

A voyage is a grand thing: It begins with terror, but the terror is not bad, the terror is good, the terror allows you to see everything clearly, to understand that you are at risk, that life is unstable, that some of the yellow flowers growing by the side of the driveway are daisies but that one is not, it is different, it is more beautiful than the daisies, and you don’t know its name.

Then there’s a flight.

You stand on line for bottles of water and margherita pizzas at the food stand at Versailles. You are in the garden but you are hidden from the garden, on line at the food stand at Versailles. Later your husband will say to you, I measure my life in trips to Versailles. The line to buy food at Versailles is long, and slow-moving. You are behind a group of people who eventually notice a wild Polish woman trying to cut the whole line. You are united with them—Yes! Yes!—as they tell her in French—she doesn’t speak French—that she should go stand on the end of the line. She just wants water! She tries to explain. But that is what everyone wants on the line for food at Versailles. Everyone wants bottles of water, because it is hot and dusty at Versailles. She leaves for the back of the line, then comes back to plead her case again to the women in front of you. In the end, she is allowed, because she can’t be stopped, to cut in front of them and order her water. She seems entirely bewildered by the problem for which she just found an effective solution.

At the taxi stand outside the gates of Versailles there is another problem, which can also be solved: the taxis won’t take you the train station, because it is close. They won’t take you to Montrouge, where your friends live, because that’s not what they do. They won’t tell you what they do, even if you speak French and can be abusive in French. But if you ask them if they’ll take you to the Sixth Arrondissement they will take you there, and charge you what the meter reads, which is fifty euros.

That’s fine, that’s how things are. You can go to Versailles many times. Your husband has been many times, he measures his life in trips to Versailles. But no matter how many times you go to Versailles, you will never get further than a certain point. You will never see more than three fountains. You will never see the inside of the chateau. You will have to cut things short. Then, one day, either because you have grown old, and your children have left home, or because you are lucky, you will come to Versailles and find you have time enough for everything. You will also find that you have seen everything you wanted to see, and there is nothing left to do. You will be bored by Versailles.

You embark on a canoe trip down the Sorgue. Fat trout hide in the shadows of the Sorgue’s cold water. Fisherman stand in the flow. Your husband is given the back position, because he is stronger than you are. The children sit in the middle, and you sit in the front. When you go down a small rapid, your seat fills with water. You pull over to the side of the Sorgue to dump the water out of your seat. But when you get back in the boat, the current is strong, and you are pulled into the trees that hang over the water’s edge. You lay back to avoid a branch, you try to force it away, but it hits your son in the face. You blame your husband for steering badly. You are ashamed of yourself, then get over it. This will be your favorite part of the trip.

At night your husband drives home from dinner à deux. The road is a narrow twisting mountain road that takes you through the southern hills of the Luberon. The advantages to driving this road at night is that lights tells you other cars are approaching, and that, unable to see clearly what's coming, you never put on unmanageable bursts of speed. The disadvantages are that the other drivers are drunk, that it’s easy to make mistakes, and that you might die.

The flight home takes place entirely during the day time. It is always sunny out the windows, although the window shades are mostly pulled down. You must make eight-and-a-half hours disappear. Eight-and-a-half hours of sunlight, of the same sounds, of the same smells, of the same people, of the same ideas, of the same hunger. Eight-and-a-half hours of eternity. You do it, but you’re not sure how you did it, or whether you could do it again.