ELENA

Do you remember Elena? Well of course you do, because you spied us both peeing behind your car in the parking lot when you came out of Walgreens with your saline nose spray. You took pictures of her pretending to be dead in the swimming pool. She popped up to say that she hadn't drowned, someone had strangled her and then dumped her body. Buoyed by her enormous sun-burnt boobs. Elena my friend in darkness who could follow me down the hole, get it, and laugh. I was sure as hell glad to move away to where she couldn't reach me.

She changes her cell phone so often that I can't keep track of her number, and then when she calls there is no way for me to fence it. She is hysterical and drug-addled, and she wants me to reassure her by telling her that she is not hysterical, and not drug-addled. We toyed briefly with the idea that she would come visit and I would do a documentary on her. I could film her just walking down the street, though Boston's not as game for her kind as NY, so I'm not sure what kind of attention she'd garner. Oh my god, I love Elena.

Her sister called me this morning to tell me that Elena was found unconscious in a parking lot behind a bar. She was rushed to the hospital, and she is currently in the ICU. This is painful to hear, but you know, it is so very typical of Elena. I remember her saying "Nobody has the right to make you better if you don't want to be better."

You are not supposed to let love ruin your life; you are supposed to rewire your brain to understand that there are many fish in the sea, and one lover, boyfriend, or husband out the door frees you up to find someone else. But I believe that one person can haunt and ruin you for love for the rest of your life, partially because they want to do this to you, and mostly because you ask them to do this to you. It's completely mental; the one in question could be dead, which would make it even harder to get over them since dead people are always perfect. You could even be married for thirty years and still think "this one I'm with currently is nice and what a good time we've had, but he's not the one I really wanted". The one you want could be a horrible person, and never love you back, and your neglected spouse could be gentle and sweet and adoring. Happens all the time.

It happens because some of us crave tragedy. Ruled by our humours. From my vantage point as a woman, the object of desire is imagined to be better, either smarter IQ-wise or stronger, and the bearer of some secret mystery to the meaning of being alive. Unequal footing means that you are always slipping down into your obsession whether or not the other person returns the interest.

Leaves are perfect. Leaves when they turn brown and fall off trees are perfect. Leaves with little roads eaten out of them by worms are perfect. Worms are perfect. Twelve bored lions who kill an old elephant in the night for sport are perfect. But humans. I can say I am perfect nature too, but I don't believe it.

SUFFOCATION

Blank blank blank. But shells can be dangerous.

I am in the tub rolling around with him, and all kinds of people, the whole world as I know it in fact, are yelling and banging on the door. I am terrified and looking for windows to jump out of, and he is just chuckling. Who cares about them? Me, I care, because I am total patsy.

This is what mothers can do to you. Mine always warned not to give in to rebellious itches or I'd die like Isadora Duncan, wrapped up in my own scarves. Her life was a moral joke, and her death was the punch line. With a mom like mine, who needs the scarves?

GRANITE AND BEIGE PLAGUE


Zumi has been sick with what in all probability is that Flu. She had a very high fever for two days, seemed to recover, and then became worse with more fever and a cough. She slept and wouldn't budge for 14-17 hour stretches. I tried to shake her awake to get some water into her, and filled an old baby bottle with milk thinking I could pull her thumb out of her mouth and sneak the bottle in while she slept. She would cry as I became more and more frustrated, begging her to take some sips of water or juice. The light was gone from her eyes and the house was quiet. She couldn't bring herself to get out of bed even to use the bathroom.

On Monday Freddy took her to see the doctor and waited with fifty other sick children and their parents. The doctor took X-rays of her chest an called us back that night at 10 p.m., explaining that she had just finished seeing the last of her patients for the day. This same doctor last month advised us not to give the H1N1 vaccine to Zumi, saying that it had not been tested enough, and the potential life-threatening risk of complications from the immunization was not worth the protection it offered. Doesn't really matter now, since immunizations aren't available in our area yet, but I am thinking I should look for a more educated doctor who won't confuse this year's swine flu with something that came out in the 1970's.

Then I have this new student Monday, a tall woman with bobbed hair whose clothes are so new they still smell like Nordstrom's. In fact, the sweater she wore still had tissue covering the buttons at the sleeve cuffs. I think she wants to learn piano because it's kinda cool, and she is a kinda cool chick.

She was all out of breath because she'd been run ragged by a pair of gay designers from the city, not Boston next door, but NYC. They are doing her living room. I asked her what kind of design they were going for. It's all beige, she said, all different textures and shades of beige. It's fantastic. She and her husband had just been to Barnes and Nobles to pick out an obscene quantity of books with bindings that matched the decor: books bound in different shades of beige. I know it sounds crazy, she said, but as the designers explained, our interiors are a work of art that we live in, and every detail is important.

The matching books idea is so awful it sounds like a parody. This is something that publishers need to be aware of; would The Tinker's Wife sell more copies in maroon or chestnut since next fall's line of Ethan Allen will be in rust?

Who are these people who live in magnificent plywood houses with machine-stamped molding and granite countertops in the kitchen and 63 recessed lights overhead? This is the good American life, to be found less than three miles from Walden Pond. It's not quiet desperation, it's just beige shit. I want a different student. I want a little black girl whose mother smokes crack. Her name was Felicia, they never paid me for her lessons, and all she had to practice on was a rinky-dink Casio which I had to provide the batteries for. I left her in Kansas.

So take this: young piano teacher distressed by failure falls for older business man who takes lessons from her and reminds her of her father. Or older business man, bored with biking and searching for meaning now that his kids have flown the nest falls for odd piano teacher with bendy legs who opens the door to the spiritual plane of music. These set-ups play themselves out so predictably.

He doesn't realize that he puts out signals. He is a straight-shooter; he loves his wife, loves his job, loves God and his kids and his dogs and fall in New England. In a head like his, you can't love those things and make room for a nervous twit to come in once a week for some nookie, and anyway, there isn't time for it.

He comes in late usually, beet red and grinning. He has to comment on how I look, my clothes, or my hair, and I deflect with something snide. He is just living out "How to Make Friends and Influence People" which is so much a part of him because of his job that he can't approach another person with any other gesture. He is noticing me, and focusing on me, and making me feel liked. It's part of his training.

Before we start he has an amusing anecdote to relay that has been worked out during his drive out of Boston, and I'm sure it's used again later for light dinner conversation. Last time it was about the man at the fish market who ordered two pounds of raw tuna and ate it right out of the butcher paper while standing there in the store.

When we open the piano book it's all painful, his struggle to get his brain into his fingertips, my feigned patience which is really just me shutting off my ears and daydreaming. He plays a five-finger arrangement of Yankee Doodle for the ninth lesson in a row. He scoots off the seat very quickly when I want to show him something at keys. I can smell his cologne which is subtle, and I can smell my own nerves out of my armpits. It's stupid, I can see how stupid it is. But after the lesson, I feel happy.

Is writing this an action? And I have to suffer the consequences? Fuck. There's never a choice. You think you have a choice, but whatever happens goes down too fast for there to have been any personal liberty playing part. We know exactly what happens to Zulieka. What is the point of her?