The Collected Stories of Diane Williams Read online

  “What I can’t get over,” the Dutchman said, “in your country, are all those rich people’s names plastered all over your museums—those plaques. Rich people in our country would never do that. They would be so embar­rassed to do that.”

  “They would be?” she asked.

  “Yes. They would never do that.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t really do it either,” she said. “Maybe a tiny tag that I had donated this or that, but not a huge plaque announcing a whole wing or any­thing like that. That would be embarrassing. It would be so obvious.”

  “What you were after?” the Dutchman laughed. “Are you very rich?”

  “What?” she said.

  “You, are you rich?” the Dutchman asked.

  “I suppose that I am,” Mrs. Osborne said. “Will you excuse me, please?”

  In the mirror of her host’s bathroom she saw her small oval face and her large earrings, each earring the size of one of her ears, rectangles of lapis lazuli framed in gold. She was embarrassed by the size of the ear­rings. She took the earrings off. She slipped them into her purse.

  She was embarrassed by the size of her purse, the leather was too luxuriantly soft. She remembered the price of the purse, of the earrings.

  She found Mr. Osborne in the host’s kitchen, pour­ing himself a glass of wine. “I want to go home,” she whispered.

  “You tired?” Mr. Osborne asked.

  “No,” she answered, “I am not tired.”

  She held her gloved hands up in front of her as they walked to their car. She thought her gloves were a gaudy shade of green. She remembered what she’d paid for the gloves. It would not bother her never to wear them again.

  Sliding inside their car, she was afraid suddenly they were being watched. In this neighborhood, for the cost of the car, they could be killed. They could be killed anywhere.

  Mr. Osborne petted his wife’s arm, before he turned the key to begin the drive home. He was petting the sleek seal fur of her coat. One of his hands, the glowing flesh of it, was all that she could see. She was frantic. She thought, What if I am really adored too—if it is true! She remembered.

  Power

  How do they do it? She cannot bend her legs.

  Here I go, I must see him propping up her legs some way onto his shoulders, or with some contraption that they have had to devise, or do they simply put a bunch of something under her hips, or does he get into her from behind when they are lying down? or something else so obvious, but I don’t know. She sits in his lap in a chair? and does it hurt her, because it is awkward? or do they even bother to try, because it is never fun? Or does she do it for him some way with her mouth? How would she do it that way?

  Her legs shine under the mesh nylon of her hose. I look right at her legs when she says, “Oh, these legs.” I do not know these people, the husband, and the wife, or the driver of this car that we are all paying to please get us home. At least, I know I have been away.

  I do not know where to begin with this injury—with the sharpness of her nose which seems to solve some­thing, the brightness of the light shooting off from her lacquered cane, or her laughing many more times than once, so that her husband said to her, “What is the matter?” or her ever-constant soft drawing up of a breath through her nose—once, then twice, and then pause—the sense of the stupid loss of time, that for once did not matter to me.

  I thought, Let us keep on at this looking for the house they are looking for. It does not matter that the driver of the car cannot find it. Once I thought that.

  She said to me, “I did not mean to throw my cane at you.”

  The door of the car had opened, the cane had been flung by someone onto the seat toward me, then her body. She had flung her body onto the back seat the wrong way—flat out and on her back—because of her problem, her big problem, her husband’s bigger prob­lem, their terrific problem.

  She said, “No, this is not it,” whenever the driver beamed a light on a house.

  I said, “It is so dark.” Finally, I said angrily, “Is this even the street?”

  The driver said, “Yes!” and then I saw locust in block black letters on a white sign on the corner at just that moment when the driver spoke.

  She said, “No, this is not it.”

  When finally it was the house—those relatives, those people up there who came out onto that cement porch, who maybe call themselves friends, were not happy enough to receive their guests. That chirruping woman with her arms around the other woman didn’t fool me. Nobody fooled me, but probably somebody was being fooled.

  At least I knew where I lived. I could say to the driver, “Straight east now, and then left at the light.” I could say it and say it and keep on with it, even with a righteous sense of anger—thank God—with a sense of—You listen to me! This is how you get somewhere!

  But all this is not about failed love.

  Somebody please tell me that this is all about some­thing else entirely which is more important.

  Somebody smarter and dearer than I, be the one available for my best, my most tenderest embrace when I have been convinced by you.

  I could be a believer.

  What Is It When God Speaks?

  This was the house which once inspired a sister of one of the guests to declare, “People kill for this.”

  That’s where the guests were on the perfect after­noon, not the sister.

  It was a shame the afternoon became evening before the guests had to leave, not that anything was less lovely because it was evening.

  There was a tender quality to the lack of light on the screened-in porch where they all were sitting, as there was also a tender quality to the small girl too old to be in the highchair, but she was not too large for it. The girl had insisted the highchair be carried out from the kitchen onto the porch. She had insisted on being put up into the highchair. She was ecstatic to be locked in behind the tray.

  Her hands tapped and stroked the tray. She was not up there to eat. It was past time for that.

  Behind the handsomest man on the porch was the array of green leafy trees and lawn, lit by a yard light, veiled by the black porch screen. The handsomest man smiled. He was serene.

  Across from him, his wife, on the chintz flowered sofa, who was the most beautiful woman, smiled se­renely at her husband. She said of her husband to the others, “He never wants to leave here. Look at him! He likes it. The food is so good and healthy. He can keep swimming in your pool. Look at him. He is so happy!”

  Then the man lifted up his girl, who was smaller than the other girl, who had never ever—his girl—been irritable even once, there at that house, and he put her up onto his shoulders. Her short legs were pressing on his chest, because he had wanted her legs to do that.

  Her father felt his daughter on the back of him and on the front of him, on top of him, all at once. She was slightly over his head too, her head was. Her light heels were tapping lightly on his chest. He took her hands in his. She was ready for the dive that would not be possible unless he would fling her from him.

  He should.

  To Die

  I undressed myself. I wanted sex—I wanted sex—I wanted sex—I wanted sex.

  I climbed into bed with my wife.

  She wanted sex with me. She always wants sex with me.

  When I discharged myself this time into her, I was feeling myself banging as high up into her as I have ever gotten myself up into her.

  I had just done the same with another woman who always wants sex with me, too.

  There is another woman that I do the same with.

  There is another woman.

  There is another woman. There are five women who always want sex with me. They are always ready. It does not matter when or what or where, but they are ready.

  I have a great deal of money which I have earned.
I have physical beauty for a man. I have intelligence. I have work to do which I love to do, but women are what I prefer to anything, to lie down with them, the turning to touch the woman and knowing I will be received for sex as soon as I wish to be welcome.

  I have been at it like this, this way for years. It does not matter when I will die. I have had everything I have ever wanted.

  I should die now.

  There should be a killing at my house.

  There should be much, so much more for me, which I am not able to conceive of.

  A Contribution to

  the Theory of Sex

  Danny Ketchem had found himself compelled, or rather, repelled by his lack of understanding of what had become her whole life.

  It is immaterial who she is. She could be his wife, his mother, his daughter, his best woman friend, these, or any combination of these, or add in any other female you can think of that she could be.

  What the female’s life had become is also immaterial, because Danny, in any event, was bound to get con­fused.

  Her name is Nancy Drew. Real people do have her name.

  Then Danny was towering, when Nancy held him, which was her idea, and his penis was sticking itself in between her breasts, as if a button were being pushed.

  Remember, Danny could be a small-sized boy stand­ing on a stool, getting hugged by Nancy, or a tall grown-up, not on a stool, and Nancy could be short.

  Some time later, but not much later, Danny was on Nancy’s lap. This could happen in all of the conceivable cases.

  The object—Nancy’s idea—was for her to wipe that grimace off his face.

  Nancy cannot, she will not bear an ugly face. She tries not to—poor schmuck. She’ll try anything. I know Nancy.

  I want to wipe that grin off her face. It’s so easy when you’re one of us.

  Marriage and the Family

  Every time I go in there I am thinking, This time I will get the sisters straight, which one is which. But each time I go in there I think there is a new sister, one I have never seen before, who gets me mixed up. This new sister will act as though she knows me very well, as though I am quite familiar to her.

  What is the same or almost the same about all of the sisters is this: their hair and their clothing, their faces, their jewelry, their ages, their expressions, their atti­tudes. I do not think they are quintuplets, if there are that many of them, or anything like that, but there is the possibility.

  The sisters run a business where there are balloons around. It is a print and office supply shop in my town. It is new, and they behave as if they will be very successful, or as if they already are.

  Everything is clean, such as stacks of tangerine and fuchsia paper for writing, and pens to match, which must be too expensive to buy. I wouldn’t buy the pens.

  Two or three of the sisters may be married. They wear tiny rectangular or round diamonds set into gold bands, and plain gold wedding bands to go with. A couple of the sisters only wear the diamonds.

  There is a blond child I saw once, who looks happy and well adjusted. One of the sisters laughed and joked with the child. She hugged him and she kissed him.

  A mother of a sister called in once, and she was spoken to sweetly by one of the sisters.

  They do wear very tight pants. The pants hug and squeeze their bottoms so that there must be some dis­comfort for the sisters when they have to sit down to do their work, or even when they just stand—the pants are that tight.

  I have never had an argument with one of the sisters. One of these sisters has never ridiculed me, or made me feel unwelcome, as if I were trying to take over in there, or take advantage of any of them, when I shopped there.

  Not one of the sisters ever yelled at me, told me to get out of her way, or implied that I came into the shop too often, and that something was suspicious.

  I never yelled back at one of the sisters to say I buy a lot in her shop, and that I could just go somewhere else. I never said I have my whole life in my hands when I come in there. I never got myself into a rage. I never looked at a sister and thought, You frighten me more than anyone I could ever look at—take a look at you—and your whole attitude is wrong.

  Your attitude is abysmal. Your attitude is as if you have been stung, or are stinging, or are getting ready to be bitten, or to bite.

  The last time I was in the shop, this is what hap­pened: a man was in there. I didn’t know for what purpose. He looked suspicious. He didn’t buy any­thing. He was darting around, and he was looking at me, and looking at me, until I had to pay attention to him. Then he said, “I saw you out there,” meaning out in front of the shop. What he meant was, he had seen the way I had parked my car. I knew that had to be it. I had even surprised myself with the way I had done it. I had never done anything like that parking.

  I was proud of myself like a hero should be proud, who risks her life, or who doesn’t risk her life, but who saves somebody, anybody!

  “You could have killed somebody!” was what that man said to me.

  Oh, My God, the Rapture!

  The man was looking at the woman’s breasts.

  The woman thought, Oh, my God, I’ve forgotten myself, as she saw the man, another patient, at the end of the hall, looking at her, as she realized her paper robe was open, that she had left her paper robe open like that, while she was going as she had been directed to go into another room for the car­diogram. But since he had already seen her, there was no point, she thought, to closing the robe up.

  “Go in there,” the nurse had said. “That’s right.”

  Lying down, waiting for the nurse, the woman looked at the tall window that rose at her feet which to her showed a very boring sight—some greenery and sky—and then the woman thought it would be so right to have a man who was not her husband make love to her. She thought it would be the rightest thing imagin­able, and she was feeling what was to her the glow of perfect good health.

  It was like hand lotion, the woman thought, that the nurse was putting on her breasts in small dabs. The woman didn’t look—like white—she didn’t look, lo­tion, and it was gooey and cool, not painful, very relax­ing, the whole business.

  “Now don’t be alarmed,” the woman told the nurse, “because my cardiogram is like the cardiogram of a sixty-year-old man who has just had an attack. Did the doctor tell you not to be alarmed?”

  “No,” the nurse said, “not for you he didn’t.”

  “I’m just too small in there for my heart,” the woman said. “It’s being squeezed, so it looks funny, and it sounds funny, but I’m all right. It’s all right.”

  There were short black wires that the woman thought the nurse was either untangling or rearranging in the air, and to her the nurse looked happy.

  The woman wanted to make the nurse even happier by chatting with her, by making the nurse laugh. But the woman’s mind came to a stop on it, on the thought of it, on the thought of wanting to make someone happy.

  “Oh, my God,” the woman said.

  The nurse opened her mouth and smiled as if she might be going to say something. She was operating the machine behind the woman’s head which the woman thought was making a small unimportant noise. The whole business was so soothing, the whole cardiogram part. It was the easiest, the most relaxing thing, the woman thought.

  When the doctor hung the woman’s X rays up in front of her, the woman didn’t even want to look.

  When the doctor said, “You see, I think it’s pan­caked,” when the doctor said, “I think it’s because of your funnel chest,” the woman said nothing.

  “You know,” the doctor said to the woman when the woman was leaving, “you ought to come in here more often.”

  The woman didn’t have to pay the bill just then. The nurse said she did not have to, that it was not necessary, but the woman wanted to do it for the nurse.

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nbsp; So the woman said to the nurse, “I want to pay you now. This was wonderful. This never happens. You hardly kept me waiting at all. You took me—” she said, “you took me just when you said you would.”

  The Future of the Illusion

  It was an intimate relation that we had had because hardly anyone else was listening in, except for a new employee who was learning the ropes.

  The clerk looked at these beans, and she said, “Those are the ones I always use.” And I said, “You do?”

  Then she said, “Why don’t you use the canned?”

  That is the finale for that. That is the end of my retelling of it, because that is the end of what I view as the significant event. Everything else about the event withers away for the retelling except for the sight of the clerk’s mouth.

  Questions and answers: How did the clerk and I know when enough talking was enough? I don’t know. Did we care that we were deadly serious? I was surprised by it.

  The clerk’s upper lip is neatly scalloped. Together, her lips pout. They are the same to me as my childhood best friend’s lips—the friend I had physical relations with, with a blanket over our laps on the sofa in my house.

  We were girls side by side touching each other up in there where the form of the flesh is complicated. I do not know if I touched as well as she was touching me. We were about nine or we were ten, or we were eleven, or thirteen. I have no memory of sexual sensation, nor much of anything else.

  I see us from the front because I am the person watching us, standing in front. I am the person who was not there at that time, who does not know whose idea it was to try, who does not know if she was the one who was afraid of being caught, if what she was doing was being done wrong.

  I am still the odd man out, going backward for my training, for a feeling.