From Raymond Carver's "Gazebo"--
That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.
I go, "Holly, this can't continue. This has got to stop."
We are sitting on the sofa in one of the upstairs suites. There were any number of vacancies to choose from. But we needed a suite, a place to move around in and be able to talk. So we'd locked up the motel office that morning and gone upstairs to a suite.
She goes, "Duane, this is killing me."
We are drinking Teacher's with ice and water. We'd slept awhile between morning and afternoon. Then she was out of bed and threatening to climb out the window in her undergarments. I had to get her in a hold. We were only two floors up. But even so.
"I've had it," she goes. "I can't take it anymore."
She puts her hand to her cheek and closes her eyes. She turns her head back and forth and makes this humming noise.
I could die seeing her like this.
"Take what?" I go, though of course I know.
"I don't have to spell it out for you again," she goes. "I've lost control. I've lost pride. I used to be a proud woman."
She's an attractive woman just past thirty. She is tall and has long black hair and green eyes, the only green-eyed woman I've ever known. In the old days I used to say things about her green eyes, and she'd tell me it was because of them she knew she was meant for something special.
And didn't I know it!
I feel so awful from one thing and the other.
I can hear the telephone ringing downstairs in the office. It has been ringing off and on all day. Even when I was dozing I could hear it. I'd open my eyes and look at the ceiling and listen to it ring and wonder at what was happening to us.
But maybe I should be looking at the floor.
"My heart is broken," she goes. "It's turned to a piece of stone. I'm no good. That's what's as bad as anything, that I'm no good anymore."
"Holly," I go.
-Another showstopper from Raymond Carver. The "Mad Men" bits this one calls to mind? When Megan and Don are slowly drifting apart in Season Seven. In "The Strategy," Don suggests he could fly out to see Megan in L.A. And Megan looks away and says something puzzling, i.e. "Let's meet midway, in a hotel somewhere. A place where there's not so much history." And then the two have to pretend this is fun and exciting, when really they are dying inside. Exquisitely painful! And then in the next episode, Don is on the phone: "I'm going to get fired. I can finally move to California, to be with you." And: long, excruciating silence. A breakup is a kind of dance, where people can't say what they really mean. Carver's "Gazebo" shows this beautifully, with empty statement after empty statement: "I'm no good," "this can't continue," "this is killing me." There's a kind of code, a ballet: The story feels so real, you might imagine you're watching a documentary (a film of one of your own breakups). That's how sensitive Carver's ear is.
-Often, a Carver story has an odd spin. The baker who unwittingly harasses the young mother in mourning. The waitress floored by the grotesquely fat diner. In "Gazebo," the two young married proprietors of a shitty hotel have locked themselves in a suite above their office to go through their marital death throes. As they fight, there are unanswered calls and lights flashing--cars fleeing the parking lot, drivers in fits of disgust. The decaying motel mirrors the decaying marriage. There's also that killer first paragraph: She licked Teacher's from my belly, then, a few hours later, she was trying to jump out the window. A quick, brutal marriage in two sentences: Sex in the morning, suicide in the afternoon. (The wife rightly states that the husband is thinking about his girlfriend while in the act of marital fucking, and the husband, stunned by the wife's acuity, must deny, deny, deny. This leads to the suicide attempt. The narrator is like a figure from Junot Diaz's "This Is How You Lose Her." Though he is the cheater, he is also the one who wants to hold on to the marriage. The Divided Self. Men are weaker than women: It's Holly who has the courage to demand a showdown, the courage to state that the affair is still happening, and, ultimately, the courage to suggest that the marriage really is over. "In this too, she was right.")
-I really love this story's attention to marital charades. To the farce of a dying relationship. Having been in a decaying five-year domestic "thing," with a Duane-ish figure, I really derive therapy from Carver's unblinking view of human self-delusion. Duane claims to believe that he and his wife can have a ripe old age; they will look back on their motel days with fondness. But their motel days are not at all like the young days of the couple with the gazebo, the couple who brought guests and musicians to the outdoor space. That couple was multiplying, being fruitful. For Duane and Holly, visitors do not arrive; visitors run away. Visitors can sense the rot in the marriage, the rot in the motel, and they cannot escape quickly enough. Holly does not need to say, "This is over." She says as much with one word: "Duane." (Subtext! "Duane" can mean any number of things! Have you not been in this particular relationship?)
-This story is more minimalist than the later "Small, Good Thing." But it still has exquisite details and gestures. Duane staring at the ceiling when he should be staring at the floor (in shame). Holly, in distress: "turning her head back and forth and making this humming noise." Duane with his unintentionally eloquent evasiveness (so bland it's gorgeous): "I feel so awful from one thing and the other." Juanita's bold switch, from using "Mister" to using "Duane." The microscope Carver uses, the way he can zoom in on things the rest of us would miss: You might think of "Fat," with the speaker dwelling on the diner's "thick, creamy fingers." Carver finds epic tragedies in pedestrian situations, with inarticulate, less-than-glamorous characters. He tells sad, even dingy, stories, but there's something exhilarating when you read his work. You're encountering a poet, a first-rate mind. Someone who saw things no one--really no one--else could see, and who found a way to put his vision into words.
That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.
I go, "Holly, this can't continue. This has got to stop."
We are sitting on the sofa in one of the upstairs suites. There were any number of vacancies to choose from. But we needed a suite, a place to move around in and be able to talk. So we'd locked up the motel office that morning and gone upstairs to a suite.
She goes, "Duane, this is killing me."
We are drinking Teacher's with ice and water. We'd slept awhile between morning and afternoon. Then she was out of bed and threatening to climb out the window in her undergarments. I had to get her in a hold. We were only two floors up. But even so.
"I've had it," she goes. "I can't take it anymore."
She puts her hand to her cheek and closes her eyes. She turns her head back and forth and makes this humming noise.
I could die seeing her like this.
"Take what?" I go, though of course I know.
"I don't have to spell it out for you again," she goes. "I've lost control. I've lost pride. I used to be a proud woman."
She's an attractive woman just past thirty. She is tall and has long black hair and green eyes, the only green-eyed woman I've ever known. In the old days I used to say things about her green eyes, and she'd tell me it was because of them she knew she was meant for something special.
And didn't I know it!
I feel so awful from one thing and the other.
I can hear the telephone ringing downstairs in the office. It has been ringing off and on all day. Even when I was dozing I could hear it. I'd open my eyes and look at the ceiling and listen to it ring and wonder at what was happening to us.
But maybe I should be looking at the floor.
"My heart is broken," she goes. "It's turned to a piece of stone. I'm no good. That's what's as bad as anything, that I'm no good anymore."
"Holly," I go.
-Another showstopper from Raymond Carver. The "Mad Men" bits this one calls to mind? When Megan and Don are slowly drifting apart in Season Seven. In "The Strategy," Don suggests he could fly out to see Megan in L.A. And Megan looks away and says something puzzling, i.e. "Let's meet midway, in a hotel somewhere. A place where there's not so much history." And then the two have to pretend this is fun and exciting, when really they are dying inside. Exquisitely painful! And then in the next episode, Don is on the phone: "I'm going to get fired. I can finally move to California, to be with you." And: long, excruciating silence. A breakup is a kind of dance, where people can't say what they really mean. Carver's "Gazebo" shows this beautifully, with empty statement after empty statement: "I'm no good," "this can't continue," "this is killing me." There's a kind of code, a ballet: The story feels so real, you might imagine you're watching a documentary (a film of one of your own breakups). That's how sensitive Carver's ear is.
-Often, a Carver story has an odd spin. The baker who unwittingly harasses the young mother in mourning. The waitress floored by the grotesquely fat diner. In "Gazebo," the two young married proprietors of a shitty hotel have locked themselves in a suite above their office to go through their marital death throes. As they fight, there are unanswered calls and lights flashing--cars fleeing the parking lot, drivers in fits of disgust. The decaying motel mirrors the decaying marriage. There's also that killer first paragraph: She licked Teacher's from my belly, then, a few hours later, she was trying to jump out the window. A quick, brutal marriage in two sentences: Sex in the morning, suicide in the afternoon. (The wife rightly states that the husband is thinking about his girlfriend while in the act of marital fucking, and the husband, stunned by the wife's acuity, must deny, deny, deny. This leads to the suicide attempt. The narrator is like a figure from Junot Diaz's "This Is How You Lose Her." Though he is the cheater, he is also the one who wants to hold on to the marriage. The Divided Self. Men are weaker than women: It's Holly who has the courage to demand a showdown, the courage to state that the affair is still happening, and, ultimately, the courage to suggest that the marriage really is over. "In this too, she was right.")
-I really love this story's attention to marital charades. To the farce of a dying relationship. Having been in a decaying five-year domestic "thing," with a Duane-ish figure, I really derive therapy from Carver's unblinking view of human self-delusion. Duane claims to believe that he and his wife can have a ripe old age; they will look back on their motel days with fondness. But their motel days are not at all like the young days of the couple with the gazebo, the couple who brought guests and musicians to the outdoor space. That couple was multiplying, being fruitful. For Duane and Holly, visitors do not arrive; visitors run away. Visitors can sense the rot in the marriage, the rot in the motel, and they cannot escape quickly enough. Holly does not need to say, "This is over." She says as much with one word: "Duane." (Subtext! "Duane" can mean any number of things! Have you not been in this particular relationship?)
-This story is more minimalist than the later "Small, Good Thing." But it still has exquisite details and gestures. Duane staring at the ceiling when he should be staring at the floor (in shame). Holly, in distress: "turning her head back and forth and making this humming noise." Duane with his unintentionally eloquent evasiveness (so bland it's gorgeous): "I feel so awful from one thing and the other." Juanita's bold switch, from using "Mister" to using "Duane." The microscope Carver uses, the way he can zoom in on things the rest of us would miss: You might think of "Fat," with the speaker dwelling on the diner's "thick, creamy fingers." Carver finds epic tragedies in pedestrian situations, with inarticulate, less-than-glamorous characters. He tells sad, even dingy, stories, but there's something exhilarating when you read his work. You're encountering a poet, a first-rate mind. Someone who saw things no one--really no one--else could see, and who found a way to put his vision into words.
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