Asunder Read online

  She smiles, tells me out of the left side of her mouth that I’m the first one to pass her test.

  I say, I guess you’ve met your match.

  I start behind the ear. She makes her sound and grabs hold of the back of my head, digging her nails into my scalp. Eventually I get to where we both want this to go. I run my tongue back and forth over the spot. The skin feels dead.

  ONE OF MY DAUGHTERS IS CALLED RESNICK

  * * *

  THE BRUISED PARTS OF A BANANA ARE POISON. I’ve gone up to people on street corners—I’ve said, the bruised parts of a banana are poison. I’ve said you mustn’t eat them. I never use the word mustn’t unless I’m talking about the bruised parts of bananas. Only young actresses say the word mustn’t out loud. They are allowed to because they have long curly hair and pretty polished toes. They say I mustn’t eat this whole box of cookies right now. Or they say I mustn’t allow complacency and ennui within a city block of my long curly hair and pretty polished toes. I’ve seen them on street corners and I’ve said to them the bruised parts of a banana are poison. I’ve said you mustn’t eat them. Some of the young actresses thank me for saving their lives and others don’t thank me at all. These thankless ones walk away quickly in some other direction. I like the way the thankless ones walk so it’s always fine with me when this happens. The ones who do thank me are my favorites, though. They have the longest curliest hair and the prettiest polished toes. I tell them all about what is poisonous in the world. Envelopes you have to lick with your tongue, green bell peppers, vitamin C with rose hips, and so on. To make myself clear I ask them what the hell is a rose hip. Not one of them ever knows the answer. What they say is I mustn’t allow Mr. Resnick to push me around anymore. I tell them they are absolutely right about this. Then I ask them who is Mr. Resnick and they answer he is the director, silly. This is another word young actresses say out loud and there’s nothing wrong with it. I like it when the young girls call me silly. I always ask them how they know my name is silly and they giggle. Eventually I tell them I understand what they are saying and then I say one of my daughters is called Resnick as a way of relating to them. This is when that gut love connection explodes all over everyone. It fills the universe. At this moment they know they have to trust that gut love connection because this is what it means to be alive and on the planet. This is what they have waited their entire lives for. Now I invite them home so we can eat unbruised bananas and make long polished gut love all night. On the way I tell them the world is full of all kinds of poison and we have to be careful. I tell them we have to live inside our gut love and not let anyone else in. I tell them I will save their lives every day forever if only they let me.

  TO DEATH I'M STARVING

  * * *

  MAYBE THIS ONE MAN LIES TO ME REPEATEDLY over the course of several years and having had more than enough deceit for one lifetime from this one man I shoot him repeatedly in the chest and head until I tire of the noise and mess and stop shooting. So then I stand over this man who lies to me repeatedly and whom I’ve shot repeatedly and maybe because I once loved and perhaps will continue to love this man I apologize for ruining the new suit he was excited about wearing for the first time. I tell him the suit looks grand. I tell him he looks like an important man in this suit. Not the kind of man who becomes important only after someone shoots him repeatedly but a man whose importance transcends any single event. I even say he exudes prestige with such a suit. This is just the sort of comment he would bask in the glow of had he not been shot repeatedly. He would puff his chest out and strut around like a peacock is what he’d do. But his being shot repeatedly was his own doing or his own undoing and so I don’t feel sorry for him not being able to bask in the glow of the comments I’ve made regarding his new suit. It should be said that at the time the decision to shoot him repeatedly was more of a knee-jerk reaction than a considered decision. Insofar as once I started shooting I kept on shooting rather than thinking twice about it or realizing exactly what I was doing. I have no recollection of what I was feeling while I was shooting him repeatedly only that at the end of it I was tired of the noise and mess. And that before I started shooting I chanted to myself in my head it is to be now it is to be now over and over again. I’m not sure where it is to be now came from as a phrase to chant over and over again. Maybe the man I’ve shot repeatedly uttered it is to be now during a pre-orgasmic stupor once. That is entirely possible given the kind of man he was. It just now strikes me that I am already thinking of him in the past tense like this is something that happened years ago. Amazing how the mind works sometimes. It’s like Darwinian or something, like that survival-of-the-fittest or adapt-or-die or something. And yet the future is something I cannot even conceive of. What tomorrow will find me doing I cannot rightly say. For now I’ve always been curious about what they call human nature. Why people do what they do and how they see themselves. This is one thing this man and I did not have in common although we did have a lot in common. I would ask him if he thought we had too much in common and that being two peas in a pod or cut from the same cloth was an unhealthy situation. He would say he didn’t think of such things. He said whenever you think or talk about a relationship is when you stop having one. He would always make a salient point to either avoid an issue or bring a premature end to a potentially important discussion. It was his one great skill. He was plain good at avoidance although some things he could not avoid like a hail of bullets for instance. For the record his lies ranged from the little white to the big fat. The worst part about the lying was not that it was habitual but instinctive. I would call him on his lies and he’d say you’ll miss me when I’m gone which could very will be true. I imagine I will miss him terribly. For my part the business with the suit was the straw that broke his mother’s back. The suit and the circumstances surrounding the suit. Ostensibly what amounts to a breaking point, although I don’t approve of the phrase breaking point at all. I don’t recall anything breaking except for the frame to that awful seascape and a vase. It wasn’t as if I was looking for an excuse or for something to set me off. I was not lying in wait. He was the one who would lie in wait for me. Sometimes I’d come home and the lights would be off and he’d jump me. He’d make like a cop and have me against the wall spread eagle and frisk me from stem to stern. This is what he liked so I’d humor him. I was what is known as the submissive although that is another phrase I do not care for. Every time my heart would nearly jump out of my chest and he’d say the game was supposed to get your heart pumping as he’d fondle my breasts or some such. The first time he mentioned the word game I said … This is a game to you? He said everything was a game like he was in some spy movie. He was always quoting obscure movies and half the time I had no idea what he was talking about. All in all it was not what you would call a healthy situation. He’d say peculiar things too although nothing sticks out in my memory to illustrate it. He could be hard to figure out sometimes which is something else we have in common. I slipped there. Clearly I meant being hard to figure out was something we had in common and not have in common. It is funny how the mind works sometimes. How wishy-washy how fallible. The man I’ve shot repeatedly was as fallible as they come. And vain. He was hell-bent on buying a new suit although he didn’t need a new suit and couldn’t afford one either. He owes money or used to owe money to everyone and their brother but I guess is off the hook now having been shot repeatedly so all is not lost as far as that end of it is concerned. … How are you going to pay for this new suit? I asked him when he told me he was planning to buy one. He said whatever stupid thing it was he said and then said it wasn’t for me to worry about. Then he lied about some job he might be getting. There was no job. And even if there was a job they weren’t going to give it to him. This lie came on Valentine’s Day and the custom was for him to take me to a fancy dinner. I laid into him about selfishness and narcissism and insensitivity. He made one of those incredulous faces he used to make and said we can still go to dinner but he didn’t
feel like it just then and asked if I was that hungry and then suggested I have something to hold me over. Truth is I wasn’t terribly hungry but said … To death I’m starving … to make a point. I can have a melodramatic flair that borders on the poetic at times and this was another thing this man and I had in common. He said … Maybe if I give you twenty-nine cents a day we can save you from imminent starvation. I laughed but I wasn’t laughing with him I was laughing at him. He couldn’t tell the difference. I said … Even if I was starving to death you wouldn’t even know it. …I’ve been starving to death since I’ve known you. I’m not exactly sure what I meant by that when I said it but I think it was true nevertheless. He reached into his pocket and handed me a dollar bill. He said … This should keep you off a respirator for a few days then. Then he sat himself down on the couch and I went into the bedroom. A few minutes later he proceeded to talk about a television show he’d seen about ancient Indians. I could hear him even though the bedroom door was closed. He’d do this all the time whenever we’d argue. He’d have a conversation with me even though I wasn’t there and he’d talk loudly so I could hear from behind whatever closed door I happened to be at the time. I believe this was to signify that he didn’t need me or something to that effect. He said there were giant earthen mounds scattered across the mid-west and the south and there were scores of skeletons and artifacts buried within these mounds and one of them covered more acreage at the base of it than the great pyramid at Khufu. I could never tell whether the story he was telling from another room had some sort of double meaning or not. I tried to find a connection between this Indian story and what was going on between us but couldn’t. The one aspect of the story I noted was the Khufu part because I think he meant Giza although I could be mistaken. After telling me this I hear him go into the shower where he takes his sweet time. This was roughly when I decided to shoot him repeatedly although it was more of a knee-jerk reaction than a considered decision in most ways. The suit the Indians the starvation Giza Khufu and the shower were all the last straws. He comes out of the shower in a towel and struts around like he’s something to look at. Then he cracks open a beer and drinks it slowly while he drip dries on the couch. All the while I’m thinking it is to be now it is to be now it is to be now. And I’m still not exactly sure where I got it is to be now as a phrase to chant in my head but don’t think it is vitally important at this stage of the game. Eventually he excuses himself and says … I’m going in to change into my new suit so I can take you to your Valentine’s dinner before to death you starve, in that mocking way he has. When he emerges from the bathroom wearing his new suit he holds his arms out and spins around like a model and asks me what I think. This is when I shoot him repeatedly. Some of the bullets hit him in the chest and some in the head and I don’t stop shooting until I tire of the noise and mess.

  ASUNDER

  * * *

  THIS IS TO BE WITHOUT CEREMONY.

  This is to be the marriage of disparate ideas.

  Concerning someone in particular and the kind of woman who signs the guest book at her own son’s wake. On the surface it’s complicated. Deeper down it has to do with something else altogether.

  Someone in particular wanted to compose a story without characters and details. Without a setting. No themes, no ambiguities. Being that someone in particular doesn’t consider himself a writer he feels he can dispense with many rules and regulations.

  And then the kind of woman that takes twenty-five pills a day.

  No flashbacks, no dialogue, no obscure academic references.

  What’s more is someone in particular is shamefully ignorant when it comes to the rules and regulations. For instance, he has no idea what a split infinitive is.

  And then the kind of woman who sends her twelve-year-old grandson a birthday card with a five dollar bill taped to it and writes I am broke under her signature.

  Any use of simile or metaphor or foreshadowing or alliteration or onomatopoeia would be unnecessary in such a story. Nothing at all synecdochical.

  Even if someone in particular knew what any of that meant.

  To heavily second chance the lonely alone.

  And then the kind of woman who applies lipstick at inappropriate times and identifies people by their ethnicity, all of them savages.

  Who’d come running when her husband would whistle for her to come running.

  Which is not to say someone in particular doesn’t respect those who are cognizant of the rules and regulations and adhere to said rules and regulations. That someone in particular doesn’t consider himself a writer should in no way reflect upon any of those people.

  A story without exposition or a conflict or an arc and with nothing at all at stake.

  And then the kind of woman you cannot believe actually raised two children and held down several jobs and who derives a queer satisfaction from having her picture taken and is the kind of woman you can say is the kind of woman for years and never run out of she is the kind of womans.

  Joan of Arc.

  Any assumption that someone in particular is the author of the lines This is to be without ceremony and This is the marriage of two disparate ideas would be premature at this time.

  Joan of Arc being the one who led four thousand French soldiers into Orleans to expel the English in 1429, all at the tender age of sixteen. Then she was taken prisoner by the Burgundians. Then she was burned at the stake in Rouen. Then they made her a saint. Someone in particular has a hard time swallowing any of this.

  Some of this can be considered adulterous.

  Then the kind of woman who is afraid to answer the door lest she be attacked by the Savages probably knows next to nothing about Joan of Arc. The arc of that particular story clearly being Joan herself. Joan was also what was at stake, too.

  Derivative. Superfluous.

  Someone in particular has given little thought to how long such a story should be. If he ever decides to write it, that is.

  A story not subjected to editors or critics or awards or anthologies.

  It goes without saying someone in particular has his own problems.

  Right around this time the marriage seems headed for trouble.

  No plot, no backstory. Research is something someone in particular wouldn’t have to do for such a story.

  Someone in particular does not feel he is in any way obsessed with the kind of woman who dyes her hair at the age of eighty-four. He does, however, feel he sometimes devotes too much time to the thinking of her. Point being he can stop whenever he wants to.

  The actual relationship between someone in particular and the kind of woman who discusses regularity in mixed company isn’t worth mentioning. She in no way dominates his consciousness. Someone in particular often goes weeks without giving the kind of woman who spreads lite butter on lite bread a single thought.

  Nothing linear. Nothing avant-garde. No discernible style whatsoever.

  And he has never had a single dream in which she has made even a guest appearance. So she is not a part of his subconscious at all.

  Essentially a story with no language to get in the way of the telling.

  Or is it unconscious? Do dreams belong to the subconscious or the unconscious? Regardless.

  Point being someone in particular has a life of his own.

  A life that has nothing to do with the kind of woman who harps ceaselessly on the fact she is all alone.

  Retaliation. Misogyny. Blatant disregard.

  Connubiality.

  Marriage without consummation is subject to annulment.

  Someone in particular originally conceived of his story in his native language and then translated it into its present form. It is fair to say it has lost something in the translation.

  And then the kind of woman who identifies people by their ethnicity is actually bilingual.

  Nothing that may pay homage to something done long ago. Or echoes this or calls to mind that. Nothing ahead of its time.

  The sanctity of the in
stitution.

  None of this should be taken literally. Nor should it be taken figuratively, orally, rectally, intravenously, three times a day, on an empty stomach, with milk, or lying down.

  Not realism, impressionism, minimalism, dadaism.

  The someone in particular knows his proverbial goose has been long ago cooked.

  The someone in particular intended to compose a story disregarding all of the inherent trappings common to such endeavors while still addressing the life and impact of the kind of woman they write stories about. If someone in particular could somehow allude to the great women of history like Joan of Arc doing some kind of juxtaposition then that would be an unexpected bonus.

  Someone in particular realizes he possesses certain gifts. He plans on getting up early tomorrow to exchange them for something more practical. Like a toaster-oven. Or a cutting-board.

  A story that cannot be dissected or explicated by any would-be dissectors or explicators.

  Here comes the bride. All dressed in white.

  What certain explicators might call an off-rhyme. Or is it slant-rhyme?

  Someone in particular would like to hit it big posthumously.

  Does anyone know what comes after all dressed in white?

  This way he will have nothing to live up to.

  No movements, not neo-this or post-that.

  Da-Dum-Ta-Da-Dum-Ta-Da-Dum-Ta...Daaa.

  And then the kind of woman who lives well past a hundred, burying husbands, sons, daughters, grandchildren and as yet unborn and distant progeny.

  Involve. Revolve. Dissolve. Absolve.