Better Stories than Mine

The New York Times thrilled me this morning.  Not because of any news it reported, although I liked reading about the President's busted lip.  That is reassuring, somehow.  I want a President who takes a physical beating once in awhile.  It is a healthy thing, and more people need to.  But the thrill came from the Book Review section.  Steve Martin's new novel, "An Object of Beauty," is out for the holidays.  You will think me shallow to look forward to this, perhaps, but I liked "Shopgirl," both the novel and the horribly underrated movie.  This novel, I hope, is hermetic, sealed against anything that does not resemble art.  With understated wit.  We'll see.

But sitting in bed with my laptop, listening to the roosters crow in the coming dawn, glancing about at the seashell tables and framed Tommy Bahama posters and nautical knickknacks, and a lamp that is a faux-Tommy Bahama shirt. . . nope, I can't wait.

So that you will not think me a complete Philistine, though, I am also excited to read the new short story collection from William Trevor.  It should be a nice counterbalance.  The review of that book reminded me that I have not read Alice Munro's latest, either.  I may put everything else on a back burner and spend my days in a coffee house somewhere reading while the holiday shoppers pass by.

"Cockledoodledoo."

It sounds so appealing.

I have to quit being such a prick about my relatives, though.  They are ultra-nice people, and like most have gained quite a bit of sophistication due to the last decades of national affluence.  Television and the internet have changed the way they live and think.  They have nice pickups that I envy, boats and kayaks and giant flat screen televisions.  They even eat better than they used to.  They don't leave food out unrefrigerated for hours any more.  But none of that makes a good story.

What does are the stories themselves.  Player told me quite a few last night.  He is a funny boy who took over part of his father's lawn business when pop decided he had had enough of working in the sun and took a job at an outdoor store.  Player stays out all night and comes home in the morning to sleep the day away.  Two nights ago he went to an Indian reservation to play poker all night.  He knows poker.  He and his buddy go and play for days at a time.  He has to come home eventually so that he can get up at four p.m. and take care of the four accounts he still maintains.  And before he goes gambling, he has people he has to take care of, too.

"Veronica is going to be eighteen soon," he tells me with a suggestive raising of the eyebrows.  She is the high school senior, my second cousin in the little dress at the Thanksgiving table.  I'm not sure if he is suggesting I should make a run at her or if he is when he says, "But she is such a bitch."  He tells me that he got with her half-sister, her mother's daughter by another marriage, when she lived with his uncle.  "She wasn't blood to me," he says.  He is pretty candid.  The whole story is a mess.  My cousin's wife was a very pretty woman who liked to drink.  "She hit on me at my parent's silver anniversary," he said last night at the dinner table with his parents and my mother.  My mother was treating everyone to the Outback where about half the employees are cousins.  His mother stared hard at him.  "I'm telling you, it would have been an easy pull."  His mother shakes her head.

But everyone knows it could be true.  She and my cousin got divorced because she didn't like to come home at night.  She liked to go to bars and flirt with the younger boys.  But after a year or so, she moved back in and they lived together like roommates.  Still, he did not like her running around, and one night when she didn't come home, he went looking for her.  He found her sitting at a park by the water absolutely drunk and naked and with one of the neighborhood men.

"We're not doing nothing," she reportedly told him.

And that was the end.  She moved out a few days later.  Player says he sees her at the bar dancing with boys younger than him.  "I pulled her out a couple of times," he says.

Meanwhile, my cousin, who is very shy, hasn't had a date for several years.  He's tried everything.  He pierced his ears and shaved his head and then the rest of his body, but even such fancy measures didn't win him a single date.

"I was telling him about an online service for call girls," Player told me.  "He called me about ten minutes later and asked me for the website.  The next morning, the ambulance took him to the hospital.  That's when he had the stint put in.  I never asked him if he had someone over.  But I'm just saying."

A few weeks ago, my cousin went to the Outback where both his high school kids work.  He went with a purpose.  He was going to ask one of the waitresses out, a woman about forty.  The kids were telling the story at Thanksgiving dinner.  They said he had put on a Tommy Bahama shirt and had parted his hair on the side and sat at the table with his hands pressed together like he was praying, noticeably trembly and nervous.

"I had to go to the bathroom," he said.

When she brought him the check, he asked her if she wanted to go out on Saturday.  No, she said, I'm going to a party with my girlfriends.

But the party was on Friday night, his daughter spits derisively.  Her father says he isn't going to ask anybody out any more.  He'll just spend the rest of his life alone.

The stories go on and on.  I will write them more artfully one day if I remember.  But I know I shouldn't be telling any of this.  Family, for god's sake.  I should be more protective.  But god, they are archetypes and I am trying to fictionalize enough to prevent them knowing.  They will never read this.  No one will.

The roosters are really at it now.  The sun is up, the day gray.  I will drive with my mother back home in a bit, and I will think of all the things I didn't write down, didn't photograph, and I will think I should go back and stay a week or two in the name of fiction.

Back home, I will buy those new books and seal myself into that protected life again, away from what I ran from so long ago, haunted by how familiar it all becomes so quickly, knowing my life does not provide me with the rich material that a few days with my mother's family can.

Everyone is moving now.  Toilets are flushing and kitchen drawers are banging shut.  I will get another cup of coffee and finish reading the New York Times.