One Friday Morning by Langston Hughes

One Friday Morning" was written by Langston Hughes, a noted Kansas author. It was published in 1952. Langston Hughes lived in Kansas during a part of his life and attended schools in Topeka and Lawrence. At that time, most African Americans attended segregated schools, but there were a few integrated schools in which blacks were enrolled. The custom of referring to African Americans by the terms "Negro" and "colored" was prevalent in 1952, and that custom is reflected in the story.

The thrilling news did not come directly to Nancy Lee, but it came in little
indirections that finally added themselves up to one tremendous fact: she
had won the prize! But being a calm and quiet young lady, she did not say
anything, although the whole high school buzzed with rumors, guesses,
reportedly authentic announcements on the part of students who had no right
to be making announcements at all - since no student really knew yet who had
won this year's art scholarship.

But Nancy Lee's drawing was so good, her lines so sure, her colors so bright
and harmonious, that certainly no other student in the senior art class at
George Washington High was thought to have very much of a chance. Yet you
never could tell. Last year nobody had expected Joe Williams to win the
Artist Club scholarship with that funny modernistic water color he had done
of the high-level bridge. In fact, it was hard to make out there was a
bridge until you had looked at the picture a long time. Still, Joe Williams
got the prize, was feted by the community's leading painters, club women,
and society folks at a big banquet at the Park-Rose Hotel, and was now an
award student at the Art School - the city's only art school.

Nancy Lee Johnson was a colored girl, a few years out of the South. But
seldom did her high-school classmates think of her as colored. She was
smart, pretty and brown, and fitted in well with the life of the school. She
stood high in scholarship, played a swell game of basketball, had taken part
in the senior musical in a soft, velvety voice, and had never seemed to
intrude or stand out except in pleasant ways so it was seldom even mentioned
- her color.

Nancy Lee sometimes forgot she was colored herself. She liked her classmates
and her school. Particularly she like her art teacher, Miss Dietrich, the
tall red-haired woman who taught her law and order in doing things; and the
beauty of working step by step until a job is done; a picture finished; a
design created; or a block print carved out of nothing but an idea and a
smooth square of linoleum, inked, proofs made, and finally put down on paper
- clean, sharp, beautiful, individual, unlike any other in the world, thus
making the paper have a meaning nobody else could give it except Nancy Lee.

That was the wonderful thing about true creation. You made something nobody
else on earth could make - but you.

Miss Dietrich was the kind of teacher who brought out the best in her
students - but their own best, not anybody else's copied best. For anybody
else's best, great though it might be, even Michelangelo's, wasn't enough to
please Miss Dietrich dealing with the creative impulses of young men and
women living in an American city in the Middle West, and being American.

Nancy Lee was proud of being American, a Negro American with blood out of
Africa a long time ago, too many generations back to count. But her parents
had taught her the beauties of Africa, its strength, its song, its mighty
rivers, its early smelting of iron, its building of pyramids, and its
ancient and important civilizations. And Miss Dietrich had discovered for
her the sharp and humorous lines of African sculpture, Benin, Congo,
Makonde. Nancy Lee's father was a mail carrier, her mother a social worker
in a city settlement house. Both parents had been to Negro colleges in the
South. And her mother had gotten a further degree in social work from a
Northern university. Her parents were, like most Americans, simple ordinary
people who had worked hard and steadily for their education. Now they were
trying to make it easier for Nancy Lee to achieve learning than it had been
for them. They would be very happy when they heard of the award to their
daughter - yet Nancy did not tell them. To surprise them would be better.
Besides, there had been a promise.

Casually one day, Miss Dietrich asked Nancy Lee what color frame she thought
would be best on her picture. That had been the first inkling.

"Blue," Nancy Lee said. Although the picture had been entered in the Artist
Club contest a month ago, Nancy Lee did not hesitate in her choice of color
for the possible frame since she could still see her picture clearly in her
mind's eye - for that picture waiting for the blue frame had come out of her
soul, her own life, and had bloomed into miraculous being with Miss
Dietrich's help. It was, she knew, the best water color she had painted in
her four years as a high-school art student, and she was glad she had made
something Miss Dietrich liked well enough to permit her to enter in the
contest before she graduated.

It was not a modernistic picture in the sense that you had to look at it a
long time to understand what it meant. It was just a simple scene in the
city park on a spring day with the trees still leaflessly lacy against the
sky, the new grass fresh and green, a flag on a tall pole in the center,
children playing, and an old Negro woman sitting on a bench with her head
turned. A lot for one picture, to be sure, but it was not there in heavy and
final detail like a calendar. Its charm was that everything was light and
airy, happy like spring, with a lot of blue sky, paper-white clouds, and air
showing through. You could tell that the old Negro woman was looking at the
flag, and that the flag was proud in the spring breeze, and that the breeze
helped to make the children's dresses billow as they played.

Miss Dietrich had taught Nancy Lee how to paint spring, people, and a breeze
on what was only a plain white piece of paper from the supply closet. But
Miss Dietrich had not said make it like any other spring-people-breeze ever
seen before. She let it remain Nancy Lee's own. That is how the old Negro
woman happened to be there looking at the flag - for in her mind the flag,
the spring, and the woman formed a kind of triangle holding a dream Nancy
Lee wanted to express. White stars on a blue field, spring, children,
ever-growing life, and an old woman. Would the judges at the Artist Club
like it?

One wet, rainy April afternoon Miss O'Shay, the girls' vice principal, sent
for Nancy Lee to stop by her office as school closed. Pupils without
umbrellas or raincoats were clustered in doorways hoping to make it home
between showers. Outside the skies were gray. Nancy Lee's thoughts were
suddenly gray, too.

She did not think she had done anything wrong, yet that tight little knot
came in her throat just the same as she approached Miss O'Shay's door.
Perhaps she had banged her locker too often and too hard. Perhaps the note
in French she had written to Sallie halfway across the study hall just for
fun had never gotten to Sallie but into Miss O'Shay's hands instead. Or
maybe she was failing in some subject and wouldn't be allowed to graduate.
Chemistry! A pang went through the pit of her stomach.

She knocked on Miss O'Shay's door. That familiarly solid and competent voice
said, "Come in."

Miss O'Shay had a way of making you feel welcome, even if you came to be
expelled.

"Sit down, Nancy Lee Johnson," said Miss O'Shay. "I have something to tell
you." Nancy Lee sat down. "But I must ask you to promise not to tell anyone
yet."

"I won't, Miss O'Shay," Nancy Lee said, wondering what on earth the
principal had to say to her.

"You are about to graduate," Miss O'Shay said. "And we shall miss you. You
have been an excellent student, Nancy, and you will not be without honors on
the senior list, as I am sure you know."

At that point there was a light knock on the door. Miss O'Shay called out,
"Come in," and Miss Dietrich entered. "May I be part of this too?" she
asked, tall and smiling.

"Of course," Miss O'Shay said. "I was just telling Nancy Lee what we thought
of her. But I hadn't gotten around to giving her the news. Perhaps, Miss
Dietrich, you'd like to tell her yourself."

Miss Dietrich was always direct. "Nancy Lee," she said, "your picture has
won the Artist Club scholarship."

The slender brown girl's eyes widened, her heart jumped, then her throat
tightened again. She tried to smile, but instead tears came to her eyes.

"Dear Nancy Lee," Miss O'Shay said, "we are so happy for you." The elderly
white woman took her hand and shook it warmly while Miss Dietrich beamed
with pride. Nancy Lee must have danced all the way home. She never
remembered quite how she got there through the rain. She hoped she had been
dignified. But certainly, she hadn't stopped to tell anybody her secret on
the way. Raindrops, smiles, and tears mingled on her brown cheeks. She hoped
her mother hadn't yet gotten home and that the house was empty. She wanted
to have time to calm down and look natural before she had to see anyone. She
didn't want to be bursting with excitement - having a secret to contain.

Miss O'Shay's calling her to the office had been in the nature of a
preparation and a warning. The kind, elderly vice-principal said she did not
believe in catching young ladies unawares, even with honors, so she wished
her to know about the coming award. In making acceptance speeches she wanted
her to be calm, prepared, not nervous, overcome, and frightened. So Nancy
Lee was asked to think what she would say when the scholarship was conferred
upon her a few days hence, both at the Friday morning high-school assembly
hour when the announcement would be made, and at the evening banquet of the
Artist Club. Nancy Lee promised the vice-principal to think calmly about
what she would say.

Miss Dietrich had then asked for some facts about her parents, her
background, and her life, since such material would probably be desired for
the papers. Nancy Lee had told her how six years before, they had come up
from the Deep South, her father having been successful in achieving a
transfer from one post office to another, a thing he had long sought in
order to give Nancy Lee a chance to go to school in the North. Now, they
lived in a modest Negro neighborhood, went to see the best plays when they
came to town, and had been saving to send Nancy Lee to art school, in case
she were permitted to enter. But the scholarship would help a great deal,
for they were not rich people.

"Now Mother can have a new coat next winter," Nancy Lee thought, "because my
tuition will be covered for the first year. And once in art school, there
are other scholarships I can win."

Dreams began to dance through her head, plans and ambitions, beauties she
would create for herself, her parents, and the Negro people - for Nancy Lee
possessed a deep and reverent race pride. She could see the old woman in her
picture (really her grandmother in the South) lifting her head to the bright
stars on the flag in the distance. A Negro in America! Often hurt,
discriminated against, sometimes lynched - but always there were the stars
on the blue body of the flag. Was there any other flag in the world that had
so many stars? Nancy Lee thought deeply but she could remember none in all
the encyclopedias or geographies she had ever looked into.

"Hitch your wagon to a star," Nancy Lee thought, dancing home in the rain.
"Who were our flag-makers?"

Friday morning came, the morning when the world would know - her high-school
world, the newspaper world, her mother and dad. Dad could not be there at
the assembly to hear the announcement, nor see her prize picture displayed
on the stage, nor listen to Nancy Lee's little speech of acceptance, but
Mother would be able to come, although Mother was much puzzled as to why
Nancy Lee was so insistent she be at school on that particular Friday
morning.

When something is happening, something new and fine, something that will
change your very life, it is hard to go to sleep at night for thinking about
it, and hard to keep your heart from pounding, or a strange little knot of
joy from gathering in your throat. Nancy Lee had taken her bath, brushed her
hair until it glowed, and had gone to bed thinking about the next day, the
big day when, before three thousand students, she would be the one student
honored, her painting the one painting to be acclaimed as the best of the
year from all the art classes of the city. Her short speech of gratitude was
ready. She went over it in her mind, not word for word (because she didn't
want it to sound as if she had learned it by heart) but she let the thoughts
flow simply and sincerely through her consciousness many times.

When the president of the Artist Club presented her with the medal and
scroll of the scholarship award, she would say:

"Judges and members of the Artist Club. I want to thank you for this award
that means so much to me personally and through me to my people, the colored
people of this city who, sometimes, are discouraged and bewildered, thinking
that color and poverty are against them. I accept this award with gratitude
and pride, not for myself alone, but for my race that believes in American
opportunity and American fairness - and bright stars in our flag. I thank
Miss Dietrich and the teachers who made it possible for me to have the
knowledge and training that lie behind this honor you have conferred upon my
painting. When I came here from the South a few years ago, I was not sure
how you would receive me. You received me well. You have given me a chance
and helped me along the road I wanted to follow. I suppose the judges know
that every week here at assembly the students of this school pledge
allegiance to the flag. I shall try to be worthy of that pledge, and of the
help and friendship and understanding of my fellow citizens of whatever race
or creed, and of our American dream of 'Liberty and justice for all!'" That
would be her response before the students in the morning. How proud and
happy the Negro pupils would be, perhaps almost as proud as they were of the
one colored star on the football team. Her mother would probably cry with
happiness. Thus Nancy Lee went to sleep dreaming of a wonderful tomorrow.
The bright sunlight of an April morning woke her. There was breakfast with
her parents - their half-amused and puzzled faces across the table,
wondering what could be this secret that made her eyes so bright. The swift
walk to school; the clock in the tower almost nine; hundreds of pupils
streaming into the long, rambling old building that was the city's largest
high school; the sudden quiet of the homeroom after the bell rang; then the
teacher opening her record book to call the roll. But just before she began,
she looked across the room until her eyes located Nancy Lee.

"Nancy," she said, "Miss O'Shay would like to see you in her office,
please."

Nancy Lee rose and went out while the names were being called and the word
present added its period to each name. Perhaps, Nancy Lee thought, the
reporters from the papers had already come. Maybe they wanted to take her
picture before assembly, which wasn't until ten o'clock. (Last year they had
had the photograph of the winner of the award in the morning papers as soon
as the announcement had been made.)

Nancy Lee knocked at Miss O'Shay's door.

"Come in."

The vice-principal stood at her desk. There was no one else in the room. It
was very quiet.

"Sit down, Nancy Lee," she said. Miss O'Shay did not smile. There was a long
pause. The seconds went by slowly. "I do not know how to tell you what I
have to say," the elderly woman began, her eyes on the papers on her desk.
"I am indignant and ashamed for myself and for this city." Then she lifted
her eyes and looked at Nancy Lee in the neat blue dress sitting there before
her. "You are not to receive the scholarship this morning."

Outside in the hall the electric bells announcing the first period rang,
loud and interminably long. Miss O'Shay remained silent. To the brown girl
there in the chair, the room grew suddenly smaller, smaller, smaller, and
there was no air. She could not speak.

Miss O'Shay said, "When the committee learned that you were colored, they
changed their plans."

Still Nancy Lee said nothing, for there was no air to give breath to her
lungs.

"Here is the letter from the committee, Nancy Lee." Miss O'Shay picked it up
and read the final paragraph to her.

"It seems to us wiser to arbitrarily rotate the award among the various high
schools of the city from now on. And especially in this case since the
student chosen happens to be colored, a circumstance which unfortunately,
had we known, might have prevented this embarrassment. But there have never
been any Negro students in the local art school, and the presence of one
there might create difficulties for all concerned. We have high regard for
the quality for Nancy Lee Johnson's talent, but we do not feel it would be
fair to honor it with the Artist Club award." Miss O'Shay paused. She
paused. She put the letter down.

"Nancy Lee, I am very sorry to have to give you this message."

"But my speech," Nancy Lee said, "was about..." The words stuck in her
throat. "...about America..."

Miss O'Shay had risen, she turned her back and stood looking out the window
at the spring tulips in the school yard.

"I thought, since the award would be made at assembly right after our oath
of allegiance," the words tumbled almost hysterically from Nancy Lee's
throat now, "I would put part of the flag salute in my speech. You know,
Miss O'Shay, that part of 'liberty and justice for all.'"

"I know," said Miss O'Shay slowly facing the room again. "But America is
only what we who believe in it, make it. I am Irish. You may not know, Nancy
Lee, but years ago we were called the dirty Irish, and mobs rioted against
us in the big cities, and we were invited to go back where we came from. But
we didn't go. And we didn't give up, because we believed in the American
dream, and in our power to make that dream come true. Difficulties, yes.
Mountains to climb, yes. Discouragements to face, yes. Democracy to make,
yes. That is it, Nancy Lee! We still have in this world of ours democracy to
make. You and I, Nancy Lee. But the premise and the base are here, the lines
of the Declaration of Independence and the words of Lincoln are here, and
the stars in our flag. Those who deny you this scholarship do not know the
meaning of those stars, but it's up to us to make them know. As a teacher in
the public schools of this city, I myself will go before the school board
and ask them to remove from our system the offer of any prizes or awards
denied to any student because of race or color."

Suddenly Miss O'Shay stopped speaking. Her clear, clear blue eyes looked
into those of the girl before her. The woman's eyes were full of strength
and courage. "Lift up your head, Nancy Lee, and smile at me."

Miss O'Shay stood against the open window with the green lawn and the tulips
beyond, the sunlight tangled in her gray hair, her voice an electric flow of
strength to the hurt spirit of Nancy Lee. The Abolitionists who believed in
freedom when there was slavery must have been like that. The first white
teachers who went into the Deep South to teach the freed slaves must have
been like that. All those who stand against ignorance, narrowness, hate, and
mud on stars must be like that.

Nancy Lee lifted her head and smiled. The bell for assembly rang. She went
through the long hall filled with students toward the auditorium.

"There will be other awards," Nancy Lee thought. "There're schools in other
cities. This won't keep me down. But when I'm a woman, I'll fight to see
that these things don't happen to other girls as this has happened to me.
And men and women like Miss O'Shay will help me."

She took her seat among the seniors. The doors of the auditorium closed. As
the principal came onto the platform, the students rose and turned their
eyes to the flag on the stage.

One hand went to the heart, the other outstretched toward the flag. Three
thousand voices spoke. Among them was the voice of a dark girl whose cheeks
were suddenly wet with tears, "...one nation indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all."

"That is the land we must make," she thought.

The Man Upstairs by P.G. Wodehouse

There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham’s attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her waltz, she had heard it almost subconsciously. The second stage set in when it became a physical pain like red-hot pincers wrenching her mind from her music. Finally, with a thrill of indignation, she knew it for what it was—an insult. The unseen brute disliked her playing, and was intimating his views with a boot-heel. Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck—almost slapped—the keys once more. “Bang!” from the room above. “Bang! Bang!” Annette rose. Her face was pink, her chin tilted. Her eyes sparkled with the light of battle. She left the room and started to mount the stairs. No spectator, however just, could have helped feeling a pang of pity for the wretched man who stood unconscious of imminent doom, possibly even triumphant, behind the door at which she was on the point of tapping. “Come in!” cried the voice, rather a pleasant voice; but what is a pleasant voice if the soul be vile? Annette went in. The room was a typical Chelsea studio, scantily furnished and lacking a carpet. In the centre was an easel, behind which were visible a pair of trousered legs. A cloud of grey smoke was curling up over the top of the easel. “I beg your pardon,” began Annette. “I don’t want any models at present,” said the Brute. “Leave your card on the table.” “I am not a model,” said Annette, coldly. “I merely came—” At this the Brute emerged from his fortifications and, removing his pipe from his mouth, jerked his chair out into the open. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?” How reckless is Nature in the distribution of her gifts! Not only had this black-hearted knocker on floors a pleasant voice, but, in addition, a pleasing exterior. He was slightly dishevelled at the moment, and his hair stood up in a disordered mop; but in spite of these drawbacks, he was quite passably good-looking. Annette admitted this. Though wrathful, she was fair. “I thought it was another model,” he explained. “They’ve been coming in at the rate of ten an hour ever since I settled here. I didn’t object at first, but after about the eightieth child of sunny Italy had shown up it began to get on my nerves.” Annette waited coldly till he had finished. “I am sorry,” she said, in a this-is-where-you-get-yours voice, “if my playing disturbed you.” One would have thought nobody but an Eskimo wearing his furs and winter under-clothing could have withstood the iciness of her manner; but the Brute did not freeze. “I am sorry,” repeated Annette, well below zero, “if my playing disturbed you. I live in the room below, and I heard you knocking.” “No, no,” protested the young man, affably; “I like it. Really I do.” “Then why knock on the floor?” said Annette, turning to go. “It is so bad for my ceiling,” she said over her shoulder. “I thought you would not mind my mentioning it. Good afternoon.” “No; but one moment. Don’t go.” She stopped. He was surveying her with a friendly smile. She noticed most reluctantly that he had a nice smile. His composure began to enrage her more and more. Long ere this he should have been writhing at her feet in the dust, crushed and abject. “You see,” he said, “I’m awfully sorry, but it’s like this. I love music, but what I mean is, you weren’t playing a tune. It was just the same bit over and over again.” “I was trying to get a phrase,” said Annette, with dignity, but less coldly. In spite of herself she was beginning to thaw. There was something singularly attractive about this shockheaded youth. “A phrase?” “Of music. For my waltz. I am composing a waltz.” A look of such unqualified admiration overspread the young man’s face that the last remnants of the ice- pack melted. For the first time since they had met Annette found herself positively liking this blackguardly floor-smiter. “Can you compose music?” he said, impressed. “I have written one or two songs.” “It must be great to be able to do things—artistic things, I mean, like composing.” “Well, you do, don’t you? You paint.” The young man shook his head with a cheerful grin. “I fancy,” he said, “I should make a pretty good housepainter. I want scope. Canvas seems to cramp me.” It seemed to cause him no discomfort. He appeared rather amused than otherwise. “Let me look.” She crossed over to the easel. “I shouldn’t,” he warned her. “You really want to? Is this not mere recklessness? Very well, then.” To the eye of an experienced critic the picture would certainly have seemed crude. It was a study of a dark-eyed child holding a large black cat. Statisticians estimate that there is no moment during the day when one or more young artists somewhere on the face of the globe are not painting pictures of children holding cats. “I call it ‘Child and Cat,’ ” said the young man. “Rather a neat title, don’t you think? Gives you the main idea of the thing right away. That,” he explained, pointing obligingly with the stem of his pipe, “is the cat.” Annette belonged to that large section of the public which likes or dislikes a picture according to whether its subject happens to please or displease them. Probably there was not one of the million or so child- and-cat eyesores at present in existence which she would not have liked. Besides, he had been very nice about her music. “I think it’s splendid,” she announced. The young man’s face displayed almost more surprise than joy. “Do you really?” he said. “Then I can die happy—that is, if you’ll let me come down and listen to those songs of yours first.” “You would only knock on the floor,” objected Annette. “I’ll never knock on another floor as long as I live,” said the ex-brute, reassuringly. “I hate knocking on floors. I don’t see what people want to knock on floors for, anyway.” Friendships ripen quickly in Chelsea. Within the space of an hour and a quarter Annette had learned that the young man’s name was Alan Beverley (for which Family Heraldic affliction she pitied rather than despised him), that he did not depend entirely on his work for a living, having a little money of his own, and that he considered this a fortunate thing. From the very beginning of their talk he pleased her. She found him an absolutely new and original variety of the unsuccessful painter. Unlike Reginald Sellers, who had a studio in the same building, and sometimes dropped in to drink her coffee and pour out his troubles, he did not attribute his nonsuccess to any malice or stupidity on the part of the public. She was so used to hearing Sellers lash the Philistine and hold forth on unappreciated merit that she could hardly believe the miracle when, in answer to a sympathetic bromide on the popular lack of taste in Art, Beverley replied that, as far as he was concerned, the public showed strong good sense. If he had been striving with every nerve to win her esteem, he could not have done it more surely than with that one remark. Though she invariably listened with a sweet patience which encouraged them to continue long after the point at which she had begun in spirit to throw things at them, Annette had no sympathy with men who whined. She herself was a fighter. She hated as much as anyone the sickening blows which Fate hands out to the struggling and ambitious; but she never made them the basis of a monologue act. Often, after a dreary trip round the offices of the music-publishers, she would howl bitterly in secret, and even gnaw her pillow in the watches of the night; but in public her pride kept her unvaryingly bright and cheerful. To-day, for the first time, she revealed something of her woes. There was that about the mop-headed young man which invited confidences. She told him of the stony-heartedness of music-publishers, of the difficulty of getting songs printed unless you paid for them, of their wretched sales. “But those songs you’ve been playing,” said Beverley, “they’ve been published?” “Yes, those three. But they are the only ones.” “And didn’t they sell?” “Hardly at all. You see, a song doesn’t sell unless somebody well known sings it. And people promise to sing them, and then don’t keep their word. You can’t depend on what they say.” “Give me their names,” said Beverley, “and I’ll go round to-morrow and shoot the whole lot. But can’t you do anything?” “Only keep on keeping on.” “I wish,” he said, “that any time you’re feeling blue about things you would come up and pour out the poison on me. It’s no good bottling it up. Come up and tell me about it, and you’ll feel ever so much better. Or let me come down. Any time things aren’t going right just knock on the ceiling.” She laughed. “Don’t rub it in,” pleaded Beverley. “It isn’t fair. There’s nobody so sensitive as a reformed floor-knocker. You will come up or let me come down, won’t you? Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman. But you wouldn’t care for that. So the only thing for you to do is to knock on the ceiling. Then I’ll come charging down and see if there’s anything I can do to help.” “You’ll be sorry you ever said this.” “I won’t,” he said stoutly. “If you really mean it, it would be a relief,” she admitted. “Sometimes I’d give all the money I’m ever likely to make for someone to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice for the people in the old novels, when they used to say: ‘Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life.’ Mustn’t it have been heavenly?” “Well,” said Beverley, rising, “you know where I am if I’m wanted. Right up there where the knocking came from.” “Knocking?” said Annette. “I remember no knocking.” “Would you mind shaking hands?” said Beverley. A particularly maddening hour with one of her pupils drove her up the very next day. Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting. Some of them were learning the piano. Others thought they sang. All had solid ivory skulls. There was about a teaspoonful of grey matter distributed among the entire squad, and the pupil Annette had been teaching that afternoon had come in at the tail-end of the division. In the studio with Beverley she found Reginald Sellers, standing in a critical attitude before the easel. She was not very fond of him. He was a long, offensive, patronising person, with a moustache that looked like a smear of char coal, and a habit of addressing her as “Ah, little one!” Beverley looked up. “Have you brought your hatchet, Miss Brougham? If you have, you’re just in time to join in the massacre of the innocents. Sellers has been smiting my child and cat hip and thigh. Look at his eye. There! Did you see it flash then? He’s on the warpath again.” “My dear Beverley,” said Sellers, rather stiffly, “I am merely endeavouring to give you my idea of the picture’s defects. I am sorry if my criticism has to be a little harsh.” “Go right on,” said Beverley, cordially. “Don’t mind me; it’s all for my good.” “Well, in a word, then, it is lifeless. Neither the child nor the cat lives.” He stepped back a pace and made a frame of his hands. “The cat now,” he said. “It is—how shall I put it? It has no—no—er—” “That kind of cat wouldn’t,” said Beverley. “It isn’t that breed.” “I think it’s a dear cat,” said Annette. She felt her temper, always quick, getting the better of her. She knew just how incompetent Sellers was, and it irritated her beyond endurance to see Beverley’s good-humoured acceptance of his patronage. “At any rate,” said Beverley, with a grin, “you both seem to recognise that it is a cat. You’re solid on that point, and that’s something, seeing I’m only a beginner.” “I know, my dear fellow; I know,” said Sellers, graciously. “You mustn’t let my criticism discourage you. Don’t think that your work lacks promise. Far from it. I am sure that in time you will do very well indeed. Quite well.” A cold glitter might have been observed in Annette’s eyes. “Mr. Sellers,” she said, smoothly, “had to work very hard himself before he reached his present position. You know his work, of course?” For the first time Beverley seemed somewhat confused. “I—er—why—” he began. “Oh, but of course you do,” she went on, sweetly. “It’s in all the magazines.” Beverley looked at the great man with admiration, and saw that he had flushed uncomfortably. He put this down to the modesty of genius. “In the advertisement pages,” said Annette. “Mr. Sellers drew that picture of the Waukeesy Shoe and the Restawhile Settee and the tin of sardines in the Little Gem Sardine advertisement. He is very good at still life.” There was a tense silence. Beverley could almost hear the voice of the referee uttering the count. “Miss Brougham,” said Sellers at last, spitting out the words, “has confined herself to the purely commercial side of my work. There is another.” “Why, of course there is. You sold a landscape for five pounds only eight months ago, didn’t you? And another three months before that.” It was enough. Sellers bowed stiffly and stalked from the room. Beverley picked up a duster and began slowly to sweep the floor with it. “What are you doing?” demanded Annette, in a choking voice. “The fragments of the wretched man,” whispered Beverley. “They must be swept up and decently interred. You certainly have got the punch, Miss Brougham.” He dropped the duster with a startled exclamation, for Annette had suddenly burst into a flood of tears. With her face buried in her hands she sat in her chair and sobbed desperately. “Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly. “I’m a cat! I’m a beast! I hate myself!” “Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly. “I’m a pig! I’m a fiend!” “Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly. “We’re all struggling and trying to get on and having hard luck, and instead of doing what I can to help, I go and t-t-taunt him with not being able to sell his pictures! I’m not fit to live! Oh!” “Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly. A series of gulping sobs followed, diminishing by degrees into silence. Presently she looked up and smiled, a moist and pathetic smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, “for being so stupid. But he was so horrid and patronising to you, I couldn’t help scratching. I believe I’m the worst cat in London.” “No, this is,” said Beverley, pointing to the canvas. “At least, according to the late Sellers. But, I say, tell me, isn’t the deceased a great artist, then? He came curveting in here with his chest out and started to slate my masterpiece, so I naturally said, ‘What-ho! ’Tis a genius!’ Isn’t he!” “He can’t sell his pictures anywhere. He lives on the little he can get from illustrating advertisements. And I t-taunt—” “Please!” said Beverley, apprehensively. She recovered herself with a gulp. “I can’t help it,” she said, miserably. “I rubbed it in. Oh, it was hateful of me! But I was all on edge from teaching one of my awful pupils, and when he started to patronise you—” She blinked. “Poor devil!” said Beverley. “I never guessed. Good Lord!” Annette rose. “I must go and tell him I’m sorry,” she said. “He’ll snub me horribly, but I must.” She went out. Beverley lit a pipe and stood at the window looking thoughtfully down into the street. It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. Sellers belonged to the latter class. When Annette, meek, penitent, with all her claws sheathed, came to him and grovelled he forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from now on he would be more insufferable than ever. Her surmise proved absolutely correct. His visits to the new-comer’s studio began again, and Beverley’s picture, now nearing completion, came in for criticism enough to have filled a volume. The good humour with which he received it amazed Annette. She had no proprietary interest in the painting beyond what she acquired from a growing regard for its parent (which disturbed her a good deal when she had time to think of it); but there were moments when only the recollection of her remorse for her previous outbreak kept her from rending the critic. Beverley, however, appeared to have no artistic sensitiveness whatsoever. When Sellers savaged the cat in a manner which should have brought the S.P.C.A. down upon him, Beverley merely beamed. His long-sufferingness was beyond Annette’s comprehension. She began to admire him for it. To make his position as critic still more impregnable, Sellers was now able to speak as one having authority. After years of floundering, his luck seemed at last to have turned. His pictures, which for months had lain at an agent’s, careened like crippled battleships, had at length begun to find a market. Within the past two weeks three landscapes and an allegorical painting had sold for good prices; and under the influence of success he expanded like an opening floweret. When Epstein, the agent, wrote to say that the allegory had been purchased by a Glasgow plutocrat of the name of Bates for one hundred and sixty guineas, Sellers’ views on Philistines and their crass materialism and lack of taste underwent a marked modification. He spoke with some friendliness of the man Bates. “To me,” said Beverley, when informed of the event by Annette, “the matter has a deeper significance. It proves that Glasgow has at last produced a sober man. No drinker would have dared face that allegory. The whole business is very gratifying.” Beverley himself was progressing slowly in the field of Art. He had finished the “Child and Cat,” and had taken it to Epstein together with a letter of introduction from Sellers. Sellers’ habitual attitude now was that of the kindly celebrity who has arrived and wishes to give the youngsters a chance. Since his departure Beverley had not done much in the way of actual execution. Whenever Annette came to his studio he was either sitting in a chair with his feet on the window-sill, smoking, or in the same attitude listening to Sellers’ views on art. Sellers being on the up-grade, a man with many pounds to his credit in the bank, had more leisure now. He had given up his advertisement work, and was planning a great canvas—another allegorical work. This left him free to devote a good deal of time to Beverley, and he did so. Beverley sat and smoked through his harangues. He may have been listening, or he may not. Annette listened once or twice, and the experience had the effect of sending her to Beverley, quivering with indignation. “Why do you let him patronise you like that?” she demanded. “If anybody came and talked to me like that about my music, I’d—I’d—I don’t know what I’d do. Yes, even if he were really a great musician.” “Don’t you consider Sellers a great artist, then, even now?” “He seems to be able to sell his pictures, so I suppose they must be good; but nothing could give him the right to patronise you as he does.” “ ‘My learned friend’s manner would be intolerable in an emperor to a black-beetle,’ ” quoted Beverley. “Well, what are we going to do about it?” “If only you would sell a picture, too!” “Ah! Well, I’ve done my part of the contract. I’ve delivered the goods. There the thing is at Epstein’s. The public can’t blame me if it doesn’t sell. All they’ve got to do is to waltz in in their thousands and fight for it. And, by the way, talking of waltzes—” “Oh, it’s finished,” said Annette, dispiritedly. “Published too, for that matter.” “Published! What’s the matter, then? Why this drooping sadness? Why aren’t you running around the square, singing like a bird?” “Because,” said Annette, “unfortunately, I had to pay the expenses of publication. It was only five pounds, but the sales haven’t caught up with that yet. If they ever do, perhaps there’ll be a new edition.” “And will you have to pay for that?” “No. The publishers would.” “Who are they?” “Grusczinsky and Buchterkirch.” “Heavens, then what are you worrying about? The thing’s a cert. A man with a name like Grusczinsky could sell a dozen editions by himself. Helped and inspired by Buchterkirch, he will make the waltz the talk of the country. Infants will croon it in their cots.” “He didn’t seem to think so when I saw him last.” “Of course not. He doesn’t know his own power. Grusczinsky’s shrinking diffidence is a by-word in musical circles. He is the genuine Human Violet. You must give him time.” “I’ll give him anything if he’ll only sell an edition or two,” said Annette. The astounding thing was that he did. There seemed no particular reason why the sale of that waltz should not have been as small and as slow as that of any other waltz by an unknown composer. But almost without warning it expanded from a trickle into a flood. Grusczinsky, beaming paternally whenever Annette entered the shop—which was often—announced two new editions in a week. Beverley, his artistic growth still under a watchful eye of Sellers, said he had never had any doubts as to the success of the thing from the moment when a single phrase in it had so carried him away that he had been compelled to stamp his applause enthusiastically on the floor. Even Sellers forgot his own triumphs long enough to allow him to offer affable congratulations. And money came rolling in, smoothing the path of life. Those were great days. There was a hat… Life, in short, was very full and splendid. There was, indeed, but one thing which kept it from being perfect. The usual drawback to success is that it annoys one’s friends so; but in Annette’s case this drawback was absent. Sellar’s demeanour towards her was that of an old-established inmate welcoming a novice into the Hall of Fame. Her pupils—worthy souls, though bone-headed—fawned upon her. Beverley seemed more pleased than anyone. Yet it was Beverley who prevented her paradise from being complete. Successful herself, she wanted all her friends to be successful; but Beverley, to her discomfort, remained a cheery failure, and worse, absolutely refused to snub Sellers. It was not as if Sellers’ advice and comments were disinterested. Beverley was simply the instrument on which he played his songs of triumph. It distressed Annette to such an extent that now, if she went upstairs and heard Sellers’ voice in the studio, she came down again without knocking. One afternoon, sitting in her room, she heard the telephone-bell ring. The telephone was on the stairs, just outside her door. She went out and took up the receiver. “Halloa!” said a querulous voice. “Is Mr. Beverley there?” Annette remembered having heard him go out. She could always tell his footstep. “He is out,” she said. “Is there any message?” “Yes,” said the voice, emphatically. “Tell him that Rupert Morrison rang up to ask what he was to do with all this great stack of music that’s arrived. Does he want it forwarded on to him, or what?” The voice was growing high and excited. Evidently Mr. Morrison was in a state of nervous tension when a man does not care particularly who hears his troubles so long as he unburdens himself of them to someone. “Music?” said Annette. “Music!” shrilled Mr. Morrison. “Stacks and stacks and stacks of it. Is he playing a practical joke on me, or what?” he demanded, hysterically. Plainly he had now come to regard Annette as a legitimate confidante. She was listening. That was the main point. He wanted someone—he did not care whom—who would listen. “He lends me his rooms,” wailed Mr. Morrison, “so that I can be perfectly quiet and undisturbed while I write my novel, and, first thing I know, this music starts to arrive. How can I be quiet and undisturbed when the floor’s littered two yards high with great parcels of music, and more coming every day?” Annette clung weakly to the telephone box. Her mind was in a whirl, but she was beginning to see many things. “Are you there?” called Mr. Morrison. “Yes. What—what firm does the music came from?” “What’s that?” “Who are the publishers who send the music?” “I can’t remember. Some long name. Yes, I’ve got it. Grusczinsky and someone.” “I’ll tell Mr. Beverley,” said Annette, quietly. A great weight seemed to have settled on her head. “Halloa! Halloa! Are you there?” came Mr. Morrison’s voice. “Yes?” “And tell him there are some pictures, too.” “Pictures?” “Four great beastly pictures. The size of elephants. I tell you, there isn’t room to move. And—” Annette hung up the receiver. Mr. Beverley, returned from his walk, was racing up the stairs three at a time in his energetic way, when, as he arrived at Annette’s door, it opened. “Have you a minute to spare?” said Annette. “Of course. What’s the trouble? Have they sold another edition of the waltz?” “I have not heard, Mr.—Bates.” For once she looked to see the cheerful composure of the man upstairs become ruffled; but he received the blow without agitation. “You know my name?” he said. “I know a good deal more than your name. You are a Glasgow millionaire.” “It’s true,” he admitted, “but it’s hereditary. My father was one before me.” “And you use your money,” said Annette, bitterly, “creating fools’ paradises for your friends, which last, I suppose, until you grow tired of the amusement and destroy them. Doesn’t it ever strike you, Mr. Bates, that it’s a little cruel? Do you think Mr. Sellers will settle down again cheerfully to hack-work when you stop buying his pictures, and he finds out that—that—” “I shan’t stop,” said the young man. “If a Glasgow millionaire mayn’t buy Sellers’ allegorical pictures, whose allegorical pictures may he buy? Sellers will never find out. He’ll go on painting and I’ll go on buying, and all will be joy and peace.” “Indeed! And what future have you arranged for me?” “You?” he said, reflectively. “I want to marry you.” Annette stiffened from head to foot. He met her blazing eyes with a look of quiet devotion. “Marry me?” “I know what you are thinking,” he said. “Your mind is dwelling on the prospect of living in a house decorated throughout with Sellers’ allegorical pictures. But it won’t be. We’ll store them in the attic.” She began to speak, but he interrupted her. “Listen!” he said. “Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life. We’ll skip the first twenty-eight years and three months, merely mentioning that for the greater part of that time I was looking for somebody just like you. A month and nine days ago I found you. You were crossing the Embankment. I was also on the Embankment. In a taxi. I stopped the taxi, got out, and observed you just stepping into the Charing Cross Underground. I sprang—” “This does not interest me,” said Annette. “The plot thickens,” he assured her. “We left our hero springing, I think. Just so. Well, you took the West-end train and got off at Sloane Square. So did I. You crossed Sloane Square, turned up King’s Road, and finally arrived here. I followed. I saw a notice up, ‘Studio to Let.’ I reflected that, having done a little painting in an amateur way, I could pose as an artist all right; so I took the studio. Also the name of Alan Beverley. My own is Bill Bates. I had often wondered what it would feel like to be called by some name like Alan Beverley or Cyril Trevelyan. It was simply the spin of the coin which decided me in favour of the former. Once in, the problem was how to get to know you. When I heard you playing I knew it was all right. I had only to keep knocking on the floor long enough—” “Do—you—mean—to—tell—me”—Annette’s voice trembled—“do you mean to tell me that you knocked that time simply to make me come up?” “That was it. Rather a scheme, don’t you think? And now, would you mind telling me how you found out that I had been buying your waltz? Those remarks of yours about fools’ paradises were not inspired solely by the affairs of Sellers. But it beats me how you did it. I swore Rozinsky, or whatever his name is, to secrecy.” “A Mr. Morrison,” said Annette, indifferently, “rang up on the telephone and asked me to tell you that he was greatly worried by the piles of music which were littering the rooms you lent him.” The young man burst into a roar of laughter. “Poor old Morrison! I forgot all about him. I lent him my rooms at the Albany. He’s writing a novel, and he can’t work if the slightest thing goes wrong. It just shows—” “Mr. Bates!” “Yes?” “Perhaps you didn’t intend to hurt me. I dare say you meant only to be kind. But—but—oh, can’t you see how you have humiliated me? You have treated me like a child, giving me a make-believe success just to—just to keep me quiet, I suppose. You—” He was fumbling in his pocket. “May I read you a letter?” he said. “A letter?” “Quite a short one. It is from Epstein, the picture-dealer. This is what he says. ‘Sir,’ meaning me, not ‘Dear Bill,’ mind you—just ‘Sir.’ ‘I am glad to be able to inform you that I have this morning received an offer of ten guineas for your picture, “Child and Cat.” Kindly let me know if I am to dispose of it at this price.’ ” “Well?” said Annette, in a small voice. “I have just been to Epstein’s. It seems that the purchaser is a Miss Brown. She gave an address in Bayswater. I called at the address. No Miss Brown lives there, but one of your pupils does. I asked her if she was expecting a parcel from Miss Brown, and she said that she had had your letter and quite understood and would take it in when it arrived.” Annette was hiding her face in her hands. “Go away!” she said, faintly. Mr. Bates moved a step nearer. “Do you remember that story of the people on the island who eked out a precarious livelihood by taking in one another’s washing?” he asked, casually. “Go away!” cried Annette. “I’ve always thought,” he said, “that it must have drawn them very close together—made them feel rather attached to each other. Don’t you?” “Go away!” “I don’t want to go away. I want to stay and hear you say you’ll marry me.” “Please go away! I want to think.” She heard him moving towards the door. He stopped, then went on again. The door closed quietly. Presently from the room above came the sound of footsteps—footsteps pacing monotonously to and fro like those of an animal in a cage. Annette sat listening. There was no break in the footsteps. Suddenly she got up. In one corner of the room was a long pole used for raising and lowering the window-sash. She took it, and for a moment stood irresolute. Then with a quick movement, she lifted it and stabbed three times at the ceiling.

If I Vanished by Stuart Dybek

What if I were to vanish?”

“Vanish? Under what circumstances?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You mean, like—poof!—suddenly you’re not there?”

“I’m not there.”

“But there’s always a reason, or at least a context. Were you kidnapped? Abducted by aliens? An extraordinary rendition by the C.I.A.? Did you fall down a rabbit hole? Was it amnesia? Vanishing cream? Did you meet someone else? Was there a note? A message on my answering machine saying, ‘ “Goodbye” ’s too good a word, babe, don’t worry, ciao’? Should I show up at the Department of Missing Persons? Or by ‘vanish’ do you mean that all trace of you would be wiped from my memory?”

“Say I met someone else.”

“Well, see, that’s a different question.”

“You don’t have to answer that one. I can see the answer in your eyes. They’re more honest than you are.”

“Where’d you come up with this?”

“I heard it in a movie.”

“What movie? Certainly not ‘The Vanishing.’ ”

“It was a Western.”

“Clint Eastwood? Duke Wayne? Roy Rogers?”

“Kevin Costner.”

“Costner a cowboy? Pauline Kael said in her review of ‘Dances with Wolves’ that Kevin Costner had feathers not only in his hair but in his head.”

“It wasn’t Kevin Costner per se. It was Charley something, the character Kevin Costner plays, who gets asked the question—by Annette Bening.”

“No, it wasn’t Charley something. Characters in American movies are just poor excuses to watch movie stars. Can you remember the name of any of the characters Marilyn Monroe played? They’re all Marilyn Monroe. Charlton Heston isn’t Moses, Moses is Charlton Heston.”

“Answer the question.”

“First, you have to tell me if you want me to answer it as if we’re starring in some movie. If we’re in an Ingmar Bergman film, then the answer’s going to be different than if we’re in something by Paul Verhoeven, say.”

“You’re stalling.”

“Because a question about vanishing is easy to answer in a movie where the good guys always win. I mean, if we were in a Western I reckon I’d say, ‘If you vanished, Ma’am, I’d mount my horse and ride after you to the ends of the earth. I’d ride to the silver mountains of the moon and back, gunning down Injuns and other swarthy Third World desperadoes until I found you again.’ ”

“In other words, you’d make fun of me.”

“I’m making fun of cowboy kitsch, of the Marlboro Man mythos of the genocidal, racist, anti-environmental, Heil Adolph Coors’s right-wing all-American West.”

“No, you’re making fun of me. And you’re wrong, by the way. In the movie, he doesn’t answer anything like that. He doesn’t answer at all right away. He goes off to think about it, like you could have done, and he comes back with the answer.”

“O.K., I give. Tell me the right answer.”

“You want to know, go see the movie.”

He doesn’t see the movie until two years later, after she has vanished. Clearly, by “vanish” she hadn’t meant that she’d be wiped from his memory.

Jack doesn’t remember the title, if he ever knew it, but, one night, unable to concentrate on any book in the house, he Googles “Western Costner Bening,” and finds fifty thousand five hundred entries for a film called “Open Range.” Kevin Costner not only stars in it; he also directed it.

According to the reviews that Jack skims, it’s a movie about the war between free grazers and landowners. The free grazers—Costner as the former gunslinger Charley Waite, and Robert Duvall as Boss Spearman—are the good guys. The evil rancher who controls the law is played by Michael Gambon. Their economic clash is a moral contest: greedy corporate America versus the don’t-fence-me-in values of the Old West. The conflict plays out against what many reviewers agree is a beautifully photographed “iconic vista”—Montana, 1882, a big-sky landscape that makes it look as if there were enough to go around for everyone, especially since the original free-grazing tribes have been decimated. The film was actually shot in Alberta.

Reviews compare “Open Range” to classics like “High Noon.” Amateurs at Amazon rate it a four-star masterpiece. The Cleveland Sun News, where dollar signs, rather than stars, are awarded, agrees: 4 ½ $. It’s a “Hot Pick,” “a paean to the Old West,” for Boo Allen, of the Denton Record-Chronicle, and four and a half stars for Roger Ebert, who praises its defense of the values of a vanishing life style.

The phrase “vanishing life style” catches Jack’s attention. He wonders if vanishing is a motif in the movie, a theme echoed in the love story between Costner and Bening, prompting the odd question: What if I were to vanish?

Other reviews are less enthusiastic. The movie’s panned in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune. Rolling Stone despises its “insufferable nobility,” and Newsday complains of “the man’s-gotta-do-what-a-man’s-gotta-do excesses” of the script. A couple of reviewers find that it mirrors Bush’s cowboy Presidency, with his bring-it-on war on terror and “Wanted Dead or Alive” rhetoric. It makes a Worst Movies of the Year list: “a Harlequin Romance with a gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”

From the little that Ceil said, Jack had assumed that the movie was a love story, but the reviews mostly agree that Costner’s relationship with Bening seems superfluous. Bening plays Sue Barlow with what is described on Yahoo! UK as “the steely resolve” of “a spinster who has nearly given up on love.” Iggy’s Movie Reviews cautions, “The ties that bind these two lonely folks are . . . flimsy. Unless Sue placed a personal ad seeking a SWM, age 40-50, who loves dogs, cares about friends and has killed before and will kill again, the attraction between the two doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Jack decides to see for himself. Whatever the answer to the question about vanishing, Ceil must have experienced a shock of recognition at something in the film. Tonight, his missing her has assumed the guise of curiosity, and curiosity is preferable to feeling her absence. It’s late, already after eleven-thirty, but he knows a Blockbuster nearby that’s open until midnight.

The street has vanished, been whited out. He was so absorbed in cyberspace, he hadn’t noticed. It seems to Jack that the snowfall should have a hiss of its own, something other than the swish of tires from the Dunkin’ Donuts-lit cross street at the end of the block. If it were true that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow, there’d be a word meaning snow-that-makes-the-familiar-unrecognizable. Jack can’t tell which of the plastered shapes lining the curb is his Saab. He imagines having to go car by car, brushing off snow to find his, and, when he realizes that he might not make it to Blockbuster in time, the intensity of his disappointment surprises him. Then he spots his car, dim under the only street light that has burned out. Rather than take the time to scrape the windows, he scoops the snow with his bare hands. When the engine turns over, the radio plays. He flicks on the defroster, the wipers, the headlights. It takes only that time for him to recognize the piano version of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the movement titled “Gnomus,” which is meant to evoke the picture of a nutcracker in the shape of a gnome promenading on deformed legs. Jack practiced this piece for a whole semester in college when he still studied piano. He hasn’t heard “Pictures” in years, and it occurs to him that sometimes one stops listening to a beloved masterpiece in order to continue to love it. Perhaps the pianist now is Sviatoslav Richter, at the legendary live recital. Jack remembers reading that after Richter’s possessed performance the Steinway he’d used had to be junked. He doesn’t wait for the engine to warm.

The snow-paved Blockbuster lot is empty and Jack leaves the car running, wipers swiping, radio broadcasting the movement titled “Catacombae,” which echoes the spectral world beneath the streets of Paris. Ghosts seem to swirl across the deserted streets of Jack’s city as well. He rushes in and a white kid with rusty dreadlocks shoots him a dirty look from behind the counter, before directing him to the Action section. It only now occurs to Jack that the movie might be checked out, and he scans the rack feeling ridiculously frantic. He’s in luck—it’s there next to Steven Seagal’s “On Deadly Ground” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.”

“Open Range” in hand, Jack opens the car door onto a blasting heater and the majesty of the final movement, “The Great Gate of Kiev.” With no more reason to hurry, he silences the heater and sits in the idling car, watching his tire tracks be obliterated by the snow gathering as it might in Kiev. The yellow Blockbuster sign subtracts itself from the night. Beneath the blurred street lights, ascending notes and falling flakes create the impression of a gossamer arch spanning Chicago Avenue. Jack slips the Saab into gear and drives slowly toward the gate of snow that retreats before his headlights. It’s a vision more imagined than hallucinated, and it makes Jack think how long it’s been since he was stoned for real. Not since a vacation when Ceil wanted to see what sex would be like on hashish. Instead of smoking it, they mixed it with honey and spices, based on a recipe for a sweetmeat supposedly served by Alice B. Toklas at Gertrude Stein’s soirées. That night ended in an emergency room, Ceil faint, terrified, hallucinating. She later said she’d had an out-of-body experience and seen herself dead. “Keep talking to her,” the doctor had told Jack. “Don’t let her slip away.” It’s not a scene that he wants to recall.

He thinks instead of the first time he heard “Pictures at an Exhibition.” His best friend in high school, Rafael Rio, a self-proclaimed graffiti artist, had stolen a Lincoln so they could drive to Detroit to see the murals that Diego Rivera had done for Edsel Ford. High, joyriding after midnight, they’d cruised onto the Chicago Skyway, the city aglow beneath them. Jack had punched on the tape deck, and when the orchestral version of “Pictures at an Exhibition” blared out they began conducting wildly—not that either of them knew what was playing, but they knew that it was something.

Jack turns off the radio, and makes a left into the Dunkin’ Donuts that has lit the end of his block for the three years he’s lived in the neighborhood. He’s never had the urge to stop there before. Ceil claimed they had good coffee. If he’s going to do something so peculiar as to stay up late watching a film that more than one critic complained was, at a hundred and thirty-five minutes, too long, a coffee is in order. He doesn’t want to drowse off and miss the answer to Bening’s question.

A woman with lapis-lidded sleepy eyes, a gold-studded nostril, and a caste mark that looks like misapplied nail polish glances up expectantly when he enters. Her face appears to be disfigured by a mole on her cheek, but as he approaches the counter Jack realizes that the mole is the microphone of her headset. “The usual?” she asks.

He isn’t sure whether the question is addressed to someone she’s speaking with through the headset or to him. She smiles, waiting for an answer.

“Depends on what’s usual,” Jack says.

In the hygienically bright lighting, the trays of frosted doughnuts look like replicas. He notices a surveillance camera and has a tactile sensation of being filmed. It’s as if he’d stepped into a scene of infinitely repeated takes.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” she says. Her singsong accent would be perfectly in character if she were playing an Indian woman who works nights at a Dunkin’ Donuts. “He always has a small black coffee and a Bavarian Kreme.”

“Good by me,” Jack says. He’s impatient to step back out into the hypnotic night, but the woman takes her time selecting a doughnut, artfully creasing the bag, then fitting with inordinate care the lid on the coffee cup, which reads “America Runs on Dunkin’.”

“Two-eighty-two,” she says, and, when Jack digs into his jeans pocket, she adds, “He always gives me a fiver. Tells me, ‘Keep the change, doughnut girl.’ ”

“Maybe that handsome guy you thought was me will come by later,” Jack says, handing her a five.

“No,” she says. “No cabs tonight.”

“He takes a cab here?”

“Drives a cab. He’s never come in, just goes through drive-through. He always jokes that I’m the most beautiful woman in the doughnut shop.”

“Keep it,” Jack says, and she stuffs the change into a Styrofoam tip cup on the counter. He doesn’t call her doughnut girl. Their conversation feels scripted enough already. It was a mistake to stop here. Not only has the spell of what had come to seem like a quest been broken but a night that had felt spontaneous now seems manufactured. The snow is real, Jack thinks, and the music.

“I told him it was my last night working here,” she says. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”

Ceil was right about the coffee— strong with a hint of licorice—but the cab-driving double, whoever he is, doesn’t share Jack’s taste in doughnuts. Jack crushes the bag with the half-eaten Bavarian Kreme inside and lobs it into a wastebasket. He moves his laptop from the bedroom that serves as an office to an end table in the living room, inserts the DVD, and turns off the only lamp burning in his apartment. He tries to imagine Ceil alone in a dark movie theatre years earlier, gazing at a panoramic screen that properly conveyed the big-sky landscape. Or maybe she saw the film on a little seat-back screen, during a flight from London or Brussels. Back then, if she wasn’t travelling for her work with a human-rights organization, they’d spend every weekend together. It surprises him that he never asked her where she’d seen the movie. He’s watching it now to see it through her eyes.

From its early scenes on, “Open Range” is a love story between cowboys. Driving longhorns before him, a grizzled Robert Duvall gallops across the landscape. One of the cowpokes remarks, “Old Boss sure can cowboy, can’t he?,” and Costner answers, “Yeah, broke the mold after him.” As the reviewers noted, the film’s dialogue is a rehash of other Westerns. Usually, Jack avoids reading reviews beforehand, so as not to ruin any surprises, but there aren’t any surprises in “Open Range,” unless its degree of sentimentality qualifies. Costner’s Charley Waite has a cute mutt that follows him on the trail. Jack knows from the reviews that the dog is marked for death, but he’d have guessed it anyway. It brings to mind “Hondo,” a movie Jack saw as a child, in which Apaches kill John Wayne’s dog, Sam. Jack still remembers the dog’s name. Despite all the people slaughtered in “Hondo,” the only loss Jack really felt was the dog’s. He wonders if a young Kevin Costner felt the same for Sam and never forgot the effect, both the loss and the justification of violence that went with it: clearly such savage dog-killers deserve extermination.

Annette Bening doesn’t appear until partway through the film. When she does, Jack is suddenly, nervously alert. He listens for the question about vanishing to be posed in Bening’s voice rather than in Ceil’s. It’s not a question for the early stages of a relationship, but Jack knows that the film has reached the point when that question, and its answer, must be coming.

In an interview that Jack came across while scanning reviews, Costner mentioned that he thought Bening was “very heroic” for playing her character without makeup. It gives her a mature, sympathetic look that’s fitting for the nurse she plays. Jack imagines that it’s a look Ceil could identify with, as she, too, was heroic about makeup. But, then, Ceil’s face was still unlined, except for a worry wrinkle across her forehead, visible when she wore her blond hair tied back. The corners of her eyes crinkled as if she were squinting against the wind when she smiled. Jack can visualize her pale-blue eyes but not her face. Ceil travelled regularly for work, and early in their relationship, when they didn’t see each other for a couple of weeks, he’d tell her that he’d forgotten what she looked like. She’d pretend to be exasperated that he could forget so easily. He was kidding, but only in part: her face was so lovely to him that he hadn’t yet allowed himself to gaze at her with the full force of recognition. That was true of her nakedness, too; it dazzled him, and he found he could take it in only in glimpses. He wonders now what else he didn’t look at, what else he didn’t see.

Jack doesn’t have a photo of her. On the few occasions that they took pictures, it was Ceil who snapped them. He recalls her fiddling with a new digital camera as they walked out onto a wave-sloshed pier under bleaching blue sky. Ceil stopped before a small fish that looked as if a wave had flipped it onto the pier. Jack thought she was going to photograph it, but she gently slipped the fish back into the water. They’d gone only a step when an Asian man fishing from the pier turned and yelped, “Miss, you throw away my bait!” Ceil was annoyed when Jack laughed, but by the time they reached the end of the pier, where gulls swirled around a man cleaning salmon, they were both laughing. Ceil asked the man’s daughter to take a picture of them. They didn’t know then, smiling for the camera, that later that night, stoned on hashish, they’d end up in the emergency room. Jack asked for a copy of the picture taken on the pier, as he’d also asked for a picture of her for a present on his birthday. Ceil gave him instead an antique letter opener that she said would accrue in value. Ceil collected letter openers, pens, and paperweights, which she traded on eBay.

It was that night, after Jack had talked Ceil through her near-death experience in the E.R., that she told him about a long-distance affair she’d had before they met, with a man named Dom, who sold used Italian cars in upstate New York. The affair had lasted for years—she was vague about when they’d broken it off. Ceil still owned a Fiat Spider she’d bought with Dom at an auction; she said it was accruing value. Dom had photographed her naked so that during phone sex he could summon what she called “non-vanilla” poses—Dom had a thing for women and bottles. Ceil said that spreading for him had been the peak sexual experience of her life. It was as if she’d met a reflection of her own sexuality, a male twin to a secret self she’d always felt was dirty. Dom, she said, had made it clean. She said that their sexual likeness had overrideen all their differences, including his right-wing politics. After she and Dom broke up, Ceil had asked if she could visit him one last time, to watch while he deleted the private porn show he’d directed, but he refused, claiming that it would be too painful for him to see her again. He promised to erase the photos. Still, Ceil wasn’t sure that they weren’t somewhere in cyberspace, posted on one or another of the Web sites Dom frequented.

Listening to her, Jack understood how profoundly in love she’d been with the car salesman, and the authority that the relationship still had in her life. It brought to mind one of their first times in bed, when she’d called him “sir” in a little girl’s voice and then apologized. He wondered, but didn’t ask, what it had taken for her to break it off.

Tonight, he wonders if perhaps Ceil had been sleeping with them both. It would have been easy, given her frequent travel. He wonders if she could have been that devious, if, in fact, he was the catalyst she needed to end her relationship with Dom, if he’d been a player in a romance that she was directing, one he didn’t know he had a part in. After Ceil told him about the photos, Jack had felt uncomfortable having to press her for what was, in her word—or was it Dom’s?—a simple “vanilla” photo, and he never brought it up again.

It’s nearly 3 A.M. Costner and Bening have grown closer despite the lack of chemistry between them. As one reviewer remarked, “If the two of them were any more upstanding, they’d be trees.” Though Bening still hasn’t posed her question, she has revealed to Costner that she “always hoped somebody gentle and caring might come along.” The nurse she plays has up to this point in the film abhorred violence, but when Costner replies, “Men are gonna get killed here today, Sue, and I’m gonna kill them, you understand that?,” she submissively answers, “Yes.” After the climactic shoot-’em-up, modelled on the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which the bad guys are wasted, Costner asks her again, “Those killings, they don’t give you pause?”

“I’m not afraid of you, Charley,” she answers. It’s the moment in the film that reviews found least credible, given Bening’s character. But Jack thinks that the film has finally got something right: Afraid? No, she’s turned on, thrilled, ready to brag about her gunslinger. She just wants to get laid.

Jack wonders what Ceil, who regarded George Bush as a war criminal, would have said about Bening’s response. Often the best part of going to a movie together was the time afterward, when they’d stop for a drink and discuss the film. Tonight, Jack has carried on a one-way conversation with Ceil, as if she were watching it beside him. These conversations with her have continued since she vanished. He wishes he could make them stop, but they’re growing more frequent, as if the lengthening of her absence had made the phantom dialogue between them more compulsive.

Costner shyly asks Bening for a kiss. Killing is easy; it’s smooching that’s embarrassing. The film is winding down, the time for asking is running out. But she doesn’t ask. Jack watches as they ride out of town together—Duvall, Costner, Bening—under the big sky. Jack listens for her question. She doesn’t ask it. After all that killing in support of a man’s right to the open range, Duvall says that he’s tired of the open range. He’d like to run a saloon in town, and maybe Costner could be his partner. Costner tells Bening he’ll be back. They exchange happily-ever-after smiles. She turns back toward town, and Costner and Duvall ride off toward the dogies they’ve left on the open range.

Jack watches the credits roll.

He feels confused, then tricked. He has an impulse to replay the whole dull film. Could he have somehow missed the line? He vividly remembers that the conversation with Ceil was predicated on that question about vanishing. He knows that he didn’t make it up. He can’t understand why Ceil would have invented that dialogue, why she would have ascribed it and the answer that supposedly followed to a second-rate movie. There must have been some mistake. Could she have conflated “Open Range” with some other film? He remembers her complaining that she wasn’t sleeping well; she used to wake beside him in the middle of the night from dreams that made her moan but dissolved before she could describe them. Maybe she had dreamed the question. It’s another thing about her that he’ll never understand. He ejects the DVD and logs off.

Are you sure you want to shut down your computer now?

The screen goes wordlessly blue, then blinks off, leaving the apartment lit only by the reflection of the street lights in the falling snow. The blank windowpanes are fogging from the bottom up. He isn’t tired. Ceil was right about the coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. He tries again to summon her face. If the myth about a hundred words for snow were true, there’d be a word for snow-erasing-its-own-memory. He has an urge to open the window and let the wind and snow blow in. He tugs at the handles, hammers the sash, but the window won’t budge. The cold pane mists with his breath and body heat, and, when he wipes away the steam, his reflection peeps in darkly. He wonders if a person can forget his own face. He wonders if his cabbie look-alike ever showed up for the usual. All the windows but one are dark in the apartment building across the way. Lines he hasn’t thought about for years, from a poem in “Doctor Zhivago,” come to mind:

It snowed and snowed, the whole world
over . . .
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

It doesn’t seem incongruous that the window across the way is lit not by the halo of a candle but by a bluish glow—someone watching television in the middle of the night or working at a computer, perhaps surfing Web sites. What if, in the vastness of cyberspace, whoever is up across the street should encounter an image of Ceil? Is it snowing the world over, even in New York, where the used-car salesman may still be at his computer, filing through a gallery of pictures of old girlfriends, like a collector checking the inventory of his antiquities, assessing the value they’ve accrued, before settling on a photo of Ceil?

Dom wasn’t fond of travel, Ceil told Jack—it was one of their many differences. So every few weeks she’d made the trip to the river town outside the city where he had his dealership. She marvelled aloud about the thousands of miles she had logged over the years to be with him. Between visits, they’d talked on the phone at least once a day. They had broken up over the phone, and she said she’d thought that going to see Dom one last time in person would be the “classy” thing to do. Suppose Dom had allowed that journey.

Jack sees her travelling from Grand Central toward her beloved along a track she knows by heart. This time, Dom isn’t waiting at the station. She takes a cab along a familiar cobbled street, past the candy shop and their breakfast café, past the antique shop where she foraged for letter openers, to a Victorian house, where clothes of hers still hang in the closet of the ornate master bedroom, where on a velvet chair the photographs she asks him to delete were taken. He’s concealed them under the folder name “Bottles.” She expects him to simply delete the files, but he opens them, and there they are, preserved in digital light: Dom—though he’s not visible in the photo, she can see him—and herself, more real there than she feels at this moment, younger, naked, spreading her legs for the man she’s chosen to define her. Remember that afternoon, Ceil? What’s happened to us? We are halves of a whole. You said you knew it from the first time you saw me and had to leave because your body shook. You said I was the man you’d needed all your life to meet. What did you really come here for?

I need to be sure you’ve erased them.

But surely you know I could have hidden files and copies on disks and travel drives.

You wouldn’t lie to my face.

Would you lie to me? Is there someone else? This horseshit about differences—as if they ever mattered to you with your clothes off. You’re most devious to yourself. Do you think you’ll ever be as intimate? If you leave, you’ll always be lying. We’ll be, for each other, an absence, like a phantom limb. You’ll look for me in others and they’ll feel what you’re missing.

Erase them.

Say you love me. Say please.

I’ll always love you. Please.

Please who?

Please, sir.

That’s my girl. So, poof! Look, one gone. I was naked, too, remember? You think erasing a replica will erase reality? Will erase us? Will erase the me in you? Look, this one has always been my favorite. I’ve studied it a thousand times and still get hard. I’m going to close my eyes. You watch and tell me when you’ve disappeared. Like at those auctions you found so exciting: going . . . going . . . gone?

Yes, sir.

Satisfied?

Thank you, sir. Now please erase me from Trash.

“What would you do if I vanished?”

“You mean like—poof!—suddenly you’re not there? So where are you? Lost in the ether? Travelling through time? In cyberspace?”

“It doesn’t matter. Answer the question.”

“O.K., I’ll play. I’d ride to the ends of the earth, to the silver mountains of the moon. Or maybe they’re borax.”

“You think you’d find me there?”

“I’d follow your footprints across borax craters, ford molten rivers that parted like mercury, a starry sky guiding the way. Or on a summer day I’d walk out on a pier whose perspective jutted toward infinity, and when I reached its end, if you weren’t there, over the laughter of gulls I’d call your name, and if you didn’t answer I’d follow the little fish you saved and he’d lead me to you.”

“He’d lead you to nowhere.”

“Then, on a night in winter, I’d pass through the arch of a Great Gate of Snow and on the other side I’d be back in time in the city when it was ours. I’d hail the only cab out late. The cabbie would study me in the rearview, and in the mirror I’d see that his eyes were mine. I wouldn’t have to tell him where to go. We’d drive from lighted corner to lighted corner for nights until I found the most beautiful woman in Dunkin’ Donuts. The coffee’s good here, you’d tell me.”

“They do have good coffee, but I wouldn’t be there.”

“I’d hire a hypnotist who specialized in negotiating the release of alien abductees. I’d search the secret records for all the secret prisons of the C.I.A. I’d wait in long lines at the Department of Missing Persons . . .”

“That’s not the answer.”

“After a while, I’d do nothing but go day by day without you. Sometimes I’d remember something you said, and have another one-way conversation. I’d walk around secretly talking to you, wondering where you were and what you were doing. I’d tell myself that wherever you’d gone I wanted you to be happy.”

“You need to work on a better answer.”

“What was the question again anyway?”

“What would you do if I vanished?”

“But life is never that simple. One doesn’t just vanish. There’s always a why, or at least a context. You suddenly moved away in the middle of the night. Changed your unlisted phone number. Left no forwarding address so that mail was returned and e-mails disappeared into whatever graveyard file they go to. Was it amnesia? An overdose of vanishing cream? Did you meet someone else? Another catalyst? You’re not the suicidal type, thank God, but still . . . or by ‘vanish’ could you really have thought that you’d be erased from my memory?”

“Say I met someone else.”

“Well, see, that’s a different question.”

The Instructions by Eric D. Anderson

The first thing is, you are not allowed to wear your shoes in the house. There is a rack in the front entry.

If you need to go out by the pool there are slippers there that you can put on. Otherwise, just carry your shoes through the house and leave them on the back patio.

The cat food is in the cabinet out by the washer and dryer. Take out two cans of Friendly Feast and one can of Purina and bring them into the kitchen. Open one can of Friendly Feast and put it in a crystal bowl. Then open the remaining two cans, mix them in a larger bowl, and then divide this into two portions, putting one in a purple dish and one in a crystal bowl.

The cats will probably join you at this point.

You must microwave the cat food for twelve seconds so that it isn’t cold. If you do it for fifteen seconds or more, the cat food will start to pop and splatter and get all over the inside of the microwave. Trust me on this.

Place the three dishes as far apart from each other as possible at the edges of the kitchen. The cats don’t like to see each other when they eat. Often you can use the “island” for concealment. Here is a diagram:

A = “Scot” (tabby). Mixture in a crystal bowl.

B = “Jake” (black and white). Fancy Feast in a crystal bowl.

C = “Gaia” (manx). Mixture in a purple dish.

It is essential that each get its own little water dish as well, though this can be Tupperware. Change the water every day. Don’t just let it sit there, even if it seems like they aren’t drinking it.

And always serve the cats with clean dishes. Please do not serve the cats out of crusty dishes! I will know if you do.

Also, do not use any of the dry food in that huge unwieldy bag next to the washing machine. This is what Ben ALWAYS fed cats when he was growing up poor (I’m sure you’ve heard the story) so it was “good enough for us.” Well, the cats hate it and I’ve been meaning to throw it out for a long time but it’s a little heavy for me and it’s kind of at an awkward angle to pick up. Emily, would you be a dear and get rid of it for me? (Garbage day is Tuesday.)

Water the inside plants as needed. Every few days or so. Use the spray bottle on the leaves. Do not drown them.

Water the outside plants as needed. Once a week, perhaps. Use the turquoise watering can that’s rusting out so beautifully. Do not use a hose!

Remember, this is not a housesit. You are merely feeding the cats and keeping things up. You may not invite anyone over, even if it’s just to “watch a little TV” or “have a dip” in the pool. Do not bring your boyfriend over. Do you have a boyfriend?

Do not answer the phone. Just let it ring.

It is possible that Michael might show up when you’re here. I am still missing a key and fear that he might have it. He will probably ask who you are. Just be honest and try not to make eye contact. He will then probably make a pass at you, which should be easy to resist (he is my son, yes, but not the most attractive creature on the planet). If he gets physical, call the police. If he does drugs in front of you, call the police. If he’s in the house doing drugs in secret, just ignore him and go about your business. He will leave eventually.

Take the mail out of the box every day and put it on the kitchen table. If possible, divide it into five piles: personal, bills, junk, banking/accounts receivable, and other. Occasionally there will be overlap, like bills/other or junk/personal, but do your best.

Do not spread the newspapers all over the living room floor and then forget to pick them up.

If you are desperately hungry and cannot wait until you get home, you may fix yourself a snack. Do not do any cooking, though! Making, fixing, or assembling something to eat is fine. No cooking. I recommend cheese/crackers or celery/peanut butter.

Please remove any offending items if the fridge starts to stink. More often than not it’s something in the crisper.

Be sure to activate the alarm once you leave. (Your mother says you are very responsible. I was too at your age. Maybe girls are different—my son has never been responsible.)

If you want, you are more than welcome to read my newspapers to stay abreast of current events (so long as you do not spread them all over the living room floor and forget to pick them up). You can even take these newspapers with you, if you wish to read them at home. I will not be needing these so it’s okay for you to have them. They will have newspapers where I am going.

Do not worry about the pool becoming polluted by those leaves coming from the neighbor’s maple tree. This is a Lost Cause. While it would be noble for you to fish these leaves out, I understand why someone would not want to do it. The neighbors are quite standoffish about the whole situation. Even if you are very strict about scooping leaves out of the pool there will always be more leaves the next day.

I am including a list of names of people you can call if there is a problem and I can’t be reached. You will notice that Ben’s name is on there, but try not to call him unless it’s a REAL emergency (someone dead or dying) and you can’t get a hold of anyone else. Technically we are still married, but only technically. (I’m sure your parents told you.)

I know it must be hard sometimes going to public school. I read about conditions in the newspaper sometimes. So you are welcome to stop by and read from our humble library in Ben’s old den (now storage). All the books in there are first editions, some very valuable, I think. Ben used to forbid anyone from touching them, let alone reading them. Especially me. I would go in there and he would just tense up. Near the end I’d pull some book off the top shelf and just open to the title page and he would be shaking, SHAKING, in kind of this nervous rage. Like totally psychotic, my husband. Fuck him, though, he’s gone now, right? Read whatever you want, honey. That’s what it’s there for. Dog-ear whatever you want, make notes in the margins, I don’t care. Books are not furniture, they are meant to be read, right?

By the way, the books are organized from left to right, top to bottom, but they are not alphabetical. I think they are organized in terms of value, believe it or not. Actually, now that I think about it, there are shelves on either side of his desk. The books on the right side of the desk are organized in the way I just said, but those on the left hand shelf descend in value from right to left. That is, the closer to his desk and the higher a book is, the more value it has. Here is a diagram:

If you find some other explanation for his cataloguing style, please let me know.

There is a little nook on the second floor, on the southwest side of the house. This is a good place to curl up with a book. You will probably fall asleep and end up reading the same paragraph over and over.

(I am on my third glass of wine now. Please forgive me if my handwriting is becoming harder to read.)

If Michael appears when you're here, make sure that he doesn’t take anything, will you? I have put all my jewelry in the safe deposit box, but you never know.

Oh, and be sure to use a coaster for your beverages. This may seem like common sense, I know, but I had to fire the last girl because she put a hot cup of coffee on an endtable and it burned a white circle into the wood.

Under no circumstances are you to enter the master bedroom. The door stays open, so you can look inside, but please do not cross the threshold. It is my sanctuary. Have a look at the four-poster bed I just put in, though. Isn’t it beautiful and princessy? Ben never would have stood for it. There’s something about all that sheer mosquito netting that makes me horny feel romantic. Let me know what you think.

Actually, I wanted to get your opinion on something else, and, well, you’re going to have to enter the bedroom to do it. So be it. Go to the dresser on the north side of the bed and open the bottom drawer. You will find a book there with some sketches in it. Won’t you have a look at my drawings? Your mother said that you had a keen interest in art. I feel kind of strange asking (I am almost three times your age, after all), but I wonder if you can tell me what you think of them. I’ve only started drawing again, since Ben left. I realize now that the men in my life have been squashing my creative impulse for twenty years. Don’t let this happen to you. When I was in college I was always very creative. I belonged to art clubs, I did collage and crochet, I was studying Spanish. Once we were married Ben always made me feel like a child for this, even when he was trying to be diplomatic. He would say, “Well, everyone has to have a hobby, I guess.” What an asshole. Of course he didn’t have this attitude when we were dating. He was smart enough to make me think he actually cared.

You may find that a lot of the drawings are sexual in nature. Don’t get the wrong idea. Actually, I usually start doing nudes (like we used to in art class), but they always look so lonely on the page, so I keep adding more people to the pictures. I can’t help myself. I haven’t shown these to anyone. Technically, I know they aren’t perfect, but I think they are good in their own way and I wanted to show them to you and see what you thought. Please do not think I am a strange old lady.

Keep the blinds closed in the master bedroom. There are some paintings near the window that I think were getting faded by the direct sunlight. Also, I don’t like people looking in, even when I’m gone.

You may notice the large walk-in closet when you’re in the master bedroom. I’ve been adding some cuter outfits to my wardrobe. I hope you don’t think they are too provocative/inappropriate for someone in their forties. You would tell me, right? You know what? If you have a date or something and you need some cute shoes, you’re more than welcome to use some of mine. I have more shoes than I know what to do with. We seem to be the same size so maybe they will fit you and if you need some nice shoes for a date but you can’t afford them, you can borrow from the shoes on the left side of the closet. The shoes on the right side are off-limits, but the shoes on the left are good too. Don’t think that these are the Bad Shoes or something. They are still great shoes and you’re welcome to them if you have a date. I notice you were wearing some old sneakers when we met the other day.

The closet is a great place to hang out although I’d prefer if you didn’t. I started sleeping in there after Ben left and before I got the new bed. There was something kind of small and comforting and cavelike about it. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I’d be surrounded by all of these shoes and jackets and things. Not that I’m materialistic or anything—it just reminded me of being very young and having this huge pile of pillows and stuffed animals around me when I slept. It kind of felt the same although in this case the stuffed animals became pumps and stretch boots.

I will mail you a check to this address every week. As I said, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone exactly. After Aunt Carla’s funeral I’m going to travel a little bit, see some people I haven’t seen in many years. And then, I’m not so sure. These have been some terrible times, quite honestly, and I’ve been doing a lot of crying lately. Sometimes I think that my whole life has been a waste of time. I don’t wish to sound maudlin here, but I’m not going to lie either. I haven’t told anyone this, but I’ve been thinking about leaving the house and just keeping going. I won’t do it of course—I don’t have the guts—but I will admit that I’ve been feeling that adolescent feeling of running away lately. You and I probably aren’t so different. I realize I don’t know you that well, but I’ve known your parents since high school and I think you know what I mean. When I was your age I felt so alone and I wished that I had someone older to help me in life, you know, mentor me a little. If you ever need any advice or help you know who you can turn to. I’d be happy to assist you with your troubles, talk about boys, whatever. I’ve had a full life, I’ve seen a lot of things and traveled to many countries. You could really benefit from my experiences and not make the same mistakes that I did. I’d be more than happy to counsel you on these matters. You seem like a nice girl—a little rebellious, perhaps, but rebellious is good sometimes.

Tell your parents hello. Perhaps I’ll invite them over for drinks sometime. I think they’d like it here.

Give the cats (Scot, Jake, and Gaia) lots of love. I’m not going to worry about them or worry about my beautiful house. Enjoy it while you can and remember about the newspapers please. I am trusting you with my life.

Please don’t screw it up.