Untitled
Etiquette is a comprehensive term; and its observances are nowhere more to be desired than in the domestic circle.
Amanda waited until Robert left before pulling the old book from the kitchen drawer and sinking into the suede blue living room couch with her coffee. She should have been working—typing up computer product descriptions and specs and emailing them to her editor, but she would have time for that later. A worker had found the book in the eaves of their barn when they were converting it a year before. She took it, reverently, from his gloved hands, inserted it into the bookshelf and promptly forgot about it. She and Robert fought a lot that year. Part of the house, which she had decorated Southwestern style, had been portioned off into an art studio and Robert, an accomplished artist, hadn’t produced anything in months. That--and she couldn’t have a baby. Robert had been forced to “sell out” and get a graphic design job in the city. Amanda missed the gallery openings and the way men would faun over her as they always did, only now, as the enigmatic, presumed muse. She was getting worried about Robert. He had abandoned his strict vegan diet in favor of bloody hamburgers and Cherry Garcia. His skinny frame was becoming fattish around the edges, like bacon. He was not an attractive man to begin with, he was shortish and balding a bit, but at least before he was…streamline. But he was cerebral and self-contained, and smart in a zen master kind of way, offering up insights in unexpected places, proverbs over breakfast, poetry in the car. He began overcompensating in the happy department. Last night he came home early with a bouquet of plastic-wrapped convenience store flowers in one fist and an enormous cup in the other. He sucked loudly on the straw, his eyes skittering around the room, before they settled on her. “Blueberry Slurpees are the very best!” he explained.
Amanda rediscovered the book while dusting—something she rarely did. It became an excuse to peruse their collected titles and pick out an old book: Black and White Photography, The Bell Jar, Metamorphosis, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She had climbed the shaky authentic wooden Kiva ladder, spotted the spine and plucked the book from the shelf: Martine’s Hand-book of Etiquette. That’s when she realized it was time to make dinner. Now, she sipped her coffee and examined the cover. It featured an illustration of a pristine, Victorian-looking woman seated under an arbor. The title was in huge, jagged lettering surrounding and imposing on the woman in an almost threatening manner. Amanda opened the book and turned a page. 1866. She spilt some coffee and lunged forward to catch the drips in her palm before they landed on the cowhide rug. The book flopped open. Something fell to the floor. A photograph. She picked it up, smoothed it out and examined it closely. It depicted three roughly dressed men wearing hats pushed back on their heads. The third man was tall and handsome in jeans with a big belt buckle and a dark, double breasted shirt. He looked like a cowboy. The photo had been folded over so that it only showed him. There was no date on the back, but it was clearly old. These guys hardly looked like the type to be concerned with etiquette. But that tall man—he looked dark and dangerous. She imagined his big arms enfolding her, his dark eyes searching out her face for a clue of what she wanted. She stood up, slipped the photo into her jeans pocket and strode to the bedroom, feeling like a dirty cheat.
·
It is the aim of politeness to leave the arena of social intercourse untainted without any severity of language, or bitterness of feeling.
Camille plunged her husband’s wool shirt into the soapy water and slapped it against the wash board, rubbing it hard against the rails. She dipped it into a bucket of water, twisted the shirt into a croissant-shaped knot, shook it out and hung it on the line. That was the last of it. It was getting dark. She knew she should have done the wash earlier so it could dry in the July sun, but she had spent the day darning and sweeping out the tent--that, and cooking breakfast and dinner for the miners. She toiled over crepes and pea soup and sugar pie, but it was her chicken and dumplings they liked best. Thomas hadn’t shown for supper. The other miners had made their way back to their tents for a nap before heading out to the saloons. With a sleepy sigh she peeled open the flaps of the tent and dragged the rocking chair to the mouth of it, sat down and began to rock and softly sing to herself, resting her hands on her swollen belly. Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Thomas hadn’t wanted to cart the chair all the way from Canada, but it was just about all she had left of her mother, so he strapped it to the back of the buckboard in silence, which was unusual for him, he so liked to charm her with his makeshift chivalry—along with any other woman who would listen to him.
They had come for the gold. They chased news of a vein all the way to South Pass City, Wyoming. Wy-o-ming. Camille thought it sounded mysterious and exotic, like some remote village in the Orient. She surveyed the small city from her spot on the edge of the tent town. It had rained the night before and Main Street, lit by the light of the brothels, was thick with mud, forcing everyone to travel by foot on wooden planks. There were miners and merchants and cavalry soldiers on leave. Gaudy dance hall girls gathered on the steps of the saloon, having slept all day in the city’s only hotel. They smoked cigarettes and belly-laughed and slapped each other on the back like men. Camille caught Thomas’s figure in the crowd. He was talking to Smitty who appeared short only because Thomas was so tall. Smitty took a swig from a small bottle before handing it to Thomas who took a sip and slipped it in his back pocket before turning on his heel and heading in the direction of the tent. As the sun set in a blaze of orange on the horizon, his face darkened. Soon, he was a silhouette. He could be any man walking toward her. Then, suddenly, there he was with his thick dark hair slicked back from his face and grizzled cheeks. He was grinning. Jittering with excitement. More than just his jaunty self. But then, it was probably the drink.
“Hullo darlin’!” Thomas took off his hat with a flourish and planted it in her lap, kissing her on the cheek. “I’ve got news!”
“Did you strike?” Camille stopped rocking and froze in the chair.
“No, no, it’s nothing like that—I found a place for us to live.”
“A house!”
“Not exactly.” He reached into the tent and swept the mirror, toilet water, and comb from the small stool before fitting it underneath him and squatting in the mud.
“Listen, Smitty says there’s an abandoned barn a mile outside the city. The roof’s sound and I could fix up the inside. Besides, we won’t have to pay to house the horse. Camille’s squinty blue eyes went wide and round. “We’re going to live with the horse?” Thomas shook his head and laughed. “What’s the difference? He’ll be on one side, we’ll be on the other.” Camille looked at her feet and went back to rocking. Thomas chucked her under the chin and pressed his fingers to her lips, propping them into a smile. “Camille, we got soaked last night! You could get sick. Get off your high horse and think about my son. We’re not exactly living a grand life, here.” He stretched his arms wide and looked around.
Camille ignored what he said about a son, smoothed back her blond hair and tightened the bun. “What about the money from my mother’s place? We could be staying in the hotel.”
“You--with gamblers and whores? Thomas slapped his thigh and leaned back on the stool, pressing it further into the mud. We need that money for supplies—there’s nothing coming in!”
“What about my cooking?”
“A pittance,” he spat.
“Whatever you say, but to be perfectly honest I think you’re the one who’s soaked.” Thomas leapt to his feet. She’d never seen him move so quickly.
“Dammit girl—don’t be so uppity. You don’t know what it’s like working the mine all day. A man needs to bend an elbow now and then just to get through it.” With that, Thomas pulled the micky from his pocket, took a swig, and strode off into the night.
*
Never trifle with the affections of a man who loves you; nor admit of marked attentions from one whose affection you cannot return.
Robert hadn’t touched her in weeks. His usually elaborate love-making had become as quick and apologetic as an adolescent virgin. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “Pretend your tongue is a paintbrush,” she whispered encouragingly.” He shrunk from her in shame. She hadn’t meant to be cruel. He started coming home from work later and later until it was after dark and she was asleep in bed. He crawled in next to her. “Where do you go?” she murmured.
“The movies, he whispered. “Now go to sleep.”
The cowboy was Amanda’s new background for her desktop. She had scanned the photo of the men and cropped it so only the handsome one with the belt buckle remained. She made his jeans red and his shirt bright blue, for effect. One big image was too blurry so she set it to tile producing a cloned parade of cowboys across the screen. It looked like an Andy Warhol painting. “I’ll take fifteen minutes with you, any day,” she thought, aloud. She’d never liked westerns and wondered what a real cowboy would be like. Weren’t they writing poetry now? That would be the ideal man: a cowboy poet who could rope cattle and never got writer’s block.
*
Let neither rank nor fortune, nor the finest order of intellect, nor yet the most winning manners, induce you to accept the addresses of an irreligious man.
Camille wiped the stool clean, put it back in the tent, and and replaced the handful of toiletries before lighting a lamp and stretching out on the bedroll. She reached into her bag for her bible and pulled out a book on etiquette instead. Pressed, paper thin flowers fell from the pages, littering the blanket in a sudden flurry of snow. She tried to gather them up, but they crumbled in her fingers. She had collected the flowers by the brook just outside of town where she and Thomas would picnic on Sundays. They were all alone, there, half the city was sleeping and the other half was at church. Thomas would press his lips to her neck and whisper promises into her ear that made her forget to breathe.
Camille had bookmarked Chapter 17: Domestic Etiquette and Duties with a photograph. It pictured Thomas with Smitty and a man she didn’t recognize. Thomas had it taken when the fair came to town. Camille shook out the blanket and returned to the book. It had belonged to her mother, who, after the death of her father, a shopkeeper, had become preoccupied with raising her station in life in the hopes of marrying a “cultured man.” She studied the dog-eared book with all the diligence of a true scholar and quoted from it so often, that Camille felt she had read it, herself. Her mother saved enough money to secure a family pew in church and even tagged along with Camille to an art museum in an effort to “civilize” herself. Although, her mother seemed more intent upon arranging the flowers on her new hat than in viewing the art. Camille had been shocked by the new exhibition of nudes—women laid out with all to be seen—so unlike the demure poses of the older paintings. Her mother hadn’t like Thomas. She felt he was beneath her. He picked fruit for a living, migrating from town to town, orchard to orchard, wherever there was work. Even he seemed incredulous when she agreed to marry him. “You’ve had education and books and your own room with your own bed. What do you want with a picker like me?” He was proud of her then. Suddenly hot and tired, Camille threw off the blanket and turned off the lamp. Later, Thomas crawled into the tent and fell asleep, his arm heavy on her neck.
*
Every young woman ought to know the state of her own heart.
Robert had started spending time in his studio again. Amanda cooked a big dinner, avoiding the candles and music and opting, instead, to cut to the chase by using the biggest cliché of all: seducing him with her body. She wore a smoke-colored gauzy dress that showed off her lean legs and pulled her hair from her usual ponytail and primped it a bit, letting it fall past her shoulders. She knocked on the studio door and opened it to announce dinner. Robert was slumped over in a stool, snacking on a bag of pork rinds and reading Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. He looked at her and froze in mid-bite.
“What the hell?” she yelled. “I thought you were working!” Robert pushed back from the table and stood up. “I have been working—all day! Jesus, Amanda, I’m tired.”
“Tired? You’ve been bouncing in and out of here like a maniac for weeks. Why can’t you take some of that energy and work on your art?”
“That’s not energy. That’s fallout.” He pushed past her and headed for the front door. She followed behind him.
“That’s great,” she said, “just great. Leave. Go to the movies or whatever it is you do. You’re acting like a child. What are you seeing? ‘Toy Story 8’?” she sneered.
Robert laughed and turned around, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Amanda, I have been working—nights at the copy store. Do you really think we can pay off this place with your income and my entry level job in the city? The gas alone is killing me.”
Amanda sank to the floor and sat, Indian-style, in her dress. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked her lap.
“Because we were fighting—and I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Well, I’m worried…”
Robert jammed his hands in his front pockets. “Amanda, what if I stopped painting?”
“Wha-?” She looked up at him.
“What if I never painted again? Would it matter to you?”
“I think it would matter to you.”
“It would. A great deal, but that’s not what I’m asking.”
Amanda stood up and headed toward the stairs, muttering to herself: “I’m not doing this. I am not doing this.”
“What’re you doing, Amanda?” Robert called after her. “What are we doing?”
Amanda fell onto the bed and felt for the photo she had secreted in the pillowcase, flat and familiar against her palm.
*
Never offer to shake hands with a lady in the street if you have on dark gloves, as you might soil her white ones.
They had lived in the barn for three weeks. It was set back from the main road with peeling white paint and a flat roof. An old foundation lay nearby, blackened by fire. Weeds poked through the ruins. Thomas had given her a tour of the barn like it was some kind of palace. The stalls were draped with cobwebs and shafts of gold shone through the cracks. Without a word, she fetched the broom from the buckboard and started sweeping. In the afternoons, Camille had taken to climbing the ladder to the loft—no easy task in her condition—and lying down in the hay with its smell like something sweet and dead and alive all at once. Sometimes she would page through her mother’s book, other times she would nap a bit, dreaming of an ocean she’d only seen in paintings.
She woke to the sound of labored breathing. A great, rocking weight was upon her. She heard a grunt and something slipped out of her. A hand groped her crotch and then fingers found their way inside, slamming against her, punch after punch. Someone palmed her belly and flipped her over tearing into a place, unimaginable, her brain reared and bucked and went black, scanning the universe for something that made sense to hold on to. There was nothing. It was Smitty. And Thomas.
Questions:
· What would make a good title for this piece?
· I was torn between two names/meanings for the Amanda character:
Amanda: “she who must be loved” and
Cassandra: “she who entangles men”
Which meaning best fits this character?
· Is it better to begin the story in the present day, with Amanda and Robert or in 1867 with Camille and Thomas? Which “works better” and why?
· The etiquette book quotes serve as a heading or title for each section of the story. Does each title succeed in resonating with the text. Why or why not?
· Amanda is the only character who possesses little in the way of physical description. Other than her long hair and lean legs, she is described as “beautiful.” This simple sketch of her appearance is meant to represent her tendency toward superficiality. Does this work or do we need a more robust outward description for what we know about her character?
· I used some subtle foreshadowing to point to the dark side of Thomas’s character. Do I need more of these? Does Thomas, as we know him, seem capable of the rape?
· While Amanda idealizes the man—Thomas, a rapist--in the photo (she thinks he’s a cowboy), it is her own suffering, self-sacrificing husband who is the true hero. She cannot see this. Did you pick up on the irony? Does it work?
