I'm going to start with a little bit from that,
and then I'll move on to the new thing.
So not too much introduction needed for this.
This is just, sort of, in the middle of Dept. of Speculation.
And all you really need to know is that the narrator is
a wife, and a mother, and once thought
she was going to be an art monster,
and never get married or be a mother.
Chapter 12.
"Advice for wives circa 1896--
the indiscriminate reading of novels
is one of the most injurious habits to which
a married woman can be subject.
Besides the false views of human nature it will impart,
it produces an indifference to domestic duties,
and a contempt for ordinary realities.
It's true.
I'm feeble-minded at the grocery store.
I write lists that I forget, buy things
we don't need or already have.
Later, my husband will say, did you
get toilet paper, did you get ketchup, did you get garlic,
and I will say, no, no, I forgot,
sorry, here is some butterscotch pudding and some toothpicks
and some whiskey sour mix.
But for now my daughter and I stand shivering
in front of the meat case.
'I'm cold,' she says, 'Why can't we go?
Why do we have to stand here?"
There is some kind of meat I am supposed to buy."
[LAUGHTER]
"A kind of meat to go in a meat recipe.
'We can go soon,' I say. 'Just wait.
Let me think for a minute.
You're not letting me think.'
So lately I've been having this recurring dream--
in it, my husband breaks up with me at a party, saying,
I'll tell you later.
Don't pester me.
But when I tell him this, he grows peevish.
'We're married, remember?
Nobody's breaking up with anybody.'
'I love autumn,' she says.
'Look at the beautiful autumn leaves.
It feels like autumn today.
Is autumn your favorite time of year?'
She stops walking and tugs at my sleeve. 'Mommy, mommy!
You are not noticing.
I'm using a new word.
I say autumn now instead of fall.'
I run into an acquaintance on the street, someone
I haven't seen in years.
When I knew him, we were both young.
He edited a literary magazine and I sometimes wrote for him.
He had a motorcycle but married early, both of which
impressed me.
He is still very handsome.
As we talk, I discover he has a child now too.
'I think I must have missed your second book,' he says.
'No,' I say.
'There isn't one.'
He looks uncomfortable.
Both of us are calculating the years or maybe only I am.
'Did something happen?' he says kindly after a moment.
'Yes,' I explain.
That night, I bring up the old art monster plan.
'Road not taken,' my husband says.
13.
I had this idea in the middle of the night
that maybe I could stop writing a hack book for the almost
astronaut and get a job writing fortune cookies instead.
I could try to write really American ones.
Already I've jotted down a few of them.
Objects create happiness.
The animals are pleased to be of use.
Your cities will shine forever.
Death will not touch you.
I send my fortunes to my friend, the philosopher.
He writes back immediately.
I'm interested in bankrolling you.
But I only have $27 in checking."
[LAUGHTER]
"The next morning a man comes in to look
for bugs in the apartment.
He brings his dog with him.
'Seek!' he tells the dog. 'Seek!
Seek!' but the dog just sits there, looking at me.
A week later, I call the man back to look for the bedbugs
again.
I give him tea and cookies.
'Here's what you do,' he says.
'Put poison on the mattress, then on the windowsills,
then in the electrical sockets.
Then just go to sleep in your bed."
[LAUGHTER]
"But the kid upstairs knows all about it already.
'Can I give you a little piece of advice?'
he says.
'Throw out everything you own.'
I read an article written by a woman living alone
who got them.
She talks about how depressing it
is to have no one to help her with all the spraying
and washing and cooking and bagging.
She's spent all her money, hasn't had a date in years.
I show it to my husband.
'It's true.
We're lucky,' he says.
A few weeks later, they send a note home
from her school about lice.
Mothers drive across town to the Orthodox neighborhood
to see the nitpicker.
$100 a head is what she charges them.
She is very thorough, the other mothers claim,
worth every penny.
But my husband is thorough too.
He goes through our hair, then holds the comb up
carefully to the light.
'Do you know why I love you?'
my daughter asks me.
She is floating in the bath water, her head lathered white.
'Why?' I say.
'Because I am your mother,' she tells me.
There is a video I have seen, which I cannot unsee,
that shows the bugs avoiding the poison by climbing the far
wall, crossing the ceiling, and then dropping down on the bed.
And another one, even worse, in which
a woman films herself waiting up all night
beside her young daughter's bed with a lint roller.
What Simone Weil said--
attention without object is a supreme form of prayer.
The almost astronaut calls me at all hours
now to talk about his book project.
'I think it's going to be a bestseller,' he tells me.
'Like that guy, what's his name?
Sagan.' 'Carl?' 'No,' he says. 'That's not it.
Something else.
It'll come to me.'"
[LAUGHTER]
"A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius.
Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain?
But in the morning, my daughter asked me what a cloud is,
and I cannot say."
OK so that's the cooked, and now the raw.