Gotham Diary:
Serene and Oblivious
10 September 2012
A picture of yesterday’s skies would interest no one. There was nothing to see but blue. At one point, a flotilla of small cumulus clouds, looking more like wallpaper for a nursery than anything else, crossed from north to south, but, for the most part, the sky was blank. It had completely forgotten the night before.
It would be all right with me if today were our last day out here. I’ve soaked up as much seaside peace as I can hold, and I’m beginning to feel the melancholy of autumn, which, in the city, is a burnished delight. Not so out here. The island is at its emptiest. Summer is absolutely over; the few hangers-on constitute an inverse of decimation. The winter life, in which about a hundred households participate with a frontier sociability, is not even imaginable at the moment.
For Kathleen, however, it is nothing less than heaven, and for all of these reasons, except for the melancholy, which touches her only in the form of a reminder that she will soon be going back to work. She will be going back to work, tomorrow; the combination of a conference and several unavoidable meetings will keep her busy for two days, and, because the ferry service has been cut back, she will have to leave this evening and wait until Thursday morning to return. Hell of a note! Why bother, I thought to myself; we have to be out of here first thing Saturday morning. But from Thursday morning to Saturday morning is the space of a slightfly curtailed weekend, which is generally thought to be worth the trip, and Kathleen hasn’t spend much more than a third of the time that I’ve had.. So I’ll stay here by myself. Anything is better (for me) than traveling. Being in other places is wonderful, but getting there is excruciating. (That’s why I’ve still never been to Williamsburgh.) I’ve made the most out of these restful weeks away from the city by staying put. I had the idea of ferrying across to Bay Shore for a haircut and a beard trim, but instead I’ve risked looking like the abominable snowman for the sake of ignoring logistics.
***
After washing up last night, I was casting about for something to read, and I thought that I would beguile a half hour with a story by Elizabeth Taylor. I opened up the fat omnibus to “The Dedicated Man,” the title story of her fourth collection. It is anything but beguiling. Closer to surrealism and alternative reality than anything by Taylor that I’ve read, it tells of an emotionally shut-down waiter who enlists a dependable coworker to pass as husband and wife in order to snag a position at a genteel restaurant in the Thames Valley. This odd deception works well enough until the waiter feels it necessary to allay suspicions by simulating the appearance of a genuinely marital chamber by putting out the photograph of a boy in a school blazer. Unfortunately, this photograph proves to be a portal, through which the waitress, his accomplice, travels into a better, if imaginary world.
A brilliant story, but unsettling, especially after dinner. For the first time, I did not hunger to read another story right away. I went to bed instead.