april was the cruelest month (and march, and may)
Wednesday 12 May 2004 | I like a cookie
It mixed memory with desire, bred lilacs out of the dead land, and got the Unnarrator for one into a whole lot of trouble. Though actually most of the trouble happened in March.
So a brief précis of my wicked misdeeds:
- March 23—the Un sleeps with the Film Critic, which is not All That, but has some real potential, and anyway she’s already in love with him, because of him quoting Baudelaire and starting letters “Hello my love,” and ending them “unalterably yours (mind, body, and soul)”—of course he means “inalterably” but she forgives him, because of the Baudelaire
- March 25—Film Critic meets the Un at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and then dumps her (”but I’m not really breaking up with you,” he explains helpfully, “because we’re not having a relationship”) in the parking lot outside DeVargas at midnight—but with sufficiently confusing ambiguity that she foolishly maintains some degree of hopefulness
- March 30—Film Critic misses Un’s birthday and is generally neglectful and indifferent and increasingly less ambiguous
- April 1—what turns out to be last date of FC and Un, in which they go to Japanese hot tub, eat sushi, watch South Park episode pillorying The Passion of the Mel, and make out briefly in the parking lot (different parking lot)
- April 2—the Un drives to Texas, spends a couple of days with parents, dazed with frustrated desire and writing incessantly in journal
- April 3—disastrous phone call with FC in which he compares her to Another Girl and doesn’t ask how she is doing and is just generally self-obsessed and Done with Un
- April 4—Film Critic goes to Paris
- April 5—the Un drives south, goes to take care of Maman who is recovering from surgery for endometrial cancer, and will purportedly begin radiation/chemo in a couple of weeks when she is stronger; Un is immediately flung into 24-hour nursing, not sleeping, not eating, dealing with creditors and Episcopalians when she isn’t running errands or holding Maman’s head over the pink kidney-shaped basin or reading psalms to her or making up stories with her, and, ensuite, burning holes in her own stomach lining; through all the month of April, receives increasingly tepid emails from Paris; any time she has five minutes to herself, feels leaden and grim and hurt all over again
- April 18—Maman admitted to hospital as it becomes clearer and clearer she is not recovering
- April 19—Mandarin arrives to take care of the caretaker; Un promptly falls in love with her all over again
- April 23—biological daughters of Maman arrive and we all begin process of Trying to Cope
- April 24? 25?—Mandarin accompanies Un to her parents’ farm where they have idyllic brief two days of watching all three installments of Lord of the Rings, boating, sleeping, lolling, walking, staring at the emu, and petting kittens; Un wakes up from sobbing nightmare of Mandarin’s death and no one understanding, distraught and slapping a dense Young Monk
- April 29—Mandarin leaves again for California, and Un, who has been clutchily lovesick and thus silent and surly for the last couple of days of her bodhisattvic visit, immediately misses her horribly
- May 2—the Un returns to New Mexico via her parents’ farm; immediately upon return, rings the FC who is wrenchingly chilly (”yeah, maybe I could fit that in between now and Sunday”); calls back to tell his answering machine, you know what, you really screwed me up, and I don’t know why you did it, but I really wish you hadn’t, and I don’t think I want to see you again; and hangs up and combusts into small ball of pain, which has come and gone since, but is somehow mostly still there all the time…mostly.
And thus, hanging out in the casita trying to figure out what hit me, I proffer you this, a small cool lima bean, for your reading delectation.
MAY
every night when I walk through the little gate a low-hung branch of
apricot blossoms smacks me in the face : you ditched me faster and
after more effulgent avowals than I even dreamt was possible : now
there’s pollen in my mouth and redolent white scent stinging my nose :
and a long wet scratch reaching from my cheekbone up tomy eye
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