Shatterday

Nothing mattered; he was alone with his memories, replaying again and again.

The sinking of the Titanic wafted through him.

She did not move, even though he was approaching on a direct line.

When he was quite close he could see that she was sitting cross-legged on nothingness; she was asleep. Her head was propped in one hand, the bracing arm supported by her knee. Asleep.

He came right up to her and stood there simply watching. He smiled. She was like a bird, he thought, with her head tucked under her wing. Not really, but that was how he saw her. Though her cupped hand covered half her face he could make out a sweet face, very pale skin, a mole on her throat; her hair was brown, cut quite short. Her eyes were closed: he decided they would be blue.

The Greek senate, the age of Pericles, men in a crowd—property owners—screaming at Lycurgus’ exhortations in behalf of socialism. The shadow of it sailed past not very far away.

Ian stood staring, and after a while he sat down opposite her. He leaned back on his arms and watched. He hummed an old tune the name of which he did not know.

Finally, she opened her brown eyes and stared at him.

At first momentary terror, shock, chagrin, curiosity. Then she took umbrage. “How long have you been there?”

“My name is Ian Ross,” he said.

“I don’t care what your name is!” she said angrily. “I asked you how long you’ve been sitting there watching me?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“I don’t like being watched; you’re being very rude.”

He got to his feet without answering, and began walking away. Oh well.

She ran after him. “Hey, wait!”

He kept walking. He didn’t have to be bothered like that. She caught up with him and ran around to stand in front of him. “I suppose you just think you can walk off like that!”

“Yes, I can. I’m sorry I bothered you. Please get out of my way if you don’t want me around.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said I was being rude. I am never rude; I’m a very well-mannered person and you were just being insulting.”

He walked around her. She ran after him.

“All right, okay, maybe I was a little out of sorts. I was asleep, after all.”

He stopped. She stood in front of him. Now it was her move. “My name is Catherine Molnar. How do you do?”

“Not too well, that’s how.”

“Have you been here long?”

“Longer than I wanted to be here, that’s for sure.”

“Can you explain what’s happened to me?”

He thought about it. Walking with someone would be a nice change. “Let me ask you something,” Ian Ross said, beginning to stroll off toward the phantom image of the hanging gardens of Babylon wafting past them, “did you waste a lot of time, sitting around, not doing much, maybe watching television a lot?”

They were lying down side-by-side because they were tired. Nothing more than that. The Battle of the Ardennes, First World war, was all around them. Not a sound. Just movement. Mist, fog; turretless tanks, shattered trees all around them. Some corpses left lying in the middle of no man’s land. They had been together for a space of time… it was three hours, it was six weeks, it was a month of Sundays, it was a year to remember, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times: who could measure it, there were no signposts, no town criers, no grandfather clocks, no change of seasons, who could measure it?

They had begun to talk freely. He told her again that his name was Ian Ross and she said Catherine, Catherine Molnar again. She confirmed his guess that her life had been empty. “Plain,” she said. “I was plain. I am plain. No, don’t bother to say you think I have nice cheekbones or a trim figure; it won’t change a thing. If you want plain, I’ve got it.”

He didn’t say she had nice cheekbones or a trim figure. But he didn’t think she was plain.

The Battle of the Ardennes was swirling away now.

She suggested they make love.

Ian Ross got to his feet quickly and walked away.

She watched him for a while, keeping him in sight. Then she got up, dusted off her hands though there was nothing on them, an act of memory, and followed him. Quite a long time later, after trailing him but not trying to catch up to him, she ran to match his pace and finally, gasping for breath, reached him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“I offended you.”

“No, you didn’t. I just felt like walking.”

“Stop it, Ian. I did, I offended you.”

He stopped and spun on her. “Do you think I’m a virgin? I’m not a virgin.”

His vehemence pulled her back from the edge of boldness. “No, of course you’re not. I never thought such a thing.” Then she said, “Well… I am.”

“Sorry,” he said, because he didn’t know the right thing to say, if there was a right thing.

“Not your fault,” she said. Which was the right thing to say.

From nothing to nothing. Thirty-four years old, the properly desperate age for unmarried, unmotherhooded, unloved. Catherine Molnar, Janesville, Wisconsin. Straightening the trinkets in her jewelry box, ironing her clothes, removing and refolding the sweaters in her drawers, hanging the slacks with the slacks, skirts with the skirts, blouses with the blouses, coats with the coats, all in order in the closet, reading every word in Time and Reader’s Digest, learning seven new words every day, never using seven new words every day, mopping the floors in the three-room apartment, putting aside one full evening to pay the bills and spelling out Wisconsin completely, never the WI abbreviation on the return envelopes, listening to talk radio, calling for the correct time to set the clocks, spooning out the droppings from the kitty box, repasting photos in the album of scenes with round-faced people, pinching back the buds on the coleus, calling Aunt Beatrice every Tuesday at seven o’clock, talking brightly to the waitress in the orange and blue uniform at the chicken pie shoppe, repainting fingernails carefully so the moon on each nail is showing, heating morning water for herself alone for the cup of herbal tea, setting the table with a cloth napkin and a placemat, doing dishes, going to the office and straightening the bills of lading precisely. Thirty-four. From nothing to nothing.

They lay side-by-side but they were not tired. There was more to it than that.

“I hate men who can’t think past the pillow,” she said, touching his hair.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s just something I practiced, to say after the first time I slept with a man. I always felt there should be something original to say, instead of all the things I read in novels.”

“I think it’s a very clever phrase.” Even now, he found it hard to touch her. He lay with hands at his sides.

She changed the subject. “I was never able to get very far playing the piano. I have absolutely no give between the thumb and first finger. And that’s essential, you know. You have to have a long reach, a good spread I think they call it, to play Chopin. A tenth: that’s two notes over an octave. A full octave, a perfect octave, those are just technical terms. Octave is good enough. I don’t have that. “.

“I like piano playing,” he said, realizing how silly and dull he must sound, and frightened (very suddenly)