On Thursday morning, when everyone had gone in accordance with their habits, she ate some burnt toast with her grapefruit and for ten minutes stared at a coffee pot with glazed eyes. There was a time when inanimate objects never failed at reflecting the ennui by which she gazed at them, causing profound ideas to be projected onto her consciousness like a great beacon of light shown onto a screen in dark movie theatre —a filmed documentary of the entity and its discoverer, Parmenides. Now meditation on a blank wall brought a sketch of that wall within her memory and this was all.
So, from pure boredom, she decided to watch the dogs that were all alone and unto themselves in the back yard. Since she wasn't exactly next door to Antarctic penguins and these two specimens were infinitely more fascinating than calculating the exact strands of gray hair in the underbrush that lay fully on her scalp, she cast spells onto the dogs making these smelly bodies with panting faces oozing out halitosis objects of mild curiosity. They were certainly something to consider for those who had nothing better to do with their time. Betty was busy behind the loud vacuum cleaner, and Gabriele could hardly retreat into her bedroom to escape the noise since the fusillade of Michael's flatulence a half hour earlier had been so rife that the air freshener could not do much but dilute it in an equally reprehensible odor.
She went out on the deck and looked onto a world that was definitely for the dogs. The German Shepherds moved in the yard unrestrained. In a more genuine way they seemed happier to sniff and distinguish bits of the world instead of this obsessive bliss of centering themselves on human masters. Much of the time Nathaniel's anti-social dog growled when Rick's dog came near him; but, depending on its mood, the two at times could play and wrestle with each other amicably. Gabriele fed them Puppy Chow and watched how they relinquished their freedom to instantly come for their meals. She pondered how all creatures were always slaves to hunger and the desire to obtain more than their allotted share—at least both characteristics were apparent in Nathaniel's dog.
Her thoughts echoed the breakfast talk a little over an hour ago. Rick had wanted to bring his dog to school and had suggested that he could tie it to a bicycle rack. Nathaniel had scoffed, "Right, ignoramus. D'you think Betty'll come behind the two of you with a pooper-scooper to keep your ass from being expelled. I think not!" Now, thinking of it, it still struck her as funny. It hadn't bothered Rick. He had retained his placidity the way his dog was now happily wagging its tail and looking up at her while its partner stole the food that was in its dish. As agreeable as Rick's dog was, she could understand Mr. Petulant's canine perfectly. Half-battered and half-loved even for a few days in this thing called family, it was lost there in the bosky thickets of confusion. Made to sleep with Nathaniel so that it might know him as master, it could already sense that his love was tepid at best. Feeling inferior and groping around in pleasurable associations so inextricably linked to pain it was sometimes bumptious, aggressive, and striving to leave a concept of its superiority onto the other dog's mind.
Months passed. She could not think anything in particular about the owl or the dogs let alone anything else. They just existed along with her existence and as incommunicably as her reticence. The late April rains were making shallow ponds within her yard. Sodden as the mustard MF put on his eggs, or the streams rolling across her sidewalk, the turgid sediment brought turgid sentiments of desperation in her mind. Then out of nowhere came a chain of events as if a blessing. They offered a respite from the void by the clogging of one's days in myriad tasks. It was clutter devised by her bed partner's making and it beeped according to the schedule in a PDA/ pocket computer that he lent to her. It all started one numb day when Rick's dog was licking her face and she wasn't even cognizant of it doing so and the telephone was ringing but she wasn't aware of it either; a message on her old answering machine informing her about Nathaniel's truancy; the imbroglio discussed in pillow talk; and the smell of MF's breath cajoling her to withdraw the boys from public school and to home teach them until the private school opened.
Eager to escape imprisonment in the void, her intransigence on the issue began to break down and there she was arguing with him playfully, agreeing with him silently, kissing him, needing the intoxication of his breath, and that tendentious male assertiveness of that one right perspective. Her tenuous arguments were playful and like any male he felt licentious flames from this clashing of wills, this electric and sexy friction, and this knowledge that by rubbing her in his arms and planting his seed in her he would conquer all resistance.
The next morning she kissed her MF at the breakfast table in front of the others without inhibitions, massaged the nape of his neck, and then sat there holding his hand under the table as she bobbed on some type of cloud. Betty's frying of bacon did not seem nauseating; the mustard Michael put on his eggs radiated warmly like the sun god, Aten; and the flatulence of one or more males at the breakfast table seemed aromatic. Convinced of her mission to be a teacher, she was suddenly the indispensable cue ball setting others in motion but being banged along with them. Her busy new life often involved the search of the right books to purchase; the readings, the making of handouts and worksheets; her impatient lectures, enforced homework, and administered tests; her punishment for recesses of savagery when Mr. Placid's head of hair was often pulled out of the sink like a fisherman's trophy; more lectures; taking Mr. Placid—never Mr. Petulant— with her grocery shopping or searching for acceptable amateur art for the school lounge (a Gabriele Sangfroid deemed not tame enough); sending another one of Mr. Phlegmatic's suits to the dry cleaner; and then driving the boys to baseball practice, boy scouts meetings, or swimming lessons. Her only contemplation during the first week of this teacher act was to sit on the toilet to urinate and defecate. It brought not only to her a physical catharsis but, from the bathroom window a view of Betty burning raked grass and leaves in the yard. Smoke hovered over the tree limbs like a thick massive spider web and she saw that the fire that was leaping and the smoke that was hovering was her own life. She told herself that she loathed contemplation. And so the months passed by in a vapid and dizzying succession of things to do. Real existential pondering or the internal creation of meaning within herself were troubles she did not need to ponder.
Sometimes she doubted herself and wondered whether motion had become an ersatz; and this quandary was as pesky as a fly trying to land on the oils of her shiny nose. She kept having a recurring dream of floating on the mattress of her bed to undulations and the sounds of waves splashing against a wall. These bedroom walls had old pallid- yellow wallpaper that was bubbled and flaking off and patterned onto the strips of wallpaper there were hexagon shapes. Cartoon versions of herself and her family were trapped in each hexagon like semi-beings in monads that were unable to connect to the bigger picture, but like the wallpaper they were fading away.
In a last exasperated appeal for her to apply for work at the school before it opened, he reminded her that the boys wouldn't be there to teach any longer so she would need to do something with herself. Ruminating would never succeed; but an external activity like painting that was so outwardly self-absorbing might be used to subtly reiterate to them who she was as if an action or a set of actions were the summation of a being. By painting she could only thwart the aspirations of others by making them realize that her own selfish agenda came before theirs. Such an appearance would make her outwardly narcissistic and impregnable in their perspectives. For otherwise they could take her apart piece by piece the way souvenir hunters chipped off Teotihuac‡n or walked off with the Petrified Forest.
He would perceive the less concrete images in her paintings to be feral, and yet he would remain taciturn, scowling but leaving her to be herself. Maybe there would be some of these bedtime reminders, although not so many as now. Now there were these continual reminders of suits to have cleaned, grocery items for his palate and pallet (colors for his mouth that she would be vile and immoral to ignore) and reminders of what their boys needed, the agenda of pleasure for these little monkeys whom she was meant to chauffeur from place to place (a karate class for one, a baseball practice for another, a friend's birthday party for one, a jean and shirt buying extravaganza for both).