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It’s About Time
00:59:00
Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories about the nature of time and how it shapes our lives. In Helen Phillips’ “The Knowers,” a woman chooses to learn a vital fact about her future, while her husband does not. Stockard Channing reads this thought-provoking fantasy. In Anita Felicelli’s “Time Invents Us” a chance encounter turns the clock back for an aging artist. It’s read by Kirsten Vangsness.
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- [00:00]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
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- [00:31]
Narrator/Character (Ellie)
Unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes so you don't have.
- [00:36]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
To don't know the difference between matte paint, finish and satin or what that.
- [00:40]
Narrator/Character (Ellie)
Clunking sound from your dryer is.
- [00:42]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app.
- [00:49]
Download today.
- [00:59]
At Selected Shorts we love what if Stories. What if you could turn back the clock and retrieve a lost moment or a lost love? On this week's show, two stories that ask those questions. I'm your host, Meg Wolitzer, and you're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. Time flies. If I could put time in a bottle. It's about time. Love you till the end of time. I have wasted time and now time doth waste me. It's closing time. When we were thinking about the theme for this show, we realized the extent to which time is a constant in our lives. It's not just that we live in and through time that's a given, but the idea of time has pervaded our language colloquially and lyrically. We spend our lives moving through time, and yet again and again we're shocked, shocked to see it pass. So we decided to move past the tropes and cliches and consider two very different stories on the nature of time and its effects on us. In one, a woman chooses knowledge over comfortable ignorance. In the other, a chance encounter turns the clock back for an aging artist. Our first story, the Knowers, is by a selected Shorts favorite, Helen Phillips, whose demure and dangerous works of fantasy have beguiled us over the years. She's the author of five books, including the novel the need, and was one of the authors we commissioned for our first ever anthology, Small Odysseys. The Knowers has a provocative sci fi premise, the the availability of personal information that's sort of an extreme version of the Freedom of Information act. But the heart of the story is about the effect on a marriage when two people choose different paths. Our reader is the multi talented, multi credited stalker Channing, whose television work includes the West Wing and on stage, her Tony nominated performance in House of Blue Leaves. Here she is with Helen Phillips. The Knowers.
- [03:25]
Narrator/Character (Ellie)
There are those who wish to know, and there are those who don't wish to know. At first Tim made fun of me in that condescending way of his a flick of my nipple, a grape tossed at my nose when I claimed to be among the former. When he realized I meant it, he grew anxious. And when he realized I really did mean it, his anxiety morphed into terror. Why? He demanded tearfully, in the middle of the night. I couldn't answer. I had no answer. This isn't only about you, you know, he said. It affects me too. Actually, maybe it affects me more than it affects you. I don't want to sit around for a bunch of decades waiting the worst day of my life. Touched, I reached out to squeeze his hand in the dark. Grudgingly, he squeezed back. I would have preferred to be like Tim, of course I would have, if only I could have known it was possible to know and still accept ignorance. But now that the technology has been mastered, the knowledge was available to every citizen for a nominal fee. Tim stood in the doorway as I buttoned the blue will coat he'd given me for, I think, our four year anniversary a couple years back. I don't want to know where you're going, he said. Fine, I said matter of factly, checking my purse for my keys, my eye drops. I won't tell you. I forbid you to leave this apartment, he said. Oh, hon, I sighed. I did feel bad. That's just not in your character. With a tremor, he fell away from the doorway to let me pass. He slouched against the wall, arms crossed, staring at me, his eyes wet and so very dark. Splendid. Tim. After I stepped out, I heard the deadbolt sliding into place. So? Tim said. When I unlocked the deadbolt, stepped back inside, he was standing right there in the hallway, his eyes darker than ever, his slouch more pronounced. I was willing to believe he hadn't moved in the 127 minutes I'd been gone. So I replied forcefully. I was shaken, I'll admit it, but I refused to shake him with my shakenness. You. He mouthed the question more than spoke it. I nodded curtly. No way was I going to tell him about the bureaucratic office with its pale yellow walls that either smelled like urine or brought that odor to mind. Never ceases to amaze me that even as our country forges into the future with ever more bedazzling devices and technologies, the archaic infrastructure rots away beneath our feet. The pavement, the rails, the schools, the dmv. In any case, Tim would not know today or ever, about the place I'd gone, about the humming machine that looked like a low budget atmosphere. Could they really do no better about the chilly metal buttons of the keypad into which I punched my Social Security number after waiting in line for over 45 minutes behind other soon to be knowers? There was a silent, grim camaraderie among us. Surely I was not the only one who felt carefully, deliberately, desperately, I avoided looking at their faces as they stepped away from the machine and exited the room. Grief? Relief? I didn't want to know. I had to do what I'd come to do. And what did my face look like, I wonder? As I glanced down at the paper the slot spat out at me as I folded it up and stepped away from the machine. Tim held his hand out, his fingers spread wide, his palm quivering but receptive. Okay, lay it on me, he said. The words were light, almost jovial, but I could tell they were the five hardest words he'd ever uttered. I swore to never again accuse Tim of being less than courageous, and I applauded myself for going straight from the office to the canal, for standing there above the sickly greenish water, for glancing once more at the piece of paper, for tearing it into as many scraps as possible, though it was essentially a scrap of paper to begin with, for dropping it into the factory scented breeze. I thought it was the right thing to do, and now I knew it was. Tim should not have to live under the same roof with that piece of paper. I don't have it, I said brightly. You don't? He gasped, suspended between joy and confusion. You mean you changed your poor Tim? I got it, I said, before he could go too far down that road. I got it. And then I got rid of it. He stared at me, waiting. I mean, after memorizing it. I watched him deflate. Fuck you, he said. I'm sorry, but fuck you. Yeah, I said sympathetically. I know. You do know, he raged, seizing upon the word. You know. You know. He was thrashing about. He was so pissed. He was grabbing me. He was weeping. He half collapsed upon me.
- [09:06]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
He.
- [09:07]
Narrator/Character (Ellie)
I navigated us down the hallway to the old couch. When he finally quieted, he was different. Maybe different than he'd ever been. Tell me he calmly commanded. His voice was just at the threshold of my hearing. Are you sure? I said. My voice sounded too loud, too hard. In that moment, I found myself, my insistence on knowing profoundly annoying. Suddenly it seemed quite likely that I'd made a catastrophic error, the kind of error that could ruin the rest of my life. Tim nodded, gazed at me. I got wildly scared. I, who so boldly sought knowledge now, did not even dare to give a voice to a date. Tim nodded again, controlled, miserable. It was my responsibility to inform him. April 17th. I began, but Tim shrieked before I could finish. Stop. He cried, shoving his fingers into his ears. His calmness vanished. Never mind. Don't, don't, don't. Okay. I screamed, loud enough that he could hear it through his fingers. It was lonely, ever so lonely to hold this knowledge alone. April 17, 2043. A tattoo inside my brain. But it was as it should be. It was a choice I had made. Tim wished to be spared and spare him. I would. It was an okay lifespan. Not enough. Is it ever enough? But enough to have a life. Enough to work a job, to raise children, perhaps to meet a grandchild or two. Certainly abbreviated, though shorter than average. Too short, yes, but not tragically short. And so in many ways I could live a life like any other. Like Thames. I could go blithely along, indulging my petty concerns, lacking perspective, frequently forgetting I wasn't immortal yet. It would be a lie if I said a single day passed without me thinking about April 17, 2043. In those early years, I'd sink into a black mood. Come mid April. I'd lie in bed for a couple of days, clinging to my sheets, my heart a big swollen wound. 10 would bring me cereal tea. But after the kids were born, I had no time for such self indulgence, and I began to mark the date in smaller, kinder ways, would buy myself a tiny gift, a bar of chocolate or a few daffodils. As time went on, I permitted myself slightly more elaborate gestures, a new dress, an afternoon champagne at some hushed bar. I always felt extravagant on that day. I'd leave a tip of 30%, hand out a $5 bill to any vagrant who happened to cross my path. You can't take it with you and all that. Tim tried hard to forget what he'd heard, but every time April 17th came around again, I could feel his awareness of it, a slight buzz in the way he looked at me, tenderness and fury all wrapped up in one. Oh, he'd say, staring hard at the daffodils as I stepped through the door that I'd made a reservation for us at a fancy restaurant. I'd schedule a weekend getaway. Luxuries. We went the whole rest of the year without. Meanwhile, my birthday languished unnoticed. In July Tim would sigh and pack his overnight case. We sat drinking coffee in rocking chairs on the front porch of a Bent and breakfast on a hill and the chill of early spring. Tim was generous. To me it was his least favorite day of the year, but he managed to pretend. We'd stroll, we'd eat ice cream, silly little band aids. My life would seem normal, bland really, to an outside observer. But I tell you that for me it has been rich. Layered and rich. I realize that it looks like, you know, 2.2 children, an office job, a long marriage, an average number of blessings and curses. But there have been so many moments. Almost an infinity of moments. Soaping up the kids hair when they were tiny. Walking from the parking lot to the office on a bird studded Friday morning. Smelling the back of Tim's neck in the middle of the night. What can I say? I don't mean to be sentimental, but these are not small things. As the cliche of our time goes, the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. This is no time to go into the ups and downs, the stillbirths and the car accident and the estrangement and what happened to my brother. But I will say that I believe the above statement to be true. April 17th. I lived that date 31 times already before I learned about April 17th, 2043. Isn't it macabre to know that we've lived the date of our death many times, passing by it each year as the calendar turns? And doesn't it perhaps deflate the horror just a bit? To take the mystery out of it? To actually know. To not have every date bear the heavy possibility of someday being the date of one's death. I do not know the answer to this question. April 17, 2043. The knowledge heightened my life. The knowledge burdened my life. I regretted knowing. I was grateful to know. I've never been the type to bungee jump or skydive. Yet in small ways I lived more courageously than others. More courageously than Tim. For instance, I know when to fear death, yes, but that also meant I knew when not to fear it. I'd gone to grocery store during the times of quarantine. I'd volunteer at the hospital, driven in blizzards, ridden roller coasters so rickety Tim wouldn't let the kids on them. But December 31, 2042, was a fearful day for me. Are you okay? Tim said after the kids had gone home. We'd hosted everyone for our last supper of the year, both children and their spouses and our son's six month old, our first grandchild, bright as a brand new penny and the dinner table. Our radiant daughter and her blushing husband announced they were expecting in August. Amid the raucous cheers and exclamations, no one noticed that I wasn't cheering or exclaiming the child I'd missed by four months. The ache was vast, vast. I couldn't speak. I watched them, their hugs and high fives, as though from behind a glass wall. Oh God, Ellie, tim said painfully, sinking into the couch in the dark living room. Oh God, no, I lied, joining him on the couch. Not this year. Tim embraced me so warmly with such relief that I felt cruel. I couldn't bear myself. I stood up and, unsteady with dread, limped towards the bathroom. Ellie, he said. You're limping. My foot fell asleep, I lied again, yanking the door shut behind me. I stood in the bathroom, hunched over the sink, clinging to the sink, staring at my face in the mirror until it no longer felt like my face. This would become a distasteful but addictive habit over the course of the next three and a half months. Aside from the increasing frequency with which I found myself falling into myself in the bathroom mirror, I got pretty good at hiding my dread from Tim and even at times, from myself. We planted bulbs. We bought a cooler for summer picnics. I pretended and pretended. It felt nice to pretend. Yet when Tam asked on April 10 what I planned for this year's getaway, the veil fell away. Given the circumstance, I had, of course, neglected to make any plans for the 17th. Dread rushed outward from my gut until my entire body was hot and cold. Panicking, I looked across the table at Tim, who was gazing at me openly, boyishly, the way he looked at me. For almost four decades, Tim and I, we'd been so lucky in love. Tim, I choked. You okay? He said. And then he realized. Damn it, Ellie. He yelled, and hit the table. I quietly quit my job, handed in the paperwork, and Tim took the week off, and we spent every minute together. We invited the blissfully ignorant kids out for brunch. I clutched the baby, forcing her to stay in my lap even as she tried to wiggle and whine her way out, until eventually I had to hand her over to her mother, a chunk of my heart squirming away from me, everything. I saw a fire hydrant, a tree, a flagpole. I thought how it would go on existing just the same. Tim and I had more sex than we'd had in the previous 12 months combined. Briefly, I hung suspended and immortal in orgasm, and a few times lying sun stroked in bed in the late afternoon, felt infinite. What can I say? What did we do? We held hands under the covers, we made fettuccine Alfredo, and cleaning the kitchen, listened to our favorite broadcast. I dried the dishes with a green dishcloth, warm and damp. On the morning of April 17, 2043, I was astonished to open my eyes to the light. Six hours and four minutes into the day and I was alive, petrified, too scared to move even a muscle. I wondered how death would come for me. I supposed I'd been hoping it would come mercifully. In the soft sleep of morning, I turned to Tim, who wasn't in bed beside me. Tim, I cried out. He's in the doorway. Before I reached the m, his face stricken. Tim, I said plaintively, joyously. He looked so good to me, standing there holding two coffee mugs, his ancient baby blue robe. I thought you were dying, he said. I thought you were dying. I sounded like a figure of speech, but he meant it so literally, so very literally, that I gave a short, sharp laugh. Would it be a heart attack? A stroke? A tumble down the basement stairs? I had the inclination to stay in bed, resting my head on Tim, see if I might somehow sneak through the day. But by 10am I was still alive and feeling antsy, defiant when why lie here whimpering when it was coming for me, no matter what? Let's go out, I said. Tam looked at me doubtfully. It's not like I'm sick or anything. I threw the sheets aside, stood up, and pulled on my old comfy jeans. The outside seemed more dangerous there. It could be a falling branch, a malfunctioning crane, a vehicle running a red light, but it could just as easily catch me at home. Misplaced rat poison, a chunk of meat lodged in my throat, a slick bathtub. Okay, I said as I stepped out the door. Tim. Hesn't behind me. We walked, looking this way and that as we went, hyper aware of everything, vigilant. I felt like a newborn person passing so alertly through the world. It was such an anti death day. The crocuses, Tim kept saying these beautiful solemn one liners that would work well if they happened to be the last words he ever said to me. But what I really wanted to hear was throwaway words all those thousands of times Tim had said what? Patiently or irritably or absentmindedly, so eventually I had to tell him to please stop. You're stressing me out, I said. I'm stressing you out, tim scoffed. But he did stop saying the solemn things. We strolled and got coffee. We strolled some more and got lunch. We sat in a park, each additional moment a small shock. We sat in another park. We got more coffee. We strolled and got dinner. Mirrors and windows reminded me that we were a balding, shuffling guy hanging onto a grandmother in saggy jeans. But my senses felt bright and young, supremely sensitive to the taste of the coffee, the color of the rising grass, the sound of kids whispering in the playground. I felt carefree and at the same time the opposite of carefree, as though I could sense the seismic activity taking place beneath the bench where we sat gazing up at kites. Is it strange to say that this day reminded me of the first day I'd ever spent with Tim 38 years ago? The afternoon gave way to a serene blue evening, the moon a sharp perfect half, and we sat in our small front porch watching cars glide down our street. At times the air buzzed with invisible threat, and at times it just felt like air. But the instant I noticed it just felt like air, it would begin to buzz with invisible threat once more. Come 11:45pm we are inside, brushing our teeth, shaking. Tam dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. I grabbed it out for him. Would I simply collapse onto the floor? I would be a burglar with a witness weapon. What if there had been an error? Remembering back to that humble machine, that thin scrap of paper, the cold buttons of the keypad, I indulged in the fantasy I'd avoided all the years. It suddenly seemed possible that I punched my Social in wrong, one digit off, or that there had been some kind of systemic mistake, some malfunction deep within the machine. Or perhaps I'd mixed up the digits. April 13, 2047. If I lived beyond April 17, 2043, where would the new boundaries of my life lie? Shakily, I rinsed Tem's toothbrush and steaming hot water from the faucet. It wouldn't be me lingering in the aisle of the drugstore, considering the potential replacements, the colors. We stood there staring at each other in the bathroom mirror. This time I didn't fall into my own reflection. Tim. I was looking at Tim. Why had it never occurred to me that it might be something that would kill him, too? In all these years, truly, I had never once entertained that possibility. But it could be a meteorite, a bomb, an earthquake, a fire. I unlocked my eyes from Tim's reflection and grabbed the real Tem. I clung to him as to a cliff, and he clung right back. I counted 10 tense seconds, the pulse in his neck. Should we I said. What? Tem said quickly, almost hopefully, as though I was about to propose a solution. I don't know. Go to bed. It's way past our bedtime. Bedtime, Tim said, as though I was hilarious. 11:54pm on April 17, 2043 we are both alive and well, yet I mustn't get ahead of myself. There are still six minutes remaining.
- [27:28]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
Stocker Channing performed the Knowers By Helen Phillips. I'm Meg Wolitzer. What makes this story so powerful is the way Phillips controls our sense of time and extends the story's premise to the edge of an infinity we can only sense. It makes us realize that in life and in a marriage, there often isn't enough of it. We asked Phillips what inspired this unsettling exploration of both time and marriage.
- [27:56]
Author (Helen Phillips)
It's impossible for me to think about the story the Knowers without thinking about the fact that this was the first work of fiction that I wrote, the death of my sister in July of 2012. And after she died, I had a hard time writing fiction. I had a hard time understanding how fiction could help me. But then when I found a way to write the Knowers, which it really is, a story about coming to terms with the fact that we are all going to die. It was really the emotional process of coming to terms with the death of my sister, the fact that her date had come. I got this image of an ATM machine that, rather than spitting out money at us, would spit out the day of our death. So I'm always interested when a bureaucratic reality can bump up against an existential truth. It is a love story. Although I really came to notice that when Stockard Channing read it at Symphony Space. I think that as I was writing, I was thinking a lot about the premise. But when Stockard Channing read it, I realized how much it is a love story, and a story about a marriage and a story about two people being close, even though they've made a very different choice. One person in the couple chooses to know the date of their death, and one person chooses to be protected from that knowledge. So when I was thinking of the character of Tem, I was really framing him as the person in this story in opposition to the protagonist who chooses not to know the first line of the story is, there are those who choose to know and there are those who choose not to know. So he is one of the not knowers. He is someone who would rather bury his head in the sand. I am like tem. I am the one who would rather not know. I don't want to know the date of my death. I think that that would be a very, very weighty knowledge to bear. But he wants to live free of that. And I think that maybe there's something immature about that or maybe there's something very wise about that. I think that I was conscious of giving her her piece of the pie to some extent, that she would get to have many of the pleasures of life, but she would live all of those pleasures in the context of knowing that she wouldn't get to experience them in all of their potential fullness. And ultimately, I think that that potentially makes those pleasures richer for her. I think that's one of the questions of this story. Is there something height by knowing the brevity of something of your marriage or your relationship with your children, do you cherish it more or does it cast a shadow over it? And I think this story hovers in that question.
- [30:44]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
That was author Helen Phillips talking about her provocative concepts. When we return, an artist experiences deja vu. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to Selected Shorts recorded live and performance at Symphony Space in New York City and and at other venues nationwide. Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction or One Short story at a Time. I'm Meg Wolitzer and we're glad you made it back before the lights went up. No, wait, that's in the theater. But the important thing is you're on time because you know what happens when you're late. You miss my pithy introductions and you miss the plot, but we forgive you. And what's timeless is all the good stuff you can find on our website selectedshorts.org, past stories, a link to our anthology Small Odysseys so you can read another Helen Phillips story and our podcast. We promise that it's worth the time. On this show, we're considering the idea of time not just as something we live by, but as an emotional catalyst. In our first story, the principal character has agency, knowledge about her. Time gives her power and peace. But in Time Invents Us by Anita Felicelli. The protagonist is swept away in time and cannot control her response to memories that seem to have come to life. Felicelli is the author of the short story collection Love Songs for a Lost Continent and Chimerica A Novel. Our reader is our friend Kirsten Vangsness, best known as Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds. Recent stage work includes Nimrod at Theatre of Note. Here she is to take us back in time in Anita Felicelli's Time Invents Us.
- [32:57]
He strides into my art studio with a vitality and energy you can't fake. The mediae of the young no paunch, no white hair at the temples, no slump in his shoulders, no half hearted efforts at a flirtation he already knows is marked for failure. All the artists in the neighborhood have flung open the doors to their homes, their sheds, their cramped makeshift studios, their lush gardens, and people meander into these spaces to look at art. Often they pretend they're going to buy something to be polite, but most of the time they're simply seeking the pleasure of looking, of taking something with their eyes they don't have to pay for or give back. Standing before one of my installations, a young man nodding. Not only young, but gorgeous. Jet black hair, eyes shielded by sunglasses, each lens an iridescent swirl of oil, rainbow skin darkened like summer velvet. He's the spitting image of my husband, down to the constellation of black moles on his neck, but 30 years younger. His arms are sleeved in a sky blue sweater. My heart catches a strange kind of ecstasy and I immediately want to introduce myself, to slowly, carefully roll up the sleeves of his sweater, to run the tips of my fingers along the warm surface of his arm and find his familiar tattoos. He might be my husband, my family. Not a simulacrum, but the real thing, the human I've lost somewhere in the present. My husband has decided not to come as per usual and has fled to the gallery he owns in the city. He hasn't visited any of the artists participated in open studios in years. He's lost interest in art, he says, even though it puts food on our table. What's the point? Nobody's genuinely moved by it. People are faking it. People are desperate to seem sophisticated, he says as he drinks himself into an absinthe flavored stupor. There's no reason to hold back, as there are several more bottles of absinthe in the garage, a thank you gift from a celebrated artist who sculpts phalluses in varying postures and places waxed mustaches on them. My husband is in a midlife crisis but unwilling to admit it, even as all the rituals of crisis come into play. He likes to fill the bird feeder in the backyard lemon tree and watch the hummingbirds flap around it, their elusive wings holograms. He likes to take his time eating, chewing every bite of his cereal slowly, methodically, feeling the easy give of grains under milk. He goes on long strolls for the sole purpose of counting the ramshackle nests of crows in order to estimate the growth of the crow population in our neighborhood, and he announces upon every return that the crows are taking over. He's interested only in the minutia of mortality, and it's taken a grievous toll on our marriage, which has been constructed on an edifice of art, on the edifice of art as a real agent of change in our world, our relationships built not on art but on a shiftless artifice. I realize now with dismay, it's scorching. Artists offer Dixie cups of lemonade or wine. Most people choose wine, no matter how thirsty they are, or perhaps because of how thirsty they are. Milling around my husband's double are people of every persuasion. In hoodies, in T shirts, in designer business suits, in leather pants, wearing hoop earrings and red lipstick, waist cinched in corsets, flowy gauze skirts flaunting piercings like shooting stars all over their bodies. They enter the shed in our backyard, following gold balloons and pasteboard and marker signs. Back in the day, my husband would have enjoyed the people watching. If nothing else, I wanted to blow off this yearly ritual too, close my doors. I'm too far along in my career to care much about opening my studio to the public. Long ago I thought something life changing might occur at an open studio, that a stranger might walk in and change my life. And the anticipation of the unknown fueled me through the small talk, made me ever more aggressively entertaining. Now I know nothing changes only because you let people look at your work. Everything is the same afterward, at least for you, even if you're hoping your work moves, strangers, changes them in some way they cannot immediately articulate. My paintings have grown tame, tame enough to sell, tame enough for living rooms in the heartland even, but I never managed to beckon fame or a legacy, and I understand now I never will. Yet force of habit compels me to participate in this pointless ritual, even if I need to do it alone. Before throwing open the shed doors around noon, I guzzled espresso and painted for hours. I'd stretched two linen canvases and primed them, covering my fingers and hands and overalls with gesso. I swirled alizarin crimson into ultramarine. I'd flung blue oil paint onto a canvas and entitled Moon womb that I painted last week, the image of a titanium white and kiana cryodone magenta moon with the shadow and embryo cast against it. My husband's double is ignoring the paintings, as he should, since they're shit. He gazes as an older installation I've left on the wall as a kind of litmus test for how easily a viewer succumbs to shock. A wall of unwrapped tampons, hot glued together, each string casting a skinny shadow, the wall meant to show how the body's most visceral needs, deepest reality, serve as a barricade against all else. Next to the tampon installation from the same period, a wall of birth control dispensers, each painted in streaks of Carmen and purple lake, luminous seed pearls nestled inside in place of pills. My husband loved these installations once upon a time, but now he thinks they're garish and vulgar, too needy and erotic and attention seeking to say anything meaningful, he said. I study my husband's double from across the room. I want to find out if in fact my husband has traveled across time to find me, perhaps to tell me something important I should know about our marriage, perhaps to reveal what I don't already know about the past that led me to this lonely, barren moment, perhaps to warn me about the future. What if my husband has found a way to break the space and time between us? I would know it was him, I think. If the devil has the same voice as my husband, I just need him to speak. How else would we know our time travelers? If we run into them except by the way they appear, except by the way they move around a room, we might be the only ones to recognize them, the only ones to understand that time has been breached. My husband was once beautiful, and here he is in this young man. Perhaps the sunglasses are an affectation, a way to cloak intense vulnerability. They had been with my husband when I met him. I think about sliding the sunglasses to his brows, slowly gazing into the seductive brown eyes I already know, carefully removing the sunglasses from his face, running my hands along his cheekbones. But the young man won't look at me, not at first. He's resolutely closed off, even after he abandons the wall of tampons and starts to peer at the paintings with his hands stuffed in his corduroy pockets and an impenetrable air, occasionally nodding or grunting at the art, whether in affirmation or unspoken criticism, I can't say. Other visitors swarm around him, but he stays laser focused, like he's truly come to view art, and not necessarily for the free wine and brie and crackers I've set out, or even to mingle with the other visitors or pick someone up. I breathe in deeply and I cross my arms, almost to protect myself from this younger version of my husband, the sense of lost magic that floods me as I look at his countenance. Can I help you? He glances at me and he pauses. You the artist? He asks, as if he already knows the answer. It's my husband's voice. Same intonation, same elegant accent, the same lighting of the R. Yes? I nod uncertainly. When I was browsing online, yours was the studio I most wanted to see, he says. He holds out his hand and I shake it with some reluctance so he doesn't recognize me except as the artist. Your work, it's phenomenal. I love what you're doing with even the most mundane objects, the most mundane experiences. Menstruation, birth control. I love it. He keeps holding my hand. If he isn't my husband at a younger age, he should have released my hand immediately. And then there's the pleasant nature, too, of his grip, the peculiar, peculiar way his hand is precisely the right temperature. No sweatiness, no clamminess. The feeling of it against mine, like we have known each other intimately for years. I don't want to let go either. The room full of strangers spins around us, and I think again of rolling his sleeves up, of taking off his sunglasses. But he releases me finally, and I suck in air. You okay? He says.
- [43:01]
Narrator/Character (Ellie)
Uh huh.
- [43:02]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
You remind me of someone, I say, and he looks at me with an utterly blank face. I want to shake him. How could he not know? It's maddening. It must be a hoax. I rack my brain to consider who might be trying to play this joke on me. Who have I pissed off in the art world, shuffle through the names. Still he says nothing. But he does take off his sunglasses and put them in his pocket.
- [43:27]
Narrator/Character (Ellie)
Who?
- [43:28]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
He asks helter skelter, flecks of bronze in his eyes, identical to my husband's, but there's no recognition there. I scrutinize his jaw, his cheekbones, maybe too closely, hoping I don't know for what. Silence consumes us both. He looks at me like he thinks I'm flirting with him, and maybe I am, because I am, in my own mind at least, flirting with someone I've known for 30 years. He touches my cheek. Electricity, startling, overwhelming, painful, passes through my skin, conducted through the water in my body, reverberating like waves in a pond after a Stone's been skipped. You have some kind of, I don't know, orangish streak there. You painting this morning? I nod. He takes his hand away. Can I see the work? The crowd moves around and skirts us, and as soon as he asks me to see the work, the sound switches back on and I understand we weren't alone. We're surrounded here in this room by many other people, all of whom I'm supposed to be courting. I realize I've inched toward him in my effort to properly see his face, and now, standing far too close to him. Our faces are inches from each other. His pores are identical to my husband's, but I'm not sure whether pores can be taken different. I don't know if he comes closer to me or I come closer to him, or perhaps it's just natural when we're standing in the midst of so much noise and commotion, but close like this. I observe the crooked bump on the bridge of his nose and the way his upper lip curls ever so slightly with contempt. I know that contempt, the contempt of the young. I take him to see the new canvases, which I've left leaning up against the shed outside to fully dry. He paces in front of them, cagey. They're different, he says finally. Different than what you've got hanging inside your embryo. Fixation is interesting. Fixation? I ask, tension in my shoulders. I'd been hoping he'd say he'd like these, that he understands what I'm going for, that he understands me. This is what I want most of all, for him to understand me the way I'm always hoping my husband will understand me, even though my husband never has, and probably this guy, his double, never will either. Oh, maybe that's too strong a word. Fascination. Isn't that a kind of hat? No, that's a fascinator. He smiles a little now, quizzically, like he's not sure what he's done wrong but knows there must be something my eyes might give me away. He steps back, hesitation animating him, and he begins edging away from me. It is all I can do not to grab him by the arms and pull him back toward me, as if we were still in college at a party. We met drunk off our asses in the co ops at Cal. He liked my art, and because he liked my art so much he invited me to eat cheese flautas like the ones his abuela used to make and drink icy margaritas, and this is how he ended up in bed, that sultry midsummer night and why we'd moved into apartment off campus together the following year. Never again had it been the way it was that first year, either the first year when we fell in love or the first year when we got married, trying to halt our inexorable slide away from each other. We didn't know then that marriage is a way to be sure. You never know someone as he is by himself. Not entirely. Do you have children? He asks. His eyebrows draw together, making a tense squiggle in the center of his forehead. No, I can't have children, I regret immediately saying too much. I'm always saying too much, letting spill details about my life, like I can't bear to keep anything to myself, like I need the comfort of other people knowing what's inside my mind, like I need to express myself at the cost of social order, and that's I found a high cost to pay. What does my fertility have to do with him? Nothing, of course. Nothing. I'm so sorry, he says, aghast, and steps back and again I want to pull him closer. It's okay. I'm past that stage of life. I say it flatly, with no emotion. Sometimes it still hits me with a painful force. Children will never happen for me, not if my life continues the way it's been going, and not if I keep getting older, if my body keeps changing, aging against my will. My wife and I are thinking of having kids, he says after a moment, his voice calm and new. I glance at his finger and see, sure enough, a plain platinum band circles it, the same band my husband has. You look like my husband, I say in a broken voice. Last ditched effort, because my longing has put become unbearable, a kind of excruciating stretching and breaking inside me as I remember the person I was when my husband and I first met, and how much I longed to be that person instead of this other person, less accomplished for her age but with more silver hairs and yet somehow hungrier, ravenous in spite of being older. He looks at me more closely without alarm this time, his eyes wandering my face. He's noticing me, finally. I hadn't realized he wasn't looking at me closely before, and it's only the contrast of before and now that makes me understand that I've mistaken interest in my work for interest in myself. Maybe in fact he's only here because of my canvases and not to sweep me back in time after all. What other studios are you planning to visit today? I asked politely, last face saving question. Disappointment and humiliation have assumed control of my body, rendered it merely a blushing host, triggering me into helplessness, hopelessness, fragility. Visitors begin to leave the studio, slipping out one by one and two by two, and I should get back inside. I should play hostess. He shrugs, glances down, embarrassed. I was interested in your work, in the materiality of your brushstrokes. No other artists in the catalog caught my attention. When are you finished here? My eyes meet his again. Bronze flecks. My husband liked my brushstrokes too, their juicy thickness. I glance at my watch. I'll be closing up in about a half an hour, I say. Do you need to get back inside? He asks. He looks like he wants me to say no. I nodded, startled, that after all, it's not just me. Maybe there's something hanging in the air between us, a curtain to be drawn away. I'm gonna grab something to eat for lunch, he says, But I can come back. He pauses.
- [50:18]
Narrator/Character (Ellie)
You want something? No, that's okay.
- [50:21]
Narrator/Host (Meg Wolitzer)
Trays of cheese and water crackers might still be overflowing after everyone leaves, and he touches my forearm, lingers there a moment again. Electricity, the jolt of that, him and me sharing the same spirit. But the moment passes and he walks away, and he doesn't look back. I hurry back inside and I mingle with stragglers. They ask me questions about what medium various works are in, how long it took me to install those tampons on the wall, how long it took me to install the birth control dispensers, what glue I used. They don't ask me as much about meaning, about what anything means, about how my life informs the work. They are interested in the meaning, I realize for the first time in my career, more how it makes them feel. My intentions are irrelevant to the art's reception, and maybe my husband is right to take such an intense interest in the hummingbirds, in the speed of their metallic wings and their zealous emptying of the bird feeder and the crows invading our neighborhood. Maybe that's all there is to life. Visitors leak out of the studio, having bought nothing. I am deflated. My work, which seems so vital, so charged in the morning, is leached now of all excitement, of all the blood and sweat which I made it merely paint on cloth, nothing. I begin to clean up, throwing wine bottles in the recycling and sweeping up crumbs. The brie and crackers are gone, though voluptuous curls of cheese remain on the edges of white plastic knives, and I regret not taking the young man up on his offer of food. I adjust paintings on the wall. I shouldn't have left this studio. Some of the paintings have been touched. Plainly people were touching them without me there, since a number are askew. You use impasto, I remind myself. You want people to touch them. The desire to be touched is embedded in the paintings themselves, the raised impasto surfaces, most of the work done rather violently with a palette knife, so that you feel, looking at the rough surface of the painting, life pushing at the edges, life in the fallow blue swirled with cadmium yellow in the naphthal scarlet glazed with transparent orange. These paintings are meant to be consumed, eaten with gusto, digested rather than simply seen passively from a distance, with coldness. This is how my husband sits on the redwood bench in our backyard, entirely still, watching birdseed vanish from the feeder. It doesn't read so much as warm absorption but as a kind of quiet alienation, estrangement. Simultaneously, I am irritated with myself for leaving the studio to chase a dead end. Excited, some visitors felt what I wanted them to feel. Touch me, touch me. I glance at my watch as the last visitors exit. He's not coming back. I wonder if I should get something to eat. I go outside to fetch the new canvases and bring them back inside the studio to be varnished. I think of our marriage, the vacuum of silence. It is all the things, things we don't talk about, gathering weight, pressing down on us over the breakfast table, left unuttered. And I wonder if this younger version of my husband is here to talk, and I mean talk openly, the way we used to talk years ago, like true confidants rather than with the muted politeness of strangers, all that talk eventually leading us to understand there was no real knowing of each other possible, no amount of talk to bridge the gap between us or how we saw art, or for that matter, how we saw reality, how I wanted to stand revealed within my art, how I wanted to be loved, and how after years of toil in the art world, years of crackers and cheese, he came to understand art was of no more importance than boxes of cereals. All the glamour, mirror illusion, all the right people saying all the right things. We had invented each other at the start, only to unmake each other over the years. An hour later, as I'm drinking the dregs of a bottle of wine, there is a knock at the door. My husband's double has returned. He hands me a brown paper bag. Thought you might have changed your mind, he says, and he smiles, his eyes crinkling in the corners. I take a foil wrapped package, still warm to the touch out of the brown paper bag and unwrap it underneath. Foil flautas that look like they're from Mario's on Telegraph Avenue. Cheese flautas. That Mexican joint's been closed for years and years. I look up at him. Do you want to sit down? He nods and we sit down together at the table at the front of the street studio. Are you? I hack the flauta in half with a white plastic knife. Warm cheese oozes out of its crisp golden shell, a pale white pool of it on the black plastic plate. I pick up one half and take a bite. It tastes real. Yes, he says. Is he lying to me? Entirely possible. I want so deeply to believe he's my husband, that he's come to carry me away from my present, to return to the past, to start over, to live life over. But better now that he's simply admitting he's my husband, like it's no big deal. I realize with an ache in my ribs he might not be. I am old. I am old enough now to be his mother. I examine him as we speak, and I see the differences between him and my husband. Little differences, like how his eyebrows are just a smidge narrower and his lashes slightly longer, thicker. And yet I reach over. Tiny differences don't shield me against the desire to be with him, to be with my husband as he once was. There are ways that time makes us, but there are also ways it fails to shelter us, ways it fails to offer a buffer against the way we've been with each other. He startles as I slowly roll up the sleeves of his knit blue sweater, hoping to see on his arms those indelible marks of past and future.
- [57:07]
Thank you. That was Kirsten Vangsness performing Time Invensas by Anita Felicelli. I'm Meg Wolitzer. What makes this story so intriguing is the element of doubt as well as the poignant sense of longing. The artist's husband is in the real world, still alive and present, but he is so absent emotionally that she easily slides into a state of longing and retrieval that might be real magic or might just be a state of mind conjured by the young man's vivid presence. So two stories about the power we have over it and the power it has over us, which is a theme that, no matter how long it's been around, never gets old. These stories keep us from forgetting that as we make our way through time, the people in our lives are also making their way through time, but on their own schedule. I'm Meg Wolitzer thanks for taking the time to join me for this. Selected Shorts Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivianne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Miles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul, the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.
- [59:42]
SA.