Anna Kleis
Professor Zabalbaescoa
FYSH: Text and the City
27 March 2015
The Common Creative Assignment
Part
1: Based on Lauren Groff’s “Exquisite Corpse”
A Life Worth Living
Exquisite:
of a special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence, as a face, a
flower, coloring, music, or poetry. I use this word a lot because it sounds
nice, it sounds exquisite. I also
like saying it: ex-quis-ite. So elegant! This word was the epitome of my life from
my early twenties to right before I spent two years in the oldest correctional
facility for women in the United States: Massachusetts Committing Institution
in Framingham. With a great deal of security and a loss of simple freedoms, my
life was anything but exquisite during those miserable years. I was physically
stripped of the nonchalant interaction with my identity, sense of self, three
loving children and passive and supportive husband. My husband and children
were too good to me during that time, though. Every day, my husband trekked the
near fifty minutes (most of the time it was over an hour) to come see me and
refresh me with news about the kids, his life, and the world’s daily
occurrences. It was one of those things where I would hear what he was saying,
but I wouldn’t really process it. I enjoyed the way he explained things, the
rising of his voice when he got excited about something and the hasty way that
he talked because he couldn’t wait to get to the exciting part. Or the lowering
of his voice when he mentioned something unfortunate. You could really her the
pain vibrate through his vocal chords and make its presence known, hanging like
an ominous cloud over the conversation.
My five years at the correctional facility came to an end
on a day in the gloomy month of March. The roads were slick with fat drops of
rain that had not been saturated into the already pothole-filled pavement. My
husband, well accustomed to these roads, cruised back to Lowell with the ease
that he acquired quickly after every single new experience or thing he learned.
We coasted along the Merrimack River, a sight I had waited so long to see. The
steady movement of the water that had powered the Industrial Revolution so many
years ago put my mind at ease. I could stare at it for hours, which I usually
did when I had some down time. I would sit at the bank of the river and revel
in the constant swooshes and blips of the water as it encountered rocks that
obstructed its flow. “What would you like for your celebratory dinner for
tonight?” My husband’s kindness interrupted my daydream that had brought back
so many memories before the time that I was cooped up for a wrongdoing. “Nothing
too fancy. Something we can make with whatever we have at the house. I’ll have
to ease into eating anything too good, you know what I mean?” With the smirk
that I always loved on my husband, he nodded and proceeded along to the humble
abode I had missed so much.
After a joyous reunion and dinner with my children, so
grown up that I had to prevent myself from tearing up every moment I looked at
them, I roamed the house to remind myself of its familiar nooks and crannies. I
ran my hand over the mantelpiece over the fireplace, the sensory receptors in
my fingers familiarizing myself again with the rough edges of brick. I felt the
slight warmth of the dying fire on my lower body as I admired the only family
photo we have in the house because it is the only one we were able to get
together. My husband sat on his favorite loveseat in the living room, grading
his undergraduate English students’ papers and scribbling notes to himself. He
peered up at me every once in a while, assuring that what I was doing was
perfectly normal. But, over time, his glances ceased and his eyes glazed over,
clearly delving into the part of himself that wanted to fully forgive me.
Seconds seemed to hold the lengths of eternities, and I
could tell my husband was growing restless. I halted my exploring and insisted
that we go for a walk. Emotionless, he agreed. We suited up in our raincoats
and rain jackets and immediately headed towards the river.
As the sun started to set, the rain began its treacherous
pelleting. We didn’t mind though; we continued on at our usual pace and reached
the river. We found shelter under a nearby tree and looked at each other. In
that moment, the swooshing of the Merrimack didn’t sound so pleasant. It
sounded angry, threatening, revengeful. My husband glared at me. “How could you
be so selfish?” That last word, not
it’s connotation, but the way my husband said it made my heart jump. When I
tried to say something, I realized I couldn’t. So many thought-out apologies
that I had time to think of were left as words unsaid. My husband’s screaming
in the light of the moon under the tree next to the angry river became a
blissful haze, like a punishment that I so desperately needed.
When I awoke the next morning, I was able to clearly
recount the previous night’s tumultuous outcome. Despite our altercation, my
husband and I lay next to each other in perfect serenity. Since I woke up
before he did, I was able to study him, the changes in his facial features
since I last really studied my own husband. Damn, he ages well. Slight wrinkles
appeared around his mouth and on his forehead, but other than that, he was
still the same vibrantly young man I had met twenty years ago and fell in love with.
Gazing at this near-perfect image of my husband brought me back to the moment I
said good-bye to him on one of the sunniest, brightest days in late February.
Right before I bid my husband and children goodbye, though, I visited my mother
in her nursing home. Her memory illuminated and then captured my thoughts
because that was the last time I had ever seen her. I had abandoned her just as
she abandoned me when I was younger.
My childhood wasn’t the most exquisite experience.
Growing up in the poorer part of Lowell, I wasn’t destined for much success. My
father came home every night, throwing his coat on the table and yelling at my
mother for something that happened to him that day. He couldn’t get a better
job because of his attitude therefore he couldn’t make enough money to provide
for us and he would just end up taking it out on mother. It was an endless,
miserable cycle. Then, suddenly one day my mother decided she couldn’t take it
anymore. I came home after school, eager to show my mom the A plus I had just
received on my spelling test, to find the house empty. I just remember crying
and crying until my father came home, immediately realizing what had happened
and speaking on the phone. In a two-minute phone call done through a hushed
tone, I became aware that I wouldn’t see either of my parents for a very long
time.
With a brief hug and kiss on the forehead, my father
dropped me off with all of the belongings he thought I needed and left me with
his aunt and uncle, or my great aunt and great uncle. I remembered seeing them
at my baby brother’s funeral, a memory that I was trying to make distant but one
that would not stop plaguing my everyday existence.
In total, I spent three years with my great aunt, Fran,
and my great uncle, Bob. I called them Bran after a while, and they grew
accustomed to the nickname. They did their absolute best in raising me from a
child to a pre-teen. They packed my lunch everyday, helped me with my
schoolwork and listened to me when I needed to be heard. We found something to
do on sunny days and played games on rainy days, my favorite of which was
called “Exquisite Corpse.” We would pass around a piece of paper, each of us
adding a body part until we were left with a monstrous-looking creature with
five arms and one leg or nine eyes. In the middle of one of these games one
dreary day, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find my mother,
appearing rested and fresh as ever, being pelted with rain, beaming a huge
smile on her face. Fran must have seen our visitor standing in the rain and me
not letting her as she ordered, “Let them in, would ya?” When my mother stepped
in the house, my caretakers were in shock. I was told to finish our game while
they talked. Before I knew it, I was in the car with my mother heading to the
apartment she had saved up her money to pay rent for. She explained to me what
happened to her. I would not really learn the extent of it until years later.
My mother had always experienced symptoms of depression, but after my baby
brother’s death and my father’s constant belittlement, it went severely
downhill. I listened to her and lived the rest of my childhood with my mother,
still paying a weekly visit to Bran who made me feel as safe as I would ever
be.
The last time I was able to see my mother was when I was
telling her that I would be going to jail for crimes that I had helped commit.
I worked for a lawyer who defended the crime-committing citizens of Lowell. He
was one of those crooks who had a million connections all over the place and
eventually started laundering money. I figured this out one day and began to
help him. I would find out new places he could put his money in, some in the
United States and some in different parts of the world. When he got busted, so
did I. I was put in jail as an accessory to the crime and would serve my time.
I confessed to my mother that as immoral and illegal as it was, it made me feel
alive. Despite the fact that I was all jumbled up and had a little more
selfishness than I did morality, I wouldn’t change my decisions for anything.
My mother, as disappointed as she seemed, just listened to me and reassured me
that everything would be fine and that I would see her as soon as I got out.
By the time my husband had awoken, I was already at a
local coffee shop in downtown Lowell. I missed the comfort of this place and
the warmth it offered any time of the year. I took a window seat and I ordered
what I had missed most: a cappuccino. As I sat there pondering what I was going
to do, I saw my husband emerge out of his car across the street. Just when I
thought he would be crossing the street, a woman surprised him from behind.
They embraced and kissed and walked away from the coffee shop. In shock, I
began to tear up and let thoughts overtake my sanity. But, I stopped myself.
What my husband was doing wasn’t wrong. I think he met this woman, whoever she
was, near where he thought I would be so that I could see him. In that moment
with that woman, I could see how alive he felt. Inevitably, I didn’t see our
marriage lasting much longer. Maybe he, too, is just a jumbled mess of emotions
and feelings. I think that’s what most exquisite about us in this life anyways;
we’re all just exquisite corpses waiting to happen.
Part 2: An Explanation
For this assignment, I chose Lauren Groff’s short story
“Exquisite Corpse” from The Common Issue
No. 01. It tells the story of a man, recently released from a prison stay of
six months, who comes home to his distressed wife and finds it difficult to
readjust. He was given this sentence because he stole large amounts of money
from stockholders and stored it away in offshore accounts for a long amount of
time all the while lying to his wife about it. After he is released, he and his
wife go on a vacation to Hawaii and she reveals her true feelings towards him,
her anger unraveling rapidly and his realization of how selfish he was. He
finds out that his wife was cheating on him. Ultimately, he affirms that, “We
can’t always choose what we love, or what we can’t love” (p.136). In order to
replicate this story and its plot, I wrote about a woman who is convicted of
crimes similar to those of the man in the original story and her adjustment to
reality. I based this story in Lowell and its surrounding areas.
My fictitious story can be deemed a “Lowellian”
production because of its setting in Lowell and the possible every day
struggles of some lower-class families who live in Lowell. My protagonist has
an unstable home life due to a shaky parental relationship and constant
monetary worries. It is assumed that they reside in one of the poorer areas of
Lowell that sits adjacent to the richer part. However, once she has a family
and a husband, it is assumed that she moves to the more lucrative part of
Lowell. Additionally, a major part of Lowell described in this short story is
the Merrimack River, which I believe is essential to any discussion about
Lowell. I used my experience with the Merrimack and the scenery surrounding it
to illustrate the scene between the protagonist and her husband. The river is a
very powerful symbol of Lowell and all that is has to offer. Despite this being
a redundant matter, Lowell is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution due
in major part to the strength and richness of the Merrimack River. Therefore,
it would not be a story about Lowell without this significant geographical body
of water. I also incorporated some of what Lowell has to offer currently. In
the end scene, the protagonist is at a coffee shop in downtown Lowell, surveying
her lifetime home and how it has changed.
In conclusion, this short story based off of “Exquisite
Corpse” featured in the first issue of The
Common, is primarily a Lowellian production because of its context. The
protagonist’s background consists of all things Lowell, although that could
happen to someone who lived anywhere. I believe that Lowell is an exquisite
corpse itself. It might have a little more historical aspect than most cities.
It might have more bad qualities at one time than good, but that is what makes
it unique. The paradox that is Lowell truly is one of the highlights of the
state of Massachusetts and it is no wonder why so many artists come here to
showcase its perpetual beauty.
