The Common Creative Assignment

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.