The Red Tree

I am so sick of this typewriter, and right now, sitting here pecking at these fucking black keys is the very last thing I want to be doing. And yet, I will not even try to deny that I needthis, the outlet of writing, the words, the pages, the goddamn typewriter. As surely as I need the Tegretol and Klonopin and sleep, as surely as I need to stop drinking again and stop smoking so much and write another book, and while I’m making this little wish list, as surely as I need to take an ax to that goddamn wicked tree out there. As surely as I need all those things, so, too, do I need to reduce the day to mere nouns and verbs and adjectives. It has been entirely too strange and frustrating, this day, and that’s afterfucking Constance and after the inexplicable fact of “Pony.” I mean, it seems now, somehow, that the worst of it began after Constance returned from Foster, though, truthfully, very little has happened since she got back to the farmhouse.

Whether I’m actually talking in circles or not, I feelas though I’m talking in circles. Reading back over that last paragraph, it seems like nothing so much to me as the Ouroboros of my consciousness struggling futilely to consume itself in toto. Maybe in the hope that the act of consumption, of self-a

I’m not sure what I expected from Constance this afternoon, only that I expected something. I know that last night she said, “No strings attached.” In fact, I’m pretty sure that she said it twice. And when she said it, it was no doubt exactly what I wanted to hear, the little push necessary if I was to follow her up those stairs, the promise that we could share this thing without commitment or emotional baggage or whatever. Just sex. Just the physical release and the comfort of having another woman’s body against mine for the first time since Amanda’s death. Looking back, I knowthat was all she offered and all I agreed to, all I thought I wanted or needed. But. she’s acting like it never happened.

And what? What the fuck am I whining about? I’m upset because she meant what she said? Did some desperate recess of my mind allow itself to believe that, regardless of what we said and what we thought we meant, last night would be the begi

She came back from Foster and, almost immediately, retreated to the sanctuary of her attic, and I’ve hardly seen her since. She’s come down a couple of times to use the toilet, once to get something from the fridge. She’s been perfectly pleasant with me, and I’d be lying to say that she’s behaving differently towards me (and isn’t that the problem, Sarah, that she isn’t?). There was the usual small talk, but no suggestion that tonight would see an encore of last night’s tryst. I’m forty-four years old, and I’ve had more one-night stands than I can even recollect. I’m not supposed to act like this. I am ashamed that I feel so rejected or betrayed or ignored simply because Constance meant “no strings” when she said “no strings.” I am more than ashamed that I can’t stop thinking maybe I just didn’t do it for her last night, that I was invited into her bed and found wanting.

And maybe what’s eating at me isn’t even so much Constance’s inattention as the mystery posed by the “new story,” which, try as I may, I can’t stop suspecting is somehow her doing. And that’s not to say that I think she wrote the thing. Having been over it so many times now, there is genuinely no way left for me to attribute the authorship of “Pony” to anyone but myself. It’s my voice, my handwriting, me exploring my own very personal concerns, and, most damning of all, a set of line edits that includes several proofreader’s marks that, so far as I know, are entirely of my own invention.

Even if I were to go so far as to imagine that Constance could have mimicked my style, forged my handwriting, and had these sorts of insights into what happened between Amanda and me — and all those things are at least not beyond the realm of possibility—I still ca

I wrote the story, and I must admit that I wrote it. I just don’t rememberhaving written it. All evidence would indicate that I composed it sometime between July 8th and July 13th, the span of time during which I produced no journal entries. Four days, and the story comes to about 3,850 words, which is about (actually just under) what I would normally be able to produce in four days. I have spent a great deal of the afternoon and evening trying to distract myself from thoughts of Constance by trying to clearly recall everything I did over the course of those four days. My memory is decent, despite the drugs, and I’ve not come up with any apparent “missing time” or blackouts. I know my memory’s seen better days, but everything appears to be in order. There is one last avenue of investigation open to me that I have not yet pursued, and that is simply to ask Constance if she heard me at the typewriter on those days, or if she ever actually saw me working on the story, or if I talked about it with her while I was working on it. I just haven’t found the courage to do that yet. I’ve promised myself that I will do it tomorrow, and then I’ll call my doctor in Atlanta and see what she thinks.

About the only aspect of the story that might argue against my having written it is that I am rarely so transparently autobiographical. Especially when it comes to details. For example, the chipped Edward Gorey coffee mug. I’ve had that mug for years (but it’s also in storage, so there’s no way that Constance could have seen it), but it’s the sort of thing I almost never borrow from my own life and insert into my fiction. Doing so has just always sort of given me the creeps. But, it’s hardly legitimate grounds for dismissing myself as the story’s creator. Oh, and the ruby-stemmed wineglasses. Amanda bought those somewhere, and I got rid of them after she died.

It’s late, and I just want to go to bed. My eyes are begi