Scissors Read Online Free PDF Page B

murmur.
    She raises her head. We freeze and listen.
    Marion leaves the kitchen.
    I should follow her, but I can’t move. I think about the secret compartment in the fridge. About all the compartments in all the fridges in the neighborhood. Everybody should have one, I say to myself. A secret place, there or somewhere else.
    I say that to myself, and I start shaking.
    End of the story. Three cuts with the scissors, a few sentences moved around. And Marianne and I are a little more separated, a little more cut off from each other.
    Is that the way you see us, Douglas? You’re mistaken. Some hope has to remain, some source of light. Even if it’s only a neon sign on the side of the highway.
    It’s a good thing he didn’t want my story.
    Even though I could’ve used the money … I could have … I could … He edits the most widely read magazine in the country.
    I can send him other stories. What have I got to lose?
MARIANNE
    Why did I pick up? Why did I pick up that telephone?
    I’m not sure they pulled all the bottle fragments out of my head. A shard must have remained under my skin. And now it’s circulating through my veins, poisoning me in small doses. I’ll spit it out one day. I’ll spit out the debris of our love.
    But I’m not ready. The proof is what I thought when I heard him:
How’s he going to tell the bottle story? What will he weave around it? What name will he give me? Emma, I’d like to be called Emma. Or Rita, why not? The story he tells had better be successful. In case it’s our last
.
    That’s what I thought, and then I picked up the phone.
RAYMOND
    A stranger in my house, that’s what I am.
    I’ve been sleeping in the living room ever since I came back home. Marianne has quarantined me. Sarah’s back home too. Until the next time she runs away. Meanwhile she leaves early in the morning for the drugstore, where she works as a cashier. She tells us her classes begin at noon. We know it’s not true, but we don’t say anything. It’s still early when Marianne starts moving around the kitchen and wakes me up. Sleeping on the sofa hurts my back, but I don’t complain. A man must earn his place in the marital bed.
    Leo’s a tranquil teenager. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t run away. The complete opposite of his sister. Maybe at twenty he’ll become a psychopath. “You should have more fun,” I tell him. “Enjoy life.” His reply: “Don’t have time for that. I’m in too much of a hurry to get the hell out of here.” That kid’s got ambition. He takes after his parents.
    Marianne and I haven’t shelved our hopes. I’ve done some arithmetic: For eleven years we’ve been going from one little job to another, from town to campus, from training coursesto night school. By this time, I could have a medical degree. I could be—who knows?—a cardiologist. Except that I’ve never examined any heart but my own, and I give no prescriptions. My sole recommendation: “Keep the faith, and a bottle within reach.”
    I go out into the yard. I run my eyes over the house, peering through the sliding glass doors. People are moving about from one room to another. They speak to one another and occasionally address me. They move their lips as though warning me of some danger.
    I’ve come back but I don’t feel at home.
    *
    I had another call from Douglas. He’s clamoring for more short stories. He thinks I’m talented, he thinks I’ve got something in my belly, but he can’t say what. “Guts?” I said jokingly. There was a silence, and then he tossed out, “If you’ve got some guts, send ’em to me.”
    I looked over my stories again. Some are more than ten years old. I’m capable of lugging a short story around for years and years. I correct it, I grow older with it, and most of the time, it improves. My life remains the same or goes into a little more of a spin, but my stories improve.
    Perfection in what I write; chaos in all the rest.
    I sent Douglas the lot.