There’s a handsaw putting on the wall of my dwelling room

1.

There’s a handsaw putting on the wall of my dwelling room, a house key from a massive’s pocket. It’s been there a long term. “What’s your saw for?” people ask, and that i say, “It’s no longer my noticed. I never owned a saw.”

“but what’s it for?”

“putting,” I answer.'

by now if you took it down you’d see the ghost of the saw in the back of. Or—no, now not the ghost, because the blue wallpaper could be darkish wherein the noticed had blanketed it from the solar. Ghosts are faded. So the room is the ghost. The saw is the only factor that’s actual.

in recent times, even though it grieves me to say it, that sounds approximately right.

2.

here’s how I became a singer. forty years in the past I walked past the Washington Monument in Baltimore and thought, I’ll climb that. It was first element inside the morning. They’d just spread out. As I climbed I sang with my eyes closed—“Summertime,” I think it was. sure, of course it become. “Summertime.” I stored my hand on the iron banister. My ftlocated the stairs. In my head I noticed myself at a celebration, leaning on a piano, making a song in the front of a small audience. I climbed, I sang. I in no way ought to consider the words, largely due to a spoonerized version my buddy Fred favored to sing—Tummersime, and the iving is leazy / jif are fumping, and the hiver is rye…

Then a man’s voice stated, “Wow.”

In my reminiscence, he leans in opposition to the wall steps from the pinnacle, shouldering a saw like a rifle. but of direction he wouldn’t have added his saw to the Washington Monument. He changed into a massive-boned, uncooked-faced blond man with a smashed Parker house roll of a nose, a puny felt hat placing on the back of his head. His slacks were dark artificial, snagged. His orange cardigan gave the impression of rusted Brillo. He became so massive you wondered how he could have got up there—had the tower been constructed round him? Had he arrived in portions and been assembled immediate? “Wow,” he said once more, and clasped his arms in front of himself, bouncing on his knees with the syncopated jollification of a love-struck Thirties caricature character. I predicted to look querulous lines of exhilaration coming off his head, punctuated by using exclamation marks. He plucked off his hat. His hair regarded love ithad been combed with a piece of buttered toast.

“That was you?” he asked.

I nodded. maybe he changed into a few municipal worker, charged with maintaining the noise down.

“You sound like a noticed,” he said. His voice was soft. I concept he might be from the South, like me, though later i foundout he simply had one of these voices that picked up accents through static energy. without a doubt he changed into from Paterson, New Jersey.

“A saw?” I requested.

He nodded.

I positioned my hands to my throat. “I don’t recognise what that means.”

He held up his huge palms, one still palming his hat. “beautiful,” he stated. “not of this earth. come with me, I’ll displayyou. Boy, you positive taught George Gershwin a lesson. where do you sing?”

“Nowhere,” I said.

I couldn’t sing, according to my friends. The only character who’d ever stated something satisfactory about my voice became my friend Fred Tibbets, who claimed that when i was under the influence of alcohol, from time to time I managed to hold a tune. but we drank plenty in the ones days, and whilst i used to be drunk Fred turned into drunk, too, and mawkish. still, I secretly believed I may want to sing. My only proof became the satisfaction making a song addedme. maximum not unusual mistake within the international, believing that bodily pride and virtue are in any wayassociated, directly or not directly.

the person shook his head. “No proper,” he said very severely. “That’s rotten. We’ll alternate that.” He went to take my hand and rather hung his hat upon it. Then I felt his personal hand squeeze mine through the felt. “You’ll sing for me, ok? could you sing for me? You’ll sing for me.”

He led me back off the monument, the hat on my hand, his hand at the back of it. My wrist started to sweat however I didn’t mind. “Of path you’ll sing,” he stated. He went in advance of me but kept preventing, so I’d half tumble onto the factor of his elbow. “I understand human beings. I’m from Philadelphia. properly, I stay there. I got here to Bawlmore because a buddy of mine, a part of a trio, he broke his arm and wanted a guitar player so there you cross. There arehundred and twenty-eight steps on this factor. I study it on the plaque. additionally I counted. God, you’re a thin lady, you’re like not anything, you’re so lovely, no, you are, don’t disagree, I realize what I’m speakme approximately. properly, no longer all of the time, but proper now I do. I’ll play you my saw. no longer each person appreciates it but you'll. What’s your call? yet again? Oof. We’ll trade that, have to, you need some thing short and to the factor. Take me, i was Gabriel McClonnahashem, there’s a moniker, huh? Now I’m Gabe Macon. For you, I don’t recognise, let me think: omit Porth. because you’re a chanteuse, that’s why the pass over. And Porthkiss, I don’t understand. And omit Kiss is just silly. examine you blush! The human musical saw. There are all varieties of locations you could sing, you don’t understand your personal really worth, that’s your hassle. I’ve recognised singers and that i’ve acknowledged singers. I heard you and iidea, There’s a voice I ought to pay attention to for the rest of my life. I’m no longer kidding. I don’t child approximatelysuch things as that. I don’t child approximately music. i used to be frozen to the spot. look, still: goose bumps. You rescued me from the tower, Rapunzel: I climbed down to your voice. I’ll communicate to my pal Jake. I’ll speak to this different man I understand. i have a sense approximately you. i have a sense about you. Are you getting as dizzy as me? perhaps it’s no longer the steps. Do you consider in love in the beginning sight? That’s not a line, it’s a question. I do, of direction I do, would I ask if I didn’t? because I believe in good fortune, that’s why. We’re nearly at the bottom. poor kid, you in no way even were given to the top. Come on. For ten cents it’s strictly an all-you-can-climb monument. We’ll goagain up. Come on. Come on.”

“i'm able to sing?” I asked him.

He checked out me. His eyes were inexperienced, with gears of darker inexperienced across the students.

“believe me,” he said.

three.

I wasn’t the kind of woman who’d climb a monument with a unusual guy. Or cross lower back to his hotel room with him. Or agree to transport to Philadelphia tomorrow.

however I did.

His room became on the top floor of the Elite resort, the type of vicinity you may test in to to dedicate suicide: bathroomdown the hall, a sink within the corner of the room, a view of some other building with home windows preciselythroughout from the Elite’s home windows.

“Musical saw,” stated Gabe Macon. He opened a cardboard suitcase that sat at the give up of the single mattress. First he took out a protracted item wrapped in a sheet. A violin bow. Then a piece of rosin.

“You hit it with that?” I asked.

“Hit it? What hit?” Gabe said.

“I concept—”

“appearance,” he stated. The noticed he’d hung within the closet along with his suits. I’d notion a musical saw might be a percussion device. A xylophone, maybe. A marimba. He rosined the bow and sat on a chair on the corner. The noticedbecome only a ordinary wood saw. He clamped his toes on the give up of it and then pulled the bow throughout the dullaspect of the blade. you may infrequently see the saw, the cope with clamped between his toes, the give up of the metalsnagged in his hand: he was a pile of guy with a blade at the coronary heart, a person doing violence to something with an unlikely weapon.

It was the voice of a stunning toothache. It became the sound of every enchanted harp, flute, princess changed into a tree in every fairy tale ever written.

“I sound like that?” I said.

He nodded, saved playing.

I sound like that. It changed into humiliating, alarming, unsightly, thrilling. It was like searching at a flattering picture of yourself doing something you needed you hadn’t been photographed doing. That’s me. He changed into gambling “Fly Me to the Moon.”

He completed and looked at me with those Rube-Goldberg eyes. “That’s you,” he stated. He flexed the noticed back and forth then dropped it to the floor.

I picked it up and attempted to look my reflection in the steel. “You don’t take the enamel off?”

“Nope,” he said. “this is my second noticed. here. give me.” I lifted it by using the blade and he caught it via the tawny deal with. “First one i purchased become too precise. short, steeply-priced. Wouldn’t bend. You need something cheap and with an amazing duration to it. eight points to an inch, this one. tooth, I suggest.” He flexed it. The metal made that behind the scenes thunder noise I’d imagined while he’d first stated I sounded like a saw. “This one, although. It’s proper.” He flipped it round and caught it once more between his brown shoes and drew the bow in opposition to it. He’d turnedon just one mild by the resort mattress while we’d come into the room. Now it changed into darkish out. I listened to the saw and looked at the sink inside the nook. A spider crawled out of it, tapping one leg in the front musingly like a blind guywith a cane earlier than clambering over the embankment. The noticed sighed. Me, too. Then Gabe reached over with the bow and touched my shoulder. I flinched, as even though the horsehair had caught a case of sharp off the saw.

“That’s you,” he stated again.

perhaps I cherished Gabe already. What’s love at the beginning sight however a bucket thrown over you that smoothes out all of your previous self-loathing, so you can see your self slick and raveled down and audacious? at the least, i believedfor the primary time that i was able to being loved.

Or maybe I just cherished the noticed.

We left for Philly tomorrow. The story of our achievement, and it wasn’t plenty fulfillment, is pretty boring, as all such stories are. a whole lot of ready through the telephone. a variety of terrible skills nights. One excellent talent nightwherein I won a container of dishes. The walk domestic from that night, Gabe wearing the dishes and smashing them into the gutter one by one. Don’t do it, I said, those are mine—

He held one dish to my brow, then lifted it up, then touched it down once more, the manner you do with a hammer to a nail earlier than you pressure it in.

Then he stroked my brow with the plate edge.

“Don’t inform me what to do,” he stated.

five.

He wrote songs. before I met him I had no concept of the way every body wrote a tune. His apartment on Sansom streetsmelled of burnt tomato sauce and had inside the kitchen, in vicinity of a range, a piano that looked as although it werethru a house hearth. every now and then he performed it. sometimes he sat at it together with his arms twitching over the keys like leashed dogs. “The Land beyond the Land We understand.” “A Pocket full of Pennies.” “Your 2nd biggestregret.” “maintain Your Eyes Out for Me.” He turned into the sort of sly mimic, the sort of sneaky thief, that human beingsidea these had been difficult to understand requirements, if one of these element exists, songs they’d heard generallylong ago and have been simplest now remembering. He wrote a music each day. He were given mad that once in a while I couldn’t preserve them straight or keep in mind them all. “That’s a hanging Offense.” “Don’t You Care in any respect.” “tillthe cease of us.”

We executed them collectively. He offered me a inexperienced Grecian-draped dress that itched, and matching opera gloves that have been too lengthy and cut into my armpits, and lipstick, and fake eyelashes—all haunted, specially the eyelashes.

records is full of the sad tales of silly ladies. What’s terrible is that i was now not silly. Ask everybody. Ask Fred Tibbets, who lied and stated I may want to convey a tune.

We reduce a report known as leave out Porth Sings! For a long term you may nevertheless find it in boxes in file shopsunder Vocals or other or Novelty. Me at the sleeve, my head tipped lower back. I wore pink lipstick that made my complexion orange, and tiny noticed-shaped jewelry. My hair became cashew-coloured. That turned into a fault of the printing. In real lifestyles, in the ones days, my hair became the coloration of sandpaper: diamond, garnet, ruby.

i was at the radio. i was at the Gypsy Rose Lee display. leave out Porth, the Human Musical noticed! but the completepoint become that Gabe’s saw sounded human. Why be a human who best sounds like an inanimate item that sounds human?

6.

This is not a story approximately fulfillment. inside the international we have been what we’d always been. the affectionstory: the noticed and the sawish voice. We have been cripplingly shy, witheringly judgmental folks that fell in love in non-public, away from the conversation and warning of other people, after which we left metropolis before every person may want to warn us.



In Philadelphia he commenced to throw matters at me—stupid, embarrassing, lighter-than-air matters: a bowl completeof egg whites i was approximately to whip for a soufflé, my brother’s birthday card, the whole contents of a newly opened field of powdered sugar. For days I left white fingerprints at the back of. He said it turned into an accident, he hadn’t intended to throw it in any respect. He turned into handiest gesturing.

after which he began to threaten me with the noticed.

I don’t suppose he could have defined it himself. He didn’t drink, but he could seem inebriated. The drunkenness, or something it was, moved his limbs. Picked up the noticed. added it to my throat, and just held it there. He in no waymoved the blade, and referred to the terrible things he would do to himself.

“I’m going to dedicate suicide,” he stated. “i can. Don’t depart me. inform me you won’t.”

I couldn’t shake my head or talk, and so I attempted to have a look at him with love. I couldn’t stand the way he hated himself. I desired to kill the person who made him experience this manner. Our apartment was shiny on the the front, through the windows, and black and airless on the again, where the mattress become. where we were now, mendacityon a cover that seemed like a lecture room map, orange, blue, green, yellow.

“My life is over,” said Gabe. He had the burnt-tomato scent of the whole apartment. “I’m vintage. I’m antique. I’m talentless. i will see it, but you recognize, at the same time, I concentrate to the radio all day and that i don’t apprehend. Why will you wreck all of us’s hearts the manner you do? Why do you do it? You’re crazy. probably you’re now not capable of love. You want assist. i can kill myself. I’ve notion approximately it ever in view that i was a bit kid.”

The saw blade took a chunk of me, eight enamel marks consistent with inch. cheap metal, the kind that bent without difficulty. I had my fingers at the stupid side of the noticed. How did we get right here, I puzzled, however I’d had the same disoriented idea while i assumed I’d fallen in love with him at the start sight, lying inside the same bed: How did this show up?

“I may want to soar,” he said. “What do you think i was doing up that tower whilst you located me? windows have beentoo small, I didn’t comprehend. I’d gotten my nerve up. but then there you have been, and you were so little. And your voice. and that i bet I changed my mind. Will you assert something, Marya? You’ve broken my heart. considered one ofthese days I’ll kill myself.”

I knew the whole thing about him. He weighed precisely two times what I did, to the pound. He became bold and dubious: he wanted to be famous, and he wanted nobody to have a look at him, ever, which might be the human situation—in him it became simply amplified. That was nearly all I knew about him. every so often we still informed the story of our life together to every other: Why had I climbed the tower that day? Why had he? He had nearly stayed in Philadelphia. I’d almost long gone lower back home for the weekend however then my exceptional-aunt Florence died and my oldsters went to her funeral. If he’d been five mins slower he wouldn’t have stuck me singing. If I’d been ten minslater, i would have smiled at him as he left.

We had been lucky, we advised each other, blind natural luck.

7.

One night we have been at our status gig, at a cabaret referred to as Maxie’s. It harm to sing, with the pearls sticking to the noticed cuts. The owner became named Marco Bell. He cherished me. Marco’s face changed into so wrinkled that after he smoked you could see each line in his face anxious and slacken.

There’s a land past the land we know,

wherein time is green and guys are slow.

follow me and shortly you’ll know,

Blue happiness.

My green get dressed became too large and that i kept having to join it up. It wasn’t too big a month in the past. on thedamage, I sat down subsequent to Marco. “How are you?” I requested.

“complete of sorrow,” he replied. He leaned into the hand maintaining the cigarette. I thought he would possibly light his pomaded hair on hearth.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You do it, omit Porth. along with your—” He waved at the spot where I’d been status.

I laughed. “They’re no longer all sad songs.”

“yes,” he said. there has been now not a shaggy dog story in a 5-mile radius of the man. He had a super Russian head with bullying eyebrows. three years in advance his spouse had had a stroke, and now and again she came into the club in a chevron-patterned dress, sitting in her wheelchair and patting the tabletop, both in time to the track or searching outsomething she’d positioned down there. “You’re incorrect. they are.”

I said, “from time to time I don’t assume I’m doing all of us any favors.”

Then Gabe turned into behind me. He touched my shoulder lovingly. concentrate: don’t inform me otherwise. It was now not quality love, it turned into no longer proper love, but you can't inform me that it wasn’t love. Love isn't alwaysoxygen, although many songwriters will tell you that it is; it isn't always a chemical substance this is both definitively giftor absent; it can't be decreased to its elements. It is not like a flower, or an animal, or something that you'll ever be capable of recognize while you see it. Love is meals. That’s all. Neither better nor worse. on occasion very good. once in a while horrible. however to say—as humans will—that wasn’t love. As even though that makes you experience better! properly, it won't have been nourishing, but it sustained me for a while. once I’d left I’d be as terrible as any reformed sinner, amazed at my old self, however in spite of the blade towards my neck, I loved him, his worries about the future, his dependable black moods, his dependable affection—that became nevertheless there, too, though sullied by means ofremorse.

I stayed for the noticed, too. no longer the chance of it. I stayed because of the ones minutes on stage when I may want torecognize it. Gabe bent it again and it known as out, Oh, no, honey, help. It desired consolation. It desired to comfort me. We have been in problem collectively, the two folks: the honey-throated noticed, the saw-voiced female. help, assist, we’re still alive, the saw sang, though by and large its songs had been simply pronouns all stuck together: I, we, mine, you, you, we, mine.

sure, that’s proper. i used to be going to tell you approximately the saw.

Gabe touched my shoulder and stated, “Marya, permit’s pass.”

Marco stated, “In a minute. miss Porth, let’s have a drink.”

“Marya,” said Gabe.

“I’d love one,” I said.

Maxie’s turned into a famous place—no sign up the the front door, a personal funny story. there was a crowd. Gabe punched me. He punched me inside the breast. The proper breast. a completely atypical area to take a punch. now notthe worst vicinity. I thought that because it occurred: now not the worst place to take a punch. The chairs at Maxie’s had backs carved like bamboo. He punched me. I’d in no way been punched earlier than. He stated, “See the way it feels, whena person breaks your heart?” and that i notion, yes, because it occurs, I assume I do.

i was on my returned. Marco had his arms around Gabe’s fingers and was whispering matters in his ear. A crowd had shaped. people have been touching me. I needed they wouldn’t.

here is what I want to inform you: I knew something became finishing, and i used to be grateful, and i missed it.

eight.

about 5 years in the past in a eating place close to my condo someone diagnosed me. “You’re—are you omit Porth?” he said. “You’re leave out Porth.” guy approximately my own age, tweed blazer, bald with a crinkly snub-nosed puppyish face, the type that usually seems like it’s approximately to sneeze. “I used to peer you at Maxie’s,” he said. “all the time. well, lots. i used to be in grad college at Penn. leave out Porth! desirable God! I always questioned what passed off to you!”

i was sitting at the bar, awaiting a friend, and i wanted to quit the verbal exchange earlier than the friend arrived. the man took a bar stool next to me. We talked for a while approximately Philadelphia. He nonetheless lived there, he becamesimply in town for a convention. He shook the ice from his emptied drink into his mouth, and that i knew he changed intoreturned there—no longer taking note of me, precisely, just remembering who turned into at his elbow, and did she needanother drink, and did he have enough cash for every other drink for both of them. All the good things he believed approximately himself then: by means of now he’d realize whether he’d been right, and proper or incorrect, knowingturned into dull. I didn’t like being his occasion for nostalgia.

“i have your album,” he stated. “I’m a fan. severely. It’s my subject, music. I— some man hit you,” he said suddenly. His domestic dog face seemed over-sneezeish. “i can’t keep in mind. changed into he a under the influence of alcohol? someman in love with you? That’s proper. A crazy.”

“Random component,” I said. “What were you analyzing?”

“Folklore,” he stated absentmindedly. “I usually puzzled some thing about you. can i ask? Do you thoughts?”

Oh, I notion, slide down that rabbit hole if you have to, simply let pass of my hem, don’t take me with you.

“I cherished to hear you,” he said. pup tilt to his head, too. “You had been like nothing else. but I continually wondered—I mean, you appear to be an sensible female. I by no means spoke to you back then.” One piece of ice clung to the lowest of his glass and he fished it out along with his fingers. “Did you realise that human beings were guffawing at you?”

Then he stated, “Oh, my God.”

“I’m sorry,” he stated.

“now not me,” he stated. “I swear, you were wonderful.”

I turned to him. “Of direction I knew,” I stated. “How should I miss it?”

the line between pleasure and a loss of it is thin and brittle and exciting as new ice. only while you’re young are you capable of skate out onto it, to no longer care which facet you grow to be on. That turned into me. i was innocent. Later, whilst you’re vintage, whilst you recognize matters, well, it takes all types of attempt, and ropes, and pulleys, and all styles of tricks, to hold you from crashing through, if you’re even inclined to hazard it.

even though perhaps I did know again then that a few people didn’t take me severely. but nonetheless: the primary time they came to laugh. no longer the second one. I should listen the target audience. I may want to hear how still they have been after I sang with my eyes closed. positive, a number of them had idea, Who does she assume she’s fooling? Who does she think she is, with that antique green gown, with the ones made-up songs? but then they’d concentrate. It become the ones people, I suppose, those who concept before everything they were above me, who were given the wind knocked out of them. Who delivered their buddies the next week. Who offered my document. Who notion: Me. No greater, no less, she’s fooling me.

Later I got a letter asking for the proper to position songs from miss Porth Sings! on a report referred to as Songs from Mars: Eccentrics and their track. The be aware said, Do you recognize what took place to G. Macon? I want his permission, too, of path.

nine.

The night of the punch, I went domestic with Gabe for the final time. Of path, don’t call the police, I told Marco. He wasexhausted, repentant. I led him to the bed, to the diminished cover, and he fell asleep. From the kitchen smartphone I known as his sister in Paterson, whom I’d never met, and i told her Gabe Macon become in trouble and alone and wantedassist. Then I climbed into mattress next to him. Gabe had an archipelago of moles on his neck I’d in no way observed, and a few faint pimples scars on his nostril. His eyebrows were knit in dreamy notion. I loved that nostril. He hated it. “Do I surely look like that?” he’d ask, seeing a photo of himself. He’d cowl his nose together with his hand.

I didn’t know what would emerge as of him. I had to give up being concerned. It wasn’t love and it wasn’t the noticed and it wasn’t a worry of being alone that saved me there: it changed into wanting to know the give up of the tale, and lookingthe quit to be satisfied.

At five a.m. I left with a bag, the saw, bamboo-patterned bruises on my lower back, and a fist-shaped bruise on my properbreast. soon enough i used to be surprised at how little I cared for him. perhaps that became worse than whatever.

10.

still, regardless of what, i will’t shake my first influence. Even now, miles and years away, the saw in my living room to take me back to the fact, when I think about Gabe, I see a Thirties animated man or woman: the black pie-cut eyes, white gloved arms held flat in opposition to the historical past, dark long limbs without elbows and knees that don't bend butundulate. The cheap jazzy glorious music that, in spite of your better self, places you in a very good temper. Fills you with reasonably-priced jazzy hope. And it appears you’re making big strides across the united states of america to your spring-operated limbs, in your spring-loaded open automobile, to your jazzy pneumatic lifestyles. You don’t even be aware that in the back of you, over and over within the same order, is the equal tree, shack, street nook, mouse hole, table set for dinner, blown-lower back curtains.