There’s a handsaw placing at the wall of my dwelling room

1.

There’s a handsaw placing at the wall of my dwelling room, a house key from a giant’s pocket. It’s been there a long term. “What’s your saw for?” humans ask, and i say, “It’s not my noticed. I never owned a saw.”

“but what’s it for?”

“striking,” I solution.

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

these days, even though it grieves me to say it, that sounds approximately proper.

2.

right here’s how I became a singer. 40 years ago I walked past the Washington Monument in Baltimore and notion, I’ll climb that. It became first thing inside the morning. They’d simply opened up. As I climbed I sang with my eyes closed—“Summertime,” I think it become. yes, of route it become. “Summertime.” I stored my hand at the iron banister. My ftlocated the steps. In my head I noticed myself at a celebration, leaning on a piano, singing in front of a small target market. I climbed, I sang. I in no way may want to keep in mind the phrases, largely due to a spoonerized model my friend Fred preferred to sing—Tummersime, and the iving is leazy / jif are fumping, and the hiver is rye…

Then a person’s voice said, “Wow.”

In my memory, he leans against the wall steps from the pinnacle, shouldering a saw like a rifle. but of path he wouldn’t have added his noticed to the Washington Monument. He turned into a large-boned, raw-faced blond guy with a smashed Parker residence roll of a nostril, a puny felt hat striking on the back of his head. His slacks were dark synthetic, snagged. His orange cardigan gave the impression of rusted Brillo. He became so huge you wondered how he ought to have were given up there—had the tower been built around him? Had he arrived in portions and been assembled instantaneous? “Wow,” he stated once more, and clasped his arms in the front of himself, bouncing on his knees with the syncopated jollification of a love-struck Nineteen Thirties cool animated film man or woman. I expected to peer querulous lines of excitement coming off his head, punctuated with the aid of exclamation marks. He plucked off his hat. His hair seemedadore it were combed with a piece of buttered toast.

“That became you?” he requested.

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

“You sound like a noticed,” he said. His voice changed into soft. I thought he might be from the South, like me, althoughlater i discovered out he simply had one of those voices that picked up accents thru static energy. definitely he becomefrom Paterson, New Jersey.

“A saw?” I asked.

He nodded.

I placed my fingers to my throat. “I don’t understand what which means.”

He held up his huge palms, one nonetheless palming his hat. “beautiful,” he said. “not of this earth. come with me, I’ll show you. Boy, you sure taught George Gershwin a lesson. wherein do you sing?”

“Nowhere,” I stated.

I couldn’t sing, in step with my pals. The best individual who’d ever said some thing excellent about my voice changed into my buddy Fred Tibbets, who claimed that after i used to be under the influence of alcohol, on occasion I managed to hold a track. however we drank loads in those days, and when i was drunk Fred was drunk, too, and sentimental. still, I secretly believed I should sing. My simplest evidence became the satisfaction making a song introduced me. maximumcommon mistake within the global, believing that physical delight and virtue are in any manner associated, at once or not directly.

the man shook his head. “No top,” he said very significantly. “That’s rotten. We’ll change that.” He went to take my hand and as a substitute hung his hat upon it. Then I felt his personal hand squeeze mine thru the felt. “You’ll sing for me, ok? could you sing for me? You’ll sing for me.”

He led me go into reverse the monument, the hat on my hand, his hand in the back of it. My wrist started out to sweat however I didn’t thoughts. “Of course you’ll sing,” he stated. He went beforehand of me but kept preventing, so I’d half oftumble onto the point of his elbow. “I recognize humans. I’m from Philadelphia. well, I stay there. I came to Bawlmore because a friend of mine, a part of a trio, he broke his arm and wanted a guitar participant so there you cross. There arehundred and twenty-eight steps in this factor. I read it at the plaque. also I counted. God, you’re a thin female, you’re like nothing, you’re so cute, no, you are, don’t disagree, I know what I’m speakme approximately. nicely, no longer all thetime, however right now I do. I’ll play you my noticed. now not everyone appreciates it however you will. What’s your call? yet again? Oof. We’ll alternate that, have to, you want something quick 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 understand, permit me suppose: leave out Porth. due to the fact you’re a chanteuse, that’s why the miss. And Porthkiss, I don’t recognize. And leave out Kiss is just silly. examine you blush! The human musical saw. There are all varieties of places you could sing, you don’t knowyour personal well worth, that’s your problem. I’ve acknowledged singers and i’ve regarded singers. I heard you and ithought, There’s a voice I should listen to for the rest of my life. I’m now not kidding. I don’t child approximately things like that. I don’t youngster about music. i was frozen to the spot. appearance, still: goose bumps. You rescued me from the tower, Rapunzel: I climbed down to your voice. I’ll talk to my pal Jake. I’ll speak to this different guy I know. i've a senseapproximately you. i've a sense approximately you. Are you getting as dizzy as me? maybe it’s not the stairs. Do you trustin love at the beginning sight? That’s not a line, it’s a question. I do, of path I do, could I ask if I didn’t? because I believe in luck, that’s why. We’re almost at the bottom. poor child, you never even got to the top. Come on. For ten cents it’s strictly an all-you-can-climb monument. We’ll pass again up. Come on. Come on.”

“i can sing?” I asked him.

He looked at me. His eyes were green, with gears of darker inexperienced around the scholars.

“trust me,” he said.

3.

I wasn’t the sort of woman who’d climb a monument with a unusual man. Or move back to his hotel room with him. Or agree to move to Philadelphia tomorrow.

but I did.

His room was at the pinnacle floor of the Elite inn, the kind of area you might test in to to dedicate suicide: lavatory down the corridor, a sink in the nook of the room, a view of some other constructing with windows precisely throughout from the Elite’s home windows.

“Musical saw,” said Gabe Macon. He opened a cardboard suitcase that sat on the stop of the unmarried bed. First he took out a protracted object wrapped in a sheet. A violin bow. Then a piece of rosin.

“You hit it with that?” I asked.

“Hit it? What hit?” Gabe stated.

“I idea—”

“look,” he said. The noticed he’d hung inside the closet with his suits. I’d concept a musical saw might be a percussion tool. A xylophone, maybe. A marimba. He rosined the bow and sat on a chair on the corner. The saw became only aregular wood saw. He clamped his feet on the cease of it after which pulled the bow throughout the stupid facet of the blade. you can rarely see the noticed, the manage clamped among his ft, the end of the metal snagged in his hand: he became a pile of man with a blade on the heart, a person doing violence to some thing with an unlikely weapon.

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

“I sound like that?” I stated.

He nodded, stored gambling.

I sound like that. It became humiliating, alarming, unpleasant, interesting. It became like looking at a flattering image of your self doing something you wanted you hadn’t been photographed doing. That’s me. He was playing “Fly Me to the Moon.”

He completed and looked at me with the ones Rube-Goldberg eyes. “That’s you,” he said. He flexed the saw backward and forward then dropped it to the ground.

I picked it up and tried to peer my reflection inside the steel. “You don’t take the enamel off?”

“Nope,” he stated. “this is my second saw. here. give me.” I lifted it via the blade and he stuck it via the tawny deal with. “First one i purchased become too exact. brief, expensive. Wouldn’t bend. You want some thing cheap and with an awesome period to it. eight points to an inch, this one. teeth, I imply.” He flexed it. The steel made that behind the scenesthunder noise I’d imagined while he’d first stated I seemed like a saw. “This one, although. It’s proper.” He flipped it roundand stuck it again among his brown footwear and drew the bow against it. He’d turned on simply one mild by way of the lodge bed while we’d come into the room. Now it changed into darkish out. I listened to the noticed and looked at the sink inside the nook. A spider crawled out of it, tapping one leg in the front musingly like a blind man with a cane earlier thanclambering over the embankment. The noticed sighed. Me, too. Then Gabe reached over with the bow and touched my shoulder. I flinched, as though the horsehair had caught a case of sharp off the noticed.

“That’s you,” he said once more.

maybe I cherished Gabe already. What’s love at the beginning sight but a bucket thrown over you that smoothes out all of your previous self-loathing, so that you can see yourself slick and disheveled down and audacious? at the least, i assumed for the primary time that i used to be capable of being loved.

Or perhaps I simply loved the saw.

We left for Philly the next day. The story of our fulfillment, and it wasn’t a good deal achievement, is quite dull, as all such stories are. a whole lot of waiting by way of the cellphone. quite a few bad talent nights. One first-rate talent night in which I gained a box of dishes. The stroll home from that night time, Gabe sporting the dishes and smashing them into the gutter one at a time. Don’t do it, I said, those are mine—

He held one dish to my forehead, 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 forehead with the plate area.

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

5.

He wrote songs. before I met him I had no concept of ways every body wrote a track. His condo on Sansom street smelled of burnt tomato sauce and had inside the kitchen, in place of a stove, a piano that seemed as though it had been througha residence hearth. once in a while he performed it. from time to time he sat at it together with his arms twitching over the keys like leashed dogs. “The Land past the Land We realize.” “A Pocket complete of Pennies.” “Your 2d largestremorse.” “maintain Your Eyes Out for Me.” He turned into the sort of sly mimic, the sort of sneaky thief, that humansthought these had been difficult to understand standards, if this type of aspect exists, songs they’d heard regularly longin the past and had been best now remembering. He wrote a song each day. He were given mad that now and again I couldn’t preserve them directly or consider all of them. “That’s a putting Offense.” “Don’t You Care at all.” “until the endpeople.”

We completed them together. He sold me a inexperienced Grecian-draped dress that itched, and matching opera gloves that were too lengthy and reduce into my armpits, and lipstick, and fake eyelashes—all haunted, mainly the eyelashes.

records is complete of the unhappy testimonies of foolish women. What’s terrible is that i was now not foolish. Ask every person. Ask Fred Tibbets, who lied and stated I should carry a track.

We cut a record known as omit Porth Sings! For a long term you could still locate it in containers in document shopsunder Vocals or different or Novelty. Me on the sleeve, my head tipped lower back. I wore red lipstick that made my complexion orange, and tiny noticed-shaped jewelry. My hair become cashew-coloured. That was a fault of the printing. In actual life, in the ones days, my hair become the colour of sandpaper: diamond, garnet, ruby.

i used to be on the radio. i was at the Gypsy Rose Lee show. pass over Porth, the Human Musical saw! however thecomplete factor turned into that Gabe’s noticed sounded human. Why be a human who best feels like an inanimate objectthat sounds human?

6.

This is not a tale about success. within the global we have been what we’d usually been. the affection story: the noticedand the sawish voice. We were two cripplingly shy, witheringly judgmental individuals who fell in love in non-public, far from the communique and warning of different human beings, after which we left city before everybody may want towarn us.



In Philadelphia he started out to throw matters at me—stupid, embarrassing, lighter-than-air things: a bowl full of egg whites i was about to whip for a soufflé, my brother’s birthday card, the entire contents of a newly opened box of powdered sugar. For days I left white fingerprints in the back of. He said it was an coincidence, he hadn’t intended to throw it in any respect. He become simplest gesturing.

and then he commenced to threaten me with the noticed.

I don’t suppose he may want to have explained it himself. He didn’t drink, but he would appear inebriated. The drunkenness, or something it became, moved his limbs. Picked up the noticed. added it to my throat, and simply held it there. He never moved the blade, and talked about the terrible matters he could do to himself.

“I’m going to devote suicide,” he stated. “i will. Don’t go away me. inform me you gained’t.”

I couldn’t shake my head or talk, and so I attempted to study him with love. I couldn’t stand the way he hated himself. I wanted to kill the person that made him experience this manner. Our condo became vibrant at the front, by using the home windows, and black and airless on the back, in which the mattress was. where we were now, lying on a duvet that gave the impression of a study room map, orange, blue, inexperienced, yellow.

“My existence is over,” stated Gabe. He had the burnt-tomato smell of the complete rental. “I’m antique. I’m antique. I’m talentless. i'm able to see it, however you realize, at the equal time, I listen to the radio all day and i don’t recognize. Why will you ruin each person’s hearts the way you do? Why do you do it? You’re loopy. possibly you’re no longer able to love. You need assist. i'm able to kill myself. I’ve idea approximately it ever given that i used to be a bit youngster.”

The noticed blade took a bite of me, eight teeth marks according to inch. reasonably-priced steel, the type that bent effortlessly. I had my fingers at the dull side of the saw. How did we get right here, I questioned, but I’d had the samedisoriented idea whilst i believed I’d fallen in love with him at the beginning sight, mendacity within the identicalmattress: How did this manifest?

“I ought to leap,” he said. “What do you suspect i was doing up that tower while you observed me? windows were too small, I didn’t understand. I’d gotten my nerve up. but then there you have been, and you were so little. And your voice. and that i wager I changed my mind. Will you are saying some thing, Marya? You’ve damaged my coronary heart. considered one of in recent times I’ll kill myself.”

I knew the whole lot approximately him. He weighed precisely two times what I did, to the pound. He changed intoambitious and doubtful: he wanted to be well-known, and he wanted no person to examine him, ever, which might bethe human situation—in him it was merely amplified. That was almost all I knew about him. on occasion we nonethelesstold the tale of our existence collectively to every different: Why had I climbed the tower that day? Why had he? He had nearly stayed in Philadelphia. I’d almost long gone lower back domestic for the weekend however then my top notch-aunt Florence died and my oldsters went to her funeral. If he’d been five minutes slower he wouldn’t have caught me making a song. If I’d been ten minutes later, i would have smiled at him as he left.

We had been lucky, we told every 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 saw cuts. The owner was named Marco Bell. He cherished me. Marco’s face become so wrinkled that once he smoked you may see each line in his face irritating and slacken.

There’s a land past the land we recognize,

wherein time is green and men are sluggish.

observe me and soon you’ll recognize,

Blue happiness.

My green get dressed become too large and that i stored having to affix it up. It wasn’t too large a month in the past. on the ruin, I sat down next to Marco. “How are you?” I requested.

“complete of sorrow,” he replied. He leaned into the hand holding the cigarette. I notion he might light his pomaded hair on fireplace.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You do it, pass over Porth. with your—” He waved on the spot wherein I’d been standing.

I laughed. “They’re not all unhappy songs.”

“sure,” he said. there was now not a funny story in a 5-mile radius of the man. He had a first rate Russian head with bullying eyebrows. 3 years earlier his spouse had had a stroke, and sometimes she got here into the membership in a chevron-patterned dress, sitting in her wheelchair and patting the tabletop, both in time to the song or seeking outsomething she’d placed down there. “You’re wrong. they are.”

I stated, “from time to time I don’t think I’m doing all and sundry any favors.”

Then Gabe turned into in the back of me. He touched my shoulder lovingly. pay attention: don’t tell me otherwise. It turned into not first-rate love, it was no longer correct love, but you can't inform me that it wasn’t love. Love isn't alwaysoxygen, although many songwriters will tell you that it's miles; it is not a chemical substance this is both definitively present or absent; it cannot be decreased to its elements. It is not like a flower, or an animal, or anything that you willever be able to apprehend whilst you see it. Love is food. That’s all. Neither better nor worse. every so often superb. every now and then horrible. however to say—as humans will—that wasn’t love. As though that makes you sense higher! nicely, it won't have been nourishing, however it sustained me for some time. as soon as I’d left I’d be as terrible as any reformed sinner, amazed at my old self, but regardless of the blade in opposition to my neck, I loved him, his concernsapproximately the future, his reliable black moods, his reliable affection—that became nevertheless there, too, althoughsullied by way of remorse.

I stayed for the noticed, too. not the threat of it. I stayed due to the ones mins on stage after I could understand it. Gabe bent it returned and it referred to as out, Oh, no, honey, assist. It desired consolation. It desired to comfort me. We had been in hassle collectively, the two folks: the honey-throated saw, the noticed-voiced female. help, help, we’re still alive, the noticed sang, even though mainly its songs had been simply pronouns all stuck collectively: I, we, mine, you, you, we, mine.

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

Gabe touched my shoulder and said, “Marya, allow’s go.”

Marco stated, “In a minute. omit Porth, allow’s have a drink.”

“Marya,” stated Gabe.

“I’d love one,” I said.

Maxie’s became a popular location—no sign up the front door, a personal shaggy dog story. there was a crowd. Gabe punched me. He punched me within the breast. The proper breast. a completely odd area to take a punch. now not the worst location. I idea that as it took place: no longer the worst vicinity to take a punch. The chairs at Maxie’s had backs carved like bamboo. He punched me. I’d never been punched earlier than. He said, “See how it feels, whilst a personbreaks your heart?” and i thought, yes, as it takes place, I suppose I do.

i was on my again. Marco had his palms around Gabe’s arms and was whispering things in his ear. A crowd had fashioned. people have been touching me. I wished they wouldn’t.

here is what I want to inform you: I knew something was ending, and i was thankful, and that i missed it.

eight.

about five years in the past in a restaurant close to my condo someone recognized me. “You’re—are you omit Porth?” he said. “You’re pass over Porth.” guy about my own age, tweed blazer, bald with a crinkly snub-nosed puppyish face, the kind that constantly looks as if it’s approximately to sneeze. “I used to look you at Maxie’s,” he said. “all of the time. nicely, plenty. i used to be in grad college at Penn. miss Porth! desirable God! I usually wondered what happened to you!”

i was sitting on the bar, awaiting a pal, and that i wanted to end the communication before the pal arrived. the persontook a bar stool subsequent to me. We talked for a while approximately Philadelphia. He nevertheless lived there, he become just on the town for a conference. He shook the ice from his emptied drink into his mouth, and that i knew he turned into lower back there—not paying attention to me, exactly, simply remembering who turned into at his elbow, and did she need any other drink, and did he have enough cash for any other drink for both of them. All the good stuff he believed approximately himself then: by now he’d recognize whether or not he’d been proper, and proper or wrong, knowing turned into stupid. I didn’t like being his event for nostalgia.

“i have your album,” he said. “I’m a fan. severely. It’s my discipline, tune. I— some guy hit you,” he stated . His pup face regarded over-sneezeish. “i'm able to’t don't forget. became he a inebriated? some man in love with you? That’s right. A loopy.”

“Random thing,” I said. “What had been you studying?”

“Folklore,” he stated absentmindedly. “I constantly puzzled something about you. can i ask? Do you mind?”

Oh, I thought, slide down that rabbit hole when you have to, just let cross of my hem, don’t take me with you.

“I loved to pay attention you,” he said. doggy tilt to his head, too. “You had been like not anything else. but I constantlypuzzled—I imply, you look like an clever girl. I in no way spoke to you lower back then.” One piece of ice clung to the lowest of his glass and he fished it out along with his hands. “Did you comprehend that human beings were laughing at you?”

Then he said, “Oh, my God.”

“I’m sorry,” he stated.

“no longer me,” he said. “I swear, you were splendid.”

I became to him. “Of path I knew,” I stated. “How should I pass over it?”

the line between pride and a lack of it's miles skinny and brittle and thrilling as new ice. best while you’re young are you able to skate out onto it, to now not care which facet you grow to be on. That become me. i was harmless. Later, when you’re antique, when you understand things, properly, it takes all varieties of attempt, and ropes, and pulleys, and all kinds of tricks, to preserve you from crashing thru, in case you’re even inclined to chance it.

even though perhaps I did recognise lower back then that some humans didn’t take me severely. however nonetheless: the first time they came to snort. not the second one. I could hear the audience. I may want to listen how still they had been after I sang with my eyes closed. certain, some of them had thought, Who does she assume she’s fooling? Who does she assume she is, with that antique green robe, with the ones made-up songs? however then they’d listen. It turned intothose humans, I suppose, the ones who idea at the beginning they were above me, who were given the wind knocked out of them. Who introduced their friends the following week. Who offered my file. Who idea: Me. No more, no less, she’s fooling me.

Later I got a letter asking for the right to position songs from omit Porth Sings! on a report known as Songs from Mars: Eccentrics and their track. The note said, Do you recognize what occurred to G. Macon? I need his permission, too, of course.

9.

The night of the punch, I went domestic with Gabe for the last time. Of course, don’t call the police, I advised Marco. He turned into exhausted, repentant. I led him to the mattress, to the faded cover, and he fell asleep. From the kitchen smartphone I called his sister in Paterson, whom I’d never met, and i informed her Gabe Macon became in trouble and on my own and wished assist. Then I climbed into mattress subsequent to him. Gabe had an archipelago of moles on his neck I’d by no means noticed, and a few faint acne scars on his nose. His eyebrows had been knit in dreamy notion. I loved that nose. He hated it. “Do I honestly seem like that?” he’d ask, seeing a picture of himself. He’d cover his nose with his hand.

I didn’t understand what might turn out to be of him. I had to stop worrying. It wasn’t love and it wasn’t the noticed and it wasn’t a worry of being alone that kept me there: it was wanting to understand the quit of the story, and wanting the stopto be glad.

At five a.m. I left with a bag, the noticed, bamboo-patterned bruises on my back, and a fist-fashioned bruise on my rightbreast. quickly enough i was amazed at how little I cared for him. perhaps that changed into worse than something.

10.

nonetheless, no matter what, i will’t shake my first affect. Even now, miles and years away, the noticed in my living room to ring a bell in me, when I think of Gabe, I see a 1930s lively person: the black pie-reduce eyes, white gloved arms held flat against the history, darkish lengthy limbs without elbows and knees that do not bend but undulate. The cheap jazzy superb music that, regardless of your higher self, puts you in an awesome mood. Fills you with cheap jazzy hope. And it appears you’re making large strides across the country to your spring-operated limbs, for your spring-loaded open automobile, in your jazzy pneumatic life. You don’t even word that in the back of you, time and again inside the sameorder, is the identical tree, shack, street nook, mouse hole, desk set for dinner, blown-returned curtains.