S.V.P.
Notes on miniatures, broken boundaries, and the strange familiarity of the woman on the phone.
Monday I was almost on time. That’s worth noting.
The atelier was in a theatre, a space I didn’t know yet, and when I got there lunch was being served — pizza from a place I associate with summertime, post-FEQ dates with my ex. A woman at the table was struggling with a slice that wasn’t cut all the way through. Un couteau — anybody got a knife? As it turned out, I did. I’d impulse-bought a small serrated kitchen knife at the checkout of some store earlier that week, threw it in my backpack, forgot about it completely. Still in its case. I dug it out, she cut her pizza, and I left the knife on the table in case anyone else needed it. Forgot about it again on my way out. Remembered at the last second and grabbed it from the pizza box and shoved it in my purse. Without the case.
Tuesday morning I was rummaging for my missing keys and sliced two fingers open.
But Monday, at the table, my fingers were just covered in glue and modeling clay. I sat down across from her — I recognized her face, I’d seen her around the neighborhood, and it was one of the only seats left. When it was my turn to introduce myself I said I’d been living out at the lake for the last ten years, and that living here is very different. It was the most French I managed all afternoon. She talked about what it’s like to be a woman on the streets, how dangerous it is, how she’d lived that with her daughter. I made tiny tables and chairs, I rolled tiny little beer bottles for a karaoke bar and thought about the addiction that runs in my family. She worked on a tiny microphone. These days she hosts a karaoke show on the local radio station, and I remembered that I’d actually seen one of her posts on Facebook. I told her I had. Her daughter was there too. They were speaking French. I could only catch pieces of it. I kept thinking I was letting her down, that I wasn’t listening well enough.
Tuesday I was very late to French class on account of the keys and the fingers. After class I walked outside and a woman on the sidewalk was selling La Quête — the street magazine, sold by people without housing. I didn’t have cash. It turned out I could pay with my phone. The cover was blue — a man floating underwater, fish drifting around him. Légèreté. Lightness.
I took it home to the backyard and sat down and opened it. Page 13. A column: L'insoutenable légèreté de lire. The unbearable lightness of reading. Kundera’s been on my shelf for years. I haven’t read it yet.
I knew she was an editor there. I wasn’t exactly expecting her face. The librarian from the building where I take my classes. The face that belonged to the voice I’d heard on the phone in our kitchen.
The reading recommendations on page 13 were pretty (annoyingly) solid. A few I’d heard of. One was a French translation of a webcomic I’ve loved for years — Hyperbole and a Half. I didn’t know it existed in French. Under other circumstances, I think she and I would probably be friends.
That same day the organizers posted photos from the atelier to Facebook. I was scrolling in my apartment and stopped on one — a notebook open on the blue table, a miniature building in the background. Someone had written:
Les gardiens de bâtiment séparent les riches et les pauvres mais pas la sécurité. Les sans-abris sont des enfants abandonnés par la société. C'est ironique d'être répugné et avoir peur des gens qui tentent de vivre les conforts de base mais en public. On les snobe quand ils vivent plus en collaboration et communauté que le monde isolé dans son grand logement à scroller pour simuler le social.
I don’t know who wrote it. It might have been the daughter — the one who was there at the table, speaking French I could only catch pieces of. I’m in the background of the photo, hands busy with the miniatures, listening. I didn’t know those words were sitting on the table in front of me until I was back in my grand logement, isolated, scrolling to find the proof that I’d been there.
Wednesday I went to French class. We did pronoms relatifs. My worksheet: Avez-vous trouvé les clés que j'ai perdues? Have you found the keys I lost? La femme dont il parlait. The woman he was talking about. Elle raconte une histoire que je ne me souvenais plus. She tells a story I no longer remembered. Ce dont j'ai besoin, c'est de repos. What I need is rest.
I filled in the blanks. Got most of them right. I wondered if she was a floor above me right then, filing books or editing text about the homeless, while I sat downstairs trying to find the words for “the thing that happened.”
After class I walked to the store on the corner and bought a bucket and some scrubbing pads. I couldn’t find a proper scrub brush. I went home and cleaned the liquid shit off the concrete wall in the backyard. Then I got out a spray can and wrote S.V.P…Chiez pas dans la cour. Merci! I’d let them keep their stuff in the carport when it rains. I’d given them primo dry cardboard and plastic sheeting from when I got my mattress delivered. I said please. I said thank you. I added the exclamation point.
I heard a poem recently that I can’t stop thinking about. It’s about friends who aren’t dead but who stand outside of houses, swaying. Friends you could have been, had you been born two doors down. I sit in my backyard and look at the safe use centre down the block and think about my uncles, my cousin. How they’ve probably been the guys people cross the street to avoid. How I’m only inside because of a door I didn’t choose.
I’d been getting by in French for years without ever really learning it. I finally signed up last January, sat on a waiting list until July, and then just showed up and started conjugating things. The crisis came in October, November — the marriage, suddenly visible in a different light. He didn’t start seeing her until this year, February or March. By then I’d been doing this for months already — going to her building every week, learning her words.
One night last month, before I’d fully moved out, I was making a bagel in the dark and he was in the kitchen on the phone with her, voice low, not saying anything when I walked in. He knew I was there. I just made my bagel and went to bed.
Une étrange familiarité. Strange familiarity. That’s what this week felt like. That’s what this city feels like, most days. I keep showing up. I fill in the blanks. I get most of them right.
Update: they did not appreciate the spray paint. The next day I came outside to find spoiled raw chicken breasts, a truly impressive quantity of cigarette butts, two broken umbrellas, a stuffed penguin, and various other things. I contacted the landlord. I don’t know what the landlord is going to do. I don’t know what anyone does with this.
I love it. Keep on with French, it's not easy. I hope this will get better in the courtyard pour tout le monde, vous comprise. Beaucoup d'atmosphère dans ce texte. Magnifique.
Goddamn, this is powerful stuff. You’re a great writer. The cadence is beautiful. I’m sorry about the shit though. All of it.