That Which Doesn't Count for Much

It has taken me two months to read my first book of the year. Mona Simpson’s Anywhere But Here. The title grabbed me in that bookstore in Chatham, next door to the cheese shop that sells baguette sandwiches, grilled cheeses, and coffee that’s temperamental to the woman pouring it. Once, I said I wanted a little half and half, and that was my entire cup. Lukewarm cream. I haven’t seen her since, only the older woman who makes the coffee perfect. I feel lucky when I go and see her behind the counter.

I wanted a big book, one that I could be absorbed in, one that would make me excited to take off my nightstand instead of my phone in the morning. I cannot read in the morning for the appearance of reading in the morning. The vision is dreamy and I wish I could see myself in that light sometimes. But I want to want to read in the morning. I want to feel so pulled to this act of reading that nothing else makes sense besides that and a glass of water before coffee.

Simpson’s writing is steady. Her observations are precise and cutting. I began to see each character clearly, so I couldn’t tell if it was laziness or intermissions of disinterest that made me take two months to finish it.

The book that sparked my fervor for reading in adulthood was Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. I had read lots as a kid, constantly leaving the library with arms full. It’s a story I often hear, losing the passion for reading once entering high school, once creative compulsions were traded in for analysis.

I was 18 at a house show and I met some guy named Andrei smoking a cigarette outside. He didn’t attend college, thought it was stupid. He claimed to already be a journalist, but he seemed to be about the same age that I was. I went to his house which was his father’s house. Andrei brewed coffee, and I left in the morning with his copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Yates’ Revolutionary Road. I didn’t venture much into the thick Sartre novel but I fell in love with Revolutionary Road. I loved the descriptions of the couple’s movements, play-like in their performance. It began my attraction to American Dream books, this debunking of a life we’re told we should desire and obtain.

I saw Andrei at other house shows or he would call sometimes because he would be hanging out outside my dorm. I would see him from my dorm window. I’d wave and sometimes I’d exit. I lent Andrei’s copy to the next guy I dated and he filled it with notes. Many of the notes that I saw while I flipped through were trying to be in conversation with me or were written memories of his past or of us together. Are you kidding me? I remember yelling at him.

“That’s not my book!”

“I’ll get him another book,” he said. “Don’t be mad!”

Do you really think I want to reread this book but now with the addition of your marginal notes?

I didn’t respond to Andrei’s messages asking for the book back. I think I also left the book with the ex because the copy I have now is clean besides my dog-eared pages.

Anywhere But Here is about wanting to do better than what has happened to or become of oneself. It’s also about self-righteousness. By supposedly doing the better or being the better, we can still be met with foul attitudes. Don’t they see all I had to do to get to where I am now? Can they rewatch life from my perspective and see how I’ve risen above? There’s this want for empathy and compassion that exists while trampling over some people to get there, sometimes the same people from whom you desire empathy and compassion.

The story is mainly told by Ann, the daughter. She is growing up in Wisconsin with her mother Adele who thought she deserved to always be somewhere else, somewhere greater. Ann is her mother’s chance to make her life better. She’s also a punching bag for Adele because she’s become the reason Adele’s life isn’t better. They leave Adele’s new husband Ted, a figure skater who can’t provide the ultimate life that exists beyond Wisconsin.

‘Ann, do you know what a homosexual is?’ He looked at me hard, waiting, like the teachers wait, a whole side of their heads still, after they ask a question in school. ‘Well, a homosexual is a man who likes men better than women. Your mother is saying that I’m a homosexual and when you’re older and she tells you that, I want you to know it wasn’t true.’

We get short perspectives from the mother’s sister, the mother’s mom, and mother’s grandma. It rounds out the picture of Adele through insight on her upbringing, her absent father, then her absent husband, her knowledge of her beauty and dependence on it.

My mother’s brilliance is in a lot of things you notice if you’re around a person all the time, but which don’t count for much in the world. While we talked, her hands moved through her hair, taking bobby pins from the edge of her mouth, arranging a perfect bun.

I often read nonfiction and fiction that revolves around marriages and subsequently books on affairs. I read about families and, is it still important to create one? If unimportant, is it nice still? I try not to look at babies unless they’re staring, then I’ll stare back. Maybe I’ll compliment their footwear but never to the mom or baby but to the person I’m with if I am.

In Los Angeles, Adele and Ann came upon money problems. Adele had used Ted’s credit card throughout their drive to stay in motels. Ann constantly monitored the nightly price of rooms. If Adele wanted to stay in a nicer room, she would get upset that Ann maintained this voice of monetary reason. Sometimes she let Ann dissuade her, but then used that to be upset and create distance. Other times, she would continue with the room she desired and they laid in luxury for a minute. When they get to Los Angeles, Adele can’t afford different apartments but will not admit this. She will instead make a fuss about the paint color not being the same on the shutters as they are on the walls so they have to move again.

Still, with my lack of critiques about it, I stopped picking up the book. I could say it’s because I got busy or work got more consuming. But I think it’s because Adele’s habits exhausted me. She constantly left Ann on the side of the road to test her loyalty, made promises, conducted lies, fought physically, pined for men who drew their blinds when she drove by. I still wanted to finish it though as there were no problems with the writing itself. I began to get invested again when Ann got older and started questioning Adele, when Ann got older and it became possible for her to leave her mother.

‘Mom, if he’s going to marry you, why won’t he talk to you?’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You don’t know anything.’

It ends with the first and only passage from Adele. It’s surprisingly easy to empathize with her after being agitated with her for the majority of the book. It made me think about people I know who don’t have the capacity to change, how we can love or leave them, or maybe leave and love them from a distance because our daily lives no longer circulate around them. Adele fulfilled her want; Ann ended up having more opportunities than her mother did. But Ann keeps returning to Wisconsin because of unanswered questions and undeniable comforts about home.

I finished the book in Bacalar, Mexico. I can’t escape books that comment on this American Dream. I just want something transportive, something that can get me out of my head, I say. But there I am in Mexico, my body relaxing while I read a book about a dysfunctional multigenerational working class American family.