S TOR Y

THE TWO OF
By Annie Dillard
THE~I

S he shipwrecked on the
sheets. Her body, hitherto hav-
May tree, a working simu-
lacrum with a history. She was
ing served her adequately, was a tall girl, big rib cage, aslant
now an autopsied doll, a broken and tucked on a Marblehead
clown. Her fingers swelled. love seat, who read a red-
Stunned, she surfaced like dy- bound book that stained her
namited bass. palms. She was broad-boned,
How courteously he had ex- young; her high eyebrowsdrew
plored, and how slowly!At first, brown arches like the bed's
amused, she answered his sub- arching headboard. A young
tlest inquiries with an encir- woman of no special gifts-
cling tweak that he acknowl- unless looking like Ingrid
edged by as it were tipping his Bergman was a gift;she guessed
hat. Astonishing she had dis- it was, and hoped Ingrid
covered those musclesand their Bergman, who at least escaped
switch in her brain only a few always hearing she looked like
weeks ago-but not egregious- Ingrid Bergman, found her
ly astonishing, as she had a com- form agreeable too for a
mitment to lifelong learning. while-who somehow won all
Somewhere the world had the considerable love of Jay
cleaved and dropped, leaving Maytree in Provincetown. So
only a tissue of consciousness she found herself in bed with a
one cell thick. The two titrat- thousand freckles. In a New-
ed their reserve by increments foundland book she read that
they controlled together, and a boy's mother told him
the key changed and they en- people's freckles washed off in
tered blinded pitches whose protracted rains; the freckles
ranges rose. The couloir appeared, the was by no means sure she had ever floated in puddles whence unwise chil-
narrowing long hall whose only exit seen a set of barn doors in her life. dren filled up on them and spoiled
was through. At the hall's end in the She lay spread as a film and as frag- their dinners.
dark she perceived the doors, the rush- ile. She opened her eyes to learn where Maytree, flexed beside her, was al-
ing barn doors, which presently began on the bed she had fetched up. She ready asleep. He was a crisp sort of
to swing on their hinges and strike aligned herself sensibly, steering by tall redhead. Clean from daily out-
walls. Funny, she thought later: she bed frame. Then she oriented herself door showers, his neck smelled of salt
to the rest of it too, and took on faith and hot sand. Was this the man of
Annie Dillard's most recent book is For the
the consensus world. She cobbled to- only a minute ago? She often wanted
Time Being, a short nonfiction narrative gether, from repeated chips of various to ask, Have we met? Now he looked
(Knopf, 200 1) . states of being, a clastic self, Lou like a fellow whose parachute had

Illustration by Clifford Alejandro STORY 61

failed. He slept with a long leg flung blurred frown, as if he had been knees. I jumped from the bowsprit,
over her, as their yellow dog scanning the offing for his own ar- he said, I jumped from the church
claimed a stick. Once while he slept rival. Perhaps she only imagined un- roof, the treetop, the bike seat ...
on his side his legs thrashed and he ease in his expression. Actual boys You might have killed yourself, and
panted. She pressed his shoulder. look certain enough. They are not then where would we be?
Chasing a rabbit? He exhaled and searching for anything; they think Supple and irrigated, May tree's
said, Tap dancing. they possess it already. It was she skin took a shine to the light. Blue
He told her once-they were who sought for the man in the tinted his white parts, where thin
walking the gassy mudflats-that his child. She could not find him, so the skin made catenary curves. The skin
brain was like a shadow box, like the boy seemed to her lost. The boy on his kneecaps looked yellow,
cherry shadow box friends hung on seemed-wonderfully-to need her. pulled so tight his freckles vanished.
their porch to store beach debris. But he did not, not yet. Perhaps, she Now: Were those bony manly knees
Every day, he said, he packed each asked later, he never did? here on the sheet, knees from which
compartment with information-he Morning sun heated the sheet and hairs coiled, once naked boy knees,
called it knowledge-like seeds. the sales of her feet. She wished she and ignorant of all this
Maybe like thistle seeds, she were there in the lost past to protect man knew?
thought, or poppy seeds. When he
had jammed every compartment
tight, it was night. As he fell asleep
him, on the one hand, and to admire
and hearten him, on the other.
Actually, she wished-while she
A wareness was a braided river.
It dropped down time in cascades,
the shadow box emptied. Its con- was wishing-to know and admire now in dribbles, now in torrents. He
tents, the seeds, spilled, box by box, all those vanished boys she never woke. We should tie up the dory.
into deeper parts of his brain. Now met: the baby whose scalp she could Tide's coming in. When they met
she stopped kissing his temple. She then smell, the boy who rowed out this past June, on a cliff backing a
imagined chicken feed from shore to catch a witch flounder Truro beach, she noticed he con-
stuck to her lips. with a worm, who sold codfish trolled his voice's force. Now he

N othing so moves a woman as

the boyhood of the man she loves.
cheeks door-to-door from a bucket,
the bony boy distraught and silent
on the beach, and the reading youth
stood and brushed sand from his side
of the sheet. They always had sand
in the bed. It was a wonder she was
Lou thought, Is this true? intense as the man who always sur- not slimmer.
She had searched old family pho- prised her and always wanted her. One night on the bed May tree
tographs for signs of that wild and In school pictures he was pale- had said to her, Was that you! They
delicate gentleman he would be- eyed and sullen or silly. At sixteen, discovered themselves seated facing.
come. She found instead only his seventeen, eighteen-why, there Was that you? she asked silently
slight figure, and his bright forehead was a team of brainy redheads, a now; he was stepping into bathing
curved back before his hair, his scrimmage of growing lovers, a hay- trunks before the window. Light
brows like a shed roof over his eyes, load of future husbands. She could from sea and sky shone through his
his sharp jaw. The boy May tree not turn from any of them: their right ear. Red right returning. His
dwarfed by his father on a Province- clumsiness, their arrogance, the wide lips cracked. His redhead's skin
town wharf. The boy Maytree, after long-boned way they walked with already showed laugh creases. He
his height came, kneeling with his their eyes on hers and smiling. Sil- was thirty. In summer his cap etio-
cross-eyed grandfather by a catboat. ly, immortal, fleet. She lated his forehead. A startling figure:
Jay Maytree back there stood ea- should get a bigger bed. his red hair, his agitated height, his
ger, restrained-in a wind harsh with
that present's brine, in that present's
glare-between his hairy mother and
S he could not yet lift her legs.
Love was a home sea, and ordinary
long-faced humor and alertness. He
looked like the thin Picasso clown,
like orange-brewed Van Gogh pale
his visibly half-dead grandmother. consciousness was a stony island, of eye; he looked like a pileated
These women he now barely ac- pricking the feet, from whose various woodpecker the thought of whose
knowledged. Lou knew those two shores the two dove, again and body made her blush.
taught him to spend his heart, for again, and emerged dripping, and We should tie up the dory. Did he
which this day and many days she dove again. She knew she might rise not just say that? They lived in
thanked them both, if they could get soon-here, where the tide was flow- Provincetown's West End, on the
the message, being dead. For was not ing in and they were yet so young- water, facing south. Next week they
spending your heart, all the way but she could not fancy why. Her would plaster tongue-and-groove
down, everywhere, called for? staked sensations pinned her; she walls, to stop wind and save coal.
She rolled and stared at the wall's was the girl spread on the spinning Did this familiar, friendly man be-
thumbtacked print, "Sinbad the disk whose body the knife-thrower long to the same vertebrate order as
Sailor." She had seen, too, in those outlined. Don't move, honey. I that agent of tonal shifts on the bed?
snapshots-whose actual subject, as wouldn't dream of moving. Her legs were sawdust; they were a
in all photographs, is nostalgia-an In these two months since they line of shreds a rope left on sand.
uncertainty or unease in the boy's married, she learned the scars on his True, the tide would float and loose

62 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2003

 THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY
the dory. Lou rose, put on her red GRADUATE CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM
bathing suit, and descended the
ur program, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the nation, is small (no more than a dozen
stairs-had she no knees? Outside
was quiet and light alone.
The dog woke as they passed. Its
O students admitted in any ge~re, with all workshops limited to twelve members); very intensive (the
Master's degree is ordinanlv awarded after the academic year of eight courses); and highly
competitive (normally twenty-one students apply for each spot in fiction and poetry). We are best known
head knobs felt hot. Full tide swelled for the quality of our graduate workshops. All of these are held in the same small room. which allows
through it; dusty windows a glimpse of the Charles River. Perhaps the most remarkable such workshop
halfway up the beach. Its smoothness occurred when Sylvia Plath,Anne Sexton, and George Starbuck gathered for instruction by Robert Lowell-
made the bay seem to bulge. Their so- gathered, by the way, less often in that little room than at the Ritz Bar. These days, the poetry workshops are
called yard beyond their crawl space run by our regular faculty of Poe' Laureate Robett Pinsky and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, who also
was a few feet of gray sand. Gray sand conducts the playwriting workshops; and those in fiction are led by Leslie Epstein and Ha Jin and
distinguished visiting writers. Of course our students have about them the resources of a great university.
ended in tan sand that gave way, when
That means they often take courses with a superb faculty in literature that includes, besides the poets
the tide was out, to mud sandflats.This Geoffrey Hill and Rosanna Warten, the scholar Christophet Ricks and Boston University's two other Nobel
beach ran south and north from here Prize winners, Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel. It is difficult to know how best to measure a student's success,
most of the way around the hemi- or the worth of a program to a writer; we can say that our graduates in each genre have accomplished a good
sphere. They carried their yellow deal. Among numerous awards, our playwrights can list The Heideman Award, The Charles MacArthur Award
for "Best New Play;' and SIX national playwriting awards from the American College Theater Festival. Quite
dory into the water and walked it to its
recently our graduates in poetry have won the $30,000 Whiting Award, the Barnard New Women Poets
mooring. Sometimes a lady crab Series, a grant from the NEA, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America:
pinched Lou's toe so she cursed; now there have been three winners in three years of the Discovery/ The Nation Award, and two winners of the
through the water she saw one, green, National Poetry Series. In fiction, our students have also won the Whiting Award, along with an inordinate
share of the nationwide Henfield Awards. A few years ago our writers swept every major literary award in
spill sand and flee. The water's skin
the country, with HaJin winning the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner, and Jhumpa Lahiri the
dipped where it met her dry arms. PEN/Hemingway and the Pulitzer Prize. Not a year goes by without a graduate of our progtam bringing
Maytree tucked its oars into the boat. out a book with a major publisher, and some, like Sue Miller and Arthur Golden, spend a good deal of time
He found her eyes-what larks-for on best-seller lists. Over the last decade we have placed more than a score of our graduates in tenure-track
the duration of one click, and left the positions at major American universities.We make, of course, no such assurances. Our only promise to those
who join us is of a fair amount of time in that river-view room, time shared with other writers in a common,
water. She swam deeper and turned a
most difficult pursuit: the perfection of one's craft. For more information about the program, visiting writers,
somersault to wet her head. and financial aid (our teaching fellows conduct undergraduate creative writing classes) write to Director,
Lou saw her friend walk barefoot Creative Writing Program, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215 or visit our website
between houses to the water. The at wwvJ.bu.edu/writingl.

friend carried a baby and held a child's

Boston University is an eqlJal opportlll1ity, affimrative action insutuuon.
hand; she wore a scarf around curls, a
print bandeau, and flared shorts. She
baby-sat; she had the first degree in
architecture MIT awarded a woman.
She joined Lou in the water. From
deep water the two women watched
the child walk on her hands nearer NEW YORK CITY
shore. Lou saw Maytree shower and
go inside.
These were some peeled, protoplas-
mic people: held baby, a green shred of
algae stuck to his calf and grayed at
an academic degree for practitioners in
the top; child upside down in the wa-
ter, woman tall and woman small, and
Industrial and Labor Relations
thin man behind the window waving.
They all stuck out forty miles into a Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, recognized
mineral world where almost nothing as the preeminent labor and management school in the nation,
contained carbon but the few people,
some birds, fish, snails, goldenrod, and now offers a part-time Master's degree program in New York City.
brutal pines. They lived as if at the
edge of Saturn's rings, legs dangling
loose and kicking like kids' too short • Renowned Cornell faculty
for the floor. It was the rim of eterni- • Small, Saturday classes
ty out here.
Here came the milkman's piebald • Affordable Ivy-Leagueeducation
mare. Lou saw the wagon stop be-
tween houses while the milkman
gave her hoyden friend a lift; the
Collective Bargaining - Law & Public Policy - Research
piebald mare carried on. She saw Human Resource Management - Labor Economics
Leroy and Matthew heading toward Organizational Behavior
her front door with supper. Maytree
212.340.2886.7 ml'[email protected]

STORY 63
www.ilr.cornell.edu/mpsnyc ilr
More than called the two "Quemoy and Matsu."
Already time for drinks? Leroy bent
like a bow under his suspenders.
drank whiskey sours. She asked
point-blank: Can love last? Rural
people get to philosophizing, and
Matthew carried a twitch> will say anything.
just a rr' ing cod by irs gill cover. Oh, darling! Reevadare pulled
Lou to a pinching metal bench.
~ har July, Reevadare Weaver No, not that heart-thumping pas-

bookstore. had thrown a crushing lawn parry for

the May trees' short engagement.
Reevadare Weaver was a henna-
sion. Give that eighteen months. But
it's replaced by something even better.
Yes?
haired old Provincetown woman, un Lovers!
peu superbe, who wore wax-fruit- How the upright prized Reeva-

* Exclusive elongated hats. As her party began

she discovered to her vivid dismay
that all her liquor was gone. Be a
dare. She fought their secret battles
for them like a mercenary. Why do
people fret about such a simply mar-
Author dear, Lou heard her tell May tree,
and run get two bottles of every-
velous thing as love? After a bout
with Reevadare, her' friends' gar-
thing-I'll pay you back, you're mar- goyle scruples fell from their shoul-
Interviews velous. But May tree and all her ders and did not climb back for
guests had long ago learned that to hours. Maybe she would even go to
Reevadare's lawn 'parties, as to beach hell for them. She was already from
picnics, they should bring everything Virginia or Oklahoma or Mississippi

* Honest but the place. Maytree revealed to

Reevadare a bottle of rye. Everybody
had bottles. Someone also brought a
or one of those.
That night on her bench Reeva-
dare offered Lou advice. With many
Reviews turkey, someone a ham, and Lou, killing rings she pressed Lou's hand
whose mother shipped fruit from and said, Keep your women friends,
New York, brought peach darling. Men come and go.
and plum pies. Lou had walked home by the beach,

* More than R eevadare Weaver had run

through five husbands like a bro-
holding her shoes and avoiding trash.
Of course Reevadare's exotic life led
her to think men came and went.
1.5 million chette. When she married Joe Jerni-
gan, her first husband, family and
Overhead she saw a bleary planet nav-
igating among stars. No one knew
books friends gave her monogrammed tow-
els and sheets. Subsequently, when
what she and Maytree knew.
They knew it even better now
she married in succession the Messrs. they were married. Back from the
Jarvis, Johnson, and James- beach, the woman fastened her red
-I never needed to change shorts by the window. Water had
monograms! she told Lou, delighted chilled her skin only; she still felt
all these years later. By the time she his heat. Awareness was a fiber be-
married Five, Trudeau, she was poor; tween them-or a corpus callosum,
her friends and family had wearied of he said, and she looked it up later

reod ot
roor~e
1'151
a a II
buying her presents, and monograms
were out of the question. A year lat-
er Trudeau, suppressing laughter,
and rolled her eyes. Twined they
made a filament by which eternity
tugged time.
sailed as one-way crew on a schooner At Reevadare's buggy party

1)0·
'r .)~
'f~~
for Papeete, Tahiti, and Reevadare
resumed her maiden name, Weaver.
Sleek clouds wandered off toward
Maytree had kept his gaze on her as
always. His face, firm and mobile,
showed-not his but-her feelings;
Portugal. There in her garden, he laughed or deepened when she
Powell's City of Books, Since 1971. Reevadare told Lou and Maytree about did. They shared like conjoined
marriage: It's a marvelous way to get to twins a single organ of feeling; it was
know someone. Lou and May tree the same organ that perceived gods
smiled. Reevadare wore her hair in a strolling in gardens in the cool of
Gibson-girl pouf, which perhaps also the evening.
USED • NEW • RARE filled her fruit-piled conical hat.
Lou stayed at the party late. With
At sea stiffclouds appeared and start-
ed to color. Did natural beauty, how-
OUT-OF-PRINT Reevadare she emptied ashtrays,
cleaned the outdoor kitchen, and
ever overdone, serve or permit any-
thing needful? Was beauty necessary?
800-291-2676

64 HARPER'S MAGAZINE! NOVEMBER 2003

 \\A MASTER
This question she was perhaps put here will all unroll from now. I am twenty-
to ask. Evidently she was not put here
to answer it, since it called to mind
three and May tree thirty; before the sea
he fools with the living dog and
STORYTELLER
only the Thurber and White
title Is Sex Necessary?
squints. It will never again be like this.
I see from our bedroom window
ATTHE HEIGHT
E rom their bedroom window she
watched May tree in the yard. He spread
May tree in the yard holding sun every-
where. Just now a flaw of wind the size
of a thumb drags a glissando across the
OF HIS POWERS"*
each hand's fingers alternately as he sea. The air apparent.
walked. She knew he was siphoning She remembered that day years
off some energy, a form of happiness. later, out of all the flapping days, be-
He threw a ball in the water for cause she had vowed she would. She
the dog. He wore white overalls over fancied it would be difficult, or she
a once-blue shirt. All his clothes would have vowed to remember
hung loose. Sunlight made the over- every other day as well. For that was
alls' bleached canvas blinding as sail. many years ago, and she was right; it
His hair was wet again. Their out- was never again like that. _
door shower was a black-ribbed hose
they looped on a nail. Within the November Index Sources
past two hours, the private awareness 1 Bureau of Economic Analysis (Wash-
belonging to that man on the beach ington); 2,3 Office of Management and
throwing a ball had, in a replicable Budget (Washington); 4 Pitts & Associ-
impossibility, touched hers more ates (Houston, Tex.); 5 u.s. Army War
nearly than had his cells. She could College (Carlisle, Pa.]: 6 Harper's re-
never thank him enough. search; 7 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
(Springfield, Mass.), 8 McDonald's (Oak
Two fishing boats were coming in
Brook, Ill.): 9 American Society for $24 • HARDCOVER
from the bay, Vito Cue's and Tico
Bariatric Surgery (Gainesville, Fla.), 10
Flea's. In May tree's eyes that morn- "San Remo Drive grabs and holds our
Florida Virtual School (Orlando); 11
ing and often, and in his restraint, anention-and our syrnparhy-e-pre-
Cvcorp (Austin, Tex.); 12 Election Data cisely because Epstein allows us to
she read his astonishment at the un- Services (Washington); 13 Election Sys- glimpse Hollywood in its golden age
worldly power that grew, or they tems & Software (Omaha); 14 Bush- through the eyes of someone who
made it, at their shared boundary- Cheney '04, Inc. (Arlington, Va.); 15 knows it firsthand, and he populates
the skin that parted and joined Center for Responsive Politics (Wash- the landscape with men, women, and
them-as a tree grows both ways ington); 16,17 Voter News Service children whose fears, yearnings, and
failingsare perfectlycredibleand wholly
from its cambium layer. (Brooklyn); 18,19 Adva Center (Tel
compelling.Epstein is a master story-
The dog dropped the ball at Aviv); 20 U.S. Agency for International teller at the height of his powers."
May tree's feet. May tree faked get- Development (Washington); 21 World
-*Jonathan Kirsch,
ting the ball and throwing it high; Trade Organization (Geneva); 22 U.S. LOS ANGELES TIMES
Department of Agriculture/Oxfam
the dog looked up; May tree grabbed
America (Washington); 23 California "Wonderfully resonant ... Mr. Epstein
the ball. The dog seemed embar- effortlessly captures the magic of a
Independent System Operator (Folsom,
rassed and pretended it had been Hollywoodchildhood... San Remo
Calif.)/U.S. Census Bureau (Washing-
chasing terns all along. May tree's ton); 24 Federal Energy Regulatory Drive is a haunting and deeply
hair dried pale again. How lightly he Commission (Washington)/U.S. Census affecting book."
held himself! His head and arms' Bureau (Washington); 25,26 u.s. Ge- -Michiko Kakutani,
THE NEW YORK TIMES
blue shadow on his overalls con- ological Survey (Juneau, Alaska); 27
tracted or grew when he moved. The Environmental Protection Agency "There is something of The Winter's
tide slacked and its lip, (Washington); 28 National Park Ser- Tale in the way Epstein pulls it all
rolled on sand, flattened. vice (Washington); 29 Cellular together, something of the miraculous

R ernernber this. She touched

her forehead to hot glass. Remember
Telecommunications & Internet Asso-
ciation (Washington); 30 Embassy of
Finland (Washington); 31 Glasgow
second chance. Losingand finding, he
shows us love betweenfathers and
sons as the most powerful and endur-
ing in life, capable of transcending
this: Now May tree, light of limb, is Zoo (Scotland); 32,33 U.S. Depart- death, time, folly,and Hollywood
ment of Agriculture Forest Service; childhood. In doingso he has givenus,
crossing sand. We made love all this
34,35 Edelman (N.Y.C.); 36 Boet along with F.Scan Fitzgerald's Last
Sunday morning on our bed. We
Troskie, Mimosa Films (Bloemfontein, Tycoon, Budd Schulberg's What
woke to ordinary awareness like two Makes Sammy Run? and his own
South Africa); 37 Greenwood Acres
ponds a gale passed. There was an Full Gospel Baptist Church (Shreve- Pandaemonium, one of the four best
immediate future, which was-next' port, La.): 38 American Numismatic Hollywood novels ever written."
Next they moored the boat. Association (Colorado Springs); 39 -Elizabeth Frank,
Remember this. The dog will die; ]FK Lancer, Inc. (Dallas); 40 Universi- THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
May tree and I will at best grow old. It ty of Rhode Island (Kingston).
HANDSEL BOOKS
a division of Other Press
1-877-TH E OTH ER • www.otherpress.com
STORY 65