A Kind of Dream: Stories

Palmer’s Method of Penmanship

126­Palmer’s ­Method of Pen­man­ship­ Palmer ­ drained his ­ Scotch in a sin­ gle gulp. He fol­ lowed that with an­ other, and then a third. His drink­ ing was de­ lib­ er­ ate and in­ ten­ tional: he was doing what was nec­ es­ sary to get drunk. Maybe other hus­ bands ­ wouldn’t have to get drunk be­ fore they could write a eu­ logy to their wife. Not he. This was not an op­ er­ a­ tion he could carry out with­ out first an­ esthetiz­ ing him­ self. He wrote with a foun­ tain pen. He used real ink. Black. From his desk he could see, out the win­ dow, snow fall­ ing on Joss Court. It made him think of James ­ Joyce’s story “The Dead.” It made him think of North­ um­ bria in the ­ eighth cen­ tury. He had pub­ lished a book on North­ um­ bria in the ­ eighth cen­ tury. That was the rum thing about being a his­ to­ rian: every­ thing re­ minded you of some­ thing else. His head was over­ run with ref­ er­ ences. He had lived his life in the past tense. He made an ef­fort now to ­ create a por­ trait of his wife as ir­ re­ place­ able, be­ yond sub­ sti­ tu­ tion, ­ unique, and ­ present. Which, in his mind, she was—as ­ present as she had been for all the years he had known her. He ­ thought back to their first meet­ ing, at the­ Merchants’ Pa­ rade with its array of ­ clever ­ floats. He began to write: When I met Nina for the first time and told her that I could be in love with her, I cer­ tainly did not mean that I was. Who falls in love at first sight? Okay, Dante, but who else? I had seen her photo­ graph in 127 Palmer’s Method of Penmanship her books, of ­ course, but I ­ wasn’t in love with a photo­ graph. Maybe with the words? Any­ way, what I meant when I said that to her was what I said: that I could be, in time, if ­ things ­ worked out. As for the no­ tion of “fall­ ing in love,” it’s my im­ pres­ sion that for the most part peo­ ple don’t fall in love. What they do is de­ cide to be in love and then talk them­ selves into being in love with ­ so-and-so. It’s a type of ­ self-hypnotism.­ That’s the way it is for a man, at least. It ­ doesn’t mean you ­ wouldn’t give your life for the one ­ you’ve cho­ sen. I’d have given up mine in a sec­ ond to save ­ Nina’s. The child was a bonus. That was what I ­ wanted: a fam­ ily, a life out­ side my work. A for­ bear­ ing woman who would stick ­ around for the du­ ra­ tion. That day at the ­ Merchants’ Pa­ rade, when Tavy got lost in the crowd and I ­ grabbed hold of her for Nina, what I saw was a woman with­ red-brown hair, in one of those sum­ mery sorts of ­ dresses—it was sleeve­ less—and san­ dals, and she kept turn­ ing her head to look for her daugh­ ter so I saw her pro­ file. Do you re­ mem­ ber Gene­ viève Bu­ jold? She had Gene­ viève ­ Bujold’s pro­ file. In the Her­ mi­ tage in Saint Pe­ ters­ burg I saw a paint­ ing by Pi­ casso of a woman in me­ di­ eval dress, in­ clud­ ing one of those tall ­ cone-shaped hats ­ called a hen­ nin, with a veil trail­ ing from it. Nina ­ looked like her, too. She was wor­ ried sick that Tavy was lost. Or kid­ napped. My guess is that the adren­ a­ line rush ­ caused by that is what made her con­ nect with me. But I would never have told her that. I just said we had chem­ is­ try. Ibe­ came a his­ to­ rian be­ cause I ­ wanted to know what had hap­ pened in the world be­ fore I ar­ rived. I chose Brit­ ish his­ tory ­ rather than ­ Amer­ ican be­ cause ­ there’s more of it. I chose me­ di­ eval his­ tory be­ cause I had seen ­ Picasso’s me­ di­ eval lady and had fal­ len in love...