The Throwing Muse
By Dana Jerman
ERIC AND MARIE, MARRIED FOR ALMOST A YEAR, are sitting docile in their second floor apartment, in front of the TV on a Thursday night in very late September. A freakishly warm sixty-four degrees in the Minnesota town, as perfect accompaniment came the light breeze down the well-lit residential street where they live on a corner above a low-ceilinged garage. Tall, slim pines can be seen through every window, and they give Eric and Marie the illusion of living isolated in a forest.
At about 9:30 p.m., the two are sitting in separate chairs staring passively toward the talking box. The couple had chosen for the evenings viewing a documentary, and the pale flickering purple-blue thrown from the television bathed them while they sat in the dark. The lights in the room reflect off of their stale glares representing respective moodiness.
Here’s what’s wrong with Eric and Marie: Eric is a twenty-eight-year-old writer. He’s alright at it and lives off of it when it pays well, which is most of the time, and he’s made a comfortable space for he and Marie in their marriage in the world. But as of the past two months, and for no particular reason, Eric has the unfortunate luck to be experiencing what writers sometimes call a "block," which some claim does not really exist and others claim can be all but deadly. This is Eric’s problem.
Marie, twenty-three years old and quite bright, has recently graduated from a university where she received her bachelors degree in both biochemistry and bioengineering, two things that come very naturally to her, yet she lacks a true passion for the subjects and can’t see a career involving them that would give her the promising future she ostensibly deserves. Therefore, she is having a great bit of difficulty choosing a graduate program that will suit her, and while she deliberates on her position in this land of opportunity spread out before her, she has taken up drinking alcohol to pass the time.
Eric and Marie love each other. They are close and spend a great deal of their time together, and happily. Somehow though, they are in separate places; a cloud has descended.
So here they sit — a near empty bottle of citrus vodka beside Marie. Her face like a blank page in the open notebook on the lap and favorite black in pen in the left hand of Eric. During commercial, Eric swings his head to look at his wife. Her gaze smoothed over, she blinks a few times and turns to meet his glance, delivering a glazed smile.
Here’s what’s wrong with Eric and Marie: Eric is a twenty-eight-year-old writer.
“You look a little tipsy baby.” Audible exhaustion in his voice. She leans toward him and shakes her head smiling bigger, brighter. Looking at him through sleepy slats for eyes, her head tilts back with the weight of itself. A large hiccup-belch comes out of her that makes him laugh and her cover her mouth and blush. Her other hand goes to her belly as she grimaces.
“Are you… are you going to puke?” Eric asks, cautiously. She nods throwing a concerned look in his direction. He rises slowly out of his chair and eases her up out of hers by her back and arms. “You’re gonna make it,” he says, and worries about her for a moment as he flicks on the bathroom light. Had she thrown up in front of him before? He can’t recall. He supposes it’s no big deal, people vomit all the time. But perhaps this means that she is drinking more often or consuming harder liquor. His head feels fuzzy as he sits down on the rim of the tub beside her, kneeling on the wide blue mat in front of the toilet and hovering — a state of panic painted on her profile. He smooths her long mousy hair and moves to hold it back as she lets go of the drink and what little she had eaten that day. Eric makes a cool compress of a washcloth and places it on the back of her neck while he helps her up. She sighs thankfully toward him as he escorts her into the bedroom and gently down onto the bed. He turns on the bedside lamps turns off the TV and returns to the bathroom, realizing he'd forgotten to flush the toilet.
And then, there it is.
For some reason not even God might ever know, Eric sees something.
Whatever that sweeping genius is that Eric sees there in the toilet — in the tan gray swirling particle mass of his wife’s puke — it sends him careening back into the living room to snatch up the empty notebook. Not a moment spared, he opens the ream of paper and begins to write on the blank back of the cover. No time to be stunned or even reflect for a moment on how he'd spent hours just within the past week staring down empty lined pages, he furiously draws the pen across sheet after sheet, repositioning himself only when his ass becomes numb. Completely unaware of the not-so-pleasant smell that rises up out of the bowl in the other room and sat stale in the air, Eric writes and writes and writes and writes until eight that morning, filling the entire notebook and well into another.
✶
NOT LONG BEFORE NOON, MARIE WANDERS IN TO FIND HER HUSBAND sleeping in the fetal position on the floor with a bathroom towel for a pillow. Open notebook beside him, toilet still full. She shakes her head and crumples her nose at the smell, and reaches over her sleeping husband to flush the bowl. He doesn’t even budge as she leans up again to rummage through the medicine cabinet for aspirin. Marie washes her hands, smoothes her hair, rubs at the sleep in her eyes in the mirror. She turns back to him as he snores lightly, looking peaceful. She smiles as she shuts the light off and the door behind her, leaving him to rest.
When Eric wakes again late afternoon, he emerges from the dark bathroom and stands a moment. Dazed, he shakes out his writing hand and massages his neck. He glances thru his new work, bringing it close to him, looking at the shapes of words he is almost astonished he'd written. His brain alive with euphoria over the wrinkled texture of the pages. The slashes of ink. It isn’t finished though, his new story. And as he moves, in white socks soundless on the brown gray of the soft bedroom carpet, he puzzles over how the new complications can be resolved. The notebook and pen hit the floor together beside the bed as Eric crawls in under the covers and goes back to sleep.
It is around this very moment that Marie settles down on the living room floor, filling out applications and sipping on her first vodka of the evening while also casually skimming through brochures. As the late evening arrives, Eric wakes to the sound of the hi-fi floating into the bedroom, invading dreams that cling to his newly manifested characters. Rising groggily, the true volume of the stereo hits him.
Marie is dancing, drink in hand, and bumping into the furniture. The poor girl is on her fifth at this point, considerably well on her way to getting sick. Eric comes up behind her and with a gentle gesture removes the drink from her hand. She turns and smiles, wobbling, before she falls into his arms in an attempt to kiss him. He sets the drink on the coffee table and chastises her as he holds her. She only hums and laughs as they keep dancing. Eric moves to turn the LP over and pick up Marie’s school papers off of the floor when Marie, leaning dizzily, pulls on Eric and motions toward the bathroom.
“Okay, okay. You really have to watch how much you consume next time, honey.” They go together into the lavatory and Eric thinks only of purging his wife into betterment.
But then again, the very same thing happens. Staring into the bowl, Eric discovers ecstatic revelation.
Rummaging quickly for a new notebook in his desk, he begins to write just where he left off. Pausing only to place a cold compress on Marie’s hot neck and supply her with a fresh glass of water as she rests. Eric pulls another all-nighter in the bathroom, searching for the complexities and their answers in the offering given to him by his new throwing muse.
As his wife sleeps into the morning, Eric drives out to see his agent with his four completed notebooks.
“You didn’t even call? What’s the rush?”
“Put down whatever you’re doing. I need these perused by tomorrow. Man, I think it’s some of the best work I’ve ever done.” Eric tries to sound nonchalant.
“Wow, you didn’t tell me you were working on anything past that novella series.” The agent fingers the thickness of the notebooks.
“I completed the first one the night before and this one last night. I’ve been up since yesterday. Look, you really have to give me an advance on this. I know just where I’m going with it and it could be huge,” he lies.
“How much of an advance are we talking?”
“A grand. I'll come for it late tomorrow when you finish these manuscripts.”
“No kidding!? Okay, okay, by tomorrow. I trust you, Eric. I have a notion you may actually know what you’re doing with something this big. Good luck.”
Eric goes on his way, stopping before home to pick up groceries. He even, perhaps not entirely on a whim, picks up a bottle of alcohol and arrives to meet Marie who is diligently watching a science special on television. After Eric puts the groceries away and retreats to his desk to open a fresh notebook in an attempt to write on where he'd left off. He entertains a few ideas, but they are mediocre. He can’t seem to resolve the parts of the plot he needs to move the narrative along. It is at this time that he becomes almost absurdly discouraged at the fact that he’d flushed the toilet that morning. Marie’s well-placed hurling was serving up brilliance left and right for him, but as he tries to recreate or further it, everything begins to blur together.
Eric puts his pen down and joins Marie in the living room. He sits down on the floor beside her in the big chair and puts his head in her lap. She smiles at him and pats his hair. She isn’t drinking tonight and Eric sighs, feeling torn about this and conflicted further about feeling so conflicted! As they let the television glow escort them into the quiet evening, Eric mulls over what he might do. He would go see his agent and pick up his advance and read back over his work — all those magnificent words that had rushed out to meet him. The sweet brilliance, now etched there. He possesses a terrible confidence that he might re-write the whole thing again, right now, if he wanted. He just can’t go past the last point. He’ll have to wait and see…
✶
THE FOLLOWING DAY, ERIC SLEEPS IN WITH MARIE UNTIL LATE. The recent activity has exhausted them both. In a way, it is strange to be in bed together. Their different lives pausing here on the same schedule. Evening comes, and with the return of the manuscripts followed by much praise from his agent, he drives home thinking again of the great story developing within. It practically makes his mouth water. He stops in town to mail an application for Marie and joins her at home where she is cleaning out the pantry and flatware cabinets. Wiping down the surfaces and moving with a quiet diligence, applying herself as best she can to the task.
It is here that Eric begins to propose his insidious experiment. He sets to cleaning up the kitchen with Marie and then plops her down at the tiny round breakfast table. He presents the thousand-dollar check as proof of his work. She gazes in wonder at the thing, distracted while her husband pours two drinks for them.
“Let's celebrate this work and what it could mean for us! Finally a book deal and we can get a house and say goodbye to this cramped apartment! I can help you with school expenses, things will be better!” He raises his glass with aplomb and she moves to clink hers against his. He takes a sip and watches carefully as the potent drink fills her nose and throat; she winces a bit, coughs, coming away from the swallow. “Guess I made them a little strong, huh?” Oh well!”
He moves to throw back another big swig. Marie, too, gulps again. His wide smile comes down at her timid gaze while he encourages her to consume more and faster. If she can just toss her cookies again, just once more, for the sake of art, he can finally finish this grand opus that his pen itches to put down, so he thinks. Over these last few days it became a fantastic yearning. An exciting ache to want to finish and finish well this work; to complete it perfectly and wholly with no loose ends. Is it now possible?
Marie’s well-placed hurling was serving up brilliance left and right for him, but as he tries to recreate or further it, everything begins to blur together.
He smirks as the recesses of his brain contemplate just how it came to this, how to begin and finish a piece of such magnitude, the kind he’d never even fathomed before — stuff of epic proportions — and to do this he has to ogle at the regurgitations of his wife’s belly and bowels floating in a porcelain bucket? He takes another gulp and observes Marie’s confused countenance.
“Oh, it’s nothing, I’m just thinking about the story,” he placates. Looking down, he sees her glass is empty and it makes his eyes pop. What swift finesse with which she consumed the large cocktail! “Want another?” he eagerly suggests. She stares into the bottom of the glass in one hand, her chin resting on her other palm. She shrugs and smirks, offering the glass over to Eric in affirmative as he gets up from the table.
Marie accepts the invitation unwittingly to again become her lover’s throwing muse. Her weakened stomach and liver move her, three drinks later near midnight, to place offering in careful increments to the white water waste tank. Without fail, illumination descends on Eric, quickening his mind and pen into action. It is almost as if all of Eric’s words are there already; why hadn’t he thought of them before? He frantically copies his thoughts. Marie stumbles out clutching her ravaged midsection. Eric fails to notice, so immersed is he in the work he longs to finish.
Deep into the morning, he completes his sixth notebook. His body had begun to ache with yearning for rest when he hears a desperate sound. A sinister gurgle and heave emerges from the throat of Marie as she lay in the bedroom, poisoned by the liquor she had consumed. She begins exacting the last breaths of her dying consciousness on the mattress. The sound alarms Eric immediately. He realizes he doesn’t even check on her or care for her before she collapses. He rises instantly and switches on the bedside lamp. Her face is pale, her lips a twinge of blue, her body unresponsive. Hurried and near panic, Eric dials for an ambulance, which arrives shortly carrying paramedics who attempt for a number of minutes to revive Eric’s dead spouse to no avail.
At the hospital, Eric grasps the graveness of the situation for some time among the ringing white walls and humming fluorescent lights. Forgetting himself, he contemplates a cab home to retrieve his manuscript, to begin to edit and revise. The writing he has produced has begun to mean more to him than his glorious wife and muse herself in her broken state! For shame! Eric catches himself, damns himself for his shallowness and distractions. He begins to cry out, stomping down the bloodless hallway he grows increasingly despondent. Confused, disheartened, and extremely anxious, Eric shivers as a doctor invites him back to see Marie one last time before she will be sent to the morgue. After a moment in the eerily silent ER, Eric begins to softly recite his apologies over and over, and he climbs up to lay beside Marie. What had just happened? His whole soul aches for her to come alive, to be returned. For clocks to reverse and time to be kinder.
✶
HE LEAVES THE HOSPITAL NUMB, waltzing slow into the streets fresh with rain, and walking down sidewalks and gutters soaking with puddles. The cold wet world awakening his flesh to goosebumps under socks and slacks. The sky sinks from creamy blue to the color of a rock as Eric finds himself standing in front of the liquor store on the heaviest afternoon of his life. He stands staring, knowing intrinsically his responsibility to his writing. Now more than ever with his muse gone, Eric has to make a choice and it seems the only clear solution is to work for himself, as he’d always done in the time before Marie... can he remember how?
Marie’s favorite was vodka. With four handles of the cheapest brand, two in each hand, Eric carries them and himself up steps back into the cold apartment. The foreign footprints of the paramedics’ boot treads still visible on the sandy carpet. Eric realizes again how he will be alone in this place — truly alone — for he knows he can usher no one in who will inspire him. No one can be as true and faithful to him as his beloved late wife. He stands in the open doorway until the draft from the hall sends a chill over his neck.
He enters then, and finds he can not stop moving. He switches on all the lights and plays records over the muted TV. He pours the alcohol over ice and takes his first gulp — squinting out tears not only for to ease the burning taste. He cleans up the bedroom, vacuuming and restoring the bedclothes, and moves into the bathroom. The toilet remains unflushed. It serves to be the most shocking remnant of Marie. Eric chokes back the salty tears in his eyes and throat grotesquely, while he reaches for the flusher to say goodbye. Gathering himself from the floor as he weeps, he hugs close to him his latest companion — the sixth notebook.
Shutting off the lights, he moves back into the living room. He turns up the stereo, grabs his drink and sits down at the kitchen table to review his continued manuscript. On his third vodka, he stumbles back to retrieve his first two notebooks and begins to read from the beginning on. The story keeps getting better and better to him, more intense with each read. Over half of the first opened bottle in his belly, he now wants desperately to finish what his deceased muse had helped him thoughtlessly begin. Discovering in his desk a recently purchased oversized notebook, it is with an almost perverse determination that Eric keeps on, through the alcohol and the tears, when his stomach jumps and what he is hoping for finally manifests itself.
Feeling the adrenaline fuel the certainty of his muscle’s push, the pain in his gut begs the acid and the drink burns their way back up and out of his throat and mouth. He wretches and spits and whimpers over the bowl. Thinking of his wife in the same position, burning and enduring in the same way — a way that now Eric promotes and induces for the both of them. It had begun — Eric’s last chance for validation. The kind of closure he longs for is the kind that will move him to visualize on his own that generous expulsion of the fabulous world of interconnected and compelling tales that dear Marie had given him through her secret disclosure. Wit of a kind so pure it killed her. His intellectual translation of it is no good. He’ll have to adopt it — to perform the ritual in its original form.
He catches his breath and leans up over the edge of the porcelain altar, eyes filling with the sight of only translucent swimming bubbles and a few tiny half-digested shapes of particle matter. Leaning back, gasping against the tub, Eric expells his sighs of despair and relief.
He focuses and sees nothing there. He can not be reconciled.
He is not his own muse, and never can hope to be.
He flushes the toilet without even taking a second look. This last swirling mass without message is gulped and kept down. The commode did the thing that Eric could not.
Silence surrounds him as he moves back into the living room. The recording is over, the TV remains muted. Eric switches off light after light until it is just him and the TV and his new notebook in his lap — empty pages he longs to fill with almost anything other than the beautiful story that robbed him of another kind of beauty.
Night progresses until almost morning. The slanted colors from the glinting box and the chair what held him sees his words only half as well as he himself can. Catatonically, Eric finally drops the notebook to the floor. He has officially abandoned the belief that a writer's path can make him immortal. Now he believes only in the power of a cold reality. The kind which delivers a muse at the expense of a life.