We Have To Eat and Drink, I Take It

The first story in my collection of scenes from The Seagull, real and imagined. It is called The Realists.

“Why do you always wear black?”

    Margot digested the question in quiet, letting the obtuse language swirl around her. A younger, more upset Margot would never have subjected someone to this silence having learned the behavior from her father. At fifteen she stopped asking him questions all together. The simple inquiries would pass her lips only to be mulled over at such length that she no longer knew if he heard her speaking at all. It was quickly apparent that asking again only elicited harsh tones and not much improvement on an answer. At first Margot felt guilty and petulant but after years of these episodes, across the dinner table, after school in the living room, she began to resent his measured pause and went out of her way to answer her own questions.

    Here and now in the comfort of the garden Margot exercised this tactic with more poise than her narrative usually allowed. Vacillating between the ground and a stray cat in the corner of the yard she successfully communicated that she was deep in thought, procuring the most thoughtful response. In truth Morris’s question angered her. Such an obvious gaffe was expected of strangers and coworkers, people for whom Margot usually held disdain, but hearing it form Morris turned her passive acceptance of his presence to nothing short of disgust. She wanted to think him out of existence, shut him up with her mute vexation, but she knew that if she waited too long to speak he would simply repeat himself. “I might really bite his head off then.” she thought.

“You don’t like what I wear?” she asked.

“No, that’s not it,” Morris answered. Sensing the bait in Margot’s response he fumbled for a way to glean the information without setting her off. “I think you look great, I just wonder why you make that choice.” he answered. Morris tried to read her eyes and mouth for a reaction. Was she already regretting inviting him here? He decided that her tilted head and closed lips were only extensions of her ambivalent nature and not the seeds of hate as he often suspected in their time together.

“Life is a funeral, why not dress for the occasion?” she finally said. She hoped to sound casual, flip if she could. She guessed his social IQ to be under the one hundred mark and aimed to distract him with her overblown statement. While in her mind at least some fragment of the statement was true she rarely added weight when she made such assertions. Margot could present thoughts on any subject with a candor that made them humorous but with a starkness that said they must also be true. It was this duality that drew others to her in spite of her misanthropy and in turn their presence inspired her cynicism.

“A funeral? How could you say that? You live in the most beautiful house I have ever seen…….your friends are movie stars. I mean, s**t Margot, you lucked out.” He realized the judgment in his tone as heard himself speaking. Surely she knew it was judgment over this subject and nothing else. While she silently scrutinized with ease, Morris found himself racked with guilt upon questioning her at all.  

“Did I?” asked Margot, lilting the phrase into an up tick on the “I”.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound harsh. I don’t really know you that well, it wasn’t my place.” he said. Across the patio table Margot’s face and collar altered to reveal a Hellenic bust. Morris could see the strain between her neck and clavicle solidify as her eyes latched on to something above his right shoulder, possessed by a frozen clarity he would never come to comprehend.

It was true she had money, more than enough. Her friends were in fact famous. What did she do for a living? Margot Mercer worked with directors to select the scoring for their films. On all accounts there was extreme reason for this boy to question her malaise and she knew it. She took every opportunity to prove her rottenness to him. To anyone who asked her more than a few comfortable questions. It wasn’t a case of sweetness hidden in a rough exterior but a complete dissolution of vulnerable self. How amusing it is for them to poke and prod she thought, laughing secretly at the idea that there was something more than what she offered up. There was no great romance at the center of her psyche, no bread or cheese to comfort those who entered the house of her. Fact, desire, and distaste were the tenets that ruled her and backbone that made up her composure. She would eventually show him a sharp enough blade, he would run wounded, and she would feel only relief. Relief and hunger, for she too wanted bread and cheese.