A Unique
Sensibility Under Siege
Do the Windows Open? is
a series of hilarious linked tales documenting the mania of the modern
day in devastating detail – tales that have had readers of The
New Yorker laughing out loud for years.
The beguiling and alienated
narrator – who finds nearly everything interesting and almost nothing
clear – has set herself the never-ending goal of photographing a
world-renowned reproductive surgeon, Walden Pond, the ponds of Nantucket,
and all the houses Anne Sexton ever lived in. On the way, she searches
for organically grown vegetables, windows that open, and an endodontist
who acts like a normal person. She sometimes compares herself unfavorably
to Jacqueline Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Princess Diana. What emerges
is a unique sensibility under siege. This is a remarkably original literary
performance, one that speaks to anyone looking for the refuge laughter
offers from life in an absurd world.
For several years I was afraid
to ride the South Fork Bus. Then one day I rode it. The day itself was
over, since I couldn't get my courage up for the afternoon bus to New
York, but I did make it to the 7 P.M. For one year I had driven myself
back and forth from East Hampton to New York. It had taken me ten years
to try this. Then, all of a sudden, after almost mastering it, I could
never do it again.
Even when I drove the better
but longer way onto the Northern State Parkway and across the Triborough
Bridge and down the F.D.R. Drive to get to my apartment in SoHo, the trip
was still horrible and I couldn't keep doing it. Once I crossed that bridge
at night in a thunderstorm with cars speeding past me on the left and
right. But it was the part of the Grand Central Parkway near La Guardia
that started to cause the attacks of no breathing. Nothing like the more
serious attacks of paralysis of the lungs that occurred when I took the
worse route – the Long Island Expressway and the deadly approach
to the Midtown Tunnel, with trucks passing on the right and three lanes
of headlights coming toward me on the left.
On one of my last trips a single
truck caused a severe attack. How could I have thought I could drive among
trucks? How many trucks could there be at night? was my reasoning. There
could be a whole highway full of trucks at night on the Long Island Expressway,
and one of these trucks in front of me had an open cargo, if it could
be called a cargo – a load of dust. Dust was its cargo, probably
asbestos dust was what it was filled with, and this asbestos dust wasn't
packed up in barrels and tied down but simply heaped onto the back and
covered with a thin gray sheet. The sheet wasn't even tied down, so it
flapped around and the dust was blowing into the air, and there was no
way to see through these gusts of asbestos dust.
I'll pass the truck, I thought
– because I had learned how to pass with Cosi Fan Tutte playing
on the radio for encouragement, but I quickly discovered that I hadn't
learned to pass on a curve with no visibility, no matter what opera of
Mozart's was on and no matter how loud. I was trying to pass the asbestos
truck on the left, I had the signal on, only a few seconds had gone by
while I was waiting for a part of the road that wasn't curved. But whenever
one came up, the dust would start to blow, and it would be a case of trying
to pass into dust through dust to nowhere. As I waited these few seconds
with Karl Bšhm conducting, cars began to squeeze in and pass on the
right. Couldn't they tell that I was going to pass at the correct moment?
My last trip took place on
a rainy night. Although I had listened to the weather reports all day
and they had warned of only occasional light rain, heavy rain overtook
the road at the safe, wide, empty part east of Manorville. Before I could
get into the right lane, a gigantic blue-and-white vehicle roared past,
going sixty or seventy, splashing water so that I was completely blinded
for several seconds. This vehicle was the South Fork Bus. I thought, It
would be better to be on the South Fork Bus than to be passed on the right
by it in a rainstorm.
I prepared myself for that
first trip on the bus by seeing someone else off. The passenger I chose
to see off was my husband. "It's not so bad," I said when I
got to see the bus. Nothing is so bad if it isn't summer. The people,
the things they have with them, namely, their faces, their bodies, their
hairstyles – none of this is so bad in cold weather. But even as
I said that it wasn't so bad I noticed that the seats were too close together,
and I couldn't help wondering what it would be like to be aboard when
the vehicle filled up with human beings and departed from pleasant, tree-lined
Main Street. When it got onto the road. Onto the road, with fifty other
humans and their paraphernalia. Onto the Expressway. The thought filled
me with horror.
My husband didn't mind his
time on the bus. He said, "I work, I read, I sleep. It's great –
I'm not driving."
I would never be able to work,
read, or sleep. I was working on a series of photographs of flowers in
decline, and there wouldn't be any plant or flowers on the bus. My other
project was to photograph the reproductive surgeon Dr. Arnold Loquesto
with his dog, and they wouldn't be on the bus, either. Reading in vehicles
caused nausea, and sleeping on a bus on a highway was insane. "Are
there seat belts?" I asked my husband.
"No. Why? You mean you're
afraid to ride the South Fork Bus?"
"Not afraid. Do the windows
open?"
"No. Windows on these
new things don't open anymore. Why – you need the windows to open?"
"It would be better if
they could be opened."
"Who wants to open the
windows on the Long Island Expressway?" he said.
