Free Scissors by Stephane Michaka Page A

were strewn on the ground, but all flowers had disappeared. It was as though a mole, a hundred moles, had gone wholeheartedly to work, had dug their burrows under the roots and made so many openings in the soil that every growing thing had been swallowed up.
    Now it was a field of compost, and you could inhale, along with the earthy smell, the potpourri of efforts Robert and Emma had made to replant their garden.
    In the midst of the disaster, there he was, on his knees. He wasn’t wearing his overalls, just an undershirt and a pair of boxer shorts. His sweaty body was spattered with earth. No shovel or spade or any other tool could be seen near him. He’d turned over the soil in the yard with his bare hands.
    He was staring wide-eyed into space; he seemed to be elsewhere.
    Emma turned to Cathy and Victor and figured it was toolate. They’d seen the spectacle of their father pulling up and demolishing what he’d planted. Cathy had tears in her eyes. A vague smile was playing on Victor’s lips.
    Emma opened the sliding door and hurried over to Robert. She knelt down, removed a clod of dirt that fell on her thighs, and placed her hands on her husband’s shoulders.
    Robert sniffed a dense, sweet fragrance that drew him out of his torpor. He didn’t hear what was being said, but it was his wife’s voice. It was Emma’s voice, beyond any doubt. And he was conscious of being solidly planted with her, with Emma and their children, planted together in the same compost, moved by the same shocks and the same quakes, like some of the very tenacious roots he could see around him but had been unable to pull up.

DOUGLAS
    … 
like some of the very tenacious roots
 …
mmm
 …
mmm
 …
unable to pull up
.
    All right. Attack.
    *
    If Raymond hadn’t existed, I would have invented him. He’s had all the experiences I missed out on. Never had the time. Never had the temptation, or the bad luck. There are so many lives out there. So many opportunities to suffer. I’ve always had … It’s funny. I’ve always had the feeling I wasn’t made for suffering. I imagined I could exempt myself from that. Even as far back as when I was in school, I didn’t think collective punishments concerned me. The whole class would get an F in something, and I’d look at the others and think, “Poor mutts, they’re really in for it now.” I’d be surprised to see that grade on my report card too. In my case, it was a mistake.And I always found a way of canceling the F, of coming out unscathed.
    Raymond: a compost of experiences I haven’t lived through.
    “Compost.” Sounds a lot better than “Petunias.”
    If I’d known suffering, if I hadn’t exempted myself from it by becoming one of the three editors who count in this town, I would have been a writer like Raymond. Maybe even better than Raymond.
    His life, the giant screw-up he’s made of it—the two kids by the age of twenty, the debts, the booze, the wife who loves him and weighs him down, the domestic drama of the working-class guy who stubbornly keeps on writing—that’s what I was looking for. The chronicle of an absurd ambition. Prometheus chained to the corner mini-mart. That’s me, that’s you, if we hadn’t had a choice.
    Raymond and I talk on the phone and write to each other. Since I started publishing his short stories, he calls me his friend, he calls me his brother. I know as much about Marianne as I would if we lived together. Sometimes I wish she would just fuck off. Take care of the kids and let me write. It’s come to this. I have to pinch myself to remind me that he’s the one who lives with her.
    I feel empathy. My scissors aren’t for cutting so deep that what’s left is unrecognizable. Their work is to make the resemblance total. I look in the mirror, and who is it I see? Him or me?
    *
    I don’t like the Greek. I don’t like Nikos Kalifatides—a carnival name if I ever heard one. Raymond has too much imagination, it harms his stories. And then