Chekhov play

Laurie
Chekhov play
Starbucks, November 10, 2008

I am turning into a Chekhov play—the one where the women stand at the window of their provincial outpost and pine for Moscow. Moscow, Moscow, Moscow is all you hear about in The Three Sisters. Moscow is society, surprise, strangeness—all the things a great city is supposed to be. In a city like that, the streets are your arteries and veins.

“You have the look of the last Tasmanian,” Richard says, “the only speaker of your language.” Before I moved to Arizona, he said: “You’ll miss your life, your friends,” I said: “Don’t be ridiculous. I can work anywhere.” When has anything you thought about the future turned out right?

My friend Alan lives in my apartment; technically it’s still mine, but when I see his belongings all around, I’m restless and unhappy. I have traveled far and often but never so far afield and never without knowing I was coming back. Can you hear me Major Tom? Toby has been dead a year. We are all the only speakers of our language.

We visit Kierland Common, an outdoor shopping mall designed to look like a village with a square and fountain in the center. The stores are the usual suspects: Barnes & Noble, Banana Republic, Eileen Fisher. Scattered about are a few expensive restaurants and a place you can get a sandwich and coffee, but this is not a neighborhood where people live; they come and go by car. “It’s based on Main Street, Disney,” Richard says, “rather than an actual town square. It’s an evocation of village centers that in reality have been abandoned.” What a smarty-pants my boyfriend is. He’s wearing a carrot colored T-shirt, and his silvery hair spikes up. The streets are a break from the Valley’s dominant suburban sprawl, punctuated by strip malls and condo communities, and I’m trying not to live in my old patterns. But who am I kidding? Kierland is depressing and not all that different from other shopping sections of the Valley; all have been constructed by developers and aren’t attached in any network. There’s no urban area to get lost in.

Richard asks why I’m sighing, and I don’t know I am, and the air between us starts to get a black, funnel cloud look. I say this place, this place where we live is an indistinct fuzz ball and in it I’m a fuzz ball, too. I have one or two almost friends, but it takes an hour each way to drive to them. I talk about the difference between an urban facsimile and a city that isn’t planned, rather evolves as an emergent system, little by little, and is shaped by the language, and clothes, and art, and food of its neighborhoods. Richard says that all cities are constructed around commercial interests and that western cities and eastern cities are based on different models. He says what eastern cities have is a patina of use and wear. My head goes on fire and I raise my voice a little that sounds to him like shouting and I say: Are you suggesting that the difference between a mall and a city is soot? And he says: You like to fight, you just like to fight. You need to fight. It’s something about you and your mother. And we are thinking: Why did I throw over whatever the hell I had for this hidebound flame thrower, but I am also thinking: I would be just as lost in New York without my love. But my love is pissing me off with his crack about fighting, even though he’s right. I am just like my mother. I am just like my mother in order to fend her off. But why is he protecting Arizona? I say: What’s Arizona to you, huh? Every day when you write, you don’t situate yourself here. You’re in England, wandering down cobbled streets or trucking across wind blown moors. Or you’re in New York, listening to jazz or riding the subway and looking out for muggers. You have hardly any friends here, too! So what’s this defense of Arizona? And he says: There’s something to what you say, but I feel that badmouthing Arizona is snobbish and an easy target for outsiders, and I just hate snobbery. And I say: Well, I’m not a snob, and I want to talk about my experience without you thinking I’m attacking people who live here. And he shoots me a grumpy smile, and I see his even row of top teeth, and he says: What the hell am I defending? And it hits us we’re defending ourselves against being swallowed up in the other, and I think I could talk to this man for the rest of my life. It’s not that rash an idea. I mean, how much longer do I have?