| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ***BIO*** Sharon McGill: My fiction and graphic stories have appeared most recently in Pindeldyboz, Opium, Hobart, and Redivider. More publication information is available on my website: sharonmcgill.net |
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| © 2009 zygoteinmycoffee Ink. |
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| The Truth of Fiction |
| by Sharon McGill |
| Everything you read is a lie, but I know you’ll never believe that. We’ve never met before, but I know you’re the kind of person who trusts in books. Who thinks that if there were an absolute truth, it would be in the written word and not the events of your own life. That’s why I didn’t write this down. That’s why I came here to say it—because I want you to doubt me. There’s too much trust in narrators, eh?
So I’m going to tell you a lie. A fiction, if you will. You like fiction, eh? You’ve made quite a living at it. Though I suppose, to be fair, not everyone likes their job. I don’t. I do construction. Roads mostly. What they call honest labor. It’s good to work with your hands. Mine are big. See? Huge. Once, I dated a woman who said hands like this could smother a face and I said, yeah, I know, they’ve done it. A joke, see? She didn’t get it. Hands don’t lie. Eyes and mouths, yes. But not hands. Lady Macbeth found that out. What’s that? You don’t believe a construction worker reads Shakespeare? Haven’t you ever heard of complex characters? I’m not a stock person, here. I read a lot: Shakespeare, Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway, Woolfe. I’m not who or what you expect me to be. No, I’m not a writer. Never even tried. My mother was, though. Poet. Poetist. She had a book published a long time ago but it got panned and one of her critics called her that: poetist. Didn’t make any sense, but maybe he thought it was clever. The review destroyed the book but what devastated my mother most was that word, poetist. As if she wasn’t even good enough to be a poet. What’s her name? Oh, that’s not important. What is important is that it destroyed her. One review. Doesn’t take much, eh? But I’m getting ahead of myself. I came here to tell you a lie. So here it is. Once upon a time, a young poetist met an old novelist and fell in love. It didn’t matter to her that he was twenty years older. Didn’t matter that he was married and had three children and was known throughout the university to have a string of student mistresses, many of them like her—beautiful and naive. I can’t tell you what she saw in him but since this is fiction, I’ll make it up. Let’s say she liked his face: blue eyes paired with gold hair turning to ash at the temples. Bright, open smile. A face like a day in August. What? Oh, you recognize that, eh? Well, you should—it’s yours. I told you I’m no writer. I stole it from your fifth book, The Art of Destruction. That was a long time ago, so to refresh your memory here’s the rest of it: ‘Margot liked his face, the blue eyes and gold hair gone gray at the temples. Like a day in August, heady and hot. She knew she’d fallen and she was happy for it.’ Oh, I screwed it up. As far as I’m concerned you should have stopped right there. That book had it all: adultery, betrayal, suicide and murder. Bastard son, dying father. Very Shakespearean. What’s that? Where’s your nurse? Oh, that’s not important. What is important is that she’s not here. I wanted to be sure we had some privacy, so I’ve arranged for her to leave us alone. Where was I? Oh, we were discussing how people break down into basic elements. Eyes, mouths, hands. Faces like summer skies. Minds like roads going nowhere. That was from your tenth novel, wasn’t it? You made a lot of money off that one. Too bad it was just another rehash of The Art of Destruction. That story is the only one you write: an affair, a bastard child, a man destroyed by his own lies. That’s your formula. You’re a hack. A novelist. And now you’re here dying in the comfort of your own home the first time we meet. What’s that? Who am I? Oh, that’s not important. What is important is what you are made of. Me, I’m made of steel—steel slag. It’s a by-product of making steel, a silicate aggregate that creates roads. Why am I telling you this? I said before: because it’s a lie. I know you’d only believe it if it was written down. But—it has been! It’s there in The Art of Destruction! The famous writer, the affair. Though in the book, she’s a novelist, too. And her son was not made of steel, but ash—I remember that: ‘even his eyes were of ash’. Good line! But the novelist drops the mother, doesn’t he? Margot—her name is Margot. In the book, which is a lie, her name is Margot even if, in life, her name is Mallory. And the novelist torments her with letters he sends for years while she’s raising the bastard alone. He promises so much but never visits. Never sends money. And when her book is published, his review destroys it and she falls into a depression that ends in suicide. Then the boy grows up and meets his father long after the review has been written, long after the novelist has forgotten them both. What’s that? You don’t remember that part? Oh, that’s because it’s the truth. No, no—it’s not in The Art of Destruction because that story is a lie. I told you that. All fiction is lies, but this is life. This is a true story. I know you’ve guessed the end so I won’t bother with it, but I will tell you this: we are made of basic elements. I am steel, my mother is shadow, and my father is made of ash. |
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| Aug. 2009 |
| 123 |