Karen Pinkus

AUTOFICTION, AGAIN

Here is the opening to my new novel in progress, Swans Do Not Eat Candy. As you might note, this one begins in a setting closer to my own formation and it draws on some of my experiences in very oblique ways, but it is NOT about my own childhood and it is NOT autofiction. In fact, I don’t think I could write in the first person. I won’t say never, but not now. Please do get in touch if you want to discuss or read more.

Chapter I, 1966

Before they sat down to eat, the family members drew thin wooden sticks, bundled, upside down, from a lacquered container. Whoever drew the stick with a gold tip was supposed to open a topic that the family would adhere to, more or less, for the entire meal. On this evening, the youngest of the four children, Matthew, arrived in the dining room still immersed in his favorite cartoon: Adventures of a black-and-white locomotive featuring a pair of primitively-overgrown lips (through which he emitted a series of “toots” and a phrase that sounded to grownups like “choo choo mother fucker,” but was obviously something else). Matthew imagined the train maneuvering through the apartment, led by a large white nose (that he often blew into a handkerchief, using two gloved hands that disappeared into his sides when he finished), and crudely circular eyes (without lashes or brows to humanize them).

The last thing on Matthew’s mind was the gold-tipped stick. He certainly wasn’t expecting to pull it. A statistician might have calculated the number of times the gold-tipped stick would fall to each member of the family (factoring in that one or more of the older children was often absent from the dinner table, away at a school trip or visiting friends; or the parents might be away for work, though rarely both together since they planned their commitments thoughtfully; or that a family friend or cousin might be in attendance). Somehow Matthew was not often the standard-bearer of the evening conversation, either because of pure luck or, if you believe in such things, a kind of karma that spared him the responsibility (for now), even though for a child of his age, he was remarkably articulate, perhaps in some measure due to the nightly ritual itself or the general atmosphere of the family or the progressive private school he attended where verbal expression was stressed above math or science or physical fitness or practicalities. (“It’s a place you learn to read Hannah Arendt before you learn to tie your shoes,” one of the principals said at a fundraising banquet). 

In fact, on this particular evening Matthew had not prepared anything, so that when the family sat down and the plates had been filled and each child had a glass of milk or juice and the parents (both in attendance) had water and wine, and when all eyes turned to him, he hesitated for a moment and then blurted out the somewhat cabalistic phrase: “a girl with a patch on her eye.” Since this was not like the usual icebreaker or ethical conundrum heard at the dinner table, what followed seemed more like a party game of twenty questions than a conversation on a generalizable subject:

“Was this girl in your class?

“Was it a costume?”

“Was she hurt?”

“Was she a pirate? Is she still a pirate?”

“Do pirates still exist?”

“Is there any age limit for piracy?”

“Are there any female pirates?”

“How was she hurt?”

“Did the other children tease her?”

Next followed exchanges ranging from the history of piracy as a potential form of anti-capitalism to the famous 1954 Broadway production of Peter Pan (which the parents had taken their oldest son to see), with its even more famous original cast album played over and over by both children and adults in the household (with subsequent crowing for days) not to mention the periodic broadcast of the same musical (not a live performance, but a restaging for television, as it was determined after some back and forth among the parents and the oldest son); from what it meant for a woman (the actress Mary Martin, who apparently grew up a tomboy) to play the role of Peter; to the sad state of Broadway during the present season. Meanwhile, butter was passed and someone took more than their fair share of cucumber salad and gasps went up as the guilty party tried to put some back in the serving bowl. Knives and forks clattered, bowls were set aside and some scraps of chicken found their way onto the well-worn “oriental carpet” underneath the table.

Finally, with the cheerful encouragement of all present, Matthew managed to elaborate on his initial declaration: One of his classmates (we’ll call her “the plaintiff” from this point on), had been injured by a piece of metal that had flown off a spinning top and landed in her eye. From this point on, the discussion turned to the protection of children and consumers or children as consumers, topics dear to the parents, both attorneys, both at the same firm.