Teresa Carmody
Trash Talk
Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every morning for seven mornings, Marie studied a different piece of trash near the front door of her apartment building. The trash reminded her of a woman she knew, but not for the usual reasons. The woman came from a wealthy and culturally-established family, while the trash came from passers-by and the other tenants in Marie’s building, neither of which were wealthy or culturally established. Too, the woman was adamantly against trash, for such a label, as she liked to explain, categorically determined an object for either a landfill or a garbage barge, and the woman resisted both wastelands by throwing away as little as possible. “Reuse, recycle, re-gift!” she said with a big wink, knowing these words had been said by others and often. As someone who worried about climate change, Marie was grateful for any effort to reduce a carbon footprint, and like the woman, she believed “words mattered.” Yet she wondered at the woman’s techniques, or more specifically, her linguistic recyclings. Did they provide clarity or obfuscation, or some combination thereof? Marie knew this to be a question as old as Plato’s distrust of poets and Christ’s fondness for straightforward parables—at least according to certain stories Marie had heard about those two men. Yet when the woman’s face rose in Marie’s mind’s eye not once but twice, triggered both days by a seemingly random piece of trash, Marie began looking for a pattern linking the trash to the woman and gave herself five more days. To finish the week.
But what did Marie see those first two days? When she walked out of the apartment building on what would become day one, she saw a Styrofoam plate stuck in the leafy bush by the porch stairs. The plate was white with meat-colored stains and a brown mush smeared over part of its edge. Marie leaned closer and smelled cheap cat food. She looked at her building—an old house converted into small irregular apartments—and wondered what neighbor had left the plate, and if it was for the stray gray who liked to sun on the porch and was missing a bit of his right ear. It had been windy the night before, which might explain the plate’s unfortunate location. That’s when Marie thought of the woman and her cat, Cesar Chavez. He was a big cat, black and white with green eyes, and the woman always shortened his name to Chavez, never Cesar, to avoid misapprehension. If she was speaking to someone unfamiliar, she added the phrase, “the cat who lives with me.” Once, at a reading to celebrate a new translation of Japanese avant-garde poetry, Marie listened as their mutual acquaintance, Janae, asked the woman if she ever referred to Chavez as “her cat.” “No,” said the woman, “I care for Chavez but he is welcome to leave as his heart desires.” The woman glanced behind Janae to see who was coming into the room, which was, after all, her room, as she was hosting the event. “That’s very post-human of you,” said Janae, and the woman gave a knowing laugh and walked away. “My dog certainly likes her pets,” said Marie when the woman was no longer within earshot. Marie thought Janae smiled. Earlier, the woman had introduced the evening’s performance by saying, “I have this house so I can hold these kinds of events.” The woman said this exact sentence every time she hosted an event, and Janae, who was sitting nearby, looked at Marie with a look that seemed to say, “Really?” The house did seemingly hold more rooms than events.
Marie had heard stories about how the woman fought her ex- for full ownership of the well-located bungalow, which they’d bought and fixed up together. Yet by most accounts, the ex- had done the bulk of the manual labor. And everyone said, too, that the woman had a trust fund, which explained why she could travel so much while working only part time. Not that the woman ever mentioned having money; instead, she liked to complain about how expensive things were, and when she traveled she always tried to find a local acquaintance she could hang out with, snagging an airport pickup or free place to stay. In other words, the woman often benefited— personally, financially, or professionally—from her friendships. Looking at the woman’s life, Marie could no longer tell these areas apart, so that her life seemed either a holistic flow of intentions and interests, or deeply compromised, where every situation paid off with personal gain. Which is why, at least to Marie anyway, the woman’s comment about keeping a house as a site for community smelled a bit like cat food left outside in bad weather.
But as Marie picked up the Styrofoam plate and placed it on the edge of the porch, it occurred to her that perhaps the woman needed to say such things—not to hide or impress, but to keep herself honest, more or less. Perhaps the woman wanted to avoid becoming like her quite wealthy parents, who ordered others around and assumed they had the right to stand wherever they happened to be. Maybe these carefully chosen words helped the woman align herself into the relationships she’d like to have— with others and with the house itself, not as a possession or unwarranted prize, but as a person, a place, she cared for. So what is the sin here, thought Marie. Ah, the sin of abstinence, which for many, isn’t a sin at all.
It was difficult to hold these more generous thoughts about the woman, especially on day two as Marie peered at an empty dried mango bag lying near the same spot as the cat food plate from the day before. The bag was from Trader Joe’s and had what appeared to be teeth marks on both sides. She remembered the woman saying in a measured tone that personally she avoided “Trader GMOs” whenever possible, preferring the farmer’s market near her house, which was more, and here the woman used the Spanish word for “practical” or “down to earth.” Marie rolled her eyes just thinking about the woman’s smooth confidence as she spoke. After all, everyone knew how great the farmer’s market was, and that it was better to support small organic growers and to buy locally-made artisanal jams and panadería sweetbreads. But the farmer’s market was too far for Marie to drive, and it was too easy to say the woman somehow believed that shopping at the farmer’s market, and not Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, made her more conscientious and otherwise genuine than her peers. And it wasn’t as if the woman wasn’t interested in acquisition; her house/event site was filled with curios, which, while not indicative of wealth, bespoke the ability to globally flea market and thrift shop for things perfectly, delightfully, ordinary. The small everyday people, the woman often said, are the same ones who are systematically overlooked, oppressed, and forgotten. Yet Marie also watched the woman carefully add names of select individuals and cultural organizations to her circle of citations, and if a writer or artist began receiving a certain amount of attention, the woman could be counted on to already know the person and to consider her/him/ them “a dear friend.” “We should collaborate,” the woman often said when meeting someone she wanted to be associated with. “I feel collected,” commented one of Marie’s friends after having her first, and decidedly only, dinner with the woman.
This was the sin of avidity, which was, Marie realized, the other side of wrath.
Although what wrong did the woman do? Certainly, she was never a smoker, noted Marie on day three as she picked up an empty pack of Marlboro smooth menthol 100s from the ugly crushed stone covering the building’s grounds. Marie suspected there was something not quite trustworthy about a person who had never smoked in earnest. Especially when the person was close to Marie’s age, as the woman was, which meant they were teenagers and college students before the tobacco companies, in a major legal settlement, agreed to curtail altogether direct marketing to impressionable youth. When she was young, Marie hadn’t known many nonsmokers, and the ones she had encountered exuded a certain amount of overly-adjusted ambition, were the children of parents with means and education enough to not only pay for their college education, but to praise their children’s abilities and interests as well. The sin of generosity. The woman’s parents had, in fact, always encouraged her to participate in art gestures and social causes, as befitted their own charitable inclinations, and the woman learned from them how to easily meet the most influential people in a room while adroitly avoiding eye contact with the less important. Too, the woman spoke three languages fluently, and liked to arrange and make things that were as visually pleasing as they were useful, from small editions of artists’ books assembled from (repurposed) mail-return envelopes (some of which Marie found on day four) to knit wrist warmers perfect for keeping cozy while bicycling to other houses for other curated events. And because the woman truly enjoyed working with others to create (only) positive change, she happily teamed up with any number of similarly socially-minded artists to experiment with publications and performances (“reimaginings”). These always emphasized process over product and the everyday over the grand gesture, and always left Marie with a sad, small feeling inside.
But perhaps that was the point: to experience oneself as nothing more nor less than other people around you, including those who may be worrying over unpaid bills (as Marie often was) and those who considered bills mostly a bother (paperwork), but showed up in this shared space for this shared time nonetheless. This, Marie decided, was the sin of activity.
On day five, Marie didn’t notice the shards of broken pottery until she returned from her morning walk. The bright orange pieces had been a flower pot, abandoned on the porch by a former tenant, and while Marie had moved the pot from floor to railing months ago, she somehow never managed to fill it with dirt and a tulip bulb. The evening before, she settled on Mrs. George (Bertha) Dorset as the woman’s fictional equivalent—Bertha Dorset, who came from and existed within society, who knew what rules to break and was often a topic of gossip, admired even as she irritated and snubbed, and who would never be, for any reason (Marie was certain), excluded or fully pushed out of her circle. As for herself, Marie didn’t identify with any of Edith Wharton’s characters (she doubted the woman did either), and while she found Lily Bart’s downward spiral to be excruciating, she also thoroughly enjoyed Miss Bart’s capacity for leisure and social intrigue. Yes, Marie thought, The House of Mirth is certainly bourgeois literature. She’d had this very discussion with the woman, who was, as a rule, critical of conventional narratives, excepting those written by members of marginalized communities and who were still, as the woman said, finding their voice. At the time, Marie had simply nodded and thought the woman condescending. But why, Marie thought, didn’t she argue back? Marie knew she was as prone to turf wars and accidental power struggles as anyone, especially when taken by surprise. Just that morning, she had crossed the street to throw her dog’s waste into a garbage can. An older black woman sitting on her back porch yelled at her, saying “I don’t want that in there.” Marie, who was much younger and not black, pointed out that it was in a bag, and the woman said that she didn’t care and told Marie to fish it out. Marie did, but grimaced (she thought) at the woman before she left, to show the woman that she was unreasonable. And now Marie was mortified. Why had she made that face? Why had she thought dumping her dog’s waste into the woman’s trash was all right, especially as Marie saw the woman sitting on her back porch before she did it and could have easily asked her permission and been denied, which would have been far less shameful, especially in retrospect. But even in this, Marie thought, she herself might be committing the sin of remission. Her only consolation was that perhaps she had given the woman a good story to tell, one in which she was absolutely right while Marie was clearly wrong.
On day six Marie saw a cigarette butt and a wrapped piece of peppermint candy lying near each other on the pine needle- covered dirt. The pine tree wasn’t directly in front of her building, but she liked to stand there with her dog and look into the tree branches. She was thinking about a Bible story she never learned as a child because it appears in a chapter of Daniel that Protestants consider apocryphal, and so leave it out. It is also the only Biblical story of a woman falsely accused, which means that, at least in the Bible of Marie’s youth, any woman accused was guilty as hell. In the omitted story, the beautiful and God-fearing Susanna is married to the rich and well-respected Joakim. Every day, two elder judges visit Joakim to consult on a variety of matters, and over time the two men begin lusting after Susanna. They notice she often walks in the garden at noon, sometimes alone, and they begin leaving Joakim’s counsel early, bidding goodbye to each other only to rush back, separately and secretly, to watch Susanna walk. One day, Susanna decides to bathe. She sends her maid away and locks the garden door. The two men, who have discovered each other’s hiding place and their shared lust, decide to entrap her. “Lie with us,” they say, “or we’ll say we found you having sex with a younger man.” Susanna refuses and is, as she knows she will be, accused before the people and condemned to death.
There is more to the story, including a temporary shift from who is speaking to what is being said and a satisfyingly bloody ending in which the falsely accused is saved while the lying men are put to death. Contrarily, in The House of Mirth, Lily Bart takes an ever higher moral stand, but her good deed is never publicly known and no one finds salvation, including Miss Bart herself.
That night, Marie went to a party the woman was co-hosting in honor of Sam, the woman’s “former student, now good friend,” a hierarchical designation Maire suspected the woman would spout for years to come. The party was a backyard potluck and Marie brought a bag of Star Bright peppermint candies, which the woman uncomfortably called “truly and strangely unique” as Marie placed the open plastic bag on the table, next to someone’s hummus. The house belonged to the other host, an artist Marie didn’t know, though in the email invitation the woman described their recent text-image collaboration—a collaged critique of American imperialism (it’s bad). Guests could wander into the artist’s studio (a converted garage) and see this work alongside prints by the guest of honor. “We are so lucky to have Sam joining our community,” said the woman, having instructed everyone to sit on blankets spread across the lawn. There were lights strung above them and around two trees, and Janae, who was sitting with Marie, whispered that she was glad to have her sweater. “Sam’s work pushes viewers into new territories,” said the woman, “and in the spirit of this work, we wanted to give Sam, and everyone here, a chance to meet differently.” Marie glanced at Janae and zipped up her own hooded sweatshirt. The woman passed around a small bowl, explaining that everyone should choose a slip of paper. Each one contained a question written by one of the hosts—the woman, Sam, the artist—which they agreed would be a more interesting way to equally share everyone’s interiority. “If you don’t like your chosen question,” said the woman, “you can also opt to tell a story of a memorable encounter with art.” Marie looked at her question and knew she wouldn’t address it. And the only stories she could remember at that moment were memorable for reasons she didn’t like to say. Janae remarked that this was certainly different. “Yes,” said Marie. “Sometimes there is the sin of goodwill.” Janae gave Marie a strange look. “Is that a sin?” And Marie, who felt her own compulsive friendliness, said it depended on intention, now, didn’t it? “The old theological debate,” said Janae, “about what counts toward salvation: thought or deed.”
When it was Marie’s turn to talk, she said that one of the first art spaces she had ever entered was the small gallery at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. “I was 26 years old,” said Marie. “It was a Picasso exhibition.” She paused. “It was neat.”
The next morning, Marie found a coconut flavored condom wrapper, open, condom gone. It was a glimpse into a private action that told Marie nothing. She remembered how people laughed when she mentioned the Bellagio, thinking she was being ironic. She remembered a time she’d watched the woman as they sat in the same audience for an academic panel on race and gender identity in contemporary poetry. The woman was knitting as she listened, and Marie felt the tightness in the woman’s chest and wondered what had happened to make her so anxious, so uncertain about whether or not she was good.
That was day seven. And the sin of humility.