Rabe - A primitive heart: stories

Praise for A Primitive Heart:

A Primitive Heart is not only an exhibition of David Rabes acclaimed dramatic powers but also proof of his narrative magic. Here are six riveting stories in which characters are pulled by the rip tide of circumstance beyond comfort and predictability into murky and treacherous waters.

Billy Collins

The America these people inhabit is an unforgiving land, full of false promises and semi-inexplicable glitches and misunderstanding. This is a book that sticks to you. After reading it, I found myself looking at random strangers with new eyes, imagining back stories and circumstances as if I were on some curious hitherto unknown drughardly Ecstasy, but certainly Empathy. Given that no such pharmaceutical has yet been crafted, we need to be grateful to writers like Rabe who know how to dole out the dosage.

Chronogram

Praise for David Rabe:

A gifted prose writer of original vision Rabes beautiful, tight, fluent prose renders the fragility of reality with enormous power and grace.

San Francisco Chronicle

Rabe is unflinchingly honest with his characters as they move through harsh realities.

Bomb

A PRIMITIVE HEART

ALSO BY DAVID RABE

Plays

The Vietnam Plays, Volume One: The Basic Training of Pavlo

Hummel and Sticks and Bones

The Vietnam Plays, Volume Two: Streamers and The Orphan

Hurlyburly and Those the River Keeps

In the Boom Boom Room

Goose and Tomtom

A Question of Mercy

The Dog Problem

The Black Monk (based on a Chekhov story)

Fiction

Recital of the Dog

The Crossing Guard (with Sean Penn)

Stories

DAVID RABE

Copyright 2005 by David Rabe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Two of these stories have previously appeared in slightly different versions: A Primitive Heart in the May/June 1995 issue of The North American Review and Some Loose Change in the 1998 collection Shorts: New Writing from Granta Books.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST GROVE PRESS PAPERBACK EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rabe, David.

A primitive heart : stories / David Rabe.

p. cm.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9685-9

1. United StatesSocial life and customsFiction. I. Title.

PS3568.A23P75 2005

813.54dc22 2005050206

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For
Raymond Roseliep

HIS WIFE PHONED him from California to tell him she was spotting. She was at a girlfriends house in the hills north of Malibu. She had just flown back from Hawaii where she had been vacationing with her friend. Staying at inns in the backcountry, they had hiked through jungle trails and climbed barren volcanic slopes.

It was a strange phrase, spotting. Pushing one foot and then the other against the floor, he started pivoting his swivel chair back and forth. Her words had provided him with an image of her panties darkly mottled like pavement with the first few flecks of rain. She was a little over four months pregnant.

What does it mean? he asked.

They dont know. I mean, exactly. Or they wont say.

But its not good.

No, its not good. How could it be good?

What started it?

It started on the plane.

Is that what caused it? The trip, somehow. The planethe altitude or something.

No.

Did the doctor say no? Did you ask him that?

He said that he didnt know. He said a number of things could have caused it. We might never know.

But could it have been the trip? Could one of those things have been the trip, or did he say that wasnt possible?

Are you trying to blame me? Is that what you want?

No.

It sounds like it. It sounds like thats what youre trying to do. You can if you want. I dont care what caused it.

What are you supposed to do?

Its here, thats all I know. Its here. Its happening. Its terrible and its happening. Thats all I know.

What are you supposed to do?

I dont care what caused it. He said I should rest here a couple of days and then if its stopped, which it probably will, he said, then I can fly back to New York.

Daniel sat for a moment silently leaning forward on his desk. His elbows adjusted to support his chin with one hand, while the other held the phone to his ear.

It might have been the amniocentesis, she said.

What do you mean?

It might have been the amniocentesis.

What? he said. Her words had thumped into his brain, leaving him startled as if someone had just shouted at him.

They might have nicked the sack, the placenta, when they went in and that could have caused this. Somehow.

How?

I dont know exactly. But its a foreign body. The needle. If it nicked the placenta, then there could be a flaw in the sack that might get better or it might get worse or it might be infected.

Oh, he said.

I could miscarry.

He noticed now that he had started doodling on his phone message pad: a series of interlocking triangles, one of which was adorned with a sort of bowler hat. He had never liked the prospect of these men going in there with their foot-long goddamn needle. He started blocking out the open spaces in the triangles, obliterating every speck of open space.

Sarah and Biff are fighting, she said. Sarah was the girl she had traveled to Hawaii with and Biff was Sarahs husband.

What about?

Well, when he was helping her unpack, he found that she had taken her diaphragm with her and that really pissed him off. Hed been under the illusion that she didnt take it with her. So theres a lot of diaphragm rancor around here at the moment.

Oh, he said. He could see it. Biff was robust and macho. He kept a lot of guns in the house. Why was he helping her unpack?

Nobody knows.

He probably just figures a person wouldnt take her diaphragm with her unless she was planning to get laid. I can see his point.

Yeh, but hes hysterical on the subject. You know. Very righteous.

Oh, well, we wouldnt want that.

Is that sarcasm? I hope notI dont have the energy. You should save it for the office, Daniel.

The silence that followed grew increasingly uneasy until he ended it by asking her if she was scared that they might lose the baby. That brought on another pause. He imagined her pacing out from the kitchen of Biff and Sarahs house onto the deck that overlooked foothills descending to the Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean itself. He imagined her carrying the phone as she crossed the planking that Biff had cut and planed and nailed in place, her dark hair fuzzily unkempt at this early California hour, a mug of coffee in her hand, her lithe body camouflaged by one or another of the gigantic mens T-shirts she liked to wear to bed. Leaning on the railing, she looked out of her clear dark eyes toward the ocean that appeared a restless haze beneath the faint mist. He imagined her listening to the wind snaking though the gullies in the hillside, bouncing off the rocky slopes. She didnt have to answer his question. Try not to worry, he said.