Go Get a Job

“Well, I think you should be the one to go out and find a steady job,” said Conrad.

“What did you just say to me?” Claire fairly shrieked at Conrad.

“I said that I think you should get a steady job,” Conrad replied calmly.

The cabin was quite cold and their breath was visible as they spoke.

            “Are you out of your freaking mind? I have a baby to take care of!”

Conrad looked over to where his son, Justin, 3 months old, lay in his crib. He was snuggled in his blankets and wore a tiny blue woolen knit cap on his head. He turned back to his typewriter and said, “Look, you are the one that thinks that we need some more income. Lots of women with babies have jobs. So I think you should go find a steady job if that’s what you want.”

            “What?! And leave him here with you! You are out of your mind!!”

Conrad winced. Claire was shrieking again.

            “I didn’t say leave him here with me. There are plenty of jobs that a woman can do where she can bring her baby with her. Women have been carrying babies in papooses since the dawn of time while they gathered food or cooked,” said Conrad as he poured over a typewritten page in the one room cabin that he, Claire, and their son Justin shared in the hills outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.

            “I didn’t bring this up to you so that I could get a job! I brought this up to you to point out that we are freezing – we have no electric, no telephone, and no toilet. This is not an acceptable way to bring up a child. You need to get a job!”

            “I know what you think I should do. I just don’t think what you think. I am a writer. I think I should write,” said Conrad as he pecked at his typewriter.

            Claire slowly sat down and glared at Conrad. Conrad paid her no attention.

            “Conrad, we can’t keep living like this,” she said.

            “ We have been living like this just fine. You seem to have changed your mind about our living arrangements and the way I should live my life. Well, I have not changed my mind. I am going to write and that is all that I am going to do. I am not interested in getting a job or keeping a job or doing anything that might keep me away from my writing,” said Conrad. He continued to type as he spoke.

            Claire’s breath came in shallow and short gulps. She wanted to harm Conrad and if she had had a gun she would have shot him then and there. Conrad didn’t notice. He never noticed. Conrad either was writing, drinking, sleeping, or walking around while holding the baby. He did nothing else. There was a time when Claire was fascinated by Conrad’s creative mind and obsession with his work. Claire could no longer remember those thoughts or that time. She hated her life and she hated Conrad for it.

            ‘What about me?” She stood up and the veins bulged on her forehead and neck from rage. The floorboards groaned under her feet.

            “What about you? Do as you wish. I am not doing anything differently. I don’t ask anything of you,” Conrad replied.

            “We have a child!!”

            Conrad shrugged.

            “We have had a child for three months and you were pregnant for nine months before that. There have been no surprises here,” said Conrad indifferently as he studiously read the page he had just finished typing.

            “What about my painting?” asked Claire.

            “I didn’t know you were still interested in painting. I have not seen you paint in some time,” said Conrad.

            “I can’t paint! I have a child to care for!” Claire was wild-eyed now.

            The drafts in the cabin were so strong that it caused the flame in the kerosene lamp to flicker. The shadows produced by the lamp danced on the ancient wooden planks and mud chinking that made up the walls. A blast of wind shook the cabin and loosed a piece of ice free from the roof. They could hear it slide down the corrugated tin and land in the snow that had blown around the north side of the shabby structure.

            “I don’t know what you are talking about. I have not seen you paint in at least a year. Justin is only 3 months old. If you want to paint, then paint. If you want to get a steady job, then get a steady job. But please stop yelling at me. I am trying to concentrate here,” Conrad said as he rolled another sheet of paper into the typewriter.

            “Are you insane? We have a child to provide for!”

            “Claire. Justin is three months old. He has all he needs. He is warm, dry, and well fed. If there is something you want, well, please feel free to go and get it. There is nothing more that I want. I have everything I need in order to continue to write. I am never going to do anything other than write. Not ever. I will never hold a steady job, or own a car, or have electricity or running water for that matter, if any of that will interfere with my work. I will live on whatever my writing brings in,” said Conrad.

            “You will live?! What about us?!”

            “None of us are starving here, Claire.”

            Claire looked around the grungy shanty and spread her arms as if to say, “look at this place!”

            “Conrad, we live in a cabin without running water, heat, or electricity!”

It was true. For the past two years they had lived in the one-room hovel with a potbelly stove, a small wooden table and four unfinished but sturdy chairs, a dresser, a bed, and a crib - and of course Conrad’s typewriter.
            “I am well aware of where and how we live, Claire. We have been here for almost two years and are none the worse for it,” said Conrad. “In fact our health has been perfect.”

            “I am sick of living on cold cereal, powdered milk, and beans!” Claire bellowed.

            “OK. So go get a steady job and live on something else. What does that have to do with me and my work or you and your painting?” Conrad asked matter-of-factly. “And we do have plenty of eggs from the chickens and milk from the goat now. We have not had powdered milk in months.”

            Claire shook her head in disbelief.

“Are you even human? Do you have any idea how creepy you sound?” Claire was incredulous.

            “I have no idea why you would think that I would agree to get a steady job and interrupt my writing. Has anything changed in my behavior or demands since the moment you met me? No. You wish your life to change. Well, that’s OK with me, but I am not changing my life,” said Conrad.  “And your definition of “creepy” is subjective. I don’t feel creepy at all, but I do wish you would stop your screaming and carrying on so. Get a job if you want to. Paint if you want to. Do what it is that you want to do and I will do what it is that I want to do – and what I want to do is to write,” Conrad finished his response just as the bell from the typewriter’s carriage return sounded off.

            “How can you be so cold?” Claire whispered.

            “I am not being cold. I am continuing my work and I will not be interrupted. The real question is why do you think you can manipulate me? I have never wavered, not once, in my vision for my life and my work, nor will I ever. Not ever. You must accept that and plan your own life accordingly.”

            Claire stamped her feet furiously. The entire shack shook with each strike of her feet on the floor.

            “What about Justin’s life?” asked Claire.

            Conrad looked down at Claire’s feet as she stamped and then up to her face. His own face was completely impassive – the face of a man that had just woken up from a nap while at church and didn’t want anybody to know he had been sleeping.

            “This isn’t about Justin. This is about control – you want to control me and you want to control the way I live my life. Well, I won’t have it. But since you asked - Would Justin be better off as the son of a man who is a successful and published novelist or as the son of a man who works as a clerk in a plumbing supply store? The answer to that is obvious. What is even more obvious is your complete disregard, no, disdain, for my writing. Why would I have even the slightest concern for or give even the slightest thought to someone who thinks so poorly of my work? Because you are the mother of my child? That would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I do not belong to you. You do not belong to me. Since you have made your assessment of my talents and interests so abundantly clear I really don’t think that there is much more to talk about,” said Conrad evenly. He then returned to his typewriter and began to stroke the keys. He hadn’t gotten through an entire line before Claire exploded.

            “Fine! I am leaving! And I am leaving Justin here with you! You take care of him!”

            “Claire, your threats and tantrums will not have an effect on me or my work. If you leave us I want you to understand that you will never see Justin or me again. If you threaten me again, in any way, you will not see me again. Do you understand me? Perhaps that is what you want, and at this point I think that that would be a very good thing. I am not going to negotiate my life away. I am going to finish this book. After that I am going to write another, and hopefully many more. I will live on whatever my writing brings in along with what else comes my way. I will not sell out my life for unimportant comforts and conveniences. I have no expectations of you. None whatsoever. I do have expectations of myself. I expect to become an accomplished writer. I will never do anything else for a living. You should have no expectations of me other than what I have made abundantly clear. I have no expectations of you. If you do not wish to share your income from any job you might have with me that will be your decision. I will continue to write in any and every event.”

            After several minutes Claire regained her composure and took a seat at the shaky table. Though a fire was still burning in the small potbelly stove in their ramshackle one room shelter in the mountains of East Tennessee she could see Conrad’s breath as he worked the typewriter wearing a coat and a hat he got from a church charity. She then glanced around the room and at the greying boards that made up the floor and walls and rafters and then out the frosted window that looked upon the flimsy façade of the outhouse that serviced their home. This was their life. Her life.

Not anymore.

She would not live like this. Claire rose from the table, collected her few possessions into a decrepit leather bag, and then collected Justin and his things. She hit the front door, the only door, to the cabin without saying goodbye to the man she had been married to for the past two years. With the baby strapped into a papoose on her chest and her bags in her hand Claire strode out into the cold air of a winter morning. As the door was closing behind her she could hear the “tap tap tap” of typewriter keys as they struck the ink ribbon, paper, and roller of Conrad’s Olivetti Lettera 32.

June 29, 2015