Study in Perfect

STUDY
IN
PERFECT

 

ASSOCIATION
OF
WRITERS
AND
WRITING
PROGRAMS
AWARD
FOR
CREATIVE
NONFICTION

ESSAYS BY

Sarah Gorham

“Woman Drawn Twice” originally appeared in
Prairie Schooner
.
Copyright © 2004 by the University of Nebraska Press.
All rights reserved.

© 2014 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
All rights reserved
Designed by Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Set in 9.7/14 Bodoni Twelve ITC Book
by Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Manufactured by Thomson Shore
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for
Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America
14 15 16 17 18 c 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gorham, Sarah, 1954–
Study in perfect : essays / by Sarah Gorham.
pages cm. –
(Association of writers and writing programs award for creative nonfiction)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
978-0-8203-4712-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) –
ISBN
0-8203-4712-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS
3557.07554s88 2014
814′.54–dc23
2014002325

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN for digital edition: 978-0-8203-4789-9

To Lucille
,
Josephine
,
Anabel Mae
,
and Seamus

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Moving Horizontal

PERFECT WORD

Darling Amanita

PERFECT FLOWER

The Changeling

On Lying

PERFECT WATER

Marking Time in Door County

PERFECT SOLUTION

A Drinker's Guide to
The Cat in the Hat

PERFECT TEA

Sentimental à la Carte

PERFECT CONVERSATION

The Shape of Fear

PERFECT SLEEP

On Selfishness

Be There No Human Here

PERFECT BARN

Woman Drawn Twice

PERFECT HEAVEN

Neriage, or What Is the Secret of a Long Marriage?

PERFECT ENDING

Notes and Sources

Endless thanks and love to Jeffrey, my forever man.

STUDY
IN
PERFECT

The Ohio is rising. We drive down the road two or three times a day to gape at the river's ascent over docks and decks, graveled shoulders and steamy blacktop. We marvel at the water's subversion, snubbing boundaries, finding its way inside things it's not supposed to touch, like electrical boxes and river-park restrooms. It creeps into our basements and ruins immaculate lawns, a real life, mocha-colored version of the Blob. In its relentless, steady progress and its egalitarian destructiveness, it is perfect.

What can the city possibly do to stay this roiling mix of snow-melt, runoff, and rain? The sandbag is a laughable defense, like a chrysanthemum planted in a rifle's barrel (you know the photograph). Forget your well-laid escape plans and army engineer pilings. A flood's rushing water levitates picnic tables and boats like rubber bath toys. It douses everything in silt, including meticulous shrubs and mulch laid down by Operation Bright-side volunteers. All their work, wiped out. Even the silvery boat barn moans as it tears from its foundation and pulls away.

So we wait till the river relents, sinks back into its rumpled bed.
Après le déluge
, the state releases emergency funds for the cleanup. Workers appear in orange vests to remake what was recently a perfectly beautiful place.

But
perfect
is a slippery term. For a word that seemingly requires no modification, it certainly has had more than its share of cultural shading. To the ancient Greeks, perfection was a requisite for beauty. The Pythagoreans specified right proportions and a harmonious arrangement of parts in their idea of perfection. To the Japanese, an object of supreme beauty must contain an
imperfection
. In his essay “Of Beauty,” Sir Francis Bacon famously noted: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” Immanuel Kant felt that beauty was something distinct from perfection, because it was an aesthetic question of taste. Aristotle offered the earliest and perhaps best description in three hues: Perfection is (a) that which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better; (b) that which has attained its purpose, like perfect vision or a watch that keeps perfect time; and (c) that which is complete—containing all the requisite parts. To Empedocles however, perfection depended on
incompleteness
, the potential for development and for adding new characteristics.

This book is an exploration of the many-faceted concept of perfection, which by its nature embraces imperfection. The essays alternate between brief considerations, such as “Perfect Solution” and “Perfect Heaven,” and longer pieces, such as “On Lying” and “On Selfishness.” In “Moving Horizontal” a Victorian house loses its charm over time, especially when compared with a modernist contemporary filled with light. The poisonous
mushrooms in “Darling Amanita” lead to thoughts about our darker impulses, like obsessive love, even murder. Family life is dense with pleasure, as in the perfect vacation described in “Marking Time in Door County” and in “Neriage, or What Is the Secret of a Long Marriage?” where an ancient Japanese ceramic technique has much in common with shaping a close relationship. But there is pain too: “The Shape of Fear” relates the story of a child stricken with a deadly Staph infection; the essay reflects on the function and form of fear. Alcoholism, a family disease no one wants to talk about, is poised against
The Cat in the Hat
, a story everyone has read and enjoyed. There is such a thing as a perfect cup of tea, depending on who is preparing and drinking it (“Perfect Tea”). And schmaltzy show tunes flowing from a black-lacquered piano in a Chinese restaurant can be genuinely moving (“Sentimental à la Carte”).

Thus the collection winds its way around and through the many permutations of this most hermetic and exalted concept. The book proceeds with the full consciousness that perfection's exact definition is subjective, reliant on who is speaking, and easily unmoored by time, wind, and water.

Moving Horizontal

 

Once, we lived our lives vertically at 1637 Rosewood, a four-over-four Victorian with finished attic. It was, we believed, the perfect house, holding most of a twenty-five-year marriage and all but three years of our two daughters' lives. Within its walls, we lived through elementary, middle, and high school, and college applications; a twenty-two-inch snowfall, a burst appendix, the euthanasia of a beloved rabbit named Meatloaf, a tornado, bunk beds, My Little Pony, multiple piercings; piano flute voice mandolin drama soccer lessons; one recovery from alcoholism and another from MRSA; Smashing Pumpkins, Modest Mouse, straight As and the first D, new drivers and five minor accidents, Nintendo arguments, a plague of mice, eighteen tall and skinny Christmas trees to fit in our foyer.

The feeling was one of containment. We were eggs in a three-story egg carton. One child lived in the attic, another in a second-floor bedroom: daughter cubicles. My husband and I slept just next door, our studies right on top of each other. Far below were the living/family/dining rooms, where everyone tossed and tumbled together. The children kept us microscopically focused with their various crises, sorrows, pleasures, and accomplishments. We were living in the “now,” not mystically, but perforce. A life was
one day
, with various components, compliments, or complaints, and little thought of yesterday or tomorrow.