What He Will Make - Jackie Davis Martin

Diane’s husband Bill is going to make a desk. He needs a desk to write poems. He’s written a couple of poems that she knows about, somewhere else, not at a desk, maybe with a pad of paper propped on his lap while he sits on his chair, and they’re pretty decent, but the desk would help him to concentrate fully on making poems. So he needs to make a desk.

These are simple matters, really: a poem, a desk. Maybe in reverse order. But they require a great deal of thought, of discussion. Bill wants to discuss with Diane his vision of the desk he will make. He visits stores, runs his hand along the wood, judges the height of the working area, whether his knees will fit under the table part when he is sitting at the desk. These visits to antique stores and boutique furniture stores are done by trial run by Bill before he returns with Diane so she can get a feel for the sort of thing that Bill wants to make, so she will understand his needs, maybe even the scope of what he can make.

Bill hasn’t built anything in the twenty-five years Diane has known him. So, in a sense, the desk is a warm-up of his old craft, one he says he performed early in life, in the life he lived before his life with Diane. The other twenty-five years, where he made beds and a sofa and chairs and tables for his family. Diane believes all this, and can picture the young Bill outside the farmhouse he’d purchased in New Hampshire, swinging an ax or sawing boards; she can picture the rustic interiors, the hemp cushions his then-wife arranged on the wooden frames of the furniture Bill made, his children, now middle-aged men, running their trucks into the solid wooden legs of the end tables, tables would could withstand kicking and bumping.

Bill is a man to overcome obstacles. The present obstacles he faces in his desk-making are several. One is the floor space to put the desk, which has not presented itself to either him or to Diane. They live in a flat that, while decent in its area, already has two desks. One desk she has claimed as hers, but that’s only because she retired from full-time work first, and conceded to a cheap IKEA thing which—in all fairness—Bill had to put together for her—so, she’d forgotten this!—he had, essentially, made one desk. The other desk is a relic from the past (hers) that sits in the bedroom piled high with files and bills and opera brochures and the like. That’s the bill-paying desk, although it’s really too cluttered, so Bill writes bills at the dining room table. Clearly poems cannot be written at either desk and the goal here is, ultimately, not to make a desk, but to make the poems that will emerge once the desk is in place.

Bill has tried to show Diane the sort of desk that would work for him. One such desk he found in Flax, while Diane was buying wrapping paper and ribbon, and led her, with excitement, to witness his discovery. The desk was a huge plane of wood that tilted, a drafting table, the flat area the size of a refrigerator turned on its side, the legs thick steel.

Bill might be willing to forego the making part to acquire such a desk. She asked where they would put it—would they clear out the living room and mount it there? Well, he said, he just wanted her to see what he had in mind. She could tell he thought she was squelching his plans, putting him down. Maybe he wouldn’t show her his poems.

But he couldn’t resist leading her down the vast cement aisles of Home Depot so she’d get a sense of wood. He pointed out to her the difference in qualities of wood, the air thickly redolent of it. Even the Home Depots differed in qualities, he said, leading her through the Home Depot that specialized in building materials only. What did she think of this grain? That grain? Both would make good desks.

She was hesitant to ask, surely he’d seen this obstacle: Where will you build the desk? They had no garage, they lived upstairs. Bill wasn’t sure; he’d think of something. He pointed out he’d need tools, too, to let her know that he’d thought of all angles.

Making the plans to make the desk does not occupy Bill full time; the rest of the time he makes the plans to make the poems. He reads poem after poem; the table next to his chair is piled high, haphazardly, with books of poems. Volumes of poetry have filled one bookshelf, then another. (Bill also wants to make bookshelves, maybe at a later date.) He searches out poetry readings, which Diane likes to go to, too.

Sometimes Diane will go into the living room, where Bill is sitting (until he has his own desk to sit at) to ask if he wants some lunch, and he is reading aloud, softly, in a whisper, a poem. He is concentrating, he always concentrates on the poem; he loves the words. He is getting ready to make his own poems. Diane at such times sees that he needs a place to turn inward, a desk facing a wall or a window, a place to think. He needs a desk, whether he makes it or not, to make his poems.