Remembering Franz Wright

Abstract

Remembering Franz Wright Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright Click for larger view View full resolution In the ninth month after Franz died, I was asked if I would like to contribute something to a memorial feature in his honor. I was faced with an immediate difficulty involving shared reality. To contribute, I went along with the premise. I slept on the couch for several weeks, facing the chair, the one still there for Franz, to coax out a few of the days I might uniquely offer, private sketches, testing my interest in getting back. There are days that come to me. Some were months or years. Here are a few notes: A day in December the first year we were married and living in Waltham, Franz called me to say he had gotten a job at the independent movie theatre down the street. He said it didn't matter where he was anymore or what he was doing, he could write the poems while sweeping up popcorn. New Year's Eve, a drunk woman wouldn't leave the lobby until someone gave her a light. There was a scene, threats. Franz followed her out. I think Franz introduced the idea to me of driving her forty miles north to Gloucester in an ice storm at 1 a.m. before getting her to come up the stairs and meet me. I recall a congenially rough [End Page 163] voice, apologies, laughing. We left. It was dark in Gloucester of hilly one-way historic streets and none of us knew where her friend lived. How many times passing the same houses, the gas station. And then we were there, her friend opening the door in his socks, a neat votive candle-lit apartment behind him. As a work-study student at the Emerson College Library, I checked out a book for Franz, twice. I knew his name, that he was the translator of The Unknown Rilke, a book I had fallen in love with even after failing the oral presentation for which I bought it. My roommate had Franz for a composition class. She said he read books to them for the entire two-hour period. He put the library book on the counter. I don't remember the title of the book either time. His soft low voice, his downcast eyes; who could blame me if I imagined talking to him alone someday, maybe reading German poems together. When Franz bought us tickets to hear Mahler's 2nd Symphony "The Resurrection" at Symphony Hall in Boston, he typed up the German along with his own synopsis in English then tore these into strips that he handed me at the beginning of each movement. Click for larger view View full resolution On the phone when I was still living in Boston, on the verge of moving in, Franz told me he wanted nothing but to watch baseball with me. I had to borrow a TV. We watched football too, and a lot of movies. Eight years, four apartments later, during the week, after writing alone at home all day, Franz picked me up from my job at the translation agency; we made dinner and sat in the living room to watch the news, then CSI and Law & Order episodes until we couldn't find any more. The next evening we walked to the video store and rented movies, made popcorn, did the dishes, went to bed, things like that. Another evening, a recovery meeting. On the weekends, Franz drove us along the winding 117 from Waltham through to Concord for lunch and a walk in the woods or to our apple orchard and then west on Route 20 until the sun went down. This takes place in eternal time. But there was an end to it. [End Page 164] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 165] Year unknown, one weekday evening Franz stretched out on the couch. At the end of the movie: What if you were one time to sit in this chair, I suggested, having been seeing a therapist, and I could stretch out on the couch. Why hadn't I said something sooner—of course! But nobody liked...