The Art of Arranging

I had a professor in college who used to say, “Nonfiction is the art of arranging.” He took his time grading our assignments and threw a student’s cell phone out the second story window once when it rang in class. He said, “Actually, it’s the word fiction that means to arrange.” Therefore, nonfiction maybe means not to arrange. To rearrange? To let things sit? The whole debate reminded me of moving furniture. Of hauling my grandmother’s pink and white rug into the house and deciding whether to place it hotdog or hamburger-wise in my living room.

My grandmother was ninety-five when she died. I never saw her wear a flat shoe or a t-shirt. She liked to say she hadn’t seen her natural hair color since she was sixteen and didn’t plan to. On birthdays she’d take us shopping—Phillips Toy Mart, Claire’s—then out to lunch. I remember how she’d balk if we wanted to go somewhere ordinary. “Panera?” she’d scoff. “We’re not gonna see anybody we know at Panera.” We went to J. Alexander’s instead.

My grandmother’s hair color was fiction, but her desire to be seen was very real. She’d cut a rug at anybody’s wedding if it meant getting to wear the wedding dress she’d bought for her second marriage. Here’s some arranging for you: the marriage fell through because of the bathroom wallpaper. My grandmother and her fiancé had bought a house, and she wanted to put monkey-print wallpaper in the bathroom. It was cheerful. Jungle-like. She even found a monkey lamp to go along with it. But the man’s daughter hated the wallpaper and called my grandmother a ditz or a bimbo—I was too young to remember exactly which—and so she called it quits. Never mind that the house had an elevator that I, a nine-year-old, was looking forward to riding. Never mind the mortgage. My grandmother was not about to be called a ditz and a bimbo for the rest of her life, so she kept the dress and dumped the man. Until the day she died, she wore a wedding dress to weddings.

In her defense, it wasn’t exactly white. It was eggshell, practically cream. Or maybe that’s the kind of leeway we tend to give grandmothers, especially ones who have died. My grandmother gave me long afternoons in the Dillard’s shoe section. I think I can give her this.

If I could go back in time, that’s what I’d tell my professor. He’d have the windows open because it would be a nice day and somebody’s cell phone would ring. Raising my hand, I’d say nonfiction is a lot like memory. We edit. We move things around. We declare, “I think I’ll put this here.”