Ending (11 page)

“Thanks a lot,” I said, and I thought of Jay. What if he had been able to grow old like that, and his flesh became a loose sack on his body? And what about me?

The first person I touched that night was myself. Furtively, with the offhand expression of a subway masher, I put my hand across my own waist, moved it over the familiar valley and forward toward the slight swelling of my belly. Solid and real and well known to me. I thought of all the new hands on Jay now, of his fragile bones, and the intimacy of those probing fingers. “I don’t feel so well,” I told Isabel. Just then our leader came into the room.

At least
she
looked athletic. In her black leotards, she resembled a dancing teacher. She was very short and she had no-nonsense close-cropped gray hair. She went slowly across the room, speaking to each person in turn, and shaking hands. The room grew quiet as we strained to listen. But all she said was, “Good evening, I’m happy to meet you. Good evening, I’m glad you could come,” as if she were the hostess at a garden party. “How are you?” she said to me, and I found myself bracing my foot against the floor in case I would be thrown off balance. Then she moved to the center of the room. Raising her arms above her head she stretched, exaggerating the movements, yawning. “Oooooh,” she said. “That feels good. Why don’t you try it? No, come on, I mean
really
try it. Extend yourself, move that elastic body.”

The fat woman lifted her arms slightly above her head and made a mewling sound.

“That’s right,” the leader said. “Give a little and then a little more. Experience that stretch, experience the luxury of it.” Then she lay down on the floor and the dark hairy man immediately lay down beside her. A few people snickered. “What’s your name?” she demanded. “First name only.”

He cleared his throat. “Ahem. Ahem. John. Johnny.”

“Oh,” she said, rolling away from him. “That’s a good name. I want to experience that name. Say it with me, everybody. Roll it around in your mouth. Joh-un, Joh-un-ny. Joh-un.”

“Say, that’s my name too,” the fat man said. “Listen, you can call me Big John,” he said. Then he bent over, grunting, took off his shoes, and threw them into a corner.

“Big John,” the leader said. “Come here, Big Joh-un.”

Big John lay down beside her, smiling slyly at the fat woman, who still stood with her arms folded across her breasts.

“Joh-un-ny,” we all chanted. “Big Joh-un.”

A dark woman in sunglasses poked me. “What the shit is that supposed to mean?” I shrugged and she said, “I mean, what is it supposed to mean?”

Then the leader told us all to take off our shoes and leave them against the wall. “Nobody wants to get hurt,” she said. She reached her hand out to one of the twins, who immediately attached herself to her sister, and the two of them joined the group on the floor.

“What the hell,” said the woman in sunglasses, and she stretched out on her stomach, kicking her legs in the air. One by one we all lay down. The last one was the old man and we could hear the terrible snapping of his joints as he lowered himself. “Sidney Farber,” he said, from a supine position, extending his hand.

“First names, first names,” said the leader.

“Sid,” he said. “Call me Sid.”

We hissed and writhed like snakes, experiencing Sid’s name.

Then the twins demanded to know the leader’s name and she said that we were to call her Bunny, and we all chanted, “Bunny, Bunny, Bunny.”

“That’s a soft name,” said a twin.

“It’s a cuddly name,” said the other.

“Ah, but do I feel soft?” Bunny demanded. “Come on, find out.” She rolled over onto her stomach and shut her eyes, looking like someone about to receive a rectal thermometer.

Sid crawled stiffly across the floor and touched her arm.

“Leave it to the old ones,” Sunglasses said. “The first ones to use their hands.”

“But that’s what we’re here for,” said a skinny blonde in velvet dungarees.

“Yeah, well,” said Sunglasses, not convinced.

We incanted the names, lying on the floor with our eyes shut, with our eyes open, hands touching down the length of the room. “Sa-an-dy, Si-id, Is-a-bel, Cyn-thi-a, Bi-ig Joh-un.”

“Say,” said Big John, “how’s about we do the one with the rocking back and forth. Remember that one, Pearl?” he said to the fat woman.

Bunny shook her head. “Obviously Big John has been to other sensitivity sessions and wants to do something he remembers.”

“So? He’s not the leader,” Little John said.

“Bunny
is our leader,” pouted a twin.

“And she’s soft,” said the other.

“God, are they for real?” asked Sunglasses. But no one answered her.

“We all want to feel safe in this room. We all want to feel close to one another. Everybody stand up now,” Bunny said. “Stand up and we’ll form a circle.”

The handsome boy in the mesh shirt hadn’t said anything, but he quickly took my hand and we moved into the circle. Isabel gave him a fast tragic look and reached for my other hand. A terribly cross-eyed woman in a flowered dress cut between the twins, who squealed in protest.

“They don’t like to be apart, those two,” observed Little John.

“Siamese twins,” Pearl said, as she stood and pulled her panties out of her crotch. She walked between the other two men, both middle-aged and wearing sweat socks, and took their hands.

“Now shut your eyes,” Bunny said. “Shut your eyes and experience the darkness.”

“Oh good,” Pearl said. “We’re going to do ‘blind.’ ”

“Now,” continued Bunny, “are you experiencing the darkness?” Someone moaned softly. “Do you feel the density and the blackness and the silence? Do you see, even darkness has a texture.”

One of the twins giggled and someone else said, “Shhh.”

“Okay,” said Bunny. “Now drop hands and choose someone. Quickly. A partner. I’ll be someone’s partner, too, and we’ll come out even.”

Sid and Handsome each took one of my hands and Sid looked sad and dropped the one he held. Handsome scratched across the palm with one finger.

“Don’t,” I said, but he looked blankly ahead and waited for further instructions.

“Now we’re going to pretend we’re blind, that half of us are blind. We’re going to experience the dark world of the blind, the very texture of it. But we’re going to feel safe and protected because one partner in each couple will be able to see. The seeing partner is going to lead his ‘blind’ partner around the room. Everyone will have a chance to be blind. Everyone will have a chance. Put your arm around your partner. Feel his presence.”

“Say, that’s not my presence,” someone hooted. Someone else said, “Be serious. This isn’t a game.”

It was my turn to be “blind” first and before I shut my eyes I looked around quickly and saw Izzy paired with Little John and the twins clutching one another. Then I shut my eyes and Handsome led me around the room, his hand too high on my waist and then too low on my hip. I hated the darkness. I shut my eyes so tightly that flashes of color broke the blackness. I hated the feel of his hand on my waist, not Jay’s hand. I wondered if I would fall, if I would plunge without stopping into some darker place than the one behind my closed lids. I felt relieved when Bunny instructed us to change places. But Handsome cheated, letting a slit of light in through the incredible mesh of his lashes.

“Don’t you trust me?” I asked, and I could tell by his faltering step that he had finally shut his eyes.

After everyone had been both “blind” and “leader,” we sat on the floor again. “Scramble up,” Bunny said. “Sit next to someone else.” Izzy drew Handsome and I sat next to Sid, who looked surprised, and smiled.

“Now touch, go ahead and touch, gently now, no genitals please. Experience the texture of the partner: the hair, the skin, the body warmth. Touch and know that you are being touched, that we can reach one another in this simple way. Stroke, if it gives pleasure. Pat and stroke and touch.”

The cross-eyed woman looked at her own nose and stroked Big John’s leg. “That’s wonderful, Sophie,” he said. “Sophie, you are wonderful.” And Sophie’s face opened in a smile.

Sid’s hands were as soft as a girl’s, and he touched in brief, tentative pats. I touched his arm, and then I moved closer and put my hand across the creepy yellow skin of his neck and I heard a deep sigh of pleasure leak from him like air escaping from a tire.

“Now what are you feeling?” Bunny asked. “Tell us what you are feeling.”

“I feel relaxed,” the thin blonde said, as Bunny massaged her back in long, slow strokes.

“Cynthia feels relaxed,” Bunny said. “Let yourself go limp, Cynthia. Let yourself feel free against the movement of my hands.”

“I feel nervous,” said one of the twins. Little John paused in stroking her leg.

“No, don’t stop,” Bunny instructed, and he continued to move his arm in mechanical strokes.

Tears came to the twin’s eyes. “I still feel nervous, I can’t help it. I don’t think we should be here doing these things.”

“Why don’t you go home then?” Pearl asked.

“Because I like it,” the twin said, beginning to weep.

Her sister jumped up and put her arms around her.

“Don’t stop,” Cynthia said to Bunny.

“Sometimes we feel guilt over receiving pleasure,” Bunny said, raking across Cynthia’s back.

One of the middle-aged men was massaging Sunglasses’ feet. “I like it better when I’m done than when I do,” she confessed.

“We want to be babies,” Bunny said. “We want to be free of worry and guilt. We want to have things done for us. We want to remember lying on the dressing table. Mother pats the powder here and there, touching secret places, making us quiver. Mother makes sweet cooing sounds and her soft hair tickles our bellies. How does it feel to have Mother doing these things for you?”

“My mother is dead,” Little John said.

“John feels sad, remembering his mother is dead.”

I tried to remember being a baby, and my mother’s hands, but Sid’s stroking, monotonous now, abrasive, intruded.

“She died when I was a baby,” Little John said. “My aunt brought me up. My father’s sister.”

“Do you remember how it felt to have your aunt do things for you, John?”

“She was a strict woman. She never touched anybody with a ten-foot pole.”

“Poor John,” Cynthia cried out. She leaped from her place and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Cynthia feels sorry for John. She feels like mothering him.”

Big John walked over to Little John. He patted his head. “We’re all with you, kid.”

“Mother!” Little John cried. “Mother!”

“Take it easy,” Pearl said, and she pulled his head onto her mountainous bosom.

“Mother!” he cried again, but his voice was muffled.

I looked across the room and saw that Izzy was lying back against Handsome’s chest, and that he was playing the nipple of her left breast as if it were a guitar string. Her eyes were shut.

“Come on everybody,” Bunny said. “Let’s show John that we care about him. Let’s give him our support.” We crowded around John, who had worked himself into a breast-beating frenzy.

“We love you, John.” “Take it easy, fella.” “You’re our boy, Johnny.”

Then Pearl pulled away, letting his head drop with a dull thud to the carpet. “I think that’s enough,” she said. “I hate to say this, but I think that John is selfish.”

Cynthia stood on her knees. “You only want to call attention to yourself.”

“Who, me?” Pearl asked.
“Me?”

“You!” the twins said in chorus. Then one of them continued. “You’re an absolute slob. You and fat man have been trying to take over all night.”

“Do you feel threatened?” Pearl shrieked, and the twins cowered.

“Why do you feel it necessary to resort to name-calling?” Bunny asked.

“Because they make me angry.”

“So you feel angry. Does your sister feel angry too?”

“Yes,” one of them said. “We always feel the same things. It’s a psychic phenomenon.”

“Bullshit!” Sunglasses said. “What a load of bullshit!”

“Mother,” Little John moaned, but no one listened.

“You have no right to attack my physical appearance, you little runt. This happens to be a thyroid condition.”

“Bullshit, bullshit.”

Sophie ran into the center of the room and waved her arms for silence. “Why don’t you attack me?” she asked. “Why don’t you pick on my poor eyes?”

“Nobody is even
talking
to you!” Pearl shouted.

I looked around the room and saw that Handsome and Izzy were locked in an embrace. Poor Izzy, I thought. But then there was poor aging Sid, and poor motherless John, and poor Pearl. We were all such dreadful and pitiable creatures of this life that. I wanted to throw back my head and let out an earth-splitting howl. I pushed Sid’s hands away and opened my mouth, but it was Bunny’s voice that I heard.

“Believe it or not—now hold it everybody, just for a second!—believe it or not, you’re touching. Now! With your voices, with your anger. Let the anger out. Let’s be animals and let the animal rage loose. On all fours, now! Growl! Roar! Let it out!”

We prowled the room on our hands and knees, and I kept thinking at least this is making me tired, and later I’ll be able to sleep.

“OWOOO!” The other animals circled me and grew tired too, until one by one we lay silent in a chaotic pattern on the floor. The green carpet was musty and rough against my cheek, but I pretended that it was grass, and that Jay was beside me in some early beginning place.

M
Y COLD WAS GETTING
better. On Sunday, the last day of my exile from the hospital, I took the boys to the beauty shop for haircuts. My parents made the usual joyous fuss over them, commenting on their size although they had seen them only three days before, on their beauty, on the bliss they created simply by being. My father actually called Harry “Champ” and sparred with him, and Harry laughed and shut his eyes against the loving blows. I saw that my father was trying to be the masculine presence for my children in the absence of
their
father, and I was touched. I knew that in the future he would throw footballs and baseballs to them with the changing of the seasons, and ruffle their hair and speak to them in grave, deep tones.