Authors: Lois Walden
I walk in front of the old mahogany breakfront, look at myself in the beveled mirror on the wall; no longer young, I am surprised to see this older me … in my childhood house. I gird myself, step over the dining-room line. There lies my father, looking like an under-ripe banana. He is canary yellow. It is the liver cancer. The bile has nowhere to go but into the skin. He is smaller, looks sweeter, and seems unusually lucid for a dying man. His eyes dart in my direction.
‘Well, well, well, look who’s come home – the prodigal child.’
‘Hi Pop.’ I scoot over to his bedside, kiss him on his yellow forehead, grab his bony hand. His grip is unfaltering. The son of a bitch is as strong as ever. ‘Ouch.’
‘Your old man’s still the strongest man in Beechwood.’
‘Guess so.’
‘What kind of malarkey did that Irish bitch feed you? The devil’s come to get me? Should have booted her Irish ass out years ago, when she was feeding me dog food, telling me it was ground round. Sure I ate it. I never let on that I knew. Thought she was trying to save me money. Now I can’t get rid of her; at least she shows up. Loyal … She’s good to me … You have no idea what it’s like when you can’t take care of yourself. Don’t get old. More important, don’t ever get sick. They treat you like an animal. It’s despicable, demeaning, and downright demoralizing.’
‘How are you, Pop?’
‘Don’t be a smart ass.’
His perspicacity is not diminished. He knows he’s losing his grip on life, his power being stripped away. He feels it. He will go out kicking and screaming. Though he be jaundiced,
incontinent and irreconcilable, he will fight for life until he is turned inside out. The bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks who got ahead has nowhere to go. He has nothing to show for making it in the world, nothing but remorse and rage; lethal combination for the final journey.
‘Let me see your lip. How are your teeth?’
‘Look.’ He opens his mouth wide, like a racehorse having an oral exam.
‘Great job.’
‘The good doc fixed the chip, stitched the lip. It was nothing. He’s a genius. You know it was Saturday, he took me anyway. Normally, he charges overtime on Saturday; big bucks, not me, not your old man. Didn’t charge me a cent. What a great guy. Imagine not charging me … on a weekend. There’s a gentleman. Tell me again? Where were you, kid? Omaha, right?’
‘Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush …’
Good timing, Ma, right on cue. ‘Beatrice, Nebraska.’
My father turns his head away. ‘Oh.’
I want to cry. I’m sure that he does too. ‘Daddy?’ No response. ‘Daddy?’
‘Hmm.’
‘… Is something the matter?’
‘She’s in the bedroom … Your mother’s chased me out of the bedroom.’
‘Maybe she just wanted to visit … had nowhere else to go … wanted to say …’
‘She’s come to get me. I know that’s why she’s here.’ He turns toward me. ‘I’ve given her the room. She’s won.’
‘Dad, it’s not a contest.’ I try to comfort him. ‘She speaks to me, you know?’
‘Your sister told me.’
‘Nursery rhymes.’
‘Not her. Never her.’
‘That’s what I said, but it’s her. It is definitely her … her voice.’
‘She never knew … any… how to take care of you kids … never heard a nursery rhyme from her. We hired somebody to help …’ He turns away again. ‘Would you check on my monkeys?’
‘Be right back.’ I get up, walk away. Always walk away.
He asks, ‘Are you sleeping here tonight?’
Wasn’t planning on it. God, I hate this house! I didn’t bring a change of underwear. ‘Yes. We’ll have breakfast tomorrow morning. I’ll make you some eggs and toast.’
‘I’m not very hungry these days, but I’ll sit with you.’
‘That’ll be wonderful. Be right back. Do you need anything?’
‘The monkeys. Someone’s been moving the monkeys.’ Those monkeys, his good luck trophies … Whenever he closed a deal, made a killing, clobbered a hated business rival, he bought a monkey. There were jade, silver, gold, onyx, brass, glass, wood, ivory, soapstone, all kinds, types, sizes and shapes. How he loved his monkeys. The more money he amassed, the more monkeys he accumulated. His bureau top was brimming with them. Her bureau drawers were brimming with bottles; her drugs. Now she was keeping a watchful eye on
his
monkeys.
I walk into the parents’ bedroom. The closet doors are unhinged, paint peeling, bed upside down, footprints on ceiling … high-heeled shoes, no less. She has been dancing on the ceiling. I want to dance with her on that cracked, aged, off-white ceiling. We have never danced upside down in her boudoir. This seems the ideal time. The room spins. I want to
faint. Instead, I open a window and breathe some Beechwood air. It is toxic in that monkey master bedroom, toxic.
A ghost can hold you close, turn you inside out and upside down, but you still love it, because it is your ghost. After all these years, my father and I finally have something in common. Her. She has moved the monkeys. Each and every one of them has been turned on its side. They are lying next to each other, like a stack of dominoes in a grave.
‘Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her…’
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ Why talk out loud? Why ask a ghost questions? It won’t answer. ‘He, your husband, and I would appreciate it if you would leave his monkeys alone. He surrenders. You win. What more do you want from the poor guy?’ There is no reply.
I look up at the ceiling. The footprints have disappeared. I leave the monkeys and the madhouse behind. I walk into my bedroom, close my eyes and listen. Through the walls I hear her crying: no sobs, no hysteria, just muffled cries in a pillow. It is a time long past. I am once again of hopscotch age. I listen harder. Because she cries, I cry. And I am still crying.
I stay the night. Try to fall asleep. I am fully clothed, afraid to undress, afraid that someone is watching. In my fitful slumber, I hear her feather pillow become drenched with tears. I hear my father mumble under his breath. He gets out of bed, plays with his monkeys, leaves the bedroom. Where he goes, I do not know. Where he is, well, he is downstairs. Isn’t he? He too is in the master bedroom. He is in a shrinking world with no possibilities. No. He has one possibility left. But if you have but one possibility, nothing else is possible. And that is what makes life before death seem impossible.
He and I will have breakfast together in the a.m. That is a first. You see, while we are both alive, anything is possible.
When I wake up in the morning, my eyes are stuck together with sleep and nursery rhymes. I rub my eyes. The sleep falls onto my bedroom floor, floor awakens, yawns, boards creek, stretch into the new day. Still fully clothed, I walk into the upstairs hallway, once again I peek into my parents’ room. The monkeys are upright, the bed on all fours, the ceiling is ceiling-white. From where I stand, in the doorway, it looks freshly painted. I take a closer look at his monkey
collection
. His favorite picture-jasper monkey is missing. A hidden message from the past has slipped into a disharmonious world of apparitions. She has stolen his grief and made it her own. It is no wonder that he is dying. He cannot locate a place within himself for his personal sorrow. She is his sorrow. She holds his grief in her transparency.
At breakfast I eat half a grapefruit, one poached egg and toast. He watches, does not eat a morsel. His eyes are glassy, like a still blue lake.
‘Did you sleep well?’
I lie. ‘I did. How ’bout you?’
‘Didn’t sleep. I was too worried about the monkeys.’
I lie again. ‘They’re fine.’
‘You sure?’
‘Positive.’
‘She hasn’t been playing with them?’
One more breakfast-time lie … ‘She’s not there.’
‘Oh … I hope …’
‘Do you want a piece of toast? Marmalade?’
‘Marmalaud.’
Bless him and his phony English accent. ‘Do you?’
‘Not hungry. I’ll watch you. You need to put on some weight.’ He stops. He thinks about what he has said. ‘No, you’re just fine. You’re fine the way you are.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t let the eggs get cold. Nothing worse than cold eggs.’
‘So, that’s where I get it from.’
‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
I look. I listen. ‘I know.’
‘I’m glad you came home.’
‘Me too.’
He yells at the top of his failing lungs. ‘Patty! It’s time for my medication!’ He whispers. ‘She’s not getting a penny, not a penny. Don’t you girls give her a cent. You hear me.’
‘Have a piece of toast, Pop.’ He leans over, nearly falls off his chair, finds his balance, nibbles at my toast.
‘Needs marmalaud.’
‘I’ll put some on.’
‘Don’t bother. Just enjoy it before it gets cold.’
I am not hungry, but for you, Father, I will eat. Oh shit! I forgot to ask Patty about who’s living at Mrs B.’s. ‘Dad?’ He is lost in space. ‘Dad!’
‘What?’
‘Who’s’ … better not to ask … ‘What’s the best stock fund? If you were investing, who would you give your money to?’
‘Warren Buffet … Berkshire Hathaway. Didn’t I tell you I had business in Omaha … when I first started the firm?’
‘You did.’
‘How’d you like Omaha?’
Don’t bother. ‘I liked it. I liked it a lot.’
‘Your mother would have hated it. She never liked small towns. Never.’ Simultaneously, we turn toward the kitchen doorway, listen. Her voice fills the air.
‘I went up one pair of stairs.’
‘Just like me.’
‘I went up two pairs of stairs.’
‘Just like me.’
‘I went into a room.’
‘Just like me.’
‘I looked out of a window.’
‘Just like me.’
‘And there I saw a monkey.’
‘Just like me.
I ring the outside buzzer. It rings back. Through two heavy wooden doors, I enter the brick building. I ring the office buzzer. It rings back. Push the black door open, enter Mary Michelin’s anteroom. As I had imagined, the walls are beige. We will begin on a blank page. The usual magazines are on the glass table:
Vogue, Bazaar, Newsweek, Time, People, Vanity Fair
.
The door opens. There she is. Mary Michelin is no 60,000 miles guaranteed tire. She is a silver-haired beauty, wearing a black turtleneck tucked inside a long black straight skirt. Around her slim waist is a leather belt with silver buckle; and black boots underneath the fashionable skirt; not a lot of color to her outfit. But, her eyes sparkle as if she has a secret or knows the secrets that wait in her waiting room.
She opens her interior door. ‘Loli Greene?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come in.’ She closes the door. I sit in a comfortable padded armchair. She sits in a reclining easy chair. She looks so at ease in her body, in her world. I am petrified.
‘Where do I begin?’
‘What brought you here? Let’s begin there.’
A therapist who asks questions. The jig is up. ‘My father is dying – cancer. He’s got about a month to live. My mother, who’s been dead for at least twenty years, chased my father out of his bedroom, which was their bedroom. About a year after she died, she started talking to me in nursery rhymes during
this nervous breakdown I had in LA. When she was alive, it wasn’t like her to recite
Mother Goose
to anyone, especially her children. She’s talking nursery rhymes again … now. My sister, I have an older sister named Dina …’
‘How much older?’
‘Six years. We’re very close, not in age, but in other ways. She has children. I don’t. I’m gay … I guess that’s what I am. I’ve been in a … how can I say it, a … very … on-again,
off-again
, relationship for nearly twenty years, but now I’ve fallen in love with a married woman. She’s getting a divorce, I think. My other relationship, Simone, the long one, has always been an open relationship.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘We, me and Simone, wanted it that way, or she wanted it that way. I don’t remember who wanted it what way… I just came back from Beatrice, Nebraska. That was my mother’s first name … Beatrice. The accent is on a different syl … Never mind. It was phenomenal; see my mother’s name everywhere. I fell in love with a straight woman. I already said that, didn’t I? It’s not important.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘Maybe it is. Her daughter, it turns out, thinks of me as a role model. Now that’s crazy.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not a role model type … Hate to work. Since my mother died, hard getting up in the morning. My father and I never got along. Never. But we got along yesterday … for the first time, ever. We have my mother in common now. He sees her. I hear her. I almost liked him, loved him yesterday.’
‘How lovely for you.’
‘It’s so sad.’ Floodgates open. ‘It’s all … so sad. I feel so sorry
for him. He’s so alone, even though my mother’s ghost is in the house. He has a housekeeper who takes care of him, but she doesn’t care about him. She’s been stealing from him for years. He pays her to stick around. He has no friends left.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Ever since she killed herself, he hasn’t had any friends, maybe one or two.’
‘Ever since who killed herself?’
‘Oh … my mother killed herself. Then he went and married my mother’s best friend. It’s been a mess for years. He tried to seduce my lover … I think. That was a while ago. My mother’s best friend, my father’s ex-wife, is blind. And, somehow, my mother is somewhere in this world, but she’s been dead for years.’ I laugh hysterically, split my sides … guts ache. ‘The story is, believe it or not, it’s true.’ I can’t stop laughing and crying. I can’t … br … bre … brea … breathe … ‘Help! Help!’ Can’t breathe! Oh my God! Suffocating … in Mary Michelin’s office, first visit. She doesn’t know what’s happening, does she?
‘Are you … Can you hear me?! Loli, are you alriii …’ Fade to black.
Pounding in heart space. Pounding, pounding so hard, so heavy. Drop down through a portal onto a furry mound. Shadows surround me. Noises come toward me from all
directions
. Warm skin, a warm hand picks me up. I am safe. Once again I have survived.
A voice asks, ‘Can you hear me?’
I open my eyes. Mary Michelin is standing over me. I am lying on her office floor. I look straight into her eyes. ‘I can hear you … This is embarrassing.’
‘Never be embarrassed in my office.’
‘Okay. But we’ve only just met.’ We laugh.
‘I am very glad we have.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘I can see why. Would you like a glass of water?’
‘No, thank you. But, I will get back in the chair. I prefer to be eye level.’ We laugh again. After which there is a very, I mean, very long pause. ‘How are we going to work together?’
‘Quite well, I think.’
I have very little to say after the spectacle … ‘So … How’s Dr Dot?’
‘How do you know Dr Dot?’
‘He was my therapist during the California breakdown.’
‘How did you know he … I left his referral number, didn’t I?’
‘You certainly did. Quite surprised I was.’
‘I hope my professional relationship with Dr Dot and your professional relationship with him won’t keep you from working with me.’
‘I don’t think anything could keep me from working with you.’
‘When would you like to come next?’
‘Tomorrow. This afternoon. This evening.’
She opens her black leather appointment book. ‘I have a nine a.m. opening.’
‘I … I have trouble getting … never mind. Nine a.m. I hope I didn’t scare you.’
‘Not at all.’
I stumble out the door. What must she think? What an opening. What happened before I hit the floor? Best not to remember. Auspicious therapeutic convergence. Mary Michelin … bet you haven’t seen a lot of that on your office floor. I have Dina to thank for this. I have Dina to thank for so much of the good stuff.
I walk the Village streets; west on 10th, north on University, west again on 13th. Stop at a construction site. Can’t fall through the cracks in the open sidewalk. Can fall into the bottom of sludge called personality. Shovel self into a corner of insubordinate longing. How I long for the moment when I was a bird fish, when I could swim and fly all at once, in a space with no past or future in its way. In that space is the breath, the rhythm, the endless adventure without any fragmented self, without doubt, without fear. That is where I want to be, where the bird fish spawns the present participle called life.
At Fifth Avenue I duck into the 14th Street subway, wind down deep into the city’s grip, until I am standing in front of the Canarsie Line. I remember my underground motel in Iowa. That was before Beatrice, before I knew that I am not where I belong, and have never been. The train arrives.
Before too long, I arrive at West 96th Street. I do not remember switching trains, but after all that has happened, it is a miracle I am home at all.
The elevator is broken. I walk up six flights, definitely enough exercise for the day. When I enter the apartment, I feel overwhelmed with a nauseating despair. I drop down onto my knees in front of the toilet, barf, flush my grief down the bowl. There are four messages on the machine: Dina checking in on my time with Pop, as well as my time with Mary
Michelin
; Simone informing me that she will arrive home on Friday evening. Saul extolling the virtues of sleeping with men who scramble eggs well … And sweet Molly Malone.
Her voice is full of smiles. ‘Hi Loli. You won’t believe it. Willwrite thinks I have talent. He’s furious at me for not having applied myself sooner. If I work hard, I might be able to get into a decent college. He wants me to submit my story
to a national essay contest. Isn’t that awesome? Maybe I should come east and look at schools back there. He wants me to apply to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He’s almost positive I can get in there. That’s where he went, says he’ll write me a recommendation. I have to study really hard for my college boards. Who knows. Maybe I can write. Wouldn’t that be something? Oh, by the way, Dad’s in therapy. He asked Mom and me to come to some of his sessions. He wants to come back home.’ My heart sinks. ‘He’s joined AA. He’s dumped the bimbo. We’re all going to the therapist this week.’ My heart sinks again. ‘Please call. I miss you a lot. So does Mom. We wish you were here.’ What if she takes him back? ‘Glad your message machine lets you talk for more than sixty seconds. I’m not a very good editor … yet. I’ll get better. I promise. Bye. Love you.’
Therapy. Call Maggie. If Molly picks up, I’ll say I’m calling her … Pop would love Maggie. Where’s that monkey? Maybe it fell behind the radiator. I’ll find it the next time I’m in Beechwood.
I pay more overdue bills than I can cope with, but I cope. I decide teaching in Montana is a bad idea. Dina’s got her hands full with Pop. Do not want to feel guilty when his death is behind me. I know that feeling too well. I want to be a
peaceful
orphan.
I call Stuart Manly to inform him of my decision. Though I would like to be told that I am irreplaceable, instead, I am told, I will be replaced by a fledgling fellow, who is packed and ready to go, not the slightest problem. I am not pleased, but I have personal obligations that need my undivided attention. I pick up the phone and dial Maggie’s number. It rings twice. I hang up. ‘I need you,’ I say to myself. With phone in hand,
I contemplate my mother’s expertise at helping my father from this world to the next. On Tuesday morning, somehow, I manage to drag myself out of bed in time to make it to Mary Michelin’s office for my nine a.m. appointment. She is wearing a new black outfit. I suppose that wearing no color whatsoever neutralizes being projected upon. She is still beautiful.
‘How are you today?’
‘Tired.’
‘Nine is early for you, isn’t it?’
‘Can’t think my way through my bullshit.’
‘You’re a night bird then?’
‘Night bird fish.’
‘Bird fish?’
‘A bird fish, like a salmon with wings.’
‘That’s an interesting way to think of yourself.’
‘Always felt like a bird fish. When I can’t breathe, which, as you have seen, happens from time to time, I feel like I’m trying to breathe through my gills. But I don’t have gills. I don’t think I have gills.’
‘Do you have any memory of being inside your mother’s womb?’
‘No.’
‘As an unborn child, you are very much like a fish. The amniotic fluid is the embryo’s sea.’
‘Sometimes I get the feeling, when I arrived on earth, I didn’t quite make the switch over from gills to lungs. Like I said, I have breathing issues. Always had them. My sister says I’ve had trouble breathing ever since I was an infant.’
‘Why don’t you ask her if she remembers when it first began. It would be helpful.’
‘I will. Look, about Dr Dot.’
‘I’m glad you brought it up.’
‘I didn’t think very much of his work. My therapist, Dr Guttman, was vacationing on Cape Cod. It was August. Dr Dot was his sub. I was out of my mind back then. It was a year after my mother’s suicide. I had gotten myself involved with a cult … a crazy guru named Bovar. I left the cult, lost my mind … My mother started talking to me in nursery rhymes. I saw demons. It’s hard to explain. When Guttman recommended Dot, I had no choice. Guttman was my therapist. I trusted him.’
‘So you worked with Dr Guttman?’
‘I did.’
Mary sighs, ‘Dr Guttman was my mentor.’
‘He was? What a small world.’
‘The psychoanalytic world is a very small world indeed.’
‘Your work is so different from his, at least so far. Guttman hardly ever spoke. I spent quite a bit of time and money looking at his shoes. His shoes were my barometer for whether I thought he was having a good day or a bad day. It was total projection. He had big feet. He must have had a huge dick. You know the foot wanger theory?’ Mary Michelin seems extremely uncomfortable with where the conversation has taken us. Sensing her discomfort, I change the subject. ‘And Dr Dot? Where did he come into all of this?’
‘Leo had many students …’ Mary reaches behind her, turns the air conditioner to low.
‘Leo?’ Familiar. Very familiar.
‘Dr Guttman.’ Mary Michelin blushes. I am not a psychic or a mind reader, but I, at the moment of blush, am certain of Mary Michelin’s emotional involvement with Dr Leo Guttman. I know it’s not my place to inquire about Mary’s life. But … ‘How is Dr Guttman?’
A wistful Mary replies, ‘He died five years ago August while vacationing on Cape Cod.’
‘I always imagined him playing Frisbee by the sea.’
‘Yes.’ … Mary Michelin spent summers on Cape Cod with Dr Leo Guttman. They were lovers for years. They made love in the dunes. They played Frisbee by the water’s edge. When we patients were having our breakdowns in August, Mary and Leo were fucking their analytic minds out on Ol’ Cape Cod. Mary Michelin has never loved another man. Dr Guttman was the great love of her life. I want to cry; another dead love.
‘Weird that you should know both Dr Guttman and Dr Dot.’
‘Quite a coincidence.’
‘Quite. Would you mind opening a window? It’s kind of stuffy in here.’
‘I’ll turn up the air conditioner.’ She turns up the fan speed.
‘Mary, Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?’
‘Oh no.’
‘Is that too much air then?’ Mary asks.
‘It’s perfect. Just perfect.’
‘Silver bells and cockle shells.’
I sigh, ‘We can never have too much air.’
‘Without it we wouldn’t be here, would we?’
‘Well … most of us … mere mortals … wouldn’t.’
‘Yes. Isn’t that the truth.’
‘Mortals … most of us.’
‘And pretty maids all in a row.’
After the love life of Mary Michelin, I train it up to Beechwood, to visit Mrs B. at Beechwood Manor, the old age home three blocks from the railroad station.
Walk the winding driveway, revolve into the Tudor-style building, stand in the middle of a beige florescent entry. You don’t get well in a place like this, filled with that final-chapter, last-stop smell.