Panorama City (16 page)

My thinking was interrupted by screeching tires, honking, and a crash. Maria jumped up, the spell was broken. I followed her through the waiting room to the edge of the outer bead curtain. Everyone who had been inside the Lighthouse Fellowship was now in the parking lot, and people were coming out of the Laundromat, too, and the liquor store. JB's gold Datsun was on the other side of the street, facing the wrong way, smashed on the side, a box truck was up on the sidewalk. I hid, I stayed behind the curtain, no one could know that I'd gone to Maria's. Scott Valdez, I could see him across the parking lot, Scott Valdez was not looking at the accident but across the parking lot toward me, no, directly at me, his gaze penetrating the bead curtain, a look of blame, I thought. I heard sirens approaching. Then I realized Scott wasn't looking at me, he couldn't see me, he was staring at Maria.

 

At first I thought JB's accident came
ex nihilo.
Whenever you have the opportunity to say
out of nowhere,
say
ex nihilo
instead, Paul's words. Then I remembered a scene from a few
days before. I'd been sitting with JB at the Lighthouse Fellowship, talking about something or other, when Scott had walked up to our table. It was morning, Scott's hair was wet and spiky, his head really did look like a pineapple, I wondered if it would look less like a pineapple if his hair wasn't so spiky, I remember wishing I could take a picture. Of course, Scott was a thinker, that's the thing about thinkers, Juan-George, you never know what they're going to look like. Or what we're going to look like, I should say. Don't forget how Aunt Liz turned away Paul Renfro for looking shabby. I wondered how many people had missed being exposed to the kindness and sensitive thinking of Scott Valdez because his head looked like tropical fruit. In any case, Scott asked JB how he was doing, they nodded at each other. And then he asked me how my Bible studies were coming, he quizzed me about my reading, he wanted to know what I thought, this was before I skipped to the New Testament, in fact this was when I decided to skip, I was deep into Jeremiah, and so I talked about Jeremiah, I talked about how God made Jeremiah hide a linen girdle down by the Euphrates just to make a point about the people of Judah, it seemed like an awful lot of work just to make what the teachers in Madera used to call a visual aid. Scott pointed out that in the Old Testament God made the prophets do all kinds of things, things God could have done with a snap of his holy fingers. He thought it had something to do with letting everyone know who was in charge. JB shifted in his seat, he said that Scott should know all about that. Scott didn't say anything to JB, he said only that he was looking forward to discussing Jesus with me, he was interested in my fresh perspective on the material, his words. After Scott walked away JB, who had after all facilitated my arrival at the Lighthouse, said I should be proud that Scott had become interested in my thoughts, that Scott was an incredible leader, for whom it was an honor to facilitate, and that no one, not even himself, had ever gained Scott's ear quite the way I had in such a short period of time. JB said that he himself might have become a leader of Scott's caliber, if he hadn't taken the Lord's word to heart. He could have led an amazing church of his own, but that wasn't what the Lord wanted from him, the Lord wanted him to be a facilitator, a humble facilitator, someone who operated behind the scenes to bring people together, which was what he'd done by bringing Scott and I together, by facilitating my gaining Scott's ear. JB said he'd come to understand that humility was far more important than power, to him at least, and that Scott could have all the power he wanted. His power would do him no good whatsoever in the next life, JB's words. I didn't notice, I should have noticed, that everything out of JB's mouth had a flip side.

 

An alarm is going off. Your mother is awake. She'd been sleeping so peacefully. Are you all right,
mi amor
? The beeping is coming from the other room. I wish you could see what is happening here, Juan-George. The hall has been quiet all night, just someone's television in the distance, and me talking into this tape recorder, your mother's trips to the toilet, medication beeps, the hum of the air or the freeway or both. Now the hall is full of light and nurses, I don't know where they've come from. A sleepy doctor, the night doctor, I recognize him, he was a year older than me in high school, his hair is sticking up in the back, he's walking quickly, his arms swinging like an ape. The alarm is still going. What's happening? Your mother is going to check. I can't turn my head far enough to see where she's gone.
[Pause. Carmen's voice, soft and unintelligible in the background. Distant commotion. Someone shouting:
Clear!
Buzzing on the tape.]

 

I visited JB after his accident, I took the bus, sat in front as usual, and I brought my tape player with me. I listened to the Bible in one ear and the world in the other. JB had gotten out of emergency surgery and was in the ICU, I told him I would pray for him, for a speedy recovery, but he didn't seem to see me. He mumbled toward the end of the bed, where nobody was standing.

 

Later I asked Scott whether he'd gone to see JB and he looked at me seriously and said he'd visited JB one time too many. I asked how that was possible if JB had been in the hospital only one day. Scott explained that he'd always stepped in to rescue JB from whatever problem he'd gotten himself
into, but JB always found his way back to trouble. I didn't understand why this would happen, how this could happen. The next time I saw Dr. Rosenkleig I didn't want to talk about what was inside my head, namely thoughts that didn't fit the boundaries of the clinical trial I was trying to run, so I asked him about it. Dr. Rosenkleig said that the Lighthouse Fellowship was a little Band-Aid, and JB's wounds, his emotional wounds, required stitches, required round-the-clock care. JB's time at the Lighthouse Fellowship was bound to end badly, again and again, because he needed a different kind of help from the kind the Lighthouse Fellowship could provide. It was a fine place for me, Dr. Rosenkleig couldn't blame Aunt Liz for introducing me to it, it was a fine place for me to develop a sense of community, but it was not a complete system for dealing with the traumas of the past. JB had too much pride in himself to admit defeat, and so he continued moving forward, patching up one tiny defeat after another with one tiny untruth after another, after which these little defeats and little untruths began to accumulate, which led to what Dr. Rosenkleig called a total breakdown. JB had too much pride to deal with the little defeats as they came, he could not acknowledge them, he was too busy being born again, and so he collapsed, which is what they call a cautionary tale, Dr. Rosenkleig's words. He took a long sip of tea and looked at me as if staring could hammer home his message. I had the strange feeling again, for the second time, that is, that the puppet had cut his own strings and come to life, he had cut himself off from the professional strings and expressed something real. Then he went on and on about how JB was in need of therapy, about how only through therapy would JB have any hope of progressing, instead of repeatedly regressing, and it was as if the strings were getting tied right back on again, as if I had seen the bare walls behind all of those plaques and degrees just long enough to wonder whether deep inside that feline head of Dr. Rosenkleig's, behind that professionally inexpressive face, under those wavy mounds of salt-and-pepper hair, there was a tiny thinker, shouting to be heard.

 

And then one night over a casserole, an Italian casserole, with pasta and vegetables and ground beef, Aunt Liz pulled out a three-ring binder. We were at the kitchen table as usual, with the single candle unlit. I had never seen the binder before, I had no idea it existed. It had been thirty days, she said, since I'd arrived. I had been in Panorama City for one month, and she wanted to do what she called a check in, she wanted to talk about how I was adapting to life there. Her no-nonsense hair shimmered under the kitchen lights. I hadn't realized she'd been tracking my progress, I told her I felt like I had just begun my journey. She frowned, put on her reading glasses, her eating glasses, and licked her finger and flipped the page. First of all, her words, I had made significant progress with Dr. Rosenkleig. The so-called professional talker and listener thought I was adjusting well, he thought I was putting in a
good effort, he wished only that I would talk more about my father, your grandfather, he thought that in due time I would open up to my feelings and begin the mourning process in earnest, his words, as reported by Aunt Liz. I should mention that I'd decided, it was during my second session, not to talk to Dr. Rosenkleig about your grandfather, I kept those feelings and thoughts to myself, he had not proven himself capable, my thinking, he hadn't proven himself able to handle those kinds of ideas and feelings, he had buried his thinker too deep. Then Aunt Liz flipped the page and said that Scott Valdez had given me high marks as well. To discover that Scott was reporting my progress, my quote-unquote religious progress, was baffling, the whole message of the Lighthouse Fellowship was that only God knew what was in one's heart, only God could be the judge. And yet here was Scott, telling Aunt Liz how impressed he'd been with my level of participation, their words. Aunt Liz smiled at me, her eyes proud and perky above those reading glasses, and I felt like I was back in one of those parent-teacher meetings your grandfather had taken me to, those meetings we'd attended when he was still leaving the house, on the way back from which he would pick apart everything the teacher had said, he would wonder aloud what kind of morons were running the educational system, he would pledge to write a letter the next day. True learning, your grandfather's words, cannot be evaluated by morons, school was an accountability cult. Aunt Liz moved on to the fast-food place, apparently
she had been speaking regularly with Roger, it was the first I'd heard of it. Turned out he hadn't expected me to move beyond floater, he hadn't expected me to succeed as a french fry cook. She said, she read, this was a quote from Roger, she said that I had become an integral part of the fast-food place machine, that I was a trusted fan belt in the fast-food place engine, and that he looked forward to my service well into the future. In fact, Aunt Liz said, she had a secret for me, a private message from Roger, something I wouldn't be allowed to share with my fellow employees until it was announced a few days from then. Roger had informed her, this was the secret, he told her that I was going to be named the next Employee of the Month. He had singled me out, specifically, because of my top-notch handling of an unhappy customer and her irregular french fries. Aunt Liz shivered with excitement. There was going to be a photo shoot and everything, her words, they were going to put my picture on the wall. I had seen the plaque before, of course, the plaque hung to the side of the counter, everyone could see it, customers and employees. I had seen it and wondered whether I could ever become Employee of the Month, I had pictured it as a jewel in the crown, so to speak, befitting a man of the world, but the longer I worked at the fast-food place, the smaller the jewel got, until I finally had it in my hands, or on my head, so to speak, at which point it became so small it disappeared, and the crown along with it. The closer you get to any goal, the more it looks like a false goal, my philosophy.

 

And then Aunt Liz closed her notebook and told me how happy she was that I'd come into her life, despite the challenges, despite the awful event that had led me to come to Panorama City, meaning her brother's, my father's, your grandfather's death, not his double burial, she clarified. She opened up to me, as they say, and she talked about how she had always felt like she was growing up in my father's shadow, how he was the one everyone thought would succeed. It was a different time, of course, women didn't have the options they did today, her words, but nevertheless it was clear to Aunt Liz that she was not the pride of the family. And so she stumbled from one job to another, she married Alan, I did not know she had been married, she married Alan and he left her after six years, at least she got a house out of it, she didn't seem to be able to succeed at anything, but she was a good Christian, she remained humble, she knew that if she stayed the course her life would one day open up, she would one day be called upon to do something great, something greater than verifying and certifying people's signatures on bank loans and real estate documents and living trusts. Already, Aunt Liz told me, already, only one short month after I'd arrived, already I seemed like a different person, already we had made headway against her brother's, my father's, your grandfather's failure to guide me in any meaningful way, already my life was taking the shape of the life of a respectable citizen, of a responsible member of society. She had been called, her words, and she had answered, I was her answer. I'm not sure how it came to be, the reason is probably attached to the great chain of unintended consequences, but Aunt Liz's calling in life turned out to be preventing me from pursuing mine.

 

I lay on my inflatable mattress that night, breathing my own air, all manner of thoughts spinning around my otherwise empty head, and I found myself picturing a certain person who ran a certain business near the Lighthouse Fellowship. You see, a substantial part of my paycheck had been going toward frequent secret discussions of past, present, and future events, and that the person with whom I discussed these events was providing far more insight into the workings of the human mind than the so-called professional Dr. Armando Rosenkleig, and the discussions themselves, the acts of discussion, resulted in a much more intense spiritual experience than anything I'd felt at the Lighthouse Fellowship. It was her hands, Juan-George, it was her hands on my hands, her eyes on my eyes, it almost didn't matter what we talked about as long as her eyes were locked on mine and she was feeling her way around the lines and bumps of my palms. And so you can understand, Juan-George, why I found myself making an appeal to this person, why I found myself trying to broadcast my thoughts to her, why I hoped that she of all people might give me some advice. It was a form of prayer, I realize that now, not all prayers are addressed to God. I wanted, I don't dare say her name, your mother will wake up instantly at the mention of that name, I wanted her, the one who had led me into temptation, as they say, I wanted her to take me away, to liberate me from the nexus of invisible lines and invisible fences, I wanted to be with her, and even more, I wanted to be, I didn't know how to express it then but now I would say I wanted to be, I needed to be, outside Aunt Liz's dominion, outside the confines of her three-ring binder.