Woman On The Edge Of Time (43 page)

“Sin duda. The day it rains money on Harlem.”

“Fíjate, I brought you some perfume. And here’s for you to get some coffee, a little something from the canteen.” Dolly kissed her cheek and pressed a wadded-up five into her palm. “Smell the perfume, it’s the real thing. Arpege cologne. Nice, huh? It came in a set with the perfume. Splash some on now. Nice? You smell like a rose. I kept the perfume, you couldn’t hold cm to it here, the staff would swipe it A john gave it to me. He has a drugstore in Teaneck, he says he’s the manager.”

“Dolly, you’re so thin. Do you eat at all?”

“You lost weight too. The both of us. With your hair done where I get mine, you’ll look ten years younger, Connie. I’ll treat you to it when you get out Very short hair is in. I make money hand over fist now, you’ll see. You like the Arpege? It’s good to be thin, it’s chic” She pronounced it “cheek.” “When you get out, you’ll be all better and you’ll get yourself a man in no time. But that wig is ratty! How come they give you such a stupid wig? I’ll get you a good one, human hair.”

“Dolly, don’t fuss about the wig. Please get me out of here! Let me come and visit you.”

“Okay, Connie, not to worry. You’ll look great I’ll send you
to my hairdresser. It’s good you lost weight, and without taking pills even! But that wig, it makes you look like a jíbara! I’ll get you a better wig so you won’t be ashamed.” Dolly kissed her. “I had something to give you. What was it? Some perfume …”

Her arms where Dolly had splashed the cologne smelled like her old caseworker, Mrs. Polcari. One case unloaded. Maybe she had had a bit of a crush on Mrs. Polcari, at the same time that she resented her youth at the age they shared, her job, her money, her home, her children, her air of being gently but firmly at all times right. She felt sophisticated thinking so about her caseworker; Luciente’s influence. Maybe she had wanted to eat Mrs. Polcari with a long spoon, like an ice cream sundae, a pineapple sundae with whipped cream and a cherry. Back in her life before they had made her their monster.

Suppose they said she could trade lives? But who would want hers? Only somebody like Dr. Redding would buy her at auction, cheap by the dozen along with five thousand chimpanzees. Now she was a chimp who smelled of Arpege. Probably the cologne would be stolen. In spite of this being a locked ward, people went in and out all day—doctors and researchers besides the staff, orderlies and aides, volunteers who filtered through the whole hospital, students, graduate students, residents, interns, the chief resident, Argent’s assistant director of research, patients’ visitors, technicians, even a patient from another ward who flitted in to sputter quickly to Tina that she was dying of cancer but nobody would believe it.

A clam in a green chair, she sat in the day room, unmoving, and all the gossip of the ward trickled through her sore mind. Somewhere in this fund of trivial bits of garbage smelling of rotting shrimp and brown lettuce must be some clue on how to find herself again, how to fight. She sat facing the bronze plaque on the wall that said the ward was named for Mrs. John Sturgiss Baylor. Baylor was Dr. Argent’s middle name. Actually it was his mother’s name, Valente said. His first wife was dead too, and his second, Elinor, was in her late thirties—a hearty good-looking woman who seemed oddly transparent. Connie could never remember in between her appearances what she looked like. She seemed entirely beige and honey-colored and she would come marching rapidly through the ward for some momentary consultation with Dr. Argent,
striding as if across a tennis court and looking at no one, cheerful enough and utterly indifferent to them all. She was the only wife who ever came into the hospital. She was on some committee that had to do with fund raising and managing volunteers. Finally at some point she began to speak to Dr. Redding when she encountered him, giving a measured smile, but she never greeted Dr. Morgan.

Dr. Morgan had married a nurse who stayed home with their children in Rye. Nurse Roditis liked her and they had long conversations on the phone, about Dr. Morgan and his temper and his vanities and whether he was or was not having an affair with a ward secretary named Pauline. Connie found it hard to imagine Dr. Morgan having an affair with anyone, but it sounded like he was meaninglessly but frequently unfaithful, like a nervous twitch.

But patients and staff had no gossip about Dr. Redding, who had four children and had always been married to the same wife nobody had ever seen. More was known about his kids, because he talked about them. Chaz Junior was doing his residency in urology. Betsey was married, expecting. John was studying physics. Karen, the youngest, he was bitter about He said she was spoiled and he made her go to a psychiatrist. She had run away from home, from school, from him.

Patients and staff talked over the doctors constantly. What could she make of this coffee grounds of gossip? That Redding’s family had a ski and summer house in Vermont and everybody commuted back and forth except him usually. That Dr. Argent was an Episcopalian and was always hurrying to a banquet or a fund-raising dinner for a senator or a wedding that would be in the
Times.
Elinor cared for neither New York summers nor New York winters, and Dr. Redding thought Dr. Argent took too many vacations.

Dr. Redding wanted Dr. Argent to invite him to some annual get-together, some bunch of men who went up to his family’s old hunting lodge in the Adirondacks to shoot at birds or deer or whatever they shot at. Dr. Redding didn’t want to go because he liked to shoot things. He didn’t seem to like anything except his work. He wanted to go because of the men who would be there drinking and shooting. Dr. Morgan admired and envied Dr. Redding, as Dr. Redding envied but
did not admire Dr. Argent. Dr. Morgan was a nervous sneak who clung to the rules on the job, who loved procedures and methodology and other such words. Dr. Redding loved power and the feeling of success. He said Dr. Argent liked too much to be a man about town. She had no idea what Dr. Argent might have loved, but he was nervous now at the brink of retirement to carry off some final prize. Redding had an ulcer, Argent had a heart condition, and Morgan lied to his wife about where he spent his evenings.

Tuesday as she was being taken to the bathroom, suddenly she felt Luciente in her like a scream. Luciente came through her like a great wound ripping open that knocked her to the floor of the ward. Then Luciente was gone. Yet she felt an after-aura of Luciente’s presence. She knew her friend had been with her, there like lightning and gone. The attendant picked her up.

After supper she lay down while the patients were still moving around and talking, while the lights were still on all over the ward, while the laughter of the television set sounded like the pins going down in a bowling alley. She and Eddie had lived at first next door to a bowling alley in the Bronx; oh, maybe twenty blocks from Carmel’s apartment and beauty shop. She had been pregnant in that apartment: she remembered lying in the bed with the hollow rattling thunder of the bowling alley coming through the wall … . She felt Luciente approaching again. Again it was a wild careening approach, full of pain, and almost she resisted in fear; but what should she fear from Luciente? Something must be wrong. She had to find out. She went with the wave of pain, pushing over, and found herself hugging Luciente.

Luciente’s face was set with tears, twisted with agony.

“What’s wrong? What is it?”

“Person is dead!”

“Who? Who’s dead?”

“Jackrabbit,” Bee said behind her, laying his big hand on her shoulder.

“You heard today? When I felt you in my mind for a moment?”

“I didn’t know I’d touched your mind,” Luciente mumbled in a low, weary voice. “I did so now because Bee suggested
you might want to attend the wake.” Gently Luciente disengaged herself and stood apart, her shoulders bent.

She touched Luciente’s cheek. “I’m glad you sent for me. Yes. I want to be with you.”

“We feel you’re family,” Bee said. “We thought you should share, if you wished.”

“I heard today,” Luciente said, and began to weep again. “It happened yesterday.” She turned away shaking. Her hands clawed the air. Her back arched on itself and seemed to collapse. Bee caught her. She struck at him, writhed, twisted back and clutched him, pressing her face into his chest.

Bee held Luciente until she had stopped shaking and then started her walking, his arm supporting her. “Come. To the meetinghouse. The wake will start.”

“Is he … Do you have the body?”

“Yes, Jackrabbit was brought by dipper this afternoon and we laid the body out. The mems, we wept over Jackrabbit this afternoon. Now it’s time for everyone.”

The room was round and about half the size it had been for the holi. Most of the younger people were sitting on mats, blankets, cushions on the floor, while the older people sat on chairs. The room was full by the time they came in and went toward the center of the circle, where Bolivar sat on the floor beside the body, his back like a flagpole. Jackrabbit lay on a board across trestles with a woolen blanket of light and dark blues thrown over him, woven in patterns of rabbits and ferns. Only his head showed. His eyes had been closed and his face wore a strange grimace, but it was obviously him: obviously Jackrabbit, obviously dead. He looked deader than the embalmed corpses of her own time, her mother painted garishly as a whore in the funeral parlor, shockingly made up.

Globes of light stood at his head and feet. Around him objects were arranged like children’s offerings: worn boots, clothing, a leather cap, a wide straw hat woven of rushes in a sea gull emblem, drawings, a pocketknife, carefully arranged piles of papers and cartridges, shiny cubes, a pillow, a woolen poncho, an intaglio belt buckle on a carefully worked leather belt, a few books, letters, a ring with a yellow stone. From what she knew of Mattapoisett, she guessed she was looking at the
complete worldly goods of Jackrabbit, arranged around him in the dimly lit room.

All her family had gathered now in the innermost circle: Luciente, Bee, Barbarossa, Morningstar, Sojourner, Hawk, Dawn, Otter, Luxembourg, everyone except Barbarossa’s baby. She felt a strange shifting as if her internal earth quaked. What did she mean by calling them family? Well, something warm. They had called her to share their sorrow. They were the closest family she had now.

Everybody around her was wearing those ceremonial robes, long dresses. Bolivar, two other young people, three of middle age, and one very old also sat in the inner circle of mourners. Some people began serving coffee in ceramic mugs. Red Star, the yellow-haired mechanic, poured hot savory coffee for them before the general serving began and returned as everyone else was served to offer more to anyone who wished.

“I’m not dressed right. My nightgown,” Connie mumbled.

Bolivar took from a pile beside the body a long shift and helped her pass it over her head. It was much too long to walk in, but for sitting it was fine. “Person had taken it out to wear in a ceremony we performed in Red Hanrahan village last month. Neglected to return the garment to the library afterward. Person was often careless.” He spoke monotonously, face blotched and strained tight.

“Oh, Bolivar. This is your second loss. Your mother Sappho and now Jackrabbit,” Luciente said. She walked over, touched her forehead to his. “Bolivar, you’re getting use to grief, and your pain must be great, recalling old pain not yet worn out.”

“Nobody gets used to grief. Yet I feel numb.”

“Before this night be over, your pain gonna loosen and come down.” Erzulia spoke, in a robe of sky blue. “I am ready to lead this ritual. Bolivar, you and Jackrabbit made so many good holies here. Many times you give us pleasure and the healing of conflict, the easing of hard edges, the vision that pick us up and carry us. I hope we able to bring you through this night. All the sweet friends and handfriends, the basemates and old family and mems. We gonna try hard to make the passing of Jackrabbit beautiful as person made other giving backs. We begin now. It gonna be done in truth and beauty and kindness.” On that last phrase her voice boomed forth. Her voice for a
moment colored the air and hung there. “We gonna speak now and remember our friend. We gonna speak of the good and of the bad Jackrabbit done. We gonna remember together Jackrabbit.”

A girl stood. She began to sing:

Connie could hardly hear the ending because the girl was crying by the time she finished. “Jackrabbit was my teacher. I felt so close to per! I was angry person chose to defend while I was learning in torrents.”

Luciente too began to cry again, but Bolivar sat like a scarecrow, his freckles drawing all the color in his face to them and the rest of his skin pallid.

“I’m Arthur of Ribble, a Lancashire village in Fall River.” A heavy-set person of forty or so with cropped light hair rose. “Jackrabbit was my child. Gave me joy and hard worry. Person was running in seven ways at once from five on. Such beauty. Such a pile of beginnings! Jackrabbit wanted to do everything. Person could not, would not choose. Instead Jackrabbit would begin to weave a rug, would launch a complicated genetic experiment, would begin studying spiders, would start glazing a namelon, would demand to be taught how holies function, would begin cartography lessons, all in one week. A month later the rug would be a beautiful fragment, the namelon would be half painted and abandoned, person would know a bit about spiders, something of how holies function, would have had three cartography lessons and would have abandoned the
genetics experiment in the third generation of fruit flies. Person drove me wild! I would yell and bluster and my child would sulk and withdraw. But person would forgive me—yes, that’s the way to body it. In sunny excitement my child would forgive me and come tell me how person—then named Peony—wanted to learn theory of wind power, construct a mill, learn lithography, study Japanese and vertebrate anatomy. I comped Peony to choose something. Much pressure. I wore out just listening. I could not grasp such trying on of subjects and roles was learning also. When Peony began to think seriously of shelf diving, I bound per into making a commit. I obsessed Peony into being ashamed of flightiness—which was excessive curiosity. I didn’t do this alone. Others reacted same way. Including the head of the children’s house.” Arthur sat down.