Lithium for Medea

19

Everything requires an explanation.

Name. Age. Sexual persuasion. Occupation. Tribal rituals completed. (Check where appropriate.)

1. Search for visionary experience/hallucinatory connection with forces called magical, spiritual or even philosophical.

2. Marriage.

3. Birth.

4. Death.

5. Contact with evil force, place or person. Also contact with evil spells sometimes called concepts, art, science and history.

6. Contact with holy forces sometimes called miracles or luck.

7. Rebirth.

8. Physical torture.

9. Blood sacrifice, exorcism, etc.

10. Other. (Specify.)

Francine telephoned at precisely nine. Nine, I thought, looking at the clock. Nine, a kind of chime.

“His heart stopped last night,” she said. “Then it started again. I wasn’t here when it happened. I just found out. Actually, he looks considerably better today.” She sounded surprised. It was the first energy I had heard in her voice in weeks. Was it weeks? Her voice had a new dimension, some rumbling of a white mania to come, one suspicious perfect white cloud.

My body was weaving, secretly drunk. Your father’s heart stopped she said and my heart stopped and I felt the blood empty from my face, felt the chill, the cells within collapsing. But it started again. His heart started again she said. And I realized that he wasn’t dead. No, of course not. She was talking. I was twenty-seven when he got it the first time. Now you’re twenty-seven. The wheel spins she was saying. Or was she?

“He looks terrible. Gray. Like hell. But somehow better. For the first time I feel he has a chance,” Francine said.

The Santa Ana winds had disappeared. The day was warm and clear. I found Francine in the hospital cafeteria. She was wearing a white tennis skirt. She seemed rejuvenated. An intern passed our table carrying a tray of fried chicken. Francine watched him walk. “You look lousy,” she said to me.

I shrugged. I was holding a white styrofoam cup. It might have been a small warm white rock.

“Listen, kid. You think I’m ridiculous, obscene? Forty-six with a tennis racket? If I drop dead tomorrow, and I might, just tell them I was here, alive, trying. Are you following me? I haven’t given up. I’m still in there punching. Just like your father.”

But no, Francine wasn’t saying that at all. She was smiling. She was sipping coffee from a white cup. She was saying, “He looks so much better today. They’re going to make him walk tomorrow. The skin graft looks good. The pain has stopped. I’m taking the whole day off. Let’s go shopping in Beverly Hills.”

“I don’t think so,” I said carefully.

“Come on,” Francine said, almost gay. “We’ll start on Rodeo. I’ll buy you a milk shake.” I shook my head no.

“No. No,” she screamed, banging her fist on the table. “That’s all you know how to say. No. No. And you’re getting older. You’re almost thirty. And you’re missing it all.”

I didn’t say anything. Francine was wearing a white blouse over her tennis dress. She looked as if she were wearing a pale pair of wings.

“You’ll never give me a break, will you?” Francine demanded.

Yes/no/maybe. All of the above. None of the above. Are there gradations? Can you use an attached sheet? No?

“There’s so much you don’t know,” Francine was saying. “Your father taught me. All we have is the moment. It can be snatched away at any time. I learned late. But I learned. Don’t you see?” My mother brought her face very close to mine. “Each second is important. See him struggle just for a chance to keep living? Where is your sense of life?”

Gone, I thought, like everything else. The impulse was finite, meager from the beginning. It was chipped into. Francine had taken pieces of it. My father. Somewhere Gerald sneered at me and in that special darkness took a piece. Jason came with a shovel. He dug out pieces of me by the cartful, the truckful. I had a paper kite in a bird’s shape. It broke. Everything broke.

Francine was staring at the girl in the chair. She was examining her/me. “Don’t let your father down,” she said after a while. “I mean it,” she added. Her words were sharp white splinters.

My father’s bed had been raised to a sitting position. He was reading Esquire magazine. His eyeglasses were stuck through the gauze near his ears. He heard my footsteps. He let the magazine fall to the floor.

AM DOOMED.

I sat down carefully near his legs. I could see the bandages on his thighs through the sheet. I was staring at his eyeglasses stuck into the head bandage. In the beginning my father had refused to even touch his glasses. He said he would never need them again. He would never read again.

AM DOOMED.

“What do you mean, doomed?” Was that me talking? CANCER 2X NOW.

“You beat the rap twice. You’re way ahead,” somebody said.

LOOKED IN MIRROR. MUTILATION HORRIBLE.

“There are many different kinds of scars,” I began. Scars of childhood. Francine’s scars of sitting on the cold stoops of brick buildings in winter. Houses where the refrigerator was always locked. Houses where the ceiling collapsed and mice ran across her head and she wasn’t really surprised, she knew they were there. And scars of the first footprints and tire tracks in the new snow. And scars in the neck, scars across the throat. And scars like an invisible web fallen across Gerald’s lap, a kind of glue in his lap where nothing stirred. “There are physical scars, Daddy. And mental scars, emotional scars.”

I HAVE THEM ALL. I HAVE A 3 HORSE PARLAY GOING.

I sat very still. The blinds were partially open. I could see the new white flowers poking star-shaped through thick-looking vines. The morning was still clear.

SAD SAD SAD. A tear slid down my father’s cheek.

SURGERY MISTAKE. SUCKER BET. My father threw his writing pad on the floor.

I reached for his hand. It felt almost lifeless, brittle, a severed leaf. “Daddy,” I began softly, very softly. I had noticed that loud noises made him nervous and angry. “What are you afraid of? The skin graft is working. They’re going to take out the feeding tube soon. You’ll go home. You’re beating this one.”

My father nodded his head. He seemed to be listening.

“Are you afraid the cancer will come back?” Sprout new branches? Grow more tumbleweed in another place, your lungs perhaps?” I handed my father his writing pad.

INSIDIOUS DISEASE. ALWAYS COMES BACK.

“Doesn’t everything come back in a way?” I said. I wasn’t thinking about the cancer. I was thinking about Venice Beach, the way the waves came up and embraced Picasso. I realized if one stood on Venice Beach long enough the sea would be revealed absolutely. If one stood there long enough sooner or later everything would wash up on shore. The sea’s dead returned as rows of coughed-up white bone. Old beer cans, pieces of galley ships and a strangled long-haired orange and white cat.

WANT 2 DIE.

My father wrote that note in a heavy black scrawl. I pretended not to notice.

AM DYING.

“Nobody knows that,” I said. “It’s a photo finish. I wouldn’t throw away my ticket.”

YOUR TRACK ANALOGIES STINK.

I stared at my father. There was a tiny spark in the center of his too dark eyes. I thought he might be smiling.

The telephone was ringing as I walked into my house. It was Jason, warm and apologetic. Was I angry he didn’t come back last night?

“No,” I said. It occurred to me that a person needed hope to be angry. Anger implied expectations and violations. I wasn’t angry.

“Picasso’s gone. I came back this morning and he was gone,” Jason told me. “You know he always waits for me in the morning.”

Was I supposed to say something? Silence. The quiet space was a whirlpool, some kind of vacuum sucking all the air in, swooshing, eating it all up. In the silence black waves wrapped black ropes around a throat of cracked bones.

“Yeah, old Picasso’s gone. I guess he packed his bags and hit the road.” Jason laughed.

Easy come, easy go, I thought.

“I’m going to check out the rents,” Jason said. “Want to come?”

“No.” My, how easy it was becoming to talk to Jason. A shrug. A grunt. Why, it didn’t require anything at all. “I’ll see you after I paint.” Jason hung up.

I crossed the bridge over Eastern Canal. I crossed Howland and Linnie canals and waited for him to drive away. Then I began carrying his possessions back to his house.

I put his things in a neat pile near the water fountain in his front room. It took six trips to carry everything back. Things were changing, all right, I told myself. I had a pile of hard evidence on the floor near his water fountain. I was becoming certain. When I walked back into my house, the telephone was ringing.

“The old man’s dead,” Jason said.

“The old man?” The room turned black. Why had they called Jason? Jason didn’t even know my father was in the hospital. I was reeling. I was chunks of black ice. And the room was slanting now. There were no edges.

“You know, Gordon? The decrepit old—”

“I know,” I said quickly, said as quickly as I could. The room was slowly returning to a normal color. Mr. Gordon was the old man with a mandolin, wood fine and polished and reddish like a stretched heart. He used to play the mandolin on the roofs in New York in August. He was going to show it to me the last time I saw him. He was looking for it in a back closet but I left. I was afraid to see it.

“He was coming back from his doctor on the bus, on Pacific when—”

“Don’t tell me,” I said, and hung up.

They said it went in threes, didn’t they? If I counted Picasso as the first and Mr. Gordon as the second, there was only one question left. Who was going to be third?

My living room was almost empty. Sunlight spilled across the walls freely, exuberantly. I wondered how I had ever stood the unnecessary clutter. It was much better now. It was airier. It was much easier to breathe, to think clearly and remember.

I stood on my porch. A fat duck floated by, a dark stain on the water. The air was warm. It could have been summer. A dog barked. I felt the sea breeze slowly uncurling and thought if he just lives a few more days, he’ll beat it. Spring would unravel, bewitch and enchant, sun silky across the new wounds. If he could just live a few more days he would eat and walk again. If he could live a few more days he would be victorious. He would be tougher than leather, yes. He would be terribly aged, yes. Crazed, yes. But he would be on his feet, punching. And I was gaining a deep appreciation for being ambulatory. A moving target was considerably harder to hit.

I sat in my bedroom. I became conscious of the clock ticking, ticking, ticking. Ticking like a special secret code. Ticking like small teeth nibbling the dark air. Ticking, the quality of something entering and breaking. The ticking was harsh and whispery. And Daddy had to edge up close to me to speak. He had to put his lips right next to my ear. And Mommy said, when Daddy comes back, he may talk funny. He may talk like Billy. But Billy ate worms. My father wouldn’t eat worms, I knew that.

And the clock was ticking, ticking, ticking. And Francine said, “Listen, kid. Your clock’s ticking. You’re almost thirty. You don’t have forever. A week becomes a month, becomes a year, becomes a life. Define yourself,” my mother said once. Or did she?

I picked up the clock. I threw it on the floor. Then I picked it up and threw it down harder. The fourth time I punched it against the floor, it broke. I realized it didn’t matter anymore what time it was. Time was frozen. It was always now. Terminal now.

The telephone rang. I picked it up with a stiff arm. My hands were shaking. Get it done with, I thought. Butcher the third one and be gone, back to the depths, you bastard, you shark-hearted monster.

“What’s all that crap doing in my painting room?” Jason demanded. He made it sound so exotic, like they weren’t simply boxes but a series of strange tan ornaments.

“I’m just cleaning house,” I said.

“Then you’re not mad.” Jason sounded relieved.

“Of course not,” I said carefully. What in the world do I have to be mad about, mad about, mad about? I howled inside.

“What are you doing?”

I am just thinking about the mind, Jason. Thinking about my father and how night drills and tunnels. How night has harsh sagebrush breath. And my father was pinned in his white hospital bed. A hot wind was blowing. The sirens were screaming. And it was the first moments of April. And I would not let my father die. I would not let him be thrown away like a page from a calendar, cast off with the perfect still squares of February and March.

“I’m thinking,” I said out loud. Yes, Jason. Thinking about the radiated tissue that won’t heal and is opening toward the artery. I was wondering about the skin they took in nice neat squares like white calendar pages from his back and shoulder and thigh.

And they have to build him a new throat or he’ll be stuck with a red plastic feeding tube in his nose forever. And that wouldn’t be a long time. And I’m thinking that I should just tear the phone out of the wall, just sever its stupid thin neck and be done with it, done with it.

“And yourself?” I inquired. My, how nice and formal. Was this the great lull? The calm before the storm. The calm my mother and father settled into right before their divorce. When they stopped shouting and breaking things. When they looked up at the same patch of thin blue sky and realized they saw different dimensions.

“We’ll get dinner. Pick me up in ten minutes,” Jason said.

I felt light and airy. I could let go of the edge of the chair, just unwrap my fingers from their blood-draining tight grip and float to a far wall. Float like light, like smoke, like a big transparent bubble.

I didn’t have a clock anymore. I just left my house and parked my car in the alley behind Jason’s house. I was early. I was always early for him, always waiting. He got into my car.

“Were you painting?” I asked.

“Yep.”

I was driving. “Did you get a lot of work done?” Did you get a beer can perched on a cunt exactly right? Did you find some way to send a rancid shadow through a woman’s thigh? Did you notice I’ve begun hating you? I glanced across the car seat. Jason was staring out the window.

“They repainted the liquor store,” he said, pointing. “See? It’s red and white stripes now.”

My father’s red and white, I thought. Bandages and blood. I felt hot. I wanted a shot. It was a lull.

I parked the car. The market was closing. The lot was practically empty.

“You’re in crooked,” Jason observed.

“I know.” Did he have his sword out? Was it off with my head? And imagine, it wasn’t even dawn yet. “They’re closing the store. There’s only four cars here.” I pointed to the almost deserted parking lot.

“I still don’t like it.” Jason slammed the door shut.

We walked into the market. Two steps forward. Four steps back. I am moth wing. You are fire. You are snow. I’m a steam shovel. Why, it could go on that way indefinitely.

Jason stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re barefoot,” he said. He sounded shocked. He was staring at my bare feet. He looked miserable.

I ignored him. What was he talking about, anyway? I didn’t even have feet. They were white, of course, and somehow attached, but why call them feet? Weren’t they the color and texture of mushrooms? They were a kind of web. They were a form of a pod, clearly a device for locomotion. But then, everything was if you considered time and the wind as part of the equation.

I picked out a shopping cart and began pushing down an aisle. My arms felt very strong and zingalong, zingalong. It wasn’t any trouble at all.

“I don’t like your attitude,” Jason pronounced.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” I kept pushing the cart. “Bare feet one day and who knows what next? The crossing of any boundary. The end of life as we know it.” Did that mean the burial of a father?

“You’re such a bitch,” he said.

“A bitch?” I stopped pushing the cart.

“Shut up,” Jason said.

I shut up. I started pushing the cart again. I was the path to heaven. He was a toll gate. I was a girl wrapped in the skinned white sides of stars. He was a blind troll. I tossed a loaf of bread into the cart.

“Wrong,” Jason said. He was staring at the bread as if I had picked out a big brown turd. He removed the bread from the cart. He replaced it with another, one with a better fiber count, I was certain. One with fewer carcinogenics and preservatives. He had probably heard about it on a consumer affairs program on Channel 28. I almost laughed.

“Everything you do is wrong,” Jason said. “You’re incorrigible.”

I stopped pushing the cart. I stared at him. “Your whole terminology sickens me. What are you? A probation officer?”

We were face to face. It occurred to me that if Jason got angry enough, he wouldn’t spend the night with me.

“You want it one hundred percent your way,” Jason said.

“You are talking about yourself,” I said. And it was echo, echo, echo, echo chamber time again, time again, time again.

“You have no sense of order,” Jason yelled.

“Oh, leave me alone,” I yelled back. I was getting tired. I gave the shopping cart a jab. All at once I didn’t care if he fucked me tonight, or ever.

“I’ll leave you alone, cunt,” Jason screamed. He walked out of the market. I watched him leave. Go, bastard. I hate you. And he was gone. And I was staring at the market door. Everything seemed darkly gouged out and too cold and I wasn’t at all certain.

I had the sensation of sinking into black circles, liquid whirlpools, dark air hissing, the chill, and I thought, now easy, take big breaths. Calm down. It was all a dream. I was wrong. I was dark, too sharp. I was bleeding, seething, mistaken, misshapen. And I’ll go insane without him. The roof will break off and winter strike without warning and the ground dissolve with a small sucking sound. And the earth will be barren, skies clotted with fat yellow clouds of dust and hopping locusts and I’ll die.

I ran into the parking lot. I searched the sidewalk, the street, the gray shadow-driven pavement where haunted fat dark shapes floated. I got into my car, aching and resigned, part of me breaking, breaking.

Jason was lying on the back seat. He was eating a Mars bar. “I really don’t know what to do anymore,” he said.