Lithium for Medea

5

Jason and I live precisely nine hundred and twenty paces from each other; I’ve counted. But distance is always an illusion, relative. Jason and I live with an unspeakable gulf between us, a black space that might be filled with rows of stainless-steel spikes.

I think of my life with Jason in terms of eras, distinct blocks of time marked by unique characteristics. I look at our life the way geologists look at rocks. Still, a certain amount of dust settles, a fine layer of silt and sediment obscuring and graying. There is a loss of clarity. It becomes difficult to remember.

“I’ll never get married,” Jason said.

It was the beginning, the first era, when I lived in the Westwood duplex where Francine had installed me, wingless and hopeless. What was she going to do with me? I not only wasn’t ascending; I looked as if I might be leaning in that other direction, toward burial. I had divorced Gerald. I had returned to flat Los Angeles plan-less and futile. It was the reign of Richard Nixon. I waxed my new floors. The war went on. I stared out windows, watching the tops of palm trees sway like greasy strips of confetti. I kept waiting for something to happen.

“I must be free,” Jason informed me.

It was toward the end of my life in Westwood. I was edging into something new. He came to my apartment without calling. Sometimes he simply opened my refrigerator, made a sandwich and disappeared again for days. Sometimes he stayed for a week. I wandered through my apartment feeling like a guest, a newly arrived lodger waiting for my room key in a downstairs lobby.

“I’ll make you walk on eggshells. I do it to everybody. I’ll make the world a minefield for you. Help me,” Jason implored.

I opened my arms and rocked him and cooed softly. Jason was like a skittish horse. I was afraid that the first time I looked him directly in the eye and said no he would bolt. I learned to take small noiseless steps. My mouth felt glued shut.

I wanted to nest with him, to cuddle him and cushion myself by lying secure in the warm dark center of his life. In his absence I was a somnambulist. I pressed the shirt he chanced to leave against my face and filled my lungs with his smell, his shaving lotion and sweat, sunlight and the undefinable, duck squawks and sunsets and honeysuckle coating a high wire fence. I rocked his shirt against my breast like a child. At this time, in that distant and blank era, I envisioned washing his morning breakfast dishes as a holy task, a profound purification ritual. I wanted to merge our lives.

“Swallow me, you mean,” Jason has often accused. “You wanted to stuff and mount me, hang me on a wall.”

Perhaps he is right. I know I longed for him, leaped and lunged for him, needed him as I needed to breathe. When Jason talked to me I thought cherries in summer, a slow swaying hammock, mint juleps and yes, you are master, take curry and just-baked bread and love me, love me.

If my words offend you now or ever, then forget them. They are lies, confusions. You know women. I was unwell. Does my body please? I’ll change it for you. I’ll thin down or fatten. Look, my skin will tan and firm simply by your command. I am yours, yours. I’ll do anything. I’ll grow new memories for you, cell by cell. I’ll invent a new history with more laughter and more bells, more sunlight and sails. Watch me dream of drawers fat with socks that always match. I will be Scheherazade at five A.M. I am yours, yours.

“You’re a romantic and I’m a sensualist,” Jason explained. “That’s the whole problem.”

Jason had dropped by. I had been waiting all evening, sitting in a chair facing the front door, naked with a white feather boa draped around my neck and rings on my fingers, bracelets on my trembling arms, hands wrapped around the same melted-down Scotch in the same hot glass, waiting, waiting. We made love near the door standing up. We made love in bed. I was the shore and he was the ocean and I was eroding. My hidden parts opened glistening, a collection of starsides, a whirlpool, a phenomenon, girl, girl, girl.

At the end of our first year, after that initial period of probation, I moved into my house on Eastern Canal. Jason’s second house. The Woman’s House, he called it. The house where all Jason’s women have lived during the past twelve years.

It would be almost like living together, Jason explained, but better. There would be no domestic quarrels, none of the trivia of an ordinary marriage, the dull predictable routines and all that goddamned bourgeois gray. We would stay viable human beings in our separate but equal ways, identities intact, free to come and go as we pleased.

I lived in a continual state of terror. Jason peered at me through eyes black from anger. He looked like a man slowly realizing he’s been cheated of his estate, his birthright, his goddamned destiny. Every time Jason left my apartment in Westwood, every single time the door closed, I thought I would never see him again.

Then I moved into the Woman’s House on Eastern Canal. From the top of the bridge in front of my house I could see his red roof.

“Nothing’s changed,” Jason cautioned, “but proximity.”

He smiled, pleased with himself, as if he had invented that particular cliché. We both laughed. Jason laughed because he thought he was clever, witty and way ahead. He thought he was a silver bullet. I laughed because I felt superior. I smiled blankly while yelling and kicking and howling inside. I was encased in my private pretense of silence, a kind of form-fitting metal, my own brand of armor. I dedicated myself to becoming indispensable, subtly, at the periphery. He began to need my intensity, my passion. Being loved excited him. Jason sensed the energy and power in it. It made him feel strong. He was anchored. I was there. He could drift.

“I’m with you almost every night,” Jason said.

I nodded, not satisfied. We had driven north along the Pacific Coast Highway. We sat on rocks in the sun at the ocean’s edge under a sky erased of depth. Sailboats slid slowly toward the Orient. I wanted to leap up and yell, let’s get on a boat and eat rice and raw fish and sleep on straw mats all night holding hands.

“Let’s get on a boat and sail away.”

“I don’t like boats,” Jason said.

Jason’s hair looked red in the sun. I wanted him to say he needed me. I wanted him to say, tell me everything, how you grew to your strange adulthood on streets of birches, streets of red fallen leaves clotting the wide lawns of gray stone houses. Tell me about your sled, I wanted Jason to beg. And the snow that fell, the fire with logs smelling of pine and clouds.

I wanted Jason to say, let it rise from ash, mysterious. I wanted him to press tight my swollen forehead and seal the dark and broken. I wanted Jason to say, let the gray shake apart like a shell. Come to me, darling. I will show you how to howl at nightfall and know the moon as our mother and dance the marble tides the sky provides for certain people.

“I need you.”

“I know.” Jason turned away. “It’s tedious.”

I reached out to touch his body bathed in sun. He stood up.

“I’ve got to paint now.” He was already moving.

When I think of Jason, he is always in motion. Jason, pacing, restless. Jason, the mystery, the bastard, father unknown. Jason with his birth certificate stating that he arrived on the planet on the thirteenth day of May in Los Angeles. That year, the thirteenth day was a Friday. Jason often points to the date with its traditional aura of superstition and bad luck as if admitting his sense of stain. It exists within him, black and sharp, a kind of hard evidence.

Jason is a small man, two inches shorter than I am, even when I am barefoot. He is a man locked in a boy’s body, a body he has exercised and pushed into abnormal strength in some endless rite of compensation, a rebellion, a kind of holding action against a buffoon fate. Jason’s shoulders are broad as those of a man a full head taller. I have watched Jason build his enormous canvases and carry them over his head through his studio, dwarfed beneath his paintings and arrogant, balancing them easily.

“I’m a bastard,” Jason often began, beguiling, voice soft, face opened, beckoning, smiling. It was one of his routines. Everyone in Los Angeles has an act, a polished five-minute cocktail-party or agent’s-office version of his life. Jason had several.

“No, I really am a bastard,” he would say, slyly, reciting his story of his unknown origins, the possibilities locked within him, past denied.

“I’ve always lived here, by the sea. I was a beach brat. I was born riding the peak of a crest of a wave. I was born with salt in my eyes. No, I mean it. I was conceived right down there on that beach. Six years old and surfing. It’s all that sea in me. That’s what makes my eyes change color. I’ve got waves inside. The ocean runs through me, man.” Jason called everybody man, particularly women. Sooner or later, generally sooner, Jason would find his way into sex.

“We used to cruise the boardwalk when we were thirteen, fourteen. Let guys blow us under the pier for fifty bucks. I’ve made it with two chicks at once. Things happen when you’re painting on the pier and boardwalk. You’d be surprised.”

At some point in his routine, Jason would let his bombshell fall. “I’ve done everything. But the only thing I’ve ever cared about is painting.”

It was a good line. He had been using it for years. The first time was when he was valedictorian of his class at Venice High. “This is all gratifying on some level,” he said that day, in the high school auditorium, to a sea of white faces draped in black gowns, “but I’m just planning to paint.”

Yes, painting. That was where Jason gave his image depth. He was an artist. He was permitted excesses, idiosyncrasies, lusts and addictions. He traveled to a different drum, all right. And if the woman he was talking to seemed receptive — and it was odd how Jason had the ability to find precisely the woman who would be open to him — he would ask her to pose for him.

“What do you think my painting is?” Jason demanded once. “Just some fancy way to get laid?” He was outraged.

Once I took Jason to Francine’s house for dinner. It was a terrible mistake. They began badly and it got worse.

“I understand you’re a painter,” Francine began. This was the first man I had ever brought to her house, her new house, with the glass-sided dining room looking down on the city, the lights below an eruption of reds and ambers and violets.

“Yep.”

“What do you paint?”

“Canvases.”

“What is your subject matter? Your artistic concerns?” We were still on the hors d’oeuvres.

“Still lifes. Surfboards and rafts, tits and ass.” Jason put another cracker in his mouth.

Pause.

“What do you think of the Impressionists? Monet? Degas? Cezanne?”

“They had their moments,” Jason said. He was eating the last of the cracked crab.

“What about their statement?” Francine pushed.

“Getting out of bed in the morning is a statement.”

Pause.

“Do you sell?” Francine’s hands had begun trembling.

“Sell what?”

“Your paintings.”

“Oh.” Jason began working on his salad. “Nope. Not too often.”

“What do you sell?” Francine was getting pale. It wasn’t like talking to Gerald at all.

“What are you interested in?” Jason gave Francine his big smile. “I’ve sold a lot of things. Stolen surfboards when I was ten, eleven. Stolen bicycles. Later motorcycles, cars, property. I’ve sold grass from the ounce to moving three hundred fifty kilos a week. I’ve sold sex. Hey.” Jason looked at me for the first time. “Did I tell you about the dudes I knew who were into white slavery? Stealing chicks and taking them across the border. They had camps down there in the mountains guarded by machine guns. Planes would come and fly the chicks out. They wanted me to go on a run with them. But I was doing the kilo trip then.”

“What exactly are your plans for my daughter?” Francine demanded. “She’s getting too old to pimp.”

We had finished the salad. The roast beef was next.

“I got no plans for your daughter,” Jason said. He looked offended. He forked a large piece of meat onto his plate.

It was becoming clear to Francine that Jason had not come to ask for my hand in holy matrimony. She was very pale. She was so angry she couldn’t eat. “Are you telling me you’re just going to use my daughter as you please?”

“She likes how I use her. And”—Jason forked another piece of meat onto his plate-“I’m not a humanitarian institution. I take care of myself. Period.”

We didn’t stay for the strawberry shortcake. “What a plastic cunt,” Jason observed as we drove home. “Now I see why you’re so sick,” he said without sympathy.

“I never want to see that punk again,” Francine told me the next day. “And I mean never. To think you let rancid garbage like that touch you. Don’t you feel contaminated? Aren’t you afraid of getting some kind of disease from someone like that?”

Perhaps that is when the schizophrenia set in. The night I sat at the dinner table with Jason and Francine, the night they spoke about me in the third person, as if I weren’t there. And I wasn’t. Who sat silently in the chair simply listening?

I thought there would be just two worlds then, the one with Francine and the one with Jason. I thought I could control the splitting and branching off, the places in me that seemed battered and ruined, the channels in my flesh that felt glued together, somehow bricked shut. I thought I could control Jason, myself, my passion and my contempt. I was trying to remember exactly how the splitting began, accelerated and took on a life of its own, when the telephone rang.

“He’s going to die, I know it,” Francine said, tearful and drunk.

“Even money says he’ll make it.”

“Don’t jerk yourself off. Be prepared for the worst.”

Francine believes in preparing for the worst. After all, she was deserted in childhood. After all, she was a foster child, taken in by Irish and Italian families who only wanted her for the forty extra dollars a month the state provided for her room and board. She spent her childhood among illiterates and drunks who starved her, beat her and never gave her a key to a house, not even in winter. And she didn’t have the money for tampons and stuffed toilet paper between her too thin legs and thought she would never live until March, until the snow stopped and sun warmed the dull brown streets. After all, her right arm is permanently damaged, after the day she slipped on the ice, after the day and night she screamed and cried and begged before the foster parents took her to a doctor, before they set the compound fracture. To this day she cannot zip up the back of a dress by herself and the arm still hurts. And just when she thought she could take a rest, let her guard down, her husband got cancer and went broke.

She knows what it is all about. Let the world sift through the garbage and lies. She keeps her money in different banks. Her cupboards are stocked with canned goods and bottled water in case of earthquakes or wars, in case of depressions or invasions. Francine has a.38 revolver. She has detailed plans, with alternate and emergency subplans.

“Francine,” I began, feeling weak, feeling the room start to spin. “I’m tired.”

“You’re tired? You don’t even have a real job. I did two tapings today. I had a budget conference. I looked at film.”

“I know.” I tried again. I took a deep breath. “Your energy is astounding.”

“I’ve got no fucking energy. I’m half dead.” She began to cry. “He’s going to die. Painfully, horribly. I can feel it in my bones. This is it, kid.”

“Mother, calm down.”

“It’s a punishment. Him and you. My childhood wasn’t enough. Heap it on me. Bury me in catastrophe.”

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” I glanced at the clock. It was ten-thirty.

“How can I sleep? Martin’s coming in from Boston tonight. He’s probably in a cab right now.” Francine seemed to be regaining her control. “You know,” she whispered, “Martin is very fond of me. He’s a very important man. He’s on the board of fourteen major companies.” Francine named them, one by one. “Harvard Law School. The whole WASP bit. He thinks I’m exotic. That’s what he told me last time I saw him, in Chicago. He said I was exotic in the best sense of the word. What do you think that means?”

“He wants to fuck you even though you’re Jewish.” And crazy, I added mentally.

“You’re vulgar,” Francine said, sobering up. “And so resentful. You can’t stand it that men find me so attractive.” Francine lowered her voice. “Men have always found me attractive. I have a special quality, a certain magnetism. I’ve always had it. Even in the foster homes, even wearing rags from strangers and hanging around street corners hustling guys for dinner. I just ate and disappeared. I had to do that to survive. Just food and then I disappeared. God, I was hungry, always hungry. I weighed ninety-three pounds when I married your father. I guess you blame me for it. You blame me for everything. Five foot eight and ninety-three pounds. Every winter, I thought I’d die.”

“Mother—”

“Of course, you blame me for everything. That’s the basis of your whole pathetic life, trying to stick it to me. That’s why you live in a slum with that sick little maniac. It’s all to punish me. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Please.” I noticed my hand was clenched so hard the blood had drained out. My fingers were sheet white.

“Of course, you think I’m stupid. Because I didn’t get spoonfed at some college? I’m in MENSA. You know what that is? It’s a special society for geniuses. They verified my IQ at 168. Less than one percent of the population has an IQ that high.”

“I’ve always been proud of your IQ,” I said, digging my fingernails into the palms of my hand. The pain was intense. It helped distract me from the pain of talking to Francine.

“One day, you’ll realize. One day, when I’m dead. And it’s going to happen sooner than you think. One day, at my desk, with the fucking telephones all ringing at the same time, I’ll keel over, a heart attack. You go like that.”

“I don’t feel well.”

“Your father’s dying. He’s the one who doesn’t feel well. But then, that’s typical. You never could face reality. Even as a kid. Why do I keep expecting anything from you? You’ve never given me one moment of love or solace. I jack myself off thinking you’ll start now.” Francine began to cry again. “You don’t even think Martin cares for me.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You think I’m just a piece of ass for him? I got news for you. He’s a very busy man. He’s deliberately stopping in L.A. just to see me. He has to hold up a conference in Honolulu to do it. You think a guy from Harvard Law School with a Boston town house and an estate in Virginia has to hustle a piece of ass?”

Suddenly Francine’s voice changed. “The bell!” she exclaimed, all at once thirty years younger, breathless, a teen-ager with a big, perfect lavender corsage on her way to the prom. She hung up without saying good-bye.

Somewhere, my father was curled up in a small ball, asleep on the sofa. I hoped the surgeon was getting a good night’s sleep. I walked outside. I crossed the bridge near my house and zigzagged down Howland Canal. I stood on the broken sidewalk near Jason’s house, on the opposite side of the canal, the water black and final between us. Jason’s lights were on. I walked home quickly and telephoned him.

Jason answered cheerfully. Jason invariably answers the phone with rare optimism, as if continually prepared for the great moment, some ultimate offering. What is he expecting? A stranger’s voice informing him that he’s just won a prize in a painting festival? The big break? A new woman? An old woman?

“What do you want?” Jason asked, cold and flat.

I assumed Jason had a woman with him. He’s always nervous when he has a woman with him and I call, as if, after all this time, I’m going to rush across the bridges and broken sidewalks and storm through the front door hysterical, with a gun and a paternity suit, screaming he’s the one, he’s the one.

“Something terrible has happened,” I began. It was very hard to talk.

“It’s always terrible for you,” Jason said, talking much too fast. “The sky’s falling. The ground’s cracking. The moon is sending you messages. Look.” Jason decided to change his tack. “Could we take this from the top tomorrow?”

After a moment I said sure.

Outside, the sea breeze was rising, brisk and curled up like a wave. Everything felt black — the wind, the air, the inside of my body. I was cold. My bones ached. My bones felt chilled at their centers as if the blood was somehow leaking into them.