Lunar Follies

TYCHO

A photograph in the corner of the apartment, cloudy, dark, difficult to make out: In a room filled with haze, a woman in a low chair, her face in her hand in a familiar female posture, weeping — again, familiarly — bitterly. She weeps for Buddy, her dead son, killed at the age of sixteen in a fall from the parallel bars that at one time graced, God knows why (perhaps to kill Buddy) every public high-school gym in New York. “My Buddy,” she whispers, bitterly weeping. Life, despite its vaunted pleasures, can be monstrous and ruthless, utterly without pity or solace, despite sunsets and cool forests. The days are long since he died, long. The room’s haze seems to thin or lighten, but then it is again precisely as it was, so it probably never changed at all. (As if a photograph could show such changes!) She thinks about her son all through the day, the days, every day, her obsession is said to be “unhealthy,” an “unhealthy obsession.” So much for assistance from friends and providers of assistance. The world, and we know exactly what “the world” is, prefers that everybody rid oneself of anything that might even hint at “unhealthy obsession,” no matter the form it may take. It wants everybody to fall in! dress right dress! ready front! cover! You girls gon’ soldier or you’ll be doin’ close-order all night! No room for obsessions here, of any sort, that’s what “the world” wants. But she misses his voice, she misses the touch of his hand. Maybe she’ll come out of this funk, this depression, this despair, and become, once again, a valuable, contributing member of society, with a great deal, oh, a great deal to give to same. In the meantime, while society waits, Buddy, her sweet, handsome, funny Buddy, nobody quite so true, is dead; and, although, as a good Catholic, she knows that he must be in heaven with God and all His angels, he’s not here. He’s not here! She thinks about him all through the day. But now, wait, we discover that this is a photograph of — what? — a man shielding his eyes from the sunlight that enters the small room through a worn, almost transparent, window shade. He is thinking about something, but what? He is thinking about the woman whose photograph he is gazing at, holding it at an angle, away from the glare of the sun. She is in a low chair, bitterly weeping. He has looked at the photograph every day for months, an “unhealthy obsession.”