Chapter Twenty-six
A colonial sofa with an arched wooden back; the dark drapes absorbing the light that would have saturated the living room; Ravel's Bolero playing lightly from her CD; and a fly above vher face…cacooning there, she could only focus on little monads of reality at a time: now it was pulling back the hair out of the face and toward her pillowed head; comparing her thoughts to the over-shuffling of Tarot cards flying off in all directions, the choping of meat at a butcher's shop, or the static of television stations intruding into each other; and the recent and recurrent memory of MF (visibly older but obviously easily recognizable when she saw him in the audience while making her address from the podium). For ten or eleven hours now there was pain and the slow scattering of her thoughts was as a child on a beach with a fist full of sand who discovers his souvenir has been ebbing out of the cracks between his fingers.
She could not shoo away the pesty fly that was as pesty as Mormon flies (those sententious dragon fly missionaries who had knocked on her door earlier that week—Nauvoo, Illinois, Mormon flies so succulent and "so fuckable," whom she had reluctantly rejected from her door). The migraine was intense and she could only lay there in her tomb. Her sterile thoughts were filth. Her harmonic bliss in aloneness was, in illness, devestating and lonely as one suffering in solitary confinement. Within her sickness earlier suppositions about the world discomfited her. They mutated into something less than worms and hid themselves in her gray matter.
Powerless—she who years earlier had been an avid racketball player, criminology and psychology scholar, and a forger of a new destiny, an individual who had made a success by embellishing her inner self in marketable products on canvas—here she was lying on a sofa unable to even successfully shoo away a fly. The weak thing she had become, she tried to suck it into her mouth. She tried to use the human mouth as a vaccum cleaner as this fly incessantly tried to land on the contours of her face. She put a hand over her face and turned on her side. "Come away with me!" she imagined MF as saying. "Come away with me, the two of us out of this pase place!" And again, as throughout her illness, the thought of him was as a light beyond the tunnel. She did not know the reason for it. She had only spoken to him once beyond the service she had initially given to the widower in her previous profession. They hadn't spoken at the funeral. Even though she could have met him again through parent teacher conferences she had delegated these sessions to Hispanic Betty.
The previous night had been an extroverted evening: a reception at a temporary art exhibition where many of her works were on display and then a speech she gave to art students, faculty, and others interested in her art at a university in Albany. She told them that successful art could be a natural propensity or from just learning to paint when not having a natural propensity for it at all (usually something in between) + dispensing with any conventions that stifled an unbiased and uninhibited desire to play in ideas and see the wonder of everything anew. She supported her premise with quotations from Emerson, Thoreau, and myriad artists. It was a typical speech presented and specifically catered to those who yearned to hear motifs stressing independence even if it bordered on the absurd. To her the self should be married and revered but seeking uniqueness in a forest like a post Taoist or post Transcendentalist was to seek it from an external force. Still such was her audience and she would prostitute herself to them a little bit.
As she was listening to Ravel's "Pavane pour une Infante Defunte" she heard the doorbell. She knew that she could not get up without the most trying effort so, staring at the fire alarm some seconds, she finally raised herself briefly. She pushed the "test" button and continued to press it for a long moment of a sonorous outcry. Was her door unlocked? She hoped it was and wasn't. She heard a door open and footsteps. She returned to the sofa. She wondered if it might be a bill collector, a life insurance salesman, or a well endowed and handsome rapist. A whole host of other possibilities entered her head. She told herself that whoever it was, thief or saint, if this person weren't scared away by the fire alarm, she would demand that he or she go buy her some asprin. Surely it wasn't Lily. She hadn't spoken to her for so long and she would never be able to figure out how to get to this city let alone her home. Was that it? Had she used Rita/Lily to fulfill her limited social requirements and then dumped her, figuratively, on the side of the freeway linking to Albany? Had she forgotten about her when there were other people in her life? Were all humans this way? Was there no such thing as caring? She heard further steps pursue the top story…or was she imagining them? She wanted to push the fire alarm again—it didn't make sense but in her pained mind the sound of the fire alarm would make robbers leave and Zulu witch doctors with instantaneous and magical remedies appear. She did not, however, have the energy and that fly kept buzzing around her ears. She kept swatting it but missing it each time. The footsteps were those of a man's. She heard boot soles clunking hurriedly up the stairs under her miniature chandalier. Were they Michael's footsteps? No, surely not and yet she hoped they were all the same. There before her, in leather boots,was Hispanic Betty.
"Fuego! Levantese, senora. Hay un fuego en su casa, dama."
"Oh, it is you, Hispanic Betty. There isn't a fire, you silly deranged fool."
"No, hay un fuego.I heard the fire bell."
"Oh, all right. Just trying to get your attention." She had to muster up all her strength to make her ideas cohesive and sensible. She smiled with the full manipulation of her white fangs. "Please go after some asprin. I swear I can't take much more of this without some relief. El dolor esta desmasiado. Por favor compreme unos asprina a la 7-11 convenience tienda." She closed her eyes. Words were arduous feats.
"Esta usted enferma otra vez?"
"Yeah, sick again. I thought you were on vacation. No desea ir el vacaciones?"
"Purse. La otra noche perdi mi monedero."
"Yeah, I saw your purse, tu bolsa upstairs—arriba la escalera; but run to the convenience store or the grocery store for the asprin— whatever is quickest. Rapidamente!"
"No, dama. Hoy no tengo trabajar hasta cinco."
"For Pete's sake usted es terrible perezosa. You are floja-lazy floja, floja-lazy."
"I'm not none floja, please Miss. I'm your good illegal trabajadora. Don't throw me in the streets."
Gabriele again thought of having figuratively tossed the carcass of Rita/Lily into the thickets of weeds on the embankment."Please, Hispanic Betty, as one of our family go out to get it and then you can have the day off hasta cinco por la tarde."
"You won't fire me now for looking floja?"
"Not if you filfill my fucking request and get the goddamn asprin."
After she took the asprin she got some relief. She had Hispanic Betty get Nathaniel ready for summer school and then she sent him off in a taxi herself. When both were gone she ate a little something. When she recovered more of her strength her mind was still very groggy and painting was far removed from the agenda of the day. Since there was no painting there was no agenda and so she began to clean the house. Inaction, she thought, might lead to a void. A void in the proper state of mind could lead a strong person to philosophic discoveries and a strengthening of one's fortitude; but in weakness a void required energy to escape, and so it was best to keep busy. She saw that a string of cobwebs was dangling from one of the elements of the chandalier. She looked at it, and not knowing how to get up there she decided that this was not a good place to start on a day when one happened to be sick; and so she went into Nathaniel's room.
In the room she dusted everything from the little volkswagon that ran on D batteries to the breeches of the stuffed animal, Pluto. When she opened one of his desk drawers she discovered a child's book called "Heroes of the Bible." It was published by the Latter Day Saints. She wondered whether these dragon flies were so insecure that they even needed children to validate the stories they projected into their minds. Religious minds not only projected such stories onto all the walls of their brains but cast themselves as more Disney characters into this metaphysical film within the most salient roles. God that destroyed humanity in the flood so that something "good" might generate from it; Abraham who was ready to sacrifice his son to any arbitrary and barbaric whim that this godly tyrant entertained—the Bible was camauflaged brutality as was this book that catalogued Joseph to Joseph Smith. Plato would call it more misrepresentation of the gods and yet she couldn't call it libel, slander, or misrepresentation if there was no god and nothing to misrepresent. She took a break and had some bread and grape juice like one more cannibal eating Jesus' 2000 year old body and drinking the virulent tonic of his 2000 year old blood. She resented the Mormon flies for having given her son that book and yet she knew that sometimes people could be positively influenced by something at a certain stage that years later would be beneath them.
She told herself that since Hispanic Betty would be back at 5:00 she could spend the day recuperating in a park. She would not be missed. When he needed his bicycle fixed it was Hispanic Betty whom he turned to. Just the other evening she saw him drag a tent out of the garage. She asked if she could help him. "Hispanic'll do it," he said.
"Well, I'm rather good at such things—repelling, camping, and you name it as long as its outside the house."
"S'not an issue. She's good at everything. You're not needed," he said and the words resonated deep into the far reaches of herself where she remembered Peggy saying, "They don't want you so they pawned you here so quit blubbering for them. I opened our door to you; fought with my husband when I didn't want you here either—and look what you did to me. Look again! Pen marks on this upholstery.You ruined the sofa—a two hundred year old piece of furniture because you don't have sense enough to take pens out of your pants." She remembered all those years where she was this pariah absconding into her room. She remembered this second war where they laughed and ridiculed her every move and how Peggy never acknowledged it was happening. She remembered how Peggy's husband had one day come to her and tried to undress her and that she bit him which invited his fullest hatred of her. From that day onward there wasn't a comfortable moment. Even at Christmas this "uncle" excoriated her for sitting with the rest. She had to sit in a corner of the room and hide in books and distant places. She wanted to tell Peggy about how he had drooled over her with his wet slobbering eyes and then tried to undress her, the biting, and how the biting had led to more contempt. But she was wise. She knew that there was no use broaching this subject any more than shedding any feelings over the decapitation of the Turk. She was all alone in the world and the choices were to kill herself or to become immune to others and not let them affect her and she chose the latter path.
At the park she swam for a short time in the swimming pool. Gleaming studfish of the Spandex species were everywhere and their gleaming bodies magically invoked within her sexual feelings—each in his own way. Then she sat along a lake watching row boats stir the waters that were turned to silver in the sunlight and joggers running on a road that was to her right. Her womanly instincts wondered what life would be like to be involved with one of such studly apparitions. She disregarded such lowly inclinations by walking around the park. She followed loud pop music and then with a hundred others she did some aerobics according to the movements of the teacher on his wooden platform and then, exhausted, she lay in the shade of the trees. She became aware of feathery leaves, angular leaves, paddle shaped leaves and the fronds of palms and ferns. She briefly fell asleep and when she awoke those leaves had become a silhouette. She felt blessed to be in such beautiful variety and the ostensible plan that went into it, or at any rate, "one hell of a variety from adaptation"; and this healed and restored her. As she watched runners also fade into silhouettes she yearned for the mystery of their movement. She wanted to run to foreign countries and escape this God sanctioned superpower that school children were brainwashed into believing as better than all other countires. She wanted to peak inside these foreign lands and say "Hi" to its denizens.
She went into a bathroom in a McDonald's restaurant and changed into more formal clothes. Then she went shopping at Sax. The outlandish prices to the clothing of super rich snobs appealed to her, as it had before, but when she got back to her car she was reminded that they were just foder for covering nakedness.
By chance she saw that a travel agency was still open and she stepped into it. Photographs of Peru, Mexico, Egypt, Italy, and China graced her. Where would she go? Should she take her son with her as part of his education? No, she told herself. This would be a contemplative retreat.
A week later she went from New York to San Fransisco; San Fransisco to Tokyo; and then Tokyo to Bangkok. She took in temples and Buddhas via the river boat bus, the Chao Phraya Express. She saw opulent skyscrapers and she meandered through labyrinths of tackey tin and wooden cobbled shacks along the river. She saw two young boys with Butch haircuts in dark blue shorts and light blue shirts embracing each other as they walked closer than lovers, emaciated and fur-lost dogs beaten with sticks and then shoved into large racket and burlap bag instruments like butterfly nets. She watched the dog catchers dump the hounds into wooden crates, uniformed teenagers in sidewalk restaurants enjoying the process, coconut tonic vendors putting straws in the cut cocunut shells and fruit on a stick salesmen pushing their glass ice and fruit carts. She spent most of her time downtown. On the sidewalk she saw men's underwear sprawled on a table top that was balanced by one of those plastic stools used as chairs at sidewalk restaurants or those for tired sidewalk salesmen. "I wish I had the man in the undies" she said aloud to her amusement. Then she passed containers of raw fish on ice next to the sharkfin restaurant. A young man who gained a commission from bringing in the masses into the restaurant said, "Fish! good!" He was so palpable and so much in her reach. She turned toward him and stopped. She put her hand on his chest and slid it down to his waist. "Fish good, you say?" she asked and then giggled like an embarrassed school girl for she was embarrassed by her own temerity. "Fish very good!" said the google and glaze eyed fish salesmen. He put his fingers into the waste line of his pants and jiggled them in a couple seductive bounces. Outside of the fomenting of her own sensuality, she felt the imagined spirit of Buddha permeating everything like a warm wind.
After three days here she went from Bangkok to Rome. Her world was that other world, that etheral world consisting of the highest apogee of man, that which was least in his making and yet here it was manifest in tangible objects from one museum to another. This was her idea of heaven: to be fully in that small realm of one's mind where true beauty existed and within a city where others, some living and most dead, had also engaged in that area of the brain and produced objects so splendid. At a Burger King a block away from such a museum she bought a couple vegie-burgers, an apple pie turnover, and a chocolate shake. When they were deposited on her tray she turned and walked to an empty table. Near it she stopped with mouth agape. There at an adjacent table were Rick and his father, MF.