“Roughage.” Concamadine was foraging for something in her mouth with a finger. Lenore looked back down at the book.
“Membrane, Concamadine,” Lenore said, trying to make her voice deep. “I say to you ‘membrane.’ ”
“Roughage.”
LaVache Beadsman had said, years ago, that Lenore hated Concamadine because Concarnadine looked like her. True, Concarnadine’s hair was long and full and curled down all over the shoulders of her pink bathrobe, where Lenore’s was of course shorter and brown and hung in two large curls to meet in points below her chin. But Concamadine’s actual face was Lenore’s face, too, more or less, the less being a dust of wrinkles at the comers of Concamadine’s eyes and two deep smile-furrows from the corners of her mouth down into her jaw.
“Lenore hates Concamadine because Concarnadine looks like her,” LaVache had said to John, in the east wing, while Lenore read by the window and listened. “Lenore identifies with her in some deep and scary way.”
“Then are we invited to extend the same reasoning to your relationship with Dad?” John had said with a laugh. “Since we all know that you’re basically just Dad’s image in a tiny little mirror.”
LaVache had moved in, brandishing the leg. And Lenore had watched Miss Malig, current in her fingers, iodine in her eyes, descend, restore order.
“Oh, Lenore.”
Lenore looked up from the book. “Pardon?”
“Roughage roughage.” The bathrobe was now up over her knees, knees that looked to be covered with the kind of gray skin usually found at the backs of elbows.
Obstat’s voice was in the hall. Lenore could hear the wet sound of Mr. Bloemker doing something to his own face. Protruding from the edge of the frame of the door, she could see, was the bottom of Mr. Bloemker’s brown sportcoat. The floor of the doorway looked dusted with a faint black that trailed out into the hall. Lenore wished Concamadine’s room were cleaner.
“ ‘And this is how it happened that Billy Mink went dinnerless to bed. But he had learned three things, had Billy, and he never forgot them—that wit is often better than skill; that it is not only mean but is very foolish to sneer at another; and that to lose one’s temper is the most foolish thing in the world.’ ”
Lenore watched steam chug out of Concamadine’s humidifier and turn pale yellow in the light of the glass wall. The steam made her think of another room.
“What should we do, Gramma C. ?”
Concamadine smiled beautifully and plucked at the papery skin on the backs of her hands. Lenore watched her roll her head back and forth at the ceiling, for joy.
/c/
10 September
Shall we begin, then. Calves. Posture. Scent. Sounds amid fields of light.
One. Calves. Shall we discuss the persistent habit the light of the sun had of reflecting off Mindy Metalman’s calves. Thus then the calves themselves. An erotic surface being neither dull nor hard. A dull surface equalling no reflection; a hard surface equalling a vulgar, glinting spangle.
But a reflection from soft, smooth—perfectly shaved smooth—perfectly clean suburban skin. Light off the shins of her calves as said calves projected their curves from chairs, or scissored the air above clogs that made solid sounds in the sidewalk ... or yes go ahead hung over the edge of the country club pool, pressing, so that the flesh of the calf behind swelled out and made the reflection two ovals of light.
I pull a new red-eyed Vance Vigorous from the pool, and as we enter into com-dog negotiations there is Mindy Metalman, in a deck chair, sipping something cold through a straw, and there is the light of the Scarsdale sun, reflecting from her smooth shins, and I am elsewhere as Vance shrinks on the deck.
Heavy of necktie, I rise from the plume over baby Vance’s crib to see Mindy Metalman, and yes perhaps two or three incidental neighborhood children around her, for decoration, doing her Circe dance around Rex Metalman’s sprinkler. And yes there is the light, reflected from her legs through the water, and the light comes out and breaks the mist of the sprinkler into color, and the mist and the light settle into the wet grass and the light remains and affects the air around it; I see it even much later as I sip something from my den window and watch Rex on his knees in the trampled, sprinkled, misted lawn, straightening each precious bent blade with tweezers. And in the breeze of late afternoon my own chaotic blades vibrate in sympathy.
From my den window, here, is to be seen Mindy Metalman, at her own window, seated on her desk, legs up and calves demurely thrust curving over the sill of the open pane, shaving in the sun. She sees me across the fence and laughs. Fresh air does absolutely everything good, doesn’t it? And here the blade moves down, too slowly by far to be taken seriously by me, for whom the whole process is a rite entirely other, but at any rate each furrow of foam in the curving field is replaced by an expanse of soft shaved gold, in the light.
Calves, light, legs, light, everything will be all right.
Two. Posture. Am invited by Rex Metalman to a cotillion for his daughter, Melinda Susan Metalman. (Was it a real cotillion? Why can’t I remember?) Am invited by Rex Metalman to some Puberty-Rite function for his daughter.
Said function consisting of row after row, group after group, whole nations of tired, nervous, bad-postured girls in immoderate pink gowns. Thin, heads thrust out, hands resting on one another’s shoulders, lips moving just inside one another’s ears. I squint a bit over my third or fourth something and am in a tinkling, frosted swamp, a cold pond of candy flamingos, flowers of snow, slowly hardening under a varied crystal sun. Then the girls change and become for a while vaguely reptilian, heads out like turtles, vaguely amphibian, seeming ever to scan for threat or reward—pimples to be seen at some of the comers of some of the mouths.
Yes and of course the key here is except for Mindy Metalman, who was in a white gown, with a carnation of pink sugar, and her hair pulled up in a tight bun, but with a burst of a black curl here, and there, and here, hinting at the dark nova the hair could become at any time, should someone outside my influence wish it.
And Melinda Metalman standing straight, with a straight spine, but for the swan’s curve of her neck and the bit of the hip-shot pelvis with which she pummeled the unwary, a solid, straight, juicy girl, her gown just low enough to afford the thinking man imaginative access to the systems that must have lain just within, revolving broad and silent about their still red point. And, and this posture—what was it about a head, with its dark, spreading, fluttery eyes, about a head placed so easily atop a simple vertical line? Perhaps just the contrast with the rest of the wildlife in that cold frosted marsh, perhaps merely the fact that the head was easy and content to let things come, that it did not jut out to snap at them. Sounds of snapping were all around me, and I loathed them, and I loathed too and still do loathe any and all heads which jut.
But dancing was of course out of the question, and this girl in the throes of Rite of course either danced or installed herself in a social orbit around the hors d‘oeuvre bar, and I will never ever again approach a female at an hors d’oeuvre bar.
And yes too following me about the perimeter of the room as I circled, joined at the soft parts of our bones, was as always the deeply chilling presence of Veronica Vigorous, and so yes anything at all was rendered impossible, assuming that it wouldn’t have been, which it would have, and so here I was tiny and icy and tired. But I can remember in the cold bath of the chandelier that vertical line, and the hair, and the eyes that were wings in a head to which jutting was clearly a thing unfamiliar, to be laughed at with the toss of a tiny star-burst curl.
She said Mr. Vigorous what a terribly wonderful surprise seeing you here of all places after all these years, do you remember who I am, and there with her was Mandible, and there in the cubicle the northern regions of the dark planet of Walinda Peahen’s hair, and there was Raring, setting up his magnetic chessboard, he plays chess with himself all night, and there was Lenore, she had wanted to bolt back into the elevator when we stepped into t
he lobby, she had seen, I could feel, and Mandible was petting the arm of Mindy’s coat as if it were an Airedale, and there she was, and the day had been such that when she said Mr. Vigorous what a terribly wonderful surprise to see you I felt deep beneath all our feet a heavy liquid clicking, as if the gears and cogs of some ponderous subterranean device had all moved into positions of affinity within their baths of lubricant, and she was saying Lenore do you remember me, I certainly remember you, I will bet you remember my husband, at whom you threw a shoe, how is Clarice, and as I rode the rhythm of the device I heard from above talk of parlors and tanning accidents, and uncountably many words from her about husbands, and lawns, and schools, and some dress or other, and careers, and marriage therapy, and Lenore was monosyllabic throughout, and then the tangent involving the type of switchboard equipment we used, and temporary things, and the whole Peahen planet dawned over the cubicle horizon, and cogs bit into one another, and eyes were rolled, and there was talk of Lenore’s bird, our bird, all in the context of the husband being in some bar with a self-flagellating bartender, and the Desert was mentioned, suddenly, and Lenore’s nostrils abruptly flared as she pulled away, and a long look passed that did something to the air between them, and over it all and muffling it all was the sound of hoofs on the marble lobby floor, the Scarsdale Express, bearing down, cold sparks at the wheels, pulled by the marvelous set of horses that whip themselves: Calves, Posture, Scent and Sounds, and all the suns went down.
Three. A scent came off her. Turn just right and it would go through me and leave a tiny hole in which the wind whistled, when I turned just right.
I was behind her in the car, on occasion, when Rex would drive into the city and she to school and me to work. When I rode in the back she would be in front, on the passenger side. She would not wear a seatbelt, and Rex would say You are riding in the Death Seat Melinda, the seat you are in is called the Death Seat you know, and I would be directly behind her, in the Rear Death Seat, with my feet not touching the floor except at the hump in the middle.
And now in the passenger window beside her were reflected at an angle the images of the oncoming cars and trucks, and there was her image, there, too, waiting; and the cars and trucks bore down in the window and emptied head-on into her reflection, were swallowed and exploded, and out the back of her reflection into my sleepy puffy face came fragments of light, the street made pale, and a wash of scent.
Yes the scent really came off her head, not off images exploding into light in glass; I am not a complete shitty fool. It was just a scent: clean, rich, vaguely fleshy. Imagine something blown dry on a line in a soft wind. Much should not be made of what is only a horse with cold hoofs.
Or once finding myself behind her and a friend on a city street. I was eating a pretzel for lunch, big and soft as my own face, a monstrously salty pretzel, and soon the pretzel man’s partner some blocks down would cheerfully sell me a Pepsi, but here were the solid, very solid sounds of her boots on the pavement, like a pump in the roots of a deep well, and here was the dark, thick hair, hanging almost all the way down her back, and having things done to it by the wind, and of course hair equals scent, and I was riddled, and salt poured from me like sand, and Mrs. Lot stood stock still in her beret in the middle of gridlock, transfixed by a red light.
Too much cannot be made of a scent.
Four. Sounds and a Lonely Little Thing.
Veronica and Vance were somewhere, away. For Veronica and me it had been a matter of years, so you can imagine. And it was August, and had my usual Rex-Metalman-world-of-pollen Scarsdale allergies, and was into my second week of being wired on antihistamines, salivaless and bumping into walls ...
And it was nighttime, and I was in my den, and because it was nighttime the light was on, and over across the fence Mindy Metalman’s light was on, in her room, and her window was open, but the shades were drawn. Antihistamines make me dream. My light was on, and, it being August, insects wanted in. I established for my purposes levels of insects, levels of entry, each corresponding to a field of light. The lit den made the insects tap and bounce on the windowscreen, wanting in. And a few would get in, that was OK, but then I would hear tiny dry sounds of impact and I would look up and there would be the insects, bouncing off the frosted glass shell around the light fixture: let us in let us in. And unscrew the shell, and then there you would be as before, but with the insects now bouncing off the hot thin skin of the lightbulb itself, let us in, banging with blunt heads and burnt wings, let us in. All right, but where did they want to go? Because break the lightbulb open with, say, the tiny screwdriver you use to fix the keys of your typewriter, break open the skin of the bulb to let them in, and either the light they want is killed and the game is over, or else they simply orbit the unenterable filament until they are fried dry and fall away.
So I stood on tiptoe on my desk, with my screwdriver, and bits of glass in my hair, and a dry mouth, in the dark, wishing for a Flit gun, or else to know where the appropriate place to want in was, then; and I heard sounds, from across the fence.
And they came from Mindy Metalman’s room. Behind the white shade there were shadows. And, too, there were the sounds ... like the scent, tiny but penetrating ... of a passion, not a person, being yielded to. And I got down on fours on the desk amid papers and glass and allergy capsules and looked out and saw in the Metalmans’ driveway a strange, deep-red Mustang with big rear tires, and the shade with its shadow dance, and behind and above the car and the house the slow, liquid pulse of a distant aerial tower’s red light that matched the spasms of my own drugged heart and so became my falling star. And there were the sounds of Mindy Metalman, in another world, the world of the liquid pulse; and the thought of someone unknown to me sharing the world with her, the thought that some actual person with big rear tires was with her, now, all this sent me off the desk and into the bathroom to climb atop the laundry hamper and brush away hot insects and listen at the lightbulb. For my dry dull head full of pollen thought that if we could just catch something the same, here, the insects and I could all kick off our shoes and have a beer.
I have said to her, no I will not be going to any gymnastic babyfood spectaculars with you.
And when she says why not I say ask Lang.
I say by all means, take the morning off. Go roll about. Be three-dimensional. Sign bottoms.
And she says I am going to go read to my grandmother.
And I say go, ask valid young Lang whom to take to Erieview, he’s in the next room.
And she stands there in her sneakers and says don’t push at me. Darling darling darling, tell me about the reversal I say.
How something or other to have her down below, in my network, all over again. In the cubicle. The lobby will resound, glow. I have bought breath mints.
Lenore what does it mean to feel that you must either kill or die. Does that make us an insect, in a field of light that can be only desired, or else extinguished?
Between yesterday and me lies a whole field of it.
The mints make it cold when I suck at the air. A suck at the air equals a sigh. Dinner, with Mindy Metalman? Oh yes oh no.
The burnt house stands delicate and everything is still arranged but now everything is black and hollow and featherlight and near dust and squeaks in the wind. The toilet is untouched, and pulses quietly as the wind blows through hollow ribs, all around it.
One, Two, Three, Four: that’s utter tripe, says his Lenore.
/d/
“I know what I know, is all.”
“What does that mean, ‘I know what I know’?”
“I know the whole story.”
“Well if I don’t know the story I obviously don’t know if you know the story.”
“The Andy story.”
“What, like his historical story, the story of his life, or what he’s been doing here, or what?”
“You are so funny.”
“Why am I funny?”
“This isn’t the same material, you know.�
��
“It’s close. It’s the same color.”
“But it’s not the same texture. I want that thin cotton texture, that fadedness and thinness, that it-could-give-way-at-any-second quality.”
“Well maybe you should know that this particular dress is like ten years old, is why it’s so thin. I don’t know why you’re so fixated on this dress.”
“I’d buy it from you, but if it barely fits you like that there is simply no way it could fit me.”
“Who says I’d sell it?”
“So what we need is this color in a lighter, more cottony material.”
“Anyway, it’s Lenore’s. I couldn’t sell Lenore’s dress. I’d have to buy it from her, which I’ll probably do anyway given the Nick thing, but then I wouldn’t want to sell it. See?”
“Relax. It wouldn’t fit me anyway.”
“....”
“I am having lunch in the cafeteria of something called Moora dian’s Department Store, Cleveland, Ohio. Alan and Muffin would just die.”
“This is a really good store. Don’t underrate this store.”
“Not mad about its fabric selection one bit.”
“I’ll give you the names of some other stores, but I can’t go with you, I don’t think. Walinda embolisms if I go over an hour for lunch.”
“She is not my very favorite person.”
“She’s just hard to get to know. You get to know her, everything’s OK. She just didn’t like your jacket, probably. She tends not to like people who have a lot of money. Which you pretty obviously do.”
“....”
“Have money, I mean.”
“....”
“Which if you’ll excuse me makes me sort of wonder why you’re even considering working even as a temporary at the Frequent and Vigorous board. Which don’t get me wrong is not a horrible job or anything, I’m not talking down my job, but it just isn’t too exciting, and right now it’s especially hectic and a pain because of line trouble, and you might or might not know it only pays four an hour, which is a pretty un-princely sum.”
The Broom of the System Page 41