All the Way to the Tigers

by Mary Morris

  86

  Paris, 2009

  ABOUT A YEAR after my accident, we go to Paris to get away. I’ve been thinking about tigers for several months and I’m not sure I want to be thinking about them at all. For the moment I just want to be in Paris—a city I love. Years ago I lived in Paris with a mother and her son, Jean-Michel. Jean-Michel and I had lost track of each other over the years. Then about a decade ago we reconnected and since then I’ve tried to see him and his Algerian wife, Karima, often.

  We have drinks with them one night. I tell Jean-Michel that I’m looking for a book (I no longer recall the title, but it had nothing to do with tigers), and he suggests that I try the bookstore at Place Saint Sulpice. “And while you are there, you should look in the church,” he mentions as an afterthought. “There are two very good Delacroix frescoes.” I am not a huge fan of churches and in all honesty I can’t say that I’d ever given Delacroix much thought. But on a cold and rainy afternoon we stop in the church and there are two amazing frescoes, including one with an incredible angel and another of a terrified horse. We sit for a long time, gazing at them, before moving on. At the bookstore we find the book I want and head home.

  The next day is Sunday, another rainy day. A friend had recommended the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism. He said that they have a very good exhibit on Moroccan Jews there and I am somewhat interested. We set off early and got to the museum. The museum is a little like getting into a fortress with all the security, but once inside I am somewhat surprised to see that the exhibit of Moroccan Jews begins with paintings and sketchbook entries by Delacroix. He had gone to North Africa in search of the exotic and found it in these Moroccan Jews. I spend a great deal of time with these paintings and sketches, making notes in my journal.

  On Monday Larry and I get up early and go to a café, and after an hour or two I want to go to a store I know for some art supplies, so we head out. Except we go the wrong way. We are walking and walking and after a while I realize we are heading away from the store, but then I see the sign. To the Delacroix house. It is beginning to dawn on me that I cannot escape Delacroix. That somehow he is becoming important to me. I feel as if I am following an invisible map—nothing I can see or even of my own making, but it is a map nonetheless and now I must follow it wherever it might lead me.

  We find the house and pay the admission. The ticket seller asks if we would also like to purchase a pass to the Louvre because most of the larger and more important Delacroixes would be seen there. I decline the offer. The last time I was in the Louvre I was still in a wheelchair and got trapped during a fire alarm in Grecian sculpture. It wasn’t a good memory.

  We walk into the house that includes Delacroix’s atelier. He moved to this house late in life. The studio where he’d painted his most important works was demolished and he’d had to move. This was apparently heartbreaking for him, but he built this new studio though he did not live that long after moving in.

  I wander through two rooms and then come to a third, and there I stop dead in my tracks. For not only did Delacroix paint Moroccan Jews in his search for the exotic but he also drew and painted tigers. Lots of tigers. The little room that I come to is full of them, with a note informing the viewer that the actual painting of the tigers is, of course, in the Louvre.

  We return to the front desk and ask if it is too late to add the Louvre to our ticket. An hour later we are fighting the hordes, pushing our way through the busloads of tourists, until at last I come to stand in front of the beautiful Delacroix painting of two tigers. The creature that I am trying to avoid has hunted me down. As I stand before the enormous canvas, I feel as if I have been led here by design. As if despite whatever I told myself before I came to France, this was where I’ve been going all along.

  87

  Brooklyn, 2008

  WHEN I STILL CAN’T WALK, I decide to get a second opinion. A former student of mine is an orthopedic surgeon in Minneapolis and I ask him, “Who is the best ankle person in New York?” He gives me a name, a surgeon he has worked with, and I look him up. Indeed, he is supposed to be one of the best in the world. I call for an appointment and snag one that is a few weeks away. They don’t take insurance. And he is very expensive. But I want to know what he thinks.

  The day of my appointment I’m optimistic. I bring my X-rays and Dr. Patel’s report. And then I get to the office and I wait. I wait and wait and finally he is able to see me. Without as much as a hello or asking what happened he grabs the X-rays and puts them up on his light box. He looks at them, nodding. “This surgeon did a very good job on you. I couldn’t have done any better myself.”

  I am relieved to hear this. After all, we trusted Dr. Patel on the basis of a handshake.

  “But you’ll need an ankle replacement in five years. You won’t be able to walk on this foot much past that.” I start to ask a question, and then I realize that for him our appointment is done. It has taken ten minutes and cost me five hundred dollars, and this is all he has to say.

  I walk out into the city, feeling as if I’ve just been fired from my job. A job I never wanted in the first place. An ankle replacement in five years when this surgery barely exists. I decide I won’t listen to that doctor. I will walk. To prove it I don’t get on the subway. I walk for blocks, tears in my eyes, but I keep walking.

  88

  MY MOTHER never goes outside unless she has to. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like trees or lakes. She doesn’t like a spring day or a cold winter night. I never see her taking in a deep breath or putting her hands into the soil. I don’t think of her as being outdoors. Instead I see her in front of the vanity table that she keeps in my room. Here she sits for hours on end, preening, getting ready to be somewhere—a canasta game, a luncheon, a cocktail party. Some occasion that rarely includes me.

  I’m never quite sure why her vanity is in my room and not theirs, but it is. It doesn’t matter if I’m studying for an exam or taking a nap. I look up and see her there, dabbing bright red lipstick off with a tissue. The vanity includes a large mirror and all her makeup and perfumes and combs and hair spray. All her hand creams and face creams and makeup removers. It also contains my brushes and colognes and, eventually, makeup.

  I watch her for hours, sitting in front of the mirror, applying her lipstick and rouge, the Replique she dabs behind her ears, on her wrists and the backs of her knees (don’t ask me why). I see my mother in dresses of elegant wool or crepe, gowns, tailored suits. There are pictures of her in Idaho in shorts, and on my wall in Brooklyn I have an image of my mother as a girl in jodhpurs, a neatly tucked-in shirt, her flaming red hair parted down the middle. A cowgirl I never knew.

  When I think of my mother, she is either elegantly dressed or wearing a nightgown. It seems as if for her there is no middle ground. I never see her wear any shoes besides high heels. Those stilettos whose clatter is the first thing my father heard after his ear surgery. But I love the outdoors. I love the lake, the woods. The long walks to school. My father is the same. He plays golf and tennis, and he walks everywhere.

  But my mother lives her entire life inside. I never ride a bike with her or walk a mile in her company. I never see my mother walk unless it is between stores at the mall or along Michigan Avenue as she heads to Bloomingdale’s. In fact, we scatter some of her ashes outside of the store. She never swims or plays golf. It isn’t that she’s agoraphobic, because supermarkets, the hairdresser, department stores are never a problem. It’s more as if my mother doesn’t like the natural world.

  I prod her on vacations to put her feet in the ocean, to dip into the pool. I ask her to come with me to feed some ducks. She says she is allergic to the sun. Once, when I’m much older, I ask what happens to her in the sun. “I get freckles,” she replies.

  Sometimes I use her vanity table. It is, after all, in my room. I like to sit there and brush my hair. I try on her lipstick. Dab on a little of her p
erfume. I’m sitting at her vanity brushing my hair when she comes in to tell me that my best friend Tommy has died of bone cancer. I’m in third grade. In second grade Tommy taught me how to tie my shoes. Because I’m left-handed, it was difficult for me to learn. Sometimes, if we were late for recess, he just tied them for me. She stands in the doorway. “Tommy’s dead,” she tells me. “It’s a blessing.” Then she comes up behind me, takes the brush, and finishes brushing my hair.

  89

  India, 2011

  THAT NIGHT I eat in my room. I have a fever and all I want is soup. I miss Larry. The feeling is visceral. His body is warm and mine is cold. There is a rhythm to our days. A morning walk with the dog, a glass of wine for me and a beer for him at the end of the day. Chats about bills to pay, tasks to perform. Who takes care of what. We work together as a well-oiled machine. But what we really do well is talk. We can talk for hours: about our daughter, about what it means to be a writer, about the state of the world. André Malraux wrote that a happy marriage is a long conversation that ends too soon. I just want it to go on and on.

  What time is it in New York? Can I call my husband? It is too early to Skype. And he probably won’t pick up anyway. Outside, the moon illumines the fields where the flowers and vegetables have all frozen on their stalks and vines. I press my lips to the window, and it is cold.

  90

  THREE DECADES AGO, I’m a single parent, living in Laguna Beach, California. I have a job and I’m trying to make a go of it, but my daughter isn’t even a year old and my partner of many years hasn’t wanted to make it “legal.” He’s back East, as are the rest of my family and friends. Essentially, I’m on my own. It wasn’t really my decision to leave New York and move to California. I had a teaching job that ended, and one was offered to me out West. So I thought, Why not? Wasn’t California the place of fresh starts?

  Now I’m not so sure. I’ve been there for almost two months and things aren’t going my way. There are rumors of a mountain lion in the hills above my house. My neighbors have a cat that uses the sandbox as its litter box. Ramona, the nanny I’ve hired, burns pots and hides them while I’m at work in places where she thinks I won’t look. And Kate rarely sleeps. When I discuss this with her pediatrician, the aptly named Dr. Softness, he tells me to put her in her crib and just leave her there. Instead I take her on long car rides into the desert during which she sleeps, but she wakes up as soon as we get home. On the weekends I feel as if I’ve fallen off a cliff. I take care of Kate, try to grade papers during the rare times when she sleeps, or plug her into Dumbo, which she watches endlessly. Her favorite activity is the drive-through car wash and I have the cleanest car in Southern California.

  One night, completely exhausted, I tumble into bed and have this dream. I dream that I have gone to Richmond, Virginia (a place I’d never been), and that Richard (my daughter’s biological father) is coming to kidnap her. He’s going to take her across the border into Canada and I’ll never see her again. In the dream I’m desperately seeking someone who can stop him at the border. I wake, terrified and trembling. It’s Sunday and I have another long day ahead.

  Time crawls on without much improvement. My job is a two-year commitment and I’m having difficulty making it through the first semester. Then one afternoon I get a call from an old acquaintance. He’s running a workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University and asks me if I’d like to spend two weeks in Richmond next summer. Kate’s playing on the floor, inching toward an electric socket, but I stand, holding the phone, frozen in place. Is this some cosmic joke? My appointment in Samarra? Premonition or mere coincidence, my decision is clear. Something is sending me to Richmond.

  I make it through the holidays and into the spring. I remain alone in a place where I have no family and few friends, a baby who won’t sleep, and a job I can barely tolerate. It seems as if I can get no traction in my life. I’m writing in fits and starts. In search of a distraction, I begin hanging out with New Age groups. I attend UFO abductee support groups and channeling sessions with the extraterrestrial Ashtar and his intergalactic fleet. I fly as an angel in the Crystal Cathedral. I go to channeling sessions where a group of women determine that I haven’t really given birth to my daughter. “So,” I ask, “who is the babysitter watching back home?”

  I date a bit from time to time. Blind dates, chance encounters. On the way to dinner one man comments that it’s nice of me to allow the help to bring her child over. When I tell him it’s my child, he says I betrayed him and refuses to pay for dinner. I give up dating. I give up hoping. I devote myself to my daughter and our lives together as best I can. Anyway, I have so much to do, I don’t have time to think about the future. And for a while I don’t think about that dream.

  Then summer rolls around and it’s at last time to meet my maker, my destiny, or whatever has called me to Richmond. My mother, with whom I have made relative peace, has agreed to take care of Kate for the first week of the conference. She’ll join me along with my thirteen-year-old nephew and Kate for the second week. I’m given an apartment in the Gladding Residence Center. This is where, I’m told, visiting athletes stay. It’s a dormitory of cinder-block walls. A rocking chair for Kate has been placed in the middle of the room.

  At the Gladding Residence Center there’s only one other attendee. (In fact, it turns out that he and I are the only attendees who aren’t local.) A young, good-looking (if I’d been looking) man named Larry. He’s supposed to be in another workshop but for whatever reason the director moves him into mine. On our second day I’m in the cafeteria, grabbing lunch, and I see Larry in line behind me. He smiles and waves. He has a nice smile and bright blue eyes. A thoughtful, caring face. But I’m in no shape to socialize. I’m barely getting through the day. But another student who’s sitting in the cafeteria waves us over, and so Larry and I wind up having lunch together.

  “So what did you do this morning?” the other student asks us. I tell them that I’d read papers and written critiques of their work. Then Larry informs us that he’s taken the walking tour of old Richmond. He tells us about the architecture and the interesting historical insights he’s gleaned from the tour and I think to myself, “What a nice thing. A man who takes himself on a walking tour.”

  “I’d like to do something like that,” I tell him. “Are there any more tours?”

  “Well,” Larry said with a laugh, “there is a slavery exhibit at the local historical society.”

  A slavery exhibit? Larry shrugs. It seems like a grim and perhaps ominous first date, but we agree to go and see it the following afternoon. The slavery exhibit is predictably awful, and somehow we bond over the bizarreness of the concept, and then return to the Gladding Residence Center, where without notice they’ve closed the cafeteria for the rest of the summer.

  “So,” Larry says, “do you want to have dinner? There’s a nice tearoom nearby. I think it has Southern cooking.” I tell him that I can’t because I have papers to grade, and I have to do my laundry. “I could do your laundry,” he says.

  “You want to do my laundry?”

  “Well, I have to do mine…”

  I pause momentarily to wonder if there isn’t something creepy about this. Since Kate was born, I have taken care of her. No one has taken care of me. No one has offered. So I give Larry my laundry bag and, two hours later, he returns it, even my underwear warm and folded. That evening we go to Morton’s Tea Room, where we eat the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Over dinner I think to myself, “Is this the moment when I tell him that I have an eighteen-month-old child, or should I just enjoy myself for another day or so?”

  The next night, since there’s nowhere to eat near the residence center, we have dinner again. I mean to tell him over dinner, but he asks if I want to see a movie. Bull Durham is playing nearby. It’s blistering hot as we ride to the movies, my feet on the dashboard. We watch the movie, laughing, enjoying ourselves. And I still ha
ven’t told him about the baby. And I’m starting to like him. I’m enjoying his company. He’s easy to be with. After the movie as we walk back to his car, I notice the motto on his license plates: “Yours to Discover.” And then I notice the plates themselves.

  “You’re from Ontario?” I ask.

  “Yes, actually I’m teaching in a place called North Bay.”

  Slowly the dream is coming back to me and it doesn’t seem possible, but here it is. “So, you’re Canadian?”

  And yes, he is.

  By the next night we’re spending all of our time together and it’s clear to me that things are starting to matter. I know I have to tell him and then listen as he makes pleasant excuses about wanting a family of his own or not being ready for responsibility. And that will be that. Over dinner I say, “I have something to tell you…It’s really important.” He nods, looking concerned. “On Saturday my mother, my nephew, and…” Deep sigh because I know what’s coming. He’s about to hightail it to the hills. “My baby daughter are arriving.”

  Larry listens, cocking his head. “That’s it? You aren’t married or sick or something?”

  “No.” I laugh. “Why?”

  “I was worried that something was wrong.” He smiles. “So what time do we have to pick them up?”

  A few weeks later I leave California and move back to New York. And soon Larry is flying down from Canada every weekend and Kate is starting to call him Daddy. And I know this can’t go on. When I call to tell him I want to break up, he tells me that he’s moving to New York. “It’s not going to work from here,” he says.