Sheila started sticking a billiard cue at Ohnstad under the net. “Yes, sick, sick, sick! Take that! And that! Pimp!”
Now I began to see how Ohnstad was my double as well as my nemesis. I suffered similar torments of love, jealousy, and envy when I imagined that Homero was making it with Sheila. There was all that “evidence”—the tango, the handkerchief, the signed Hall of Fame program, the weird praise she heaped on the jerk, and Ohnstad’s insinuations. It all seemed to point to Homero. Wasn’t my sex nausea caused by something? Well, the alien abductees had their evidence, I had mine. In truth, none at all.
Here’s the check from the mind’s deep emotive spring on the rationalist’s presumption. Ohnstad was heir to Enlightenment skepticism yet had become unhinged by passion, and his war against the paranormal was itself grounded in insanity—no deeper irony. I liked to think of myself as somebody whose mind wasn’t so made up, a reporter who followed the evidence. It was fun when the evidence pointed to the reanimation of the Cardiff Giant. It was no fun at all when the evidence insisted that Sheila was getting it on with Homero. Now I saw that both these delusions were simply absurd. The question became how in the future to be wise, and here I wasn’t sure.
“But why the rebirthing? The regression hypnotist said that was all your big idea,” said Esther. “Did you kidnap my sister, creep?”
“I wouldn’t call it kidnapping, but yes, I arranged for the county beauty queens and regression hypnotist to seduce her, as it were. Here again, with your forgiveness, I must indulge some psychology. Sheila Drake’s psychic had convinced her that she was a full-blooded Huron in a previous life. It gave me a rush to think I might be the one who fulfilled her grand illusion—who restored her own identity to herself. Somehow I imagined I would get the credit. And if she really believed she’d purged the non-Huron, the furrier father part, maybe she and her goddam psychic would stop identifying me with this father—and I could step in once again.” He continued, his voice trembling with shame and contrition. “You see how fine reasoning can be put into the service of dementia! Yes, I confess I was demented. And it got out of hand. They nearly killed the girl. That hypnotist either had a lousy memory or was hard of hearing—I know I told him to rebirth her as a Huron, not a heron. Details, details. Really sorry about that, Sheila.”
“You’re sorry!” She jabbed and jabbed.
“She has a point,” I said.
“Yes, we must learn to speak for ourselves, John—I mean Jack. I was off in a realm of my own, inhabited by chimeras no less fantastic than Esther’s kabbalistic angels. I could still cast stones on superstition. But it’s a bit humbling. I remember what an English essayist said about his own sexual jealousy, ‘I am in some sense proud that I can feel this dreadful passion’—Ouch! Lay off, Sheila, I’ve paid my dues.”
By now the media and others were clearing out because Ohnstad’s explanation was far too complicated for a daytime television audience. Tarbox put handcuffs on him and read him his rights, not badly for someone who could barely read. The charge was “impersonating an alien.” The sheriff led the impersonator down the stairwell to the paddy wagon just as the ambulance arrived, an hour late because the driver took a shortcut. I told the medics that the bird-lady was fully recovered, if not covered. We looked for where the rebirthers had put Sheila’s Bluebeard chemise. As it turned out, it was on the hook in the sewing room next to Ohnstad’s Cardiff Giant costume. He had not gone to great lengths to conceal his costume, trusting once again that people wouldn’t see the obvious. Well, unlike Bluebeard, he didn’t slit any throats but he almost broke one, and in this chamber he had hung his dark secret.
As he was climbing into the paddy wagon, Ohnstad smiled. “By the way, Esther, you’ll find that copy of the Zohar in the library—hate to tell you, it doesn’t glow in the dark.”
— Chapter Eighteen —
SOFT LANDINGS
With Ohnstad disposed of, we all scooted to the library. There, wedged between The Last of the Mohicans and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, we found the Zohar. Esther and Deronda lugged the volume to the reading table and opened it to the frontispiece.
“Uzziel Deronda, Far Rockaway, August 12, 1946,” read Deronda, squinting.
“Mordechai Federman, Rockaway, August 12, 1946,” read Esther. “Yes, they signed the same day—they must have been friends and neighbors. We’ve got lots in common, Danny. Let’s take it to the linen closet and see if it glows in the dark.”
Ohnstad was right again. No glow. We all sat down at the reading table as if we were at a pro-seminar.
Silence for quite some time. Then Esther sighed. “Guys, I’ve been rethinking The Kabbalah of Everyday Life. Hope you’ll understand if I tell you I’m giving the whole thing up. I’ve calculated the number of times gematrias and repairing vessels have got me in trouble since the giant disappeared. I should have guessed,” she laughed, “the number is perfect: twenty-eight.”
“Well, you do have that class action suit to worry about,” I said—my polite Midwestern way of encouraging her in this new way of thinking.
“But, sis,” said Sheila, “what’ll you put in its place? It’s hard to imagine you without your seraphim and chariots and husks . . .”
“Not to mention your voyage of sparks and column of harmony and horses of fire,” I added.
“Somehow I used to get along without them. Look at Madonna. She was doing well enough before she took a course at the Kabbalah Center.”
“Excuse me,” said Deronda, abruptly. “I must call my mother.” Glancing at Sheila, he added, “I shall make use of the public phone.” He was gone for ten minutes, during which Esther lamented Rabbi Isaac Luria’s flop at resolving life’s daily vexations. “I may have another look at Freud too, while I’m at it. What’s he good for?”
Deronda returned and stood at the end of the table. He removed his glasses and, with a sense of occasion, solemnly asked, “Dr. Federman, would it be inappropriate at this hour if I were to ask you to marry me?”
“Not at all. I accept!”
She leapt to embrace Deronda, almost knocking him over. Sheila expressed pleasure at this outcome, offering right away to serve as maid of honor, and I accepted Deronda’s invitation to serve as best man.
I’ll scope ahead. The couple lived happily ever after. Having given up Kabbalah and losing the class action suit and her license to practice psychoanalysis, Esther switched to social work, taking her MSW at NYU and focusing on ageing Jewish communities below the poverty line in the Bronx. She served as accounts manager of a Jewish burial society and saw to it that all decedents got down under within twenty-four hours. She became a cantor much praised for her warmth of voice and impeccable Hebrew. And she assisted Deronda in his lifework of restoring Sharon Springs. The results can be smelled to this day.
Living in other respects high off the hog on Park Avenue, the couple had a daughter named Rachel. They packed her off at an early age to the Rodeph Sholom Hebrew School. Rachel’s first combination of words was “Yay! Temple!” Fired by the Discovery Channel for letting Tabby and Harris get the upper hand in the Cardiff Giant story, I slunk back to the city a few days after the events at Hyde Hall to look for work. I undertook to revive the East Village Other, a fringe newspaper from the sixties, and quickly gained a readership of old-timers still committed to print culture. A year passed and in the early fall I boarded a bus to Cooperstown, where I called on Sheila at the Glimmerglass Opera. She was already working on sets and costumes for the next summer’s new production of Lizzie Borden. “Jack, what a surprise!” She was wearing baggy Levi’s and a baggier Irish sweater.
She suggested we take a walk down through the Goodyear Swamp Sanctuary, directly behind the opera house. I feared another encounter with the Plant Spirit Underworld but readily agreed. We walked down the steep path toward Otsego Lake, pausing at the water view station. Along the way we passed many trees—speckled alder, buckthorns, winterberries—but I noticed she didn’t speak to any of the
m, not even the swamp maples. At first I thought maybe it was just that, with a path so obviously marked, she didn’t need to ask directions.
Looking toward the lake, we saw a great blue heron standing in full majesty at the water’s edge. She watched it for many minutes through binoculars, then said, “Jack, I’ve changed. Something happened after that plunge I took off the railing.”
“Tell me about it, if you like. What’s different?”
“One difference is I’m a student again. Taking two adult ed courses in this sanctuary. It’s run by the SUNY Oneonta biology department and has two hundred species of vascular plants. A great place to learn botany and field biology.”
“But I thought you already knew botany. What’s happened with your Plant Spirits?”
“It’s hard to explain. A eureka moment a few days after you left. I saw there’s nothing more miraculous than a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Here’s one.”
Jack? I liked where this was going. I had always liked my jaunty nickname.
She bent down to inspect a cluster of red berries on the plant of about two feet. “There’s so much to learn about this plant, Arisaema triphyllum! It’s also called Indian turnip. This one could be a hundred years old. You know it begins life as a male, then becomes a female, then becomes a male again, then a female.”
“Can’t make up its mind?” I asked.
Sheila laughed—already something new in her approach to plants. “No, dumb bunny, it depends on starch. Every season the flower decides whether it’ll be male or female. Depends on how much starch it’s stored in its corm. The more starch, the more likely it’ll be female. It takes more energy to be female, and the plant prefers to be female, in the interest of species reproduction. The males are only temps, servicing the females.”
“Sounds like George Bernard Shaw. Wasn’t it his Don Juan in Hell who said only females are in grips of the life force, while males just make their screwy little donation?”
“Yes, the life force in action late in the season. These berries have replaced the flowers of early spring. Remarkable flowers. Large, three-lobed leaves hang over the spathe . . . looks like a pulpit or hood. And inside the spathe is a bulb—the spadix or jack.”
“I don’t mean to sensualize this,” I replied, “but I know something of the lore. Isn’t it a toss-up whether a Jack-in-the-Pulpit resembles a hooded clitoris or an uncircumcised penis?” Okay, I meant to sensualize this.
“My Huron ancestors ground up the roots to enhance potency. But I take a larger view of this plant—plants are allegories, not spirits. Every plant has a story. When I called on the Plant Spirit of Jack-in-the-Pulpit, just to stay in practice, I got no answer. Made me think of cell phones that don’t work just when you need them.”
“Cell phones!”
“Don’t worry, I’ve not gone that far to the other side. But in these botany courses I’ve found a different way of communicating with plants.”
“You mean science?”
“Well yes, sort of.” She hesitated. “Let me tell you more about these Jacks-in-the-Pulpit. You know how the female flower gets pregnant?”
“The usual method?”
“With variations. You’ve got to have fungus gnats carry the pollen from male flowers to female. But they do so at a price. The poor gnats are fooled by the smell of the plant—it’s like the fungi where they normally lay their eggs.”
“So deception lays the ground for reproduction? Sounds all too human.”
“Yes, the gnats jump to conclusions. When they fly into the male pulpit, they’re trapped for a time and beat about, picking up pollen. There’s a slit at the bottom of the male pulpit, so many get free just to fly into a nearby female pulpit.”
“Doesn’t she have an escape slit too?”
“No, the female is slitless.”
“Hmmm . . . a real variation.”
“Yes, the poor gnats are trapped forever, but it means they are more likely to transfer the pollen. The female gets pregnant and the flower turns into what we see here—a bright-red berry full of seeds.”
“So the ends of nature are served. Those poor fungus gnats must feel used. It’s so unethical. I guess that’s what Darwin was telling us all along about nature . . . But why does this dark allegory cheer you up?”
“Because there’s more meaning in it than my Plant Spirits. They were supposed to be friendly and generous, sacrificing themselves to help us out like Shmoos. But how to explain the poison sumac? I felt let down by plants, like Esther felt let down by Rabbi Isaac Luria. Now this Jack-in-the-Pulpit is poisonous too if you rub up against it. And ruthless with those gnats. Learning about it—the things that are beautiful, the things that are scary, the things that seem human, the things that aren’t at all human—all this made me see the flower as a miracle, but . . .”
“Wholly within the natural order?”
“Exactly—the Jack-in-the-Pulpit has its own reasons for doing things the way it does, its own causes, like other flowers, but different too. It made me want to find out the real story behind every plant—but there are so many! I’ve got my hands full just with this sanctuary.”
We continued down to the boarded walkway over the swamp. “All this purple loosestrife,” she said. “Very pretty herbaceous plant but it crowds out the rushes and burreeds.”
“Imperialistic?”
“Yes, another unfriendly plant with a story to tell.”
Our approach scared off the heron. I wasn’t about to bring up the question of Huron identity and how much depends on spelling and pronunciation. But she did.
“You know, Jack, I almost got killed because a professional rebirther didn’t know the difference between Huron and heron. It made me rethink this whole pursuit of identity and lots of other New Age stuff. Bet you’ll be happy to hear I’ve decided to accept the identity I’ve got—just one-fourth Huron. That’s enough, because I’m other things as well. A first-rate set and costume designer, a student of botany, a part-Irish woman who is . . .” She trailed off.
“Possessed of passion, beauty, and intellect.” Again I’d finished a sentence for her. Masculinist!
“Thanks for that. Maybe I was going to say ‘alive and well.’ I don’t think I’ve told you how touched I was when Esther told me all about your search party and how worried you were. What brings you here now, Jack?”
“It has to do with identity too. Yours and mine together. Is there a chance?”
She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Let’s try.”
Hand in hand, we strolled along the walkway toward the lake access, prompting green frogs to leap for cover. We paused near a family of forget-me-nots and hog peanuts with their purplish-green flowers in full bloom. Here we exchanged our first kiss, hesitant, non-invasive, full of promise.
“Yes, let’s try,” I said.
I’ll scope forward again. The courtship was slow and given to moments of mutual doubt, but I earned her trust. Maybe it was that I’m a fraternal, not paternal, sort of male—and that set me apart from her father and Ohnstad.
We eventually married. She had enough starch in her corm and I enough pollen in my pulpit to produce three offspring. We made no use of fungus gnats. As I write, we are all living happily ever after in a condo on Tompkins Square, overlooking where Abbie Hoffman first draped himself in the American flag.
You may remember that in the beginning I was nothing, a man without qualities except for a certain comic perspective on things. I arrived in Cooperstown with a nearly blank slate. There’s something in our wiring that’s unsatisfied with nothing—and I wanted things to happen, to fill that slate. They did, and I found myself in a plot concocted by another—Thor Ohnstad and his revenge on gullibility. He saw himself a victim in his dealings with Sheila. This was mixed up with his sick vicariousness, this pimp of human souls. I escaped, just barely, and learned that one must seek out what one wants, speak for oneself, make things happen. I fell in love and suffered the jealous delusions of love, almost becoming Ohnstad.
>
But on the other side of a dark rite of passage, I took an Adirondack Trailways bus and asked Sheila to marry me. In our domestic love I felt that slate being filled in.
Our persons aren’t isolable bundles of traits—we are plural, with permeable boundaries. Who was I now? The Jack Thrasher who lives with Sheila and pitches in with the kids and shares friends and does journalism.
But I should tell you the fate of Ohnstad and the others in my small cast out of central casting. It was like Dante’s Inferno, where punishment is meted out that matches the crime. After a night in the Cooperstown jail, when Sheriff Tarbox took revenge by locking him up with three pigs, Ohnstad pleaded guilty to all charges before a county magistrate. Sentenced to daily AA meetings, he was obliged to pledge allegiance to a Higher Power. And he was sentenced to 496 days of community service, consisting of custodial work at the Farmers’ Museum. This meant a daily cleaning of the Cardiff Giant, again exhumed, and of latrines at Bump Tavern, a 1795 structure moved from Windham, New York, to the Farmers’ Museum, its odor of urine and tobacco intact. He was forced to serve as clerk with no salary at the museum’s general store and to attend Sunday services and sing hymns at the country church, hoisted to the museum from Cornwallville, New York. Had to spend nights at the unaccommodating Seneca Log House, with its bed of scratchy straw.
Ponder also what happened to Bouche and Homero. For her stubborn trust in astrology, she was forbidden to sing at the Met or La Scala. Too many audiences had thrown tantrums instead of tantra, too many people cancelled subscriptions. But Bouche grew only more stubborn in her horoscope and, by golly, she prevailed. The horoscope led her to a chat room where she hooked up with a television Southern Baptist evangelical and—you know the rest. She gave up Gounod for Gospel, uncovered her roots, and belted out the Gospel sound to millions on cable while her husband, a Black Oral Roberts, chalked up more cures than the Holy Ravioli could ever boast. They lived happily ever after.
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