Imperfect Solo

by Steven Boykey Sidley

  A mock charge, it was called. A shot across the bow.

  “OK, let’s go, let’s leave.”

  This from a shaking Indian woman whose country’s reverence for elephants was clearly limited by current events. But we couldn’t leave. Because the old truck on which we sat couldn’t outrun elephants and a retreat would be a red flag. And so we sat frozen in whimpering terror as we were repeatedly mock charged, for about forty-five excruciatingly unpleasant minutes, after which the herd simply got bored and moved off.

  My throat dried up. I could hear the insistent pounding of my heart, which had become an ugly and painful presence. My pores leaked sweat. It was unbearable. Grace turned to me at one point early, her eyes leached of color, and whispered—I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here.

  Which is how I felt when the three schoolboys removed their belts and started tapping them across their thighs. They were going to whip me raw, for no other reason than the cruelty of children, cruelty that required little forethought to animate. This was a raw fear, blasphemous and unrelenting. I had the wisdom to understand that nothing I could do was going to save me. Not crying, not running, not pleading.

  And then, on the periphery of my sight, I saw Rebbe striding toward us, behind the boys, who had their backs to her. She had a tennis racket in her hand. She had seen and understood what was transpiring from the tennis courts far away where she was playing. She had to know from the belt display and cringing body language of her brother what was going down. The largest of the boys noticed that I was staring over his shoulder. He turned and was greeted with an eight-year-old girl’s junior tennis champion’s full-bore forehand to the tip of his nose, which exploded in a fountain of blood. Within the same graceful stroke, she pivoted and reversed into a backhand, the racket now tipped off the vertical so that the wooden edge caught the second boy in the throat, from which he dropped to the floor with a terrible gurgling squeal. The third boy stared for an instant and then turned and ran.

  My sister Rebbe was, quite simply, my protection against all things dreadful. It seemed to me that I could never offer her the same, never provide the sort of fear-shattering protection she offered me. But perhaps I did, in other ways, as we chatted long beyond our bedtime into the night, our company each other’s sustenance.

  And so came the day when I sat in the kitchen one afternoon waiting, as always, for Rebbe’s return. And then a phone call and my mother’s quiet “Oh, oh,” and the terror on her face as she turned to me, her eyes wide and filling, contemplating not only the loss of her firstborn, but the burden of watching her young son lose his childhood, starting now.

  The accident was barely page-three news. No reason. No explanation, physical or metaphysical. A car hit Rebbe outside school as she was crossing the road. She died instantly and the soft pillow of my life was ripped open.

  It is difficult for me to imagine, even at this remove, how I managed. What damage was done. I cannot remember the edges of my grief. Those days, months, years afterward are grainy and difficult to shape in my adult mind. My mother and father did their best, but they too soon decided that perhaps the best memory was studied forgetting, and clothes, toys, photos, and reminiscences were quickly swept away.

  A really bad thing happened to me. Over years I have pushed it away, locked it up, averted my gaze. And now, beset by dread I do not understand, it takes little introspection to smell its roots.

  Charging elephants and a twin sister taken. Some things pass by, some don’t.

  CHAPTER 28

  WHILE I AM on the plane flying back to LA from Miami there is an accident. I am not there, but I could have been—or should have been.

  I imagine it this way. It is dusk, the driver has been on the road for about four hours and is now anxious to get home. She leans forward to change a radio station. She has been listening to a music station dedicated to singer-songwriters. It is a station that steers clear of transient fashion, delivering compositions over the last fifty years, their commonalities being that the artist must have written and performed the songs. A Carole King number has just finished, written around the time she was born, its trajectory having landed it firmly in the iconography of US pop music. It is called “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” She knows all the words, and has sung along. Now she thinks about her son and his erratic behavior over the weekend, and her ex-husband, away on a family emergency. She wishes he was with her and then banishes the thought as childish and inappropriate.

  And so she leans forward to change the station, looking for something smart and verbal to keep her alert because she is tired. In the instant between looking down, pressing the requisite buttons on the radio face and looking up again the car has started to drift left. It is a rental car, she is not familiar with its handling, and so when she registers minor alarm and twists the steering wheel to reverse the drift, she overcorrects. She twists in the other direction, causing a second overcorrection, and now the back wheels lose their traction and within seconds she has lost control. The car hits the shoulder barrier and its center of gravity is now in an adversarial relationship with the new obstruction, setting in motion a chain of Newtonian mechanics that causes the lefthand side of the car to become airborne. The car leaves the road and begins to fly. She is aware of the sudden silence as the car begins to turn over, all four wheels now spinning against air rather than asphalt and the odd vertiginous sensation of being briefly upside down as the car begins a series of somersaults. She does not feel the second or third or fourth turn because she is now unconscious.

  When the emergency vehicles arrive, she is still alive and still unconscious. She has to be cut out of the car, a cheap rented vehicle, now twisted and crushed. She is airlifted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital. She is still unconscious when I arrive the next day.

  “What do the doctors say?”

  Innocent’s voice is strangled by grief and fear. I am on my phone, from the hospital room where Grace lies, tethered to all manner of high-technology equipment like a medical Medusa.

  “They’re hedging their bets, Innocent. There are fairly extensive head injuries. But they haven’t used the word coma yet.”

  “I’m catching a flight this afternoon.”

  “I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

  “No, stay with Mom. I’ll catch a cab.”

  I have not been home yet, having come straight from the airport, and Krystal is not answering her phone. I arrange a ride to Grace’s place to fetch my car and head home.

  There is a note on the dining table.

  Dear Meyer,

  The time has eventually come. I need to move on. This is not working for me and, I suspect, not for you. I wish you had been who I wanted you to be. For a while there, you were. And then you just meandered off to do what you do. Which is a pity because it was nearly perfect. I have taken most of my stuff. I will come back and collect anything that I have left at another time. Please do not call me. I have nothing more to say.

  Goodbye,

  Krystal

  Dread 4: Meyer 0.

  A funny thing happens when multiple crises arrive simultaneously. A calmness sets in, even a sort of peace, akin to sitting down to a long exam. Time takes on a new and pure texture, thick and lush. Peripheral distractions are batted away. I get a beer from the fridge and toast dread.

  “Game on,” I say aloud.

  I sit down at the dining room table and reread the letter, marveling at its solipsism. There is a pile of mail on the table by the front door, which I idly scan. Included is a stern-looking letter from the IRS, smelling acridly of opprobrium. I don’t open it. There is a message on the home phone. It is from Jim, the HR director, insisting that I phone him urgently. I seem to have left my favorite jacket in the cab. The trash has not been taken out, leaving a faint rancid odor in the kitchen and I notice a water stain on the ceiling. I look at the sky outside the window. It is a perfect blue.

  And it is falling.

  CHAPTER 29

 
THE DOCTOR MAY not have used the word coma, but the word settles like concrete in my head as I awake. I get up and do a bit of light Googling. By some measures at least, being unconscious for more than six hours means coma. It’s been a lot longer than that. The better part of me is thankful that she is not dead, but it is a tattered consolation.

  I struggle for emotional traction. I run the scenarios. Four options.

  She will wake up, and everything will be fine.

  She will wake up, and she will be damaged.

  She will not wake up and will remain vegetative forever.

  She will not wake up and will die soon.

  A student of the odds, I mumble. One in four. Only one option not to dread.

  The other crises and looming catastrophes are pushed aside for the moment. Innocent and drugs, Dad and prison, Krystal’s exit. Grace consumes the greater part of me. If only I had bought her a plane ticket. If only Dad had waited a day or two before crossing his Rubicon. If only, if only, if only.

  I debate calling Van, asking for support. Of what sort, I am not sure. I am not looking for brows furrowed in concern. I am also not looking for the faint odor of schadenfreude from a gloomy depressive. I am looking for escape. Which used to mean drugs and drink. Which I consider for a while, deciding on sobriety by a hairbreadth.

  Instead I call Farzad and lay it out.

  “This is a storm of bad news, my friend. How you holding up?”

  “Um … Not sure.”

  “I can either counsel you or we could get drunk. In which case I can also counsel you, except you will not remember it later.”

  “I thought drinking was a poor idea in a crisis.”

  “Who says that?”

  “Everyone. Particularly psychologists, I should imagine.”

  “There are psychologists and psychologists. And Iranian Muslim psychologists. Who happen to like drinking with their friends.”

  “OK. You win. I’m going back to the hospital first. Six p.m?”

  Innocent is at Grace’s bedside when I get there. His eyes are red. I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it is from crying.

  “How you doing, son?”

  “Not great. I just spoke to the doctor.”

  “And?”

  “There is not a lot to be done here. The injuries cause swelling around the lining of the brain and, because of the skull, the swelling has nowhere to go, so the brain is pushed down toward the brain stem. That shuts down the reticular activation system, which is like an on/off switch. Until it switches on again she’ll be in a coma.”

  “How do they know it’ll switch on?”

  “They don’t, Dad.”

  “I’m so sorry, Innocent.”

  “It was great to see you two together Friday night. I was sort of hoping—”

  He gasps, cannot complete the sentence.

  There is nothing like seeing your child in pain. It is metaphysically primal, and eclipses all else. It causes a deafening and blinding anxiety. There is no priority other than to try to comfort. I sit down and take his large hand in mine. I try to think of something to say that might offer succor rather than cliché. I can’t. So we just look at her. Her face is slack, skin gray, hair lank, contusions and bruises an insult to her beauty. The electronic monitors behind her chirp and bleep disinterestedly, oblivious. Grace looks like a corpse.

  I am suffering from a numbing despair, the sort that envelops rather than confronts. If it would only confront, I could defend, rationalize, argue, object. For the moment, I am in a fog, directionless. And it is compounded by the acrid smell of guilt as I consider my impotent and heedless attempts to convince her to rent a safer car.

  This should be simpler. I try to separate the desperation I feel for Innocent from the more complicated fear of losing Grace, who has once again, after nearly two decades, burrowed under my skin in ways I do not understand. We sit for a while, saying nothing.

  * * *

  “Meyer, come to me.”

  Farzad wraps me in a bear hug at the front door and I sink into his ample chest that smells repellently of Old Spice. He has never done this before. He kisses my head, like a father. I fight back tears.

  “And so, my little friend, an uncaring universe has turned on you, proving of course that there are forces outside of your control, and your well-being will be determined by your reactions. We will discuss tonight, over vast quantities of vodka, what these reactions should be.”

  “The whole uncaring universe thing is something I never doubted.”

  We are at Farzad’s apartment, a glorious affair in Santa Monica with 270-degree views overlooking the Pacific. We move to the deck. His wife, Cherry, comes out from the kitchen and pops a kiss on my cheek.

  “Meyer, I’m so sorry about Grace. How is she?”

  “No change. They say we will just have to wait.”

  The whole Cherry-Farzad hookup still bewilders me. Farzad is a poster boy for the ethnic autre. And even within that context, he can hardly be called handsome, with close-set black eyes, a single long thick eyebrow spanning both orbs, a titanic nose, and all manner of jowls and double chins. If he were to insert himself into a photo of one of those all-male, unsmiling revolutionary fundamentalist governmental committees in some hot desert land over there, mustachioed, overfed and austere, he would fit right in. Cherry defines perky and homegrown—the corn-fed white teeth, the insolent breasts, the tan and gold, the laughing blue eyes.

  They met at an academic conference, the theme of which had something to do with the role of psychology and developing nations. Farzad was a minor star, the book of Iranian Muslim psychologists being thin. Cherry was employed by the event organizer, seeing to name tags and programs and dinner seating and the like. The details of their courtship are hazy. It is my considered belief that Farzad hypnotized her or gave her psychoactive drugs. Whereupon she spilled her darkest secrets, at which point she was beholden. After which he certainly sodomized her, shaming her into a life of servitude.

  Her family is from Alabama, Dixie people, steeped in generations of class hierarchy and privilege, dating back to plantation ownership. Her mother has still not recovered from the shock of seeing her daughter ravished by al-Qaeda. For her father, it was a minor irritation between golf, horse breeding, cigars, port, and high-class strippers.

  Their apartment is another mystery. This is at the top end of the market, and would have cost many millions. Not on a psychologist’s and academic’s income, this is certain. Two scenarios spring to mind. Either Farzad’s family siphoned off some of the Shah’s excesses or, more likely, Cherry’s mother quietly bought it for them on condition that Farzad never show his oily face at family gatherings.

  I like Cherry. She is smart. She is a great cook. She is generous. One day I will ask her why she married Farzad. It strikes me obliquely that perhaps she fell in love with his wisdom and generous spirit and humanity and courage, but I perish the thought.

  She brings ice-chilled Stolichnaya, guacamole, and chips onto the deck.

  “Cherry, I’ve been meaning to ask you this for years. How could you, a Mayflower girl, marry this, this, this … you know?”

  She smiles at me.

  “He is really well endowed.”

  Being distracted by my multiple calamities, I do have not have any fast comeback, so she grins and retreats into the apartment, leaving us alone.

  Farzad eyeballs me severely.

  “You are making light. This is not the time to be making light.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I want to start with Krystal.”

  “OK.”

  “Irredeemable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t love her. She doesn’t love me.”

  “Why have you stayed together this long?”

  “Sex.”

  “I have to terminate this line of questioning because the thought of you having sex with anybody makes me nauseous.”

  He downs his vodka. I wai
t.

  “Anybody angry?”

  “Pissed off is more accurate.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to have company. I don’t like being alone. I’m a coward.”

  “Her?”

  “She is pissed off because I wouldn’t change.”

  “Ah, OK. Let’s leave Krystal for a moment. Your father.”

  “My father?”

  “Yes, how do you feel about your father.”

  “Great guy.”

  “Did you want to fuck your father?”

  “What?”

  “Only kidding. Just keeping you on your toes. How do you feel about what he did, what may happen?”

  “I’m OK with what he did.”

  “How so?”

  “He explained it well. It seems like a rational and appropriate choice.”

  “And are you fearful for him?”

  “A little. I’m scared that they will send him back to the Center. I think he’d be happier in prison, at least that’s what he’s implied. Who would have thought that? Do you think there are other Jews of his age in prison? He likes the high holy days.”

  “Do you feel guilty?”

  “About what?”

  “Not doing more for your father as he got older?”

  “Yes. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Not me. My father was a torturer for the Shah.”

  “Ah. No wonder you are so fucked up.”

  “Let’s talk about you.”

  We have downed a few more shots. The vodka is taking hold. I feel loose, pleasantly melancholy, more a witness to than a participant in my crumbling life. I feel like abandoning myself to bacchanalian impulses.

  “Yes, let’s talk about me.”

  “Grace.”