American Genius

by Lynne Tillman

  Everything is a problem in some way, I can’t think of anything that’s not a problem from the past for the future, and I often worry, frowning to myself, unaware that I’m frowning, my lips turning down involuntarily, which I’ve been told to stop doing since I was a child, because it creates the impression that I’m sullen and also etches fine lines around my mouth, but I can’t. My father worried about the future, which presumably he could imagine, but I can’t, just as I can’t imagine lines like tributaries running from the river of my mouth the way they do from my mother’s, who was angry, who’d abandoned her girlish hopes of marrying a violinist named Sidney, and who often speaks of him now that my father is dead, wondering where Sidney is, and also wondering where my father is, if he is outside, waiting for her in the car that he loved. She might have seen the future in us, if we’d been someone else’s children. By the time I knew my brother, he was thirteen and I was two, so he and my parents were the future that lived with and preceded me, it lay before me and also excluded me, so I didn’t consider it, not when I was a small child, since it was already in their lives. I didn’t mature fantasizing its arrival, and even knowing that I won’t be here to witness another future and be dedicated to it, or of it, that I exist as one version of the future I hadn’t fantasized, I’m only vaguely intrigued by its promise. The tenacity of the past makes me melancholy, though people like to say the past was a simpler time, but there is no simpler time, there are only simple people, and even they are not simple, but so exhaustively undermined as to be plain. Memory can be consumptive, a sickness, whose effects are wily and subversive, worthy of flight or fight, and tenacious unwritten histories leave tremulous marks on bodies in action, at rest, but not their final rest, and under siege. My body is encased in sensitive, dry skin. Skin is an organ, and the body’s largest one, protecting the body under coats of many colors. The story of Joseph is one of two Bible stories I remember, because it was about fabric and colors, both of which my father mentioned, since he was in the textile business, and it was also about rivalry, which my parents never mentioned, though I wasn’t aware of reticence then.

  My mother has beautiful skin, which she protected regularly but not slavishly. Human beings need to be protected, to enjoy being protected, especially when they are young, because they have a long period of dependency, and for some it is interminable. The past that can’t be recovered or changed has already shaped and damaged the present, and how I arrange a chair, where I set it, in what relation to my reasonable desk, or what kind of couch I have that also won’t protect me won’t tell people what they need to know about me, to protect them from me, though people spend endless amounts of time thinking about their furniture and what it says about them, and how they will appear to themselves and others. No one need come to my apartment to see how I’ve arranged the furniture, to learn about my problems from the way I’ve placed objects, to learn what damage I’ve done and might do in the future, in which they will also live, unless someone murders them, they kill themselves, or they die of natural causes before their supposed time.

  My father enjoyed especially when he was playing cards with his friends, or dancing and swimming, and he was also charming, when he didn’t glower, like the man who waited for the woman who gives me facials. I need a facial. I’ve been away from home for a long time, and my skin is very dry, but I don’t put cream on it at night. I can’t bring myself to apply cream at night, when no one would see me, though it would be good to do in my bedroom, where it’s very quiet, where not a sound can be heard except the heat rising in the pipes or the toilet flushing. But I’m the one who makes noise, who flushes the toilet most often, going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, because I can’t sleep, I’m afraid to dream, to surrender, and I have to piss frequently, which is a sign of age in a woman, and maybe a man, but I know less about men. My father never told me if he had to piss frequently as he grew older, though I watched him piss when I was four years old, fascinated by the stream of hot yellow-white urine that shot from his penis. But when, years later, I told a friend about his urinating in front of me, she contended, her lips tight with horror, that I’d been abused, a word like “environment” whose use is pervasive and compromises my individuality of which I have less and less choice. My father had generously allowed his curious daughter the opportunity to see how a man pisses, when she wanted to know, because she was curious, I am still curious, and interested in the world and in penises, especially her father’s; and when another person would instantly think that a girl had been abused by seeing her father’s penis as he pissed, though that is what she wanted to see, I thought to myself, but did not say, the time we live in is a problem. My fearful father was not afraid of my seeing his penis, but he stopped letting me when I was a little older, which was too bad, because I never had the chance to ask him how frequently he had to piss when he grew older, or before he died, since asking other men wouldn’t be the same, because it was my father I wondered about, though I could’ve asked my brother, who disappeared from my life, who may be living on the streets of Cincinnati or Mexico City, but it wouldn’t be the same.

  My mother is very old, incontinent, and she doesn’t remember that she had my dog and cat killed, though she often mentions the story she wrote about the family cat she loved but later had killed. It is laden with lovingly embroidered details about the antics of our remarkable cat, though she doesn’t remember what I was like as a child, even before she had brain damage, except to say that I was fast at everything, that I rushed. I’m still rushing, because there’s a lot to accomplish before death, which defeats accomplishment, and my mother often wants to know what I’m doing and why I’m away, not with her, though when I’m with her, she doesn’t talk to me but watches television, with ardent attention. She doesn’t know me, I don’t know her, and each time she asks why I’m leaving or where I’m going, I tell her, but then she forgets. I tell her again and again, and then she says she misses and loves me, which she never said when I was young and she wasn’t incontinent.

  THERE IS AN ASSORTMENT OF tables in the dining room of the main or big house where I have breakfast, along with the others, if they are able to wake up, without effort or by having set their alarm clock, as I have, for breakfast, often the best or only edible meal of the day. Many arrive bedraggled by sleep, talkative, or muted, and some arrive hungry, even starving, with a zest for the day ahead that overwhelms, stymies, or exhausts me, and everyone usually can find something they like to eat, if they are on time and the kitchen is still open. Sometimes there is a table for vegetarians, if their number is great and the head cook has become aggrieved by the volume or multitude of demands, including that of commingling us. But it is only at dinner that the vegetarians, when their number has swelled, are seated separately; smokers and nonsmokers had been regularly segregated, but now the smoker is simply banished, forced to smoke out of doors in the cold or heat or in a lobby that is perpetually foul-smelling so that the smokers also don’t want to be in it. There are many more kinds of separations that are not as significant as those of religion, race, ethnicity, class, and these newer, odder discriminations may subtly cover more profound insensitivities, like flounces on a bad design. In all there are nine tables, unless there is a problem, and our number varies, while rumors circulate like the residents.

  Residents such as myself float from one to another, avoiding specific individuals, choosing a chair at the last minute, but others take the same position, table, and chair each meal, and if that seat is snagged by another, a new resident or a mischievous older resident, there are consequences. Some residents don’t appear at breakfast, for instance, Gardner, or the Count, who is obsessed with time and antique timepieces; he never appears, as he sleeps during the day and wakes only for dinner, which serves as his breakfast. When I, nearly late this morning, rushed past the two young women into the kitchen, I didn’t fail to notice that they were ensconced by themselves at a distant table near a window; that the young, clever, married man was
at a table alone, reading the newspaper, which was his habit, because he doesn’t want to speak to anyone during the first meal of his day, and no one dared speak to him, and that the rest of the group was settled around a third table and in various stages of eating. Everyone could have eggs for breakfast. But some wouldn’t, since they refuse to eat what could become alive, an egg might become a chicken, but they could also, on different mornings, have a choice of oatmeal, fresh and canned fruit salad, dry cereal, pancakes, French toast, crepes, or whole wheat, rye, and white toast with marmalade or grape jelly. There was coffee, with and without caffeine, tea, herbal and black, water, and orange juice, and, depending upon who was in charge of the kitchen, sometimes it was freshly squeezed juice, which was a treat residents appreciated, took for granted, or didn’t seem to notice, like the young married man, whose morning face was hidden behind a newspaper, and who, though often grumpy, liked all of the meals, adored his wife and his mother, and his occupation and obsession, ornithology. He writes prolifically about birds native to South and North America, and, while here, hopes to compile a comprehensive glossary of the local birds, particularly avid to discover rare ones, as he did in Mexico when he spotted the hard-to-see Pauraque, whose feathers and coloring match the ground to disguise it. His cheerful appetite sets him apart from many of the others, while his grumpiness, which may come from missing his home, since he receives many telephone calls from his wife and makes many to his mother, also distinguishes him. I’m not sure what I miss, I often think I miss nothing, that there is nothing to miss, and yet I’m aware that I do, since I am often missing to myself.

  MY PARENTS SENT ME TO a sleepaway summer camp when I was six. I didn’t understand where I was, I had no idea what I was doing there, like my dog, who didn’t understand why she was suddenly unable to walk the city’s streets without her paws hurting. I couldn’t understand why I was thrust into a gray bunk, constructed of wood, somewhere in the country, sitting on a cot covered by a rough wool blanket, which tortured my sensitive skin, with seven other little girls I didn’t know, who were not my brother, who, like him, didn’t pay much attention to me when I was that age or any other. He disappeared when I was eight. I didn’t know these strange little girls, I didn’t know what strangers were, and the little girls in my gray bunk were not sensitive to me. But strangers have potential. I didn’t know the two women who were our counselors, I didn’t know what a counselor was, and, melancholy, I sat on the bed, observing this unfamiliar place, and miserably awaited letters from my mother, who never wrote, because, she told me later, I didn’t write her.

  I don’t remember the food at camp, but I remember walking to the cafeteria every day, passing the infirmary whose name was frightening, where I was told a girl of eight was being kept because she was very, very sick and wasn’t allowed medicine by her parents, who were Christian Scientists. She might die without the medicine her parents refused her. All summer long, every day for eight weeks, we seven little girls walked in a straggling line past the infirmary to the cafeteria to eat our meals. I was the youngest, no one else was turning six at the end of that summer, so I was five, the youngest child in camp, where another little girl was very ill and might die because her parents did not believe in medicine, though it might cure her. I disdain religion, which some sensitive people believe can heal and redeem them, but I have no faith, though I was born into one, which I abandoned, although people can’t abandon and be entirely through with anything into which they were born.

  I didn’t write my mother when I was away, because I didn’t know what away was, I had only recently learned to print, and I didn’t know I was supposed to write her since she was supposed to be with me. I also wasn’t supposed to be in a gray bunk with small strangers and larger ones, counselors, who asked me to do incomprehensible things, like steal the pin from the other team in Color War. I didn’t understand what Color War was, I had no idea what it was, and even though my older cousin was also in the same camp, but we were not in the same bunk, she never spoke to me about it, no one explained it. I didn’t know Color War wasn’t real, just as I didn’t know that I wouldn’t have to live in a gray bunk for the rest of my life, sent there by my parents, who believed I should be there, the way the sick girl’s parents believed she shouldn’t take medicine and die instead.

  I was afraid of dying and had many fears, like my father, but he never appeared afraid. He and my mother visited me once during the eight weeks, a visit I hardly remember, but there were photographs of the event in one of several shopping bags kept in a closet in the house where I grew up and which I loved but that was sold by my parents against my youthful protests. The photographs were meant to be pasted neatly into albums; for all those years, my parents said they should be pasted into albums, but they weren’t and still aren’t, though my father is long dead and my mother is old. My parents arrived at the camp with my father’s brother, my favorite uncle, and his wife, whom he divorced shortly afterward, to visit their daughter, my older cousin, who was supposed to be looking after me, but whom I rarely saw. Ever since her father died, I have not seen her; I never saw her again after my favorite uncle’s funeral. My uncle’s psychiatrist told him that the chest pains he complained of in the last week of his life were neurotic symptoms. Later, her family accused my father of not handing over all the money my uncle had in the business, owned by the two brothers. There was no other money in their textile business, none that was my uncle’s, who liked to gamble, knew gangsters and fast women, and who had spent all of his own money, as well as money that was not his, since my father, incapable of denying his adored, neurotic younger brother anything, had lent him money from the business. My favorite uncle’s family, only weeks after he was buried, turned against my father and treated him like a thief, but some years later, when my father was in Penn Station, his dead brother’s son spotted him walking to the train, went over and offered an apology, which would never have been given if they hadn’t been in Penn Station, by chance, at the same time near the same track. Penn Station may have been in the process of being destroyed then, to clear way for an ugly building that will also be temporary, and, unlike the previous building, it has nothing of beauty, grandeur, history, or maybe hope, and while the significant station, with its history, was obliterated and lost, my father and his nephew were likely oblivious to its demise, especially in that instance, when something of grave and appalling dimensions transpired between them. My father was being apologized to by his nephew, the son of his beloved brother, for something he had never done but of which he had been accused and that had caused him great distress, even despair, in the months and years following his brother’s death. Without this accidental meeting, there would have been no letter or telephone call, no genuine consideration of my father, who loved his brother and who was blameless in this situation, but not in all others. His brother’s family, like most, believed they were right, sensitive, and caring, because of their religion and skin, and their need to feed, clothe, shelter, and protect themselves.

  Textiles is an ancient craft and one of the earliest manufacturing industries, and, in America, in the 19th century and later, many of the mills were situated in the North, in New England, especially Connecticut and Massachusetts, notably the city of Lowell. Cotton was shipped from the South to Lowell and other Northern cities, but in the mid-to-late 20th century the mills began to disappear, many small manufacturers disappeared, and textiles again came from the East, where they had originally come from and where now labor was much cheaper. My father often drove his gray Buick far away or traveled by train to the mills to speak to other men, other owners, about the material he and his brother designed, whose threads they selected, whose weight they decided, which would be transported to their office by truck, many bolts, all smelling of dyes and other natural and unnatural substances. My father loved his brother.

  AT BREAKFAST, LIKE THE YOUNG married man, I would prefer not to talk, to ignore people, sit quietly, and eat my fried eggs, which are sometimes prep
ared over easy when I asked for medium, but I don’t say anything. I would like to be still, or just quiet, and chew the eggs without a sound, because I dislike many sounds associated with eating, and sop up the too-runny part of the yolk with dark, dry wheat toast. Then I would prefer to sip my coffee and look out of the generous window and contemplate a spacious field where deer might be grazing. Seeing deer is always a happy surprise, though they usually run away, especially when you approach them, but if they feel safe and are in the distance, they might continue to eat grass or stand dumbly, with dark brown eyes, limpid and soulful as pathetic fallacies. Sometimes they leap across the field and over paths into the woods, their bushy white tails quickly disappearing into foliage, and the deer are always a welcome surprise. I have also, in that same field or near it, spied a mole, entirely unexpectedly, it was pointed out by another resident, who stood still and motioned me over to her, to witness this exceptionally rare sight. A mole has a tiny, well-articulated face, a longish snout, thick fur, like mink, that covers its small body, and it’s not supposed to be walking on paths, but was lost or confused by an unseasonably mild winter, until finally it found its way back to its hole, though sometimes it scuttled around in circles. The hole was covered by earth, bits of wire, and a piece of thick, black denim, and I wondered where the moles had found it. Denim is often close to an American’s skin, and once I wore it, but these days, unless pressed and unable to think of anything else, I don’t, because it’s heavy, and only the oldest jeans are soft and wearable, and I no longer have the pair I wore for years, which finally felt good. Many people around the world wear denim jeans, maybe because they’re durable and also because they constitute a uniform, a classic, which has stood the test of time, though one day it may fail that. Denim is a stout, serviceable, twilled fabric made from coarse singles yarns. The standard denim is made with indigo blue dyed warp yarn and gray filling yarn, and denim is the most important fabric of the work clothing group, extensively used for overalls, coats, caps, but sports denim, also called faded denim, is lighter weight, made also in pastels and white and colored stripings, used for leisure wear, which is how most people wear it, though its association with work remains, since supposedly Americans play and work hard and have marketed this idea to the world. There is also upholstery and furniture denim.