Fire & Water

by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

  “Jake, what are you doing? My God, why are you naked?”

  The hammer swung again and was met with a loud crack and the sound of rock crumbling to the ground. A dust cloud rose. “There, you sonofabitch!”

  “Jake!”

  He jumped, falling back a little and nearly losing his footing. “Jesus! You scared the hell out of me.”

  The fog wrapped me in a cold, moist blanket, making Jake’s nakedness seem even more absurd. I surveyed the once-idyllic yard to see rock piles and pulled-up vines surrounded by muddy puddles. The willow furniture lay tossed in a heap. “What have you done?”

  He climbed up from the side of the hill to where I stood. His arms waved wildly as he described his vision. His pungent body odor stung my nostrils. “It was all wrong, Kat. It was lifeless. The yard has to have movement and sound. I see that now. We have earth. We have sky. What we need is fire and water. Fire and water together. It’ll be amazing.”

  My head pounded with confusion. I pulled my sweater around me, trying in vain to cover my bulging belly. “It was perfect. It was the most beautiful yard I’ve ever seen. Have you lost your mind?”

  “It was dead. DEAD! Now I’m going to put life into it.”

  “You sound like Dr. Frankenstein.” I tried to laugh, but my attempt at a joke didn’t sound so funny. The wildness in Jake’s eyes terrified me.

  “You’ll see, Kat. I’m making waterfalls everywhere. They’ll tumble from each of the plateaus. Each one will have a different pitch because of the size, shape, and density of the rocks that the water will flow over and the height of the drop.” Jake clicked two pieces of rock together in his hands and a hollow thud sounded. “See, this is granite. It’s really dense, so the sound will be deader. I’ve got soapstone and lava rock. Those are more hollow. It’ll be a—a—chorus. Yeah, a chorus on the hillside. The heat and crackle of flame will make it multidimensional.” Every movement Jake made was exaggerated and primal—like an animal preparing for a fight. He ran without looking. His limbs flung about as if blown by a hurricane. He ran to a large boulder to make another note in his notebook. Without looking up, he continued to mutter.

  His mouth could not spout the words fast enough for his thoughts, and he stammered. He swung his arms. “Imagine water flowing from the Golden Gate. Not real water, of course. That wouldn’t do. But the illusion of water. Made of crystals or glass or—yeah, then I’ll have to find a bigger hill. No, not a hill. A mountain. Half Dome in Yosemite. That’s it!”

  “Where’s this water going to go, Jake? Don’t we need some kind of a permit for all of this? Some kind of drainage system? We can’t just let water run off the hillside. It’ll erode and cause a mudslide.”

  With a jerk, he pitched a rock off of the hillside. “Permits. Permits are bullshit. You can’t get a permit to create. You can’t regulate art. Once it’s done nobody will care about permits. You’ll see.” He paced, ranting toward the sky. “It’ll take helicopters to make the drop.”

  “Jake, you’re scaring me.” My eyes had finally adjusted to the peculiar light, and I took in the extent of the destruction. Ryan was arriving in less than two months. I’d imagined holding our new baby girl, rocking her with the smell of lilac in the air, brushing lambs’ ears against her newborn cheeks. With Jake chattering wildly behind me about water volume and stone density, I climbed partway up the hill so that I could see the patio behind the nursery. In place of the baby garden, a pile of rubble and the gangly roots of uprooted plants lay drowning in a pool of mud. In one day he’d destroyed what had taken months to build.

  Before I was aware of it, Jake was behind me. “The Golden Gate will be my Sistine Chapel. It’ll make this garden seem like nothing.”

  Fury rose in my throat. “Nothing. You’re calling this nothing. It was your everything all summer. All you talked about. All you could think about. What about all of that talk about sitting out here with our baby? You should have asked me before you tore everything up.” Fire raged in my voice. My words ignited an even bigger flame in Jake.

  His brows came together into a pointed V and his lips curled in a snarl. “Ask you. I was supposed to ask you? Am I supposed to ask you every time I want to dig up a few goddamned weeds or move a rock? Did I ask you before I put it in? Why should I ask you before I take it out? Do you think Van Gogh asked if he could paint fucking sunflowers? Maybe you’d rather he painted daisies or daffodils. If you were Michelangelo’s wife, the David would be wearing Bermuda shorts so that no one would be offended.”

  Some alien force had taken over the body of my husband. I was too stunned to react. The harsh white floodlights cast a strange halo around him, making him unrecognizable. “Stop it. I don’t like the way you’re talking. I’m tired. I just want to sit down.” My voice was shaky and weak.

  “You don’t like how I talk when you don’t control it.”

  “What? What are you—”

  “That’s right, Kat. I have thoughts and ideas that you don’t get to control. I don’t have to behave like some domesticated pet. I’m not your fucking houseboy.”

  “You’re talking crazy. Let’s just stop before we say something we’ll regret.”

  “Not you, Kat. Perfectly controlled Dr. Murphy. Always calm. Always precise.” The stench of his hot breath hit me as he drew his face near mine. Spittle sprayed my face as he shouted. “Everything by the book. Takes no risks. But then, neither does a robot or, or, or a corpse. But a robot never created anything. A corpse can’t be an artist.”

  I drew back in silence and turned to walk up the hillside toward the house. With the speed of a pouncing cat, Jake grabbed my shoulder and jerked me back around toward him. Off balance, I stumbled and fell to one knee, cracking it hard against a rock.

  Jake hovered over me, screaming. “My ideas can’t fit inside a box! You can’t expect me to perform like some circus animal. Cooking and planting daisies all day.”

  My ears rung, my knee throbbed. “I never asked you to—”

  He waved his arms as he ranted, his silhouette dark against the stark white light of the floodlights. “No. You never asked me. Not you. Not Angus Murphy’s Kitten Princess. But you got used to the big house and me as a cabana boy pretty fast, didn’t you? And now fucking Burt is calling, telling me we need to generate money like I’m some goddamned ATM machine.”

  I struggled to stand as fear turned to hot rage. “I never asked you for this house, Jake.”

  “Fine then!” he shouted even louder. “Fuck this fucking house!” He picked up a grapefruit-sized rock and chucked it up the hill. It landed with a thud. He ran ahead of me toward the house, picked up another rock, and hurled it farther. The large crash of breaking glass pierced the quiet night. His whoops of delight rang out between each of the next dozen crashes while I cowered behind a rock. The backyard lights of our neighbors flashed on.

  I crouched on the hillside. Jake’s wild ranting and maniacal laughter were punctuated by the explosions of breaking glass. I clung to the rock, its cold penetrating my bones. Moisture seeped into my slippers. I shivered uncontrollably.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. They grew louder, and then I saw the flash of red lights against our neighbor’s house.

  Jake screamed obscenities. A voice came from the side of the house, amplified by a bullhorn. “This is the police. Please put your hands up.”

  I scurried, as much as my pregnant form and my throbbing knee would allow, to the top of the hill to see Jake screaming. “Fuck you! Get out of my house! You’ve got no right to be here!” Then he hurled another rock, shattering another window. “Get off my property!”

  From behind me on the hillside the small fire grew larger and flames licked the night sky. “Drop what you’re holding and put your hands up,” the bullhorn voice said in clipped, flat tones. Firefighters crashed through the wrought-iron gate and ran past Jake with hoses.

  Jake cocked his arm back, ready to fling another rock. Broken glass was strewn over the back patio and his feet were bloody.
Glass shimmered in the scanning beams of flashing red lights. “Drop it and put your hands up,” the voice repeated.

  “Jake! Stop!” I shrieked. I ran toward him, waving my arms, glass crunching under my slippers. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” My abdominal muscles tugged under the weight of my belly as I ran.

  Just as I reached Jake, he hurled another rock, this one landing in the bushes. He searched madly to refill his hand. I ran to him, grabbing his arms, trying to wrap his nude body with my sweater. “Stop Jake. Stop. You could get shot here. For God’s sake!”

  “Yes. For God’s sake is right. I’m doing God’s work here. Don’t you see?” He pushed me aside. I fell backward, landing on my rear end in the mud.

  Before I could get up, two uniformed police officers jumped from the shadows to tackle Jake. He thrashed as they wrestled him to the ground; all the while he screamed curses and struggled against their hold. A third man in a paramedic’s uniform came to my side. “Don’t move. Are you all right, ma’am?”

  “Don’t hurt him,” I pleaded. “He’s not well.” A young officer offered me his hand and helped me climb out of the mud. My mind was a swirl of fury, confusion, and terror. I stepped to where the police held Jake, the knee of one of the officers on his back. Jake lay face down on the ground. He turned his head and spat an angry spray of dirt and saliva at the other officer, who promptly clicked his wrists into handcuffs. “Fucking cops!” Jake screeched. The flames of the fire had died and only black smoke continued to rise. “Fucking art killers, all of you!” Jake raged.

  I knelt beside him, picking up his broken glasses. I wanted to calm his thrashing body and plead for him to return to the Jake that I knew. EMTs arrived and rolled a gurney through the side gate, crunching over broken glass. “Where are you taking him?”

  “Langley Porter.” For the first time, my fear gave way to humiliation. I’d worked with cops and EMTs a thousand times in my professional life, handling addicts, criminals, and mentally ill patients and their families. Now I was the one being “handled” while the father of my child’s fate was being determined.

  “Not Langley Porter,” I snapped. “Take him to General.” I thought of Nigel and the other people I knew at UC’s mental health facility. I couldn’t bear the thought of knowing that my colleagues would see Jake as he now appeared. Shame slapped me for thinking about my image when the man I loved was being put into restraints.

  “Most people prefer Langley Porter, but whatever you say.”

  “Don’t let them take me!” Jake screamed. “They’ll kill me! They’ll kill my art, Kat. Don’t let them take me. They drug away the spark.”

  Despite restraints, Jake continued to buck and jerk. The officers tightened their holds, twisting his arms behind him. Nausea rolled through me.

  Jake continued to shout. “They’ll kill my art. Don’t let them—”

  I was barely aware of the barrage of questions from the EMT as I watched Jake’s gurney getting loaded into the ambulance. Was he taking any narcotics? PCP? Hallucinogens? Prescription medications? Allergies? History of mental illness or violence?

  “None,” I said. “PCP, God no. He doesn’t use drugs. He—he’s fine. He just hasn’t been sleeping.”

  Now Jake was strapped to the gurney and thrashing wildly. His mouth was agape in a contorted maw. He howled, tears running down his face, repeating, “Don’t let them! They’ll kill it! They’ll kill the spark! Hide the notebooks! Hide them all!” His eyes, amber and glowing, found mine through the open door of the wagon. “The spirit will remember what they do to my body. You know it will, Kat.”

  The doors to the wagon slammed shut. The two police cars and the ambulance threw beams of flashing red lights around the neighborhood. Neighbors, some in street clothes, others in pajamas and robes, were gathered around. I’d seen some of them watering their lawns or walking their dogs, but knew few of their names. I wanted to hide my face. I wanted to scream at them to go back to their houses.

  “Show’s over folks,” an officer said. “Let’s clear the street.” The onlookers drifted back to their houses.

  Only then did I look down to see the bloody, torn leg of my mud-covered pants. My knee throbbed.

  “That doesn’t look so good,” said a young policeman. He was holding a clipboard and a pen.

  “It’s just a bump. Where’s he going?”

  “We called in a 5150, that’s a—”

  “I know what it is,” I interrupted. “Jake’s not dangerous. He’s the gentlest man I’ve ever known. He just hasn’t been sleeping.” Even as I said them, my words sounded ridiculous.

  “It seems that there are about fifty rocks in your house, a fire in your yard, and a pile of broken glass that might imply he’s dangerous. Your knee doesn’t look so good, either. Safe people don’t push pregnant women on a hillside.”

  “I fell!” I snapped. “I’m just clumsy right now with the pregnancy. Jake wouldn’t hurt me on purpose.” Images of battered women I’d treated in the ER over the years flashed into my head. My credibility was sinking fast.

  As the taillights of the ambulance disappeared into the fog, my heart grew leaden. I tried to reconcile the two Jakes: the one who created exquisite beauty and the feral animal who now rode in the ambulance.

  I started my old Volkswagen, ready to follow the ambulance to go to San Francisco General. I shivered as I waited for the nearly dead heater to warm up. Ryan flopped wildly in my belly. “Calm down, little one,” I whispered. “We’ll get this all figured out.”

  Doctors and Patience

  “Yo, Murphy, what brings a nice pregnant girl like you down to the city morgue?” Mary K shouted over the screaming wails of The Grateful Dead in the background. Jerry Garcia’s guitar solo ricocheted off the shiny white subway tiles and stainless steel surfaces.

  “You know me. Never could resist a good cadaver!” I yelled, covering my ears and poking my head through the examining room door. My status as a doctor had afforded me entry only after Mary K had assured the receptionist that I had sense enough not to touch medical evidence.

  The truth was, I couldn’t stand being at my house with the broken glass and the backyard a muddy shambles. I’d spent the morning hobbling around the house on my sore knee, then hiring a window company from Oakland. Any construction crew in San Francisco was bound to know Tully or someone else from the pub. I needed to sort out my own thoughts about Jake without having to manage the worry of my family. If I was honest with myself, pride prevented me from calling them, too. The crew boarded up the whole back of the house to keep the weather out. Inside, behind the wood-covered windows, all I could think about was my trusted friend. I decided that my pride was dispensable and steeled myself to confide in Mary K.

  I called first thing in the morning for a squeeze-in visit with my OB, Sylvia Rodriguez, just as a precaution, and was comforted by Ryan’s strong heartbeat. Dr. Rodriguez also examined my knee, just a simple laceration and a nasty bruise.

  Every time I closed my eyes I saw Jake’s sinewy body shimmering with perspiration, silver-gray against the night sky, and that maniacal look on his face. The shattering of glass. The smell of burning leaves. Flashing red lights. Jake’s mouth, an open canyon of agony, begging me not to let them take away his spark.

  I recalled Mary K’s warnings the first night she’d met Jake. She’d warned me that he was a “nut job,” that I was being a fool not to look at the facts. Then there was Aaron Bloom’s letter, warning me that Jake was “not well.” And in Japan I’d witnessed for myself the first hint of what lurked beneath Jake’s brilliance and kindness. He’d explained it all away; and I’d let him. And now I was married, carrying Jake’s baby. If I stood still, the panic about it all might swallow me. Watching Mary K work calmed me in some bizarre way, bringing me back to the world of medicine—something I understood.

  Mary K stepped back from the gray body that rested on the table in front of her and removed her face mask and the clear plastic goggles that covered her glas
ses. Her golden freckles seemed somehow too vibrant for the surroundings. The torso of the thin, bald man was splayed open from the throat to the groin. A tidy row of instruments sat on a tray beside him. She clicked off the tape deck with her elbow.

  “I don’t want to interrupt if you’re in the middle of somebody.”

  “Nice to hear a voice. My patients are cooperative, but limited in conversation skills.”

  I stepped from behind the door, unable to walk without a limp.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  “I was a little jealous of all the attention you were getting for being a gimp,” I said. “Thought I’d garner a little sympathy, get myself a few excused days off from the hospital.”

  Mary K removed her rubber gloves with a snap. “No kidding, Murphy. What happened?” Her face was pinched with suspicion.

  The smell of formaldehyde overpowered me. I swallowed hard and breathed through my mouth. “Just a little clumsiness in the garden,” I said. “It’ll be okay in a few days. Who’s your friend?” I asked nodding toward the eviscerated patient.

  “This dashing figure is Mr. Wilson. Step on up. Mr. Wilson likes meeting new people.” Gnarled fingers of cancer gripped the liver and stomach and had sent their tendrils throughout the abdomen. Mary K had begun her perfect, even stitches in the horizontal line of the collarbone, which would eventually meet with the vertical line that ran down the torso.

  “Cause of death initially assumed to be heart failure as a complication of cancer,” she explained. “Lucky guy. If his heart hadn’t given out he could have lingered for years. Died quicker than they thought, so I’m making sure nobody helped Mr. Wilson here along. Me, I’d exit long before the cancer had its way. This shit makes you a real fan of the Dr. Kevorkians of the world. Nobody should have to live in that kind of agony.”

  “How are you handling all of this?” I asked, looking around the sterile room.