The windows smell of Windex and the bed of detergent. The kitchen appliances look brand new. The clock is right.
Going in, Ralph asks that Eddie remove his shoes and Eddie asks if Ralph is some kind of Maoist. Ralph goes to the kitchen.
Eddie sits right down on the gleaming floor and puts his briefcase on his knees and puts his head on his briefcase.
He calls out through his crossed arms, “Did you have a really happy childhood? Don’t tell me. You just, obviously, you’re the kind who, your parents loved each other and you had a fucking collie.”
“Do you want a beer?”
“Yeah, try and shut me up. That’s the best thing.”
“Do you want a beer?”
“Of course I want a beer, but I’m trying to talk about why you can’t hear what I’ve got to say. That’s the point.”
Now Eddie rears back and clicks his briefcase open. Rummaging among the papers, he pulls out:
•half a ham sandwich with a match embedded in the bread
•a plastic brontosaurus
•phone bills
•bedraggled bunny ears, à la Playboy
•pens, tickets
•one fuzzy die
then he just dumps it all out on the floor.
Papers, socks, envelopes, pennies, fly everywhere. A travel-sized Listerine bounces, hitting him in the face. A snapshot of a lanky young girl in pink dungarees, smiling in the seedy Chinatown of some metropolis, skates free, briefly takes off kite-fashion, swoops down, hoverfoils some yards over the smooth floor, and finally tips over onto its face just where Ralph is about to put his foot, on his way back from the kitchen with two cans of beer.
25. Colorado – California (Montara Beach)
1Ralph left Boulder owing
•two months’ rent for his retail premises
•1,200 dollars plus for sales of merchandise held on sale-or-return
•miscellaneous sums to the gas, electric, telephone companies
•the printer of his brochures; the delivery guys; the plumber who installed his sink
•etc. to the tune of ten grand roughly
1.1It took two days, in the matchbox Hyundai, to move the remaining ceramics to a warehouse.
1.2Eddie paid the storage people with a hot check.
2Within five days of meeting they were on the road to California.
2.1Through the New Mexican desert, Eddie talked, restlessly stroking the stick shift with one hand.
2.2The shadow of a small cloud lay on the blacktop far ahead.
2.3A lone hawk tipped in the sky.
2.4“You gotta admit, it’s genius,” Eddie said to Ralph.
2.5“This card isn’t authorized,” the pump attendant said to Eddie.
3Somewhere in Nevada, the ridges had turned red. The sun bled, low and huge.
3.1“You realize what I’ll do to you if we get there and there’s no mansion?”
3.2Eddie drank just one beer, several times.
3.2“No, it was a thump. It was a thump in the engine.”
3.4Ralph put the Econo-lodge on his American Express.
3.5Ralph put the auto mechanic on his Visa.
4Arriving at last by dead of night, they were greeted by a starved hag.
4.1“You looked to me as if your beautiful fur had all been shaved.”
4.2“Chrysa, I’m your brother, okay? You look like shit.”
4.3Mine was the sky moon and theirs the bottom, swimming-pool moon, bright by unfair means. I wept savagely in the sky moon, come stalking in the open French doors. I would not approach that shipshape bed, made against me.
I sat in front of it on my haunches, dried out. When I touched the blanket, it was a moment of drama. I looked around with my arm stretched out, surprised that there was no sound. Only the trees outside said shh and shuffled, like children tiptoeing past their parents’ open bedroom door.
I don’t remember getting out of my clothes. I don’t know how I got there. I only know I woke up on top of the bed, naked and hot in blinding sunlight.
24. Boulder: 1203 13th Street
Before he could stop himself, Ralph trod on the photo. Then he stepped back hastily and, gripping the beer cans under one arm, stooped to retrieve it. Hunkering there, he studied the picture. It showed a buck-toothed girl of thirteen or fourteen years old, with caterpillar eyebrows and a strong Roman nose – a face uncannily like a dachshund’s.
It was a moment of no natural drama. A car alarm was going outside, and some passing kids were running through a Monty Python sketch in shrill, unconvincing accents. Eddie was on his knees, chewing the cellophane off a fresh pack of Dorals.
Ralph looked at the back of the picture, signed “Love, DC,” shook his head and said, “Denise Cadwallader.”
Eddie dropped the cigarettes, swearing, and gaped.
“No – no way, man. You mean you know Deesey?”
“Of course I know her,” Ralph said. “She’s my sister.”
WHAT HAPPENS
1.) Eddie is born and I’m adopted.
2.)Our father dies, somewhere, we are reliably informed.
3.)At 22, Eddie meets a woman named Denise in Cairo; she, mysterious, dark, and very beautiful like in the movies – Hitchcock, for instance – tells him some unbearable secret and loves him too briefly, vanishing at a crucial point.
4.)Our mother dies, leaving only Eddie untold wealth.
5.)Eddie meets a man named Ralph in Colorado, and something impresses Eddie, something unaccountable attaches him to Ralph, as happens to guys whose fathers were sufficiently absentee.
6.)With his untold wealth, Eddie sets up a spiritual institute, making Ralph a New Age guru.
7.)Like other enterprises of spoiled children, this one ends in madness, grief and debt.
8.)On an island off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia, raving and alone, my brother dies. Unaccountably, Denise phones me with the news.
9.)Ralph and I fly to Malaysia, where the answers await us on a damp beach whose waters sparkle too much, in flecks, like cartoon radiation.
“You Can’t Go Home Over My Dead Body Until You Wipe That Look Off Your Face”
1At Berkeley, my PhD dissertation subject was Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus.
1.1It’s the old wheeze:
•man learns dark secret
•flies too near sun
•crash
•straight to hell
1.2Moral: Don’t think too much.
1.3I was engaged in a deconstructive analysis, as I tautologically expressed it.
2Dr. Faustus was an actual person.
2.1A native of Germany, he plied his trade in the rowdy public houses common in the first half of the sixteenth century.
2.2Dr. Faustus lost his post as schoolmaster at Kreuznach through “the most dastardly lewdness with the boys.”
2.3“This wretch, taken prisoner at Batenburg on the Maas, was treated rather leniently by the chaplain, Dr. Johannes Dorstenius, because he promised the man, who was good but not shrewd, knowledge of various arts. Hence the chaplain kept drawing him wine, by which Faust was very much exhilarated, until the vessel was empty. When Faust learned this, and the chaplain told him that he was going to Grave that he might have his beard shaved, Faust promised him another unusual art by which his beard might be removed without the use of a razor, if he would provide more wine. When this condition was accepted, Faust told him to rub his beard vigorously with arsenic, but without any mention of its preparation. When the salve had been applied, there followed such an inflammation that not only the hair but also the skin and the flesh were burned off. The chaplain himself told me of this piece of villainy more than once with much indignation.”
2.4In short, the historical Faustus was a vicious quack.
3The myth of the great magician came later, posthumous to the man Faust.
3.1In the legend, Faust performed marvels, played tricks on popes and kings, learned the secret ways of stars and immortals.
3.2Faust s
ummoned Helen of Troy to be his lover, and with her had a son, Justus, born with the gift of prophecy.
3.3“The devil has honestly kept the promise that he made to me, therefore I will honestly keep the pledge that I made and contracted with him,” said Faust, facing an eternity of torture.
3.4The yarn was embellished by Marlowe, Mann, Goethe.
Chronology
1991:I am working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.
1992:I am working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.
1993:Although I have not visited the campus in a year, I am still working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.
1994:I am trying to summon the demon Mephistopheles, drawing chalk figures on my floor and chanting Latin backward.
1995:Even my psychiatrist does not realize that, crouched painfully under the bed, with a flashlight, after my mother has gone to sleep, I am working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.
1996:I keep the deconstructive treatment hidden in a pillowcase; before I go to sleep I place an envelope full of letters from “good” people over it, and paperweight the lot with a King James Bible. I have not dared open the pillowcase in six months.
1997:Now that I have finally destroyed all trace of my deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus, I do not understand why I feel unhappy.
1998:My mother dies of complications following liposuction surgery. Eddie comes home with Ralph and I faint. I wake up on top of the bed, naked and hot in blinding sunlight.
And, seeing the room from this unaccustomed angle, I remember my deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus. I haven’t thought about it in a long time.
In my deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus, I consider the manner in which incredulity “writes” the discourse about the magus. I draw on sources from The Golden Bough to the Bhagwan Rajneesh. Only it never quite gels.
I think of some ways in which life might have been different, had it gelled.
I lie in bed for some time, just feeling sorry for myself and malingering. I dwell on the negatives. I am flabby, dank, unlovable. Staunch, exalted souls rot in the mines, in the rice paddies, in the exploiters’ factories, while I fatten like a horrible insect.
I go back underneath the bed and days pass.
Sometimes Eddie and Ralph come in to check on me. They say “Hello?” experimentally – but when I don’t respond, they tromp around doing whatever as if they’re alone in the room. Every now and then, Eddie sits on the floor and talks to me. I mostly say “yes” and “no.” Sometimes I think of whole sentences I might say, but they’re all weasely ways of asking why he doesn’t love me. Afterward I suffer agonies of humiliation, just thinking that I almost said these sentences.
I’m trying to hallucinate. The hallucination I choose is of a mass of starving children in the courtyard, calling to eat me. I consider this a potent, apt hallucination. I know it would piss my mother off no end.
I don’t quite tell Eddie or Ralph I am hallucinating, though I drop strong hints.
I keep thinking I’m about to come out from under the bed. Then I think something else. For hours at a time I recall old Happy Days episodes, amazed that we all found Fonzie sexy. I remember unlikely fish from The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Did I make up the giant crab? Johnny Carson backward is Nosrac Ynnhoj. What is Nosrac Ynnhoj? would be my prize-winning Jeopardy question.
“You’re going to have to come out someday, Chrysa. You know? Cause I’ll make you. I’ll totally set it on fire or something. Not. Kidding.”
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau Dries Up and Blows Away
1Ralph kneels down beside the bed and slides a plate of chili in to me, smearing the dust ruffle with poppy-red sauce.
2I throw up violently into a plastic bucket. It’s yellow; the handle’s hooked behind my neck.
3They’re sitting on the bed over me having a discussion.
“The bed is the actual problem, cause we don’t talk about this but Chrysa was actually raped in this bed but then Mom was too cheap to throw it out. So no fucking wonder.”
“I don’t think the bed is the problem.”
“And yet, curiously enough, the bed is the problem, or else I don’t know why you bother to just contradict me.”
“I think the problem is self-pity.”
4Eddie hauls me out from under the bed by my ankle, yelling, “I’ll throw you out, I’ll fucking do it, you don’t wise up fast.”
Parenthesis
(It’s fun to slide on the floor. Then I’m revealed, a horrible result like a turtle pried out of its shell. I’m covered in some kind of juice, unlike other sweat. Eddie goes, “Oh, Jesus.”
I cry, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” I am sort of trying to curl up in a crash position, but also to sit up normally, so the effect is as if two kids are fighting for the controls.
“Okay, you need a fucking shower, I’m not kidding. Right? You look like shit. I’m your brother, okay? You look like shit. Do you ever think of eating?”
“Leave me alone!”
He mimics, in a high-pitched voice, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” And then – “No. You gotta come do something for me.”
“You’re just fucking cruel!”
He crosses his arms. I catch my breath and everything is devastatingly clear. All the things I have to say to Eddie are simple and friendly. Then the next sob comes and I remember that he doesn’t love me.
“Well, get up,” he says. “I haven’t got all day, personally.”
“I can’t,” I snivel. For a moment it’s true. I can’t even get up, and there he is, tormenting me.
“I need you to come to Mom’s office,” he says, with labored sarcasm. “It’s like, ten inches, do you think you can manage ten inches?”
But I say stubbornly, inspired: “I’ll have to crawl.”
“I don’t care if you roll! Do umbrella steps!” Eddie wails. “I want you to type a mailing list,
FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”
I crawl to my mother’s office. Eddie shuffles behind me, muttering, groaning with impatience. I can feel the swipe when he mimes kicking me in the ass. Sometimes I’m on all fours, making a good clip despite a fake limp in my left arm. Sometimes, depleted, I fall on my belly and can only make pitiful, beached-jellyfish motions. In my mind, at any moment he might crack and fall to his knees beside me, clasping me in his arms. If this miracle can be achieved, everything will instantly be healed and bright. Why don’t you love me? Why don’t you love me? my mind is booming.
At the same time I’m so furious I want to turn and bite his shins. So I’m a hypocrite, really, and I can feel I’m going to get nowhere.
Can’t give up, though, I tell myself. A quitter never wins.
Eddie’s understandably exasperated; but satisfied, too. I feel in my ritual donkey imitation I am actually carrying both of our loads. It’s strange how, to an outsider, he would seem to be the powerful one.
Finally we arrive at Mom’s office. By now we have arrived, too, at the point where people just rave, as if in fever, and the things they say are all deformed by heat. So as I grovel up to the PowerMac Mom got new just before she disintegrated and was no more, Eddie’s barking, “Me and Ralph can’t type, cause we’re men. So you gotta at least type or else you go live in the garden with the other snails!”
“Oh, you can too type! You can type!”
“We can’t type! We’re men!”
“You can type!”
“NO! You’re gonna type and fuck you!”
“I’ll type but you have to admit that you can type first!”
“We can’t type!”
Silence. I’m crouched on the gray carpet in my mother’s office. The furniture is glass and stainless steel and black canvas. It’s like sitting inside an expensive suitcase.
Eddie says, “I got the mailing lists over there. They need to go on labels.”
I blurt: “But I’ll need the computer on the floor.”
&nb
sp; Eddie winds up and slams his fist down on the glass computer desk. Both of us flinch, expecting it to shatter. But nothing happens. Then he says, “Look what you made me do.”
I’m shouting, “Don’t dare blame me!” as he stamps out of the room.
I sob for some time, and think about homelessness. Then I move the monitor and the keyboard down under the desk. I crawl to fetch the mailing lists. There are 48 pages of addresses, single-spaced. I feel safe, realizing it will take me a long time. As long as I have labels, Eddie won’t throw me out.
From then on, every day I furtively crawl down the corridor to my mother’s office, where I sit under the desk typing labels and printing them out. When my eyes begin to hurt from the screen, I stick labels on envelopes. Once, when I look up at the door, Ralph’s there. I duck my head, ashamed because I look like shit. He says, “How’s things?” and when I look up again, he’s gone. Later, in the doorway, I find a cheese sandwich, neat on a plate with a folded paper napkin.)
End Parenthesis
5Eddie lies on my floor drinking peppermint schnapps.
It’s late at night, I don’t know how late. Through the dust ruffle he tells me how cool it’s going to be once the center’s really going. But he can’t let me stay if I’m some loony crawling around the halls.
I’m his sister and he loves me and all. He likes me, anyway. He loves me. No, he likes me, no, he loves me. No, it’s something else that doesn’t start with an L.
So, instead of rotting in my own shit, why don’t I just wake up and do his marketing stuff; I got that Master’s after all, and what good’s a Master’s if all I want out of life’s to rot under a bed? I gotta admit.
The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done Page 5