Paradise Park

by Allegra Goodman

  Once I’d stopped irritating Michael so much, and showed I could live without constantly breaking the peace around me like I was a bull in the meditative china shop, he began to work with me again. He talked to me once a day, and instructed me, and he mentioned something to me which I had forgotten, which was that I had a lot of detritus inside of me from my former life. And I considered how I’d lived, and what I’d eaten, and in turn what had consumed me, like my love of beer and pot and acid, not to mention men, and there were a lot of toxins in my system, to say the least. So with Michael’s guidance I went on a course of fasting, during which I drank water and some juice, but ate nothing, and that helped a lot. That really restored me to myself, and quieted me down. My body was lighter, my head was cooler, and it was like I bid each of my wandering selves good-bye, like I sent each one on pilgrimage with a pilgrim’s staff. The child in me, and the wild girl, and the mixed-up traveler. Good-bye, good-bye. The house of myself was empty, and I had two days of perfect peace.

  On the third day I saw something about myself. Just very clearly, and without a mirror. I saw that I was starving, and it wasn’t just my bones sticking out and my hands and arms all skeletal. It was my mind; it wasn’t bright and spacious anymore; it had turned all thin and brittle, and all I could see when I looked inside myself was sludge and darkness. I was so disappointed I couldn’t even tell my teacher. I lay down and I slept for a day, because I didn’t know what else to do.

  I woke up and lay on my sleeping mat, and Michael came to me and said, “What’s wrong?”

  And I said, “Hey, Michael, I’m sick.”

  He put his hand on my forehead.

  “I don’t think I have a fever. It’s just inside of me. I’m all hollowed out. It’s like, the more I look inside myself, the less I see.”

  Then he smiled at me—a real appreciative happy smile, like Now we’re getting somewhere. He said, “That’s right.”

  “It’s right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The more I look inside myself, the less I see. That’s true.”

  I said, “I look at my body, and I look like I’m dying.”

  “Yes,” he said, “you were before, but now you see it.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “My practice seemed simple before,” I said, “but now it’s not.”

  He said, “It is simple.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  He said, “I think you do know.”

  And I sat up on my sleeping mat slowly, trying to figure out what I knew.

  And wouldn’t you know my imagination came around again in my distress, just to plague me, and I was so weak it was hard even to argue in my head. My imagination just swaggering around like he was so hot and knowing any moment I’d have to give in. “Sharon! Shaaron!”

  “What?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Go away.”

  “I want something.”

  “Go away.”

  “I want something.”

  “What?”

  “Sprinkles on top.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Garnishes.”

  “Stop that.”

  “I’m bored.”

  “Tough.”

  “I’m so bored.”

  “So, life isn’t about being entertained all the time.”

  “Yes it is,” my imagination whined to me; and then he said, “How long is this eightfold path, anyway?”

  “It isn’t about distance!” I said.

  “Well, where’s it going?”

  “It’s not about going anywhere,” I said. “It’s not about going, it’s about being.”

  “Being is a drag.”

  Then I closed my eyes tight and covered my ears. I tried to go back inside of myself, but I just started babbling, to my imagination, “Do you know how spoiled you are? Do you know what a total pain in the neck you are? Instead of joining me in mindfulness, you are dividing me and just forcing me into this Western duality and just making some kind of schism inside of myself, and driving me mad in the process! You are so shallow! Haven’t you ever heard of the possibility of peace?”

  And my imagination said to me, “Yeah, I want peace.”

  “Good.”

  “But with music, and dancing, and ice cream and song!”

  Well, all I knew was that everything that had been working before had stopped working now. My hungers were starting to return to me, my body was crying out for meat and eggs and cheese, and, believe it or not, milk. It seemed like all my blood and flesh was crying out to eat the products of other living creatures and to forget about being holy. And my lips and my hands were starting to yearn and feel sorry for themselves, because they so wanted to be touched. It just seemed like my whole body and my imagination and my memory had decided to rebel and conspire against me. I breathed and breathed and tried to give my spirit space enough to open up again, and my poor spirit tried to open, but whenever it did, it was like an umbrella pummeled by this horrible inner wind, and all its little wire spokes got bent, and it would turn inside out.

  Then—remember; how I bade good-bye and let go of all my wandering selves, and gave them pilgrim staffs to go their own way? Well, they all marched right back inside of me again. The child and the wild girl and the mixed-up traveler. And the child was crying she was tired, and the wild girl was complaining I never let her go dancing, and the mixed-up traveler was just making all these demands like “What the hell is happening here? Are you on the verge of enlightenment here? Or are you just really screwed up? And how do you know which is which? Because it seems like there’s a fine line between purification and starving to death.”

  So of course, I tried to compose myself. But still I could not. And I just got more and more irritable and grouchy. And finally I realized, This is not productive here. You’ve achieved some real peacefulness and had some awesome spacious days, but that time has passed, and it’s too bad, ’cause you still need so much more teaching, but until you can get yourself and all your inner voices to shut up again, that isn’t going to happen. So you’d better take the good and absorb the knowledge, and live the Way at the level you’re at.

  I had some broth, and I ate some flatbread, and got some of my strength back the next few days. Then I bowed to Michael and to all the other monks who had taken me in to teach me, and I walked out of the center. And I had just my extra clothes and my house key and what I was wearing, and bus fare that they gave me. My pockets were empty. I had no money, no notebook, no Bible, no lucky silver watch, since I’d given them up, and donated them, in thanks for my teaching. I felt a pang about the watch. All of a sudden I thought of asking for it back. All of a sudden it occurred to me—was I right to give up everything I had of earthly value? Were the center teachers right to accept those things? Maybe this place wasn’t on the up and up! Maybe this so-called Tibetan meditation center wasn’t even accredited. Even as I walked the road I could feel my anger and my indignation and regret coming to meet me. Shame on you! I thought as I walked tearfully to the bus stop.

  Riding in the bus, skimming over Pali Highway, I stopped my crying. I stared out the window and I saw trees, and churches, and the consulates of foreign countries. I saw the tall pagoda roofs of a temple that stood in the great cemetery in the valley below. Among the cars on the road, a convoy followed a hearse, and each car had a sign printed FUNERAL. We drove into the city. In Waikiki the stores were filled with shoppers, and between the hotels the ocean was shining blue and children were jumping in the tame little waves. The beach was shining and splashing and scented with tanning oil. The streets were jammed and materialistic and noisy. I felt stunned. I felt as though I’d just returned from another country, and in a way, I had.

  WHEN I got to my house, it was shut up, and the paint peeling and blistering in the sun, exactly how I’d left it. I took my house key out of my backpack and stepped in. Wow, the place smelled bad. Like liquor and BO and v
omit on the rug. Phew. The guys had probably had a party the night before, because there were bottles, and bits of food around, and paper cups, and on the walls were traces of their specialty cherry Jell-O that they used to make for parties, and which was spiked, and sometimes people used to throw at each other, causing Jell-O gobs and dribbles on the walls, which the ants enjoyed. The mess didn’t faze me too much, because that was just who my housemates were, and in fact a lot of who I used to be, and now I had achieved some distance from that. I felt no rancor. But then I opened the door to my room. And there were two huge men sleeping there on my buton, snoring away in their underwear, dead drunk, fat as pigs, just two three-hundred-pound hairy swine lying there, and I took one look at them and I went ballistic. Because that was my buton that I had paid for, and that had been my space that I had lived in and prayed in and studied my Bible in and tried to keep clean and decorated with my Sojourner Truth poster, “Ain’t I a Woman?” that Corinne had given me. I started yelling and screaming and tugging these oafs to wake up, and I think I kicked them a couple times until they retreated into the living room. Looking back, I was lucky they took it mildly and didn’t haul off and kill me. They were actually nice guys, and fairly gentle, if not gentlemen.

  I was so discomfited by the whole experience I had to go outside and just sit for a while on the lawn. The mondo grass was thick and overgrown, so pokey I couldn’t meditate. I ended up sitting on top of my almost empty backpack and staring out at the street in front of me. I just sat until it got dark. Still, neither T-Bone nor Baron came home. They may have been working that night down in Waikiki. The sky darkened, and the mosquitoes came around as they always did at twilight, and then their hour passed, and they flew off to their little mosquito babies in puddles and stagnant pools in the suburbs. Night came, and the night breezes that are warm on your arms, and damp on the back of your neck and on your knees. I was so tired, but I didn’t want to go back inside and sleep in my old room. I couldn’t go back in there to that hospitable yet rotten little house.

  Then who should I see strolling up the street? Marlon! My poor forsaken black kitten, who was now a big scrawny cat. And he came straight up to me! He recognized me right away and rubbed against me, as if he were glad to see me, which he must have been, because even though I’d left food and money for his care with T-Bone and Baron, Marlon had clearly been living by his wits much of the time I’d been gone. “Marlon!” I said. “What happened to you? What did you do to yourself?”

  He purred at me, and he looked up with his little furrowed brow.

  I scratched him between the eyes. “Marlon,” I said, “I can’t believe I left you for so long. I don’t even know how long it’s been. You probably thought I was never coming back! Oh, Marlon, but you left me first, you know. I started thinking you didn’t want me around. I was thinking you hardly even needed me.” He rubbed himself against my legs. He was like flea-bitten velvet. I caressed his tail, all slender and graceful until right before the end it bent. “Oh, Marlon, Marlon.” I couldn’t believe it. Nobody in the world knew where I was right then, and Marlon had come to me. There he was.

  11

  A Good Place

  WE were very thin, Marlon and I. He probably had worms from catching mice and birds and things, and I knew he should go to the vet. But even if I’d had the money, I was too tired to take him. After all that meditation and fasting, I was wasted. I was so white my roommates called me shark bait. Then they felt bad. T-Bone got me oxtail soup and steamed dumplings from the King’s Garden. And Baron even went to the Laundromat and washed my sheets for me—since he was guilty his friends had slept on them while I was gone. So I convalesced with Marlon on clean sheets. I opened up my Norton anthology that I’d left behind in the house. And I came to this poem by Thomas Hardy that was like a blue-note psalm. I started reading it aloud to Marlon.

  He opened up one yellow eye.

  I read the whole poem to Marlon a couple of times, until he started glaring at me—like Woman, now you go too far. I’ll sleep on your bed, but Thomas Hardy is pushing it.

  So I said, “Okay, okay, no more poems. Okay, I respect your silence.” I got that now. You can’t just invade the consciousness of other living beings. They will be what they will be. They can never be what they are not. And Marlon was no T. S. Eliot. He was not a literary cat. But to myself I murmured the first stanza.

  Let me enjoy the earth no less

  Because the all-enacting Might

  That fashioned forth its loveliness

  Had other aims than my delight.

  “The Buddha would have loved this,” I said. Just the idea that the universe is not designed for a person’s entertainment. It was so true. You can’t just sit around waiting for the next revelation.

  That very day I decided I was going to get off my duff. And a few weeks later I actually did get off it. I networked with all my connections, and got a job at Crack Seed World, selling pickled plums, and a weekend gig at a shop behind the Stop Light selling sex toys, and then ultimately, I got a dream job, a very hard-to-find position serving at The King’s Bakery, which had as its major perk all you could eat for the staff every night after eleven, and free day-old Portuguese sweet bread, which even when they are a day old are just about the sweetest loaves in the world and so soft and just a little bit glutinous so that you can tear them apart with your bare hands and stuff enormous amounts into your mouth, just like you’re eating bread candy. So every day I ate those loaves, and every night I got me a stack of dinner-plate-size buttermilk pancakes, which I slathered with two miniscoops of whipped butter. No syrup on top, just butter, smeared and dripping over the sides.

  I started putting some meat on my bones, and some of my energy came back. I put our things in a couple of good brown paper grocery bags with handles. I was all set to renew my life. So I got me and Marlon a new place, a room in this co-op that my old buddy Rich and his girlfriend, Kathryn, had founded.

  The co-op was near the Termite Palace, which was what people used to call the old abandoned Honolulu Stadium, which stood for years being eaten out from under, before it was finally torn down. Our co-op was a brown tongue-and-groove tract house with extra rooms slapped on the back. From the outside it didn’t look like it all fit together, but there was plenty of room for the five of us who lived there.

  A singer-actor-dancer-doctor named Will had the front bedroom. He was tall and reedy and had blond hair and had come out from New Hampshire to Hawaii to do his fellowship in emergency medicine. Will worked a lot, but his passion was theater. He was a fair singer and an amazing actor. He had the title role in the Honolulu Players’ production of The Bourgeois Gentleman, and he was in the chorus in several Gilbert and Sullivan productions at the Manoa Valley Theater, which was a tiny little stone church with a cemetery in the yard, so you walked up this short path, between the gravestones, into the sanctuary, which sat about thirty-five people, and you watched the shows on this pocket stage, the size of a large dining-room table, on which the actors barely fit, and the chorus was the bare minimum, three women and three men, who yet somehow conjured up all the shepherdesses you could wish, or all the fairies, or a whole navy if need be.

  Also in the house was a preschool teacher named Tom. He was even taller than Will, and with skinny yet hairy legs and longish brown hair and a brown beard—not a real bushy beard—but sort of here and there on his face. Tom had originally come from Oregon and migrated out to Hawaii, and fallen into his teaching job as well as the co-op; he tended to fall into things. He played the hammer dulcimer, but not well—which was why he’d never made any money back in Portland when he was trying to be a street musician. He had a lot of feeling for the music, but he tended to hit the wrong strings, so when he took his dulcimer out of its case and played, you’d hear this beautiful angelic sound like quiet little bells ringing—along with some random extra little bells he hit by mistake. It was like Simple Gifts in a rain barrel.

  And there was Rich, who looked just like he u
sed to, except thirty pounds heavier, since he’d been sitting around so much writing his dissertation on those red-footed boobies we’d gone out and counted six years before. And then there was Kathryn, who was a featherweight woman with masses of auburn curls and blue eyes magnified by her glasses. She was my age, twenty-seven, but she always made me feel scruffy in that she had real clothes from stores, and she used moisturizer, and worked out at gyms. While my hair just sort of hung, and I’d gotten so skinny, my face looked gaunt and tired, and, I don’t know, almost old. Kathryn was a one-woman revolutionary cell for Greenpeace in Hawaii—she’d come out from Santa Cruz to shake up the Honolulu offices, which was how she’d met Rich. She was also in a major domestic phase, which was one of the reasons the whole co-op got started.

  We all shared the cooking and cleaning duties, and we were all dedicated to pure food and water, recycling, environmental activism, and the ideals of simplicity. We lived as a strict democracy, which meant you had to participate in house meetings every week, no matter how long they were. For example, the first meeting I ever went to was almost three hours. It was a meeting about how people felt about Marlon coming with me into the co-op, and whether or not litter boxes in the kitchen were okay, because some people were not cat people and they thought kitty litter in the same room as food preparation was gross.

  “Plus, I’m allergic to cats,” Kathryn said.

  We were all sitting in the living room, and I was sweating it. I said, “Kathryn, to me, Marlon is not a cat.”

  “Well, he is a cat,” Will said from the floor. “I personally have nothing against that, but it is true, Sharon. You have to admit that he is a cat.”

  “Biologically, he is a cat,” I said, “but I feel like Kathryn is using the word as a pejorative term, and I have to object to that.”