Upstairs, another band played faster music for the younger crowd with English words. Their band played the latest Benny Goodman tunes with trumpets, clarinets, saxophones, and drums. The old ladies downstairs pointed to the jumpy ceiling above and whispered to each other, 'Swing' as if it was a dirty word.
On the main floor, set tables had circled around an open space, which created an area where the new bride and her husband danced the traditional first dance as a married couple. The other guests circled around and watched. Close family members waited only a short time before they would steal the dance away from the new couple. Uncles with deep affection for the bride would whisper in her ear their love and support "If he hits you, call me."
First and second generation aunts would in turn dance with the groom giving advice and simple threats. "Be gentle and patient. I be over your house next week to find out if you listened well." The promised blessings were given to every bride and groom for generations.
Dancing went on for hours long into the night. Running children chased each other between the crowds. In the corner, a towering wedding cake nervously watched.
There was a steady stream of servers moving around the tables balancing heavy trays of food. Trays filled with bowls dripping in gravies on meats and sausages along with platters stacked with dumplings. On one side of the room was a line of tables filled with desserts made by family wives from handed down recipes - recipes they received from their husband's mothers that they will pass on to their children and to Violet.
Old men and uncles with soft legs that worked poorly leaned on the sticky bar, lifting shots of whiskey for luck, many babies and long lives. The many blessings given to the young couple, matching the promises made 'till death do they part'.
"Here's to Pavel and Violet. May they have many 'childrens' and health and happiness in their married lives together."
"Gratulujem"
"Nazdravie"
The many toasts spawned three girl babies.
[ I went on and on with hardly a pause. I gave the medical prosecutors everything they had asked as if ‘ratting out’ on my mother would end their questions. ]
When the hospital ladies were done with me, I signed the papers that condemned my mother to a nursing home for the ten days and then left the room with remorse and guilt about everything I had ever done questionably wrong in my entire life. The walk toward the elevators was weighted by the deed. A strange quiet escorted my every step.
The hospital’s bright white lights swept the floor soundlessly. Attendants prowled the halls opening doors sometimes and peering in. In the breath of its darkness you occasionally heard whimpering or soft sobs. Hospital corridors are strange places at night.
I couldn't swallow. My jaws clamped down tight. My head worked over the day. I couldn't believe what I heard but I had nothing else to confuse it with… she cannot live alone. The words fit a shape like a nut in a shell. Not too big but comfortably smug in its hallow cave.
Wait a minute I thought to myself. What does that really mean… she cannot live alone? What were the exact words? Maybe I wasn't listening carefully. Sometimes I do that. Sometimes my mind has a mind of its own. I love that about myself.
I didn't want to think about it much. It was too dangerous. It fixes it. It nails it down. But I found myself muttering with each step. She cannot live alone… She cannot live alone? Tears lost their way and filled my mouth. Someone inside said don't you dare cry.
I pushed the elevator button that arrowed down. When the doors opened a man inside carrying a little girl in his arms moved slightly to the side. The little girl was tightly bundled in a pink padded jacket that went past her neck and hooded her head. A zipper and drawstring kept her stiff and fixed in place. The little girl stared at me, as did the balloon she was carrying by a string wrapped around her balled fist. Her stare continued for the longest time. Then, with no provocation on my part, she squished her lips together and pushed out her smart-ass tongue as far as it would go. I never had children myself but I believe pardoning parents would call that… ‘she-missed-her-nap’.
The elevator hit the main floor with a jerk and opened its doors. I followed the sassy sack and her father out of the building.
* It was a long day. Darkness was now complete. Great lumps of cold fell on top of me from under the night. There was nothing I could do to stop it nor did I want to. This was Chicago's cold, Chicago's snow.
There seemed to be a hint of magic to it all. In front of me were burning lights scattered all about the hospital’s parking lot, all smiling down out of their glass eyes and casting a hard light on the covered tar. Their electric faces stood between me and the stars.
I vaguely remembered and at the same time, hardly recognized where I was. The parking lot was all white with scattered rectangle patches of blue-black where cars left to go home. Only a few mounds of white popped up from its flat landscape. One mound was in the shape of my mother's car.
I walked slowly to the covered sedan, brushed aside the snow parts hiding the driver side’s door and slid inside. There I sat, in this cold metal containment, which seemed like hours waiting for the engine to clear its throat and blow in some warm air.
I bounced inside my skin and slapped my limbs together for friction warmth. The heater’s control dial was on maximum heat as my breath vaporized the air and steamed the windows. The cold shivered my bones. I began to wonder how long it would take for bone marrow to freeze into tiny crystals. All I could do was wait, bounce and take tiny short breaths.
Thoughts of the day fell apart like a thousand snow crystals that went flying into the glass faces of the street lamps. The wipers helped and moved the snow away slowly at first and then nervously rushed it's sweep. I made them stop. Their nervousness irritated me.
I wanted to cry but it was too damn cold. Scared to death. My chest hurt. I felt like crying but wasn’t sure. The cold air of the night blew into my head and made me dizzy. Those words took shape, like puppets and danced in my head – ‘she cannot live alone… she cannot live alone.’ What was about to happen to me?
I felt shut off, squeezed and closed inside. I felt I was about to be compressed in a way that I wouldn't be able to do anything but think from the outside. My mentors, my ghostly friends, Picasso, Giacometti, Gully Jimson and DeKooning would sit in my brain like a lump of clay with nothing to say, giving no guidance. They would turn into thin paper passages bound in books, stacked on my bed 2000 miles away. I was alone.
My skin shivered. My heart beat like a toy that was wound too tight. My feet wanted to run, but where.
What was going to happen to me? Oh Jesus, why am I so Goddamn self-centered? …another thing to worry about.
I felt like a corpse that spent a week in the bottom of an undisclosed river.
Shivering, I closed my eyes and used all my brains to go someplace other than where I was. Artists can do that if they had a mind to. I needed to transcend this cold, leave Chicago and run inside myself back to my studio where it was warm and foggy, with the sweet smell of paint drying and odors from dead fish carcasses squeezing their way through the sides of my roll up door.
transcend (trăn-sĕnd′) verb. transcend-ing
– to go beyond the range or ordinary limits of something abstract, conceptual field, overpass; rise above (the universal or material existence)
9.
SUZKA AND THE CREATIVES When I came out of my head, I was relieved. No doubt about it. I examined my diaphragm and felt a calming sensation, undoubtedly there was a physical sign of relief. I believed, as I walked into my virtual-studio that I had escaped a great deal of madness. I was finally home.
"Good lord where have you been. We ran out of wine." Oh my dear, dear Picasso.
Everything was just as it was that last night of painting. The paint cans were open, drooling their color. Brushes were either balancing themselves on the can’s rim or bathing in one of the water buckets about the room.
"Suzka my dear, I have found myself
to have been left in charge of the studio for the time of your absence and took full responsibility of your property."
"Of course Mr. Jimson, I would have not expected anything...." He cut my words short and continued.
"You needn't worry about your work. A good wall will paint itself. But upon further evaluation I... we have decided that your paintings need cacti and spiked grass, possibly some bald heads… and there needs to be dancing. Bosomy women dancing in bare feet. Yellow dark feet long with red nails."
Giacometti. "Ah yes, the imagination sustains creation and recalls it from the grave of memory."
Gulley Jimson pontificated, "Yes indeed. The angels must always be surprised when an artist dives head first into his paint and then with a twist of his imagination comes out again as bold as a eagle with wings bigger than the biggest in all the heavens."
Picasso's voice interrupted, "Suzka. Suzka… where is that girl? We need more wine, more Bordeaux, more imbibing spirits."
I had many mentors and colleagues. All are dead unfortunately. They lived with me and wasted no time in placing their opinions and theories about substance and creative worth inside my head.
"I like this," a comment from the other side of the room, Picasso pointed to a painting called the African Skies.
"Right here, you did not just paint a sun into a yellow spot…" overcome with his own theatrics, he paused and called on his hands to continue expressing his fervor. "…you transformed a yellow spot into a sun! Brilliant. I like very much."
Picasso then looked back at my Adam and Eve and moved closer into its space. His enthusiasm withered. Before I knew what was actually happening, he took my brush, wet with paint and in wide flying motions made bold color strokes across the canvas... without even asking.
At first I screamed but I could have fired a gun to his head and he wouldn't have heard a thing. Rain started and slapped the roof boorishly in support of my resentment. I cringed and tried to grab his arm. My anger tightened me, shut and closed me from anything outside my indignation. He kept yelling at me and at Adam and Eve, screaming in the air with his hands. "Blend them together, let Adam absorb Eve."
"Stop... you bastard! What are you doing? You've gone too far." Gulley Jimson badgered back. He had strong opinions about art.
Gulley was another close painter friend who lived in the pages of the literary world; he never got along much with other painters. He was quite melodramatic and forceful with his comments. Gulley admired, more than anything in the world, his own presence and particularly enjoyed the sound of his voice as he gushed over his armed opinions.
When the attack ended, Gulley moved his head toward my direction and with intrepid valor said... "My dear petsie, I will save your painting from this tyrant."
Picasso's hand brushed him off like a nasty fly hovering over a bowl of cheese balls. "Go away. You cannot save something you don't understand."
"You make my guts wind." words Gulley used to point out not only his disgust toward Picasso but also to note his guts’ distress at his opponent's bantering.
Picasso turned his attention and full body toward me as if we were already engaged in a long intimate conversation over a glass of Merlot. He lowered and spread out his words like soft butter on a croissant.
"Listen to me, my sweet goddess. You need to dissect all their parts and merge them in the garden, their Eden." "Poppycock! And poppycock on your pissology and to your chopping women up into pieces like broken glass, scattering them into the trees."
Picasso boiled over like forgotten pasta left on the burner before it hit the sauce. He moved in on Gulley and poked him in the chest with his brush, my brush! Just inches away from his face, he pushed out his words. "You think too much and do so little!"
Gulley then grabbed a palette knife off my table and aimed it at Picasso's neck. "You arrogant son of a bitch. I'll carve out that manly apple from your bloody throat and feed it to the buzzards, you miserable chopper."
I thought I was going to explode. Everyone was talking and arguing in voices that resembled my own. Pablo was furious and screamed back at Gulley. "You're a foolish old man. Go back to your mural'ed giraffes and your circus models, your zebras and your mad drummers! AND what does it matter to you? It's not your painting. You seem to forget you're only a guest."
"I am no guest. I am Gulley Jimson... created by Joyce Cary... a literary genius, you blundering idiot. Suzka and I have been intimately close for years."
Giacometti looked at us like he was watching a bar fight over a game of darts.
"The Fall Into Freedom... that is what you should call the painting. Yes. I think it should be titled... The Fall Into Freedom! OR... you can simply cut the damn thing up and mend the roof with it. Has anyone enough fool's sense to notice the puddle on the floor?"
By this time water was dripping steadily from the roof. Drops of water slapped me on my cheek and continued dripping. I always knew the hole was there but since it rained so seldom I put off climbing unto the roof and covering the hole with duck tape.
In what seemed like seconds, the rain found its strength and fell hard like ropes of diamonds out of the sky and fell through the hole like a pouty faucet.
I shoved the brush’s bucket under the drippings and moved the floored paintings to the side and then I put the 'Fall Into Freedom', aka the Adam and Eve close to the fan to speed up its drying.
The lights flickered. The storm yelled and slapped everything electric off and on twice. The voices of my ghostly colleagues laughed and drunkenly stirred around under my skin. My eyes glassed over the room filled with lazy drying color. The floor was silky smooth like the body of water circling the deck of the Titanic all glazed and deep in wonderings; prisms of things not seen and full of longing. A thrilling pulse went through me. My nights of painting always had an angel's blessing. I looked back around the studio and noticed my colleagues had made themselves disappear. They left like birds before a storm.
Quickly the skies fell apart and a thousand stars peeked through the one tiny window at the far end of the studio telling me the storm was just passing through.
Then, out of nowhere, I heard a scraping clangorous sound from somewhere outside. The noise was like the edge of a steel knife; the blade hurt my ears. My eyes tightened. I couldn't look. A grating sound of metal scraping against concrete shoved all my happiness aside.
Snowplows with huge wheels wearing chained bonnets had pushed through the studio walls in my head. Cinder blocks fell and tripped over each other crushing gallons of my color. The spillage was heavy and slippery. A cloud of dust and ash thickened and spread over the murky colored quicksand. Paint in a slow frenzy poured out and swam into each other quickly for support. But they lost their substance and drowned in a sea of muddy gray with only a few tiny splotches of color here and there holding on to their integrity. I stood there so powerless and in terror… my masterpieces.
*
“Are you ok lady?”
Everything outside my head shook quickly. My eyes
tightened themselves. I slouched deeper into the car seat and cringed in tortuous contortions. A plow clearing the parking lot piled my studio to the side. When I opened my eyes, I saw a huge metal blade that covered my entire windshield. I could barely see anything above it.
I thought for sure no one knew I was in the car. My friends, my family, people who knew me, they were out there behind the glass windshield and mounds of snow.
The plow’s driver threw his weight on the heavy lever and the plow clutched and shrieked to a halt. A voice hollered: “Are you ok lady? Do you need a tow?”
My head’s voice began to quarrel with me. The quarreling tightened my breath. I want to go home, I just want to go home for just one night. I want to forget about my mom and the dementia for just one more day.
I tightly closed my eyes again but everything inside began running in circles as fast as it could like a rabid dog chasing his own tail. Disturbed by my failure to trick my head into returning, cordial i
ndignation was all I could offer the terrorists of my fate and the gods who seemed to be juggling frivolously the misfortunes in my life.
I waved at the plow’s voice and signaled I was fine. Inside the car it was forcefully warm and dry as dust. The windshield looked like the top of the ocean to a fish's eye. The wipers returned to clearing the wet mess.
I drove in the snows darkness back to my mother's house.
*
It was easier this time to push in the front door and walk into the house. The duck tape that was originally used to secure the doors’ closing, lost its grip. I had no energy left. Balls of scrunched octopi from the morning’s ambush scattered the floor looking as if they were waiting for an apology.
My duffel bag was waiting in front hall where I had left it the night before. Everything was dark and for the life of me I couldn't remember where the light switch was located. A large window brought in just enough of the outside to clear a walking path down the steps. My bag, pulled by its shoulder strap, jumped from step to step, following me from behind.
I looked around for some place to fit. The room was packed with furniture. Provincials, bruised Chippendales and Bohemian chic mixed together unfavorably as if they've been arguing and suddenly stopped talking the second I walked into the room. A baby grand piano and an organ were in there somewhere, camouflaged in the clutter.
Scattered around the room were stacks of boxes and fat bags stuffed with projects that moved about the house over the years; projects that aged while waiting for their purpose. Boxes on top lived with the delusion that something inside of them would be uncovered and considered useful once again.
On the far end of the room was a pool table piled with runaway chattels like refugees in a small boat on the Pacific. I remember when the pool table was actually a pool table with a terrible slant, which confused its balls and angered its players.
Wonders In Dementialand: Dementialand Page 6