Mark Z Danielewski
Page 50
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Sweet, sweet Johnny,
Though you never ask, how many times must I respond? It was an accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. It was an
accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. It W3.S an accident, it was an accident. It WcLS 2111 accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. It was. I never meant to burn you. I never meant to mark you. You were only four and I was terrible in the kitchen. I'm sorry, so sorry, so so very sorry. Please forgive me please. Please. Please
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March 19,1988
Dearest dear Johnny,
Do not forget your father stopped me and took me to The Whalestoe. You may remember. You may not. You were seven. It was the last time I saw you before I saw you again too many years later only to lose sight of you again.
Oh my child,
my dear solitary boy,
who abuses his mother with his silence,
who mocks her with his insupportable absence,
—how can you ever understand the awful weight of living, so ridiculously riddled with so many lies of tranquillity and bliss, at best half-covering but never actually easing the crushing weight of it all, merely guaranteeing a lifetime of the same, year after year after year after year after year after year, and all for what?
You were leaving as I was leaving and so I tried before that great leaving to grant you the greatest gift of all. The purest gift of all. The gift to end all gifts.
I kissed your cheeks and your head and after a while put my hands around your throat. How red your face got then even as your tiny and oh so delicate hands stayed clamped around my wrists. But you did not struggle the way I anticipated. You probably understood what I was doing for you. You were probably grateful. Yes, you were grateful.
Eventually though, your eyes became glassy and wandered
away. Your grip loosened and you wet yourself. You did more than wet yourself.
I'll never know how close you came to that fabled edge because your father suddenly arrived and roared in intervention, a battering blast of complete nonsense, but a word just the same and full of love too, powerful enough in fact to halt the action of another love, break its hold, even knock me back and so free you from me, myself and my infinite wish.
You were a mess but aside from a few evil coughs and dirty little pants and some half-moon cuts on the back of your neck, you recovered quickly enough.
I did not.
I had long, ridiculous purple nails back then. The first thing they did when I got here was tie me down and cut them off.
But it was love just the same Johnny. Believe me. For that, should I be ashamed? For wanting to protect you from the pain of living? From the pain
Always from loving. Always for loving.
Always.
Perhaps my shame should really come from my failure. Tears just the same.
p.
September 19,1988
Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny
Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny,
Johnny
Johnny,
Johnny, Johnny,
Johnny,
Johnny,
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November 1,1988
Dearest Johnny
What a terrible sleep and dream I've been roused from. There are so many pieces to make sense of, the doctors all warn me to just put aside the last two years. It's a shambles. Seems I'm better off consigning the whole lot to psychosis, locking it up, throwing away the keys.
They tell me I should be grateful that that presents itself as an option. I suppose they're right. Cast no backward glances, eh?
The doctors also inform me that you visited several times but apparently I was completely unresponsive. As for all the letters I said I had written you, chock full of paranoia and all, I hardly wrote a thing. Five reams of paper and postage were nothing more than figments of my imagination.
I tend to believe all this because I have come to realize, as you probably realized when you came here, that the New Director is in fact none other than the Old Director, the patient one, the decent one, the honest one, the kind one who has been taking care of your mother for well over ten years.
I have now my own biochemical cycles and a couple of new drugs to thank for these days of clarity. The Director has already w
arned me that my lucidity may not last forever. In fact it's unlikely.
I shall be fine as long as I know the one on whose tender sensibilities I imposed such hogwash will forgive me. How could I misplace your visits? Lose your letters? Not even recognize you? I love you so, so very much.
Will you ever forgive me?
As always, all my love,
Mommy
November 3,1988
Dearest Johnny,
As I seem to have been granted temporary clemency from rabid thoughts, reflections pour out of me at an alarming rate. I think of all the heartache I subjected your beautiful father to. I think of everything I have put you through.
It is completely within reason for you to turn your back on me forever. It might even be the wisest decision. Saint Elizabeth was right to warn us from the rooms of Bedlam.
I am hopelessly unreliable, and though my love for you burns so brightly all would seem thrown into darkness were the sun to eclipse it, such feelings can still never excuse my condition.
The Director has patiently explained to me, probably for the thousandth time, that my varied dispositions are the result of faulty wiring. For the most part I have come to accept his evaluation. (He quotes Emily Dickinson, saying I cover the abyss with a trance so my memories can manage a way around it—this "pain so utter")
Sometimes, however, I wonder if my problems originate elsewhere. In my own childhood, for example.
These days I like to believe—which is a shade different from belief itself—all I really needed to survive was the voice my own mother never gave me. The one we all need but one I never heard.
Once, a long while ago, I watched a little black girl fall off a street curb and skin both her knees. When she got up, wailing like a siren, I could see that her shins and the palms of her hands were flecked with hurt.
The mother had no gauze or antiseptic or even running water handy but she still managed to care for her daughter. She whisked her up in her arms and murmured over and over the perfect murmurs, powerful enough to fully envelop her child in the spell and comfort of only a few words: "It'll be okay. It'll be alright."
To me, my mother only said "That won't do." She was right. It didn't do at all.
Love,
Mom November 27,1988
Dear, dear Johnny,
So convinced such happiness has to be a dream—especially these days—I have repeatedly asked the Director whether or not you were really here yesterday.
One lifetime ago I was crouched in shadow and in the next I am with you. How profound the differance.
Victoria Lucas once said there's nothing "so black ... as the inferno of the human mind." She didn't know you. You shimmered almost to the point where I had to squint for fear you'd burn away another chance for me to ever see you again.
I was even confused at first. You detected that, I saw. You're so keen. Keener than Anaxagoras. But it's true. A vagrant thought had momentarily convinced me that I was dead and your father had been restored to me. Fortunately my better faculties righted my first impression: this figure was taller and broader and in all respects stronger than my love. Here was my son, come at long last and at a time when at last I could recognize him.
If my tears upset you, you should understand they were not spilled out of grief or bitterness but out of pure bliss for having you here with me, able to lift my spirits so effortlessly, carry this old heap of bones, all of me, safe and warm in my dear child's arms.
For a few hours, every yesteryear repealed its hold. I felt free and silly. A school girl once again giggling out the day and in the presence of such a fine young man.
Your adventures in Europe caught me between heartbreak and laughter. You tell your stories so well, all that tramping over the continent for four months with only a backpack, a Pelican pen and a few hundred dollars. I'm glad to see you gained back most of the weight you lost.
Of course, only now as I write you this letter do I realize how careful you were to keep me from your greater troubles and mutilations. How can I not appreciate your protective instincts? Nevertheless, I assure you that I am fine and would love nothing more than to rally at your side, urge you through the hard times, and where the obstacles seem insurmountable, opponents invulnerable, play the part of the witch again and cast dreadful spells.
Open yourself to me. I will not harm your secrets. Do not think your mother cannot read in her own child the trauma he still endures every day and evening.
I am here. Ever devoted. Still surfeit with tenderness, affection and most of all love,
your mother
Mr. John XXXXXX
xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx
January 12, 1989
Dear Mr.______________
As you requested in your last visit, I am writing now to inform you that your mother's condition may be on the decline again.
We are doing our best to adjust her medication, and while this relapse could prove temporary, you may want to prepare yourself for the worst.
If there are any questions I can answer, please do not hesitate to contact
me at_________________ . Also, I wish to remind you that I will be retiring
at the end of March. Dr. David J. Draines will be taking my place. He is very capable and well versed in psychiatric care. He will provide your mother with the very best treatment.
Sincerely yours,
___________________________ M.D., Ph. D.
Director
The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute
February 28,1989
Dear Johnny,
It's remarkable how much I continue to improve. For the first time ever, the Director has suggested I might even be able to leave. Every day I read, write, exercise, eat well, sleep well and enjoy the occasional movie on the television.
For the first time, I feel normal. I know you are swept up in a tide of your own affairs but would it be possible for you to purchase for me a suitcase? I shall need a large one as well as a carry-on. Any color is fine though I prefer something akin to amethyst, heliotrope or maybe lilac.
It's been so long since I've traveled, I've forgotten if one checks one's luggage at the station or do I just carry everything to my compartment on the train? Is there room beneath the sleeper or am I forgetting some other sort of storage place? (That is my thinking behind the smaller carry-on.)
Love,
P.
March 31,1989
Dear Johnny,
Why have you written me such lovely letters and yet failed to mention my luggage?
If my request is a terrible imposition I wish you would just say so. Your mother's an able woman. She'll find another way.
As it is I'm fairly annoyed. The Director left today and I was informed that if I had been packed I could have left with him.
Unfortunately, while I am quite adept at folding and arranging my belongings, my inability to place them anywhere impedes my ascent into my new life— drowsy, baked in sun, with you.
1,
P.
May 3,1989
Dear John,
With no luggage to speak of—amethyst, lilac or otherwise—I've had nowhere to put my things and so I've lost all of it. To be honest I don't know where all of it went. Clearly the worker bees have stolen it.
By the way I was mistaken. The Director didn't leave. He's still here. The new one is the same one after all. In other words everything is fine, though the Old Director's moods have been a little odd lately.
I think I've upset him somehow. There's something malicious in his manner now, very slight, but noticeable just the same, a nasty, twisting wire woven into the fabric of an otherwise perfectly decent man.
No matter. I cannot tire myself on the feelings of the world. I am leaving after all, though it is no easy task, especially for this old Sibyl of Cumae.
Climes of any kind are trying. Frankly I'm exhausted by all the planning and the paperwork.
Donnie will pick me up soon, very soon, but you my dear child, yo
u should stay awhile.
Do that for me.
Mmmy
Mr. John XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX
xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx
May 5, 1989
Dear Mr._______________
We regret to inform you that on May 4, 1989 at approximately 8:45 P.M. your mother, Pelafina Heather Lifevre, died in her room at The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute.