by Carole Maso
Still there. It’s comforting to picture my young parents in the White Horse Tavern. Or the Lion’s Head.
“But no, Caroline,” he says whispering, shaking his head. “Those were not the good old days.
“My God, what do you think it was like for her? Everyone around her seeing and hearing and feeling, or she thinking they were. What must it have really been like? Painters, writers, composers, all working—all engaged in things. Artists drinking all night, discussing pure form, twelve tones, God knows what. Journalists yacking away into the wee hours about politics, the left, baseball, I don’t know what else, singing songs.”
A boyfriend and I used to come here sometimes, Max. There is something about the light here, late afternoon, amber drinks, an early snow—it made us say things we never meant before and would never mean again, but we meant them at that moment at the Lion’s Head.
“Yes, Caroline, I understand that.”
The head of a lion. The floating hands of that boyfriend. I see things in pieces, in parts. A black shoe with a bow where the foot arches. A delicate ankle. A table separates that foot from the rest of the woman. Why do I see so many things in fragments? A whole person bisected by a table. It becomes something too hideous. I look away.
Was it always so bad for her, Max?
“Well, no. It was actually OK for a while. She got worse as she got older, as she entered her late twenties. Or perhaps it was just that after a while I could better see it. Once I got past the bone structure, the elegance of her movements, the dark hair, the sheer perfection of her, she was an all-consuming feast for the eye. Her ever-changing face in those days.”
“Something to eat?” the waiter asks me.
“The food was always inedible in those days.”
“No,” I tell him, “just another drink.”
“At the age I began losing interest in ‘death,’ your mother’s interest seemed to escalate. But no, that’s sarcasm talking, bitterness. It wasn’t like that. I don’t think she ever really thought about killing herself. It never actually occurred to her, I’m quite sure. Even that night in the street. ‘The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light,’ she kept whispering. My God, how ghastly, the damn streetlight shining on her extraordinary face.”
“But the day she finally died, what made that day different? Surely she suffered many, many days.”
“She simply couldn’t go on. If nothing else, I’m quite sure of that.”
“Why did she do it, Max?”
“She simply couldn’t go on.”
“Couldn’t you have stopped her?”
“What do you think, Caroline?”
“But she was a devout Catholic. You yourself have said.”
“She was devout enough to believe He’d forgive her.”
“Will He forgive her, Max?”
My father laughs loud, as if he’s still alive. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
On the Street
We walk the same ten blocks, know the same faces, the same dogs. We hear the exact same half dozen or so raps from the street people, because they, like everyone else, are territorial, and we become attached to this all, against our will, somehow.
Through a storefront window a man standing on a box. A nun closing the church gate, a bit of Greek, a radio blasting, a saxophonist, fresh pasta. There was another man kneeling at the feet of the man on the box, a hundred images ago it seems. A woman with a stethoscope around her neck, pigeons, a hand in neon, a locksmith, boys on skateboards, Catholic school uniforms, flower markets, pink, blue, purple hair. Black men selling Gucci bags. It comes to me now, the man on the box was getting his pants fixed, the other man a tailor. Artichokes, acorn squash. It should somehow be possible to paint this scene in Father Demo Square with words.
Why one must be poor.
Why one is poor and another is not.
Why you are poor and I am not.
The sign on the telephone pole says, DANCING FOR OUR LIVES, a Dance Benefit at City Center for AIDS Research. I turn the corner and in a window a blonde has her head in a blue machine to make herself brown—a tanning parlor. I pass the Pottery Barn, Angelina’s, Cafe Degli Artistes and so on. We are dancing for our lives. Sticking our white faces in blue machines and coming out brown. This is not invented. This is just how it is.
On my street a child’s school paper escaped from a bookbag or a hand that held a jump rope or jacks. I pick it up and go inside.
A Man, Humming
A pianist, not so long dead, an acquaintance of Henry’s, hums along quite loudly on the recording he made of Bach’s Goldberg Variations shortly before he died. The record, left behind, always reminds Maggie of Henry.
As does Saint-Saëns’s “Six Etudes for the Left Hand.”
At night she runs from room to room of the big house in her sleep, turning on lamps, looking for him, leaving a trail of light.
Maggie has continued to make signs for the trees. It’s a good project, for it keeps her busy now that school has begun for Alison and confirmation classes. Alison seems to have adjusted quite well, certainly as well as one could have expected. She worries about her mother, though, who has never spent a fall anywhere but New York. And never without Henry.
“How will we recognize the trees after the leaves have fallen?” Maggie had worried. “And all the labels from the summer are gone?”
“We’ll do it again,” Alison says.
“Again?”
“It will be fun, Mom.”
And so a good part of the autumn, before the leaves fall, Maggie in a perfect penmanship writes once again the names of all the trees. Sugar Maple, Sycamore, Shining Sumac, Black Oak. This time she has the cards laminated in plastic. She labels the Tulip, she labels the Winged Elm. She invents a way to file, an elaborate coding system with colors. She cross-references.
Alison notices that her mother has completely stopped work on her Renaissance book, and this too worries her. Work was important now, Alison knew. Something demanding. Something hard. Her confirmation classes were becoming demanding in that way for her. She was surprised. She had lost a sureness of footing as far as God was concerned. This was a serious matter: to renew your baptismal vows. It was not to be treated lightly; she would have to be sure she really meant it.
The books on Maggie’s bed now were of Manet, Renoir, Degas. In Candace’s room there was nothing. They both missed Candace and hated the idea that they had lost her because of Henry, that she had become so strange, losing many of her Candace qualities, except for her passion, which was all rage now.
They could not reach her. She always had on the answering machine. “Hi,” she’d say, “this is Candace. I’m probably at school and if I’m not there I’m probably at the Cat Club or The Palladium or Area. Leave a message. I’m bound to get back to you.” But she rarely got back to Maggie or Alison. They called the number over and over, listening to the voice and the ever-changing messages as they tried to detect what was left of the old Candace. Often she’d try out new last names. “Hello, this is Candace L’ Etoile.” “Hello, this is Candace Cambridge.” “Hello, this is Candace No Name.” One time the message said, “Hello, this is Anorexia Nervosa. If you’d like to leave a message for me or for Bates Motel, go ahead.”
“Who is Bates Motel?” Alison asked.
“Oh, some guy from England with no place to stay.”
Alison was relieved that her mother and Candace did not talk too often. She hated to see Maggie in tears and inevitably Candace would make Maggie cry.
“Fuck Poussin, Mother. Your husband left you for a twenty-nine-year-old. Let’s show a little emotion. Stop looking for the perfect order, reason, symmetry. There’s no such thing.”
The last time Candace called, only Alison was home. Candace had begun going out with a series of new-wave musicians from various bands that played around downtown. The drummer from P.M.S., the guitar player from the Dead Kennedys, the lead Singer of the Dogmatics, somebody from the Squirrels from Hell.
But this was only small talk, an introduction, Alison knew. Soon it would start. “Oh, how thoughtful of him to wait for Mom to go on sabbatical.” And then on to the girlfriend. “She has no brain, I swear. She keeps changing her hairstyle. And she doesn’t even like music. She’s tone deaf.” She went on. “You can follow her ‘career’ through the class notes of her college alumni magazine. Listen to this: ‘Belinda “Biddy” Hansen has just done a big commercial for Sprite. If you turn on the TV during prime time, don’t be surprised to see Biddy playing Volleyball on the beach in a bathing suit. (The winning team, of course, Biddy informs us.) Way to go, Biddy!’
“Tell Mom I went to a show by a woman named Jennifer Bartlett. Tell her she should come to New York. There’s a lot of art around.” And she closed, “It is true that I loved him more than any of you.”
Henry wrote periodically to Alison, she the only one who would respond to him at all. Alison tried to give Candace news of their father, but she would hear nothing of it. In his last letter he asked Alison if she would make a tape of the wind in the garden blowing through the dried sunflower stalks.
He had recorded their lovemaking, Maggie remembered.
As a little girl, sometimes, at her father’s performances, Alison would clap her hands so hard that she’d have to blow on them to relieve the pain. She loved his music so. And it was not easy music, not in any way.
Alison said yes, she would do this for him, and she tucked the letter away.
A dead man hums over the stereo system in the room where Maggie sits, leafing through a book of Renoirs, and she thinks of her husband.
Who Made Us?
Q: Who made us?
A: God made us.
Q: Why did God make us?
A: God made us to show forth His goodness and to make us happy with Him in heaven.
(“I’m afraid we made God, Caroline. He did not make us.”)
Jesus at the Museum
“This is so fantastic!” he sings, twirling, circling madly, running around the ramps, dizzy. “What’s it called?”
“The Guggenheim.”
“Did I make it?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Alison: Sounds of My Mother Weeping
My father asked me to send him a recording of the autumn wind moving through the dried sunflower stalks, of rain on the tin garage roof, and of the sheep hooves right before a storm. I recorded everything he asked me for and a few things he didn’t.
Candace Speaks (Out of Turn)
This dog or, no doubt, variations on this dog will follow you through your life, looking at you with adoring brown eyes, obeying your every word. Imagine a creature so stupid as to do that, but you know it will and that’s why you love it. And the thing needs you, depends on you for food, for walks. It needs you, Biddy Hansen. But not my father. He does not need you for anything, but a moment. He does not look at you with adoring eyes. He does not mean it when he says, “I love you.” He is unfaithful to the end.
The Sudden Appearance of Animals After a Few Hours at the White Horse
Max, it is 4:45 p.m. on October 18, 1985, and I am now sitting in the dark bar called the White Horse. There are animals so huge they dwarf the entire planet.
Can you hear me? Can you hear me at all?
“I can’t hear you with the Trout Sonata playing.”
Max.
“I can’t see you with these Poulenc beasts walking so loudly in my head.”
I’m over here. Here’s my hand.
“I can’t possibly reach you with all this Rachmaninoff going on.”
Q: Hello. Can you hear me?
Q: Hello. Can you hear me? Is anybody there? I am trying to talk to you.
A: What is it? What is it, my beauty, my work of art?
Q: Why is this happening?
A: What? Why is what happening?
Q: I’d like to know why this is—
A: I can’t hear you. I can’t really hear you with all the commotion.
Q: Why did you make us?
A: (Silence)
Q: Answer the question. Why did you make us?
A: Have you not read your catechism?
Q: Why am I here?
A: Did you skip page three altogether?
Q: What is the message I am supposed to leave?
A: I’m very busy. Really, you have no idea.
Q: Are you trying to tell me something?
The Dog Series, a Triptych
This was Candace’s first project at the School of Visual Arts.
1. The dog divides neatly into sections like a chicken.
2. The dog with training wheels for legs.
3. The dog in the yearbook. (Barker Hansen, class of ’77.) Oilstick on Canvas.
The Kiss
The man walks forward.
“I’m not sure,” she says.
“Believe me.”
“I’m not sure anymore,” Alison says.
“Touch me then,” he says. He shows her his ruby palms and feet. His ruby wound. “Ye of little faith.
“I was betrayed with a kiss,” he says. “I was betrayed by the one who dipped his hand in the dish.”
“You said you would be with us forever,” cries Alison, the one Jesus loved. “I thought it meant you would never leave us. I was confused.”
He puts his hand on her shoulder. He takes it away. She moves toward him. He moves back. They make strange jigsaw shapes in order to maintain the void that must always exist between them.
“How can you turn away?” Alison cries. “Stay a little.”
She sees her father. He dips his hand into the dog’s water bowl. “Dad,” she says, “why?” He gives her a kiss.
Cummington in Fall
How the world seemed to be beginning over again! The summer residents gone back to their restaurants, colleges, word processing jobs. The now familiar landscape taking on yet another hue. I watched the same stretch of land: brown, then purple, then green, and now reddening. I knew those leaves were dying, that everywhere things were falling to sleep, but the world in fall always smelled new to me. Pine and burning wood, the land on fire. Now that it was quiet again, deer came to eat the apples off the trees next to the Children’s Barn. And the pear tree I’d been eyeing all summer near Frazier was nearly ready for picking. Max, what the light looks like in the pear trees, in October, is a hundred teardrops of gold, the whole orchard weeping.
I went over to the Thayers. Leon flew by on his tractor. Sweet Olive stood in the flower garden. “Olive, hi, I’ve got a favor to ask. I’d like to borrow the pear picker.”
“It’s that time, isn’t it?” She flags Leon down. “Leon,” she says in a loud voice, “she wants to borrow the pear picker.”
“What?”
“She wants to borrow the pear picker! The pear picker!! The pear picker!!!”
Leon, deaf as a doornail, nods. “Come with me,” he shouts.
I had, of course, never picked pears. The pear picker, it would turn out, was a long pole with a claw at the end of it. My three-hour chore for the week was to pick the pears.
My other chore was to “orient” the new residents. A sort of welcome wagon, I was to show them their “spaces,” pass out extension cords and heaters, answer questions and conduct stove school.
He was tall, sort of good-looking, older, a man of the world. He was balding, distinguished, with a twist. Definitely different from the usual Cummington fare. He was on sabbatical for the fall semester. He was getting away from the city, I imagined. He was getting away from a bad marriage, perhaps.
“Hi,” I said. “Welcome to Cummington.” By then I was tired of the constant comings and goings of artists. I was tired of getting so attached and then losing them. Love and loss in a month. The drama of the fast-motion friendship or courtship was a little dizzying. The pressure on. Oh, it was true that I had loved all of them in some way, not in the conventional way maybe, but in some way certainly. But it was wearing me down. I was cautious with this man.
“Boston.”
“What do you do?”
“I teach.”
“I mean what do you really do?”
“I’m a composer.”
“Do you like Mahler, Brahms, Bach?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like Talking Heads?”
“Yes.”
“Good, that’s good. I’m Caroline Chrysler.”
“Hi. I’m Eugene Wilson.”
“What is all that stuff?” He was carefully unpacking boxes of equipment, speakers, receivers, gadgets.
“It’s a Synclavier.”
“You mean like Laurie Anderson uses?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you like Laurie Anderson?”
“Very much.”
“How old are you anyway?”
“Fifty-two. You?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“My eldest son is twenty-eight.”
“What are you working on?”
“A suite.”
I set up the Composer in the Music Shed. I handed him his extension cords, directions, etc. “Dinner is in two hours, at six, in Vaughn, the stone house down the hill. Here’s a map. And a list of who’s here. Let’s see, what else? Oh, I almost forgot. You’ve got to go to stove school.”
“Where’s that?”
“Right here.”
“When?”
“Right now. I’m the teacher. Have you ever seen a pear picker?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
I handed him the “Creosote Papers.”
We were bent over the stove. We were burning hot. I touched his hand. How the world seemed to be beginning again.
“‘Fire safety,’” I read. “‘Is your stove making inexplicable noises? Is your stove or stove pipe glowing cherry red? Or for some other reason does your stove appear to be out of control?’”