by Carole Maso
“I loved the festival too, Caroline. When the theater finally darkened and the images—light, dark, light—would appear and you could forget a little, lose yourself in the trees or the field or the shattering glass, in the beautiful camera angles, the distinctive points of view, if only for a little while. The comfort of another language, the solace of subtitles, those little words changing at the bottom of the screen. It was everything while it lasted.
“And then the lights would come up and there were these three small, incredibly sad faces again looking at me, blinking and wondering ‘What happened to our mother?’”
How we loved through the years those Octobers. Keep your calendar free, my cherub, you’d say, near summer’s end. I used to write things down in my calendar for every day of the month. One makes lists, fills calendars to avoid falling asleep. I believed that if there were things we had to do on certain days, at certain times, then we would be all right. No harm would come to us because that would ruin our plans. I kept a very precise, orderly calendar, easy to read and filled with events for everyone. If only there were enough places to go, we’d be OK. I loved when Mother put on her lipstick because it meant she was going out. I remember her blotted lips floating in the toilet bowl. The bigger the event, the better, but anything was better than nothing. Recalling those calendars now, all those events and non-events come to mind. La Traviata 8 p.m., feed the cat breakfast 7 a.m. and dinner 7 p.m. Meet Andrea for a tea party. Label the trees. Meet Max at MOMA one o’clock. Concert in the Park. Finish novel about pioneer girl.
And each fall when we needed it most, I knew we were safe. At least for a few weeks in September and October, my job became easier. How could we die with all those movies to go to? Opening night, closing night and all the nights in between. Mom died right before the first festival. How much I wished she could have held on just one more month!
Call me Max now, you said.
Maybe it would have been something to live for.
You loved those films. “Dad,” I’d say, in the middle of one of them. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.” “Shh,” is all you’d say, too captivated to care. Is that why I went to film school? Is that what I wanted finally? Two and a half uninterrupted hours in the dark with you?
Hail Mary is playing October 7th and 8th. 28 Up is at 9 p.m. on the fifth. Ran opens the festival this year, and Kaos closes it.
I wonder if this calendar with its thirty squares, its predictable course, its necessary events, I wonder if somehow it could serve as a blueprint.
Let’s look. Let’s study it closely. Before the phone rings again. Before another Rembrandt turns out to be a fake. Before what’s really beneath Jesus’ face is revealed. Before one more person dies. Max. Dad. Max, do you think it could serve somehow as instructions on how to live?
The Message on the Machine
“Hi. It’s Steven. Guess what? We’re neighbors. I’ve checked into St. Vincent’s. Doctor’s Orders. My number is 427-4410. Give me a call, darling. Bye.”
Winter
Not Steven
My childhood friend, I think, dialing the first three numbers.
My counterpart—the next four. All these years.
“Steven,” I say.
“Hi, Caroline. What’s going on? How are you?”
“I’m fine. What are you doing there?”
“Well,” he says. He pauses. He is about to say something that can never be taken back—so he waits a beat. I am being pulled through a tunnel toward whatever it is he’ll say. He gives me this split second.
“Actually,” he says, “I’m not fine.”
“What is it, Steven?”
He pauses again, but only for a moment. And I know what it is. My best friend.
“I have pneumocystis.”
“Pneumocystis?” I say slowly, giving myself a little more time, before full knowledge.
“It’s the AIDS pneumonia.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Caroline.”
“Steven . . . Are you afraid?”
“I don’t know,” he says, “it’s not really hitting me. Oh, I’ve had my moments. I’ve already thought about what should be played at my funeral.”
“What?”
“Well, this is only a thought—how about the prologue to Der Rosenkavalier?”
“I have to see you.”
“Just call before you come. I’m in the Coleman Wing. I call it the Gary Coleman Wing. The entrance is on Twelfth Street. It’s temperature time here, Doll. I’ve got to go.”
“I love you.”
I listen to the dial tone on the other end until I hear something. It’s my own voice. It says, “Not Steven.” Those are the two words I hear again and again. Not Steven.
And a small voice responds. Then who?
“I don’t care who. Not Steven.”
Death is not only a big-breasted woman whispering over a man whose brain, whose whole body will explode so stupendously; it is also a beautiful man, muscular, faceless, lying on a pier, years ago in the bright sun.
The Teacher in Space
I turn on the rental TV and I think of Steven. It’s morning. A blue sky. A sparkling clear day. Freezing temperatures. Seven astronauts waving good-bye.
The first civilian, a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, on board. Reagan’s idea. Much fanfare.
I think of my friend and watch the little numbers on the bottom of the screen go by. T minus twenty-nine seconds and counting. The space shuttle Challenger poised on the launch pad.
Lift-off.
The upturned faces of the various families with captions under them. The stupid president. The stupid president’s stupid wife.
A veering to the right.
Steven.
An explosion in the sky.
Steven.
I do not trust myself on this one. I turn up the sound. “Obviously,” a voice says, “a major malfunction.”
We see it again.
T Minus 13, 12, 11
“T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6—we have main engine start—4, 3, 2, 1, and lift-off. Lift-off of the twenty-fifth space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower.”
Mission Control: “Challenger, go with throttle up.”
Francis Scobee, Challenger commander: “Roger, go with throttle up.”
“Obviously a major malfunction. We have no downlink.”
“We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded.”
We See It Again
The astronauts are at the last ceremonial breakfast.
The astronauts are entering a white room for the final preparation. Christa McAuliffe is being handed an apple. “It’s going to go today,” she says. The astronauts stand in front of the traditional good-luck cake. The crew eats the cake.
The crew gets in one by one, waving good-bye. Judith Resnik makes a funny little motion.
Something is said about the future, about pushing the edge, reaching for the stars.
A flash in the sky. If he were here, Max would say that Christa had just taught her best lesson.
We see it again. “T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 . . .”
We See It Again
Ed and Grace Corrigan, father and mother of Christa McAuliffe. A puff of smoke, a muffled clap. Then Lisa Corrigan, Christa’s sister, hollers and grabs her father’s hand. Extreme close-up. Slow motion. Mrs. Corrigan leans her head on the shoulder of her husband, whose sweater bears a large button with their daughter’s picture. “The craft has exploded.” She turns and repeats the message to her husband. Screams. Cries.
Red
The entrance to the Coleman Wing is on Twelfth Street. I have not called, though he told me to. I am afraid he will tell me not to come, not today. I ask for a visitor’s pass at the desk. There will be a series of doors and elevators to go through, metal against metal. I am so afraid. I ask the guard which way to go. He does not look at me but simply points. I want to clutch his uniform, stop here and simply say it: I am so afraid.
> I bring myself down the hall past the first set of double doors, through a long corridor and up the elevator. There are more doors, another long hall. I pass a doctor just out of surgery. He’s wearing a shower cap, a long green robe and gloves. My walk is the longest walk in the hospital. Past more metal doors into the forbidden zone. There’s a nurses’ station and then the AIDS rooms. I look up at the young, young nurse before I go in. Who thought we would live to see this?
There are a hundred warnings on the door. People in masks. Enter cautiously. Enter at your own risk. Stay away, I think, at your own risk.
Bright red. I can hardly find my friend through so much red. There are red plastic bags on everything. The dumpster, the wastepaper basket, the tray of food. Touch this and die.
His eyes are closed. How young he looks, like a child, I think, and also how very old. Ancient. Asleep. I look at his sensual mouth. His brown, muscled arms. His handsome profile. He looks so perfect.
I sit on a chair next to the bed.
I think of this disease flowering in his bloodstream like a dark tulip.
He has the softness of a child. Long eyelashes. So beautiful. They flutter. “Caroline,” he whispers. “Hi.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I’m so weak,” he says.
He is attached to an elaborate IV system that pumps massive doses of medicine into his body.
“All I keep saying over and over to myself is, ‘It’s making me better, it’s making me better.’”
“Shh. It’s OK.”
He nods. He’s too weak. I sit next to him as he dozes in and out of sleep. There’s so much red. I can barely see him in the glare the red makes.
“I love you,” I whisper. “Hang in there.” I put my cheek on his hand, his arm wired to a complicated series of tubes and bags and a metal machine.
I am crying as I leave the room of a thousand warnings. Danger. Stop. Red. The nurse quietly lives in my face with me for a minute. Hers must stay immobile, strong, out in the world. Her face is not allowed to look this way. All of her patients are dying and all of them are too young to die. I stand in the hall for a minute. “They are such nice people,” she says. “I never knew.” I nod. I walk down the endless corridors. Past wings. Down elevators. Through metal. I give the pass back. On the street my feet assume the rhythm of medicine and blood pumping as I go into the Jefferson Market, into Balducci’s, not knowing what to do, where to go. One foot forward, then the other. One foot. The other. It’s making me, better. It’s making me, better. I bring this message into the world. Write it on the streets. In my steps. I pump the medicine into him. I pump everything I’ve got into him. I walk miles. Hour after hour. It’s making him better.
Again
Steven McAuliffe, his son Scott, nine, his daughter Caroline, six, watching as the spacecraft explodes, showering debris into the ocean. At the launch site all the other astronauts’ families as well.
Concord, New Hampshire—Live, students in the auditorium, wearing party hats, blowing into noisemakers.
“The vehicle has exploded.”
If you turn off the sound, all you see is the eerie beauty of an orange fireball and a billowing white trail against the perfect blue. A gorgeous aerial display.
Temperatures in the low twenties.
“Good morning, Christa, hope we go today,” said Ground Control.
“Good morning, I hope so too.” These are her last words.
Chaos
Despite my penchant for order. This is the world. We name it. And what good does it do? We arrange it on a page.
You were here and now you’re gone.
You were well and now you’re sick.
You were a painting by Matisse, but you took sleeping pills.
More from the Rental TV
Haitians are dancing in the snow in Grand Army Plaza. Duvalier gone.
In the Philippines the Marcos–Aquino election. Ballots are being thrown out the window like confetti, like snow.
A wreath dropped from a helicopter to commemorate seven astronauts. A group of dolphins in the frame, leaping in unison.
I turn up the sound. A hank of hair has washed up on a Florida beach, not far from the Challenger accident. A bit of bone and tissue wrapped in dark blue cloth.
Better
They took out a piece of his lung, a bronchoscopy, to make sure it was the AIDS pneumonia and not some other pneumonia. This I remember now from our first phone conversation, something I remember again as I cross the street to St. Vincent’s wondering, Are they sure it’s AIDS, are they positive?
I pass under the stone cross on the street. He will probably die. This is the first time I say it. I pass children on their way home from school, swinging lunchboxes, knapsacks, singing, chasing each other down the dark street.
I enter the hospital, get my pass. I wave to the guard who waves back but does not look at my face. I know my way now. I notice someone in the first hallway that looks like our friend William, but is not. In the elevator I see someone I imagine could be my mother. In the last hall I hear the sound of red. In the last hall a man with gloves on, a green bathrobe, a shower cap.
Steven is sitting up in bed. “Well, well, look who it is!” He smiles, he takes my hand and kisses it. There’s a moment of silence. He is brand new at dying. We look at each other curiously.
“What a relief to see you up.”
“I feel much better. Much.”
“How long are you here for?”
“They’re not positive. Until my lungs clear up. God, it’s good to see you.”
It makes it a little easier for me to be next to the red today with Steven sitting up in bed—a death-defying position.
“What happens next?”
“Well, first they’ve got to get rid of the pneumonia. Then apparently there are a million options. My doctor is very aggressive. I like her a lot. Wait till you meet her.” He smiles. “So what’s up with you? It’s been ages since we’ve had a real visit.”
“Oh, you know, putting Max’s house in order. Trying to write a book. Keeping out of trouble.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Caroline. Who’s your latest love?”
“I’ve decided to take a break. Really.”
“I wonder whether I’ll ever have sex again.”
“Oh, probably.”
“I got this AIDS packet from the hospital, filled with all kinds of info. Parties for people with AIDS, an AIDS dating service. How’s the book going? I can’t wait to read it!”
“Pretty slowly. I’m having a lot of trouble, actually. It’s really just notes toward a novel.” I’ve only just scratched the surface, I think. I’m too afraid.
“You’d better write faster,” he says. He doesn’t mean to say it—it just comes out. We are so new at this.
I’ve heard what might happen. The invasion of the blood-brain barrier. Dementia. The inability to read. More. We talk quickly.
He tells me all about his trip last fall to Italy. The Giotto-and-Piero trip, he calls it. He tells me how he meticulously planned it all, exactly where he went. Lunching in the heat of Rome. A villa that had a dumbwaiter. The beauty of the maid. The feel of cool plaster against his hand. A swim he took in a blue grotto with a stranger.
The phone rings. I notice Steven has brought his Rolodex to the hospital. A natural talker, even under the worst circumstances.
Today I am better equipped to say the red means danger. The red means everything is contaminated.
“Was it a shock?” he asks, hanging up the phone. “Max, I mean.”
“Not a shock exactly. Something less shocking than a shock. A sort of elongated shock.”
“When had you seen him last?”
“One night in late winter. It’s strange to think back on now; it seems like we stayed up the whole night saying good-bye. And hello, actually.”
“Remember,” Steven quotes Laurie Anderson, waving his hand, “‘In our country good-bye looks just like hello.’�
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Hello, Can You Hear Me?
Hello, I say, can you hear me? Is anybody up there? Can anybody hear me? I am trying to talk to you.
“I can’t hear you with everyone talking at the same time. It’s hard to hear you with all the commotion.”
Why is this happening? I think of the seeds of this disease with us a long time. I see you with your long arm reaching into your jute sack and planting your seeds.
“You give me too much credit, my dear.”
I begin to cry.
“It’s hard to worry about you with all these extra people dying.”
Why Steven?
“I don’t know. Why don’t you talk to my son?”
Another Visit
I watch my friend thinning in front of me: a Modigliani. A Giacometti.
He’s sleeping, I think. But then he opens his eyes. “Please don’t leave me, Caroline.”
I flesh him out. I will not turn him into paint and canvas, where he’ll be manageable. He won’t allow it.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m here.” It’s something I learned from Max. To leave like this. How to make pictures of leaving in my head.
I take his hand of flesh and blood. “I’m here, Steven.”
“Good,” he says very quietly. “Tell me about the book.” He is trying to be a good host, even now.