Soon the dining room table was cleared and ready. Steve set out a square plywood board, two packs of homemade cards, dice, and a handful of colored tokens and disks.
“Remember this is still in an embryonic stage,” he said. “I haven’t got all the kinks worked out yet. Comments are welcome. The game is played pretty much like any other board game, Monopoly, for instance. You shoot the dice, you have your various options about where to move, you get directions to follow, which are more or less your fate. Like any really good game, it’s a metaphor for life. What’s special is that this is a better one than most. It’s a perfect replica of our time, which is why I think people will relate to it. I mean, what is the central experience of our era? Catastrophe, right? That’s the name of the game.”
Catastrophe, complete with Reversal of Fortune cards, Survival Credits, and twists of fate, proved lively: shrieks and groans as players confronted catastrophes on a global to personal scale, from Lethal Toxins Found in Drinking Water to Favorite Son Joins Cult. I couldn’t seem to get into the spirit, though. I dropped out early and went to bed, a king-sized bed every bit as ardent as my own, and fell promptly asleep despite the Walpurgisnacht down the hall. Tim woke me later to report that he was the winner. The game wasn’t bad technically, he said, despite a few snags. Some people felt the theme was too much of a downer to be commercially successful. “What do you think, Laura?”
“People love that kind of thing. I think it’ll be a big hit.”
“Me, too. The sicker the better, these days.”
Then he had a minor personal catastrophe, at least he thought so. He couldn’t get an erection. “Shit, what does this mean? This never happens to me. It must be the beginning of the end.”
“No, stop worrying,” I soothed him. “I’m sure it’s a passing thing. You’re tired and you probably had a lot to drink. That’s all it is.”
“Is this the price of victory?” he groaned, then put his head on my chest and was fast asleep.
WHEN WE SAUNTERED OUT to check on the pool the next day, the water was considerably above the margin we had allowed when we painted. Exactly how far it had risen was hard to judge since, as Hal had predicted, the dark walls obscured the murals below the water line. Still, their shimmering evoked something mysterious stirring beneath the surface, as in the ocean itself. Perhaps that was the effect Celia had intended. The ship had sunk lower, as if the tide had risen; only the top of its mast and stark black frame was visible.
“Aha! Half full!” exclaimed Hal.
This seemed impossible. The deep end still didn’t look full enough to swim in even if the weather had been suitable, which it wasn’t—brilliant and sunny, but cool. The shallow end was barely covered by a thin film of water.
Once more the men reviewed the rate of the trickle, the number of hours passed, and the present water level, concluding that regardless of appearances the pool was indeed half full.
“It’s irrelevant anyway,” said Celia, “unless you want to freeze your ass off.”
We drove to the beach, where there was no water problem. The ocean was full, at high tide. Waves surged up the wide beach to what my Cape Cod library book called the “splash zone,” hitting with great force as sometimes happens on radiant days, and dragging back clots of pebbly sand. A wave of tiredness broke over me, not quite knocking me down but making me sway. I lay down beyond the splash zone while the others went walking.
Only a few people were around. A pair of aging men in rolled-up white trousers strode through the surf, one gesticulating and talking excitedly, perhaps about the ebb and flow of money, while the other listened with arms folded as if for protection. A couple with a small child kept digging a hole and watching the water fill it as each wave rolled in. The child was surprised every time the hole filled up, and the parents pretended surprise. Way out at sea was a large white ship, not moving.
With each hurtling wave the tide crept up imperceptibly, like the water level in the pool, though with far more energy and inspiring greater confidence. The others receded in the distance—Hal and Tim side by side and Celia a bit apart, stopping to examine shells or rocks cast up in the foam.
When I woke I was alone with the ocean—no one in sight. The hole the young family had dug kept filling and emptying; the white ship sat stationary on the horizon. The only movement was the water’s assault and fierce retreat, as if it could not resign itself to being forever yanked back. This was just a passing mood, of course—two weeks ago I’d seen the same ocean graciously yielding to the inevitable.
After a while the others reappeared as specks and grew slowly into human form, then into generic identities: end-of-the-century Americans who played games that mocked their condition, as if a playful dose of catastrophe, like a homeopathic cure, could bring relief. Tim’s sister had been abused by an uncle and later was beaten by her husband, giving birth to a retarded child as a result. Steve’s parents had died in a hotel fire just last year, I’d overheard Hal saying to Tim. Celia’s parents had lost their farm in Illinois, she’d told me as we painted. Not to mention Ev.
Reaching life size, they came and retrieved me. Too chilly for the beach, we all agreed.
WHEN NIGHT FELL we ambled down the dark road, Hal and Celia up front leading the way. Tim took my hand. His hand was firm and warm, perfect for handholding, a comfort. So much so that tears came to my eyes. As I blinked them away I saw bright white lights moving through the trees, or rather through the bulbous masses, dark shapes against the dark, that the trees had become. Could the lights be my tears projected, aglow in the black night? How unscientific, how Tim would have laughed. Or stars magnified and made mobile by my tears? But the lights remained even when the tears were gone, dispelled by curiosity.
“Look at that.” I squeezed Tim’s hand and he squeezed back. “They can’t all be shooting stars, can they?”
He didn’t laugh or suggest anything logical. He looked, as more and more lights encircled us. The thick darkness annihilated all depth—one moment they seemed near enough to touch, and the next, they were off in the cold spatial reaches.
“Or UFOs?” I whispered, only half joking.
“More likely shooting stars,” but his tone was uncertain.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, I remembered Evelyn reciting. Like a . . . Like a . . . Mona urged her on until finally she got it. Like a diamond.
“Fireflies,” said Hal, turning around. We’d been talking so softly, I didn’t realize he could hear.
“They can’t be. They’re so high,” I said. “And big and white. In the country, when I was a kid, they were yellow. It was easy to catch them and put them in jars.”
“They’re fireflies. Last of the season. It’s the dark that makes them big and white. You’ll see when we get back to the house.”
He was right. As we approached the lighted house the white glows deepened to yellow and shrank in the middle distance. Attached to the yellow flickers, dark bodies appeared. Ordinary fireflies. Tim kissed the inside of my wrist before we came into the full light.
We walked down the lawn for a last check on the water level. With the garish pool lights turned up, the grass looked fake, like Astroturf. The shrubs flashed an unearthly sheen and the slate walls painted just yesterday, though it seemed longer ago, were lurid and ominous. The water level was more than halfway up the deep end, possibly high enough to swim in. At the shallow end, a thin layer glistening like ice coated the bottom step. The trickling hose was covered.
“Well, so much for your luxurious backyard swimming,” said Celia.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Tim. “It was too cool anyway. Thanks for a great weekend.”
“Come again soon,” said Hal. “Next time I promise there’ll be water.”
I must have fallen asleep before we hit the highway and didn’t wake until we pulled up at my building.
“Did I sleep the whole time? Not sparkling company, am I?” As I sat upright my canvas bag fell from my lap and its contents, includin
g an unused bathing suit, spilled to the floor. “Oh, sorry. How clumsy.” I gathered up the things and stuffed them back in.
“Laura, we’re not teenagers out on a first date. Stop apologizing.”
“Was I? I only meant it must have been dull for you. Do you want to come up?”
“I’d better not. I’ve got an early morning meeting and I’m exhausted. So, did you have a good time?”
“Very. I liked them a lot. You were right, it was a good idea to go.” Good data, too.
Inside, I checked the window ledge. Still no squirrel, but wonder of wonders, the nest was back, bristly and ragged in the glow of the street lamp, like a building under construction. Recently slept in, I’d say. With a surge of relief, I pictured him fully recovered and out carousing, coming home to sleep in the wee hours. It might have been some other squirrel, yes, but I chose to think it was the same one, coming and going, keeping his death at bay. Too tired now for rubber gloves, broom, dustpan. Let him have a night of comfort.
DAY ANNOUNCED ITSELF BY the hellish grinding of the garbage truck just below my window. From bed I could envision the scene. I’d watched it often enough, like a diffident witness to urban crime. The black plastic bags which last night lined the side street were being hurled mercilessly into the maw of the truck, where giant teeth pierced their thin skins and sank to the innards, fee, fi, fo, fum, chomping up the trash (though not yet the squirrel) like huge gobs of food.
I pried my body from bed, pulled on shorts and an old shirt of Ev’s, and walked around to get my blood moving. The Tai Chi class was out of the question, but I might get a slight hit by watching them from the window. I was absorbed in following a shabby barge haul itself up the river when the phone blared over the grinding trash.
“Laura? This is Celia. You’re probably working so I won’t keep you. I got your number from Information. I had to let you know that when we left for the city early this morning the pool was not yet filled. I’m thinking of writing up the whole process for the Journal of Higher Mathematics.”
I liked her. I would have liked to know her better, but that might be awkward since our connection was through Tim, and very soon I’d be saying good-bye to Tim. If Verona had hired a new Juliet by now, she might help me find a tactful way. He’d be vexed and querulous. Tell me exactly what the problem is, he’d say, and I’d have no quantifiable answer.
14
The witch is an artist of the most radical kind. She overturns the usual configuration of fairy tales, where it’s the Prince who appears in the nick of time to break the spell. With her laying on of hands, her unobtrusive needle pricks (“That which has no substance enters where there is no space”), and her captivating company—nearly as captivating as Q.’s—she’s making an upside-down story, undoing his spell with one of her own.
She offers me spells to work at home, too. I light up the moxa stick and the apartment smells like a marijuana den. I rub the aromatic oils into my skin, conjuring forests and fields: pine, eucalyptus, rosemary, fennel, caraway, lavender. .. . I practice deep breathing. The air disperses inside to become tingling energy—the Tai Chi teacher’s beloved elixir, the flutist’s preserved breath that will outlast him and even his music—and then spirit, an amber glow like inner sunlight. I watch my arms float in baths filled with salts from the Dead Sea; I could almost levitate in the water. I can’t swear any of this will cure me, but I follow her instructions on faith, the way you have to do in a story.
And yet, and yet, she hurts. In her effort to make me well (I do feel some energy returning, it’s unmistakable), her potions and treatments make me sick. She sets me painful trials, like sewing shirts out of nettles. The skin rash alone would have been sufficient. The skin rash and fever would have been sufficient. The skin rash and fever and sore throat. . . But like God raining down plagues on the Egyptians, she’s unleashed the whole arsenal.
One afternoon as I lay on her mat in the cool, quiet room, she began her performance by pricking my ear with needles.
“Hey, wait a minute! That one really hurt.”
“Sorry,” she said. “That was for the kidneys, where your energy is weak today. That’s why you felt it.”
“The kidneys? So why make my ear suffer?”
“The meridians of the body pass through the ear, so by inserting needles in the proper ear points you can influence different organs.”
I gave her my skeptical look. She knew it well. She merely smiled the virtuous California smile and carried on.
“The ear is shaped like a fetus. Have you ever noticed?” she said. “Picture the fetus lying upside down in the ear. The acupuncture points correspond to where the various organs would be located in that position.”
The ear is shaped like a fetus? “It is, isn’t it? Those photos of fetuses always reminded me of something. Or maybe it was the ear that reminded me.”
“Chinese medicine has used acupuncture points in the ear for centuries, but the analogy to the fetus was just noted and tested in the 1950s. It was a French doctor, Paul Nogier. It’s not witchcraft, I assure you. You can read about it in respectable books. That’s what I was studying in Paris when I met my former husband. A whole new set of ear points was developed as a result. What’s uncanny is that many of them correspond to the old Chinese points.”
“What a nice image. The fetus lying upside down in the ear.”
“It’s more than an image. You can treat incipient cataracts through the ear, and cardiovascular disease, and lots of other things. Okay, I’ll do the other. Is it still hurting?”
“Not as much. Ow! The kidneys again?”
“The ear is shaped like a fetus. Have you ever noticed?” she said. “Picture the fetus lying upside down in the ear. The acupuncture points correspond to where the various organs would be located in that position.”
“Sorry. Your ears seem very sensitive.”
“Maybe because I’ve been exerting them. Listening.”
“To what?”
“Oh, everything. Conversations I overhear as I walk. What friends say over the phone. They call to see how I am, but they don’t quite believe I’m sick. And if I tell them I’m seeing a witch, I hear this strange veil come over their voices. But they humor me. I even write down things you say that interest me. No wonder my ears are sensitive.”
“That may be.” I’d never known her to deny any possibility, no matter how farfetched, but she looked dubious. She was scientific, in her way.
“The ear and the fetus,” I mused. “Maybe that’s why lovers like to lick ears. They could be licking points that correspond to sex organs.”
“Funny, I never thought of that.” She began pressing her hands down hard along the length of my legs. “I’d like to check it out, but unfortunately no one’s licking my ears at the moment.”
“What ever happened to the rabbi you mentioned a few weeks ago? Is that progressing?”
She sighed. “Slowly. It’s up and down. He called once or twice, we met for a walk, we had coffee. There’s definitely a strong attraction, I know that much. If this weren’t such a puritanical age we probably would have made love by now. Ten, twelve years ago, well . . . But I’m glad we haven’t, because I’m not about to get all involved while he’s living with someone, and I as much as told him so. I also ran into him on the street several times—he lives in the neighborhood. But I think the fates had something to do with that.”
“Which fates?”
“Well, a couple of weeks ago, before I knew for sure about his girlfriend, I cast a spell with my mother.”
“Your mother? Didn’t you say she was in California?”
“She is.” She grinned as she pressed down on my ankles. “We did it over the phone.”
“Oh, is she a witch, too?”
“No, a computer programmer. But she’s very supportive. We lit candies simultaneously and offered up dried flowers at little altars we improvised. Some real witches have elaborate altars to goddesses in their apartments, but I don’t go that far.
We told each other how the candles were flickering, and they seemed to be making similar patterns. Three thousand miles apart. I think something powerful must have been passing through the air. Then we both whispered some wishes, and over the next few days I met him twice on the street. By accident, so to speak.”
“I hope your phone isn’t tapped.”
“No kidding, there are covens that do witchcraft over the phone, goddess and spirituality stuff. Conference calls. You know how hard it can be to get a bunch of people together in the city. But I’m too busy working and keeping up with the scientific literature. . . . Well, since that first spell seemed to work, I tried again with a friend, not on the phone. We lit the candles and we also offered up some pieces of very expensive chocolate. Godiva. I figured, if I were a goddess, I’d have high-class tastes. What would induce me to grant someone’s wishes? The thing I came up with was Godiva chocolates.”
“And did that work?”
“I think so. It was right before we had a date to meet in Central Park. We had a lovely time, I thought. We talked, we held hands, we sat on the grass and kissed a little. But that was over a week ago. Since then things have cooled. I ran into him on the street last Friday and he was very casual, as if nothing had ever passed between us. So I’m beginning to think he’s just a playboy, the land who acts very seductive and then when they’re sure they’ve got you interested, that’s the end of it. Do you know the type I mean? They can be pathological, especially when they don’t even realize what they’re doing.”
“Yes, I do.”
“He got what he wanted, which was to get me hooked. On the other hand, he might have changed because I asked him to please clarify for me what is going on with his girlfriend. If we’re going to be just friends, then why doesn’t he invite me over to meet her, I said. And if we’re going to be more than friends, why is he still living with her and deceiving her? I think I might have frightened him off.”
The Fatigue Artist Page 27