by Lucy Ellmann
Bee, “childish”? The idea had never occurred to me. I was the child! Watching my cartoons, reading my children’s books, coveting new gadgets, wearing sneakers to work, succoring myself on oceans of soup, and being taken care of by millions of women. I was just a big kid before Bee died! Not anymore though, not anymore.
Another fellow student from RISD, a man this time, got up on the platform and talked about a teacher of theirs who’d told Bee to go big, go big. “He told everybody to ‘go big’—the men, so we wouldn’t seem effeminate, and the women, well, for the same reason!” he said. “Whenever you see a male artist praised for ‘playing with scale,’ you can be pretty sure he went big, probably too big! Bridget never made that mistake. Her stuff was always on a human scale. That’s what I loved about it.”
Someone else piped up from the floor, reading from an index card she’d brought along (this event was anything but formal). I felt like an outsider at my own sister’s memorial! But I was pleased when somebody mentioned Bee’s Primordial Egg, an installation of hers I liked but had almost forgotten about. It had filled a whole room in some gallery. Bee had hung about a zillion little objects from the ceiling, all dunked in white paint: doorknobs, light bulbs, wooden spoons, cups, sunglasses, pencils, forks, scissors, bottles, bric-a-brac, baby shoes, and other crazy shit. They hovered, at about head height, on strings attached to pulleys, and when someone pulled on one of the white objects (spectator participation was encouraged), another white object somewhere else in the room would rise up: each item had its partner, and that partner was an egg, a white “primordial” egg. It was both funny and beautiful. Lit from above, it looked like a cherry orchard in full bloom. The guy at the memorial said he used to think Bee’s Primordial Egg was about death, but now thought it was about birth, the birth of the universe—before color got added.
Someone else stepped up to the platform and declared that Bee was a composer as well as a visual artist, because so many of her Coziness Sculptures included sound: children at play, crackling fires, creaking boats, croaking frogs, chack-chacking crickets. I’d never thought of it as music, just part of the nutty shit she came up with. I was always scared for Bee, scared that nobody else would get why she did those things. These people seemed to get it. They couldn’t get enough of it! I’d wasted a hell of a lot of time being protective of her, instead of just appreciating her. But now I was proud: Bee was a real hero to these people. The wrong person in our family was pushed, the wrong kind of success valued. I’d made money, while Bee just needed money. I should have given her my apartment—it was wasted on me, I was never home! It would have suited an artist too, all that light and space, and a whole roof to spread out on.
I remembered buying a small Coziness Sculpture that had an audio element. That was what made it interesting. Visually, it was very plain. All you saw was this bare wooden window frame, and behind it, a painted backdrop of red and yellow autumn foliage. But what you heard was the sound of rain falling lightly on wood. And I’d bought it and put it straight into storage. What a lousy brother.
Needing to share out some of the guilt, I glared at Bee’s dealer for giving that commission long ago to one of those jagged metal guys who work big. Then I turned my ire toward that big patootie Gertrude, because she hadn’t helped Bee when she could have. (Bee always loved the word, “patootie.”) But the truth was, with or without our help, Bee had accomplished more than most. While I’d regarded her as hapless, aimless, deluded and doomed, she’d been pumping out one much-loved sculpture after another! She had “done well,” if doing well wasn’t only about making money—she’d done all this for chrissake! She hadn’t waited for approval or permission from us patooties, she’d just plowed on. And all I could do for her now was not abandon her. I vowed I wouldn’t ban the thought of her from my mind to save myself pain—as I had when my parents died (in my father’s case, before he died). No, I wouldn’t kill Bee a second time. If I could be Mimi’s attorney, I could be my sister’s advocate.
Next up on the platform was Bee’s ex-husband, Hunter (the biggest kid that ever was). Get a load of this guy, hopping around, hopping on the old bandwagon. His personal connection to a victim in an international news story was just too good an opportunity to miss. Towering over us all, with his chest puffed out, at first flexing his hands like he was about to write us a ticket, then lowering them to his groin (the “fig leaf” position!), he announced, “I was married to Bridge.” (I’d forgotten Bee was his Bridge for three years.) “We were very much in love. She made herself a real part of the family. We just liked hanging out. Bridge was on a break from art at that time, she didn’t really care about all that stuff, she just wanted to have fun—”
I couldn’t stomach any more of this. “She was on a break from civilization, pal!” I yelled from the floor. “She wasn’t doing any art because you didn’t let her, you jerk.”
Was it the cop in Hunter, or the wife-beater, that led him to take a swipe at me over the heads of the crowd? He missed by a mile.
“Can’t push her around anymore, I guess, so it’ll have to be me,” I taunted. I was longing to get my hands on him too. I’d never stopped wanting to tear the guy limb from limb (and I’m a surgeon, I know how to do it!).
But nobody else seemed to want to watch us punch each other’s lights out, so Hunter was escorted to the exit, and I was allowed to remain, Hanafan’s brother taking precedence over Hanafan’s self-appointed widower. The speeches were over now anyway. While we toasted Bridget with champagne cocktails, the quartet started up with “Death and the Maiden.”
“You always were a goofball, Hanafan.”
I knew that tone. Who else would insult me at my sister’s memorial? Gus and Gertrude had made their way through the throng to bully me. But that wasn’t his only motive. He also wanted a favor. This was why he’d been trying to get in touch with me for months, bombarding me by letter, phone, and email. What Gus wanted, it turned out, wasn’t just a freebie, but some sub rosa surgery done on his face. For Gertrude’s benefit, he claimed (yet I knew his recent pestering of me predated his dating her). It was all because of an ancient broken nose, he said, and… he didn’t want to get into the precise details right now, but he was hoping for some alterations to his hairline and ears, to fob off the cops in his furtive future. (Cops identify people by their ears more often than you might think.)
“So how about it, old buddy?” he asked.
“Sorry, Gus. No can do.”
“Aw, come on. Old times’ sake.”
“Nope.”
“Well, why the hell not?”
“Well, Gus… because I’m no longer a plastic surgeon.”
“Huh?”
“I quit!”
Gertrude’s hand leapt to her throat; and her mind to the issue of moola. “But, Harrison! How will you make a living?”
“Call this living?”
The quartet was in full flight as I left. The scratch of the pen, flick of the brush, scrape of the bow—this is when things start to happen.
I had lusted after quitting in my heart. I had dangled it like a carrot before my own nose whenever the going got tough. But it wasn’t until Gus requested my services that I knew my nascent love affair with quitting must finally be consummated. The prospect of remodeling that guy’s head for old times’ sake wasn’t my only reason—but it sure was a good one!
I still had an hour or two before I had to head for the airport, so I acquired some placatory gladioli for the nurses and receptionists, and headed on over to the office. Cheryl’s face fell as I explained my position. I refused to reconsider though, despite all her tears and entreaties, and was on my way out when I met Henry in the waiting room. There sat the classic assortment of potential victims, abjectly hoping to be augmented or whittled down, perfected by us in some way.
“Ah, Harrison. You’re here, are you?” old Henry asked me jovially.
“No, I’m not really here, Henry. I quit.”
“Ha ha ha. We were wondering
when you’d deign to—”
“No, I mean it, Henry. I just quit. Ask Cheryl!”
“What?”
“This is me quitting, Henry. I quit!” I began to wonder if I would have to repeat the word “quit” seven times, as some presentation coaches recommend, before he’d take it in. I turned to our little audience and added, “I advise you all to do the same, folks. Get out while the going’s good!”
“Uh, Harrison, would you mind coming into my office—”
“Your office stinks, Henry. It gives me the heebie-jeebies! Think of all the pointless painful procedures people have endured in there! Life-endangering stuff, and all for what?! Nope, I’ve duped my last dope, Henry, you do what you want,” I said. And to the crowd, “You too!”
Henry spluttered, “For your information, this fellow, this fellow’s had a rough few weeks—”
I interrupted, to tell the baffled little crowd, “For your information, you’re all fuckworthy!—” I felt Henry’s hand like a big mitt coming over my mouth, but struggled free. “Yes, there’s nothing actually wrong with you people. Now, scat!” They stared. “Are you coming?” A few did rise to follow me, the Pissed Piper of plastic surgery, but I was too fast for them. I ran, ran out of that building. Free at last, free as a bird! I did feel like I was flying.
I’d never quit a job before, and had no idea how great it feels. Quitting is fabulous. I recommend it to everyone. I walked down the street and could smell things again, for the first time in years. The car fumes, the hot-dog stands, sweaty men in suits (or was that me?), flowers, perfume, dog shit, french fries. Jobs are all very well, but quitting feels soooo gooood.
Enough guff, enough rebuff. “To Grove Street, between Bedford and Bleecker, and step on it!”
I rang Mimi’s bell about a billion times, and howled up at her window, “Man my barricades! Or better yet, bare my mannicades!” But it was no good. No Mimi.
Mimì! Mimì!
At the airport, awaiting my flight, I sat at a bar, eating nuts and going nuts. Since Bee had died, I’d felt like a guy clinging to the wreckage in a hurricane. And they expected me to do my job at the same time! They wanted me to play the ready, steady doc, while the palm trees all around me were bent sideways, cars sailing past, people floating by on the roofs of their houses… I was pleased with myself for finally recognizing the practical impossibility of all this. But, fearing any second thoughts, some failure of resolve, some unforeseen requirement to do the exact opposite, I jotted down on a napkin my reasons for quitting:
– the pole-dancing kid I couldn’t help
– Mimi’s disdain for what I do (it’s not that I can’t take her to a medical conference—she wouldn’t go!)
– medical conferences
– the sadomasochistic mauling of healthy flesh, old or young. Leave ’em alone!
– “First, do no harm”—but we harmed people every day, flagrantly, for money
– the woman who died to save her son from having a fat mom (moms are supposed to be fat!)
– the women who want their labia trimmed (to match their inner emptiness)
– the man who dreamed he could have a penis the size of a horse’s, and asked me to do it for him
– the creepy requests to re-virginify Arab brides
– the veiled requests for female circumcision
– the suspicion that, by working as a plastic surgeon, I have personally contributed to the current epidemic of female self-hate and self-harm
– patients who come spinning in like a tornado, flinging sad tales in all directions
– the shame of working with Henry. Some beauty expert! He once gave a woman a monster eye (she’d asked for two)
– reading and writing medical papers
– speaking at clinical meetings and scold-fests
– energy-saving bulbs in the office
– Cheryl’s melancholy plight
– the noose of email
– the noise of lawyers
– trying to avoid garlic and onions before appointments
– being away from Bubbles all day!
– the diner near the office: matzo ball soup never hot enough
– I don’t really know what a good nose is anymore
Sure, I’d miss surgery itself—it’s a craft and I’d gotten good at it. But I could turn my hand–eye coordination to better things, like playing the piano, and working on my inventions. After all, I had enough money in the bank to live for the rest of my life (“as long as I die by 4:00 today,” as Henny Youngman would say).
It was only as the plane for home juddered down the runway for take-off that I realized that, during that pit stop at my apartment, I’d managed to grab a change of underwear but forgot my notes for my speech! (Such as they were—I’d never even settled on a definite subject.) What we had here was a real Grandma-died-and-her-dog-ate-my-speech situation, and an extra pair of underpants wasn’t going to help.
I could still cancel. (Could I still cancel?)
FULL MOON, JUNE 15TH
The thing Bee and I always liked about the Chewing Gum Plaza Hotel when we were kids was the modernistic indoor waterfall and fishpond in the lobby. This had now been replaced by a muggy rainforest of rubber plants and a dozy cockatoo chained to a log. The Ritz it wasn’t. Not that I noticed much when I got there: I was too busy trying to scrabble a speech together on hotel notepads, too nervous to resurrect any of my possible topics. Three chunks, I reminded myself hysterically, three ideas, three ideas per chunk, three chunks per idea, nine ideas per speech… Nothing but a few lousy phrases came to mind (and Mimi’s just dismissal of them). The last thing I wrote before falling asleep was an execrable thing about the ironies of plastic surgery, based on my trusty airport napkin.
I walked out of that hotel the next morning with what bravado I could muster and pockets stuffed with little pieces of paper (as well as a letter of apology, in case I chickened out), and took a tour around town just to re-familiarize myself with its execrableness. The last time I was there was for my mother’s funeral—but then, Bee was with me. Now I was alone: jobless, sister-less, Mimi-less, mindless, pointless, speechless. Mimì! Mimì!
Walk. Take in one color, one sound.
Nothing was left of Bee’s graffiti now—the very buildings she’d daubed were gone. But some things remain the same. I first discovered sky in Virtue and Chewing Gum, the sky and then the rest of it, from the ground up: twigs, grass that could cut you (glass too), pebbles, puddles, pencils, much prized popsicle sticks, sewer drains, cigarette stubs, dog do, asphalt, oak leaves, cracks in the sidewalk that would break your mother’s back (and in my case, did!), tree roots, buttercups, sprinklers, hoses, inflatable pools, fire hydrants, trash, rose thorns, favorite tricycles, and little red wagons. It was the look of the sidewalks that got me most, the actual squares of cement under my feet: they were the same. The tree-lined playground with the tallest swings, and bark shavings to soften your fall. The ice-skating hut where Bee and I put on our skates every winter, and the field on which we skated and lost a few baby teeth: it was all there but so tiny!
But it was lush, my hometown—all the trees had grown. And there was the bakery that used to sell cherry cobbler pie, and still did. The river too was still rushing by of course—but no little red truck. The smoldering remains of what was once my childhood: earth, air, water, fire. Born twixt pee hole and shit hole, the brown and the yellow ale, east and west, north and south, spring and fall, black and white, Virtue and Chewing Gum, I was back in the land of contrasts: home. But I now inhabited a gray area, where Ant’s got no Bee, and Rodolfo needs his Mimì.
Big black beetles had gathered on the high-school lawn in their carapaces, the black gowns of bamboozlement. Parents were taking photographs. My audience: just kids, soon to be locked into mortgages and marriages. Don’t graduate, you fools, individuate!
I wandered into the Principal’s office. Why was I surprised he was younger than me, and too busy to talk? He sat me down i
n the corridor with a copy of the high-school yearbook, and I flicked through headshots as if tasked with identifying a murderer. I didn’t even glance at my notes, though I fingered my letter of apology off and on. It’s no big deal, I kept telling myself. Humans make speeches: I am human, therefore I can make one too. People make speeches all over this goddam country every day! Really stupid people. (I ran rings around myself, logically.)
Once positioned amongst the School Board on stage, I had to resort to fantasizing about Mimi to calm myself, picturing her hands all over me and her lips on mine, throughout the Principal’s platitudinous oration, and then the militaristic handing-out of diplomas. The thought of Mimi was the only thing that stopped the shakes!
Bee-oh-double-you-el, I-en-gee,
Let’s go bowling, bowling, bowling,
My baby and me!
Bee-oh-double-you-el, I-en-gee,
Let’s go bowling, bowling, bowling,
For the whole fam-i-lee!
For “bowling,” read… But now I had to snap out of it. The Chairman of the School Board seemed to have finished his generous, as of yesterday wholly erroneous, characterization of me as a successful doctor (he made me sound like Ant and Bee’s doctor: huge), and was handing me the floor. It seemed a little late to deliver my letter. I stood, knees wobbly, stomach tensing up, palpitations starting, mouth dry: I needed Meno-Balls! But then I remembered Mimi’s injunction to look directly at my audience… and they were a sad sight, all those awkward girls, dolled up and smiling—my future patients perhaps, if I hadn’t quit, with their wonky noses, plump thighs, and blemishes. Poor ducks, I’d give my speech for them.
“Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yes, it’s true, I did go to this school,” I began. Isolated cheers. “Yeah, hey, it wasn’t that good!” Laughter. “In fact, I came here to tell you how awful it was, and give you a few of my most bitter memories of the place.” Whoops of delight; a few boos. “But… that can wait.” More laughter.