Memorial

by Bruce Wagner

  She thought some more about Full Fathom Five. The story of the couple left hanging in the branches had unhinged her but Joan wanted to avoid any treehuggers’ on-site plantings; best leave that to Sir (Sri?) Goldsworthy, the Dumfries shaman whose “Garden of Stones” Holocaust Mem at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, with its dwarf oaks emerging from holes within 18 13-ton glacial granite boulders (18 = the Hebrew alphabet correspondence with chai, the Jewish equivalent of ch’i), would be hard to beat. (In the future, the acorns born of the dwarfs would be planted by children of Holocaust survivors. For real.) It was out of her purview and Joan knew there was always the danger a wily Lew might interpret such a gesture, from anyone else but Andy, as cliché. Still, she circled the idea of a vast reflecting pool; talk about cliché, but it was pretty hard not to go there. If she could do something “new” with water, if that were even possible, if she were good enough—a flat green slate pond engineered to remain at perfect ground level in the staggeringly elegiac meadow he’d selected might achieve the timeless, anonymous effect that had subsumed since the Lost Coast rumination. (Brilliant alternate working title: Lost Coast.) She’d immersed herself in the tsunami—ancient legend come to life before the contemporary world. In some ways she felt privileged, because whether one knew it or not it was the defining event of hers, Lew’s, and everyone’s lifetime, like being on the planet during Vesuvius, Pompeii, Krakatoa. And maybe Hiroshima. (She knew it was all wrong and that it didn’t make sense, but in her mind the death of New Orleans was closer to the disappearance of the WTC.) She thought about the dogs and elephants that nudged people to higher ground, dolphins urging fishing boat captains to the relative safety of deeper seas, and afterward, when scarred, sentient pachyderms lifted detritus from the injured, or aided in the disinterment of the dead…All her life Joan had felt a strange closeness to that region, as her mother did, now racking her brains for this idiot’s assignment, something asinine and collegiate about it, civic science fair, building the Perfect Memorial, though if she had her way, not just for richies who got tree-bough-hanged but for everyone who died and everyone who lived, all the walking dead and miracle folk, the incognizant motherless children, a monument to the broken and unbreakable—impossible! How to memorialize a myth of such potency? Now was the Time of the Memorial. It was her time. Yet to note absence and the void—to note it—was a philosophical conundrum. There wasn’t syntax for such a challenge, architectural or otherwise. What would be the point? Was she capable of erasing herself, of banishing hubris? Only from Silence could the semblance of such a thing be born. Maybe that’s why she rode Freiberg bareback, subconscious thought being that life growing inside her was the only answer, an antidote to egotism. At least it would be a starting point. Womb to tomb. What was a grave, anyway? Something to mark the memory of a spirit. And what was spirit but the embodiment of Myth? (She laughed as she suddenly thought of Pradeep telling her how his favorite, Ali G, sang the last phrase of the national anthem as “your home in the grave.”)

  Sri Lanka was called India’s teardrop: only this morning she read something in the paper about a killer convicted on the strength of DNA—tears the little girl had shed onto the seat of his car. We are all made of water

  and again the images seized her, being fucked by Lew, fury of his DNA, her fury as well, he’d gripped her long hair, it had been 20 summers since some rough Berkeley Romeo did that in back of a stationwagon; mournful Napa wind howling through reconnoitered memorial grove as she got rimmed rattled and rolled (rimmed Koolhaus, rimmed reaper) in that haunted house lea, it began to rain, great blackwater sheets of it, then, Joan embarrassed at her own wetness, hoping it wasn’t a turnoff, it had been a turnoff for some of the men in her life but they were babies, that’s just how she was physically wired, she got so wet sometimes they’d assfuck her by mistake—there it was, so true, body as earth and tsunami, crass dumb analogy, fucking as access to Myth, fucking was Myth, recession and floodwater, corporeal heat and gaseous gale force cuntfart wind, magnificent oblivion as tears, secretions, and semen dissolved and commingled, the blacking out, animal rush of hearts and minds to higher ground, eyes opening, closing all veils, thresholds akimbo, atremble, reflecting pools reflecting ambient absence, sounds and swells and swelling, screams and shadows, gorge and engorged and failure to outrun the deluge, system collapse, that’s how we were wired, that’s how we vanished, kicking and screaming in sepulchral acquiescence, all the same, the sacramental memorial of 2 bodies as they rutted their way to birthing and deathing and grubby celestial silence. I’m a Mem. Yes I am, and I can’t help but love him so.

  She wished those 2 had died in the Maldives because that thousand-mile-long sea-level spine of atoll lent itself more readily to earthen monument making. How awful she had become! A leech in the architectural house of God: slutty 2nd-rate talent who’d ceased to know herself even through multiple readings of her Vedic astrological chart; it comically, macabrely ordained that she caretake others, her rising sign in codependence, moon in the House of Enabling—she especially knew how to make men feel good, as she roiled and withered, washing away from the inside, her cervix a village brittle with seabranches, vertiginous sea-horses, tumbling mothers, and drowned wide-eyed children gone saltwater ass-over-heels. She was that woman in the Andaman Islands, paid 2 rupees—4¢—by the local government in compensation for the tidal wave death of her babies, there she was, there was Joan, Joan of ARK, Joan of the disastrous, diaphanous moon-pulled tide, parasite of Melville’s “Maldive Shark,” riding the predaceous Wave:

  …sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim

  —that was she—

  How alert in attendance be.

  From his saw-pit mouth, from his charnel of maw

  They have nothing of harm to dread,

  But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank

  Or before his Gorgonian head;

  Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth

  In white triple tiers of glittering gates,

  And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,

  An asylum in jaws of the Fates!

  They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,

  Yet never partake of the treat—

  Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,

  Pale ravener of horrible meat.

  She picked up the phone to call her mother.

  XXXIV.

  Ray

  EVEN Ray couldn’t dismiss the propitious omen of the City of Industry’s offer arriving at the very moment Ghulpa announced her pregnancy. (She said she was certain of her condition when she could no longer smell the monsoon.) The Rite Aid kit had confirmed it.

  They both cried.

  He was waylaid and astonished.

  He saw himself at the end of his life now, all wrongs, failures, and misgivings mitigated by this bloodied crumpled thing soon to join them in the world. He could see the pink coverlet of its flesh, almost smell it as once he had smelled his lost children; felt wornout fingertips caressing bakery-fresh dermis, inhaling the luminous, wispy penumbra of hairs on its head—old man to new old man—and saw his BG come alive again. God, he loved her. A good and worthy woman who’d been premonitorily dreaming of monsoons, saturated in their majestic, superabundant, terrifying memory.

  For the last week, as he watched his Twilight Zones, she talked from the kitchen, half to him, half to herself, of the storms’ flat-headed mushroom clouds and bridesmaids of crows, dust, and dragonflies, muttering stories of Durga and the man-eating tigers that her parents had passed on. For the last week, Ghulpa had been all about water, Kwality ice cream (or mango with cardamom), flooded lullabies, and bedtime tales. She rinsed her hair in coconut oil and stitched a tiara of jasmine for her “Raj”—she laughed and cried like a spinning weathervane and nearly brought Bapu to exasperation. She spooned down chikko and spoke of immersion as an impish girl in the Hooghly River. For the last week, newlywed to her fetus, all washed back to Mother India, her water broke from blackholed skies, a
ll was sweetmeats and sandesh, all was Durga Puja, statues of the goddess straddling fearsome papier-mâché lions loaded onto slow-moving trucks with Little Gulp jumping on, hooded by a green centipede of banana leaf, on the way to the ghat for submergence. Now Ray peaceably drowned as well in those fluid recollections and Taj Mahal–themed pandals, Durga and Ganesha in carriage, illuminated by fierce neon, he sunk like a treasure in her tears, sunk in his private old man sobbings, the couple’s lachrymose communion incubating beneath the sacred folds of her almond-skinned belly. Raymond Rausch experienced a teleological rapture of the days, and a feeling most merciful that there had been a purpose to his smallest and even largest abdications, and that he had been forgiven.

  WHEN he got lonesome for Nip, he watched that wonderful fellow on National Geographic’s Dog Whisperer, a gentle warrior who healed the worst of the worst, even a pit bull named Half-Dead with scars around its neck—the owner, a homeless pimp, kept it tied for weeks to a pole, with barbed wire. At the end of the show the Whisperer told the animal’s stunned and grateful suburban parents, “The beauty is, they move on. Your dog is no longer living in the past, he’s living in the present. That’s why years of trauma can be reversed in an instant.”

  THE amount the city offered for the wrongful break-in was $308,000. A funny number, so precise, but Ray didn’t want to ask how they’d come by it. The fewer the details, the better—he didn’t want to be the jinx. Now that there was a figure, he felt less combative, and friendlier to the concept. The lawyer on the phone quickly said they could do “far better” but Ray thought it just fine, even though Ghulpa frantically motioned that they needed to discuss it amongst themselves. BG was frantic about everything these days and who could blame her. Ray nodded at her, hanging up congenially.

  “Bapu,” she said almost gravely. “Think of the little one who is coming.”

  She wanted to give the little one everything. She wanted the little one to have the finest clothes and a rockinghorse bed. More than anything, Ghulpa demanded—in strict compliance with Bengali tradition—the finest in education for their child. The little one would become a scientist. He would go to Caltech. (He was never a she.) He would go to Harvard. He would go to Oxford. Ray assented, on a mellow, natural high. In the space of a few hours, in the winter of his years, he’d become a father and a wealthy man. He even allowed himself the thought:

  I will be her husband. She will be my wife.

  Detective Lake called to say he was in the neighborhood. BG prepared mint tea while the men visited. Of course, not a word was said re child or settlement, but it was obvious to their guest that Ray was in fine fettle. The mood of the house was buoyant.

  When Ghulpa came in with the tray, the detective asked what part of India she was from. He said a merchant told him of a festival that honored whatever tools people worked with in their livelihood. Writers had computers and pencils blessed; musicians, their instruments. On this particular holiday, the merchant said that priests even anointed the weapons and ammunition of local police. He asked if it was all true and she smiled, bobbling her head like a sleepy cobra before a snake charmer. Yes, she said, the festival of lights, the festival of Diwali, in this Puja all “ammo” is blessed, the bands play, and the people chant Om Jai Jagdish Hare. Then she covered her mouth the way she did prior to a laughing jag. She went abruptly to another room and Ray just smiled because he knew she would soon begin to weep with the amniotic joy of housebound, baby-fevered mythos.

  Their own private festival of light.

  XXXV.

  Chester

  THE pain was really getting to him.

  He didn’t have medical insurance and Remar reiterated his offer to find doctors willing to see Chess on a contingency basis. It was called being treated “on a lien,” or something like that. The lawyer compared his situation to having been in a crash—you could rent a car while your own was under repair without shelling anything out. Vendors and insurers usually had good-faith agreements re restitution that sometimes applied to doctors as well. It was important that Chess begin to create a papertrail of medical bills. “This isn’t a self-esteem issue,” said the lawyer. “You should find the help you need, pronto.” He would “procure” a list of clinics the firm had worked with. On the strength of the facts of the case, Remar felt reasonably confident Chester could get quality care for nothing or at least pennies on the dollar. He even offered a cash advance. “Don’t let your pride work against you. Again, that’s not the issue here.”

  His landlord, Karen, Don Knotts’s daughter, stopped in with soup and sandwiches to commiserate. She was rangy, red-haired, radiant, and big-boned, with a gangly, generous smile. (She was an actress who used to do theater with her dad; Chess loved hearing stories about Life with Don.) She told him that a friend of hers who didn’t have health insurance woke up in the middle of the night with chest pain and went to the ER. They put some kind of stent in there and by the time he left—12 hours later because he was so freaked out about how much everything was costing—he’d racked up $47,000 in bills. She was surprised he didn’t drop dead right then and there. Karen said the guy was suing the hospital for what attorneys were calling a 600% markup.

  You didn’t need a whistleblower to tell you how vulnerable you were in the U S of A: with or without medical coverage. The uninsured (all 45,000,000 of em) were circled like enfeebled prey, while a corporate syndicate of turkey buzzards sought out the soft anus of the dead and dying. Hospitals had Mob-style accountants keeping 2 sets of books—one for scum, the other for bluecrossed bull’s-eyes. Paradoxically, the uninsured were the schmucks who got jacked. Ripe for some homecooked-style fucking, with all the trimmins. You didn’t even have to be in possession of a scabby street person profile; you could just be some poor slob Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf manager going through tough times who can’t afford the few hundred a month for so-called coverage. Even if you had coverage, they found a way to shit in your mouth. The hospitals added insult to injury by calling themselves “not-for-profit.” What a joke!

  Let’s say you wanted to do the right thing and spring for the premium. Be a good boy and all that yadda yadda good citizen horseshit. Well, tough—rates had gone up 70% in just 3 years. 60 Minutes said 50% of all personal bankruptcies could be traced to overinflated medical bills. Hospitals kept the costs of their procedures secret, so you couldn’t even comparison-shop; accounting departments sent out drone missile invoices left and right, blowing up middleclass houses like piece of shit Shiite temples.

  It was a marathon rape everywhere you turned. Didn’t matter if you were an enlisted person who died in the line of duty; there was still a cap of 12K. They knocked on your door and forked over a “military death gratuity”—that’s what they called it—like a restaurant tip. Raping Private Ryan. The government dunned amputees for costs to replace cheap body armor. Deduct it from the gratuity! Chess read in the paper how they didn’t send soldiers home anymore by special transport, with flags draped over the coffins. Fuck that—they shipped em in cargo holds, commercial air, wrapped in plastic.

  You couldn’t actually sue for malpractice anymore either; there were more caps than fuckin West Point on grad day. If a strung-out surgeon snagged the wrong kidney or a Down-syndrome RN accidentally switched your nametag with Joe Prostate Cancer and the next morning they murdered your hard-on and you had to be diapered the rest of your life, it was Eat Me Time: damages were capped with a capital C. The gameshow was rigged—everything had its price but the price was wrong, and it didn’t matter whether they blinded you or left sponges in your pussy that tortured you for 6 years before someone figured it out, if they figured it out at all, or they transfused the wrong blood. We’re sorry! capped out at a few hundred grand. Deal or No Deal! That was the law and it was global: even Holocaust reparations were paltry. Let’s say your gonads got irradiated by the SS and for the next 50 years intermittently balloon-bled like pomegranates, or your nips were carved off by der Weise Angel, or you got twappy and phthisical from
chemical injections—the most you could get was 3 to 8 Gs. End of story. Finito. Cap City. Capo di tutti Capo.

  Done fucking No Deal…

  He’d settle, all right, but only for what was fair and balanced—one thing Chess did know was he didn’t plan on being 60 years old and still in court. Eventually, come payday, he would have to sign off on future-related medical procedures. The trick was, he needed reasonable assurance he’d physically recover and not blow whatever money they gave him on potential surgeries, extensive rehab or whatever. He had to think worst-case scenario. That was the new fun zone, right? The Worst Case Scenario game? He knew the drill from fender-bender whiplash—you had to sign a waiver once they cut the check, releasing the big boys from liability if anything went hinky down the line. He knew that much, and Remar confirmed it. The Li-ars had the ability.

  Still it was kicky to do a little fantasizing about the jackpot. He didn’t want to get his hopes up but what was the harm? Probably healthy. Chess lit a joint and let his mind drift toward insane riches. The Catholics were really cleaning up. The Church was running scared; at least people were seeing results. A couple million here, a couple million there—in most cases, it was altar boys who got blown on ’70s camping trips. How tough could that be? A sleeping bag by the fire, marshmallows on sticks, hot and hale Marys around your dick…but everyone was so traumatized. That’s what kind of weak fucks Americans were. Put em on the wrong end of preachercock at a tender age and they become simpering snitches, queers, and serial killers. If he knew it’d make him a millionaire, Chess would have let los padres bite the wafer to their hearts’ content. The men in collars could fist him at Roger Mahony’s Bar and Grill for all he cared—just throw another few hundred thousand in the kitty.