Still Holding

by Bruce Wagner

  “Did she get teased a lot? About her name?”

  “Oh, I think when she was younger! But not too much anymore.”

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  “She was heartbroken when she heard what happened.”

  “Well, the next time everyone’s in town, we’ll have us a dinner. Ethan too.”

  “That’d be terrific. She would love that.”

  “We’ll go right over to the Mission Inn—that’s just a few miles from here. Diane Keaton is rumored to drop by now and then to partake of the prime rib. But you’re probably some kind of vegan. Isn’t that what they call that?”

  “I have been known to be carnivorous.”

  His mind returned to the rinpoche. “So, our friend—is he a ‘lama’ like the Dalai Lama?”

  “Well, yes, but not of that lineage. He’s also called a tulku, or reincarnated being. His Holiness is actually recognized as the incarnation of the Second Padma Norbu, a great Buddhist saint and meditation master.”

  “He’s a saint?” said Burke, eyebrow arched in playful skepticism.

  Bob smiled and said, “In Buddhism, saint means ‘realized being.’ ”

  “You know, I’ve been doing a little meditation myself.”

  “Ya have? Great!”

  “M & M—meditation and medication.”

  Bob laughed.

  “We have a lot of Buddhists moving through here—it’s like Grand Central, can’t help but rub off on you. They seem to calm Kit down pretty well, that’s for sure. He still gets frustrated. You know, with everything that’s happened.”

  “I can’t stress enough the importance of Kit getting back to his practice. Feeling it again. And that you’re meditating is great—this can’t have been easy for you, either, Burke. It’s a wonderful gift you’ve given your son, bringing the sangha into your home. That’s great, great merit. And I hear Kit’s doing phenomenally well—I don’t have to hear it, I can see it. He’s just flowering.”

  “He’s a tough kid, Tenzin. Tough like his old man.”

  Red Essence Rising

  LISANNE BROUGHT over the Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Buddha at the agreed upon time. She noticed a general stillness; even the neighborhood seemed more deserted that usual. She could feel the Source all around her.

  Mr. Lightfoot said that Kit was in the shower. He asked if she wanted anything to drink, and when she said no, he sat on the couch, eyes focused on the box. The copper-leafed mandala was in its original velvet-lined mahogany container. He enthusiastically bade her remove it. Lisanne smiled and looked toward the bathroom. She could hear the water running and tried to indicate that she wanted Kit to be present for the unveiling, but he said they should go on ahead. That way, it would be “in full regalia” when Kit came in.

  She carefully took it out, and the father inhaled appreciatively. That’s really something. When he asked somewhat boyishly if he could touch it, she said the Buddha was his, that it belonged to the house now and he could do with it as he wished. He held the antiquity high in the air, as if already appraising its fair market value.

  He asked her to come sit beside him. He put his hand at the nape of her clammy white neck, resting it there while he complimented the sculpture. He said that such a thing was “probably priceless” and wanted her to be certain she wished to make a gift of it. And would she mind signing a paper to that effect. He began rubbing her neck to see if she would balk at his attentions. When she didn’t, he let the hand drift to her collarbone, then out to the shoulder, telling her what a generous gesture it was she had made, all the while making tight semicircles with his fingertip. The pudgy skin was soft and unblemished and turned him on. Kit emerged from the steamy bath in one of Burke’s silk robes. He smiled, and she smiled back. When Burke’s hand deliberately brushed a big tit, Lisanne stood and asked if she could use “the ladies’ room.” She wasn’t sure if Kit was finished in there, but the impulse was too strong. She excused herself and entered the space Kit had been only moments before. She closed the door. She got the can of Comet and a brush from below the sink and began to scrub the basin of the stall. The mirror was fogged. It was humid and there was no fan. She was on her knees, sweating as she leaned into the crud. When she didn’t come out, Burke boldly opened the door without knocking. He laughed in a friendly way. You really like to clean, don’t you? he said. When she started in on the toilet with that spacey smile, he knew what he always knew—she was the Grand Imperial Super Tampon Wack Job. He fished out his cock, just to see if she’d notice. “You know,” he said, “we had a holy man here the other day. And evidently he said—this is what Ram the Ass told me but maybe I got it wrong because Ram the Ass sometimes talks out of the side of his fucking head, goo goo guh-joo, but Ram the Ass supposedly said that this holy man said that my Kit was showing signs of being a reincarnation of some kinda holy man himself. H.H. Kit Lightfoot. Now what d’ya think of that?” He pulled on his pud and moved closer, brushing the cock against her face as she scrubbed. He kept talking, trancelike. “You like to clean shitters, huh. You’re pretty good, huh. Gotta pretty big throne on you yourself. I’d like to sit on that fucking throne. Hey, what do you get when you cross a king with a toilet? A royal flush. Come on. This king’s crown has some dust on it. Do a little cleaning.” He bent his knees and put the tip of his softish penis in Lisanne’s mouth. He moved it in and out with his hand. She was a slack-jawed corpse, and he joked, “You’re a real party animal, aren’t you?” He took her by the elbow and helped her up. Come on, Big Bertha. Time to get a load off. He led her to the bedroom and sat her on the coverlet. Are you a holy woman? Are you a holy girl? Cause I think you’re a hole woman. That’s right. You a whole lotta hole. He laid her down. He stripped his clothes off while asking if she wanted to be with his son. “Oh c’mon now, that’s some kind of great honor. And you know what? Time he get himself some! Cause he’s had less pussy than a Muslim cleric, and I don’t want him on Cela either. He may have been on her already—I don’t put nothin past that girl—but I don’t play that shit, not in my house. He had his time. This is my time. I own that cunt. Hell, own the both of ‘em. And I think you should be with the holy man. In Xanadu, I so decree: you are hereby the Chosen One. Or maybe you’re fat enough I should call you the Chosen Few.” He laughed at his joke, shouting, “Son! Get in here!” Kit entered smiling, not knowing at first what was going on—so bizarre and unthinkable. Burke was in the middle of pulling Lisanne’s shirt up over her head. Wow, those are big. Jesus H.—real Louisville Sluggers. Stinky too. Y’oughta wash ‘em now and then. That’s a Howard Hughes special. Haven’t seen a brassiere like that since the freakin forties. Fuckin zeppelin catchers. Her head got trapped in the blouse then emerged and Kit recognized her, not just from minutes ago but from all the weeks she’d come and tidied, so polite and helpful. When he saw his father’s stiff dick, he backed up. He asked what he was doing and Burke said, “Lookin after you, tulku-breath. Your Analness. Your Holy Dipshit.” Then, as Bogart: Here’s lookin’ after you, kid. Kit said, It’s wrong. Burke said, Wrong never felt so right—or so tight, neither. You gonna see. You gonna see. He pulled off her jeans and panties and said, Now that’s a fuckin bush! Jesus! Know who had a bush like that? Your mother. R.J. had a bush like that. Kit said, Shut up, and Burke said, When I saw that bush on your mother, I said: Gonna marry that girl. Got to. That’s right. ‘He gotta have it.’ Oops, what have we here? It was a Tampax string. Houston, we have a problem. Gonna need a towel. Ground control to major towel. He started for the linen closet before saying, Oh fuck it. He looped the end of the string around a forefinger and slowly pulled. Woo, that stinks. That’s muggy. That’s a New York subway, summertime. When it came out he said, Plop plop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is. Woo woo woo. Sunday bloody Sunday. Burke got tired of his son’s lame, chivalrous reticences and ordered him to take off his pants. Kit got hard right away, in spite of himself. Thar she blows! That’s right. Made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Lisanne opened her eyes
long enough to see the tattoos: the FOREVER VIV and the Sanskrit she didn’t understand the first time she saw it on him in the trailer but had since learned to recognize as Om. She was on her back, beached. Burke led him down, grabbed Kit’s pecker, and put it in. There now. Fits like a glove. Fire in the hole! Kit said, Shut up, then Lisanne put her hands on his ass and worked it. Burke got a kick out of that. She ain’t dead yet, he said. He ain’t heavy, he’s my lama. Burke jacked, watching the bloody cock. In and out. That’s what a hamburger’s all about. Now that’s a beautiful thing. That’s a very beautiful thing. But I’m gonna have to burn these sheets when you lovebirds are done. And those are Ralph Lauren, they ain’t cheap. Gonna have to do a serious burn. Cause Fatty Arbuckle is hemorrhaging. Gonna need to find ourselves a tourniquet for that clit. Lookie that thing. Gonna have to tie it off. He got down and peered under his son’s flat, pistoning stomach. Yee-haw. Looks like someone stuck a buncha Bazooka gum on a goddamn Brillo pad. Lookit that belly. That’s a Goodyear blimp belly. When I was seventeen, he sang, it was a very Goodyear . . . As Kit fucked her, Lisanne thought, I am in the in-between. In the bardo of their lovemaking she saw his white essence sink in the sky like the moon and her red essence rise from the earth of her navel like a sun through karmic winds. Father and Mother merged—she couldn’t feel her own body but saw them copulating as if staring down from the ceiling. She waited for the wrathful deities, but they didn’t come. Lisanne stroked his skull, caressing the double surgical scars where the rainbow light would one day emanate. He was oblivious to her touch. He pounded her, dry-mouthed and ecstatic. His eyes were closed, but they opened as he came, shuddering, that was when she saw the energy leave the scar, she was rehearsing him for phowa, she’d read all about it and listened to the audiotapes but had never spoken of the esoteric maneuver with her teachers or anyone in the sangha but now here she was, performing like a natural. Coaching, guiding, evoking. She’d sent away for the tapes from Boulder and vigilantly done the meditation, and in the second week, she even got a nosebleed—the tapes said that wasn’t uncommon, external signs were indicators of the power of the practice. (You were supposed to repeat the phowa meditations twenty-one times a day but no more, because if overdone, they could have a deleterious effect.) The tapes said to imagine the white male drop falling from the crown chakra and the red female drop rising from the lower loins, both drops merging to form a pearl in the heart chakra. (The Dalai Lama said that when a body died, the heart was the last organ to lose its warmth.) After the merging, you said a prayer, asking for purification and forgiveness for all negative thoughts and actions experienced in this life, then you expelled the pearl through the fontanel or soft spot at the top of the head with an audible Hic! or a Pung!—straight into the heart of a Buddha or deity that you visualized to be floating somewhere above, though it didn’t necessarily have to be a Buddha, it could be your grandma or your best friend or anything really that was beloved. For Lisanne, of course, it was Kit—friend and benefactor, lover and enemy, human and animal, seen and unseen, newly born–newly dying—Kit, who was in her breath and the breath of her son, now inhabiting the lungspace of her very womb—the pearl was delivered, the merging, complete. She was certain that invisible wanderers sensed his godliness and already swarmed like flies onto meat: Imagine the multitudes of lost souls circling this bardo!—all this she thought while ejecting their mutual awareness into the heart of the ethereal Buddha-Kit floating above their heads through the corridors of dharmakaya. The tapes said one had to be certain that the person having his consciousness ejected by proxy was dead but Lisanne’s intentions were to elicit a gentle run-through, unlike classic phowa, which is always done after final respirations . . . a temporary, anomalous, honored healing instead, a kind of ventriloquistic bloodletting (wasn’t Kit letting her blood? She felt it streaming down her legs like a martyr in some religious painting but shook herself, careful to climb out of any unhelpful or confusing theistic mind-set and return to the Source, Oneness, the manifestation of True Love) or medieval trepanning. She had mingled their minds, energy, and ejaculate, catapulting them to Infinitude; they clambered into the lap of the Great Mother like unruly children, holy beggars, snow lions. Train right now in the path luminosity, the guidebook said, so that at the moment of dying you can dissolve confusion in the ground luminosity—

  Suddenly their bodies were overturned.

  A woman shrieked.

  Mr. Lightfoot yelped, guffawing.

  The lady called Cela was in the room.

  Kit grabbed his robe and ran. Cela swatted Lisanne, shouting, “What are you doing! What the fuck are you doing!” Lisanne jiggled and trembled, modestly covering her sex with a smeary hand while Burke, still laughing, put himself between them, urging Goodyear to get dressed.

  Cela struck him. “You motherfucker! She bled all over the bed! The bed where we fuck. How could you do that? And how could you do that to him? He’s your son, he’s your fucking son! You’re sick! You’re sick sick sick sick sick! You sick fuck, how could you bring a fat fucking whore in here like that! Oh God, look at the blood! She’s like a pig! You put your dick in that—she could have fucking AIDS! How could you do that? How could you do that to me! And your son, your son, your son!”

  • • •

  HE SAW HER STANDING in the driveway, disheveled. He brought her to the house—his wing, where she’d spent so little time. She was docile. He asked if she was hungry, but she shook her head. He gave her water from the kitchen tap, the Bulthaup/Poggenpohl kitchen that she called the mothership because it was capacious and made of steel, and the housekeeper made sure there were always steel bowls of fruit and redolent flowers there. Then he brought her to the bedroom and laid her down as she’d been brought to the Riverside bedroom and laid down hours before. He saw that she wasn’t wearing panties. Her thighs were smeared brown with blood. She’s been fucking, he thought. But who? Someone on the street. Maybe someone on the bluff, there was that section from the pier on up to Wilshire where he told her never to walk, where the woebegone held court, lying in wait under newspapers and ratty quilts, pretending to be sleepy and harmless so the liberals would continue to condone and indulge their predatory verminlike presence. She was vulnerable. She was prey. Her heart was kind and large and damaged—it grew larger each day and pumped less blood to its own system, an aneurysmal craving to burst and reabsorb into the generalized heart of needy humanity—and if it weren’t for his patronage he knew she would become one of them, dissolved into that scabrous communal wound. He hoped that wasn’t so and she’d just been out wandering because he worried about her catching a disease. Not that she would give him anything; their relationship wasn’t that way. His concern was unselfish. Also, he saw the end, and his seeing of that perhaps was the one selfish thing. He did not delight in the end, even though he had seen it coming for so long and had recognized Lisanne as its instrument. He soaked a rag in hot water and sponged her down with soap. (Maybe, he hoped, she’d been roughly, crazily masturbating and hadn’t been raped.) She was numb and bereft and he understood those things with tough and poignant insularity as might the translator of an astonishingly moving text who cannot then pass on what he knows. Yet who better to know those unknowable things and silently commune with her than he, the benefactor? Philip did this very thing with his mother when he was twelve, after she went out wandering. But my mother, he thought, was not a whore. My mother went out wandering to forget herself, to forget her wealth, to forget her husband—who himself had fled because he knew a wandering was coming and could not bear it—to forget how she had been crushed, her dreams eliminated. (Neither she nor the father nor the son nor his sister knew or would ever know what those dreams had been. It is a tragedy to forget what it was that was vanquished and merely be left with emotional detritus, the dried up tears of phantom loss.) Mattie would be with his father in La Jolla and Philip with his mother when she came back with her scrapes and contusions born of brambles, various small stones and the brushings-by of
domesticated bark and branches—nothing more, nothing less—such damage could be done without leaving the property, which was vast. As he damp-toweled his mother, he would linger at her fine white wrist scars, thicker by a hair than a hair’s width, wispy keloids whose origin it had been ingrained within him never to ask, the way some Jewish families never discuss the murky prehistory of modified noses. No, this was not his mother before him but rather it was as if he had swallowed her and regurgitated Lisanne’s soft white form and that he was now responsible for that form’s maintenance and comfort and for all of the forms it would beget. This was a tender lozenge before him, living and corpuscular, a sentient being whom he must protect, its cocoon rent, blown away like a bruised gown in the gusty albeit warm, sacral winds of the Santa Anas and it was up to him to father her—though he saw his own energy at an ebb, and that frightened him, he could see the recession of his earthly powers at hand. All that kept him here, and all that ultimately would send him away, lay in the animal eroticism of mother and son communion. All that kept him attached to the world was the sheer abandon inspired in the gaudy firelight of that act, by its holy, meretricious witness.

  Bygones

  TWO WEEKS LATER, his father in Vegas, Kit made an appointment to see Alf.

  (While Burke is away, the mice will play.)

  He tucked into the backseat of Cela’s Volvo while Tula spirited him away. They knew the drill—same old same old. Not too much action on the barricade, anyhow.

  They drove past old haunts.

  (He’d gathered up the addresses and given them to Tula, who spent the night before hunched with the Thomas Bros.)

  The Chateau and the Strip . . .

  (Though not a glance to or thought of the liquor store.)