Of course I knew none of this at first—at first you were nothing to me but another in a long line of strange characters I met the summer I went off in search of my sister. This was in Ogunquit, Maine, a quaint beach town whose streets were lined with historic houses, with little shops and restaurants. It was the type of place I’d only seen before on postcards, and in fact everything there looked not quite real, as if it had been staged by a photographer, an adman. Tourists strolled around in perfect ease, their hands in their pockets. They wore white pants, bright polo shirts, tasseled loafers. They were fat and pink and exuberant, smacking of health and abundance. In a place like Ogunquit it was easy to believe that life was effortless, beautiful, that there was nothing to it but riches. It was exactly the kind of place, I thought, Malinda would run off to.
I had spent two days walking around town, sneaking behind all of its restaurants, to their back entrances, where the dumpsters were kept, where employees sat smoking on overturned buckets, for it was in these shadowy, stinking corners that life’s drudgery was hiding. I’d shown Malinda’s picture around, and almost everyone had the same reaction, which was to look at her and whistle: “A girl like that,” they said, and paused, “a girl like that I’d remember.”
This is how we met, on my second evening in town, when I had started to give up hope. When I first saw you, you were leaning by the side entrance of a fancy seafood place that overlooked the water. You were so remarkably small, so short and slender, that for an instant I had the impression you had stepped out of another dimension. As a child I had always suspected that a race of small people was working behind the scenes of what I took for ordinary life—behind a scrim they pushed buttons and pulled levers, controlling the traffic, the weather, the moods of my mother—and now, it seemed, here you were, an elf out on a cigarette break. You had an elf’s pinkish skin, and an elf’s delicate upturned nose. Your hair was parted elf-like on the side, slicked down with pomade. Though you were formally dressed—in a dark blue suit with a yellow bow tie—your small size gave the suit the look of a costume.
I caught your eye and we stared at each other for a second. I wonder, now, what I looked like to you—some wastrel, some crumpled vagrant.
May I help you? you said. Your voice was high, snide.
“I’m looking for this girl.” I held out Malinda’s picture and you fairly snatched it out of my hand. When you saw Malinda a corner of your mouth turned up.
What is it you want with Malinda? you said. If I might be so bold as to ask?
“You know her?”
I might, you said. I might not. Your voice seemed to me like the recording of a voice—it was too loud, and there was something plastic about it. She doesn’t have any money, if that’s what you want. If that’s what you’re after, you can just forget it.
I wondered how bad off Malinda was. If there were people coming by her workplace looking for the money she owed them. I didn’t doubt it. The last time I’d seen her she was so drunk her eyes were swirling in the manner of a cartoon character hypnotized by a mad scientist. She’d come home in the middle of the night and woken me up. “Can I have some money?” she’d said, and I’d gone to my bureau drawer, where I kept a roll of soft, dirty bills rolled up inside a tube sock. I’d pulled out a twenty, thinking how it represented five hours of standing in front of a register at the grocery store, five hours of my life I’d never get back. She’d grabbed it and stuffed it in her pocket and said, “See ya.” Which was little enough of a parting sentiment, and she’d delivered not even that kindness. The next night I’d come home from work to find the rest of my money gone.
Hello? you said. You stepped toward me and snapped your fingers in front of my face.
“Could you just tell me where Malinda is?” I said.
I don’t think so. If I were you I’d turn around and go back wherever it was you came from. You made a shooing motion with your hand. I have half a mind to call the authorities. We don’t allow loitering on the premises.
I looked at you murderously. I had an image of gripping your throat, strangling your neck. I wondered who would win in a fight between us. Since my junior year of college I’d suffered bouts of insomnia, and I’d spent long nights on the couch in the dormitory lobby watching nature documentaries on public television. One animal was always fighting another, and I could never tell which one would survive. Sometimes the smaller animals were faster and got away, other times their size worked against them and they were devoured. You were, I thought, smaller and more delicate than I was, and I had an advantage there. But then again you were angry, and sometimes anger was enough. It was a toss-up.
Have you had a stroke or something? you said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot what we were talking about.”
Then you burst out laughing, a high, stuttering kind of laugh I’d heard before only in cartoons. “Oh God,” you said. “You’re the sister, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Oh, this is rich,” you said. You laughed again, threw your head back and cackled. “You’re exactly like she said.”
“What’d she say?” I asked.
Oh, you said, nothing much. She said she had a sister but that you were polar opposites, you were like a deaf mute, all you did was sit around reading books. You swirled your cigarette around in the air, as if conducting yourself. She said you froze up during conversations and sometimes started crying for no reason, you couldn’t help it, you should be pitied.
“That’s not true!” I said. “I don’t cry!”
She said you were probably on the street somewhere, sitting on the sidewalk shaking a paper cup full of change. You know, a charity case. One of those people walking around with a sandwich board. Some kind of crazy message painted on it. The apocalypse or whatnot. Don’t worry, you said, she didn’t say much.
“I have a college degree,” I told you.
You looked me up and down. I’m sure you went to a fine institution, you said, your sarcasm so sly I almost missed it.
Then you started reminiscing about Arkansas, something I’d soon realize was a compulsive habit of yours. Of course we had our own lunatic back home—every town has one, that’s what I told Malinda, the world wouldn’t be the same without crazy people walking around asking for change. The funny thing about Arkansas, though, is that everyone does everything backwards. Our lunatic was a fat man who went around carrying a sign with something or other drawn on it, every day something different, a flower, a rocket ship, a dog wearing roller skates. Things of that nature. No one knew who he was or where he came from, but he stood at the town center, holding up his sign, and whenever you passed by he’d try to give you a quarter. You stopped to drag on your cigarette. You looked up at the sky, squinting, as if a scene from your childhood was playing out there. I took a quarter from time to time, bought myself a soda, but it never tasted right. There was always something funny about it.
“I’m not a lunatic!” I cried. Though the sound of my voice, high and pleading, wasn’t exactly convincing.
Of course not. You gave me another cutting look. I never said you were.
“I just want to find Malinda.”
She’s not in town yet, you said. But we’re expecting her hourly, my dear. Hourly.
With that you flicked your cigarette butt into the air, and it soared into the dumpster. I imagined a fire breaking out. At the present moment, however, you said, I have a show to put on. And you turned on your heel and disappeared through the door.
I wondered what to do—whether to stay in town and wait, and if so, how to pay for it. I would have to get a job. I imagined working at that very restaurant, side by side with Malinda. We’d reconcile, and she’d realize how unfair she’d been to turn away from me, she’d sob with regret…My head was swirling with plans when suddenly you appeared in the doorway again. Well, are you coming to the show, you said, or what?
I followed you through the kitchen, bright and hot and clattering, and then through the dining room,
dark and cool, where tourists sat dismantling lobsters. They had little plastic bibs around their necks, and they were working at the lobster claws with nutcrackers and tiny forks. In their concentration they stuck the tips of their tongues out the sides of their mouths, like children in an art class.
Adjacent to the dining room was a bar, and in its far corner sat a baby grand. Small tables were clustered around the piano, and several couples sat waiting for you. They applauded when you settled yourself on the bench.
Thank you so much, you said, Thank you, I love you all. When your voice came through the microphone it was entirely different than it had been just moments before. It was low and mellifluous, and laced with such a false humility that it made me wince.
I sat at the bar, and a man who looked very much like Humphrey Bogart asked me what I was having. I looked in my pocket to see how much money I had. “Can I get anything for three dollars?” I said.
The bartender stared at me with Bogart’s wearied indifference. “I suppose you could get a Shirley Temple,” he said.
“Then I guess I’ll have a Shirley Temple.”
He made an elaborate display of serving my drink, setting down a little napkin, then resting the drink just so on top of it. He waited until I took a sip. “Everything satisfactory?” he said.
“Quite.”
Printed on the napkin was a cartoon drawing of you—a tiny man with a large head. In the drawing you were smiling, and your teeth nearly overtook your face, like the Cheshire Cat. THE OASIS BAR, the napkin read. FEATURING THE PIANO STYLINGS OF JAMES BUTLER.
I sat listening to you for hours. Your strength as a performer had nothing to do with any particular quality in your own voice, but in your ability to mimic the singers you covered—the gravel and glee of Louis Armstrong, the low suavity of Dean Martin. You chattered with the couples between songs, the kind of banter common to performers. Where are you folks from? you said. Are you enjoying yourselves? How long have you been married? You spoke in the most earnest, delighted voice, like it was the greatest privilege of your life to be in their company.
From time to time, as a little joke to himself, the bartender came over and suggested high-priced bottles of wine, glasses of single-malt scotch. “Perhaps I can get you something to eat? An appetizer? A lobster dinner?”
“No,” I said, affecting an indifference that had nothing to do with money. “Not at the moment.”
Eventually there was only one couple left in the dining room. The woman had white meringue-like hair that stood up in peaks, and her pink lipstick was drawn far outside the lines of her mouth. Her husband was a fat silver-haired man who sat with his legs spread, his hands in his pockets. As you sang he stared at the floor, probably wondering about his stocks. In between songs you kept assuring these people that there was no need for them to leave just because the place was empty and it was midnight. I have all the time in the world, you said. I’m here just for you.
The woman kept requesting Gershwin songs. As you played—lightly, dreamily—the woman sat staring at you with her hands pressed together, as if in prayer. Whenever you finished a song she stood up and clapped—Marvelous, Marvelous, she said—and you stood also, and gave her a little bow. Finally the man led his wife away by force, and as they left she kept turning and blowing you kisses. “I can’t remember,” said the woman, “the last time I so enjoyed an evening.”
Well, thank you, you said. You bowed again. You made my evening as well.
When they were out of earshot you said, in the high voice that was your own, That miserable cunt. Two hours she sits there clapping her claws together and do you think she leaves a tip? You had lit a cigarette and were waving it in the air. I’m done, you said. I can’t take it anymore. I quit. I fucking quit. You emptied out your tip jar. You lined up the bills and counted them angrily, pulling them from one hand to the other.
Seventeen fucking dollars, you said. You sat down on the stool next to me, and the bartender poured you a vodka. Did I not play every goddamn Gershwin number ever written? Was I not flawless? Was I not charming? Your voice was loud now, hysterical.
“You were charming,” I said.
From the inner pocket of your suit you produced a silver pill case. You opened it and offered a pill to the bartender, who took one and popped it in his mouth. Would you care for a pill? you asked me.
I inspected them—there were pills of all different shapes and colors. “I don’t really take pills.”
Why not? you asked, as if everyone in the world took unidentified pills from complete strangers. How on earth do you get through a single day?
“I don’t know.”
These, you said, swallowing one, are simply marvelous. I take one every night after work. You shook another pill into your palm. It was pale blue, shaped like a flying saucer. They have a marvelous effect, you said. They’re very relaxing. Other people become tolerable.
I took the pill and swallowed it. “Hell is other people,” I said.
You raised your eyebrow, looked me up and down. I’m surprised you’re educated, you said. No offense. But considering who you’re related to, I wasn’t exactly expecting Sartre.
I shrugged.
I guess Malinda got the looks, you said, and you got the books! You laughed, amused with yourself. Being an only child, of course, you might say that I got it all—the looks, the brains, the whole package. I could have done anything I wanted in life, anything. I had the grades, the talent, the charisma. I could be President of the United States right now if I wanted.
Humphrey Bogart scoffed, but you ignored him.
Or an actor, you said to me. I would have had great success as an actor. People sometimes make comparisons between me and Paul Newman. Of course I never laid eyes on Paul Newman until I got to New York. We didn’t even have a theater back home. The world could have ended and we wouldn’t have known it. You know how it is in Arkansas.
I’d never been to Arkansas and did not know how it was. But this didn’t matter to you. You carried on about the faults of your hometown—its narrow-mindedness, its poverty, the general stupidity of its population, its problem with mosquitoes, the chemicals sprayed on its crops by low-flying planes and your ensuing skin rashes, respiratory problems. Which is why, you said, naturally I had to move on. A person of my abilities trapped in a place like that. It’s amazing I survived.
One of the great curses of your life, you said, was that your brain was configured in such a way that you never forgot anything, and so Arkansas was as present to you as the glass in your hand. Every day of your life was preserved and filed away in your memory, a veritable card catalog. I plan to donate my body to science, you said, so that my brain can be studied. You claimed to have memories of infancy, of being held, of grasping your grandmother’s pearls in your fist, of being rocked, you claimed to remember the dark shade of your pram casting a shadow on your face, the hot sun on your fat bare legs, you claimed to have spoken full sentences at the age of one. Twelve months old and I was reciting the King James Bible, you said, and by the age of two I was reading it.
I had questions I wanted to ask you—I wanted to know more about Malinda, how she’d been—but you were caught up in your reminiscences. Your stories kept pouring forth, all of which portrayed you in the light of a biblical character, someone whose fortunes had taken wild and unprecedented turns. It was a blight, you said, to have been born a genius in a place like Arkansas. But then again there were moments in which you felt the full weight of your power. The time a tornado flattened all of the houses on your street except yours. The time you sat down at your grandmother’s piano, age five, and spontaneously composed a song so beautiful that it brought the entire household to tears. The next day Grandmother hired a piano teacher, you said, and within a week I was playing Beethoven.
The bartender chimed in now, too. “My kid played piano,” he said, “but she’s gone now, she moved to Tucson with my ex-wife and her new husband. Whenever I talk to her she just asks me for money.”
He’d just begun talking, and obviously had more to tell, but you interrupted him. That’s a charming story, you said, but I can’t sit around chatting all night. I have to get my beauty sleep. You hopped off the stool—your feet didn’t quite reach the floor—and started for the door. I followed you, out through the restaurant, and then up the street.
“How well do you know Malinda?” I said.
Oh, completely, you said. Completely.
“Do you know where she stays when she gets in town?”
Probably with some boyfriend, you said. When she arrives for the season, you never know who she’ll bring with her. She passes through people quite frequently.
“I know,” I said. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
That’s a shame, you said, and yawned flagrantly.
“We were really close when we were younger. But then she left home, and we never really knew why. We always thought she’d come back any day, any minute, and then all of a sudden you turn around and it’s been years.” The pill you’d given me had kicked in, and I saw my past as if a long corridor lined with doors, each opening up into a separate memory of Malinda. “Looking back,” I said, “I should have known she was leaving. She was burning her bridges. Not long before she left our father came to visit—we didn’t see much of him but occasionally he’d stop by—and as he was sitting on the couch and telling us how sorry he was that he hadn’t been around for us, Malinda just got up and went to the closet and got a hammer, and she very calmly walked outside, and then all of a sudden we heard this smashing and crashing, glass breaking, and we ran outside and saw that Malinda had broken his car windows, his windshield, she’d put dents in the hood. He was too scared to go near her, he just stood there holding his head and waited until she was finished and then he got in the car and drove away, with no windshield or anything, he must have been sitting on glass.”
Someone else’s dog, you said, used to follow me to school every morning, and every afternoon when school was released it was waiting to walk me home. It couldn’t get enough of me.
Elegies for the Brokenhearted Page 13