by Paul Pipkin
The Manhattan traffic was manageable, so instead of going directly to the airport, I drove through the Village, chatting idly to her of the days of Kerouac and the Beats, and the times that had followed. I wondered at what it had been like in the earlier time, the Thomas Wolfe time, the Seabrook time. This turned out to be my second-worst idea of the day, hard after caving on the issue of seeking the Rhinebeck location near twilight.
Later I realized that she was being drawn, like a moth to the flame, to confront the most emotionally charged contents of her predecessor’s memory. The old woman had prescribed that she read the manuscript, and that’s what we should have done, rather than have me start tinkering around. I asked her if there was anyplace she’d like to see. Her voice cracked as she cried angrily, “I’D LIKE TO STOP BY THE BREVOORT, AND DROP IN AT THE 156!”
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“I’d like to breakfast at Mouquon’s or play in the street, but I can’t do that, can I?” She demanded that I turn onto West Twelfth and find a place to park, no small chore. “I remember you leading me up Fifth Avenue by a chain,” she snickered, as we began to walk. “We’d gotten only as far as Fourteenth Street when some East Side Jewesses were coming out of Hearn’s. They saw us and were shouting and pointing, when the big fat one got very angry and called you a Yiddish name, and then whacked you with her umbrella! We hopped into a taxi and came home quick. That was all that happened, really, but it was sorta exciting.”
I tried to comfort myself that she had skimmed that story in Greene’s book, but couldn’t make my heart believe it as she drifted farther yet. It was awesome, and not a little spooky, hearing her describe the wide avenues empty except for a late streetcar and a couple of carriages. I knew that I was then hearing recollections from a childhood at the beginning of the century, when the buildings had been smaller and more widely spaced, and everything had been so, so quiet.
Listening to her made me feel, if we strolled just a bit further, maybe made a turn in some impossible direction, such would be exactly what we would find. In retrospect, I would wonder if, in the company of that being balanced between realities, might not I have been drawn to the margins of my own? We saw panhandlers, but they did not approach. A junkie, fixing up in an alley, we passed as ghosts in the summer night.
Walking back, we passed a church with an old bell tower. Scanning the second-story windows across the street, she wistfully recalled waking up to hear all the church bells ringing together. “I was frightened! Katie had been keeping me home, for fear of the epidemic. She put her arms around me, saying that it was for the Armistice. The War was over, and we were so happy …”
In the car, she doubled over and hugged her middle, grieved to the point of sickness. Justine’s specific indifference to scenes of late-century ugliness around us revealed nostalgia as quite unrelated to the relative beauty of a given time. I’d never before thought of it like that. Our social ills did not impress a memory that contained sweatshops and Hell’s Kitchen. No, it was something other that distressed her, and it was with foreboding that my attention focused on a number, well recalled from my research, on the other side of the street. With trepidation, I pointed out a location, which had come to house a realty firm.
She cupped her hands over her mouth. “I can’t recognize it anymore.” Profound tragedy was in her quavering voice. “Katie lit the window around the Christmas tree to make it easier for me to find my way. I didn’t think—never imagined it like this,” she sobbed. “The loss! I’m the same, but everything is gone!”
That was the conundrum, I discovered. The classic quandary of the immortal is only the human condition raised to a higher power. Oh God, we think so little; we view ourselves as priceless and value that about us so poorly. We strain toward the supposed potential of an unknown future. Then that future comes for us, and we find ourselves alone, in a strange and uncaring ghost-world.
Trying to seize the moment, I stressed to her that she was not the same. This was precisely why she must embrace, even magnify, her recent memories and persona, to whom this City would be a wonderful adventure. As we were talking Justine here, I was tempted to head uptown, attempt to divert her with the thriving sex industry. But comprehension paled when I would try to explain the simplest causal relationships. She broke down in sadness and frustration, like a coma victim who had awakened to a world that had passed her by. Immersed in the baseline reality of the other Justine, the jumbled contents of her present life were making little or no sense.
“I cannot construe what you’re even talking about. This is Aldous’s brave new world? It’s unmentionable!Quel cauchemar. Let go of me, and I’m lost in a hellish nightmare.” I tried again to reassure her that she had not remained the same. There was a part of her that was familiar with all this, could cope with it, but she was not to be consoled. Again, I swore never to abandon her. Even so, I was all too aware that I could be torn from her, and what would become of her then?
Minions of society all march to pretty much the same general orders: “If it looks different, shoot.” A predictable commitment authorization from next of kin would have nothing whatsoever to do with any legitimate considerations. No help there. But taking her home to Atlanta, to shelter and isolation, left me uneasy.
I couldn’t imagine that the elder Justine, planning for her successor to grow to maturity before recall, had intended a single-ended consolidation of personality. But maybe she had overlooked the traumatic effects of inputs such as we had just experienced. Locales that incessantly aroused feelings of regret and loss did not bode well for her integration and recovery.
At the barn, she’d longed for the security of her chains. Even around me, there was no calculating what she might do or say, but I could at least communicate with her. She would respond to me, even if delusional, as had my dying mother. I veered away from that awful comparison and applied the simplest of all tests.
“The President? I dunno, FDR? No, wait. I’m still doing that. Can you believe getting used to President Harry Truman?” That cinched it. I had to get her to a safe haven. Evidently, the entirely alien impacted less personally. JFK International merely intimidated rather than horrified. By then she was remembering who Joseph Kennedy’s second son had been.
She stayed nestled under my arm, clutching her big portfolio, while I first attempted to change our reservations. Giving up on that, I bought us one-ways on a red-eye to Dallas–Fort Worth. It was either that or try to cope with more hours of waiting in the terminal, or finding our way to another, to get an Atlanta flight. Using the one credit card I carry for emergencies, I didn’t even attempt to involve her in the process.
Then she spied a jumbo airliner taxiing beyond the plate glass. Even as the panic attack began, I remembered that the elder Justine had been afraid of flying. There was nothing else for it. I went into my pocket for the Valium, assuring her that the “strong sophoric” would keep her from being afraid.
“Speaking of Aldous’s story? Well, this is like ‘soma.’” At her body weight, what I gave her was actually going to knock her on her cute little butt. I had taken the decision that I would rather steer a zoned-out kid through security and onto the plane than one having a screaming fit.
As the drug took effect, I used a nearby phone to call Joe in Arlington, Texas. Justine had tried to be helpful with “wiring” him, then stared blankly at me as I explained that long-distance calls were commonplace. The agony of her frustration was visible. She would reach for a clarifying memory, but more often find only the dated assumptions of the other time.
She seemed to remember the fact of recent technology: “Keyboard, nothing. It’s only typing, after all.” But in the same breath she failed to comprehend how the great Western Union could have been reduced to consoles in the backs of check-cashing shops. It was ironic. Deutsch had proposed that past and future are merely special cases of alternate realities. In that light, the being under my arm had not only been able to use the “Everett phone”; with it, she’d
called a god-damned cab!
Brief and to the point, I told Joe the ETA and flight number, that I was in an emergency situation, and that he might expect to find our young friend in a precarious emotional condition. It’s very nice to have someone you can call like that in the middle of the night.
Drawing her against me as we sat in the gate’s waiting area, I marveled at a subjective philosophical juxtaposition. On the one hand, there were the mysteries being unraveled: a vision of the fabric of the cosmic tapestry which boded a complexity undreamed of; on the other, a Zen-like clarity I had sought but never before found. One purpose, one reason for being; sitting there, stroking her hair.
IX
Ghost Years
JOE WAS WAITING FOR US, THANK GOD, AT THE GATE in the American terminal at Dallas–Fort Worth International. With Justine between us, and a good grip under each armpit, we were able to negotiate her down the ramps and outside. Such attention as we did attract was on the order of a few smirks from passengers and a dim eye from security, but as we were clearly leaving, there was no interference. Joe observed that they thought she was drunk, and I retorted that he should know. I’d had to peel him out of that same terminal, years before during his drinking days.
The circumstances of our “escape from New York” had left me paranoid about the details of logistics. We’d been able to embark owing only to being in a teeming monstrosity that gives not a damn—unless you block the flow of traffic. Californicated Texas, its much-vaunted tradition of individualism aside, has become the most intrusive and litigious place in the nation. Lawyers and social workers swing from trees.
Describing the restaurant adventure with his Justine, Seabrook had declared that no one interferes with a girl who’s poised and happy. True now as well, but in his day the issue was the potential interference of individuals. In our time we are all in jeopardy of the benevolent “intervention” of the state.
At any rate, Justine was not presently poised and happy. Doped up, sporting numerous marks from our night at The Château, and still being impacted by vivid recollections that would be indistinguishable from schizophrenic hallucinations, she looked far too much the carrion upon which the social-service vultures feed. Joe’s “suburban utility vehicle” was parked right outside, displaying a handicapped permit due to his wife Diane’s disabilities. As we got Justine and our bags settled into the back, I told him flatly that we needed to go to ground for a few days.
Joe, who never worries about anything anymore, scolded me about being obsessed with what “might” happen. Without details which I was not even near being able or willing to give, he could have no clue as to the degree to which I could now be excused for that!
Living with a declining alcoholic renders one immune to public humiliation, and episodes from my experience with Linda had left me well equipped to handle the journey with a minimum of consternation. Once back in Texas, I possessed the contact resources to counter any but the most determined “intervention.” Still, I was unwilling to risk the slightest possibility of her falling into the clutches of professional psych-hackers while her behavior was still dysfunctional. There was no way to gauge the damage that might be done by their ignorant meddling.
Another consideration was money. Justine would have to pull it back together before she could access her buffer, and I imagined that I had maxed out with the tickets for our sudden departure. I was grateful for Joe’s largely unquestioning support, and to God for letting me get Justine to a less exposed place to recover.
I would not allow for any consideration that she might not recover, be unable to correlate the conflicting realities slamming into her memory. Just as well that she was crashed out in the back as we cruised the futuristic airport complex and the choked arteries into Arlington, now only a portion of the fabric of the sprawling D-FW Metroplex.
Insofar as I had a plan, it was to try to help reinforce, within the baseline, elements of her present-day persona. One that could cope with the sights and sounds of the alien landscape which had sent her antecedent self into a paroxysm of fear and disorientation. Her reactions to the Village suggested that an environment known to that other self, but radically changed, would not be very helpful. Just possibly, an unfamiliar but quiet suburban setting was the best I could provide.
The evidence was becoming overwhelming. I had no choice but to operate on the assumption that she was the other Justine, and always had been! But I was denied the luxury of elation at this potential discovery. Reflection on rational proof of continued existence must wait until I’d dealt with the remarkable, and rather terrifying, reality of the awakening process.
Her predecessor had indisputably contrived the conditions for her anamnesis, a “remembrance” or, more precisely, the negation of forgetfulness. She must have studied long on how her own preconscious buttons might be pushed. But something seemed amiss. The elder Justine’s plan implied that her new incarnation would be gently reawakened by virtue of first living in her old home; then going to Rhinebeck; then reading the manuscript. That last had yet to be accomplished.
Had I messed up with the cathartic sadomasochistic activity at The Château, by taking her to the barn, or merely with my own inadvertent “intervention”? If so, then what of the confluence of synchronicity that bound me into this thing; whence did that come? All I could cling to was faith, and the few words from her Testament’s instructions to go to Rhinebeck, “for which I am so sorry …” Perhaps this reaction was not wholly unforeseen.
Before discussing the situation with Joe and Diane, I tucked Justine into bed in their guest room. Through her drugged fog, she seemed content with the chenille bedspread and oversize pillows, protected by the old wooden furniture and watched over by Di’s wonderful collection of dolls. I could not escape the contrast of these friendly little figures with Willie’s witch-dolls, which must have glowered over a woman called Justine on that last night in 1945.
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I SECURED A NOTE TO A PILLOW with a safety pin, in case she should awaken: “Don’t worry. I’m here. I love you.” There was no predicting how long this process would take. While the memories of her antecedent self continued to self-organize into a separate persona, insisting on believing me to be her lost Willie, I would have to play that role to a greater or lesser extent.
There was irony here. Men have always projected desired images on women, demanding that they become what we need. Now, only by playing at being a man long dead, could I remain her bond with this present moment.
Contrary to how my young psych major might have been educated to self-diagnose, I was fearful. If this powerful personality from the past were to disintegrate, I believed that it stood to drag down with it into madness the less elaborate and fixed one of its successor. This was not some damned “complex” to be analyzed away, or, depending on your religion, exorcised. The two were really only a single Justine, and the breach needed time to heal … or so I hoped.
I took a hairbrush from the vanity and gently stroked the tangles from her red tresses. Watching them spread out on the pillows, I thought, my angel, my chained lady. I adored her as much as I had come to realize that I despised myself: myself and my world.
Had there been no real help for my poor Linda, what could there be for an exotic creature like Justine? They’d stop short of burning her at the stake, but they’d gladly render her catatonic through drugs or electroshock to erase her inconvenient memories. Much of her education had been wasted; there is no science of the mind available today, only propaganda and self-serving bias masquerading as science.
I adjourned to the kitchen to drink coffee and offer some sort of explanation. Joe and I related by an understanding that was almost family, and Di is one of the kinder and less-judgmental people I’ve known. However, there is a limit to how much you can ask anyone to swallow in one gulp. In the tradition of Seabrook with his cannibal feast, I put together, for Di’s benefit, an “alternative reality” that was true enough for the purpose. Having
known Justine “a little while,” I planned to marry her as soon as possible; some family problems due to the May-December aspect; had partied in New York with the wrong people. Joe looked at the ceiling and stayed quiet.
I would tell him later that I hoped the proposed marriage would be fulfilled when Justine was up for it. I preferred for that to be a fait accompli before I had to deal with her mother. I did neglect to mention just who her mother was! My only pure fiction was to invent a designer drug that tended to linger in the system with repeated flashbacks for a while. I didn’t want them to be too disconcerted should Justine come out in period drag, looking for “Willie”!
After graciously acknowledging the most well-intentioned cautions to their crazy friend, I wandered outside for a smoke. Joe had offered me the use of one of his cars, and I reflected, in the markedly calm summer morning, that Lake Arlington was only a few miles away.
The thought of the place where this all appeared to have begun, at least for me, so many years before, had a curious effect. Rather than existing as I had previously thought of it, abstracted away into a superpo-tent archetypal domain, the memory blended quietly with the familiar atmosphere of the North Texas morning. In its heart was still a red-haired angel, but otherwise the memory seemed more a normal part of the fabric of my life.
I thought it likely that, in comparison with the extraordinary phenomenon sleeping inside, the whole thing about JJ was being reduced to more natural proportions. I couldn’t go there immediately, risking being gone when Justine woke up, but decided that I would deal with it soon. Maybe going back there would shed some new light on my end of this weird business. I dropped a tranq myself, put out my pipe, and went to bed.
I was roused once, when Justine softly cried out and turned to burrow in against me. I gently wrapped her about me and dozed again.
Coming up again, this time from REM sleep, I brought back clear memory of my latest dream. Three of my familiar dreamscapes were superimposed, all locations along Interstate 35 and each featuring a highway interchange, which were also merged into