Sibella & Sibella

by Joseph Di Prisco

  Believe it or not—and between you and me, to this day I don’t—I happened to recognize the female visitor as they advanced upon the porch, which I hoped would remain standing after the weight of their footfall landed upon the unsteady boards. That red silk suit presence chilled me. Meanwhile, Myron’s condition continued to decline, and he was appearing unsteady, his eyes glazed over. It was unclear how much he was taking in, if anything. I could tell without a doubt he had not quite registered these arrivals—because if he had, trust me, he would have reacted.

  “Lord Almighty,” announced Mrs. Figgy, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t the young man’s name. “Cable darlin’,” she uttered with emotion and began to bawl. Cable was a name recognizable to me: it was the name of Figgy’s one son, and somebody Myron had scuffled with in the past when he called up to “protect” his daddy’s interests, which he alleged were being compromised by his publishing house, the house that had made his father what you or I or a sensible person would call what should have been a rich man. His mother threw her arms around his neck. “Your daddy missed you, Cable boy.”

  I looked over to Myron and worried. This time he did appear on the verge of stroking out.

  “I know, Mama, I know, but Daddy and I been talking on the phone a lot,” Cable said in a voice muffled as a result of his inserting his well-coiffed head into the mutinous bounty of her maternal bosom.

  After a respectful pause, Cable’s companion joined in the hug fest, and Mrs. Figgy obliged. That secondary hug didn’t seem to warm her cockles or reflush her already flushed cheeks.

  Her son’s companion needed the bathroom, and without introducing herself she was directed inside the house. I’m no Emily Post Up, but that woman’s social skills were sorely lacking. “We been driving all day, Mama,” she said with, to me, an overdetermined intensity—and familiarity. Now, maybe the female visitor was indeed feeling nature’s urgency, or maybe she wanted to get out of Myron’s line of sight as efficiently as possible. She expertly avoided eye contact with me, and I have no doubt she recognized me, too. I am hard to miss anywhere, including in a crowd. Mama’s parting word to the woman was, whatever she did, don’t wander too far into the house, counsel which sounded enigmatic if not ominous.

  Then silence settled over those of us left behind, like one of those serving plate domes they use in old-fashioned fancy French restaurants to keep hot those old-school dishes like brains—and have you ever tasted those innards, which for all I know the French might eat for breakfast? I hope not, because brains on a menu sounds repulsive, and mine were baking.

  After a painful stretch of time, Myron opened his eyes and got a bright idea to break the ice. Ice would have been an anodyne in this brutal heat, and many years later I was to remember that distant afternoon when my publisher did not take me to discover ice. Nevertheless this is what rolled off Myron’s parched tongue: “Weddings and funerals.” I cringed over his crackled brain choice of hackneyed expression, as did all his captive auditors. Beyond that, his non sequiturian utterance indicated he was registering information at best obliquely and incompletely.

  Half-hearted full disclosure: Like Myron, I am hypersensitive to hot weather. Living in San Francisco—and not in New York or Chicago or Florida or Texas—exempted me from such climatological depredations. What did Mark Twain perhaps never say? The coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco? Well, Bay Area weather was ideal for me, and Junior and his herpes simplex were nowhere nearby, either. By the way, everybody knows Clemens was a great author, but not everybody knows he was, fleetingly, a famous publisher. (Key term for publishers to never forget when it comes to great success: fleeting.)

  As for Myron’s brilliantly witty “weddings and funerals,” he would turn out to have been semi-prophetic. But he might as well have started breakdancing and spinning on the floor because the Fontana family along with my landing party all cocked heads in Myron’s direction as if they all were correctly sizing him up for the fool he could have felt himself to be.

  “If you say so,” said Cable to Myron, before turning away from him and saying, “Mama, you’re socializing today of all days?”

  Myron, fixed to the bench and unable to move because he was para-non-compis Myronis, stuck his hand out and Cable seemingly regarded the white solar-deprived appendage as an affront, while Myron tried a once-upon-a-time conciliatory tack, now updated with the uptalk. “Myron? I’m your dad’s publisher?” I wanted to weep. This is what I had questionably wrought in him, this?

  “Jesus Christ,” said the son, looking down at him in more ways than one, “you’re the famous Myron?” He wasn’t smiling, but at least he didn’t mangle the name into Moron, the way big daddy Fig did. What did Doubting Thomas say when his buddies told him they had seen Jesus freshly risen from the dead, which Myron appeared to be? Until I put my hands into the wounds on his side, I will not believe. Cable was no such skeptic and most of Myron’s wounds were psychological and unpalpatable. He pumped Myron’s wilted-lettuce hand a couple of times for good measure. And at this point Myron sank down further on the bench and shut his eyes.

  Cable was introduced to the rest of our scouting party, and he appeared visibly shaken when he shook Ashlay’s hand, as any man with a pulse often has been.

  “Caitlin should be back any second,” he said to everybody, which sounded like nothing less than a warning shot across the bow wow wow. Yes, the dogs started up, and nobody else seemed to notice.

  He did reserve one remark for me, which was not the first time I had been targeted with this genius observation:

  “You’re a tall girl.”

  “Come on, bro, don’t blow my cover,” I said sotto voce. “But actually, I’m not so tall compared to other Zulu warriors who can gut a man with a fucking glance or a spear, Caleb.”

  “Cable.”

  What kind of fucked-up name is Cable, anyway?

  Myron tentatively revived. He didn’t want me to go down that warpath again, he’d seen the bloody results, and he cut me off at the pass. “I am very sorry, Cable, that your dad seems distraught,” he said. At least it wasn’t a “weddings and funerals” type of remark. “He is a great and important writer—and, umm, man.”

  “Truthfully, Myron, I wasn’t always sold that you held him in such high regard. I remember when my dad first told me about his ‘big-time’ publisher?” You realize that Cable did the dumb-as-dirt double-air quotation mark signs around “big-time,” don’t you? And thus was Myron snarkily punked tuated. “I’m sure we have a lot to talk about, Myron,” said Cable, “when we get some time over the next couple days of your stay.”

  Myron roused himself, scrambling to respond to the terrifying invitation. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn he had surreptitiously swallowed a few Oxy, he was so unsteady on his feet. “We wouldn’t want to burden you.” Or catch a dose of the Black Death. “Plus, we didn’t pack.”

  “Mama has extra PJs and toothbrushes, not to worry.” I would have no need for anybody’s nightwear for reasons that will be made plain to you but were not yet then plain to me. Even so, the mind reeled over the prospect of undeloused clothing and the dental hygiene customs practiced locally. “And what burden? Hogwash,” Cable said.

  That was the liquid concoction we had been served by Mama Fontana?

  Cable was multitasking, talking with Myron while he was at the same time belongingly ashessing Ashlay. He pointed up to the second floor of the house, somehow provocatively. “We got lots of spare bedrooms, and Mama would be hurt if all of you didn’t spend a few nights—right, Mama? I’m glad you’re all here for the services.”

  Services? That did sound like an omen straight out of one of the Hawthorny seven or so garbled gables or Cables, which collusion I feel confident would have been missed by YGB, who himself was visibly enchanted by the place where Ashlay’s Tartlet Letter might have nestled. Myron would have to figure out how to slin
k out of the horrible prospect of a sleepover, but right then all I could sense was that he was appearing woozier and woozier by the second. On the other hand, it did occur to me that with a few extra hours to work his brand of magic he could gain better purchase on the three precious manuscripts.

  “What services?” Myron said, this time out loud, voicing my own fearful puzzlement. Were we back to square one on the mortality front?

  The Mrs. elucidated: “Fig’s twin brother, he up en died t’other day, from the cancer bug.” She did not appear overly ravaged by the loss.

  The publisher breathed a sigh of relief and teethfully smiled. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Myron said, and Mama Fontana registered the unintentional mixed message. I also deduced that that unhappy lethal development was perhaps what conceivably jumbled up the rash and unsubstantiated Figgish reports. “I didn’t know Figgy had a twin brother,” uttered somnambulistic Myron.

  “Yeah, he was the smarty-pants one, Pork was.” Which I had no choice but to conclude was the dead man’s most regrettable name. Cable, Fig, Pork, what fuck the fuck was with these Fontanian names? Would some Gargantua or Pentagruel Fontana soon stomp out of the woodwork? And something told me I didn’t want to hear the matriarch’s name, but to look at her, a few wild spitballing guesses: Ax? Slab? Awl?

  Mama continued in a way that explained why she wasn’t in deep mourning: “Pork was thick as a post about everything ’ceptin book knowledge. Figgy and he fought their whole life long, but they was brothers e’en so. They kinda worked together on projects, like the cabin. They was like twins.”

  “They were twins?” Myron said, and I instantly wished he hadn’t, because Mrs. Fontana looked at him as if he were an idiot, and remember this was someone who didn’t look like her high school transcript was peppered with AP classes. And don’t forget: Hot and Myron got along like McCarthy and Hellman. Capote and Vidal. Mailer and the female species.

  “Said that, Figgy Fontana’s publisher man.”

  This explained why Cable and his companion had arrived, for a funeral. But at least not for the authorial interment whose prospect had darkened the mood of our publishing house after lunch yesterday.

  “Mah boy gradgerated the law school,” his proud mother boasted. “Intellect of property, whatever that is.”

  “You don’t say,” said Myron. “Intellectual property, that’s perfect. Congratulations, Counselor Cable.” This professional accreditation hardly boded anything but ill, I feared. Here’s when Cable’s companion returned but remained unintroduced and on the fringe of the fascinating exchanges going on.

  “Well, lots to talk about going forward,” said the billable-hours boy, “lots and lots to talk about at the end of the day.”

  Going forward. People say that all the time. Also at the end of the day. I deplore these turns of phrase. I used them at every opportunity, particularly while going forward at the end of the day. One guess who said: “Crabs go forward by going backward over the golden sands and storms of time at the end of the day.”

  But ogler Cable wasn’t addressing Myron or me, he was habeas corpusing Ashlay prima facie with his beady baby blues.

  “Wesleyan?”

  “Good guess. I was admitted, but selected Williams instead,” she said.

  “I had a feeling it was a W,” he said nonsensically because nobody ever had such “a feeling it was a W” about anything in the span of recorded time. There are some people, in my de minimus experience of mainly de minimus lawyers, who have to not be wrong most especially when they are, so they say something that sounds like it means something or corrects a misperception (“I had a feeling it was a W”), when it doesn’t and they can’t. “The Ephs of Williams, my favorite mascot, right after the Hoyas of Georgetown, where I went to law school.”

  But the F-ing nickname of the Williams College athletic teams resonated disturbingly for me and possibly Myron. Time was wasting and, in a fast-breaking neurological development, Myron’s head (he reported later) was starting once more its magic tea cup ride: he needed to get to Double Eph, persona non grateful.

  “Wait, don’t tell me!” said Cable to Ashlay Commingle. “I know who you are.”

  She appeared ambivalent. Happy to be noticed, despondent to be recognized. I was hoping she wasn’t thinking about taking her business and breasts into her own hands and doing any more flashing, because we had had enough of that for one day, though in that regard I felt sure I stood in the distinct minority in this dystinguished and dysfunctional company. Doubtless, many people knew who Ashlay was, and her notoriety made her privy to the secret griefs not to mention briefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought, and she realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon. If you don’t get that collusion or what intimate revelation was quivering, Kelly, you have to not pass Go and sign up for Ms. Redburn’s remedial English class.

  “Of course, you are the one and only Suzi Generous!” Cable declared. “I love your movies, seen them all seriatim, which are one of a kind, as are sui generis you.” A pun is supposedly a low form of humor, and I should know, and no wonder low-minded Cable felt the compulsion to explicate. Another similarly low form of communication is open carry. If I were flashing heat holstered on my belt, I could test the comparables. As for Cable Fontana, ipso facto, lawyers couldn’t graduate a fortiori without some rudimentary Latin, mea maxima culpa.

  “I always regretted coming up with that Suzi Generous stage name, because then it stuck and I couldn’t shake it. Call me Ashlay, I’m retired from the industry. I’m a novelist, or I will be when my book comes out.”

  “You’re probably Myron’s new shining star, good for you, good for him. I bet publishing and porn must have a lot in common.”

  “Far as I can tell, both involve a good deal of fluffing.”

  “But the money shot is the money shot pari passu, Suzi, I mean, Ashlay. You know, if you ever are in need of pro bono representation…” I was marveling over the spectacular artlessness of his come-on while fighting off my own sea-sickness, even as Cable was simultaneously relishing the prospect of Ashlay’s overnight stay.

  The bono of the pro bono offer seemed to earn her attention. “Well, funny you should say that, because you’re an intellectual property guy, and I was thinking of patenting my own special scrunchie.”

  “Tell me more,” said would-be counselor for the confused.

  Alas, amplification and/or demonstration would have to be postponed.

  “Visitors, guests, people, awl ah ya!” Cable’s mère neighed. “I think the time’s come,” she said, and she prepared to lead everybody inside for the viewing of the Pork. She had anticipated some logistical concerns. “The mortician man M-bombed him, but he won’t keep in the heat, so get your feets movin’.”

  Sad to say, Myron wasn’t capable of accompanying us yet to sit down alongside Pork, and it wasn’t because he ate kosher, which you already gleaned that he didn’t, and it wasn’t a matter of being offended by Cable’s salacious and showoffy classical language exercise. He had a better reason, and one small problem loomed on his horizon, the place where his intimate revelation was quivering. In fact, Myron was, cheeky Kelly darling, literally fucking horizontal. For this was the moment he had fainted, knocked out in the second round by the undisputed heavyweight champion of the universe, the sun.

  ✴✴✴

  When Myron groggily came to, we were standing over him with gradations of concern on our faces. His head was bleeding slightly (from grazing the porch railing, which I was glad did not produce more grievous structural damage to his head or to the Fontana residence), and he appeared hollowed out like the innards of one of FF’s rusted-out trucks. He was resting—more like fidgeting—on what was a filthy pillow case on Caitlin’s fancy, overeducated lap, and he was being ministered by what I remembered to be her ice-cold hands. Her chilly fingers must have felt p
retty good, I am compelled to concede.

  Cable gave his endorsement of her professional competence. “Caitlin knows what she’s doing.” When it comes to horizontal and sick men, I completed to myself the teste monial.

  When Myron uncertainly relocated his neurological bearings, he gazed up into his freelancing caregiver’s dark eyes. Straining, he found his voice to murmuringly inquire: “Calypso?”

  Yes, that’s what I would have said, too, and Calypso is the name of the lovestruck nymph and cagey deceiver in The Odyssey, but that’s another story. Homer had little to do with Caitlin, at least yet, but it was she who had been our heretofore nameless lunch companion at Avenue yesterday, and she was the conduit for the next big book Myron was going to publish—if he lived to sell the tale.

  “What’d he say?” said YGB, who appeared genuinely concerned if not about Myron, about his next paycheck.

  “Myron wants to hear Calypso music?” said Cable.

  “Shhh,” Caitlin hushed them and then addressed her charge. “Take it easy, Myron. You’re dehydrated. Take a sip of lemonade.” I could never forget that voice.

  The reckless lemonade recommendation was all the proof I needed she could not be a traditional or alternative health care provider. I needed to expand my conception of the kind of healer she was. You may not know this, but there are certain diligent entrepreneurs who put up their virtual shingles and offer at exorbitant fees would-be authors editing and related assistance in the way of general manuscript makeovers. In the industry, they are called—step right up and collect your kewpie doll—book doctors.

  As for that Tom-Ford-bedecked, Chicken Diavolo-consuming, email-bombing, Calypso O’Kelly gatekeeper, I could see Myron and I were going to have to deal with her. Caitlin slash Calypso may have been in her spare time a book doctor when not gallivanting (a Dad word) around Venice on the lookout for gypsies and wallets. You know how when the printer screws up and a blank page appears instead of page one hundred and twelve? The kind of thing that can happen, believe me. That’s what it felt like to look at her: it was left up to me to fill in the blanks.