He went to see his mother a day before the operation. She met him at the train station, smiling and waving. She was wearing tight pants and a down jacket, like a woman in her twenties might wear. They went to the store to shop for “nice ham and tomatoes;” she wanted to make sandwiches the way she'd made them on some occasion that he could not remember. She loaded the cart with ice cream, imported cookies, sardines, artichoke hearts, paper towels, and cleansers. She got upset because the fancy-ham counter was closed, then angry because there weren't any good tomatoes. Angrily, she chose processed slices of ham and hard, pale tomatoes. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “I should've come earlier, and now it's too late. Our night is ruined.”
“Really, it's not.”
On the way home, they rented a comedy about a dysfunctional family and watched it while eating the sandwiches from plates on their laps. Then he put things in the dishwasher while she talked to Caleb on the upstairs phone. When he turned off the water, he could still hear her voice through the ceiling. He went into the living room and finished up the rest of the artichoke hearts.
The path opened onto a small meadow of pale grasses with a single tree standing in its middle. It was a large tree, with branches stretched in all directions; roughly half the branches were alive, with flourishing leaves and rich-colored bark, but the other half looked dead—blackened, dry, naked of bark or leaves.
“Want to hear how he explained himself?” asked Joseph. “Ruskin, that is.”
“Sure.”
“He said, ‘It was not made to excite desire.’ Meaning his wife's pussy. Or maybe her breasts. Or maybe just her body, period.”
She was in surgery for fourteen hours. She came home with plastic tubing attached to the wounds in her stomach and chest, tubes that functioned as drains, collecting the pus in detachable plastic bulbs. He could see the tubes under her clothes; he was aware that she took the bulbs off, emptied them of pus, put them back on. While he was with her, he was not squeamish about the tubes and bulbs— if she'd asked, he would have detached, emptied, and replaced the bulbs himself. He didn't mind the new breast made out of stomach either. He scarcely thought of it, and when he did, he was glad it was there, if it made his mom feel better. He couldn't help feeling superior to Caleb, who obviously squirmed even to hear about it on the phone.
“ ‘It was not made to excite desire,’ “ repeated Kevin.
“I guess it was a little too human,” said Joseph.
“A little too old, it sounds like.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” said Joseph. “Anyway, public opinion was overwhelmingly on her side. She won the case and married Ruskin's protégé, Millais. They had eight kids.”
“Something poignant about the whole situation,” said Kevin. “For both of them.”
In Westchester, it was okay But the first night he got back to Albany, he had a nightmare in which his mother's breast was a piece of gnawed cake. He woke from the dream feeling depressed. He didn't think his mother was going to die. But it was weird to think that men in surgical scrubs had labored to take some of her stomach off and put it where her breast had been, to think of her sleeping with plastic drains sewn into her soft, gowned body, of the bulbs pressing against her when she turned. In the past, they would've just cut the breast off and left it that way. Deeper in the past, she just would've died.
He ran his hand across the rough foliage growing beside them; it stirred in his wake.
“How would you describe this?” he asked.
“Why would you describe it?” replied Kevin.
“Feelings,” said Joseph. A dragonfly lighted on a wildflower and made it bob. “It would bring feelings into the story.” The dragon rose off the bobbing flower and lilted in the air.
“Feelings come from people,” said Kevin. “Not bushes. Bushes don't have feelings.”
“I know bushes don't have feelings.” He wasn't actually sure that they didn't, but he wasn't going to say that to Kevin. “It's the character who sees the bushes and has feelings about them.”
“Sure, that's fine,” said Kevin. “But think of Don Watson. His stories are filled with emotion, but it comes from what the people in the story are doing, an engagement with the human world. They come from the work he does with Israeli and Palestinian writers who deal with the psychotic shit that's going on there. Not from bushes.”
Emotion was coming off Kevin again; Joseph wondered why Probably there was no why. It was just Kevin's nature to always be stirred and needing something to butt up against. It was obnoxious, but even so, he respected the feeling coming off his friend, wanted to stand with it. That was his nature.
Abruptly, the path steepened. They both fell silent and began to hike in earnest.
When he returned to the university, he decided to write a story about a young man whose mother had cancer. The young man would be some kind of business executive, maybe in advertising, or an architect just starting out. He would not have time to go home and care for his mother, and his do-gooder brother would be giving him grief about it. Over the course of the story, his deeper feelings would be uncovered.
He went to Janice's office to discuss his story idea. He told her that his mother had cancer; he told her about his father and his brother and the way his mother had been about the ham. She listened and her face grew soft, much softer than it was in class. Her receptive silence felt to him like touch.
But when he told her that he wanted to write about his experience for his next workshop story, she spoke adamantly “Don't do that, Joseph,” she said. “It's such a vulnerable time. More than you know I'm sure no one would be deliberately cruel about your story. But it's too raw now for public discussion.” Again, he felt touched by her eyes, even the signs of age around them, the soft sagging of the lids.
“I don't think I can write about anything else,” he said.
“It's fine to write it,” she said. “But don't turn it in to the workshop. Please. Turn it in to me and we can discuss it privately Workshop something old, just to keep up appearances.”
And so he workshopped something he didn't care about and took the real story to Janice in various pieces and drafts.
They had been hiking for nearly an hour when the path forked; they argued about which way to take. Finally, they decided that both ways would come to the same end and they split up. Joseph intuitively chose the smaller trail, which quickly proved steep and jumbled with loose rock.
In the story, it was revealed that the architect who was just starting out was not merely indifferent to his mother. He was angry at her. He did not even fully believe that she had cancer. She had a history of acting out and hypochondria and had ruined his tenth birthday party by saying she couldn't breathe, insisting that their father break up the party so that he could take her to the hospital. He was also angry at his brother, who was still living at home and didn't have to make any sacrifices to look after her, angry at the way this brother had bought into her self-mythologizing—the myth of the beautiful woman who could've been an actress if she hadn't been stunted by early marriage and children.
The trail became increasingly chaotic. There were flat sunbaked outcrops with cool, wet fissures full of mashed pine needles. Bushes, mosses, and little trees grew out of the fissures, pushing their way out of huge rocks. Smaller, broken chunks of rock wobbled under his feet, forcing him to slow his pace; some were dry, some slippery with mud.
In real life, there were two positive lymph nodes in his mother's body, and she needed chemo. In the story, she needed chemo, too. In real life, she lost her hair; in the story, she lost her hair, too. In the story, she screamed and cried about losing her hair. In real life, she made jokes and shopped for wigs with her friends. In the story the architect finally came home, and was forced to confront his angry brother. In real life, Caleb came home and delighted their mother by acting out scenes from Glengarry Glen Ross. In the story, the dutiful son was the favorite. In real life, it was Caleb.
He came suddenly close to a co
iled snake and, stepping away from it too fast, stumbled and fell, banging his knees and hands. Too quickly, he clawed for purchase and cut his palm on a rock. The snake slithered away. He cursed as he stood.
In the story, the brothers got drunk and had a fistfight on the lawn. In real life, they did the dishes together. In the story, the architect makes the do-good brother realize he's giving himself away to win his mother's love. The do-gooder makes the architect realize he's riding free while his brother does the work of keeping the family together. In real life, no one realized anything.
“It's very good,” said Janice. “Though I'm not sure the mother's feelings would be so clear-cut.”
Sweating and irritated, he emerged from the path. Here was a clearing, an overlook. There was no way to go farther up, though there was another way down. He sat on a rock and breathed deeply Either he had reached the top ahead of Kevin or he was lost. Either way was okay From somewhere came rustling, the sound of rubbing cloth and parting limbs; Kevin had come. “You beat me,” he said.
“For once,” replied Joseph.
Kevin smiled and sat beside the rock, dropping his pack beside him. Joseph passed the water; Kevin drank. They sat a long time silently, looking at the grass, the trees, the sky. A bird, black in the distance, flew gracefully from one point to the next, dipping almost out of sight before rising again. Kevin leaned back on his elbows, legs stretched out before him. Joseph felt warmth for his friend; he felt good that they had finally reconnected.
“So, do you think you'll stay in touch with Janice?” Kevin tilted his head slightly up and back, glimpsing at Joseph with a sliver of eye.
“I don't know, maybe a little. It wasn't a social relationship; she was my professor.”
“Students keep in touch with teachers.”
“Are you going to keep in touch with anyone?”
“Yeah, Don and I will definitely be in touch. I want to follow his work in the Middle East, maybe go over there with them.”
“Wow,” said Joseph, “that would be incredible.” He thought of Kevin's mother, one son already in Iraq. The Odyssey rushed to the front of his thoughts; he remembered how, when a soldier had been killed, the narrative had stopped to say who his mother was and what kind of blanket she had wrapped him in when he was a baby.
“I have to tell you something,” said Kevin. “I feel like I have to tell you.”
“What?”
“I slept with Janice.”
“What?”
“I fucked Braver.”
“You're lying.”
“Why would I lie?”
“But you didn't like her. She didn't like you.”
“She liked me.”
“When did this supposedly happen?”
“The weekend before the graduation ceremony.”
That weekend: Joseph had been at that party too. Everyone was at that party all the grad students and most of the faculty Everyone was drunk. Late at night, he had been surprised to see Janice and Kevin talking in a corner: Kevin was leaning close to Janice and she was looking up at him with a strange naked expression on her face. He had not paid further attention because he was trying to get a girl to give him her number.
“But you said you didn't like her.” Joseph stood up. “You made a whole huge point of not liking her.”
Kevin stayed sitting on the ground. “I didn't like her as a teacher. I liked her as a woman.”
“She's married. She's old enough to be your mom.”
“No, she's not. She's forty-eight.”
Kevin stood up. “Why should I care about that? It was good, for one night. We both understood it was for one night.”
“I don't want to hear details.”
“Who said anything about details?”
Kevin turned away abruptly. He walked to the edge of the overlook and bent to pick up a rock. Joseph wanted to kick him. Kevin threw the rock over the edge, hard, like a little boy with something to prove. Joseph wanted to kick him in the ass. Kevin turned around; his face was startled and soft. The kicking urge went away Kevin spoke mildly. “Do you want to go back down your way?” he asked.
“No,” said Joseph. “It's all slippery rock.”
But Kevin's way was slippery, too; almost immediately, Joseph stumbled and fell against him. Kevin staggered and nearly went down; anger flashed in his eyes.
Joseph said, “Why didn't you tell about Janice until now?”
“She made me promise not to.”
“But you're telling it now.”
“The semester's over. You just said you're not really going to stay in touch with her. It doesn't seem like it matters now.”
Joseph tried to concentrate on his footsteps. Instead, he thought of Janice naked, in sexual positions. He had never thought of her that way before.
“So, how was it?” he asked.
Kevin didn't answer. His broad back expressed an upright reticence that was somehow dirtier than dirtiness.
“Did she like it?”
“It seemed like she did.” He paused and then added, as if he couldn't help it, “Even though she cried.”
Semicrouched, Joseph stopped. “Why? Why did she cry?”
Kevin turned and slipped a little. “I thought you didn't want to hear details.”
“I don't.”
“What's wrong?” asked Kevin. “Did you like her or something?”
“Not like that,” said Joseph.
“Then what …”
“It isn't anything, I just …” He thought of Janice with her legs spread. He did not see her face or her upper body, only her spread lower half. “I just want you to go on down,” he said quietly “I'll come in a bit.”
“Okay.”
The sky had changed. The clearing was now covered with soft shadows broken by slow-moving light. Joseph sat on the stone and put his head in his hands. His thoughts of Janice faded. He thought of Marisa, how she had asked not to feel sorry for him, when it was clear she didn't. He thought of holding her from behind, her breasts in his hands. He dropped his hands and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. In truth, no one knew if his mother was well, or if she still had cancer. They could not find cancer now, but one day she might go to the doctor to check and cancer would be there again. She would have to check and check always.
He stood up, looking into the valley. Giant broken rocks fell motionless down the incline, harsh gray stippled with black moss, shadow deeply pitting the spaces between the raw chunks. Broken trees stumbled down the slope, half-living, half-dead. At the bottom, only the living parts were visible, converged in the crease of the valley like virile hair at the fork of the body.
He pictured Caleb acting for his mother in the living room, making her laugh. It wasn't what Caleb said that made her laugh; it was something in his voice that, without his trying, touched her somewhere that Joseph couldn't reach.
He looked up at a flat field of clouds hanging low in the sky, rippled with soft gray; above them, bright light massed together as if trying to give itself a shape, like a sound trying to form a word. Above this light rose pale sky that deepened and turned blue as it rose higher into cloudlessness. He thought, Kevin would always win. That's just how it was. Radiance shone, receded, and shone again.
Don't Cry
Our first day in Addis Ababa, we woke up to wedding music playing outside the hotel. We had traveled for twenty hours and we were deeply asleep. The music entered my sleep in the form of moving lights, like fireflies or animate laughter, in a pattern, but a loose and playful one. I was dreaming that I was with Thomas. In the dream, he was very young, and we were chasing a light that had come free of the others, running down a winding path with darkness all around.
When I woke, at first I did not know where I was. The music seemed more real than the dingy room; its sound saturated me with happiness and pain. Then I saw Katya and remembered where we were and why. She was already up and standing at the window, lifting a shade to peer out—the sun made a warm place on her skin
and I felt affection for her known form in this unknown place. She turned and said, “Janice, there's weddings going on outside—plural!”
We went outside. All around our hotel were gardens, and in the gardens were crowds of people dressed in the bright colors of undiluted joy. Brides and grooms were wearing white satin, and the streets were lined with white limousines decked with flowers, and together with so much color, the white also seemed colorful. Little girls in red-and-white crinoline ran past, followed by a laughing woman. Everyone was laughing or smiling, and because I could not tell where the music came from, I had the sensation that it was coming directly from these smiling, laughing people. Katya turned to me and said, “Are we in heaven?”
I replied, “I don't know,” and for a second I meant it.
My husband, Thomas, had died six months before the trip to Addis Ababa. The music that woke me that first day touched my grief even before I knew it was wedding music. Even in my sleep, I could hear love in it; even in my sleep, I could hear loss. I stepped out of the hotel in a state of grief, but when I saw the brides and grooms in their happiness, wonder spread slowly through my grief It was like seeing my past and a future that was no longer mine but that I was part of anyway.
In the dirty hotel restaurant, we had dry bricklike croissants and lots of good fruit—papaya, mangoes, bananas, oranges, and pineapple. The coffee was burnt, so we decided to go to the espresso place wed been told was just a few blocks away We never found the place, although we walked a long time. At first, we walked on a crowded street made of pavement, with department stores, an Internet café, and a grocery with a big Magic Marker drawing (green and red) of fruit and vegetables in the window Starving dogs wandered freely The pavement abruptly fell off and gave way to rocks. We saw another wedding party in a Mercedes decked with rich-colored flowers, moving through a herd of donkeys, the herders lagging behind, talking on their cells. Beggars swarmed around us, shouting and showing us their deformed limbs, their blind eyes. We forgot our espresso. The rocky street gave way to dirt with pools of muddy water. Houses, patched together with tin, plastic, canvas, and wood, bulged out, sagged in, lurched and leaned this way, then that. Beggars swarmed us, chanting. Wedding guests in gold pants and silky shirts pushed their broken car through slowly parting pedestrians. A little boy marched along blowing a horn; he was followed by a smaller boy who was shouting and rhythmically shaking a clutch of bells on a strap. The smell of fresh shit rose up suddenly and mixed with the odors of sweat and cooked meat. An old woman seated in the roots of a giant tree sold bundled sticks and dresses mounted on smiling white mannequins. Trees made soft, blunt, deep green shapes with their boughs. Katya turned to me, her face dazed. “Wed better go back,” she said. “We're getting lost.”
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