Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth

by Edeet Ravel

  “Is he back in California?” A year had passed since Anthony had slept in my bed; I’d not seen or heard from him since. I was hoping he’d call me or send me a postcard from wherever he was—New York, California, or maybe Paris or London. But he seemed to have forgotten all about me. I missed him.

  “I guess so.”

  “I wish Anthony was my brother,” I sighed. “I’ve always wanted sisters and brothers. I used to wish I had a twin sister.”

  “A twin!” Patrick shuddered.

  “We had twins at Camp Bakunin. For some reason, they never even talked to each other. I couldn’t understand it. One of them went off to live by herself in a separate bunk house.”

  “How surprising.”

  “What’s Anthony’s life like down there? Does he like it?”

  “I wouldn’t know. We don’t talk much either.”

  “How come? How come you don’t talk?”

  “Not much in common, I guess.”

  “You guess, you guess—don’t you know anything?”

  Rosie returned before he could respond. She sat down next to me and her navy skirt climbed upward. The skirt from another planet, with a will of its own. A skirmish ensued as Rosie tugged it down, human versus apparel.

  “I’m sorry, Patrick,” she said. “Daddy’s too tired to see anyone. And you came all this way. He appreciates it, really—and I do too.”

  Patrick rose from his chair. “Guess I’ll get going,” he said.

  “Can I come over?” I asked. I wanted to see the house again, I wanted to see Dr. Moore. They were all more shadowy now, the Moores, and at the same time more exposed. I knew things that possibly Patrick himself didn’t know. I wondered whether the key was still in the jade cigarette box.

  “Why?” Patrick asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “So gracious,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure, if you want.”

  I tried to persuade Rosie to join us, but she wasn’t ready to desert her post. “I have to stay with Daddy,” she said. “Have fun!”

  There was limited parking at St. Mary’s, and Patrick had left his car, a white Mercedes, a long way from the hospital. It was a cold October day, and I was shivering by the time I let myself in on the passenger side.

  “Are you cold?” Patrick asked, inserting a key in the ignition. “I can turn on the heat.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “I don’t get cold,” he said.

  “Lucky you. Remember the cold spell last year?”

  “Was there a cold spell?”

  “Why do you do that?” I snapped. “Why do you duck like that?”

  “I’m insecure?”

  “Oh, forget it! There’s no point trying to talk to you.”

  “I like winter,” he said, suddenly in a good mood. It was the driving—I could tell he liked navigating his vehicle, like a Hardy character perched aloft a village cart, pulling at the reins.

  Dr. Moore didn’t come to the door when we entered her house, but we passed Mr. Davies, the cook, in the kitchen, patting dough into a baking dish. He was tall and gaunt, with thinning hair and vampire eyebrows. I couldn’t decide whether he was strange and forbidding or merely felt out of place.

  Patrick and Mr. Davies ignored each other, but I said, “Hi there, Mr. Davies.” He looked up from his food preparations, nodded briefly.

  Patrick didn’t seem to notice this small exchange. He dodged into the pantry and began climbing up the Dickensian staircase.

  “Isn’t there any other way of getting to your part of the house?” I grumbled.

  “I can get you a flashlight.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll just risk breaking my neck. Where did your mother find Mr. Davies? He’s kind of weird.”

  Patrick didn’t answer. He opened the door to his loft and said, “Do you want coffee, or tea—or anything?”

  “Maybe later. I wouldn’t mind some music. I’m so pissed off!” I added, the words rushing out of me.

  “Why is that?” he asked, but his good mood had vanished and his voice was unfriendly.

  “You’re not really interested,” I said. I selected a few novels and settled in one of the living-room chairs. Patrick drank vodka and leafed through the latest issue of Logos, our local underground newsweekly, printed in various hard-to-read colour combinations: pink on orange, orange on lime green.

  But I was too jittery to read. I set aside my book and interrupted him. “What’s Anthony doing? Does he have a job?”

  “Yeah,” Patrick yawned. “He works for a magazine. He writes about money.”

  “Money?”

  “Economics.”

  “Why economics?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How does he know about that sort of thing?”

  “Just picked it up, I guess. It’s not that complicated.”

  “Is he a Marxist too?”

  “I wouldn’t know. The magazine he writes for certainly isn’t.”

  “Do you have any photographs of yourselves as kids?” I asked, suddenly craving that entry into their lives. Photos of Anthony and Patrick as little boys, of their parents, their grandparents—a feast of revelations.

  “I don’t know where they are.”

  “Can’t you ask your mother?”

  “I’d really rather not,” he said wearily; it was a kind of deep, all-consuming weariness, and it reminded me of my own breakdown the previous winter, when I couldn’t pull myself out of bed, out of nightmares.

  The phone rang and Patrick said, “That’s my mother. She wants to play chess.” He picked up the receiver. “I can’t right now, I’m busy—”

  “No, no, go ahead!” I swung my arm emphatically, then caught myself. If I turned into my mother, I’d have no choice but to join a convent.

  Patrick told his mother he’d be there in a few minutes. “No, no, it’s no one. I mean … yes, Maya is here. No, she says it’s okay. We’re coming down.” He hung up.

  As we made our way downstairs, Patrick abandoned me, abandoned everyone. His unapproachable distress was almost frightening; it was like coming across a suffering animal, large and harmless—a giraffe with a broken leg or a beached whale—and no one there to help.

  Dr. Moore was waiting in a room that made me think of the word rectory, whatever that was: tall leaded-glass windows, a fire in the fireplace, walls lined with book cabinets, a small ladder for reaching the higher shelves. Patrick’s mother was sitting at a chess table close to the fire. “Hello, Maya,” she said politely. I couldn’t tell whether she was glad to see me this time round; her hopes for that first visit, long ago, had not been realized. But at least I was back, at least I’d not entirely lost touch with Patrick.

  “Hi. So nice here—I love fireplaces.”

  “Help yourself to a milkshake and fruit pie—homemade by Mr. Davies.” She laughed dryly, as if embarrassed but also mocking her embarrassment, and indicated a corner table, where two milkshakes in fountain glasses, a sliced pie, and a bowl of glistening cherries were arranged on a wooden tray with raised sides. “Or would you prefer tea—or coffee?”

  “No, this is fine, thank you. Cute tray.” What interested me was the bowl of cherries. It’s easy to forget now what a luxury imported fruit was, once upon a time. Suddenly I was Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus, discovering in the Patimkin basement a fridge brimming with fruit. Like him, I wanted to stuff handfuls of cherries into my pockets. I was thinking of Bubby and my mother as well as myself. They would set the bowl at the centre of our kitchen table and marvel.

  “We can play chess later,” Dr. Moore offered. “I had no idea you were here. Or perhaps I’ll leave you two to play.”

  “That’s okay, I don’t play chess—I’m too dumb. I don’t mind, really. I’ll just sit on the window-seat and watch.”

  “Why don’t you take the cherries with you,” Dr. Moore said. “I’ll ask Mr. Davies to bring some more.” I was transparent; my greed was transparent. It seemed to me that if I had any strength of charact
er, I’d refuse, but I accepted. On the cushioned window-seat I could gorge myself freely.

  And they really were delicious, those cherries. The window, with its latticed diamond panes, looked out on a copse of autumn-splashed trees; inside, Patrick and his mother moved chess pieces in silence. I dropped the cherry pits into my shirt pocket and picked up a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that was lying next to me on the cushioned seat. It was a beautiful edition, with illuminated Persian artwork on every page. A flask of wine, a book of verse, and thou … Maybe the plump, wide-belted, gold-turbaned man sitting under the palm tree was right. Live for today.

  Dr. Moore broke the silence. “For Kant, the ‘I’ was a set of a priori conditions. But according to Fichte, that ‘I’ in Kant’s division of ‘I’ and ‘the world’ is a tyrannical formalism.”

  Just like that! She must be resuming some previous discussion, I thought. But Patrick ignored her. He said nothing, and of course I said nothing.

  She wasn’t discouraged. She must have told herself that luring her son out of his shell, breaking through his resistance, would be good for him. Best to forge ahead.

  “Because it posits itself independently of the world.”

  Patrick’s long, slender fingers enclosed a knight.

  I could see that his mother was not merely jousting for fun: Dr. Moore really was trying to make sense of the world. I tried to imagine my mother discussing Kant with me. I wondered whether in a calm state (a circumstance I could barely envision) Fanya would be able to enjoy, say, Jane Austen. In her own way, my mother was as clever as Vera Moore.

  “But Hegel would say that Fichte is getting Kant wrong. Kant at least acknowledges the problem that exists between ‘I’ and ‘the world.’ Hegel describes this formalism as the morbid beautiful soul, pure in itself, but unreal and empty.”

  “Very interesting,” Patrick said apathetically.

  Dr. Moore ignored the rebuff. Apart from her blueprint for Patrick, she was hungry for conversation. “And Hegel’s solution—the ‘I’ swallows the world, and the world is the objectification of spirit.”

  Patrick made a small, restrained sound, something between a grunt and a chortle. His mother looked up at him, tried to conceal her excitement. “Why are you laughing?”

  “Nothing. It’s a good solution.”

  “How? How so?” She was pleading with him now, and the scene made me think, for some reason, of Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Shepherds—the ox and donkey peering curiously over the sarcophagus; a shepherd, apparently the artist himself, pointing with his index finger at the baby with the shower-cap halo and cheerful raised knee. Dr. Moore, in the present version, would be the fair-haired, slightly pouting Mary, and the chess pieces were the parade of people in the distance, coming to see what was what.

  But Patrick only said, “Check.”

  “Ingenious,” she said, nodding her approval.

  “Very ingenious.”

  “Now I think you have got me in a trap.”

  Without antagonism, pleased with himself, Patrick said, “Maybe.”

  And his mother’s cool, tangential voice also grew more intimate. “Yes, it looks bad for me. I think now I have no escape.”

  “Maybe,” he repeated.

  “If I move my rook?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  Three moves later Patrick won the game.

  “Very impressive,” Dr. Moore said with satisfaction, as if she’d been the one who came up with the clever move.

  Patrick, enthusiastic against his better judgment, showed her how she could have saved her king.

  But tactlessly she destroyed the unguarded moment. “So, through chess you feel more validated, I think?”

  Now Patrick wasn’t only angry—he was disgusted with himself for having let go. “Very validated,” he said, his voice like a clenched fist. “In the Fichtean sense.”

  “I was wondering … ”I interrupted.

  “Oh, Maya, you were so quiet I forgot you were here. You see how I lose to my son!”

  “I was wondering, could you tell me what this dream I had means?”

  “You see me as the dream interpreter?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Well, what’s the dream?” She leaned on the arm of her chair and gazed at me attentively. With her blue eyes and aquiline nose and her regal posture, she could have been posing for a court portrait.

  “I’m in this small movie theatre, I’m the only one there, and this movie comes on—there’s this operating table, except it’s very long, it goes on and on. First what you see on it are instruments and vague sorts of bits that could be parts of the insides of creatures. Then you see a dead bird that’s been gutted out, then a mammal, and a bigger mammal. Each one is higher on the evolutionary scale. And then right at the end there’s a fox on the table, and its insides are spilled out, and then I see myself, I’m on the table, and I’ve been gutted out too. Only I have blonde hair instead of red. And then the title of the movie comes on and it’s called The Fox.”

  “Like the short story by Lawrence?”

  “I guess. Only I haven’t read that story. All I read was Sons and Lovers. So, do you know what the dream means?”

  “Well, how did you feel watching the movie?”

  “Curious. It isn’t scary. Whoever gutted these creatures hasn’t hurt them, they were already dead.”

  “I think you wish to have courage. You don’t want to be gutless. You don’t mind being foxy. And you want to have fun, like in the television commercial, ‘Is it true blondes have more fun?’ That’s my guess, but it’s only a guess. Really I’d have to know more about you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. It was hard to tell with Dr. Moore, but I had the distinct feeling that she didn’t like me. “You know, Anthony was my counsellor—did he tell you?”

  “Your counsellor at that camp?”

  “Yeah, he was really good. Everyone loved him.”

  “Oh?” Dr. Moore’s smile was partly diffident, partly pleased, the smile of an adult opening a birthday gift. Then I saw that she was trembling slightly. I was shocked, and thought I’d misperceived some small movement, but no, her entire body was trembling. I remembered Gerald’s letter and felt abashed.

  “He was great. We adored him.” But I added, stupidly, “He made us laugh,” and ruined everything. Her smile faded into covert disappointment, an acknowledgment of Anthony’s failings, or maybe his unhappiness, which she’d known about all along. Not her son the beloved but her son the clown. Like Patrick, she shut down, and the trembling ceased.

  Patrick had had enough. He got up and left the room.

  I waved idiotically to Dr. Moore and followed him. “‘ Gimme shelter,’” I sang under my breath as we returned to Patrick’s lair.

  I sat on Patrick’s ugly kitchen chair, shut my eyes, breathed in deeply, exhaled. For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t about to blow a fuse or go to war with a jammed zipper. The monkey was on Patrick’s back. It had been there all along, of course, but I only saw it now, and somehow it made mine superfluous. I had witnessed a scene as unruly and peculiar as any in my own home. With a gift of this magnitude, I no longer had any urge to lash out.

  There were two knocks on the door, followed by the sound of footsteps quickly retreating, clomp clomp clomp, down the stairs. The knocks were Mr. Davies’s signal that food had been set out in the kitchen. “Why is he running away?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t want anyone to expect him to talk.”

  “I guess your mom doesn’t like to cook?”

  “She’s into food. He makes things like partridges for her.”

  Mr. Davies had left a vegetarian lasagne and a mushroom pie downstairs on the kitchen table—both culinary masterpieces, as anyone could see. Yet as far as Patrick was concerned, they might have been scraps left for stray animals. He heaped a mid-sized serving of each dish onto a plate and, still standing, ate so rapidly and blindly that he seemed to be neither chewing nor swallowing. It was as if
he had shut himself down again, had cancelled the very act of eating. I’d never seen anything like it. Even Bubby, with her deliberate efficiency, was a gourmande next to Patrick. “Well, see you upstairs,” he said, when he’d finished. He dropped his plate in the sink and left me alone with my meal.

  I, on the other hand, was in food heaven. Mr. Davies was brilliant, no doubt about it. I stuffed myself until I was bursting at the seams, then made my way back upstairs.

  Patrick was kneeling on the living-room rug, setting a lit match to the bowl of a gold water pipe. The pipe was too pretty, I felt, to be taken seriously—it looked more like a trinket or a toy. Go ask Alice … if a caterpillar in a children’s book could puff on something like this, so could I. But as soon as I tasted the bitter smoke I pushed the thin tube away, grimacing. It was too late. A procession of dream images floated before me: my mother bouncing and pouncing like a deranged human strapped to a flying machine, Vera Moore slyly quoting bits of Hegel as she plunged her fork into Mr. Davies’s partridges, Mr. Michaeli wilting under paper airplanes. Rosie in a white sari, pretending to be dead on a bed of Archie comics.

  “You should be nicer to your mother,” I said. “Though who am I to talk?”

  “I’m very nice to her,” Patrick replied, as if amused to find himself wrongfully accused. The opium had driven away his anger, and suddenly he reminded me of Anthony. Anthony did the same thing—spoke elliptically, humorously—the only difference was the aggression. Patrick had it, Anthony didn’t.

  “Did you know your father wrote about your mother’s past in a notebook?”

  Patrick seemed to be half-asleep: his legs were stretched out in front of him on the carpet, and he was leaning against the sofa cushions, his head tilted back, his eyes shut. “Yes,” he said. “The famous notebook.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “No, and I never will. I’m phobic about things like that.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said, and at that moment I felt close to Patrick, and I wanted to squeeze his hand, but he would have pulled away, and that realization pushed the moment aside.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, sprawled in the armchair, staring into space. When it was time to go, I offered to take the bus home.