by Mike Miller
I shrugged, because what else was there to do? “I would argue with you, but just because you’re wrong doesn’t mean you’re not right. Isn’t that how it goes?”
She just stared at me like I was the crazy one, and I remembered how she only thought in terms of sin and virtue.
Also she was visiting psychics.
“That’s an entirely different thing, a talent that has to be developed. Real ones, I mean, not the scam artists.” I suppose this went back to that restaurant experience fortuitously whetting an appetite for security and release from anxiety. Suddenly she noticed that real answers were available everywhere, at least according to all those crude pavement signboards on side streets with arrows pointing up narrow flights of stairs. “Of course these women are basically phonies, but even so they have this shrewdness that comes from practice, this developed intuition.” When succumbing, she would casually check for lurking witnesses, then rapidly climb another of those steep staircases while assuming an exaggerated air of impulsive fun. On into some tiny, dim apartment containing a dark-skinned young woman and a quiet baby, several scuttling cats, and too much cheap, flashy furniture: red plush and small mirrors, exotic occult figures and mysterious framed images. Tarot or palm? Full deck or partial?
“You’re a good person. You will live a long life. You have an enemy who is jealous of you, a woman with short dark hair? You’re worried about an older woman, a relative perhaps? No, no, you don’t have to worry about your job. You are very intelligent and you will always make a good living. Don’t be afraid of this, of your own success! But your heart! So much negativity!”
“They’re all exactly the same,” Ruth said. “I mean, to the letter! It’s like they’re members of some secret sisterhood because they all deliver this identical crap.” But like Diogenes she kept seeking that one honest psychic. “And the idea of dead relatives hovering around when you’re in the bathroom – talk about creepy!
And again: “It makes my skin crawl, my dead relatives knowing what I really think, watching what I do. I don’t want them anywhere near me.”
“What about the telephone ones?”
“Oh, like I would trust them! That’s just pouring money away! And then after a while they cut you off. Or that’s what the Internet articles say. They don’t want trouble. You can tell it’s just a business, like any call center.” Hands waving. “Here’s the thing. I turn to these people because I don’t have enough faith. I’ve never had real faith, not the kind that jumps into the future and creates the world. But that’s what truly living is, that kind of dumb faith.”
But it was Christmas, fraught with background music from decades and even centuries ago, and she was aching to explain another momentous adolescent insight, to share yet another glorious if burdensome secret.
“I realized that the real reason for Christ’s death was to protect the people, the Jewish community and by extension the community of mankind. Think about it: crucifying Him was the right sin, so Christ returned from the dead to demonstrate His forgiveness. That’s the real meaning of redemption. It meant we could evolve without the increasingly unbearable weight of original sin, all that agony piling on us more and more. It’s the only way it makes sense.” All this pronounced with that familiar air of patronizing patience and restrained glee.
Waltzing through Christmas in time to her internal orchestra, celestial light breaking with a stupendous fanfare from gleaming brass trumpets, joyful music descending on the world in great arcs, reverberating to the depths of the earth and sea. And everywhere bright angels standing near to deliver the good news, even in the mean doorways and empty offices and subways tunnels of our gray city.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Out in Lancaster County you get Amish men with beards driving black buggies, retail outlets, mushrooming cookie-cutter townhouse developments, modest theme entertainments, silos on sloppy-looking dairy farms, corn fields, and the usual run of unimpressive strip malls and general highway effluvia. It’s unattractive to me because it never coalesces into a conceptual whole but insists on remaining a bunch of scattered ideas trying to attract families desperate for wholesome entertainment. Also it’s not a great milieu for driving your moody girlfriend and cranky teenage daughter through a freezing downpour, more sleet than rain, past huddling bovines, the occasional horse kicking up water, and dreary family-style restaurants with bus parking.
We found a parking space at one of those ubiquitous outlet malls and pushed through the downpour towards some trendy clothing emporium. A half a minute crossing the parking lot and I was drenched, the wet seeping into my socks and my fingers were numb inside my gloves. I could tell Sophie was really angry, which is how she reacts to life’s aggravations these days: everything’s a personal betrayals. Then we were swallowed up inside the welcoming light, surrounded by everything current in the correct colors, at the mercy of the usual blandly intrusive background music. A handful of avid fellow shoppers were rifling through piles of expensive crap.
Crystal scoped out the scene and moved off on her own, and I drifted off a little myself in order to observe my daughter. Her universal snit had been partially eclipsed by greed, but there was enough of it left to keep her occupied. She stalked over to a display case of tiny evening bags, crystal and sequins and exciting promise, and lingered there absorbing it, her eyes glittering but her face carefully neutral.
Crystal reappeared by my side, rather sedate, as if the rain had penetrated her brain and dampened her usual expectant shrewdness. She had a handful of garments on hangers and gestured me towards the fitting rooms, so I nodded and squished over that way and waited too long for her to reappear. When finally she called my attention from a rack of discards I discovered her in a brilliant sapphire silk shift, almost beautiful except for her minor deviations from real perfection and her expression, which was contentious.
“Wonderful. Really.”
But she tilted her head, questioning me. I noticed Sophie watching us, then heading over.
Crystal turned to examine her reflection. “So you can actually see me?” Her face was pushed forward with a child’s defiance. “Because you know how you always say I don’t really exist? I wanted to find something really noticeable to make it easy for you.”
For a second I wondered if the weather really had pushed her to the brink, but no, she was breaking up with me. “What I said is that’s what I admire most about you.” As well she knew. She was standing in front of a wall painted in cream enamel, much smudged and marked, as anomalous and adorable as a princess at a bus stop. Sophie was just behind me; she caught my response and I saw a definite smack of approval in her eyes. Why I adore this kid.
“Well I’m tired of being invisible.”
I shrugged, realizing argument was futile. Why further indulge her? But here’s the thing: Crystal’s instincts were nothing short of prodigious. It took me a few days but finally I realized this was indisputable confirmation of what I myself already vaguely sensed but hadn’t dared articulate: a familiar dissatisfaction, a growing restlessness. Or was it more that life was perpetually dissatisfied with me? I was getting myself ready to reorganize my life into God knew what; I was feeling seriously reckless. I was actively looking to find a tall building somewhere in order to jump off and see if I could fly.
So while I was deeply shocked I wasn’t really surprised, if you know what I mean. For one thing, I knew I’d exploited and betrayed Crystal’s naïve assessment of my local celebrity, and she owed me no loyalty. It was an ingenious strategy, too, because we’d been over it often enough, my absolute rejection of the whole hypocritical mating dance. Play the game if you’re playing, don’t try to cheat and then act all superior about it. Don’t try to pretend you’re growing up instead of the exact opposite, fleeing from reality. Not that she meant it anyway, not really.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At PHA they awaited the worst with almost dispassionate impatience, but that delicate veneer of neutrality did little to mitigate the visc
eral shock of the next purge. It was the sheer illogical mendacity that floored you, the lack of any meaning, a chaos before words. Numbness became normal, everyone just floating along in it, observant and even curious but essentially anesthetized.
But Stanley continued to schedule regular airchecks with Ruth, leaning back in his executive chair and staring at his own crossed legs, listening intently and at least pretending to analyze every pause and stutter of her morning program. “This isn’t about causing you embarrassment. It’s about making you better.” But she felt the personal threat, the vines encircling her ankles, felt paralyzed by layers of terror and distrust and accepted that her immediate working environment had degenerated into a pile of viscous shit.
Despite his public protestations of innocence Stanley consistently managed to underline her tentative status, letting her see him glance at other options, blandly intimating the unthinkable. And could someone else do better? Someone younger, maybe still provocative but less of a loose cannon? A team player and overall better investment? Were they evaluating potential replacements during those mysterious off-site executive tête-à-têtes, listening to the best of Stanley’s selected candidates?
But everything was unaccountable. Suddenly it was not only okay, it was apparently policy to mock Stanley’s silly rockets and stars as a naïve failure. Real life was too baffling for soul examinations and positive attitudes. Only the signs themselves remained: maybe no one had the energy to waste, taking them down. Was that a mark against him or was he relieved? Ruth couldn’t tell, but Stanley was still with them, at least for the moment.
So the two of them, their heads cordially leaning near from either side of his extravagant desk, replayed her unobtrusively expert formatics, her practiced smooth deliveries, her unflagging if slightly cynical cheer, the call letters and time checks for that listener just tuning in, the heartfelt personal endorsement of a suburban sponsor, her brief but invariably informed comments to Leslie over the news. Now Stanley slyly insulted her by applauding her chemistry with Bob, how that experienced soul reined her in, balancing out her more undisciplined flights with a typically dry comment or affable laughter.
“My job is to go over the top.” But for how much longer in this strangely foreign and adversarial situation, reaching out to devoted but ultimately powerless listeners who’d certainly be upset or even momentarily furious at her absence but probably not enough to bother turning the dial.
“You think so?” Turning towards her with bland courtesy, his khakis and logo knit shirt an impeccable armor. “Well, maybe so.” Interesting and dreadful that despite all this constant examination of minutia there was never any correction provided, no comment offered except that snide recommendation to rely on Bob. So it was generally a matter of endlessly listening to oneself under his pointed gaze, those eyes of his that never seemed to waver in their ceaseless search for any lapse from perfection.
“How about you? Everything going okay? No problems or concerns? Need anything?” So mildly said, with an ostensibly innocuous expression.
“No, I’m going great.”
After one such session, impelled by God knows what devil to respond to the accumulated frustration and fury, Ruth decided to poke her head around the door of Sara’s’s closet of an office. “Is Jenny available for a minute, or is she too busy for mere peons?”
“You know, you really do need to be more careful what you say.” Sara delivered this constant admonishment nicely as always, without exceptional interest. “I’m not kidding. You never know who hears you in this place.” She was cautiously watering the waxy pink African violet on her filing cabinet, edging the narrow spout of a plastic watering can under its furry leaves. Once seated, she grinned up at Ruth with easy complicity across the photos and paperweights and assorted knick-knacks blanketing her desk and automatically adjusted her designer eyewear. “It isn’t professional behavior.”
“I don’t see why. It’s intelligent behavior.”
And a few minutes later Ruth was across the hall, venting to a stiff, bemused Jenny with apparent candor. “Because I need to vent!” Waving both hands in aggravation. “I really worry that people here think I’ve become cynical or just mean. Or else unbearably superior, entitled?” This with a quizzical smile at that perfectly expressionless, ladylike countenance resting thoughtfully against the back of a sofa, nestled in silk cushions patterned with full-blown blossoms, peonies or roses, ladylike and absurd in that official context. “It’s because I never judge, you see. I don’t think in terms of judgment; I only describe, and that frees me to say what I think.”
“I don’t think I follow.” Jenny reached to take and unwrap a hard candy from a bowl on the coffee table, sounding genuinely intrigued.
“I mean that everyone is equally awful so pointing out faults is interesting but not derogatory. Just analysis, not judgment.” Biting into her lip, trying to get all her random assumptions into some kind of logical order. There was a framed photograph on the table, a dark man in his sixties, notably handsome in his hiker’s outfit, posing in front of a forest waterfall.
“Take Hitler,” Ruth continued, and Jenny blinked at her. “We talk about him like he was literally a monster instead of human. We refuse to acknowledge that we’re like him, but if we can’t then everything’s hopeless. I’m not explaining this well.” She shrugged in irritation. “The thing is, I recognize all that’s shameful in myself; I claim it.”
Between them on that boudoir sofa: the awareness of twenty-four recent terminations carried out despite the promises issued from this same ostentatiously comfortable office. Jenny conceding her deep disappointment while surveying them methodically, the full station staff sprawled out before her sitting on other people’s desks or leaning against the fabric cubicle walls. “It was the promise we made to ourselves at that time. Unfortunately we weren’t able to meet our primary goal.”
Well then.
“I knew they’d already decided about me, so why not?”
And later to Stanley in front of the observant cubicles: “I admit I’m glad to be spared the cosmic philosophy.”
“I think that makes sense. We have larger problems to address at the moment, but don’t confuse that with the program itself not working.”
“I don’t exactly agree with that logic.” Laughing to the audience.
“Ruth, come with me.” And he led her to a storeroom and shut the door on them and he was right there in her face. “Do you even realize how inappropriate and plain weird you are? Half the time I wonder if you’re actually crazy and I’m fucking sick of it.” He took a breath, shook his head, turned and left her there, shaking.
I encountered both Askews late one Thursday afternoon. I was incautiously heading towards the light from Thom’s inner office, hoping to discuss the revised Columbus plan with all those required community guidelines clumsily tacked on, and the probable responses from the mayor and Council. They were both on the couch, slightly apart, obviously embroiled in some personal drama. Ruth was talking, ranting actually, in this low, incessant voice; she glanced up when I came in but continued irregardless, ignoring my presence to the extent she even registered it. “The presumption being that I’ve failed in my life by not following her miserable advice.” Kate, that oblivious matron given to issuing lengthy handwritten missives to her niece, self-laudatory biographical fantasies in her tiny perfect script intended for Ruth’s spiritual betterment, so that Ruth might open her heart, forgive her loving family, and find true happiness. Struggling to maintain her version of the past against Ruth’s angry corrections.
“And if I say anything about myself, such as where we’ve been on vacation, or someone famous I’ve met, then she starts talking really loud right over me. And mysteriously can never remember anything I tell her about myself, or makes it clear she doesn’t trust my judgment about money or politics or even movies or restaurants. Just listens and gives me this phony smile and says well, I’ll ask Pat or one of the boys.”
Thom ha
d a hand on the sofa near to her but not touching. He caught my eye for a second and turned away.
“Sitting there with this expression like the fucking Virgin Mary saying how she’s so proud of my accomplishments when none of them ever really gave a damn about me and all anyone ever did was look the other way. They gave me infinitely more to overcome by making everything unanimous, that’s what. Sitting on her ass and criticizing my dad who at least had a life. How dare she? Passive aggressive emotional cripple.”
I looked a question at Thom but he was still sitting back, paying judicious attention to all these details.
“If she does care about me, I’ve never seen any evidence of it. I don’t think she realizes I exist except how it affects her. If I died, she’d feel really sorry for what she had to go through.” That infinite, mutual resentment Ruth was somehow unable to express to Kate now her aunt was too inclined to overestimate her own resiliency when taking another strategic fall, although not old at all by modern standards but only in her late fifties. Then when the two were together all the rage evaporated, vanishing as if unimportant or even unjustified.
Thom responded with a kind of compassionate irritation. “You know this is obsessive; you’re literally going to make yourself sick.”
I visualized the Kate Ruth had described to me, watchful and given to ladylike pastels, sitting quietly apart from a husband increasingly sarcastic and judgmental, tormented by his disease. Smiling nicely with her hands folded over each other in her lap, profoundly insulting her niece from the heights of sentimental self-congratulation.
“So it’s okay that she’s still patronizing me and treating me like shit, like it’s okay to take her resentment out on me? And then sometimes, I swear she looks at me with this cold look, like underneath it all she hates me.”