We got to talking about gin rummy, and I guess I invited the man over to play for a bit. We played for hours. What was weird was that it was very normal. And the whole building seemed happy. There was laughter in the stairwell, cloppity footsteps, old music playing; the lyrics to “Georgy Girl” by The Seekers made their way to me. Eddy was having a party? It was like real estate staging taken to another level; someone visiting would have felt impulsively moved to buy, I think. Although on some level all that “life” kind of creeped me out. An old friend of mine, Betsy, once told me a story of having roomed in a haunted house. What she meant by haunted house was that she had heard that everyone who had stayed there had been haunted. There’d once been a suicide, there was a thought that might be the ghost. Anyhow, Betsy was dreading the haunting. Which didn’t arrive, didn’t arrive, didn’t arrive. Then one night it did. A doorknob rattling, pacing, a low moaning sound … the whole works.
But then that was it. Just that one visit, that one night. And Betsy thought, Ghost, why did you leave me? Have I done something right?
Next morning I noticed that the one clock in my place had stopped. It wasn’t a fancy grandfather clock, or a charming old windup, or a pocket watch on an old brass chain. Just this little LED thing of mine, which has worked for years and years. Survived many a power surge, many a move. No more. I felt a little discouraged. But having no idea what time it was gave me a valid excuse to seek out Eddy. I could ask Eddy about the time. Just about that.
On the other side of Eddy’s door I heard footsteps. I knocked. The footsteps abruptly stopped. “Eddy?” There was no answer. Was he worried I would complain about the noise from the party? “Eddy? It’s just that my clock stopped working.” Maybe he thought I was going to try to kiss him. Maybe that was his version of a nightmare. I knocked one more time. More nothing.
People have moods; that’s certainly something I know firsthand. I try not to judge. I went back down the stairs. For a bit the quiet was, well, deafening, but after a while—obviously I don’t know after how long—the pacing upstairs resumed. Other odd noises, too. Squeaks. A couple of chirrups. Something that sounded like newspapers being folded.
Eventually—the sun was still high—I walked out to the gyro place. Those bells jangled in a mediocre way when I entered. That soda fountain was there, also the smell of fresh-cut onions. I didn’t recognize any of the patrons. I still haven’t seen my father again. Nor have I seen Eddy. It’s only been twenty-two weeks or so, though. And the other morning I thought there was string cheese in the refrigerator, and then there it was, actually there. Maybe it’s wrong of me, but I do hope that nobody buys this building for a long time. I have the sense that ghosts like to return to the same places. I, anyhow, like to do that. And there is something about the bones of this place; it really is easier to dream here.
DEAN OF THE ARTS
I owe to the convergence of boredom and an atavistic attraction to the color gold the discovery on a near-empty shelf in my childhood home (and in my childhood) of The Collected Correspondence of Manuel Macheko. The only other books in the house offered health or income tax advice. But Macheko wrote to Menachem Begin, explaining that Begin’s last name was confusing; to Barbara Bush, offering a broccoli recipe (with cumin seeds) that might persuade her husband to take “a new view of the humble crucifer”; to hair dye companies, seeking free samples of dyes they might recommend to men. His book had over me the kind of power more often attributed to a Vermeer: a room with a map on the wall, a letter just arrived, a ship on the sea visible through the window, and the window letting in light from a wondrous and unboundable world that would one day make its way to you, surely as the Annunciation. That was the feeling I got anyway. Back then. I didn’t understand the letters as attempts, at least in part, at comedy. A surprising number of the pursued correspondents replied, sometimes tersely, sometimes expansively, and their responses were included in the book, alongside Macheko’s original letters. In fact, the book was dedicated “To those who took the time to respond.” Sometimes Macheko’s sentiments were “appreciated” or “had received due consideration.” But sometimes more. A former Indian prime minister had taken the time to handwrite an extensive note confirming that he did drink his own urine every day as part of his health regimen, which also included celibacy, and celery. Joan Rivers stated that she had not had a face-lift, just two and a half hours of ingenious hair and makeup. Helen Gurley Brown advised Manuel to just ask his girlfriend straight out if she had herpes.
I don’t know how many copies of the self-published book existed, or exist. I believe Macheko distributed them himself. When I got older, I came to think of that book, for reasons I can (sort of) explain, as a cry for help. That said, not long ago I was looking at a handbook of facial expressions designed to teach autistic youth how to read emotion; it consisted of captioned photos of happy faces, of angry faces, of worried faces, etc; I couldn’t really “read” the supposedly easy-for-normal-people-to-”read” faces; I mean, I could, but also I couldn’t; I could tell what emotions I was supposed to see, sure, but to my heart, they all read the same, they all looked like cries for help.
Despite looking it up repeatedly, I seem never able to recall the name of the preacher of the sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-God sermon, and I am similarly chronically unable to recall the real name of the pseudonymous Mr. Macheko. I retain only that he was a Persian—his term—professor living in Norman, Oklahoma (where I lived), and that when I came across his book, he had already been, or shortly thereafter was, fired from his position as a professor under circumstances that were, I was given to understand from my own father, a colleague of his, in some way unjust or superstitious or not unrelated to the author’s having especially dark skin and a warbling accent and a mysterious religion in an almost entirely white—and oddly preppy—department of a university in one of the most politically conservative university towns in the country. I had once heard rumors, similar to those about the high school French teacher, that Macheko attended a weekly cross-dressing night at a bar in Oklahoma City. I think I instinctively understood, of both men, that the rumors were a version of slander that a patina of time and geographical shifting would reveal as a readiness for veneration, or fear, but not truth. But of the firing: presumably, Macheko was also straightforwardly irritating. That can cause anyone problems.
I mention this irritatingness in order to give the benefit of doubt, at least kind of, to the midwesterners I grew up among, who took me—also an odd-looking foreigner—into their homes, and who taught me more about openness and social justice than anyone since, and about whom no one around me these days is, I think, fair. And I presume this—that Macheko was irritating—because his son was one year ahead of me in high school and he played trumpet. He was very, very talkative. He had bad acne, a big nose, glasses, lots of energy, and a cheerfulness whose border none of us had encountered. The social shame heaped unjustly and unsurprisingly on young Macheko for reasons of genetics and origin and whatnot—he took that and steam-engined it into just more gregariousness and academic distinction. Even: our art teacher gave up Friday lessons to “Bible Jeopardy,” and though it was not Macheko’s sacred text—I think he was Zoroastrian—his team almost infallibly won. Lots of kids disliked young Macheko, and even more mocked him. Some went so far as to throw stones at him. Yet his exuberance only intensified. He had good things to say about everyone.
Once, for a weekend debate tournament, he and I were assigned to be partners, to be a team of two set to debate other teams of two. The debate topic was “A person has the right to die how and when he or she chooses.” We had to argue both Affirmative and Negative. For Negative, we focused on what we decided was the overlooked “how” of the proposition; it was a silly argument—as if the issue were people’s right to kill themselves by stepping into the middle of a freeway or by drowning themselves at a city pool—but a technically sound one, and we won all four rounds that day, easily. We knew we had to come up with a new set of rebutt
als for what, by the second day of the tournament, would be premeditated counterarguments, and so late into the night, over fried okra and many teas at the local diner, we worked out ideas and arguments, at first about the debate topic and then slipping toward this, that, and the mark of Cain. “Innocent Abel has no descendants,” Macheko-son said, as if someone had inquired. “We forget that we’re all descendants of Cain, not Abel. It’s like each of us wears the mark of Cain, like each of us has killed our brother. And people think God marked Cain to shame him, but that’s not it.” Still no one was inquiring but he was responding. “The mark was to protect him. The mark meant that anyone who punished Cain would be punished by God sevenfold in return. It’s not for us to judge!” Macheko said. “Something like that.” We moved on, to other topics. Talking was easy. In some sense, we had a lot in common. Then, at around one o’clock in the morning, I don’t know how to describe what happened except to say that young Macheko gave me a look. Not a romantic look; it was more awful than that. He gave me a look that seemed to signal an imminent confession of Machekovian isolation and misery. A confession that, if I heard it, would draw me into an obligation I could not come even close to fulfilling. I would be a passing meal for an eternally starving golem, and I would be nothing else. “Whoa, I am so tired,” I said. “Jesus. It’s like somebody just hit me over the head with a club.” I left.
At the tournament the next day we lost the Negative rounds and won the Affirmative ones. For the rest of high school I avoided young Macheko, and I tried not to think of him in the twenty years following. I did hear that he hadn’t had the means to leave town for college, but that eventually the Macheko family had moved away—to somewhere, or to a few somewheres. I myself had also left and not returned.
Then last year I was down in Mexico City for a couple of weeks. I was going through an intense bout of fearfulness that is too irrational and stupid and elusive to explain, and I had done what my husband termed pulling a geographical. I realize it isn’t common to think of Mexico City as a haven from fear. Anyhow, there I could in conscience afford things I couldn’t normally afford because life was cheaper but not so very much cheaper that one felt awful all the time (though one felt somewhat bad). I found myself getting a manicure and a pedicure, which was weird for me, I don’t even like the look of manicured nails, and having a stranger attending to my cuticles with sharp and blunt objects: it just all feels very wrong. As I was engaged in this incorrectness, I found myself in conversation with a Mexican woman who was, she said, a television news reporter. Or rather, she used to be a television news reporter. Until she had gotten into a bad car accident. Followed by a long recovery period. She had become very depressed in that period and put on a lot of weight. Forty pounds! The television station told her that if she wanted to keep her job, she would need to take the weight off; they said they’d give her four months to do it. I was American, right? Oh, she knew my neighborhood in New York! because she had dated the grandson of Norman Mailer, and Norman Mailer had lived there, hitting on her, yes, even from his deathbed, no, that relationship had not worked out, neither the one with Norman Mailer nor with the grandson of Norman Mailer. She was soon going to be covering the Mexican midterm elections, if all went well with the diet. She might have to go to Sinaloa, or Chihuahua, in any case to a place where the narco wars were very much alive. Her friend was in Juárez; he saw bodies in the streets. Well, that’s the North!
The young woman handling my feet tenderly asked me what color I wanted my toenails painted. The TV reporter asked me what was I doing in Mexico City.
I wasn’t feeling like myself, and the light was lumbering through the extra-thick window, bending into a bright diadem, which maybe explains how I found myself getting lime green toenails and saying I was writing a culture piece about Mexico City for a magazine. For The New York Times Magazine. I hadn’t really figured out what I would focus on; I was a little lost, to be honest.
Except for the bit about being lost, what I’d said was not true. I’m a molecular biologist, for one thing. I study epigenetics, things that alter expression of the genetic code but that aren’t themselves in the genetic code. It’s actually pretty interesting, I think, but it’s difficult to find a way to “chat” about it with strangers, it being difficult to chat about methylation and histones.
I know the perfect thing! the TV reporter said. You should write about me and my friends! She could show me a real circle of artists and writers. When she said circle—she had switched to speaking English; her colloquialisms were good—I thought for a moment she said circus. It sounds narcissistic, she laughed, but American readers would be very interested, and it would be very easy and fun for me, she explained, and it would really be a help to her, too, because she wanted to get a different kind of work, work in the U.S., work that she knew she’d be great at, and it was very difficult to live in Mexico just now; she loved Mexico, of course. There were enough negative stories about Mexico City, this would be a positive one! She just needed to lose a little more weight. And establish herself in the U.S. She was so lucky that she had met me. This was really going to be great.
I said that I, too, thought that sounded great.
I imagine that there are those who, even if it was misdirected, might at least briefly enjoy being an object upon which esteem and hope are projected. There are those who can be lighthearted about a basic deception and/or error and either correct it or just go with it and then even do whatever little thing they can do to give the people around them what they want or need and who can then handle whatever disappointment ensues. Some people might not find that even someone’s minimal excitement about them provokes imaginings of that scene, which may or may not be in Dante but is certainly somewhere in my education, where the narrator is in some boat, crossing some river into the underworld, maybe the Styx, or Lethe, and the dead souls in the river are clamoring to get aboard, though of course they will not be able to get aboard, because they are the damned, whereas the narrator is still alive and not yet judged. When heading out to meet Annalise (that was her name) the next day, I might even have thought briefly of Manuel Macheko. Or at least of that gold-jacketed book, of those letters obliquely asking for help, and setting out on journeys from which news might or might not return.
Or maybe I didn’t think of Macheko’s book. Maybe it was only in retrospect that I thought of the Machekos.
I arrived at a crowded cantina in the Condesa neighborhood. People were gathered to watch Mexico versus France in the World Cup. “This is my great friend Alice!” Annalise said, introducing me around a table crowded with good-looking people, a number of them wearing glasses with “personality.” She then followed up with further biographical details about me, most untrue, some of which I was not even responsible for having related to her. My name is not Alice, but to be fair, I had told Annalise that it was. Someone at the table ran an art gallery; someone was studying architecture at Yale; or maybe his girlfriend was doing that, and he was in a rock band; someone had on a very nice suit jacket over a seafoam-colored shirt. The cantina was noisy with cheer and chatter. A corn and cream snack showed up at the table, looking somehow luxurious in little tumblers, with a sprinkle of hot pepper. A round of mescal was ordered! A goal was scored! The cantina patrons stood up and cheered. Little kazoos were being blown.
“The narcos don’t want Mexico to win,” the rock musician or architecture student explained to me. “It makes the people confident. They start expecting things.” The woman next to him, who looked maybe one-quarter Indian and was tiny, under five feet—this made her otherwise straightforward beauty otherworldly—had recently finished an art project called Canned Laughter, cans that said “laughter” on them.
“This is what Uribe did in Colombia,” a drunk older man said to me. “He killed every single one of them. Not just the narcos, but anyone associated with the narcos. A narco accountant. A narco driver. A narco nephrologist. All of them. You have to kill them all. Then you can let them come back, slowly, b
ecause of course there will always be a narco business. But you can’t let them think they own the country.”
“You can’t just put them in jail?” I asked.
“Jail is like Club Med for them,” he said. He had wide-set brown eyes, and upon reflection, he was kind of handsome. There were more drinks. I started not to mind whatever was said, including “It’s so important for people to know what’s what. I wrote a poem about it.”
“It’s so good that you can show how involved the arts are here with the real world,” Annalise said to me. “About the situations in which we produce, our means of production. I’m so, so happy that you’re here.” Even more snacks came to the table. I felt bad for Annalise, trying to lose weight in a drinking and snacking culture.
And not much later that was the end of it. That was the afternoon. Mexico won the game. I was drunk.
I took a long nap. In my dream, I walked into some sort of cantina or bar or pool hall or all of those things, and my father was there, though his face was that of my husband. I had two young boyfriends, or just young male companions, with me. The thing that was weird about my father’s being there was that he is dead, and this was true even in the dream, and so what was he doing there, mobile and breathing? I went ahead and approached him, in the middle of his pool game. He had his own face now. “Why didn’t you at least call to say you were still alive?” I asked. “At least a phone call. A letter. Something.” He didn’t really say much in return. In (dream) fact, he said nothing. Nor did my manifestation or questioning appear to startle or disturb him. His face—now it was my husband’s face again—was pale, and he shrugged his shoulders and went back to his pool game. I wondered if he was mentally well. Then I called my mom and my sister, from a public telephone that was there in the bar, to tell them the news—that the head of our family was alive. They already knew; they had always known. Why hadn’t they told me? “He was dead to us. We were hiding nothing.”
American Innovations Page 10