Saturn's Return to New York

by Sara Gran

  “Oh, I remember now. You know, now that I think about it, you were right to drop out. Brown’s a good school, but I learned so much more when I was done with school than when I was in it. You’ll learn a lot working at a bookstore ”

  “I don’t work in a bookstore anymore, Mom. I work at the computer place, remember? The computer place that you hate.” The specialist told me I should never humor her, I should always try to bring her back to the here and now

  “Oh Oh, that place.” She frowns and I know that she’s here again

  I set up dinner on the table and we eat and talk about books We’ve both just read a new autobiography called My New York. The author, Jeremy Conwinkle, is a novelist who took one of Michael’s classes at Columbia

  “What an asshole,” says Evelyn. “I never even met the kid, he acts like Michael and him had some kind of a big thing going on. It’s like that with everyone he writes about. James Furman was not ‘a gentle soul who couldn’t fit in with the rigors of academia,’ he was a prick and a rapist who was fired from Columbia for raping a freshman girl in his office. And Billy Connolly sure as hell wasn’t some kind of mentor, father figure, to his students. He hated them, each and every one. He used to bring their papers to Michael’s office to laugh at them, like they were a joke, until your father told him to stop What an asshole.”

  “At least he had some nice things to say about Dad.”

  “Well, your father was a nice man,” Evelyn says, sharply. She thinks I’m still mad at my father for dying.

  “I know. All I’m saving is, this guy said that. He said Michael was a nice guy.”

  “He was a nice guy,” she says. “You don’t remember him before he was sick. You don’t know.”

  I pick at my chicken. “I know. I remember. I have nothing but good memories.”

  “And one bad one. And that’s the one you remember.”

  She’s accusing me I don’t want to fight “Mom, that’s not true. Come on. You know that’s not true.”

  She relaxes a little. “Anyway, he wasn’t perfect This guy makes him out to be like some kind of saint.”

  “That he was not”

  “It wasn’t his fault.” Evelyn’s sharp again. “I mean, he was sick. It was an illness. He couldn’t help it.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “Today, things would have been different. They’ve got medications, treatment.”

  Evelyn puts down her fork and lights a cigarette. I do the same. It’s so rare that we even mention his name, between the two of us.

  “I don’t know if it would have helped,” she says. “You know, when we got married, I was so naive. I thought all he needed was a nice house, a home, a regular girl I thought he had too much stress at Columbia, he was lonely, his parents were such assholes—I thought that was all there was to it”

  “People didn’t know then what they know now. No one knew it was a biological thing. They thought it was from having a bad mother ”

  “Which he had All that money, they gave him everything, and you know I don’t think that woman ever said ‘I love you,’ not once in her life, not to him or anyone else. And his brother. You don’t remember him ”

  “Not really.”

  “He had his own problems. Such a cruel man. You should have seen how he treated his wife And the kids’ I felt so bad for them I wonder where those kids are now ”

  “Probably in a mental home somewhere.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. The whole family was nuts. I thought if I could just get Michael away from them he would be fine”

  I light another cigarette. “It worked for a while,” I tell her, even though she knows this better than I “It’s not like he was never happy.”

  “For a while it was okay When we first moved to Twelfth Street it was okay. Then it got bad again, then worse, and worse and worse. Oh God. I remember when they first put him on medical leave. He was so depressed he would just sit in his office all day and stare at a book. He wouldn’t go to his classes, he wouldn’t grade papers, he wouldn’t even come home until like, midnight I was devastated. I thought it was my fault—”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mom,” I interrupt. I don’t want to continue this, this I could have, I would have, I should, if I knew. It goes nowhere We can’t change the past from this kitchen table.

  “Now I know that. But then—Andrew Kleinman and I drove him up to Silver Hill for the first time. This was supposed to be like, the best place—”

  “It was the best place.”

  “Well, you should have seen what they did to him. They gave him medication, it didn’t help He tried to hang himself with a bedsheet Then they gave him electroshock. He was a fucking mess after that, his brain was like Swiss cheese, but he was better Less depressed So he came home ”

  It’s too late not to talk about it now, Evelyn is determined, so I try to make the best of it “His memory came back. You started the magazine, you had me.”

  “When you were born, that was when he really got better. I mean, he loved the magazine, but he really loved you, honey.”

  “I know, Mom. I loved him, too He wasn’t sick again until I was like five ”

  “Not bad like that, no. He had slipped back into it a few times before, but somehow he would pull himself back out When I think of what he went through—what we put him through. The therapies we tried, they seem barbaric now, like torture. Insulin therapy, electroshock I was just trying to keep him alive He would go to the hospital, they would starve him, shock him, give him drugs, he would come home.”

  “What else were you supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. The last time, I didn’t even want him back I never should have let him come back ”

  “Mom—”

  “I should have sent him back to the hospital. Or just away, just sent him away. I could have gotten a divorce ”

  “He was your husband,” I’m yelling at her. “He was my father He didn’t mean for it to happen like that It was an accident, the whole thing was an accident, you know that.”

  “I would have killed him. If I knew. You know that I would have told you he had an accident, told you he was sick, he had been hit by a car, anything—”

  Anything rather than what did happen. I stand up and go to the window and lean out Evelyn keeps talking, saying she would have killed him. She must have gone over it in her head a million times. She would have killed Michael, cleaned him, arranged him flat and smooth and waxy in a sterile coffin. She would have pulled me onto her lap and let me hold Barbie close, nestled me in her lap and run a hand over my hair and told me that my father had died.

  But it happened like this-

  I was home from school with a stomach ache Probably something I ate; Evelyn had made a feeble attempt at chicken Parmesan the night before Michael didn’t know I was home. He had fallen asleep on the sofa the night before and now, at noon, he was still sleeping and Evelyn didn’t want to wake him She went out for some errands and told me to stay in my room and wake Michael if I needed anything I wouldn’t have gone to wake him if it wasn’t important, but my stomach was worse and I needed medicine. He was sick again. My mother had been gone a long time and I went to wake him up. He wasn’t in the living room I thought he had woken up and gone into the office, like he did when he wasn’t sick It was always okay for me to go into the office, even if there was a meeting It would be okay now, I would go very quietly and no one would even know. Michael was almost never mad at me, and he wouldn’t be mad at me now

  He wasn’t in the office Or in the kitchen, or the bathroom He was in the bedroom, lying in bed dressed in a fresh pale blue oxford shirt, neatly pressed khaki pants, and black brogue shoes on his feet He must have gone to bed after my mother went out

  Until I kissed him, I thought he was sleeping. I climbed into bed with him and kissed him on the cheek, to wake him up, and then I knew. When my lips touched the hard bone of his left cheek, above the graying stubble, close to his hairline I knew, my father was gone

&nbs
p; I stayed in bed with him Maybe if I stayed close, he would come back. I lay curled up by his side, my head on his chest, for a few minutes, or an hour, or a lifetime. The house was quiet. I can think of nothing else like the sensation of feeling my father not breathe, of hearing his heart not beat Nothing else has ever been so still, no other sound has ever been so silent. Then I heard Evelyn’s keys in the door, I heard her walking through the big empty house, saying my name quietly, looking, unconcerned. She opened the door to the bedroom softly and smiled when she saw the two of us asleep together. Her hair was still dark then and her face was smooth, unlined Her smile was beautiful. It wasn’t until she sat on the bed next to me that she saw

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God.” She shook him, and as soon as she touched him she was sure, too. She kept whispering “Oh my God,” and she picked me up, roughly, one arm around my neck and another under my knees, and took me away from him Then, I started to cry.

  The next thing I remember I was in the living room. Three police officers and two paramedics had come. My mother was in the bedroom, yelling out sobs and throwing bottles of perfume against the wall One of the police officers came over and sat on the sofa with me and held my hand. Everything was quiet except for my mother’s screaming and the bottles breaking and the click-clack of the police radios No one else spoke.

  Then I was in the hospital. I wouldn’t, couldn’t speak A nice nurse named Janine brought me a different chocolate animal from the gift shop every day, an elephant, a bunny, a Scottish terrier, a cat I lined them along the window sill and made up a story for each The elephant was a philosopher, the bunny was a writer, the terrier a policeman, and the cat was a little girl Different doctors gave me shots, some hurt and some didn’t A young doctor tried to make me laugh. I ignored him. Evelyn came by and held me and cried and told me I would be okay, everything would be okay

  She lied.

  Chapter 19

  My mother is dying and I am furious. Each person who nudges me on the street, each petty thief who grabs someone else’s seat on the subway, every tasteless woman wearing the wrong shoes—all better candidates for an early death than my mother, and I hate each one of these should-have-beens If God gave me the word, it would be no problem to kill one of these not-so-innocents in her place. Even if it was an acquaintance, a co-worker, a friend—no problem. Dale from accounting, who screwed up my tax withholding last year? In a heartbeat Chris Conway, my unpublished-poet ex-boss whose wife hates him for being poor? Without hesitation Annette? Well, I could easily kill Annette anyway. Brian would be an easy choice. Chloe would be harder, Veronica, I would have to think twice, but probably yes. Definitely yes.

  Most of all I want to kill the doctors They know nothing. They don’t even pretend to be optimistic anymore. The drug trials have proved as useless as the alternative therapies I’ve essentially bullied my mother into. Chelation therapy lowers her cholesterol, Zyban helps her cheer up, hormone treatments make her hair thicker, but none of them stop the dumb merciless forward motion of the disease

  I hate all my friends, now, for having such perfect fucking families and having absolutely no gratitude for the privilege of having parents I hate them also because, as I’ve learned, people avoid death and the people near it as if it were contagious They make insipid little cracks like She’ll get better or At least she’s comfortable or She’s lucky to have you, and then they quickly change the topic to something that will cheer me up. They offer to take me for icecream cones and for drinks and to women’s wear sales, as if I could be distracted from my mother’s impending death by a butter pecan dip or a Cosmopolitan or the perfect size-six sheath As if all I need is to see how darn fun an afternoon can be The person who I now hate the absolute most, whose heart I would rip out with my bare hands, if only God would take him instead, is an old friend (now a mortal enemy) who says—when I run into him on Sixth Avenue when I’m doing my mother’s grocery shopping one sunny afternoon—It’s God’s will Fuck you, God’s will. Would it still be God’s will if a cure were discovered tomorrow? Would it be God’s will if your mother got it? Would it be God’s will if you had it? Would it be God’s will if I sneaked into your charming studio on Leroy Street, a studio I suspect your very-much-alive mother and father pay the rent on, and took off your head with an ax? Should I sit here, serene and enlightened, chant my ridiculous little mantra, and just accept? I accept nothing

  Most of all I hate my mother, who seems to be accepting perfectly well. She’s accepting the fact that she’ll never see me again She’s accepting the fact that next year on my birthday no one will take me to agnes b. and watch me try on thirty pairs of pants and buy me the least ill-fitting pair as a birthday present. She’s accepting the fact that on her birthday, I will go alone to the Russian Tea Room for blinis. She’s accepting the fact that I will be left with a black cardigan on Christmas Eve, wrapped in tissue, with no one to give it to

  And what brings my rage up to a point so overwhelming that I have to punch my sofa and hurl my Fiestaware across my apartment is that that’s all there’s been That’s pretty much been the extent of it; shopping on my birthday, lunch on hers, Christmas gifts exchanged on December 23 or 24, phone calls once a month I always thought someday we’d be closer. Someday we’ll call each other for no reason at all, sometime we’ll have lunch just to catch up. Now that we spend so much time together I see that this could have happened. We could have been friends. We get along well enough, we both read a lot, we both like old movies—this is more than I’ve had in common with half the men I’ve gone out with But I never called just to say hello, and she didn’t either And at least I have the heart to be furious about it, while Evelyn accepts.

  We’re in my mother’s apartment on a Friday afternoon. I come over every day now. At least I know, when I’m with her, that I’m doing the right thing. When I’m anywhere else, I’m not so sure.

  “So I decided,” she says out of the blue. We’re sitting on the sofa reading fashion magazines—neither of us has the concentration for books anymore “I’m not doing any more drug trials No more vitamins, no more chelation, no more shots, no more blood tests I’m through.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s it, with the doctors. I want to enjoy what I have left So I’ve got a year, maybe less. I can’t stand this guinea pig shit anymore.”

  “But—”

  “But what? But maybe one of them might be the magic potion that keeps me alive another six months? I had a long life I don’t need it.”

  The rage heats up I can not believe how calm she is “You can’t be serious”

  “Why not? Because with all this technology we’ve got, the pills, the radiation, the voodoo, I’m supposed to want to live forever? Listen, I’m telling you this now because soon I won’t be able to. I already filed all the papers with Allison. So when I’m … well, soon I won’t even have a day as good as this anymore. Soon I’m going to be, you know. I’ll be wearing diapers and I won’t be able to think for myself anymore So I signed all the papers with Allison so that when that happens, she’s going to be in charge. I told her what I want and she agrees with me. She understands.”

  “Allison! You picked Allison!”

  “Don’t yell at me’ Of course I picked her. You would keep me alive forever, like this, not knowing whether I’m coming or going I can hardly go to the corner store and back by myself anymore!”

  “You could get better!” I scream “They could find a cure!”

  “Oh Mary, for Christ’s sake, sit back down. Don’t yell at me I’m not getting better Can you understand that? I picked out a place uptown, a nursing home. A hospice Hopefully I’ll have the stroke before that happens.”

  “How can you be talking like this? Mom, we’ll keep trying Dr Leonards says—”

  “Dr Leonards is an asshole, even you can see that.”

  “So we’ll get another doctor,” I yell at her “There’s doctors all over th
e world.”

  “Oh, honey, stop crying Sit back down, come here and sit next to me That’s right. Someday you’ll see, honey. Someday you’ll understand, when you’re old and they’ve put you through the wringer and you just don’t want it anymore, you’ll think of me and you’ll say, you know what? I get it now Now I understand what my mother did.”

  We sit and cry for I don’t know how long before my mother starts making a funny sound with her nose.

  “Do you smell that?” she says.

  Olfactory hallucinations This is one of the last steps, I’ve heard. The olfactory center is in what they call the “old brain,” near the nubs that control breathing and heartbeat

  “No, Mom, there’s nothing.” She disagrees and swears something is burning And so we do a tour of the apartment I take the bedrooms and the bathroom, find nothing, and catch up with Evelyn in the kitchen, where she stands in front of the oven The door is open and clouds of black smoke are billowing out. She looks stunned I fan some smoke away and there inside the oven is a black little blob that I think was once a chicken.

  “Mom, when did you put this in?”

  She looks amazed, like she’s just seen a circus trick, and I think she might laugh. “I have absolutely no fucking idea.”

  Chapter 20

  On a Thursday evening I’m home watching a PBS documentary about money What kind of paper they use, the ink, but of course they can’t tell you everything because then you’d know how to make it yourself. The phone rings I answer and it’s a high-pitched, nervous man

  “Hi Is this Mary?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Well, uh, you don’t know me. My name is Aaron, I’m calling from the Leather Emporium? On Christopher Street?”

  Aaron explains that my mother came in earlier in the evening looking for a French restaurant that used to be there. A few hours later she came back and asked again Then she said she was lost and asked Aaron to call me, which he kindly did immediately. I asked him to put my mother on the phone.