by Lisa Teasley
“Sick …”
“Yes, she is terminal …”
“Ill … I’m sorry.”
“Yes. And she has a child, you know. I love this child.”
“Are you the oldest?”
“No no. I’m the baby, yes. My sister, she is forty-five last Tuesday, my brother is, was, forty-one,” He puts his palms together, sighs, then places them on the bar. “My mother, you know, she is … adopted, all of her brothers and sisters adopted, and this makes—”
“Her distant?”
“She never felt really, very close to any of us. My sister is a kind of mother to me, yes?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-nine. And you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Yes. I have friends twenty-eight years old.”
“Really?”
“Well, yes. Many friends, many ages, but I have a lot of young … well, I’m a writer.”
“You meet a lot of young people?”
“In my country a lot of young people know my writing.”
“I see.”
“But you see, yes, I don’t have many friends. I mean, I never really talk like this.”
With both hands he feels his breast pockets, hits them, then the back of his pants. Extracts a wallet.
“Please, look at this.”
He hands me a photograph, blurred and bubbled around the image. Artfully done. Too artfully.
“It ‘twas in a fire, yes. In a photo album, the page, the … how you say?”
“Plastic …”
“The plastic preserved it, but when the photo was pulled from the plastic, this is how it happens.”
A girl, taken in the late sixties probably, white dress, beautiful legs, pained expression.
“Look closer, yes. You recognize?”
“Wait a minute … ” I am so stunned, I could hit him. “How did you know?! Have you been following me?”
One eye tries calming me down, the other gives up.
“No. Lidya described me to …”
“Me to you?”
“Yes. We have been friends many years, Lidya and I.”
“How do I know you’re not just some crazy fuck trying to get to her?”
“Excuse me. Please. Do not leave. What ‘tis it you say?”
“I’m outta here.”
I am through the door as he grabs my arm, I pull away, keep walking.
“If you follow me, I’ll kick your ass, man. You hear?”
“Please, my friend, you are angry. You must listen, please. I am true. I do not have to show you this photograph. I want you to know my … history.”
“What do you want with Lidya? An interview?”
“Of course not!” He flicks his hand sharply near his brow. “When you talk to her, you will be sorry you act in this manner.”
“Out of my way, man.”
I continue down the street, not looking back. I can feel he is not lying but I don’t want to be involved. Lidya has so many “histories” and she gets caught up in the telling, caught up in the watching me experience them, until I am drained. Empty.
I reach the building, the doorman opens up, I squeeze the eye in my pocket. I want to throw it away. But then I would be throwing away the feeling I had on the deck of the boat, the sun beating down, the glare that hit me when I discovered it. There was a presence I felt on that boat, an almost fatherly presence. There was a memory I could not get to, a recognition. Then there was a terror too.
I look out the window. Berger is not there. Still I feel as if he is watching. I have no way of reaching Lidya, but I don’t care to tell her. Episodes happen.
When you dream of someone who doesn’t know you, someone who’s never seen you before, you take something from them. Perhaps they stir wherever they are, feel some small part taken. You see this when you look at Lidya. All of the missing small bits.
I remain intact, never taking from myself. I remain intact, never searching for my pieces.
Everywhere in the room, photographs of Lidya. The city glows through the window. Her image everywhere, catching the light. I try pushing Berger out of my mind, try clearing my head to concentrate on the usual. I brush the satin trim of the sheet against my lips, my chin, my neck. I turn over, turn over again. Press against the mattress. Finally, I jerk off. Afterwards, I feel guilty. Usually, never. I get up.
Everywhere, photographs of Lidya. In her bedroom, in the corridor, in the living room. Accompanying her, in a few, are the men in her life. Framed magazine covers, page 6 parties. I could go back to New York. I’ve found little work here. If I could afford it, I’d move to a hotel. If I had courage, I’d really look into it. Myself.
It occurs to me that Berger’s intentions may have little to do with her. I think he only wanted to make me feel comfortable, familiar. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t have a clue about how to put someone at ease.
I set up the tripod, the lights, stand with my back to the camera, facing the blinds. I squeeze. I turn my profile to the camera, watch my shadow, squeeze.
In the morning, I receive a message from Lidya. She says she hopes I am having a good time, and wonders if there’s anything I need, or anything I want to tell her. I panic, which is ridiculous, because surely she is only being polite. But what if Berger contacted her? What if Berger were some kind of trustworthiness test? Then, had I failed?
She left her cell phone number, which she hadn’t given me before, still I leave word with her assistant that everything is fine, Thank you.
A week later I see Berger near the Luxembourg. It’s the one day I do not carry the eye in my pocket. I approach him, apologize for the night in the bar. We walk.
“My sister lives here. So close to this beautiful garden. She has a nurse. The child is yet in Austria … with our mother.”
“How do you—”
“I must take you to see her, yes?”
“I don’t really have time, I—”
“I would like if you would go with me to visit her. Please, my friend.”
“Okay. Sure. Whatever.”
We walk many blocks, Berger stumbles upon a curb, sneezes, an annoyingly tiny sneeze. I say, Bless you, he waves his hand.
“I do believe in God, yes.”
“That’s good, I suppose.”
“Yes, I had an American girlfriend.”
“And that’s why you—”
. “Well, I was … how you say, beat up with desire.”
“Pussy-whipped.”
Berger laughs, waves his hand, then sneezes again. Like a caught rat, it sounds. One eye watches me search my pants pockets; I find nothing.
“I have a handkerchief. ‘Tis okay.” He doesn’t use it, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “This American girlfriend, she was religious. A Christian Scientist.”
“Don’t they give everything they earn to the—”
“Yes, they give testimonies.”
“How do you know Lidya?”
“Lidya, she is not part of this history.”
“How far is your sister?”
“Not far, only here. But God, I do believe is a … collective soul. All of us, little bits of mind, lost, yes?”
“Lost?”
“Until we find our way of thought back to each other again. Ah, here it ‘tis.”
He gestures his odd way again, an arm, one eye at the entrance, the other rests on the flowers.
“The American girlfriend. She grew up in a loving house.”
“All hunky-dory?”
“How do you say? Hunk-door …”
“Hunky-dory, peachy keen. Everything perfect.”
“Ah yes, this she would seem. Come. This way, please.”
He opens the door for me. The smell assaults us.
“My sister’s friend, a composer, he makes perfume, yes. A special scent for each friend. Touching, isn’t ‘tit?”
Touching that he mentions the perfume but not the horrid stench it fails to hide. Berger, still extends
his arm, I walk down the corridor, which is mustard-colored, matte green potted plants line either side.
“I suppose they don’t need light, these plants?”
“Oh no. My sister is a perfect mother … of plants. Even in illness.” Berger lowers his voice. “She makes £X-quisite dolls as well, yes.”
He raps on the door at the end of the hallway. A ghastly murmur bids us to enter.
“I have brought a friend, Sunnie.”
Sunnie is huge, with long hands to match. She overflows the bed. Her eyes are brilliant emerald, her smile thin, but warm.
“How do you do?” She nods. In German she asks Berger a question that makes him laugh. I want to leave immediately.
“She wants to know if I tell you she is contagious.”
“Is she?”
“No, no. Of course not. She joked this way with my American girlfriend. She joked her about … what is it … ‘thinking away the illness.’”
“Tell her I’d like to get out of here.”
Berger says something to her, and they laugh.
“She wants to know if I tell you, yet, about Lidya.”
“What about her?” I wish suddenly that I had brought my camera, as well as the eye. I would like to put it in the palm of his hand, tell him to hold it out in front of me in the ray of light that crosses Sunnie’s bed just over her right hip and her left thigh. Tell her to smile again, the way she did when I took her huge hand in mine.
“They were friends long ago. That’s how I met Lidya. I had both my eyes then. I was quite … handsome. But too quiet. Ah. Too quiet, too young for her.”
“What is it you want, then? You want Lidya to come see her, is that it?” I look at the dresser, the pushed-in cloth faces of the many dolls, their hard legs of plastic.
“No, no. You know my father also knew Lidya quite well. Too well, in fact.” One eye looks into mine with sudden hatred, the other stares lovingly at my hand.
Sunnie grabs my wrist, too strongly, pulls me to the bed.
“Tell her I hate it when people touch me.”
Berger laughs, one eye now casually on me, the other on Sunnie’s sheets. She tells him something quickly; urgently, her brows meet center.
“Actually, my friend, she wants you to touch her forehead. Gently please. Only lay your hand across it there, as if she has fever you might cool away.”
The skin there is soft, I can feel the lines against my palm, as she breathes. She murmurs again in that frightening tongue I heard from behind the door. As I take my hand away she claps it back almost violently.
“Berger,” she utters with desperation.
“She wants to remember you something. Only a minute, please my friend.” He closes his eyes, turns toward the window. “Years ago on the boat of our father, there is an explosion. He was taking us from our mother, and he kept us there with all of our possessions. There is an explosion on the boat … that killed him. Sunnie makes herself ill, so many years, trying to remember, yes. What it ‘tis he said.”
The smell of the perfume is so thick in the room with the light caressing the dust. My palm sweats with the heat of her brain working like that. I try, with my palm, to take a picture of the mechanism beneath.
“She thinks you have it, yes? What my father said, how it rolls from his mouth as he lays there. Dying. I do not see him. Sunnie sees him. There is blood in my eyes. I do not remember. But she thinks you have it, my friend.”
“I have your eye, Berger,” I say suddenly. “It is home at Lidya’s. I found it little more than a week ago. It was on her boat.”
“You cannot have my eye, my friend. Here they are, they look at you. My third eye, ah … ‘tis long gone, it ‘tis dead with our father, yes. It burns as many things on that boat burned. Many more things should have burned on that boat, as well. Like my father’s letters to Lidya. Letters when she and Sunnie were no more than … what ‘tis it? … twelve?”
“I have to go.”
And I rush out of the room, down the corridor, knocking over a pot, and out of the front door, bounding the steps. If I wanted to be that close to a father’s legacy of guilt, I could have stayed at home with my mother.
Berger doesn’t come after me. But I wait for him blocks and blocks away in my favorite courtyard near the Delacroix museum. A young Japanese man strokes a sweet flamenco guitar, pigeons gather; a woman sits on a bench that addresses the flowers at her feet. Perfect photograph. Like Lidya, as I first met her. I know this is why she keeps me so close to her heart. She said I found her there, in that polaroid, the first one I took before we began the shoot. She was at once that little girl and the old woman as she meets her end. And everything in between. She had all of her missing bits, she says were long ago given, not taken, away.
So what? I think, if Berger’s father was in love with her? So what if he actually took her? People do survive that kind of thing.
I step toward the birds so I can hear the clutter of their wings as they take off in flight. As their wings meet the hollow of the instrument, there’s a vibration in my stomach, I put my hand there, the tip of my fingers touching my breast pocket, and I realize the eye is there.
I turn around, and Berger stands there, feet apart. He smiles, then lifts his arms as if to embrace the air. Through the trees, from beyond Berger, the light hits me like the moment on that deck of the boat. Suddenly he disappears. And so my hand is back on Sunnie’s forehead. I can see their father. Sure. But what does it matter what he said? Would it bring back all they had lost? Could it really give them peace?
I let the eye drop, and it rolls not so far from where I stand. And I’m not so far. I’m not so very far from where I stand.
THANK YOU
Montserrat Fontes and Jascha Kessler. Joel Rose, Karen Rinaldi, Kevin Powell, and Meri Nana-Ama Danquah. Matthew Bialer, Leslie Gardner, Dave Dunton, and Ira Silverberg. Pearl Cleage, Jabari Asim, Wanda Coleman, and Danny Simmons. John Kaplan, Joseph Gallo, Robert Lyons, and Ron Dobson. Terri Patchen, Hooman Majd, Bill Brown, Daniel Baxter, Ron Athey, Traci Lind, David Trinidad, Austin Young, Eric Junker, Kateri Butler, Christian Puffer, Frederic Cassidy, Kathleen Wiegner, Aldo Sampieri, Roger Neal, Scott C. Davis, and Yoona Lee. Laura, Erica, Violet, and Larkin Teasley, Casey and Willy Vlautin. Imogen Teasley-Vlautin.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Lisa Teasley is the author of an award-winning story collection, Glow in the Dark, and the novels Dive and Heat Signature. She lives in Los Angeles.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The text of this book is set in Linotype Sabon, named after the type founder, Jacques Sabon. It was designed by Jan Tschichold and jointly developed by Linotype, Monotype and Stempel, in response to a need for a typeface to be available in identical form for mechanical hot metal composition and hand composition using foundry type.
Tschichold based his design for Sabon roman on a font engraved by Garamond, and Sabon italic on a font by Granjon. It was first used in 1966 and has proved an enduring modern classic.