His daughter Mona came in, all bundled up against the cold.
She was a dark and moody-looking girl. Dr. Glass gave her some money and she went back out. She was ten years old, he said, and had her own apartment. It was right around the corner, in a large and well-managed building. He said he and his wife agreed that Mona needed special rearing. She tended to be too reliant on her parents and had come up hazy on some tests for ego reinforcement. It was also good for him and Natasha, he said. It gave them more time for their own work and enabled them to channel their affection to Mona instead of sort of slobbering it all over the place twenty-four hours a day. They wanted to give her quality time, not quantity time. Whenever they were dining in, without guests, they invited Mona over. They talked on the phone every day. Besides, she had a roommate. Her younger cousin Stephanie. Steph’s parents were involved in messy divorce proceedings, and it was felt she’d be better off living with Mona for a while.
“Can it strike at any time?” I said.
“Another super question. Yes, it can, without warning. One day you are walking along window-shopping. The next, you are attempting to scrape your eyeball with a fork.”
“And can it vanish at any time, without a trace?”
“It never vanishes,” he said. “The only thing that can make it go away is God. Once you get it, as far as we know, you’re stuck with it.”
He winked at Shaver.
“At very best, all we can do at the present level of technology is reduce the number and duration of the symptoms. The thing’s been around for hundreds of years, but we’re really just beginning to separate and classify the many, many variations. Our friend Shaver has a mild form. Root symptoms only. The worst sufferers tend to imitate other people’s sudden motions. This is called a startle response. There’s a conference in the Bronx day after tomorrow. You’re welcome to come along.”
As we were getting dressed to leave. Dr. Glass’s wife Natasha came in from the next room. She was a tall, long-striding woman wearing a black jersey, black pants, a lot of necklaces and chains, and dark, bold makeup, especially around the eyes. When she was still three-quarters of the way across the room, she extended her arm to shake hands.
Dr. Glass explained that Natasha collected art. All the paintings in the apartment were things she’d picked out, tracked down, commissioned, discovered, lucked into, or outbid someone for.
We shook hands. She had a nice, toothy smile. Little primitive persons hung from some of the chains around her neck.
“I’m so glad I could say hello before you left,” she told me. “I think it’s such fun.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I figured it must be hockey. Before she had a chance to say anything else. Shaver pointed to one of the larger canvases in the room. It was white and green with several broad, thick, jagged streaks of black.
“Explain the spoon,” he said.
At first I didn’t see it, but when I looked more closely, there it was, at the bottom right-hand part of the picture, attached to the canvas by glue or epoxy or whatever they use. A soup spoon. A real one. With little dribbles of green paint on it.
“What’s it doing there?” Shaver said. “Explain it.”
“Must I?” Natasha said.
Dr. Glass shrugged.
“Well it must be there for a reason,” Shaver said. “I was brought up to believe people do things for reasons.”
“You simply accept it for what it is,” Natasha said.
“What is it?”
“A spoon. It is a spoon. You accept it as such. For some people, I suppose this requires a leap of faith.”
Dr. Glass looked amused.
Shaver said, “The painter didn’t just put it there because he had too many soup spoons around the house. It’s not something he stuck there, meaning to come back and get it later when the soup was hot.”
He sounded mad.
“Once upon a time,” Natasha said, “these pictures may have been difficult. But we have gone way beyond their difficulties. We now know they are simple. The canvas is canvas. The paint is paint. We respond to it as paint. And we respond to the spoon as a spoon. It is a spoon.”
“But what’s it doing there?” Shaver said.
I’d never seen him so mad. The veins in his neck were popping.
“But it’s so simple,” Natasha said. “Once upon a time, we might have worked and fought and struggled to come up with suitable explanations for the spoon. We might have searched for metaphors and images. We now know this isn’t necessary. It is a spoon. This is all we have to say, and it is almost too much. I can easily envision the day when it will be too much. The paint is paint. This is how we have learned to respond to it. And the spoon is a spoon.”
“The other paintings don’t have spoons,” Shaver said. “Explain that. If you can’t explain the spoon, explain no spoon.”
Dr. Glass winked at his wife. Hi, fella.
“But imagine every painting with a spoon!” Natasha cried, and she whirled, her arm sweeping the room. “How could we respond? Nothing but spoons! Intolerable!”
The both paused for a moment, probably to adjust mentally to the other person’s line of argument. We were all standing. I had one arm in my coat, the rest of the coat hanging behind me. Shaver had on his big, yellow snow hat.
“I still don’t know what it’s doing there,” he said.
Dr. Glass said, “What’s your nose doing in the middle of your face?”
“Shitty analogy, Sid,” his wife said. She shook her head. Took a long look at Dr. Glass. Shook her head again.
Shaver put his coat on.
“All right, why a spoon?” he said. “Why not a knife or a fork?”
He was furious.
“But don’t you see?” Natasha said. “Isn’t it obvious? You might as well use a knife or fork to slash the canvas. Where’s your eye? If my husband can learn to see, anyone should be able to. When it came to pictures, this man was a mutant. He was a butcher, visually. But when I saw what he was able to accomplish in his own field, with no particular talent or special ability, and the man knows I feel this way, I was sure I could teach him to look at pictures. To be open and frank, and I love and respect the man, the man is not exceptional in any way. Sid is the epitome of average. All he did was latch on to a funny disease. I mean let’s be brutally candid, that’s what he did. And the man is famous in his field. He travels all over the world, and the man knows I say this openly to everyone, but he makes a career out of telling people that nobody really knows what disease is, and he goes on television all the time, late at night, mind you, very late, between roach poison commercials, but he gets on, he is there, this man Sid Glass, with that blond streak in his hair, telling America we don’t really know what disease is. If this man can learn to see, anyone can.”
Dr. Glass winked at me.
“What is there to see?” Shaver said. “All I see is a painting with a spoon stuck to it.”
“Good, excellent,” Natasha said. “We’re finally getting somewhere. We now know this is precisely the way to respond. A painting with a spoon stuck to it. How simply, incisively put. We’ve never seen a spoon used this way. This is its power. It is providing us with a new way to look and see.”
This really got him mad. He swept his hat right off his head. I could see a vein throbbing in his temple.
“How could that be well put? What’s incisive about saying a painting with a spoon? That’s the only thing you could say.”
“In the past there were many things we might have said. We were seeing something different then.”
“We were seeing a painting with a spoon!”
“We were seeing something wholly, entirely different,” Natasha said very softly.
“It was a spoon then, it’s a spoon now!”
“We responded to what we thought was expressed by the spoon, was expressed by the paint,” she said in a whisper. “We didn’t see the spoon itself.
We didn’t know how. We had to learn.”
“How could anyone have to learn to see a spoon? What kind of people don’t see a spoon when it’s right in front of them? Ten years go by and they finally realize it’s a spoon. What kind of people?”
Little Mona came in, all bundled up.
“The toilet won’t flush,” she said.
I took advantage of the distraction to put Shaver’s hat back on his head and get him started toward the door.
“You’ll just have to cope, won’t you?” Natasha told her little girl.
“Well, it won’t flush and Stephanie’s gotta go.”
“Did you call the maintenance man?” Dr. Glass said.
“They said they couldn’t come till four this afternoon. I told Stephanie to hold it in, but I don’t think she can.”
“She can go now and flush later,” Dr. Glass said. “Did you ever think of that? We have guests, Mona. We can’t interrupt every time you and Steph come up with some problem.”
“We were just leaving,” I said. “We’re on our way.”
Natasha disengaged herself and came with us to the door. She looked at Shaver.
“Don’t make it harder than it is,” she said quietly. “The paint is paint. It comes out of a tube, a can, an old milk carton. This is what we respond to—the fact that it is paint and that we now know it is paint. If Sid Glass can look at pictures, anyone can.”
I took Shaver’s arm and pulled him out toward the elevator.
Sanders Meade called.
“Cleo, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Well, same here, I guess.”
“I’ve wanted to talk to you, but I don’t think we ought to be seen together, especially now.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s official. I’m the new Garden president. Hughes Tool is announcing it at a press conference right now as a matter of fact.”
“Why aren’t you there?”
“They don’t want me there. They’re saying I’m snowbound in Boulder, Colorado, where I’ve gone on a pressing family matter All morning they had people checking weather conditions all over North America so they could find a place for me to be snowbound on a fairly extended basis. For a while they actually wanted to send me to Boulder, but there are no flights in or out because of the snow.”
“Why don’t they want you at the press conference, Sanders, or is that none of my business?”
“They think the announcement will create a bad enough uproar in itself. If I’m there, I might try to be too bland, too noncommittal, in order to offset the uproar caused by the announcement, and this in turn may arouse and provoke the media to say and do all sorts of things. I might be so colorless, so lacking in impact that they’ll start a crusade to bring back Kinross as much as they loathe and despise the man. They’re trying to ease me in. Hughes Tool. When can we get together, Cleo?”
“You just said we shouldn’t be seen.”
“In public, in public. We can get together quietly for dinner at my place or in some out-of-the-way restaurant. I haven’t forgotten Toronto and I’m pretty convinced you haven’t. I’d like to do it again. All of it. Or at least most of it. Much of it.”
“I’m kind of worn down, Sanders.”
“I can accept that.”
“I’ve had a lot of distractions lately and very little time to call my own.”
“That’s perfectly reasonable.”
“My brother’s birthday is coming up. I always get him something. He counts on it.”
“Absolutely. No problem. I understand completely.”
“Really?”
“Sure, sure, sure, sure.”
“And you don’t mind?”
“No, no, no.”
“Sanders, no fooling, best of luck in the presidency. I hope it works out the way you said it would.”
“What did I say?”
“You’d grow into the job. You’d be strong, not weak. You’d become your own man.”
“I said eventually.”
“I’m not putting a time limit on it.”
“I know, Cleo, but eventually can mean one month or ten years. It’s a pretty nebulous kind of word.”
“That’s probably why you chose it.”
“That’s probably why I chose it.”
Shaver and I were sitting around watching TV. He’d gotten over his big mad. Some people just have to stay away from modern art. They owe it to themselves. It makes them insane with rage, trying to figure out why someone would want to paint such a thing, or buy such a thing, or put it in a museum, and it could probably take years off your life if you spent enough time looking at these pictures. “Explain the spoon.” It could kill you faster than a California mudslide.
I knew Shaver was getting half-horny during some dance routine on the Puerto Rican channel. TV never does that to me. It is such a little staticky box. There were two dancers and they wore skimpy tops and had these long skirts down their flanks with big gaps front and back, and glittery briefs underneath, and they both had enormous bottoms, which is a thing in the warmer cultures, and I could tell Shaver was getting a little itchy because he started yawning, he went into a whole routine of drawn-out, mouth-twisting yawns, and this is what he does when he wants it.
“Let’s have a boob,” he said.
“What?”
“I want to heft some titty in my hand. Let’s throw one this way, okay?”
“Shaver, you creep.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I can go along with all the hefting, fondling, and stroking you can come up with, but I’m frankly tired of having my parts referred to in that baby talk way of yours. Those are the words men invented for woman’s parts. I happen to be touchy about my parts in terms of how they’re referred to. Men use strong, virile words for their own damn parts, like cock, prick, tool, and balls. You know these words, I know these words. These are heroic words, practically, that you can imagine characters out of mythology using. It sounds to me like men were pretty careful picking these words for the slangy parts of their own bodies. Our parts all come from the Latin, but once they’re put into slang, yours come out heroic and mine come out silly and demeaning. Tit, twat, nookie, boob, pussy. These are men’s words for women. You know these words, I know these words. Quiff, jum jums, bazooms. These are the words handed out to women. The only one worth anything is cunt, and probably some woman came up with that one.”
“I don’t think balls is so heroic,” he said.
“Compared to nookie? Who wants to be nookie? Who wants to have a nookie? Balls is tough. A ballsy guy is somebody you watch out for. I’ve been called ballsy myself for going into the corners, for standing up to guys trying to intimidate me. I’ll take ballsy over tit and twat any day. Those are insects. Tits and twats. They hop around on top of dogs.”
“Boy, sensitive,” he said.
“Damn right.”
We watched the set in dead silence for about forty-five minutes.
“Who do you wuv?” he said finally.
“Shut up.”
“Do you still wuv me? Come on, who do you wuv?”
“We’ll talk later.”
“Just tell me who you wuv.”
“I wuv you.”
“And I wuv you,” he said.
The Third Annual Conference of the North American Study Group on Jumping Frenchmen was held in the Trocadero-Starlite Ballroom in the West Farms section of the Bronx. A pretty sinister part of town. Shaver and I went up there on the subway, which was a Journey Into Fear in its own right.
Shaver told me that the Trocadero-Starlite, which was due to be razed, was owned by a man named Cristobal Guzman, whose teen-age daughter was a “jumper”—someone afflicted with Jumping Frenchmen. Mr. Guzman had offered the use of his place rent free, and Dr. Glass quickly accepted since funds were a constant problem. Shaver bitterly pointed out that Dr. Glass hadn’t been able to translate his TV appearances
into cold cash in the form of public contributions.
The ballroom was a large, dusty place with sunlight streaming in through dirty windows and a bunch of folding chairs set up in front of a small bandstand. I guess they don’t make places like that anymore. The ceiling must have been fifty feet high and there were murals of tropical beaches on the two longest walls.
About eighty people were in the ballroom when we arrived, and it still seemed empty. At first I couldn’t tell the patients from their friends and relatives. But after a few minutes of strolling around and pretending to check out the architecture of the place, while shooting stealthy looks at this and that cluster of people, I realized the relatives and friends were the ones who were discussing the condition with lively interest—symptoms, medication, rumors of new cures. The patients usually stood at the edge of these animated groups, studying their own hands or just looking off into space.
It wasn’t until I was in the place about five minutes that I noticed the first actual symptom. A middle-aged woman over at the far end of the ballroom started running in place. No one paid any attention. Then a man—right near me—put one pinky in the left corner of his mouth, one pinky in the right corner of his mouth, and he sort of raised up on his toes and puffed up his cheeks as if he was about to whistle through his fingers. Except he didn’t even try to whistle. He just stood there with his pinky fingers in his mouth.
The woman stopped running in place. A teen-age girl—it might have been Ms. Guzman—took two steps back, four steps forward. A man touched her on the arm and she jumped back in fright. The man who touched her also jumped back, imitating her reaction perfectly, down to the last muscle twitch, it looked like.
I was a little stunned by this. I wanted to nudge Shaver and point these people out to him. But of course he knew all about it.
He was one of them. That’s when the full impact hit me. He is one of them. It made me feel guilty, sad, ashamed, and dumb. It also made me feel like getting the hell out of there.
Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League Page 11