Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth (23 page)

Animals and the way we treat them—this is what I’m ranting about, here in the hospital waiting room. Rosie’s also been skipping school, though not in order to watch movies downtown. Her father is sick, and she’s installed herself semi-permanently at St. Mary’s Hospital.

“How can people not care about animals?” I fumed.

Rosie lowered her head. “I know … but I like steak. I’m very selfish.”

There were shadows under her eyes. “Go home and get some sleep, Rosie,” I said. “I’ll stay until you come back. Take your time, I don’t have anything else to do.”

“You’re so nice to me, Maya.”

“I’m a bitch these days,” I said. “I’m just a jangle of nerves.”

“No, no—and you’re right about the animals,” she said. Then she stood on her toes and kissed me goodbye. A mystic kiss to ensure that the gods looked upon me kindly. “I’m just going to shower. I’ll be back soon!” she promised.

I dug into my ever-dependable shoulder bag and retrieved a package of soda crackers and
Under the Volcano
, which seemed never to end. You read page after depressing page, and it was still the Day of the Dead in Quauhnahuac, the Consul was still drunk, Yvonne was still drifting. I set the book aside and peeked into Mr. Michaeli’s room, but he was asleep. At long last, Rosie returned. Patrick was walking morosely behind her, like a stalker under arrest.

“Look who I met in the elevator!” Rosie announced happily, as if we were all there for a wedding. “He’s here to visit Daddy.”

“I have a book for Mr. Michaeli that I promised to give him two years ago,” Patrick said.

He hadn’t changed—but I had. He’d been Vera Moore’s son when I last saw him; now he was Anthony’s brother. And not a very good brother, as far as I could tell.

Patrick sensed my critical eye, and the expanse it opened up between us relaxed him. He switched to courteous mode and asked, “How’s it going?”

“I’ll go see whether Daddy’s awake,” Rosie said.

Though there was no one else in the waiting area, Patrick slumped into a chair on the other side of the room, as far away as possible from other life forms.

“I know your brother,” I told him. “He was my counsellor at camp.”

“Really?” Patrick managed to modulate his voice so it hovered halfway between neutral comment and, just in case, disparagement. I remembered the strategy; he had used it when he’d referred to his father’s spiritual quest. I’d never met a more distrustful person.

“Is he back in California?” A year had passed since Anthony had slept in my bed; I’d not seen or heard from him since. I was hoping he’d call me or send me a postcard from wherever he was—New York, California, or maybe Paris or London. But he seemed to have forgotten all about me. I missed him.

“I guess so.”

“I wish Anthony was my brother,” I sighed. “I’ve always wanted sisters and brothers. I used to wish I had a twin sister.”

“A twin!” Patrick shuddered.

“We had twins at Camp Bakunin. For some reason, they never even talked to each other. I couldn’t understand it. One of them went off to live by herself in a separate bunk house.”

“How surprising.”

“What’s Anthony’s life like down there? Does he like it?”

“I wouldn’t know. We don’t talk much either.”

“How come? How come you don’t talk?”

“Not much in common, I guess.”

“You guess, you guess—don’t you know anything?”

Rosie returned before he could respond. She sat down next to me and her navy skirt climbed upward. The skirt from another planet, with a will of its own. A skirmish ensued as Rosie tugged it down, human versus apparel.

“I’m sorry, Patrick,” she said. “Daddy’s too tired to see anyone. And you came all this way. He appreciates it, really—and I do too.”

Patrick rose from his chair. “Guess I’ll get going,” he said.

“Can I come over?” I asked. I wanted to see the house again, I wanted to see Dr. Moore. They were all more shadowy now, the Moores, and at the same time more exposed. I knew things that possibly Patrick himself didn’t know. I wondered whether the key was still in the jade cigarette box.

“Why?” Patrick asked, genuinely puzzled.

“So gracious,” I said.

“Yeah, sure, if you want.”

I tried to persuade Rosie to join us, but she wasn’t ready to desert her post. “I have to stay with Daddy,” she said. “Have fun!”

There was limited parking at St. Mary’s, and Patrick had left his car, a white Mercedes, a long way from the hospital. It was a cold October day, and I was shivering by the time I let myself in on the passenger side.

“Are you cold?” Patrick asked, inserting a key in the ignition. “I can turn on the heat.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“I don’t get cold,” he said.

“Lucky you. Remember the cold spell last year?”

“Was there a cold spell?”

“Why do you do that?” I snapped. “Why do you duck like that?”

“I’m insecure?”

“Oh, forget it! There’s no point trying to talk to you.”

“I like winter,” he said, suddenly in a good mood. It was the driving—I could tell he liked navigating his vehicle, like a Hardy character perched aloft a village cart, pulling at the reins.

Dr. Moore didn’t come to the door when we entered her house, but we passed Mr. Davies, the cook, in the kitchen, patting dough into a baking dish. He was tall and gaunt, with thinning hair and vampire eyebrows. I couldn’t decide whether he was strange and forbidding or merely felt out of place.

Patrick and Mr. Davies ignored each other, but I said, “Hi there, Mr. Davies.” He looked up from his food preparations, nodded briefly.

Patrick didn’t seem to notice this small exchange. He dodged into the pantry and began climbing up the Dickensian staircase.

“Isn’t there any other way of getting to your part of the house?” I grumbled.

“I can get you a flashlight.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll just risk breaking my neck. Where did your mother find Mr. Davies? He’s kind of weird.”

Patrick didn’t answer. He opened the door to his loft and said, “Do you want coffee, or tea—or anything?”

“Maybe later. I wouldn’t mind some music. I’m so pissed off!” I added, the words rushing out of me.

“Why is that?” he asked, but his good mood had vanished and his voice was unfriendly.

“You’re not really interested,” I said. I selected a few novels and settled in one of the living-room chairs. Patrick drank vodka and leafed through the latest issue of
Logos
, our local underground newsweekly, printed in various hard-to-read colour combinations: pink on orange, orange on lime green.

But I was too jittery to read. I set aside my book and interrupted him. “What’s Anthony doing? Does he have a job?”

“Yeah,” Patrick yawned. “He works for a magazine. He writes about money.”

“Money?”

“Economics.”

“Why economics?”

“I have no idea.”

“How does he know about that sort of thing?”

“Just picked it up, I guess. It’s not that complicated.”

“Is he a Marxist too?”

“I wouldn’t know. The magazine he writes for certainly isn’t.”

“Do you have any photographs of yourselves as kids?” I asked, suddenly craving that entry into their lives. Photos of Anthony and Patrick as little boys, of their parents, their grandparents—a feast of revelations.

“I don’t know where they are.”

“Can’t you ask your mother?”

“I’d really rather not,” he said wearily; it was a kind of deep, all-consuming weariness, and it reminded me of my own breakdown the previous winter, when I couldn’t pull myself out of bed, out of nightmares.

The phone rang and Patrick said, “That’s my mother. She wants to play chess.” He picked up the receiver. “I can’t right now, I’m busy—”

“No, no, go ahead!” I swung my arm emphatically, then caught myself. If I turned into my mother, I’d have no choice but to join a convent.

Patrick told his mother he’d be there in a few minutes. “No, no, it’s no one. I mean … yes, Maya is here. No, she says it’s okay. We’re coming down.” He hung up.

As we made our way downstairs, Patrick abandoned me, abandoned everyone. His unapproachable distress was almost frightening; it was like coming across a suffering animal, large and harmless—a giraffe with a broken leg or a beached whale—and no one there to help.

Dr. Moore was waiting in a room that made me think of the word
rectory
, whatever that was: tall leaded-glass windows, a fire in the fireplace, walls lined with book cabinets, a small ladder for reaching the higher shelves. Patrick’s mother was sitting at a chess table close to the fire. “Hello, Maya,” she said politely. I couldn’t tell whether she was glad to see me this time round; her hopes for that first visit, long ago, had not been realized. But at least I was back, at least I’d not entirely lost touch with Patrick.

“Hi. So nice here—I love fireplaces.”

“Help yourself to a milkshake and fruit pie—homemade by Mr. Davies.” She laughed dryly, as if embarrassed but also mocking her embarrassment, and indicated a corner table, where two milkshakes in fountain glasses, a sliced pie, and a bowl of glistening cherries were arranged on a wooden tray with raised sides. “Or would you prefer tea—or coffee?”

“No, this is fine, thank you. Cute tray.” What interested me was the bowl of cherries. It’s easy to forget now what a luxury imported fruit was, once upon a time. Suddenly I was Neil Klugman in
Goodbye, Columbus
, discovering in the Patimkin basement a fridge brimming with fruit. Like him, I wanted to stuff handfuls of cherries into my pockets. I was thinking of Bubby and my mother as well as myself. They would set the bowl at the centre of our kitchen table and marvel.

“We can play chess later,” Dr. Moore offered. “I had no idea you were here. Or perhaps I’ll leave you two to play.”

“That’s okay, I don’t play chess—I’m too dumb. I don’t mind, really. I’ll just sit on the window-seat and watch.”

“Why don’t you take the cherries with you,” Dr. Moore said. “I’ll ask Mr. Davies to bring some more.” I was transparent; my greed was transparent. It seemed to me that if I had any strength of character, I’d refuse, but I accepted. On the cushioned window-seat I could gorge myself freely.

And they really were delicious, those cherries. The window, with its latticed diamond panes, looked out on a copse of
autumn-splashed trees; inside, Patrick and his mother moved chess pieces in silence. I dropped the cherry pits into my shirt pocket and picked up a copy of
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
that was lying next to me on the cushioned seat. It was a beautiful edition, with illuminated Persian artwork on every page.
A flask of wine, a book of verse, and thou …
Maybe the plump, wide-belted, gold-turbaned man sitting under the palm tree was right. Live for today.

Dr. Moore broke the silence. “For Kant, the ‘I’ was a set of
a priori
conditions. But according to Fichte, that ‘I’ in Kant’s division of ‘I’ and ‘the world’ is a tyrannical formalism.”

Just like that! She must be resuming some previous discussion, I thought. But Patrick ignored her. He said nothing, and of course I said nothing.

She wasn’t discouraged. She must have told herself that luring her son out of his shell, breaking through his resistance, would be good for him. Best to forge ahead.

“Because it posits itself independently of the world.”

Patrick’s long, slender fingers enclosed a knight.

I could see that his mother was not merely jousting for fun: Dr. Moore really was trying to make sense of the world. I tried to imagine my mother discussing Kant with me. I wondered whether in a calm state (a circumstance I could barely envision) Fanya would be able to enjoy, say, Jane Austen. In her own way, my mother was as clever as Vera Moore.

“But Hegel would say that Fichte is getting Kant wrong. Kant at least acknowledges the problem that exists between ‘I’ and ‘the world.’ Hegel describes this formalism as the morbid beautiful soul, pure in itself, but unreal and empty.”

“Very interesting,” Patrick said apathetically.

Dr. Moore ignored the rebuff. Apart from her blueprint for Patrick, she was hungry for conversation. “And Hegel’s solution—the ‘I’ swallows the world, and the world is the objectification of spirit.”

Patrick made a small, restrained sound, something between a grunt and a chortle. His mother looked up at him, tried to conceal her excitement. “Why are you laughing?”

“Nothing. It’s a good solution.”

“How? How so?” She was pleading with him now, and the scene made me think, for some reason, of Ghirlandaio’s
Adoration of the Shepherds—
the ox and donkey peering curiously over the sarcophagus; a shepherd, apparently the artist himself, pointing with his index finger at the baby with the shower-cap halo and cheerful raised knee. Dr. Moore, in the present version, would be the fair-haired, slightly pouting Mary, and the chess pieces were the parade of people in the distance, coming to see what was what.

But Patrick only said, “Check.”

“Ingenious,” she said, nodding her approval.

“Very ingenious.”

“Now I think you have got me in a trap.”

Without antagonism, pleased with himself, Patrick said, “Maybe.”

And his mother’s cool, tangential voice also grew more intimate. “Yes, it looks bad for me. I think now I have no escape.”

“Maybe,” he repeated.

“If I move my rook?”

“I’m not saying.”

Three moves later Patrick won the game.

“Very impressive,” Dr. Moore said with satisfaction, as if she’d been the one who came up with the clever move.

Patrick, enthusiastic against his better judgment, showed her how she could have saved her king.

But tactlessly she destroyed the unguarded moment. “So, through chess you feel more validated, I think?”

Now Patrick wasn’t only angry—he was disgusted with himself for having let go. “Very validated,” he said, his voice like a clenched fist. “In the
Fichtean
sense.”

“I was wondering … ”I interrupted.

“Oh, Maya, you were so quiet I forgot you were here. You see how I lose to my son!”

“I was wondering, could you tell me what this dream I had means?”