Hex

by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

  LEATHER

  “What’s your move,” I said. I’d come all the way down to the lobby to find him and had lost my mind in the elevator. He stood chatting with the doorman as if his life weren’t changing. The doorman said, “Evening.”

  “Your move,” I said. “Who do you fight for? Your wife? Your girlfriend? Yourself?”

  “Fight?” said Barry. He wasn’t ready to part with the earnestly pleasant time he’d been having and knew me to be unpleasant. He looked at me the way you might look at a telemarketer you could see.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt. Tom and Joan are having a go of it in the library and Mishti is having a good cry and you’re down here with,” I squinted at the doorman’s name badge, “Charles. I thought you might want a piece of the action.”

  “A go of it?” said Barry. I wondered how many years on earth you could complete by only repeating the last thing someone else said to you. Barry had completed forty-five.

  I walked back through the parallel leather couches and rang the elevator bell. Barry whispered something disparaging to Charles and then jogged over to the elevator door as it was opening. We rode the first nine floors in silence. Between the ninth and tenth floors Barry asked me, “Do you think she knows about Mishti?” I didn’t answer. “She must,” he said. “Christ, she must have known all along.” A blissful, luminous fear poured through me, as if fear were the cousin of justice.

  TIME

  “Joan,” said Barry.

  “Barry,” said Tom.

  “I’m sorry,” Barry said, taking a left turn. “Joan from my heart I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” said Mishti, clean-faced.

  “I’m sorry,” Barry said to Mishti as well.

  “I’m not,” you said to everyone.

  Tom said nothing.

  “Babe,” said Carlo. Nobody knew where he’d come from.

  “I don’t want to go to Bermuda,” said Mishti.

  “February,” said Carlo.

  “Not ever,” said Mishti.

  “Do you mean—” said Carlo.

  “I mean,” said Mishti.

  “It’ll never happen again,” said Barry.

  “You can have whatever you like,” you told him.

  “I want you,” said Barry.

  “I want him,” you said.

  Tom said nothing.

  I looked at you and the difference between age forty and thirty and fifteen felt very small. We all stood awaiting the day we’d grow up and leave home.

  LOVE

  In your office a week later your braid was back. You looked at me and said, “Why did you fetch Barry, you idiot dog.”

  “Why did you flaunt Tom?”

  “When beauty asks you a question, how often do you reply?”

  “Joan,” I said, “Joan,” I had conquered you forever and now you’d have to die of shame, “Joan,” I said, moaning the o, “are you quoting Ani DiFranco at me?”

  You took a seat, humbly, in complete defeat.

  “Yeah,” you said. I’d never heard you say Yeah before. You smiled. You said, “I thought she was before your time.”

  “We’re the same,” I said, and added, for good measure, “I need you.”

  “How do you need me, Nell.”

  “As a parent.”

  “I chose not to have children.”

  “As a teacher.”

  “Expelled.”

  “As a friend.”

  “You have several.”

  “As an institution.”

  “Enroll anywhere else.”

  “As validation.”

  “I have validated you.”

  “As approval.”

  “I don’t approve.”

  “As the only person beside myself I can bear.”

  “You can bear yourself?”

  “Now I can’t.”

  “Good, go home.”

  I started to cry, which I hadn’t done since Tom’s string beans and before that not for four years.

  You grimaced at my feelings and said, “I’m tired of you and all your little friends pawing at me as if I can bless you, I can’t bless you, leave me the motherfuck alone.”

  “Leave Barry,” I said.

  “I did,” you said.

  I grabbed the armrests of your chair and kissed you. The chair squeaked. I held the roller wheel in place with one foot. You leaned back and rested your head on the wall.

  “I don’t love you,” you said.

  I let go of the armrests and the wheel. I must have looked frazzled. You said, to be clearer, “I am not in love with you, Nell Barber,” and it was the kindest and most legitimizing thing you could say, as if you could have loved me, as if you only happened not to, as if you only didn’t, not couldn’t, not wouldn’t dare.

  “We’ve come to the end of this now,” you said, your eyelids hanging so low on your coldest eyes you might have been half asleep. “I’ll send you the assistant money and registration when it comes through this week. Test your monkshood. Leave me out of it. You’re fine, Nell. I’m fine. We’re the same. As you’ve said: get a goddamn grip.”

  MEMO

  From:

  NSF Aid Committee

  Office of the Chairman

  To:

  Professor Joan Kallas

  Columbia University

  Your applicant for the assistant position has been rejected, as it has been brought to our attention that she is ineligible. Assistants must be currently enrolled doctoral candidates working toward a terminal degree in your project’s most closely aligned field. Please resubmit an enrolled and qualified candidate by January 15 for reconsideration. Thank you.

  Nell—

  I should have expected this, I didn’t think

  they had the most updated registrar logs.

  I’m sorry. There’s nothing else I can do for

  you and I’d rather we stop speaking.

  You understand.

  My best, J

  MARCH

  I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

  MARK STRAND

  I

  Lose me as you lost your cat, your bearings, your wherewithal, your identity. Lose me as you lose autumn each year to ice, as you lose a year each year. Lose me as you lose a little weight and your bones show. Lose me like a wet food dropped face down. Both earrings. Any key. Lose me like what blew off the ferry. Lose me like the dollhouse furniture you kept since childhood and in adulthood misplaced while moving. Lose me like your prize mountain you saw once and can’t remember where it was, what country. Lose me the way you lose fog. Lose me and fuck you.

  I am the field that cannot comprehend itself after the fog has cleared and it is only itself again. I am the fog that has cleared. I am the cleanest, smallest, emptiest land mammal and I am fast. I am not waiting for anyone to come. Take your years, your rituals, your favorites and your signs, I have none of you. I give you entirely back to yourself and I know that is more than you want.

  It is completely sacred to lose something you never needed.

  The anger that takes your place is red and unnecessary but I’ll lose it too in turn and then only my nonphysical self will fill up my physical self, I’ll be exactly my whole size. I will not be 40 percent you.

  It’s March again, last year on this date you analyzed my oaks, time circles but it does not repeat, March again but no oaks. It is up to me to do something today that I might like to recall on this date next year. You are no longer my marker of time.

  I regret your bloodlessness, your peace, your instruction, your friendship, your hair, your socks I never saw.

  I want to be your nothing, to occur to you only as an unknown, for your only thought of me to be wonder, not wonder as awe but as an absolute lack of information.

  Not
to impress, not to receive your approval your interest or your disdain, total blankness, which is not to say that we are strangers, it is to say that we have fallen from each other’s grace.

  Some things are just very large parts of your life, and not your life.

  If you change your life it changes. I changed my life and it changed. My life did not assert itself (or it did, as pain) or hold fast or keep shape.

  I have only ever been a crayon.

  The hymn says: I am like one who has been anointed.

  The train says: Stand clear of the closing doors.

  HILDEGARD

  Hildegard von Bingen, you prophet, you doctor, you abbess, you hearer of music, you daughter of the Nahe River, you daughter of Hildebert, you ward of Jutta the sister of Count Meginhard, you wearer of the habit of a nun, you favorite of the monk Godfrey and the abbot Conon, you articulator of the cosmos that holds humanity between thumb and forefinger, you composer of canticles, you creator of nine hundred words, you baker of spelt bread, you will be my new Joan.

  I dedicate this third notebook to you and I take your teachings as its start. I couldn’t keep up with things the way they were. I couldn’t keep up with Joan. I couldn’t keep up with my so-called self. I couldn’t even maintain my own system. I saw Joan’s tongue in Tom’s mouth and forgot the foods, my favorite, and collapsed without thinking into cop-outs like Leather, Time, Love? As if Love had anything to do with what happened in the arms of Joan’s swivel chair. No more monikers, euphemisms. In this book we go back to ourselves. I am Nell. You are Hildegard.

  You say,

  Peas make a person courageous.

  Eating watercress is not of much use or much harm to a person.

  When eaten, parsnip only fills the person’s stomach.

  I say, give me peas.

  You say,

  In whatever way it is eaten, fennel makes a person happy.

  In whatever way it is eaten, dill makes a person sad.

  In whatever way it is eaten, celery induces a wandering mind since its greenness sometimes harms and makes the person sad with instability.

  I say, I have eaten enough celery for four lifetimes and let the fifth be flavored by fennel. I say, enough dill.

  You say,

  Chick-peas are warm and gentle.

  Bitter vetch is not very suitable as a medicine.

  I say, indeed.

  You say,

  If a person goes out of his or her mind as if they know nothing and are lying deranged in ecstasy, dip peony seed in honey and place it upon the tongue.

  You said this between 1152 and 1158, almost a millennium before I went out of my mind. I always know nothing. You never saw me lying deranged in ecstasy (I have lain deranged in ecstasy). Still you knew me, because you knew every being who had been or would be. You argued in 1152 for whole grains, for ginger as a digestion aide, for butter and salt in moderation. I didn’t know, as far into the future as yesterday, that nutmeg will calm all the bitterness of heart and mind, open the clouded senses, and make the mind joyful. I didn’t know that hail never falls on a fern. You say to put a rose leaf on my eye in the morning. Hildegard, I will.

  You say,

  Let a person in whom melancholy rages, who has a bitter soul, and who is always sad, often drink wine cooked with arum root; the melancholy and fever will diminish.

  I say, we can do this together, this new year. Neither you nor Elvis died. But I don’t know where to get any arum root.

  You say,

  Let whoever’s head is crusty cut off the soft part of bacon and also its rind and throw away these parts. Then let the person take the rest, pound it with calendula in a mortar, and smear the head with it often. The crustiness will fall off, and the person’s head will be beautiful.

  I say, give me bacon. I say, my head will be beautiful.

  SUNNY

  For the past two months in the absence of any other structure or form of support I have worked the bar at Sunny’s. I work twelve-hour shifts because the bar is only open twelve hours a day. Johansen can’t understand my devotion but she’s no longer understaffed so she finally got to fire George. She’s always wanted to fire George. I wish George were still around. He was conscientious about filling the peanut bowls. Every Monday I buy three groceries: yogurt, rigatoni, and Birds Eye frozen vegetables. There are times in your life when tortellini becomes painful. I do yogurt for breakfast, yogurt for lunch, and rigatoni and vegetables for dinner wherein the vegetables are souped up in yogurt. I don’t cook meat at home because it’s expensive and it never washes off. Every once in a while I fry bacon to communicate with Hildegard. In any case I’m getting enough protein.

  Whoever coined the term “make a living” poetically misled us. It’s bad math to equate life with survival. I am making a living behind the bar. I am not living, or feeling alive. I’ve started water-flossing again.

  In this same two-month period Carlo has started a hedge fund. The seed money came from a friend of Mendelson’s friend. Barry has left the university; he has joined Carlo; his new title is COO, which is a sound I like to make out loud and think of him making. Joan has left everybody. No one has heard from Joan.

  That colloquium Carlo attended while Mishti did not attend Betty’s Shake-Off-Christmas dance intensive has an odd name considering it has nothing to do with academic seminars and everything to do with pairing investment managers with launch capital. Carlo went to Bermuda by himself in February and came up with the fund name there: Juniperus, after the Latin name for the Bermuda cedar tree. Sometimes I wonder if Carlo, provider of beds and namer of trees, shared more of my interests than I realized. I doubt I’ll see him again. It’s nice that he wanted an earth-inspired name for his hedge fund but Juniperus sounds more like a planetary mix of Jupiter and Uranus and I find it hard to pronounce. I hope his investors find it winning. I don’t actually wish Carlo any harm. It’s most likely that Carlo, in eventually losing his investors’ money, will be the source of his own damage, which makes sense, because nothing else has ever damaged Carlo.

  I’m sorry that the one thing he wants is something he’s not going to get. The one thing he wants is to be dazzlingly rich, and he is only smart enough to be tolerably rich. Dazzling riches require some real imagination. I wish for him that he might someday come to want another thing. That’s the real hazard with people who only wish for one thing in the world: the brutal singularity of the wish doesn’t make them any more likely to get it. And when they don’t get it, they are no longer people. Carlo’s going to be blank for a long time before he waltzes again and I do hope he waltzes again.

  Barry is taking care of Carlo’s “operations,” which again sounds more like bowel movements to me than whatever it’s supposed to suggest. He’s very sad to have lost his marriage but I don’t think he’s more sad than he’s happy to have gotten this job. He’s escaped academia for all time; he’ll be consequential now, and welcome among the consequential. His new crowd will be full of his next wives. Mendelson promises him as much. But more immediately, I’m sure Barry has a few recent graduates in mind. They too have just left the university. They too need a hand to hold.

  Mishti no longer holds Barry’s hand, or Carlo’s, or anyone’s. She won’t allow any more sex. Mishti used to believe, believe fervently, that hard work will be rewarded, and beauty will be desired, and that being wonderful is worth it. Since the smut of our Christmas dinner, she’s taken up new theories: liars win, lust is disgusting, trust is impossible. This kind of total ideological crash is only available to those who are capable of fervent belief in the first place. Mishti used to hold colossal faith in the great glow of the world; she’s now colossally depressed. Her gates have crashed down around her, like before a battle: her eyes are closed, fists are closed, lust is closed, ears are closed even to sympathy. She’s turned herself off, as if with the flipping of a power switch, and really, I cannot see her lig
hts anymore. She is miring in a kind of hate—who knows how long this stupor will last—hate of passion, hate of connection. She finds love ludicrous. She says that love is only vanity, delusion, and greed. She says she doesn’t want any part of it. I have heard her say she wants to die.

  Mishti is too alive to die, but she’s making a pretty good show of it. She’s started skipping class, as if rebellion were only now occurring to her, at age twenty-six. She’s removing the enormous jewels from her fingers and lifting her bare middle finger to the world.

  I’d like to return to the world, if it will have me. In Joan’s words, I’d like to get something done. My one sprouting castor bean is rising a little higher every day; the other is still dormant. I’d like to test and treat the soil of my monkshood potting, adjust the pH, give it the supplemental nutrients it may need to get going. All I need is one good leaf and then I can literally turn it. Maybe when I finish Rachel’s project, this project that was never even mine, I can decide what my own project will be. It won’t be oaks, maybe it won’t even be a biological science. Maybe Mishti and I will give it all up and start from scratch. Start a taco truck. A scarf store. A pillow factory. Joan would finally implode in disappointment. Good, I would like that.

  Hildegard, have you heard from Joan?

  BARBER

  My parents called me. I guessed that someone necessarily had died, but they only wanted to say hello. Hello is not something we say in our family.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “It’s a new year,” my father said. Even pre-coffee math insisted that it had been a new year for at least seventy-five days.

  I put the coffee on and thought, My father is only one-half Jewish. His mother, one Esther Rosenbaum of Albany, NY, married to her mother’s infinite discontent Harry Barber, the hat man. (“Hat man?” I once asked. “He sold some kind of hats” is all I’ve ever been told.) But Esther, in allegiance to her mother or to protect herself from vanishing, became Jewisher and Jewisher with time, bar mitzvah–ing my father so thoroughly he can still recite the haftorah blessing by heart. The hat man didn’t mind.