American Genius

by Lynne Tillman

  If lunch includes a salad, romaine lettuce and tomato, shredded carrots and sliced cucumber, to stave off eating it, I toss the ingredients into an ugly, plastic bowl and make a dressing for it in a plain water glass, but often I don’t have what’s necessary for a good dressing, like mustard, and then I must decide if I want to walk to the main house, barge into the kitchen, bother the kitchen helpers, especially the young man who likes to glance slyly at me, the girl who transgressed the rules, or the cook or assistant cook, who may or may not be there, and ask for the missing ingredient. I will be considered bothersome, a pest, too picky, and difficult. But to be picky necessitates putting on shoes, a jacket and scarf, switching off all the lights, and making sure the fire is out, so often I can’t decide, annoyed at myself for not having remembered what I would need from the kitchen while at breakfast, but then I’m not thinking about lunch when I rush away from the bustling, often tension-ridden dining room as quickly as possible, to avoid trouble.

  Yesterday, after a midday meal of tuna fish, pickles, and low-fat vichyssoise, I walked to the library. Everyone here can use the library, which is a simple, four-story brick building, with four large, similar rooms, three of which have chairs, benches, and tables, and one, a piano, lutes, two acoustic guitars, and chess sets. There is an empty birdcage in each room, a golf set and tennis racquets in one, a few sweaters near the fireplaces in all four, where mementos from former residents dot the rooms, and in three of the rooms, dark wood shelves are crammed with forgotten novels and poetry, an abundance of manuals, especially on fly fishing, cookbooks, how-to books, outdated encyclopedias, and musty dictionaries. Some people from the nearby town are permitted, if they have been issued visitors’ cards, to use the library, though most don’t, and occasionally I have run into one when I have gone in search of a book that might help me. Yesterday, a disheveled, elderly woman emerged from the library’s bathroom and inquired, brusquely, “Are you a teacher?” I told her I had taught American history and furniture and interior design occasionally, and then she asked, inserting herself into my day, “That’s good, but do you have a man?” Quickly, I had to decide whether I’d answer her impertinent question, but then I wanted to, if only to see what might transpire, because I’m curious, lunch hadn’t been exciting, pickles and tuna fish are laughable, and I hope for novelty. I restrained myself from asking, Can you have a man? and instead answered:

  —I did, recently.

  —Dumb women don’t have men.

  —You really think that?

  —Well, sometimes it’s smart women who don’t have men—

  —How can you tell anyway?

  —I’m not a mind reader.

  —That’s a relief.

  —But I read. All my books burned in a fire, so I come here. I have good eyes. I can see what other people don’t. Don’t let that scare you.

  Now the odd woman smiled, brushed off her tatty skirt, and straightened her shoulders, all of which was appealing, because she had found a necessity to relate to me, another character, with some severity, and the encounter drew something from her, so she looked at me solemnly and announced:

  —You have to use your time wisely, and then there’s always chance.

  —Yes, chance, you’re right, there’s always chance. And hope.

  —Not hope, chance. People don’t know when chance comes knocking. Mostly they’re looking with blinders on . . .

  She trailed off. When I said hope, I wasn’t sure why, except that I wanted to hear what she’d say. The odd inquisitive woman scrutinized me again and rushed to the massive library door, opened it, the door yawning loudly, which it always does, no matter who opens it or how carefully, and turned:

  —But what other subjects do you have than men?

  With this question, she ran off, though I’m still pondering her and it, marrow in the bones, since how many subjects does a person have, she must know I have more, she reads, she seems worldly, but from a different world, and if you are a woman or a man, about which you have no choice, unless you elect surgery at a suitable age, but still you have to spend at least your adolescence and some of early adulthood in the sexed body into which you were born, you will undoubtedly spend some or much of your life absorbed in men or women, who are in a sense your subject, a singular and important one, no matter how general, no matter how you decide to dispense with it or them, if you feel you have a choice. There have been thousands of years of swamp-like argument about sex and the sexes, to which most succumb, since, for one thing, sex is often adventitious, taken on the run, and, to include it in the day, when it often isn’t, some fold it between a bit of ordinary conversation during which the body is normally excluded, except for talk about illness, but then some experience sex as an illness or a rare occurrence like an acute disease, but anyway worthy to report about their day, or for some it’s a healthy or perverse pleasure. Some here relish the flavors and smells of bodies, yet describe flesh with weak or pallid language, or dwell mostly on specific parts of bodies, breasts, penises, earlobes, necks, feet, toes; and I have conversed about sexual matters, about men and women, so, to be honest, the way a daughter of time must, I’d agree that men have been and remain a vast subject, which is also boring, especially when you have talked and listened for years, with an evermore rapid sense of the subject’s inexhaustibility and futility, for everyone repeats the subject and their own behavior, too. Occasionally a person’s sexual habits are unusual, such as Spike’s, whose taste runs to much older men and has since she was twelve, when she attempted to seduce her sixty-year-old piano teacher, and, she says, wryly, she’s the opposite of a pedophile, whose activity is illicit, while her disposition isn’t, so she could work in an old-age home and prey upon the elderly. Instead, she, a math prodigy, born into a family of scientists, pursued mathematics, first, imaginary numbers and set theory, then the more abstract versions of the discipline, which include, she tells me, formulae elegant as drawings and so graceful the terms soar in the air before they disappear. She particularly follows the work of Frege and Abraham. Spike’s affliction or desire, I must tell her, according to the Medical Sex Dictionary in the library, is gerontophilia. There is no equivalent for a deflowering mania, of a man or woman with hymen fever. Spike is not an arithomaniac, whose morbid obsession is to count constantly, she doesn’t betray a hint of this, being, I suppose, well past real numbers. One day I will tell her I see numbers as colors and vice versa, she has already explained that sex is no substitute for mathematics, but mathematics does compensate during rare periods of celibacy, though sex is better for dinner talk, since few people understand abstract mathematics.

  This morning, when I insensitively rushed past the two disconsolate young women, though they may not have noticed, since they were engrossed in their own lives and each other’s happiness or misery, I noted that one of them, the skinnier of the two, was in her pajamas, which was unusual, and her image has now returned to me. People generally don’t come to breakfast or dinner in pajamas. This signaled, in a small way, her distress, though it might also have indicated the lack of it and her contentment with herself, her indifference or even immunity to others’ opinions. The other woman was dressed, and it looked as if they’d been talking all through the night, and immediately I wondered what they could have said to each other that would carry them from day to night to day. One of them has a selfish female lover, the other a narcissistic male lover who had recently returned home, and she has an eating disorder, as well as psoriasis, and now it is apparent that though in a long-term relationship with the man who recently left, she’s enthralled by the tall balding man, who bends down farther each day, with bemusement, worry, or despair, and it is his indefatigable anxiety and her anorexia and psoriasis that interest me, since she forces herself to move food around on her plate and take a few abject bites in his presence. The outbreak on her hands may have a subliminal effect upon him, but whether it will be one that marries him to her or causes a figurative divorce, time will tell, since time is
abundant in certain ways, though it’s always an elusive guide, which gets shorter, and characteristically leaves people wanting or short, too.

  Psoriasis is a common, chronic, recurrent, inflammatory disease of the skin, causing the formation of dry, scaly patches of various sizes, mostly on the elbows, hands, scalp, nails, the surfaces of the limbs, like shins, and the sacral region, and the patches increase in size, and then stop, and become hard at the centers; old patches may be thickened, tough and very scaly, so that they resemble the outside of an oyster shell. Its course is inconstant, but it usually begins on the scalp or the elbows, and remains in those areas and doesn’t spread for a long period of time, or it might disappear. Or it might begin at the sacrum, but I don’t know if the young woman has ever had psoriasis there. There is even psoriasis of the penis. One of the disease’s chief features is its tendency to return. The skin actually grows too fast. The young woman’s hands and elbows were sometimes free of the tough, scaly flesh, which, when present, was in flagrant contrast to the pallor of her cheeks, though they became flushed when she drank wine, which wasn’t often, since she feared gaining weight, though she was painfully thin. She couldn’t stand to feed herself, she courted weakness, and when the psoriasis struck, she took pains to hide it, as she did her reluctance to nourish herself. If an outbreak occurred on the bottoms of her feet, she wouldn’t have to hide it. Psoriasis may occur on the soles of feet, bur its onset is usually in middle-aged adults who have no history of psoriasis or any other skin trouble. There may have been focal infections of the tonsils, teeth, or sinuses, and there may have been a causal relationship through an internal usage of antibiotics. But there is no resemblance to psoriasis histologically, only the presence of large, unilocular pustules deep in the epidermis and very little inflammation. I’ve had difficult, inflammatory friendships with women and men, some of whom have eating disorders, like anorexia nervosa and bulimia, slipped discs, bleeding ulcers, migraines, colitis, pernicious anemia, or who have a variety of other illnesses and complaints, and who have been subject, like myself, to fainting spells, nausea, pneumonia, tooth decay, yeast infections, colds, a nonorganic pressure on the heart, sciatica, nervous stomach, pulled muscles, disturbed bowels, strep throat, infected cuts, flu, or viral infections, and others who have been subject to chronic backaches, recurrent acne, vision loss, cataracts, shingles, herpes complex and simplex, seasonal and other allergies, asthma, arthritis, hypertension and stroke, heart attacks, cancer, digestive disorders, memory loss, autoimmune diseases, including AIDS, or gum inflammation, gum loss, heroin, cocaine, nicotine, amphetamine and other dependencies or addictions. About psoriasis, one of its friendly sufferers here once remarked, “Please, always remember to mention the heartbreak of psoriasis.”

  Sometimes I have been unaware of what happens, colloquially, within some of my friends and that doesn’t manifest itself in signs on their bodies, since people can worry themselves into high blood pressure, tension headaches, and heart disease. But few can accept that their bodies also take orders from their psyches, as well as their environment and genetic makeup, and generally a sick mind is more cursed and embarrassing than a sick body. But when symptoms of a disorder appear on the skin, it’s fortunate, as they may only be skin deep, or if the body has a greater problem, a reader of skin has warning, a danger signal, since a change in the shape or color of a mole can mean a melanoma. When the skin is red and itchy, most people want relief. Other physical disorders—snoring, heartburn, insomnia—might be considered unimportant, but these can also alert a person to problems which are not necessarily organic, though snoring often indicates blocked nasal passages and, less frequently, sleep apnea, which can be fatal. One friend couldn’t sleep without pills. In the mornings, for several hours until she sloughed off their side effects, she was a fury, a monster, she’d say, until two cups of black coffee and a cold shower made her what she called human. During this time if anything occurred, when she wasn’t fully herself or adequately awake, something which she had to manage, she couldn’t do it, since she could barely speak without a rising ferocity, and instead she quelled the violence that coursed through her, which was frightening to witness, and twice I did, regrettably, later worried she’d turn it against me, which she did more subtly, and she is a person who couldn’t survive in a war or a world changed drastically, if her pills weren’t available to bring sleep. They didn’t console her, they subdued her, because her mother had died when she was six and afterward she couldn’t rest, since in dreams, I believe, she twisted into the monster who killed her mother. She became a mother later and insisted it was to be what she hadn’t had, she hadn’t been mothered, and convinced herself that, even though she could barely awaken in the morning, she could meet a child’s needs. It was about this time she left the father of the child, to raise the child alone, and I haven’t seen her in a long time, since after she gave birth, she abandoned all of her friends, to enter into a bond with her daughter, like surrendering to a nunnery, while also trying to kick barbiturates.

  AFTER POURING THE SOUP INTO the toilet, I was concerned that it might clog the old john, but I’d been at a loss to figure out what else to do with the soup, unless I put on my shoes and walked into the forest and spilled the unsightly red concoction onto the ground or on the small plants that grow at the edge of forests, which might invite unwanted animals, like skunks, near my room for solitude. I like animals, but I don’t like some, especially when they inconvenience me. There was a raccoon who would sit at my door when I lived in the South for a time, so I couldn’t enter the cottage until it moved, since it frightened me. I had no idea of how to relate to a raccoon, if it was rabid or friendly, and sometimes it ran across the roof in the night and terrified me, and then I wanted it killed. Usually, I don’t want animals killed, but sometimes I do, like my insane cat after he stalked and attacked me. His sharp claws gouged flesh from my left calf, tissue oozed from the fresh wounds and blood flowed down my leg, and I grabbed the cat and tore him from my calf, while another tenant, where I normally live, who had stopped by for some unimportant reason, watched in horror. There are four indentations on my calf from the expulsion and permanent loss of tissue, which force me to remember my insane cat and to doubt my own behavior toward him during his lifetime, when I tried several methods to quell his ferocious, apparent hatred of me, but could not, and which culminated in my ending his life, for which there is no record except my own, and the man I lived with, who rarely mentioned it then, but he does probably blame me, since he and the cat were friends.

  Yesterday, returning from the library after the intoxicating encounter with the inquisitive, disheveled woman, I saw six deer, and, when they noticed me, they became exceptionally still, looked at me or in my direction, so I whistled and waved, because I like deer and wanted them to see I was friendly and wasn’t stealthily approaching to hurt them. These are protected deer and have grown up free from harassment, safe from being hunted and killed, a freedom everyone should have, but which many don’t and have to fight for, though some never want to fight. Deer overrun parts of the country, because they are protected, and now many starve, so some want to kill them, to limit their number, so they won’t starve, and others don’t, though killing may be less cruel, still I wouldn’t want to see them killed, and sometimes there is no solution to progress, except more of it. I stopped in my tracks also, advanced quietly and slowly, whistled, stopped, advanced, whistled, and only one deer bothered to continue to look at me, and I thought, maybe I’ll make a friend while I am here, a deer who visits me, isolated or in glorious solitude, and well cared for, and then I won’t miss my young cat as much. Each time I see the deer, whether there are six or three—there is never one who is alone—I believe it is a fortuitous omen, but no one has ever said that sighting deer brings good luck.

  The red tomato soup has coated the toilet bowl. It probably would have been better if I hadn’t been lazy or cautious and had walked into the forest, but I didn’t, and I was still hungry. To dist
ract myself, I started a fire in the large stone fireplace. Everyone here has a fireplace, and I started the fire by twisting single pages of old newspaper into rod-like forms and placing kindling on top of them, this time arranging the thin sticks of dry wood into a configuration I’d never tried before, but which I’d seen the older man here, Gardner, employ, effectively. He was, in his amused rendition of himself, and also became to me, a Count, adept at fire-building, and other things, and his wife had left him, he told me early on, or maybe he said she wasn’t around anymore. On that first night at dinner with him, when all new arrivals appear like magic acts, wanted and unwanted, the Count befriended me and the tall balding man, who, after dinner, leaned over to talk with him and whispered, his mouth close to the older man’s ear, as they sat near the fire that he, the Count, built for us, though I kept a distance from it, because it dried my skin. I wanted to know what passed between them, and, against my will, since I generally want little to do with others who might intrude upon my feelings and insinuate themselves into my thoughts, such as the two disconsolate young women, a curiosity about the Count festered, as I considered he might be the person who would change my life, a thought I’d wanted to renounce upon first hearing it from the card reader, but which took hold, like my mother’s tenacious tomato vines, which were rooted in the fertilized soil in the garden at home.