American Genius

by Lynne Tillman

—How you doing? he asks.

  He kicks his bicycle tire.

  —OK, I say.

  —How was lunch?

  —Spaghetti in cold tomato soup.

  He laughs.

  —What are you going to do in town? he asks.

  —I need something, I needed a walk. Then I might have a coffee. Nothing much.

  —Me too. Nothing. I’m going to hang out, then go home.

  —Have fun.

  —Yeah, you too. Bye.

  —Bye. See you tomorrow.

  I’M BUSY IGNORING HIS LONG legs, I do want to buy something, and also I hunger for the taste of coffee and its pungent aroma, though I don’t often drink coffee, and he rides off, jauntily, and I breathe again and march on, shaking my underexercised arms which hang from my sides uselessly, and realize the sun is strong for this time of day and season. The tall old fir trees block its rays, and, when they don’t, it casts a brilliant swath on the darkened road. Two chipmunks scurry across, darting forward then freezing in the middle of the two-lane blacktop road, but each scrambles to safety, and a bearded man drives up in an old pickup truck, rolls down his window to ask directions I can’t give, but doesn’t make small talk, and I go on. I pass the high school. Luckily the students are still inside, it may even be earlier than I thought, so I don’t have to watch them flee its corridors, burst out of swinging doors, yelling and whooping, to escape into a transient liberation, or see mothers and a few fathers waiting for them, recalling a similar time in my life, which is present under my skin and which no massage releases. I don’t need anything, but I’m at the perimeter of the town, whose quaint buildings and shops appeal to locals as well as tourists, since it’s old and celebrated for its early American history that the townsfolk superintend like a garden, the way Richard II didn’t tend his, but I don’t know why Richard II occurs again to me, when Richard III is more convenient, since this may be the winter of our discontent, or at least mine.

  The battleship-gray cashmere scarf, wrapped around my neck, of fine soft wool from the undercoat of a cashmere goat, anomalously tickles the areas where yesterday the massage therapist pressed persistent knots and pummeled ropey fibers and, when she did, arcane images popped up, but I can’t recall them. I stroll past a waterfall, though it’s not the fastest route, since I’m trying to appreciate natural settings, but as I walk past, I forget the waterfall, since I’m easily distracted, and instead visualize the Count, who must be sleeping, and who, when he arrived, his dark brown, thinning hair tousled, wore around his neck an antique timepiece that, I learned, was valuable and rare, and at which he looked with concern during the first dinner, sometimes the best meal of the day, but inconsistent. The regard he showed it was superior to his apparent feeling for anything or anyone else, but then he stopped wearing it, suddenly, and carried instead a pocketwatch that he took out gently, considering its face as I might a photograph of a dead friend. He was never rude. As I came to know him, he declared scant passion except for his timepieces, caring more about time in the abstract, its formation of daily life, and the watches and clocks by which regulation was set and followed, than anyone I have ever known or probably will know. The Count is a reticent polymath and keeps secrets the way a fine timepiece does time, quietly and in a subdued fashion, though about some he was profligate, like telling me early in our acquaintance that he was married, in a way, as he put it, but then never mentioned his wife and set a question in motion, maybe guilelessly, but perhaps there was something I just hadn’t noticed. As I strolled past the waterfall that I also hadn’t noticed, I reconsidered the words on a plaque near the entrance to the town: “The spirit of liberty spread where it was not intended. —John Adams”

  The kitchen helper’s bicycle is thrown on the ground in front of the café I don’t usually frequent, so he’s there, and I could talk with him, learn what makes him tick, as my father liked to say, though that would be more literally true for the Count, and near this café is the town’s sole antique and thrift store, which I enter instead, in hopes of finding something, if only a trinket or a dainty teacup. The shopkeeper glances up from behind a glass vitrine or cabinet, which houses an assortment of Americana and small, mostly brown or rusty objects, all of which seem dirty but may be relatively old, to note my appearance and bellows hello, because people are friendly here, though not as welcoming to guests as Greeks, whose love of strangers is the basis of their generous hospitality, or philoxenia, of which I have sometimes been the grateful object. I head for the shelves of used books, which I know well, since I walk to town about three times a week, and mostly they won’t have changed, though a new one might have been inserted yesterday, or I could notice one I hadn’t, the way I didn’t notice the waterfall as I walked past, absorbed elsewhere, and today my eye lands on a book about the origins of the English language, in which I could learn about runic writing, for instance, but I first open to a chart, “The Organs of Speech,” which diagrams the mouth, epiglottis, uvula, hard palate, parts of tongue, larynx, and vocal cords, and so on, whose terms connect to places in me, and, also, to those of the demanding man, whose tongue is coated with nicotine slime, and suddenly my second heart is discomforted. The origin of the word “skin,” like most beginning with “sk,” is Scandinavian, skin is a loanword, and there are many such in English, and I wonder if when you borrow words, you return them in any sense. The kitchen helper has flawless skin. In adolescence, my dermatologist taught me, acne can deform the course of a young person’s life so badly that its physical traces will be less severe even than its psychic scars, though its physical effects may be visible for years. Actors who play villains often have pockmarked skin. Acne vulgaris occurs primarily in the oily or seborrheic areas of the skin, and in severe cases, even the ears may be involved, with large comedones in the concha and cysts in the lobes; the comedo, commonly known as the blackhead, is the basic lesion in acne, produced by the faulty function of the sebaceous follicular orifice, when the plugging produced by the comedo dilates the mouth of the folicule and papules are formed by inflammation around the comedones. Atrophic acne is characterized by tiny residual atrophic pits and scars from deeply involved papular acne. My dermatologist insists acne is the single greatest cause of neurosis and distress in teenagers and young adults, but the kitchen helper’s skin is free of depressions, pits, scars, and bloody wounds, and he clearly didn’t and doesn’t, the way some do, usually women, pick at his skin, a neurotic excoriation or self-induced illness, also known as dermatitis artefacta. The kitchen helper drinks beer, Cokes, and eats chocolate, and is remarkably unmarred by what he ingests, as his genes have set his skin’s design at least as much as his diet and environment, so he can guzzle all the Cokes he wants and never suffer unsightly pimples, though his teeth may be rotten.

  I carry the language book to the postcard tray, where I shuffle through the frayed stack, and it too hasn’t changed, the written messages are as repetitive and empty as they were some days ago. Yet I hope for surprise, more and more, though it’s the twin of disappointment, and I want to disown its wanton seductions, but wherever I go, I wait for it, even when I don’t know I am, but then I am trying to become more aware, with help, the arrival of which might also be a surprise. I had the surprise of a second mysterious postcard a while ago, when I needed it, like a good laugh. Its typed message was even more simple and blunt: Can’t give up now. The signature again appeared to have been scratched onto the card, like a bird’s sharp claw might make. On its front the word “GREETINGS” was covered in glitter, extolling the name of a town that could have been in IA or IN, but it wasn’t clear, since the card was torn at the bottom, obscuring the state’s identity, and the post office had enclosed the card in a plastic bag, on which they issued a formal printed apology for the poor handling and consequent damage their sorting machines had caused. Some people can’t apologize, ever, those who should apologize rarely do, because in their minds they’re always victims, like a woman I barely know, who was in residence briefly, a dour ch
aracter who snubbed me for no reason I could ascertain, we barely made contact, but when I came near her, she showed her back to me in the main lounge, which disturbed my peace of mind. I have done this to others but with a valid reason, as when mutually recognized enemies appeared, their presence an assault, and I couldn’t bear their contemptible faces, yet they understood my behavior, since they felt similarly, my presence disrupted their peace, too, but the dour woman’s behavior also and paradoxically contented me like an ambiguous tale. She may believe I owe her an apology, which I might give if I understood her complaint, but her complaints are likely endless, for her longings go unfulfilled, she had many ambitions, to be in the foreign service as a diplomat, I heard her say to another, but her father and mother blocked her, and her older sister, too, and daily she grows more bilious, further from her goals. It’s easy to perceive her injuries and disappointment when she throws her head to the side and peers with big dull eyes at a group of people near her and displays, like an angry dog, her contempt. She quickly left the community, to seek another where she might not be as forlorn and receive better counsel, though it is unlikely. The post office regularly apologizes for its many mistakes, and as before when I received the first postcard, on the message side an illegible but familiar signature stood, and again, with the arrival of the second postcard, I recognized that a mysterious character had thought of me, benevolently, maybe a former lover or an amusing acquaintance, though that might not be so, since I do have enemies, like the two former, devious friends I avoided, as well as ones I’m not aware of, even the woman who suddenly snubbed me and disappeared may be an enemy, but I quickly determined not to prolong consideration of the message’s meaning or its putative sender, pleasing myself with my sensible forbearance. It must have been six weeks ago that I hid the second elliptical and tantalizing card with the first in a drawer that smelled of pine and blanketed both under a one hundred percent cotton handkerchief, so that I wouldn’t see them even accidentally, though I know they are there, the way I know that heavy, frequent snowfalls in the northern hemisphere offer temporary beauty by disguising, for one thing, the ugliness of slovenly and unimaginative architecture.

  THE SHOPKEEPER WEARS AN OLD-FASHIONED costume, because it is Founders’ Day week, the town is two hundred seventy years old, and my interest in American history often brings me into proximity with characters such as the shopkeeper, who revere the past or want to simulate it in ways I don’t. On this spot, she attests, and we both look down at the unswept floorboards, the town’s founders decided there must be a library, and it is one of the towns in America that first had free public schools and a free public library, and in her shop, many yellow-paged books describe the town’s illustrious past, along with outdated manuals and instruction leaflets, whose pages fall out when opened, on knitting and the other homely arts, as well as on languages, which contain a type of history, at least one of endeavor and of trial and error. The Polish woman might vacation in a picturesque town like this, with her mother or girlfriends, visit the abandoned mills, historic inns, or churches where Jonathan Edwards damned congregations, or go skiing, ski comes from the Scandinavian languages, also, and she might spend a long, active weekend exerting herself until a film of sweat dampened her skin, since, never liking to be idle, when the devil does his work, she’s told me, she enjoys walking, volleyball, and most forms of exercise, especially going on outings and strenuous hikes. I don’t go on outings or never call them that, though my trips to town might indeed be outings.

  The owner of the store has hung photographs of her dog on the wall behind her, a large black-and-brown mutt, a mixed breed, like most people, indistinguishable from many others, but I know, because of the way I feel about my animals, that for her there is no other dog like it. My slightly wild cat is black and unmarked, and he would, if he were lost, be hard to trace, because, unless you loved him, as I do, you wouldn’t notice his endearing characteristics, which make him unusual and appealing, since he is not just a black cat, though he is that, too, and only that to others who don’t love him. The Polish woman has never mentioned cats or dogs, she might not like animals, or she might like them but not want them to ruin her furniture, a reservation I don’t appreciate, because it betrays a respect or reverence for the material world or a materialism I don’t admire, though I love chairs and textiles, and would not want either ruined by my cat, but people in this town revere their pets, people everywhere love their animals, and, on the picture-perfect streets here, hulking, aged Labradors creep after adoring masters, and in the town’s two cafés and one diner, small dogs sleep on human laps, since dogs are allowed in the bookstore, antique store, drugstore, and health food store, and no one complains about allergies to dog or cat hair, though some people must be allergic to dander and own special vacuum cleaners to facilitate its elimination, in order not to have to expel their beloved animals. My dog was given away by my parents, who pretended to love her but must not have, or if they did, it’s a mystery how they could have abandoned the beloved, innocent animal to a shelter and had it killed. Both the family cat and dog disappeared, taken by night or day, left somewhere or given away. The cat supposedly ran from the shelter, jumped out of its cage, and I have many times conjured the scene in the animal shelter, when the cage opened, and someone was about to feed her, and she, wily and desperate, took her opportunity and raced out, far away, kept running until she reached a highway, followed it, and tried to find her way back to the people who supposedly loved her, but then she was hit by a car and maybe killed, or she spent months on the road, wounded, and winter came and killed her, though she had been exceptionally sturdy and resourceful. When my family bought our comfortable house, which was built to my parents’ and the architect’s specifications, my mother decided that our cat, who was then very young, but very different from my cat now, should live near the house while it was under construction, and that we should visit her every week since we came anyway to see the house’s progress. There were woods all around at that time, the area was forested and swampy, not a yawning suburb, which it would eventually become, and back then the cat was left there in the woods, to scavenge and hunt, and every weekend we visited the house and her. My mother, to whom the cat was devoted, because she delivered the cat’s first litter, which included a breech birth, whistled sharply, two fingers tucked in the corners of her mouth, and from a distance we could all hear the excited scramble of a four-legged creature racing happily, even madly, through the leaves to her and us. The cat always came.

  THE SHOPKEEPER’S DRESS IS WOOL cambray, coarse and brown, a simple design with no excess, no flounces or decoration, a studiously severe outfit like that which might have been worn by a Puritan prison guard, and she also wears a stiff bonnet tied under her chin with a gray grosgrain ribbon, whose serrated edges sink into her fleshy neck, reddening her olive skin at those points. In this town and the environs, the textile industry flourished from the beginning of the 19th century, when the region was home to many mills, as well as ball-bearing factories, and none of this is now evident except as historical lore on plaques. The town and state has many rivers and streams, great water power for running mills, and Eli Whitney may have passed through; his cotton gin is mentioned in the town’s brochures, though it wasn’t invented here. Rows of warping machines dwarfed child workers, whose fingers and hands must have bled from cuts, their soft skin hardened and scarred over time from the process of carting, spinning, and sorting the rough raw materials, cotton and wool, into threads, yarns, and finally fabrics, while the multitude of spindles revolving in spinning rooms whirred and cranked noisily during the ten- to twelve-hour workdays. In 1860, not far from here, in Lowell, Massachusetts, there were more cotton spindles than in all the eleven states that combined would eventually make up the Confederacy, so the North had an industrial advantage, though both white Northerners and Southerners mostly disdained skins darker than theirs. In America the Industrial Revolution proceeded with strength only after the Civil War ended, and th
e first textile factory workers were like indentured servants. Max Weber theorized it was slavery that brought about the end of the Roman Empire, as Rome’s troops were complemented by their slaves, who needed to be fed and housed when they advanced, so they weren’t productive labor, they didn’t fight, but instead slowed the Roman army and cost it dearly, and slavery might have similarly ruined the American economy as it industrialized, since slavery was part of an agrarian society. In the postcard tray I search for something I might send the Polish woman, who wouldn’t expect attention or remembrance from me, since she never thinks of me, and I sometimes believe she doesn’t know my name, but because of that I’d like to mail her a pleasant card, since I do think of her. Choosing it prolongs my stay in the shop, and while I ramble about, the kitchen helper has probably left the café, as the shopkeeper tugs at her uncomfortable dress, looking at me with suppressed impatience, and at last I settle on a postcard with a pastoral scene that might be appropriate to the taste of the Polish aesthetician. The shopkeeper smiles now, relieved, and soon she’ll ask me to return, which I will, but on a long-ago visit to a similar shop in the South near a similar town, where fate was summoned when I rejected a man’s advances, I’d accompanied a widow whose husband had been a renowned scientist, who herself had written essays on science, popularizing the subject for the lay reader, as she put it, and after he died, she often spent time away from what had been their home, but then relief was not the outcome of our visit to this shop. The widow was ordinarily restrained, yet in the store marveled broadly and audibly about an object concocted by one of the town’s craftspeople, of wood and paper, which, when she picked it up to see it better, crumbled in her hands and fell to the floor, ruined. The shopkeeper demanded she pay for it, and my friend, the widow, refused, at first calmly, since she had not misused it, she declared, or hurt it in any way, but then neither character relented, and when the irate shopkeeper reached for the telephone to call the police, the circumspect widow, who was then my friend, and I walked quickly to her car at whose door she wept from humiliation, collapsing in my arms, because standing up for herself had drained her of life. I never went back there, to the store or the town, though I think of it, because the woman was shattered by the experience, which reiterated earlier ones, and, shortly after our disastrous outing to the store, she returned to the place where she was lonely without her husband, who, she also confessed in her car, had drunk to insensibility most of his life, was cruel and violent, and where she once was the subject of an investigation, based on circumstantial evidence, when coincidentally she fled from her husband’s drunkenness on the same night a robbery occurred in the town where she lived with him, relative newcomers, and she happened to be noticed in the middle of the night, wandering upset and aimlessly in the small town, and became a suspect, though she was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, but circumstantial evidence stained her present with an enduring blot.