American Genius

by Lynne Tillman

  Without removing her dark glasses and floor-length black fur coat, worn to protect her from the cold, as she is old-school and confirmed in her habits, and, I believe, to annoy the environmentalists and vegetarians, Contesa crooks her index finger and points to a corner of the room, where photographs of local and national birds hang, entreating me into a conspiracy, and hesitantly I rise, not just because I’m uncertain whether I can manage another conspiracy. I will instantly forfeit my comfortable seat to the dour man and the fretful woman, both shadow my movements and echo them, mimicking me in some way, and, as soon as I rise, with alacrity, they do replace me on the brocade couch. Mentally, I denounce them.

  Contesa has planned an event for the evening, she tells me, ever mischievous, which will happen in the lecture hour after dinner, upstairs in the Rotunda Room above the main hall that has a small stage or raised platform, a reading of her first one-act play, on whose creation she has labored in silence, since she wanted to surprise us, the Count and me especially. It’s true I desire surprise, but my second heart rebels, my intestines twist slightly, and I blush again, for the play might reveal something I don’t want to know or watch. Contesa has enlisted some of the residents, but she won’t say whom, as well as others, to play the parts or read them. “You’ll have it before your eyes soon enough,” she teases, impishly lifting her dark glasses onto the top of her forehead, and her words echo someone else’s, but I can’t remember whose. We walk to the leather couches where we sit beside each other, while the new arrivals, a sallow, bearded man, who, I learn, is an obituary writer and professional magician, a gregarious, pretty woman, with smooth skin the color of eggplant, a poet and activist, named Rita, or “the saint of lost causes,” she explains ironically, and a stout, florid man with a network of broken veins on his bulbous nose, a wine writer and art collector, make conversation with each other. They dot the area of the room near the big fire. Listening to their conversation with my eyes on the floor, I finish my Campari and soda, while Contesa draws out her gin and tonic. The magician has them engrossed in a story about a girl whose mother suddenly disappeared. The police listed the woman as a missing person, and after two years the case was closed. But every night the daughter dreamed her mother was locked up in a place and couldn’t move. The nightmare was always the same, and the daughter began to suspect that her mother wasn’t missing. One day she remembered that the freezer in the basement was locked, but it hadn’t been before her mother’s death. So she and her younger sister pried it open, found their mother’s body, and went to the police station. Their father confessed to the murder. He had kept her body in the freezer for three years, he explained, because he didn’t want to part with her. “Morbid,” says Rita, the saint of lost causes. ‘Tm claustrophobic,” says the Wineman. “But you know it gives me faith in people’s dreams,” says the Magician.

  It is now just past 7:30, and the kitchen helper has entered to announce dinner, he catches my eye slyly, as the Count waits at the doorway of the dining room, staring sympathetically at his gold pocketwatch, and now my skin burns fiercely as if at noon I had stretched out under an August sun. With the announcement, Contesa entwines her arm in mine, and we head toward the dining room. The new residents stroll slowly toward the dining room, and, like most new fellows, two of them hang back, observing the flow and custom of the older residents, and only the stout, florid Wineman or connoisseur has broken away from them to join the other disconsolate woman, they already know each other, since he walks forward with assurance, hovering close to her, and plies her, I believe, with anxious, gratuitous questions, though he might be bringing her news from the outside or spewing his recent biography. When we have entered the dining room, whose lights I discreetly lower, they take seats at a small table near one of the windows, which is close to where I sit, alone for a moment, while the Count and Contesa confer in a corner.

  —Is this table OK? the stout Wineman asks.

  He looks about, so does she, she sees me and nods.

  —Great, she answers.

  I nod to her. The Wineman’s fleshy nose is a map of purplish spider veins.

  —I had a stroke last May, he says, loudly. I nearly died.

  —I’m sorry, that’s scary.

  With this, he tucks her into her chair.

  —I’m recovered. I just need rest. Want a glass of wine?

  He sits down.

  —I brought a case of Mouton Rothschild, he says.

  —I’d love it, thanks.

  —My son’s turned eighteen, lives with my ex-wife in Des Moines, usually. He’s the one who found me on the floor, unconscious. I had a seizure.

  —That’s terrible, but he found you in time. You’re lucky.

  —I’m alive.

  Brusquely, in the manner, it seems, he performs everything, he uncorks the bottle, smells the cork, rolls it in his stubby fingers, pours a splash into his wineglass, swirls the glass, inhales the wine, and drinks, first rolling the wine on his tongue and in his mouth.

  —Excellent. Needs to breathe. I think the food here is great compared with other camps I’ve been—everything but lunch. So, I was in the hospital for three weeks, and they discovered noncancerous polyps.

  —You’ve had your share, she says, drinking greedily. I have asthma.

  —I’ve had three colonoscopies, two angiograms.

  —Bodies. I hate bodies, mine especially.

  —But I’m good now, I have a clean bill of health. So, what do you think? Like the wine? It’s vintage.

  —It’s great. To health.

  She toasts and smiles, shows her red pulpy gums, I’d never seen this solemn twenty-eight-year-old smile broadly, her teeth are uneven and milky gray, as if she hadn’t had enough calcium as a child, and, when she smiles, closes her eyes, like an ecstatic or someone who can be happy only when the world is absent. Her lower teeth are especially set back, recessed, which caused her weak chin, I suppose, she couldn’t have had braces, orthodontics, as a child, what did her parents think, did they have no money, or didn’t believe in straightening teeth, did they think it was just cosmetic, but the face grows with the body, sometimes ahead of it, my nose was suddenly long when I was short, then I shot up, my face filled out, while I lost my puppy fat. Orthodontics might have saved her from this unfortunate structural fault that makes her appear sadder than she may be, because now she hardly smiles, and when she does, displays sickening gums, and I feel an uncomfortable wave of nausea.

  My mother often becomes dizzy, but not nauseated, she can barely stand without some dizziness, and when my mother had a seizure, after the first operation on her brain, she sat up in her hospital bed, her head pushed forward, her back bent forward, also, and sewed an invisible cloth, her fingers stitched neatly and never quit moving, in precisely the same way, again and again, seemingly inexhaustible, and she was unseeing, unaware of herself and me, the doctors, she said nothing for hours. Now, when she stands up too quickly, the room whirls pitilessly, her legs weaken under her, she holds her forehead dispiritedly and moans, so I tell her to breathe slowly in and out, count, one, two, three, four, and she does, imitating me like a child, but I have no idea if this actually helps her. In the days before my father died, when his heart failed and he lay in a coma for a day, brain-dead, he recognized trouble, and, ever vigilant about his body and medical condition, in a weak hand he had noted, with few crossings out, his symptoms: 1) I have no appetite, nauseated, 2) some stomach pain (little), 3) sleepy, and, at the top, he wrote: I do not w—He halted then. My father had many fears, of playing the stock market, of heights, of his mother, of incapacitation, of death, as I do, though l believe death is nothing, but then, nothing can be frightening when it swallows your days and you don’t know where time has gone, which may be why he didn’t finish writing the sentence: “I do not w—” I’ll never know. On the other side of the note, just a slip of paper, he wrote “wheeze-phlegm-sleeping” and recorded his meds, amiodaroni, lasix, coumadin, lanoxin. My father recognized he was dying
, in his last night of consciousness, and he must have been disappointed with himself, afraid and failing again. He admired Winston Churchill, inordinately, for his bravery, and Churchill’s final words were “No more.” Before my father fell into a coma from which he never returned, he smiled at his doctor, he was happy to see him, his doctor told me later, maybe he thought he’d beat death, but when my father died, he said nothing.

  I NOTICE THE COUNT SPEAKING to one of the new residents, the professional magician and obituary writer, and now he is steering him over. I shift in my chair and arrange the pillow under me, but comfort is not forthcoming, as they are wooden chairs with hard wooden slats at the backs and woven cane seats that squeak, designed, built, and carved by JD, and I don’t dare complain about them, ever. The Turkish poet has arrived, Henry and Arthur, who enter with him, Spike, and Contesa, too, and suddenly the table is complete. The anorexic disconsolate woman and the tall balding man seat themselves far from her friend and the stout Wineman, when the actors J and JJ, and their sidekick, the guilt-ridden, silent lyricist, and the demanding man slide into chairs near them. All the others are settling in at various tables, the young married man next to the new resident, Rita, or the saint of lost causes, and beside them the dour man and fretful woman, whose addition surprises me since they generally keep to themselves. My second heart grinds with nameless worry, and ungracious doubt rumbles in my intestines, so I fear gas. JD chooses his seat, his boots muddy, his overalls sticky, he smells of pungent raw honey, I sense when he’s around, and he sits next to some nondescript characters, who will stay for a week or maybe two, whose first names I don’t know, and who often don’t come to breakfast but eat instant oatmeal or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in their rooms.

  The head cook has created an order and routine to her dinner menus, which, after many, many years, she has honed into a three-week pattern, so that a resident or guest who has been here for a while, as I have, and the Count and Contesa, will have several times eaten her array of dishes and know her preparations, the ingredients of, and dressings for, salads, the sauces for meat, usually leg of lamb or pork chops, fowl, chicken, roast or fried, and roast turkey or turkey loaf, and fish, mostly cod with capers and broiled or poached salmon, the side dishes, rice and beans, broiled mushrooms, always available for vegetarians and vegans, creamed broccoli, fresh, steamed asparagus with a lemon sauce, potatoes gratin, boiled red potatoes served with chives, wild rice, and her range of desserts, chocolate or vanilla ice cream, bread pudding, tapioca-and-chocolate pudding, cherry, peach, and apple pies, and chocolate, banana, and vanilla cream cakes, there is always a serving of fruit, so dinner is rarely a surprise, except for the night she presented us with bow-tie pasta swimming in melted caraway cheese, which caused us all consternation except the young married man, who, though regularly grumpy, likes every meal. The wretched dish reeked of the head cook’s despair. Sunday night, when both the head and assistant cooks have the day off, and a substitute cook arrives, it is vegetable risotto and pizza, and all diets are attended to with meatless, cheeseless pizzas, vegetable pizzas with and without cheese, pizza with cheese and pepperoni, pizza with cheese and tomato, pizza with no cheese and no tomatoes, and so on, they are labeled, and there is a generous bowl of green salad, without tomatoes and peppers, but with several dressings, on the side, a term much used here. Sometimes a resident’s first name is written on a card that is set on a table, and then you must take that chair, the chairs are serviceable, poorly designed and lacking in any quality, such as charm, and the card’s placement indicates you have specific dietary requirements, which have to be accommodated by a special meal, and then you feel singled out, not necessarily in a good way, but a few like any attention, though it’s not auspicious to demonstrate certain types of need. It augurs well that the Magician is beside me now, since as soon as I heard him tell Saint Rita that he performs magic for a living, a striking conceit, I hoped to learn about his ancient, perplexing profession.

  Dinner is three courses, the most elaborate of the day’s meals, often poor, and its longest, but at breakfast everyone can find something to eat, unless they are late, though there is usually bread, milk, and cold cereal available, which is not the case at dinner. At dinner, there is an appetizer, tonight it’s crudités, then there’s the entree or main course, and a dessert. There are warm, packaged rolls, which one resident steals and hides in his backpack for the next day, as he is already anxious about the next day’s meager lunch. Another regularly pilfers fruit and raw vegetables and is known to arrange carrots in rows on the top of his worktable, where he does computations, to watch them dry and curl up. Salad is served with the main course, and the few Europeans among us have it after, while the Americans have it with the entree, and then there is dessert, and, with it, coffee, decaffeinated or espresso, tea, black, herbal, or black without caffeine, cream, whole milk, skim, and soy milk, and everyone can find something to eat, special diets are accommodated, in moderation, though most residents are dissatisfied, because lunch is invariably poor and at dinner most are hungry, except the anorexics, who are starving but will not eat and who hide their disease until they are almost dead, and thirty percent of them die of this kind of contemporary wasting.

  Looking at Contesa, whose dark glasses are perched on the bridge of her small, sharp nose, obliterating her gray eyes, I imagine that her play will be inhabited by her spirit, which I must count on, as I do, one day sliding into and negating the next, though irregularly in the Count’s upside-down schedule, so her mind will be present onstage, which could inspire me. Nervous doubt unclasps my stomach and it quiets, and, with that, commences an appetite. The demanding man is also gazing in Contesa’s direction, his large brown eyes morose as a moaning cow’s, but she ignores him once again and nibbles a stalk of celery. The night the inventor exposed his rosy ass was exciting, since it was beautiful and the event out of the ordinary, this morning the psoriatic woman and the tall balding man revealed their intimacy, there was nothing indecent about it, but it held some content and provoked memory, and in the moment, again the demanding man seeks Contesa’s aid for what her interest enlivens in him, and I await or have hope for an entertaining evening fomented by the Magician’s novelty and Contesa’s liveliness or spirit.

  —Poached salmon again, laments the Count.

  —But it’s her most flavorful dish, says the Turkish poet, with good cheer.

  —I can’t bear it, Contesa says, mournfully.

  —But salmon’s good for brains and sex, urges the Turkish poet.

  Almost in unison, Henry and Arthur intone, “it could be worse,” which is an uncommon observation here, but they’re relatively new residents and often ironic. The Magician watches us like rabbits. He shoves the cooked tomatoes on his plate to the side, and they fall off next to Spike’s dinner plate. The Magician is allergic to tomatoes, which is sad, because tomatoes that have grown during a hot summer, without too much rain, so they don’t get mealy, are magical, ripened under a brilliant sun, as they were in my mother’s garden, then sliced and served on a plate, succulent beefsteaks warm from the rich soil and hot sun, but now my mother doesn’t remember her tomato garden and doesn’t like to eat tomatoes because of their skin, which she can’t chew or digest. “An old hell,” she said once, cavalierly. The Magician is also allergic to bee stings, bees produce their sting by the ovipositor of the female abdomen, and when stung, a poison—apitoxin—containing formic acid and a neurotoxin is introduced into the skin. I was stung by bees twice. Once I was practicing the piano in camp, when I thought a stabbing pain in my stiff fingers was caused by a lack of daily, rigorous practice and that my piano teacher was punishing me for my dereliction, but it was a bee. The ovipositor of the honeybee breaks off and remains in the skin after stinging. The bumblebee is able to retract its stinger, but the reaction to stings may vary from a mild, local edema and pain to severe anaphylactic shock and even death, which occurs more frequently in the case of multiple stings unless prompt therapy is un
dertaken. The imbedded ovipositor containing the poison sac should be scraped away with a sharp knife, but I don’t believe that was done when I was in camp. I took an antihistamine the second time I was stung, yet the area around the sting swelled and throbbed painfully, but unless the Magician carries a kit containing a syringe, epinephrine, and antihistamines, when stung, he could go into shock and die.