Thirteen Ways of Looking

by Colum McCann

  The dark dogs of the mind.

  —Sally!

  Long and tall she is indeed, but quick on her feet she is not. Not the girl to sally forth: sally eighth more like it, sally ninth.

  —Coming, Mr. J.

  Well, so too is Hanukkah. So, too, is the twenty-second century. So, too, is the end of the visible world. Hurry on and help me, woman. A goddamn diaper. Why the hell did you sling this forsaken piece of foolishness on me? What did I do to deserve it? What crime? What cruelty? A diaper! I might have needed one eighty-two years ago, that’s true, Sally, my dear, and forgive my Polish, my Lithuanian, my half-baked Yiddish but for fucksake, woman, I hardly need one now.

  He is halfway out of the bed and virtually suspended in mid-air when he hears a little wheeze and the rumor of a sigh, and then footsteps in the hallway. A slow shuffle. Sally stops, perhaps to catch her breath, and it takes him a moment to figure out whether she is moving towards him or away. The clockwatch. The waterboil. The plodalong.

  The cruelty of time. Never enough of it when you need it. And always too much when you don’t.

  —Sallllly!

  Another sigh, an audible Uh-huhn, four more steps, and then the turn of the gold-plated door handle.

  —Here I be, Mr. J.

  Here she is, here she be, and have they no grammatical rules in Tobago at all? They mangle the language. Mingle it. Mongrel it. No Chicago Manual. No Strunk or White. Sally will never make it onto the pages of The New Yorker, that’s for sure. Nor the Times, nor even the Daily News. She might scrape up a position for herself at the Post, but only just, by the hair on her chinny-chin-chin.

  Yet there is something lovely about her cadence. She speaks with bright coins in her voice. A tambourine in her throat. She swallowed a bird, Sally James, the first of the morning. In she breezes, cool as a treetop, tall as a redwood, sturdy as an oak. Her shape above him in the bed. Her dangling earrings. Her hair sticking out at fantastic angles. Half her life spent on that hairstyle. Curlers and irons and combs and all sorts of accoutrements. In the early days he could hear her getting up at four in the morning, just to get ready, curling, blowdrying, stitching, braiding.

  She has a peculiar smell to her, a good smell, like furniture polish, dear Sally from Tobago, or is it Trinidad? And how, anyway, do they differ? And who, quite honestly, gives a flying fig? Does it matter if she’s north, south, up or down, east or west, when the simple fact of the matter is that he is wearing a diaper and it must be removed, hastily, quietly, now.

  How in the world did it happen, Sally? What hour did you sneak up on me?

  Imagine that, my pajamas down around my ankles, the pocket still over my heart, the BlackBerry clock, tick-tock, and I wonder what she thought, or thinks, of my equipment? I am not a man of great fire-hose potential. She has seen it now, uncoiled, or coiled, how many times. Seahorsed. Hooded. We can only hope that the living don’t snicker.

  —Sally?

  —Yes, Mr. J.?

  —Did I really need the winter gear?

  It has become his little phrase: the winter gear. The idea of calling it a diaper galls him, and an incontinence pad is too much of a mouthful, or rather a handful, or a bucketful. And what is it the British call it? Such a fine gift for language, the British, having learned how to use it from the Irish, or so Eileen always said. But even the great linguistic masters fail here. A nappy, by all accounts. What specimen of genius came up with that for crying out loud? What learned Oxford mind? After a napkin no doubt. Fold it up. Tuck it in.

  —Sally, I don’t like it.

  —It’s so you don’t spoil your sleep, Mr. J.

  —Well, it sure as hell spoils my waking.

  She rears her head back and shows her mouth full of dark fillings, but this is no laughing matter, Sally, no laughing matter at all. Here’s me. And there I be. She is bending down towards me, her sharp perfume, her tickling hair, and she draws back the duvet, performs a quick whipaway of the sheets. Oh, is there anything worse on God’s dark earth? He shifts sideways on the bed and he can tell right away. Lock me up, Your Honor. Throw away the key. Oh, Lord, you pissed and shat yourself Mendelssohn. Who owns this body, this foul little wreckhouse, this meshuggeneh mansion? Who allows us this filthy comedy? Divine it is not. How in the world did I sleep through all that? The ancient pisher in me. A fountain of Helicon indeed.

  She steadies him and reaches across for his Zimmerframe—who the hell was Zimmer anyway? He leans across and says that he’ll do it the rest himself, remove the winter gear, ski to the bottom of the slope.

  And then he says: Please.

  Oh, smash this body entirely, Sally, break it up into little bits and pieces, and then I can walk around with the still-working head and heart, leave the useless pieces behind me. Fare thee well bowels, colon, pajama pocket, errant prostate, all ye untenable pieces. Let the Mendelssohn mind meander. Let the heart stroll. Leave the alter kocker behind. I have always gone according to the laws of nature. It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf. I was born in the middle of my very first diaper change. Not even my first, truth be told.

  He leans close to Sally again and he can feel her strong hefty arms and her hand at the soft of his back and who would have thought that the last lady in his life would have breasts as generous and as round as Sally’s? Soft and fragrant. Round and juicy. Full and floppy. Oh, you’re a good woman, Sally James, from Tobago, or Trinidad, or Jamaica Plains, or wherever the hell it is, and what is it I pay you again? I should make sure, double sure, triple sure, that there’s something in the will for her, she’s a good soul, she means well, though she has no grammar, but neither do I at times, I is, I am, I was, I will be, but, oh, she has me halfway in the air, it’s all a matter of science now, lift me, bring me to the mountaintop, resurrect me, roll away the stone, and he can feel his body creaking forward, Sallying forth, and he half collapses onto the Zimmerframe and he heaves a big sigh of relief, even though he can feel the contents of the winter gear shifting down below.

  —Steady, Mr. J.

  —Just get me to the church on time.

  —Huhhn?

  —The bathroom, Sally. The bathroom.

  —Yes, sir.

  Dilate your nostrils, Mendelssohn. Hurry on now. Mach shnell. Enough creakiness. Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, even the problem of being alive.

  —You look pale, Mr. J.

  —Never felt better.

  —We forgot, she says.

  She crosses the room and bends down to the walk-in closet. Stretching the white of her uniform into two neat halves. Oh, I’m a terrible man, but, Lord, there are indeed worse sights. Hear no evil, speak no evil, but at my age I should at least get a little peek?

  —I forgot what, Sally?

  Out she pops, all flesh and smiles, swinging a pair of slippers in the air.

  —Oh, Sally, I don’t need any stupid slippers!

  —Mr. J.?

  —Did you hear me? No slippers, woman.

  She bends and taps his leg and gets him to raise his foot anyway.

  —It’s so you don’t slip, Mr. J.

  —This is not a goddamn ice rink, Sally.

  She darts the whites of her eyes at him and he lifts his right foot in a gentle apology. Oh, Sally, but did you really have to choose the fuzzy ones? Isn’t there a more subtle pair you could root out? Has my whole life come down to fuzzy slippers? Nor are they a perfect fit from Brooks Brothers. And did you really have to put a diaper on me in the middle of the night? And is my treacherous son in trouble yet again? Did something happen to my lovely grandkids? Is my daughter yet returned from her mission of peace?

  He is glad, so very glad, that Eileen never had to see any of this. She checked out two years ago now, dearest Eileen. Imagine that, never smoked a cigarette in her life and ended up with the cancer all over her lungs. A quick, sharp exit. At least there was that. Exit ghost. Take Hamlet with you.

  —All set, Mr. J.

  Under starter’s ord
ers. The Zimmer race. Might as well get the checkered flag. Assume a virtue, said the Bard, if you have it not. When in the world did she start calling me Mr. J. when my real name is Peter, Petras, Peadar? She glimpsed my initials once, I suppose. Which is not all she glimpsed, more’s the pity. Oh, Mendelssohn, you miserable fool. Solid as Peter’s rock you are not.

  —Thank you, Sally.

  —Hhhrrrmmmpppf, she replies.

  Be a mensch, Lord, and put me out of my misery. What an exertion simply to get to the bathroom. He maneuvers the walking frame over the trim piece, manages to close the door. He stands, holding on: there are handles all over the bathroom. An emporium of handles—handles for the sink, handles for the shower, handles to haul himself up out of the bath, handles for the handles.

  He nudges off the slippers, opens the drawstrings of his pajamas and lets them drop to his feet, steps slowly out of the puddled cloth. The string tangles around his big toe and he almost stumbles but he catches himself at the edge of the sink. A quick glance in the mirror. Hail, fellow, well met. That is not me. Nor even I. Good God, I look like a pair of old curtains with a great big valance under my neck. A rubbery thing, could stretch to eternity.

  Onwards. Onwards now. Life is short, but it’s the morning that takes all your time.

  Clean yourself, Mendelssohn, get yourself together. Dignity and grace. I was born in the middle of my first jury argument, though sometimes I feel I’ve been born at other times too. And who in the world would be interested in a second memoir anyway when truth be told the first was an all-out flop? Ridiculous, really.

  He reaches down and pulls at the side of the diaper. Careful now. Contents in the underhead bin may have shifted during flight.

  Oh God, oh Lord, there’s nothing worse than the sound of velcro.

  There’s nothing worse on this fair earth.

  III

  The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

  It was a small part of the pantomime.

  There are two cameras in the living room, both motion-activated. The first is hidden in the bookcase, the other well concealed on a shelf by the window. Both have fish-eye lenses, which gives the pictures a faintly maritime effect, everything stretched out on a moving wave.

  When the curtains are opened, light flushes the room with a theatrical surprise. The focus is the large oak dining table, surrounded by six Chippendale chairs, hand-carved, fretworked. On the table sits a Chinese vase with flowers and a patterned dish that holds keys, letters, pens.

  There is a large painting on the wall above the table, a portrait of Mendelssohn, wearing suit and tie, large-rimmed glasses, a serious gaze.

  There are several other paintings in the room, eclectic in style and taste, the most prominent one a Maine seascape. A Persian rug takes up an expanse of the living-room floor. An all-glass coffee table sits by a long sofa. The books on the coffee table appear to be floating in mid-air: Roth, Márquez, Morrison.

  The rest of the room has an ancient lived-in feel: a dark Steinway with an open lid, a set of fire irons by the blocked-up chimney, an antique wooden bar with several crystal glasses perched on top.

  Later the homicide detectives will be surprised by the presence of the cameras: they will find out that it was Mendelssohn’s son, Elliot, who secretly installed the nannycams to keep an eye on Sally James, though there doesn’t seem much reason to suspect her at all, nor much reason to watch Mendelssohn at the table, sipping his coffee and reading his paper, looking down upon himself from his own portrait, the older self looking considerably more wan.

  They scrub through the digital video and watch the footage from the day of his death. Every now and then Sally James walks in front of the mantelpiece camera. She vacuums. She arranges cushions. She sits for an hour and reads a magazine. Mendelssohn himself shoves his walking frame into view exactly three times: once, when he shuffles to the writing table, reads a book, scribbles a note, checks his BlackBerry; another, when he shuffles to the window to check, presumably, on the snowy weather outside; another, when he stands in the room, in the early morning, staring vacantly ahead.

  When he turns to the camera he is caught in the faded glory of his maroon dressing gown. He has the lined cheeks, the hooded eyes, the frugal smile of age, but there is still something of the robust boy about him, the way the memory of his body still appears to move under the skin.

  The detectives watch Sally emerge several times into the living room, slow and laborious. Each time it takes a moment for the aperture to adjust. A backlit blaze, then a slow darkening. She wears nurse whites and slippers. She is broad, sturdy, with an undulation to her shoulders. A large hip-sway. No malevolence to her, no impatience. Nothing untoward or suspicious. She comes in, puts down the early morning smoothie, sets the table for toast and coffee, hands him the newspaper, returns again with a jar of marmalade. The footage is chilling only because it is so ordinary.

  Nor is there much in the way of interest, or evidence, later, when she helps Mendelssohn into his overcoat, wraps his scarf, dons his hat, takes his elbow, and walks him out of the living room.

  They will watch Sally when she returns to the apartment to see if she betrays any further emotion, but she simply sits in the armchair, puts her feet on a footrest, reads her magazine. Later, when she receives the news in a phone call, she will throw her arms to the sky and rush through the living room, turning once to retrieve her coat and shoes. In the late afternoon, she will pace the floor, and when the news of his death is confirmed, she will fall grief-stricken to her knees.

  There are so many ways to go, the detectives know, opposition and conflict, theories drifting over and beyond one another. Things changed by the act of observation. The old laws of physics. Speed and position. Time and distance.

  They will comb through the images, looking for any random detail, the breeze of surprise, a clue. The more obscure the moment, the more valuable the knowledge. There is always a chance they will spot something they already overlooked.

  They work in much the same way as poets: the search for a random word, at the right instance, making the poem itself so much more precise.

  IV

  A man and a woman

  Are one.

  A man and a woman and a blackbird

  Are one.

  Used to be there was quite an art to the newspaper fold. Back in the days when they summered out on the Island. A young whippersnapper. Sitting on the LIRR with the other suits and ties. It was a spectacular skill, to be able to fold the paper in long neat sections. The choreographed commute. An early morning ballet. They could sit in rows of three, knee to knee, turn the pages and still never touch elbows. Streamlining it. Some of the more meticulous could make perfect folds right along the storylines, four little corridors of broadsheet, like the fine edge of a bespoke suit. When the world was respectful and polite. Briefcases and umbrellas and door-holding. Occasionally there was a schmuck who couldn’t fold the paper at all and he would be there, arms flailing, paper rustling, no respect, an accordion of elbows, the same species who could never find his commuter pass, or who dropped his coffee, always fumbling around, making noise, causing a fuss. At least in those days there were no cell phones to deal with.

  He took a train up to Stamford last week to Elliot’s house, his mansion rather, awful place, twelve bedrooms and swimming pool and media hall and five-car garage, but cheap and shoddy all the same, like the one next door, and next door to that, a row of Ikea houses, such wealthy mediocrity, his very own son, his big bald son, who could believe it? The baldness, the bigness, the stupidity, in a house designed to bore the living daylights out of visitors, no character at all, all blond wood and fluorescent lighting and clean white machinery, not to mention his brand-new wife, number three, a clean white machine herself, up from the cookie cutter and into Elliot’s life, she might as well have jumped out of the microwave, her skin orange, her teeth pearly white. A trophy wife, but why the word trophy? Something to shoot on safari?

  Just as wel
l Eileen never got to meet her. She wanted so much for her big, tall boy and what did she get except no grandchildren, a boatload of sorrow, and two divorces? Not to mention the fact that Jacintha came with three boys under her wing, ready-wrapped fatherhood, straight from the mail-order catalog, all legs and pimples and angst. His step-grandchildren, a blubbering stew of adolescence, he can hardly even remember their names, nor their faces, and who in the world would name their son Aldous these days anyway? A brave new world it is not.

  Where was I anyway? The mind these days, it slides so quickly. Nosce te ipsum. Something to do with cell phones? Or was it the newspaper and the folds?

  Used to be that he’d read the paper cover to cover, minus the sports, then fold out the crossword puzzle, finish it in twenty minutes flat. Not anymore. Still, it’s one of his favorite moments of the day, the mental brunch of The New York Times. Open to a story about the Central African Republic. An awful thing, those machetes. All the news that’s fit to splint. A report on North Korea. No money for the Super Collider. The imminent collapse of the Middle East peace process. Well, of course, there’s always that. Hard to think of it collapsing since he knows full well that it was hardly ever built up in the first place. Poor Katya, over there, week in and week out, in her diplomatic post, pleading and cajoling and mollifying her heart out, when the plain fact of the matter is the bastards just don’t want peace, any of them, one side or the other, Jew or Arab or Christian or Coptic or whatever else, they’d rather suicide-bomb one another asunder, it’s the ordinary man on the street who suffers, women, too, not to mention poor Katya herself, over there with his teenage grandkids, no step about them, beautiful kids, Laura, James, Steven, but a life under the microscope, armed guards all over the estate, and why did she have to choose Israel of all places, couldn’t she have gotten involved in Belfast or somewhere halfway sane?

  Poor Eileen hated to see any news of Northern Ireland. Used to put her in an awful tailspin. Over there blowing the heads off one another for no sane reason either, lobbing molotov cocktails, marching in parades to celebrate the dead, flying their banners, King William up on horseback. All war, any war, the vast human stupidity, Israel, Ireland, Iran, Iraq, all the I’s come to think of it, although at least in Iceland they got it right. Odd that. You never hear a peek of war from Iceland at all, but then again who’d want to be firing bullets over a piece of frozen tundra?