Monsters

by Karen Brennan

  Listen: The drone of a plane.

  Everything else miles into the future.

  THE SNOW QUEEN

  Prologue

  In the mirror her face was deeply unfamiliar, the mouth drawn down at the corners, the eyes blank, strange, lacking expression, as if over the real face someone had substituted a mask with an image of another face. Whose?

  Always this question: who are you? Now the face, the one that is not her own, is aging, the jaw line has become wobbly and the neck has developed heavy folds pulling what was once a solemn long face down even further, almost a parody of the face that once was. A melted face, less distinct than before, on the verge of disappearing. Not hers.

  I took a course in psychoanalytic theory and Jacques Lacan was the star of that course. One felt, reading Lacan, that he was always the star of any course in which he happened to reside. It was Lacan who pronounced the mirror-image a misprision—a misperception.

  I thought knowing these things would help me understand. But what I discovered is that what I hadn’t understood became even more complicated: a simple box with a secret inside had grown limbs and appendages each with more secrets and little branches attached to the limbs and appendages, and dots on the branches that vibrated with whatever it was they hid. It was as if all knowledge were inaccessible, constantly galloping ahead or lagging behind or on another planet. In such a way, the world was restored to mystery and I took a certain pleasure in knowing that I couldn’t know anything.

  It wasn’t that Lacan was so difficult (though he was difficult). Many understood him perfectly and had a good time arguing about the implications of his theories. For me, though, it was as if I had glimpsed a little puddle at the bottom of a well—very far away and menacing though the menace may just have been the distance of the puddle from the edge of the well over which I peered and which I might have imagined falling into. . . . The puddle also held my image, very dark and quivering and tiny, my face looking down in a manner almost sublime. Though it wasn’t my face. I may have been frightened.

  Lacan’s Mirror Stage refers to the time at which a child first perceives himself in the mirror—Voilà ! But the self he sees is a fantasy of a self which can never be known.

  Is it possible I skipped this crucial step in my own evolution? (Was she right not to recognize her own image, her mistaken image that, to her, always felt alien?)

  Like the mirror, the mother’s body is shattered and the child does not see this at first, thinking she is whole and ideal. Thinking she is he and he is she. In the mirror which is broken but appears unbroken.

  Still there is this: A child whom the mother loves. A mother whom the child loves. Together they are disturbingly one.

  I remember waking up with my son in my arms. He must have been about ten minutes old. His head was horribly lopsided and he had purple marks on his temples where they used the forceps. Naturally I began to weep uncontrollably. On the other side of the plate glass window in my hospital room, I watched a flock of birds zoom by; they seemed to be cackling. One came quite close to the window, even peered in at us, my son and I in the high, white hospital bed, him swaddled in a blue and white striped flannel blanket and me in a pink bed jacket trimmed with lace over a black bra. It peered in at us and it was then that I noticed that it wasn’t a bird at all, but a tiny demon with horns made out of icicles.

  1

  I’d just moved back to the city and it was snowing, but it always seemed to be snowing here those days, even when it wasn’t snowing one had the impression of snow. I’d moved back to the city, having been away for a long time, and so my return felt unreal, as if I were sitting in a calm chair by a fire and straining (and failing) to recall a home I’d left so long ago—I cannot even say how long ago, in fact, because upon returning everything blurred, especially time blurred, becoming fuzzy around the edges like an old mitten.

  I’d been away for a long time during which I’d produced quite a bit of work. I’d been industrious, this at least you can say about me. And though I am no judge of this work, I can say in all honesty that I’d given it my all: all my strength and life’s blood; as they say, I’d poured my heart into it. You might liken my project to architecture, to plans for building a vision out of innovative materials, a kind of esoteric blueprint for what I conceived of for, say, an expression of life. I’d become very absorbed to the point of ignoring the world spinning and dipping around me . . . I came back hoping to connect, to find myself again. I believe we are always losing and finding ourselves.

  After two weeks of wandering around, I ran into a friend at Borders bookstore who very generously offered me a place to stay at his apartment. I suppose it was pity when my friend asked where I was living or if I had a place to stay for the night. My general look of forlornness must have prompted him to say, I happen to have a free sofa, and he winked at me, which I considered very kind, very warmhearted of this friend who, as I recall, did not have a reputation for either warmth or kindness.

  We were browsing the psychology section, he holding a book on the borderline personality and I holding a similar volume concerning narcissism. The maladies du jour, quipped my friend, if you don’t count drug addiction. Ah yes, drug addiction, I said vaguely. I wasn’t sure I wanted to discuss drug addiction with this friend. I had known many drug addicts and they all were unbearably sad and I found it hard to be irreverent about them. One such was my own son, a pathetic person who wandered these city streets homeless, perpetually checking himself into and out of detox units and trying to scam me into purchasing phony prescriptions. I wanted to forget about my son, to excise him from my mind, but the more I tried to do this, the more his presence asserted itself and I could see him, as if a movie were flickering before my eyes, as a serious, overalled toddler and then as a tender, pudgy preteen with straight brown hair that hung over one eye.

  I did not want to discuss my son.

  We are always finding and losing ourselves, it is the nature of our lives on earth.

  My friend and I then repaired to the fiction section and explored the A’s, Jane Austen, all the Andersons, Agee, Alcott and others, the usual great variety under A, and we each perused according to our tastes, slipping a book from the shelf, riffling through the pages and replacing it, but not before chuckling over a title or author photo, the way you do, but still in a state of awe—because books, written by anyone, are an achievement, even if they are not always ennobling.

  I hadn’t slept for a week. I’d been away and when I returned to this city I found everything changed. For example, a certain street I’d remembered as going one way toward the state capital now pointed in a different direction. Where this boulevard had been tree-lined, it was now flanked with tall soulless buildings. A store that used to sell small appliances had sprung up in the place of the junior college where I’d once taught freshman composition and all the cars had new-style garish license plates. I do not remember the state motto being _____, but it’s possible I’d never really attended to the state motto. It was very cold, as I’ve said, snowing or about to—whereas before it had been temperate, tending toward sea breezes, balmy and blue. Now, no sea in sight (though I searched until I exhausted myself) and a strange odor permeated the air, a cold odor, not quite fresh, as of old snow, but so recent that it did not qualify as memory, but more like the fleeting space between nostalgia and dread, frozen into permanence.

  My friend was blind in one eye, and though he assured me he’d always been blind in one eye—the result of a sleigh-riding accident when he was ten—I don’t remember him being blind in one eye. You must have hidden it well, I remarked. At this, he bristled. It’s not something you can exactly hide, he retorted. He was holding a paperback edition of H. C. Anderson’s fairy tales—as far away from his face as his arms could stretch, since in addition to being blind in one eye he needed new reading glasses—and he insisted on sharing with me an excerpt from “The Snow Queen,” which is all about a terrifying being called the Snow Queen who kidnaps a boy
called Kay. I didn’t want to be rude, but I’m not especially interested in fairy tales, no matter how capable and esteemed the author. In fact, “The Snow Queen” had a particularly perilous association for me, as she—the cold and beautiful woman—put me in mind of my mother who had once read me that story. Therefore, while my friend read—it was a lady, tall and slender and brilliantly white. . .—I let my mind wander.

  2

  For two weeks, I’d been looking for the sea, sleeping where I could under whatever canopy or ledge I could find—bridges, which had been abundant in the old days, had vanished without a trace, and so I was reduced to buttresses—the new gargoyles, snow-laden and hideous, the tiny balconies that used to be so fragrant and flower-laden, where people now smoked cigarettes, pitching the still-smoldering rockets below, almost burning me to death on several occasions.

  I did not like to ask my friend—or anyone—about the sea since it is entirely possible that I am misremembering my old home. While he read Anderson’s “Snow Queen” in that excited way people have when they desperately want you to share their enthusiasm, their voices ratcheting up dramatically, my mind wandered the streets in the same manner as my body, for the past month, had wandered the streets. Still no sea.

  My friend did not have the reputation for warmth or kindness, nevertheless he invited me to his apartment where he said there was an empty sofa with my name on it. He must have known I was extremely tired, yawning constantly and twirling and untwirling a strand of my hair around a forefinger, a habit when fatigued.

  My friend said: All I ask is that you remember to put the shower curtain inside the tub. Otherwise the water will drip into the downstairs apartment and that bitch will have a fit. That’s easy enough, I said. We hadn’t even arrived at his apartment when he gave me this rule about the water and shower. I wondered if there were other rules that would be more difficult to follow because, like anyone, I worry about unconscious behaviors, those which I cannot control, and then I worry that I am too old to change.

  I don’t see well, said the friend apropos of nothing. We were walking down some avenue or other—I should say sliding down some avenue or other, since it had of course recently snowed and the road held the tracks of sleds and skis as well as snow tires and chains—but there was really nothing to see, I wanted to point out to my friend, everything was white, the sky, the street, and all the things that might have been visible on a day without snow were now covered with snow—rows of automobiles to the point that I wasn’t sure they were automobiles. For all I knew, they might have been great hulking sea monsters who had lost the sea like the rest of us.

  Nevertheless, I gave my friend my arm, and he clutched my red windbreaker which probably did the opposite of keeping me warm, it was of such a weird, cold material, and in this manner we eventually arrived at his apartment.

  3

  I was perfectly comfortable in my new surroundings; they beat the hell out of wandering the icy streets homeless, running into bands of thieves and drug addicts, my son not among those I’d encountered, thank god. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d seen my pathetic son. My heart no longer bleeds for him, though there was a time when my heart was smashed to smithereens. Enough said. Every time I try to banish him from memory here he comes again with his tilted grey eyes, even in the guise of one whom I did not see in the past month, as he who had been conspicuously absent from my wanderings.

  Being homeless is no picnic and, unlike my son, I did it drug free with only my thoughts for comfort, my belief (mistaken) that the sea lurked somewhere, waiting to restore me to my bearings.

  My friend had a sofa, a TV, a lamp, a rug, a stove, a fridge, a double bed, a closet full of shoes and a cat. I hadn’t realized he was such an austere fellow. He didn’t have a reputation for warmth or kindness, but inviting me to his apartment suggested that this reputation was not entirely warranted.

  I slept on the sofa, as instructed. It was foamy, not lumpy, and its velvet material a cocoon of sorts. We all like to feel swathed, I think. Also, my friend gave me a blanket—a nice blue blanket which I wrapped around myself multiple times—and a pillow that used to belong to the cat. In fact, the cat shared the pillow with me at night, which I didn’t mind, the paddling and purring of the cat next to my ear as I slept, though I believe it colored my dreams.

  The cat was cream-colored with large irregular splotches on its back, giving it the appearance of a small cow.

  As cats go, it was medium-sized.

  I dreamt of cows, therefore, and human infants who were pitched into dark holes and drug addicts sleeping on sofas belonging to other drug addicts.

  The last time I saw my son he informed me that he was living in a “squat.” I told him that that fact struck me as kind of ignominious.

  I remember the ocean as being a deep gray color laden, on good days, with streaks of white, which gave it its characteristic shimmer. The sky on such days was lit with what looked to be rags hanging from a celestial clothesline. Very beautiful, but spooky.

  4

  My friend was christened Frederick von Schlegel, after the German philosopher of the same name, but everyone called him Hans. My name was G, just the initial deprived of the clothing, I liked to say. The cat’s name was Fur and I won’t tell you my son the drug addict’s name.

  I had been away for an indeterminate amount of time during which I completed a great deal of work. I kept residuals in a suitcase which, until I met Hans in Borders bookstore, I lugged around with me through the city. The bulk was housed elsewhere. I had no idea if any of it was successful. In more optimistic moments, I liked to think so; but eventually something would happen—the tiniest alteration in the atmosphere, such as the time when the crow who frequented the fire-escape railing growled at me through the window, and then I would be in despair over my accomplishments. At such times I felt I understood the impulses of those who scourged themselves with cat o’ nine tails and slept on beds of nails. I, too, craved punishment for the unworthiness of my effort, indeed the unworthiness of my being.

  Other than the sofa, Hans’ apartment was replete with artificial flowers of every denomination. In the mornings, he would tend to these thousands with a translucent spray bottle, which would take a full hour. I could not shake the feeling that these flowers were about to speak, that there was more to them than twists of colored plastic or, in some cases, starched fabric. The cluster of pink ranunculus which sat stiffly on the coffee table in front of the sofa in which I slept seemed always about to discourse about psychology. The narcissist, they always seemed about to say, is generally a happier person than the comparatively hysterical borderline personality. Here they seemed to nod pointedly toward the daffodils, and I of course was reminded of my encounter with my friend at Borders bookstore when we each held those books on personality disorders only to abandon them (thankfully) for fiction. The tulips, I thought, seemed about to agree with me that the idea of personality disorders was kind of creepy and attractive at the same time, the notion that something surprising lurks under the surface of a person always a thrill, but perhaps, at times, an unwelcome thrill. On and on, the flowers seemed about to yak, and I admired their stamina. The fact that they all persisted in a season of profound winter was, I suppose, cause for celebration of some sort—or perhaps they were merely stir crazy, like me.

  Even so, I rarely left the apartment, but settled myself by the window where I indulged in an on-and-off sprightly communication with the crow. The crow would bring me news of my son, not welcome news, and much as I tried to dissuade him (or her) from these reports, she seemed to insist upon delivering them. You never know about the sensibilities of other species who are possibly impervious to that which we hold dear as humans. In this case, I was holding dear the absence of my son from my life. I cherished this absence as some might cherish inhabiting the premises of one who collected artificial flowers of every denomination and harbored a spotted cat.

  The cat was not a communicator and, aside from our
sleep time, kept its distance. There were times when I felt it was “giving me a look,” but many feel this way about cats on account of the shapes of their eyes and the fact that they rarely blink. Perhaps, though, they have the capacity to stare into the soul; if this one had been able to gaze into mine, I doubt it would have insisted on sleeping with me. It would have discovered a clotted mess of conflicting desires and repugnancies, all of which I hid behind my usual sangfroid.

  Hans and I spoke rarely and when we did our conversation tended to get caught up in snarls of misunderstanding. He was, as I’ve said, blind in one eye, and this was the central fact of his life, to hear him talk about it. Once I tried to tell him that being blind in one eye was not all that disabling and he nearly bit my head off. You have no idea, do you? he said incredulously, and we went on from there, back and forth, like a ping pong tournament I remember participating in (and losing) as a ten-year-old. Nerve-wracking to see that little white ball—innocuous as it may have been—barreling toward you, as if it might cripple you for life, which is the spirit in which we fought, Hans and I. You are the most self-indulgent person I’ve ever met, he shouted and I shouted, At least I’m not deluded and he shouted, You could at least tidy up a little around here and I shouted, I can’t hear myself think around here!