by Rhoda Lerman
Robert, however, and wisely, denied her that privilege. Assuredly my Robert has come a long way. For there is chaos in my underwear drawer. Even chaos, you understand, is predetermined. If in the future, the heavens resemble my underwear drawer, you will understand it is my wish. Absurdity is also a pattern. As above, below. In your terms, my underwear drawer is a projection of my unconscious. Recognize it. My underwear drawer recapitulates astronomy and all the stops in between, including phylogeny, ontology, psychology, aging and … Claire will explain it to you in time.
“You must have Chaos within you
to give birth to a dancing star.”
Nietzsche
She enters now. She is arrayed in a dress of mine. She is clean. Her hair is electric with brushing. She nods gracefully at Robert. She sits in an Applebaum’s chair, spreads her legs and enfolds her cello. She plays my “Lamentation to a Raised Penis.” It is fine and, in its minor key, touching. Her hiking boots stick out from under my dress. She is sure of herself. I love her. Kind of. She has obviously been laid. Well.
I am thankful in a small way that Robert did not read the financial columns first. As I watched him he turned to the obituaries. He becomes more valuable and respected by the length of my obituary. I am a front page in the Pennysaver, a back page in the Times and a full quarter page in the Herald Journal. My recipes are included. One is for veal cutlet dipped in applesauce, the other for spruce beer of pears and mandrake root. The veal recipe is just a ploy. You know of course how I split my dividend. For I have given the secret away and the children shall use it and, with Grace’s direction and Robert’s productivity and business sense and Mack’s love of music and Claire’s sense of cosmic rhythm, all will share in my supernatural. As I have become more mortal this time around, you guys have become more divine.
But poor Robert. He is too deeply programmed and he will not be able to play. I am ready to play. Actually we all are. But he can not stop working and that is why he can not come with me. He will be lonely in his desert now but much respected. However, he will not be able to pull off any tricks as he has done before. The people have been reminded and they know that I, rather than granting him an audience from my lapis lazuli throne or my bed of ferns along the unnamed riverbank in Sinai, I have left him at the cottage cheese sign. Unchosen. I have called him by his name, Moses, and I have left him. I will not always be at his right hand. Grace will though. And she will cook sauces for him.
And Mack, dearest beautiful Mack, comes in, elegantly suited. He kisses Claire on the forehead before Grace, and you know what that means. His new manhood is very very special and the beginning of new things for many people. He has, in the words of one of his songs, looked at things from both sides now, in a Jungian balance, and he will find himself quite a Pied Piper. You wonder why I do not take him with me? I have seen him staring at his own eyes in his poster and listening to his own sound on the radio and I know, we can not share, easily, our destinies. I do not wish to fight. I wish to play. Claire plays circus music. She understands. I must compose myself. I feel deeply for Mack.
I am composed. I am composite. I have gotten it all together.
Grace is wringing her hands. Her eyes are red and sincerely swollen. She has brought with her boxes, shoeboxes, which of course is the original shape and meaning of coffins and the Old Woman in the Shoe (my picture is perfectly painted on the inside of Egyptian coffins), of cannoli, which I know are filled with chocolate cream. She puts one in the coffin. Mack is behind her. He brings in more shoeboxes and I consider asking my son to slip another cake, without ostentation, into my coffin. One for each hand. But it is too dangerous. None of my sons has ever been terribly good at secrets, either keeping them or telling them properly. They have always claimed credit for themselves as the originators of my secrets. No man who would actually be chauvinistic enough to try this again, would brag of his own secret recipes. It is a perfect cross trump. Grace is weeping on Robert’s shoulder.
“I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. She was so young, so strong. But there she is. I don’t believe it. Like a daughter to me.”
As usual, Grace’s intuition carries her far beyond ordinary knowledge. She shall have fine judgment running things. “I just can’t believe it. Look, Mack, isn’t she beautiful?” My face is a study in piety and composure.
I can not see Mack’s face without moving; I am sorely tempted. By the scent of his hair spray, I know him. I feel Mack touching my cheeks with his fingers and then kissing my forehead. I sigh as softly as if we were making love. “Mack.” I touch his fingers with my tongue. He swallows noisily. “A little farther down.” His hands tremble over my face again and I bite into his fingertips. I hear him dragging a chair near the coffin. He will sit near me and I am grateful.
Everyone else of course believes I am dead. The others come in, my band, in expensive suits and flowering ties. Everyone sits stiffly in the Applebaum chairs. My Jewish Junior League friends turn casually and whisper hungrily about the men in my band. I have told them my men are demons. They interpret me according to their needs. Under closed eyelids, I feel Nino arranging the two soft curls on my cheeks and because I feel his elbow heavily on my breast, in total disrespect, and because I have reason to terrify him, I wink. A curl drops. He coughs phlegmy and leaves the coffin’s side quickly. He leaves in the direction of the kitchen’s bathroom.
Now my son leans in, almond scented, chocolate breathed. He takes my cannoli. “I can’t find my toothbrush.”
“I’m dead,” I hiss. “Scram.”
“But I can’t find …”
Relatives and friends are arriving and signing in. Robert is hanging coats, greeting his family, passing bowls of chocolates. I hear hangers scraping.
“Mommy …”
“Kitchen cupboard. Go away from me. I’m dead. And give me back my cannoli.”
“I ate it …”
“Beast.”
Someone spills a drink on the tufted arm of my suede sofa and I move as if to rise, but remember. I would like to hold Mack from his trembling. My son is being held and caressed while people whisper around him in great stage whispers: “Poor baby. Poor orphan.” He answers in singsong. “She’s not really dead. She’s not really dead. She’s faking.” He pokes me to be funny. I am not amused. I know their eyebrows are raised knowledgeably and mawkishly while he continues his singing. I am prepared to strangle him and almost manage to pinch his buttock as he leans in again to complain about the toothbrush. But someone else leans in and kisses me wet and soggily. Unpleasantly. Near me, a familiar voice condemns me: “See what happens to kids when their mothers are such intellectual superiors. He’s sick. She couldn’t stay home and give him a normal life.”
“I can’t find the toothbrush. Someone’s throwing up in my bathroom. I don’t have enough socks. I want to call Danny. How many pieces of chocolate can I have more? Can’t I call Danny and say good-by?”
“Jesus Christ, bug off. Tell them I’m really dead. I’m dead. Look in your sock drawer for your toothbrush.”
“She’s really dead,” I hear him shouting gaily. “She’s really dead.” His voice trails off as it often does when Robert approaches him.
“Buddy.” Robert pulls him out of my hearing. If I do not take the boy away now the balance of his childhood will be spent, without necessity, in analysis. At present, I wish that and more on him for messing up my secrets. Big mouth. Like the rest of them. Any kid with balls like that won’t pull any more teeth out.
Robert is above me, whispering furtively. A strange level voice answers him. Figuratively, I hold my breath. “What factories?” Robert asks.
“She has four factories. I have the deeds.” Oh, the lawyer. “They’re supposed to go to Mack.” His voice becomes sanctimonious. “It’s what’s coming up … cupcakes. According to Kiplinger and Dun & Bradstreet, big trend.”
“Cupcakes are going big. You got to watch trends. If we act fast, I can destroy the note giving the factories to Mack.�
�
“I don’t think I want to give up polyesters.”
There is silence above me.
“Think you’ll get caught destroying the note?”
I am tense. Robert is about to break a law. I hear him sigh deeply. “Cupcakes.” And I know I have changed his destiny.
It wasn’t until the first shovelful of soil was thrown on her grave in the crisp winter afternoon that Ishtar made her move. She grabbed the ankle of the funeral director, who, although he had gone through elementary and high school with Robert, had also seen, in an unwarranted fashion, her feathers, and pulled him into her grave, lifting herself out while the attendants and workmen and the funeral party, frozen in terror, watched. With the purple velvet lining she had been very busily tearing from under the brass studs of the coffin she covered her shoulders, threw the Celanese dress at her husband’s Hush Puppies, grabbed her son and fled. The boy clutched a toothbrush in his mitten.
Robert stood upright. Behind him the people dropped to their knees mudstaining their Anne Klein’s and Barney’s, astonished. From the brave way Robert stood, Ishtar knew he had expected her flight. It mattered not whether she rose to heaven or climbed into the Silver Cloud waiting for her. He knew, composite, she was able to take either direction. He had at least recognized her wholeness.
Robert began, ’n his long-legged lope, to follow her, calling, “Please, Ishtar, leave me our son.” His voice crackled. She could hear his fear. Ishtar paused momentarily and flung the two teeth before him. A pink granite wall rose from the ground, stopping him.
“No,” she howled. “No more of that shit. I give them a few secrets, these sons, and they mess it up. They are bad hash. It is Mother you should eat. Mother! Go, thee, and make Cupcakes.”
“I’ll miss you,” he pleaded from behind the wall, which was rising steadily now. Ishtar caught a sob in her own throat.
“Wait here,” she told her son, and skipped back to the wall. “Robert, it was very nice.” She managed to kiss his forehead just as the wall rose, groaning, another inch, and then he couldn’t see her tears. She passed a handful of amber tears, still soft like Jujubes, over the wall to him. “Darling, go home and mess up your underwear drawer. Think of me. I destroy,” she called over the wall. “I destroy so I can love. I love so I can destroy.” She felt much gentler, this Time, about it. It had been a good trip.
23
I WATCH, UNSEEN. AT MY NEW HOSTESS BAKERY IN CANADA, unlimited, the new conveyor belt runs smoothly into the new decoration room. Robert has outdone himself in designing the equipment. Regularly, a machine squiggles my spiral on the Cupcakes, in white, in soft sugar, on the chocolate frosting and plants my star on the Twinkies, in white, in soft sugar, on their bare yellow lengths, unfrosted. Grace has sensibly eliminated production of Suzy Q’s and the breads along with other splinter products. The demand for the Cupcakes and Twinkies already is tremendous. The cakes are now wrapped with proper prayers, appropriate incantation and minimum daily requirements for the balancing and fulfilling of sexual roles. Each month the wrappers, which are becoming collectors’ items, feature the words to the Demon’s newest recording. Their songs of course are as popular as the cakes. There is also enclosed in the biodegradable packages a nice Reuben Donnelley coupon drawing for a trip to Paradise, which I shall soon restore. Actually if enough winners come to expect the restoration, I will then not be able to succumb to laziness and shall get busy planting trees and flowers. That is at least a year away and I’m currently dragging my feet, as the expression goes, until a proper partner comes along. Robert has hit a minor snag in his production also. He has been working on the blueprints of a solid state Easter bunny placement machine. I can not help him, knowing, even after all of this mortality, very little about solid states. And since at Easter, Hostess Bakeries places a white bunny, hard sugar, on each of the Cupcakes and Twinkies, Robert has taken over the Sisyphean task and works by hand.
He is in the decoration room. He wears a pure white linen three button roll suit, Puma sneakers with cobalt blue stripes and a sprig of pussywillow in his lapel. He looks wonderful. I am certain the pussywillow came from Grace. He stands at the conveyor belt. He is surrounded by huge vats of hard sugar bunnies. Grace has fortuitously remembered to note on the Easter labels that pregnant women should not eat the bunnies because of the danger of harelip children. Grace is particularly wise in these things. Robert often eats at her house before coming home.
I am sorry for Robert. His big shoulders are bent in concentration. He works very fast but anxiously. With the thumb and forefinger of his right hand he lifts a hard sugar bunny from the vat, drops it on a passing cake and with his forefinger pushes the bunny into the cake. The sound his fingers make is a heartbeat, tense and overdrawn. The lifting of the bunny with the two fingers produces a light sound, a che; and the pushing of the bunny produces a heavy sound, a chum. Che chum, che chum. But his hands shake and the heartbeat is uneven.
His difficulty is learning to adjust his actions to the tides of other objects. It is not an easy lesson for a Mosaic character who wrestled with the universe for his existences. The conveyor belt is unrelenting. The cakes never stop. He drops a bunny on the floor.
He looks upward in fear. The conveyor belt moves, unbunnied, beyond him. A clanging alarm fills the room and the red emergency lights blink above him. This red alert also is his own design. The conveyor belt grinds and is still. All machinery ceases. He scurries in his Pumas ahead placing the hard sugar bunnies on the unbunnied cakes. He works to the blinking of the red lights, which serve to reestablish the correct rhythm. At last, the Cupcakes are so fecundated and he signals Grace, in the tower above him, to turn off the lights and the terrible clanging of the bell. He bends to his work again, positioning himself by the barrels, legs spread solidly for balance on the concrete floor. He is more rhythmical now. Grace beats lightly a ruler against the Plexiglas window of her supervisor tower. Soon he will learn this rhythm and build it into a new and wonderful machine. That is his capability. He will build new factories and soaring warehouses with loading docks like suckling wolf mothers. In the meantime, there is a loveliness about his personal fecundation of the cakes. Grace will check on the quality of course. The creme, with my sufficient recipes, will be living and perfect, and because it contains the stuff of life, no matter what machine is put to its task, the creme will work its way in perpetuity.
I am satisfied. He is not, my ex-Chairman of Parks and Paradise, but then he has had his Time.
24
HIS YOUNG TREES WERE LAID HAPHAZARDLY IN A SMALL GRAY metal rowboat. The rowboat was tied up among the bulrushes of the canal. The trees had balloon bags of earth at their bottoms. His shoulders were narrow, long and lean in the mudspattered yellow slicker, and his feet, in green rubber pack boots, were covered with gray-white mud. Ishtar stood above him on the berm as he patted and kneaded the rich earth gently around the new trees. She touched the long layers of his fine hair. His head was delicate, much like a bronze now in a cathedral somewhere that had been cast of another favorite of hers, kingly. His ears were pearly and beautiful. Shafts of the winter sun played in the pupils of his wise brown eyes, and bits of dead Queen Anne’s lace and bluebells were twisted into each of the buttonholes of his army shirt under his slicker. Ishtar wiped dirt from the oilcloth on his chest and smudged it on her forehead as a sign between her eyes. She watched the muscles of his neck. She watched the muscles of his back working down into the soil. Unbidden, her son helped him by shoveling small piles of chips over the new beds.
When the final tree was planted and the little rowboat was emptied, he stood, stretching his tired knees, and licked his lips. One corner of his mouth twitched and he put a fist up against his mouth, covering the twitch, the smile and his excitement. His eyes were deep and soft. He lifted his arm above his head and pointed down at her with one finger, twice, two little questioning woodpecker taps in the air near her as if testing the wealth under her bark. Twice he pointed at her, a fist st
ill over his mouth. “Do you …?” His eyes were dancing and Ishtar smiled, waiting. “Do you … bake?” And he snorted happily at his own question.
“Once, but now I have taught others. I have learned this time to prepare cabbage soup. And have you always worn bluebells in your buttonholes?”
He rocked against an elm tree, holding his fist over his mouth again, while laughter escaped from his eyes. Then he held his hand over his head and pointed twice at her in question and then pointed at himself. Before Ishtar could answer, he leaped up away from his elm, fist off his mouth, and grinned a circus grin at her. “I …” He pointed to his chest twice. “I direct traffic around here.”
Ishtar clapped her hands. Alone on the stone weir across the abandoned canal, he lifted his yellow slicker arms, elbows straight out, and directed a flow of lengthy safaris, circus parades, Akkadian armies, halting them, leading them forward, allowing them to pass, motioning them to turn aside, bowing to kings and queens and caravans, patting children on the head and camels on the thigh, growing impatient at muddling elephants and angry mules, pleased with the snappy Egyptian barges and salt-laden scows moving regularly and professionally down the canal, and at last, when all the traffic had passed and the canal was abandoned once more, he put his fist against his lips. His eyes danced and he rocked against the elm and watched Ishtar. He finally removed his fist. “Do you …?” And dipped his head, watching her now from beneath his brow. “Do you like my canal?”
