My mother was waiting by the window. She wanted to know what had happened, what was wrong; she had a radar for such things.
“Why does something always have to be wrong?”
“I can tell,” she said.
“It’s like you want something to be wrong.”
“Don’t start,” she said. “It’s too early to start.”
She kissed Cary, then the twins. “Lucy’s been crying—her face is all red.”
“She’s fine now,” I said.
“So she was crying.”
“I don’t like miracles,” Lucy said.
“Did you see one?” my mother asked.
She pointed to me. “He made one.”
“Is that what he told you?” my mother said.
“No,” Lucy said. “I seen it.”
“I seen it, too!” Vincent said. He stomped around the dining room. My mother’s wedding china, used only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, rattled on the table. “I seen it, too! I seen it, too!” he yelled. “And then we almost ran over a baby!”
“What did you do?” my mother said to me.
“A girl ran into the street,” Cary said. “No one was hurt.”
“Was he driving too fast?”
“Everyone’s fine, Ma.”
This word, from Cary, softened my mother. Cary had taken it upon herself years earlier to call my mother Ma. My mother referred to Cary as her daughter. But when they hugged, it was the opposite: she was a girl and Cary was her mother. They swayed as if slow-dancing; my mother’s eyes were closed. I put the cheesecake in the refrigerator, and when I came back they were still hugging. Cary’s hands kneaded my mother’s back, and they were both somewhere else, hugging someone else. I didn’t feel jealous. If anything, I felt relieved that someone could give my mother that kind of love.
My mother busied herself stuffing the turkey. She brought out cheese and crackers, and juice for the kids. While we snacked she folded laundry, then went outside to sweep. I tried to help, but she said no, so I stood in the yard and watched her. Just the two of us, she became the mother I knew—nervously sweeping where she’d already swept, bending to dislodge a leaf pressed wet into the ground. Every leaf and twig had to be accounted for. A new leaf fell; she went to get it. She’d been getting pains, she told me.
“Where?”
“I don’t know—everywhere.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Are you making fun?”
“No, but if you have pains everywhere.”
“I have arthritis—you know that.”
I grabbed the broom, stopped her from sweeping. She pulled the broom away from me. “I can do it,” she said. “Go inside and eat.”
“Where’s your pain?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“They don’t know what it is.”
“So you have seen a doctor?”
“No, but they don’t know.”
“At least let me hold the bag,” I said.
“I have it,” she said.
I reached for the bag; she looked up at me from where she was kneeling. “I said I have it,” she said.
I went back inside and put a cracker into my mouth. Cary read to the kids on the floor. On the muted television behind them Tokyo burned in an old monster movie.
I went upstairs to use the bathroom. My father’s razor was twenty-five years old; his facial hair was still caught in the blade. Hanging from the showerhead was a waterproof transistor radio; a man was talking about the plane that had crashed in Queens a few weeks earlier. He was scared, he said. Everyone had been scared since September. Anything could happen at any moment. If you waited long enough, eventually the sky would fall.
In my father’s dresser were old bottles of cologne shaped like ships, the black comb he used, a pack of cigarettes he never opened. I opened the pack and smelled. His underwear and undershirts, his black socks rolled into balls. No surprises. I’d seen it all before, in the weeks after his death.
From my room I could see the stone; it looked farther away and smaller than I’d remembered. Until I moved out, I looked out my window every night before sunset. I was afraid to look, but I did. I remember expecting to see him seated atop the stone, smoking cigarettes or shuffling a deck of cards.
“Are you looking for the man?”
It was Lucy in the doorway, Vincent behind her. He laughed. “You were scared,” he said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.” He opened the alcove in the hall where my mother stored pillows and blankets; he crawled in, beneath the attic steps. “This is a great hiding place,” he said.
“Careful in there,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just be careful.”
Lucy sat on my bed. “Were you looking for the man?”
“What man?”
“The man who looks like you.”
“I found something!” Vincent shouted. He crawled out holding a baseball card covered in dust. I didn’t recognize the card; it must have been my father’s. Sam Leslie, Brooklyn Dodgers, 1934. He was standing on first base, reaching up to catch the ball. No field behind him; he was playing baseball in the clouds.
“Can I keep it?” Vincent said.
“Sure,” I said, but he put the card on the dresser and forgot about it.
“He’s in the closet,” Lucy said.
“Who?”
“The man.”
“Let’s get him!” Vincent said.
He went for the door, but I grabbed him. “Stay out of there.”
“You’re afraid,” he said.
“Aren’t you?”
“No,” he said, but then I could see he was.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Open the door. See who’s there.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said, then ran out of the room.
“Are you going to look?” Lucy said.
“Would you like me to?”
She shook her head no, and we went downstairs.
I helped in the kitchen while Cary played with the kids in the yard. My mother handed me a carving knife. I stabbed the turkey with a two-pronged fork made for a giant. The knife sliced through easily and thin pieces of meat fell onto a floral plate. My mother put her hand on my back and smiled at what I was doing. She found a small piece on the plate and lifted it to her mouth. She picked up another piece, but this one she brought to my mouth. I turned my head, but she followed my mouth with the meat. Like a child, I pressed my lips together. My mother pushed the turkey into my lips; I could taste it. I opened my mouth to speak and she forced the meat inside.
I spit it out, and her smile was gone.
“Not even one piece?”
“You know I don’t eat meat.”
“This isn’t meat—it’s turkey.”
“I don’t eat anything that used to have a heartbeat.”
“But you wear leather sneakers.”
“Let’s not go through that again.”
She tried to take the knife, but I wouldn’t let her. She tried again, but I pulled back. She winced, pulled her hand away. A thin line of blood formed on her finger. “Let me see,” I said, but she walked away. The turkey that would have been mine she gave to a skinny black cat in the yard.
During dinner my mother kept licking her finger; she looked up to make sure I was watching. Vincent lowered his face to his plate and spooned corn into his mouth as if eating were a contest. Lucy moved the food around her plate warily. She flattened her mashed potatoes into a kind of canvas and made a picture: corn as stars, peas and pieces of yam and cranberry as leaves on turkey trees. Cary told my mother how good everything tasted. She seemed happiest on days she should have been, and probably was, sad. Holidays, when she must have missed her family. Her mother’s birthday, her father’s birthday, her sister’s wedding anniversary. The anniversary of the day the plane had crashed.
Somehow she convinced my mother to allow her and the kids to wash dishe
s. It took great effort for my mother to remain seated at the table while others cleaned. Every few minutes Vincent would show himself drying a plate. My mother praised the good job he was doing, then said, “Careful you don’t drop it, honey. You don’t want a piece of glass stuck in your foot.”
The kids brought in dessert plates and clean forks and the cheesecake. “Come eat,” my mother called to Cary, and Cary said, “Okay, Ma, in a minute,” and I could hear something in her voice, though maybe I’d been looking for it all day. A few more minutes passed, and I went in to check on her. The water was running; she was leaning over the sink, her face in her hands. She heard me behind her and quickly straightened; her eyes were red.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just a headache.”
“You’ve been crying.”
“No,” she said. “I was rubbing my eyes, and my hands are wet.”
My mother came into the kitchen and wanted to know what was wrong.
“Nothing,” I said.
My mother looked at Cary, who said, “It’s just a headache. Let’s go eat some…” There was a long pause; she seemed to be searching for the word cake as if she’d forgotten it. “Let’s go eat,” she said.
Vincent put cake on Lucy’s nose and she left it there, and Cary put cake on her own nose, then I put some on my mother’s face, and for a moment she seemed happy.
As we were leaving, my mother asked if we were taking the BQE home.
“Not sure,” I said.
“Don’t take the streets,” she said. “That neighborhood—my God, what’s happened to it.”
This was an old movie; I knew all the lines.
I kissed her goodbye.
My mother kissed Cary and said, “I grew up in Bushwick. Such a shame what’s happened.”
“What happened?” Vincent said.
“Never mind,” I said, and we drove home through Bushwick.
Under the flashing light of a red-and-yellow bodega, boys drank from paper bags. One kid kicked a bottle from another’s hands; the other boy picked it up and smashed it on the street. They wandered in front of our car; the light turned green. I waited while they argued. The light turned yellow, then red. It was as if we weren’t there. Lucy slept in the back. Vincent was awake, his nose against the window. I pressed the button that locked the doors. One of the boys turned to the car and said, “You better lock your doors.” He put his foot on the car’s hood as if daring me to step on the gas. One of his friends removed his shirt, closed his eyes, and spread his arms as if Christ on the Cross.
Peace and safety.
Silently I repeated the words I’d begun my day with. I’d been running them through my head from the moment my mother warned us not to take the streets, which was also the moment I’d decided that was precisely how we’d go. A battle between my mother’s fear and my positive thinking, my confidence in my ability to create a safe drive home no matter what neighborhood we drove through. A battle between mother and son, but only son knew it was being waged. My mind filled with two and only two words until they became a sound more powerful than whatever the boys were saying. Peace, safety. Peace, safety.
The light turned green, yellow, red. They stood in front of the car passing a bottle. Green, yellow, red.
One of the boys, the tallest and maybe the oldest, a beard already, approached the passenger side of the car, where Cary was sitting; he pulled on the handle, then started kicking the door. Cary released her seat belt and moved toward me. Lucy was awake; Vincent’s face was still pressed against the glass as if watching a movie. I stepped on the gas and the boys moved out of the way and we went through a red light, and one of them—his arms still outstretched on his cross—called after us, “I never asked to be born, you know! I never asked to be born!”
SHE COULD SPEAK, but not the word I wanted her to say.
I pointed to my beard. “What’s this?”
She pointed to her own face.
“Tell me what this is.”
“Face,” she said.
“What’s this on my face?”
“Hair.”
“Yes, but what’s it called?”
She was blinking back tears.
I held her wrist, rubbed her hand on my face. “Say it,” I said.
She tried to kiss me, but I turned away.
“Please say the word,” I said. “I know you know.”
I closed my eyes and imagined that when I opened them, the past few minutes would be revealed to have been a dream.
But the word was lost to her. She no longer knew beard. Just, hair on your face. She no longer knew lamp, which she called light, and sweater, which she called thick shirt, and guitar, which she called music, and tub, which she called small pool, and bed, which she called home.
Two more days of this—the words day and night were gone, too—and I took her to our doctor. She had difficulty telling him what was wrong. She used the words of a child or someone new to the language. The names for objects and body parts and feelings weren’t enough; she needed to describe them, redefine them. How do you say wind without the word? How do you say door? How do you say headache? How do you say dizziness? You say, What moves grass and bends trees. You say, What you open to move from one room to another. You point and say, It hurts up here. You say, The world has been moving. But what if you’ve lost the words trees and grass, too? What if you’ve lost the words room and world? You say, What I feel on my face. Without the word face, you say, The thing I can’t see that touches me. You say, What keeps me out or lets me in. You say, It hurts here and Everything seems to be moving without me.
EYES CLOSED DURING the ride from airport to casino hotel.
I had been to Vegas once before, after my second book was published; the lights and sounds hadn’t bothered me then.
Now, even through my eyelids, I could see lights blinking across the cool night air, the kind of flashing that causes seizures in reflex epileptics.
I could not cover my ears, as the driver—a long-bearded man short enough to have to sit on a cushion to see over the steering wheel—was talking about a murder he had witnessed a few days earlier, a woman who ran over her husband with their car.
I opened my eyes; neon-lit faces flashed by, too close to the car.
“Kept backing over him,” he said. “A dozen times, at least.” He shook his head, looked in the rearview for a reaction; I closed my eyes again.
“Headache?”
“No.”
“I get bad headaches, but only at night, when I can’t sleep.”
Illness is an extension of negative emotion. Any malady in the body can be healed faster than it was created.
“Haven’t slept more than three hours straight in, oh, about twenty years.”
It’s important not to absorb any negative energy you may encounter. Imagine a shield surrounding your body; this will not allow the energy to enter you.
“You sure you feel okay?”
“Yes.”
“Not making you carsick, am I?”
“No.”
“Because if I am, you should say something. I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“You’re not.”
“Mind if I smoke?”
“No.”
“Never mind. I can wait.” He pressed the horn three times in succession. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Guy’s going to kill—Have you ever smoked?”
“No.”
“Bad habit, but I love it.”
The flick of a lighter, then the smell. “I’m blowing it out the window, okay? Right out the window.”
“Actually…”
“Stupid,” he said. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. I don’t want to give you cancer. Me, that’s okay, but you didn’t ask for it.”
Three weeks without a sustained negative thought, and now this. I quickly replaced the driver in my mind with the image of a flower. I opened my eyes: a tall, skinny man, taller and skinnier than I was, an Indian giant, stood outside the cab, o
ffering me roses wrapped in plastic. I reached into my pocket, but the light turned green and we were gone. I turned to see the giant standing in the street, blocking traffic, watching me. I had the silly thought, though I don’t think it’s so silly now, that I would never see that man again, that he would live the rest of his life, however many years, then die, and this encounter would have meant nothing to him. Had I been able to give him the five hundred dollars in my pocket, he might have remembered; it might have changed his life.
The car rolled along a street lined with palm trees and strewn with trash blown by December desert winds. A gust pressed a piece of paper against the windshield; a word written in black ink. Cancer. Cancel. Concern. Concede. I leaned forward to see, but the word was upside down and backward. The driver turned on the wipers, and the paper was lifted into the air and behind us in traffic.
If not for the colored lights on the trees, I would have forgotten that in five days it would be Christmas.
A series of loud pops that sounded like fireworks.
I must have jumped. “It’s all right,” the driver said. “Just a car backfiring.” He laughed. “Unless it’s gunfire.”
Traffic stopped; I looked at my watch. Thirty minutes to check in and get to the radio show.
I had told Cary that I didn’t want to go, especially given the circumstances, but she insisted. She was feeling fine, she told me; it would be good for me to get away for a few nights. “There’s nothing you can do for me,” she said. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“But I do.”
“I don’t believe that you believe that.”
“I know you mean well,” she said.
“Looks serious,” the driver said. “Three-car accident.”
“Are we far?”
“Five, six blocks.”
“I can walk.”
“You know where you’re going?”
“No.”
“Straight ahead. Take it to the end.”
“That way?”
“Straight to the end. Can’t miss it.”
I gave him a one-hundred-dollar bill but didn’t wait for change. I closed the door before he could thank me, and began walking against the wind, the straps on my bag digging into my shoulders.
The Book of Why Page 11
