by Carole Maso
“I don’t know.” I’m reluctant, but it’s what he wants to hear. “The words don’t work anymore, given all of this.” I look at my friend, thirty-two, under a fluorescent light, dying.
He nods.
Please get better, I say to myself.
“I don’t know why it’s not hitting me harder. Maybe I don’t really believe it yet. It just hasn’t sunk in, I guess.” He hesitates. “I think this is going to be the big breakthrough year. I guess I’ve got to think that.”
His doctor comes in. She is in war paint. She is here to fight this thing. She has told him of all the experimental programs there are to consider. She speaks in the alphabet of hope. She looks incapable of losing even one more person. She walks to the window. Fingers the petals of the fringed tulips on the sill. “These are so wonderful,” she says to Steven.
“Oh, please, no sexual allusions now,” he says to her.
It is the end of visiting hours. A voice makes the announcement. “Please leave your passes at the front desk.” I stand up.
“Wait,” Steven says.
“Etienne,” I whisper. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
“When I was really sick, I imagined this light that protected me, that tricked my body into thinking that I was well. Those days I thought I was dying, I imagined hoops of gold wrapped around me like a Macy’s Christmas tree. Isn’t that great?”
City of Stars
I like to think it is a city of stars. I go up to the roof. I see no stars. City of small miracles, then. For a star to burn through the lights of the city, the smog of the city. I take my star map up. If we could see stars, these are the stars we would see. It would look like this:
The New York Times says so. City of smallest hopes.
I walk up Sixth Avenue with Steven. His lungs are clear and he has been let out of the hospital. We step into a church where Louise Hay is going to speak about her work with AIDS patients.
In the room there are hundreds of people with AIDS and the people who love them. On a neck a purplish lesion shaped like a fish. On a hand a purplish lesion shaped like a heart. A purplish lesion shaped like a star.
A Family of Almost Four
Maggie arranges spices. Alison promises they’ll plant tarragon and basil in the spring, and rosemary for remembrance. Alison thought of wildflowers that live for a week.
Candace thought of the childhood stories her father would read her. They were of building a soapbox derby car and winning a race. Becoming a sailor. Being ten feet tall. Crossing the tundra. Being a pioneer. Though there were a variety of characters and situations, all had the same message finally, the same moral: Nothing is impossible, you can do anything you want, the world is filled with possibility. But with the loss of her father some idea of herself had been taken away, the loss of a world she believed in.
Henry thought of Maggie. He pictured the beautiful flush of his wife’s face in winter. He worried about her and the wood-burning stove: she was so easily distracted.
He thought of Alison, studying her confirmation questions in dim light. So serious, so determined to get to the bottom of things.
He thought of Candace, who refused to talk to him even though they were in the same city, blocks apart. He wondered whether she had begun her Italian lessons. If he knew her, she was already composing little Italian verses on that swirling marbled paper from Florence, but he could not be sure anymore. He had put those flat Florentine pencils in her stocking one year and she had loved them. She, laughing and dancing with delight. He thought of Candace dancing. What did she dream? Perhaps her dreams were all Piero and Giotto now. Who knows? He thought of his wife’s lovely flushed face. And Alison.
Candace dreams the family whole—for Christmas.
Alison looks. Alison keeps looking.
Maggie turns the pages.
Maggie saw so many people in double now. People who resembled so closely people she had loved, and she wondered if in some way this was a preparation for death; she did not know how.
Maggie thought of the bear on the path. The family of almost four.
Maggie listened to soloists. Yo-Yo Ma. Glenn Gould. She also did chores, things she had never done before. While Alison was in school she put plastic up on the windows, hay around the foundation of the house. In the afternoon she’d build a fire, and wait for Alison.
A Dog, a Cat, a Rabbit Chasing a Carrot
I turn on the rental TV but keep the sound off. I put Yo-Yo Ma on the compact disc player. I turn on the light board and look at the slides Steven has lent me.
I think of him across the street in a strange place, in a strange room.
I was away too long. I didn’t keep up with you. I turn off the music and in silence look at his life.
He’s painting on metallic panels, divided into three and four sections. Cool, beautiful surfaces. The drawings simple. Signs.
A dog.
A cat.
A rabbit chasing a carrot.
A house.
An armchair.
A diamond ring.
A division sign.
A cloud and a man.
A hand reaching through ice.
Or a hand falling through ice.
A hospital bed, a patient with a halo over his head.
A horse with wings.
A plane that descends.
The Message on the Machine
The message on the machine, my friend, is that you are back in the hospital, with high fevers, with horrendous headaches. You’ve got a new phone number and a new room. I get out my phone book and pencil it in. Around your name in the phone book are bits of our conversations over the years. “Review in Artforum, May GQ. New working hours: M, T, W nights and Thurs lunch. Opening 15 February, New Museum. Call tomorrow about blood. Blood in on Monday. Patient info: 790-7070. Lungs, Chest X ray. What happens next??? FIND COMPOUND S.
Compound S, AZT, the drug that stops the damn virus from dividing. It’s the program, you explain to me over the machine, you’ll have to try to get into. Call me, you say. Bye.
I am tired of things that divide, that change shape, that become anything other than themselves. I am tired not only of the sinister magic that changes normal cells into death cells, but of any magic, the cells in my brain that turn the homeless on the streets into pink and purple mountains, the cells that turn broken glass into ice. I am tired of any deception. The cells of my brain that bring you back, Max. I am sick of myself trying to give shape to all this sorrow, all this rage, all this loss—and failing.
Friend
I look at my friend hooked up to a huge machine. It should be possible to say something, to do something with words. But all I can manage is “I love you.” I hold his hand lightly, watch the liquid drop from its bag into the tube and into his arm. The nurse comes in, but sees me and turns. I realize I could be his sister perhaps, and, it is true, I could be his mother. He’s that young all of a sudden today. “I’m just like a pioneer,” he sputters, lying there. He opens his childish eyes. Stares at the poster that hangs across from him. Closes them again. “It looks like a carnival,” he says, “a carnival on a hot summer night.” A ferris wheel—he rode it into fever.
He is sleeping, this pioneer, and I am grateful for that. I watch him sleep for a long time. No one seems to mind. It’s visiting hours, after all.
Max, I don’t understand any of it.
I am not mother or sister, wife or lover. Remember how we used to dream of having children together, Steven?
I am your friend.
He’s sleeping so soundly. On his night table, The Vampire Lestat, The Face magazine, Mr. Palomar, his Walkman, his Rolodex.
Men with masks and gloves come in. I move my fingers to my lips to say, Quiet, my friend is asleep. They are young men and even in masks I can tell they are good-looking. Like my friend.
Steven opens his eyes. He looks at them as they remove the red plastic bags that are full and replace them. He’s thinking. Oh, those cute orderlies, or, Didn’t I meet
you once at the Palladium? or—I don’t know what he’s thinking. He turns his palm over. I put my finger lightly in his hand and he folds his finger around mine. He’s thinking so many things lying there. He opens his mouth slightly, like a baby bird. It should be possible to do something with words.
“Caroline,” he whispers, “I love you too.”
Sometimes it is best not to go directly home after a visit to the hospital. Sometimes it is best to go sit in a cafe for a while. Espresso and an anisette biscuit. Lean against some column, some faux marble.
I feel the toll that suffering takes. You are my friend and you are suffering. High fevers, chills. Tests, a bronchoscopy, a spinal tap.
“My brother had a spinal tap once,” I tell him. “He said it wasn’t too bad.”
You are sarcastic with suffering, and then not. When you are not, you sit up in bed, you clip things from newspapers, looking for shapes. You make out bills. You send me the latest fashions in an envelope. You type me little notes.
Then you’re doubtful. We find it difficult to talk about the future. All talk of galleries stops. Shows. You are sarcastic with suffering. What gallery would want you with your machines, your chills, your death sentence? You are not old enough to die. This I know for sure.
These things are true about yourself, Caroline:
Sometimes you need to sit in a cafe after a visit to the hospital. You like to watch the people around you, pretend it’s the whole world. You sit, even now, with a pen in your hand. You hold it like a paintbrush sometimes. Sometimes like a staff. Sometimes like a weapon. Now and then you still think of Maggie and Alison, of Candace and Henry.
You push your hair to one side of your head, capable of arranging, if nothing else, the way your hair falls.
You are perceived as aloof, sad, a little strange.
“Another espresso, please. Something strong, with a kick.”
We used to joke about having children.
“I had a dream that I was making love with my doctor and all of her friends on this enormous bed.”
“You were making love with your woman doctor?”
“And all her friends,” you add. “All women.”
They were saving your life, I thought, biting into the anisette biscuit.
“I called my parents this morning at about six o’clock and told them how much I loved them, how much I appreciated all they’d done, how wonderful they’ve been. They called back an hour later. They thought I was going to kill myself. End it right here. They thought I was saying good-bye.”
Put the ashtray in the center of the table. The little vase with the flower and baby’s breath slightly to the left. The sugar in its glass pot to the other side.
The woman at the next table has four cigarettes left in her pack.
My house is about four minutes from here.
Let me amend what I have always thought. I love not things that are certain, but simply things in themselves.
Four cigarettes on a table in a cafe. I love not the future. Not the fact that she will surely smoke them, but that they are here right now. Four of them, in a brightly colored package.
What he was saying was thank you.
What they thought he was saying was good-bye.
Another Message on the Machine
“Hi, Joanie, this is Celia calling about Boris’s surprise party. Meet us outside the Cafe Sha-Sha. Be there at 11, not 11:30. And bring some vodka. See you!”
I do not know Celia or Boris or where to bring the vodka, but I write it down anyway.
I think of my own voice left in fragments all over the city. I wonder if somehow all those fragments could be spliced together and played—would that be the message I finally meant to leave?
The Handsome Face
The sensuous lips. The beautiful, browning skin. No outward imperfections. What I love most perhaps are the lashes, dark, curling on the closed eyes. The dark, dark eyes. The vulnerable chin with its cleft, the perfect slope of the shoulders, the sensuous lips.
I see sometimes now, as I walk down the street or sit in a cafe, or theater or museum, I see now your cleft chin in others, your hairline, your hands, your look. Is this how it works then?
Your special way of saying hello and good-bye.
The slightly faraway look in your eyes already.
Good-bye
Thank you. I love you. Alarming things to hear from a grown son somehow, especially from one who is so sick. But nothing compared to good-bye.
Mary, Can You Help Me?
“I don’t know, Caroline. I’m not sure anymore.”
Mary, please.
“I’m having trouble watching all these sons die. It reminds me of—”
I know. But that was so long ago.
We See It Again
At 6 a.m. the temperature was twenty-seven degrees and the shuttle’s orange external tank was white with ice and frost.
At 9:07, after the astronauts were seated in the Challenger wearing gloves because the interior was so cold, ground controllers broke into a round of applause. Still, the countdown was halted, primarily to wait for the morning to warm up and melt some of the ice. It was a two-hour postponement.
All this time the crew was waiting in the Challenger’s cabin. Dick Scobee, the mission commander, and Michael Smith of the Navy sat at the controls. Behind them sat Judy Resnik and Ronald McNair. Below, in the mid-deck, were the other crew members, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe.
“Lift-off,” announced the countdown commentator. “Lift-off of the twenty-fifth space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower.”
A second later a puff of smoke from the right solid rocket booster.
“Challenger, go with throttle up.”
“Roger, go with throttle up.”
“Uh oh.” These are the last words heard. “Uh oh.”
From the New York Times, I read to Steven:
“‘At 59 seconds the Challenger went through its time of maximum dynamic pressure when the vibrations of thrusting rockets, the momentum of ascent and the force of the wind resistance combined to exert tremendous stresses on the shuttle structure. At about this time, a relentless sequence of events, none immediately detectable to ground controllers or the crew, was dooming the Challenger.
“‘A new plume of smoke issued from the lower side of the right booster. Pressures inside the two boosters, which should be equal, began to diverge, with those in the right booster dropping sharply to suggest a leak of some sort. At 60.6 seconds, flame erupted from the right booster. At 66.17 seconds, a bright glow appeared on that booster and merged with the fast-burning plume. At 73 seconds pressure in the right booster plunged further, reaching 24 pounds per square inch less than the pressure in the other booster.
“‘Immediately afterward, at 73.175 seconds, a mysterious cloud spread along the external fuel tank, followed by flashes of light and explosions. The last radioed data from the shuttle, at 73.621 seconds, told of a sudden surge of pressure in the main engines. Intense heat in the fuel pump caused one of the engines to shut down.
“‘Eighteen miles off Cape Canaveral and 10 miles up in the blue sky, a fireball engulfed the Challenger. If the crew had any warning, it came too late for them to do anything, even radio Mission Control. The first sign most flight controllers had that anything was amiss came when their computer screens flashed on and off.’”
Obviously a major malfunction.
Uh Oh
Max, if you were here you’d say something about Judy Resnik, I know. Something like “The idea of a life wasted, not just when the damn thing blew up but all along—I don’t know. She was a smart girl. People have a responsibility to their intelligence, my God! Some of those others, they were just simple boys, rather mediocre, all in all. They had reached their pinnacle, lived their personal dream. They did well for themselves, simply to be whirled around in space like a monkey or a dog.”
A dog named Leika.
A dog named Sue.
A dog named Christa.
An American Child, January 1986
A child points to a toaster. “Is this going to blow up?” she asks. To a cat. “Is Whiskers going to blow up?”
“Are you going to blow up, Mommy?”
Jesus Falls for the Second Time
And the woman whose name was Veronica wept when she saw Christ dragging his wooden cross to the place of skulls. She wept. His purple rag and crown. Sweat pouring from him. He falls and she wipes his brow. And I know the image of his face is supposed to appear on that towel, but there’s nothing there this time when she hands it to me except what appears to be a small pink flower. But on closer examination, I see it is the swollen imprint of a woman’s feverish lips.
Desire
It is 3:20 p.m. on Sunday, February 2, 1986. I have rented a car for the day just so that I can go someplace—I don’t know where. I am driving on the West Side Highway. The Empire State Building is golden and shining, splendid against a Steel gray sky. What the light looks like at this very moment is a golden pillar of hope. A flaming cylinder of desire. I am driving fast. Fast enough so that it is ten years ago. A Sunday afternoon in winter as well. He walks into one of the bars that flank the West Side Highway. He is not in love, though he would not mind it. He sees in the dark corner a beauty and moves toward him. How wonderful he thinks this life of desire, this body of desire; it is as large as the heart, as large as the mind. How it pulled him like any wind, in many directions and he simply followed. How wonderful. Sometimes just a passing stranger on a passing afternoon is enough. A bristling encounter. He moves toward it and it takes form. He trembles, he feels the blood moving in his body, he is so alive. And I am driving faster. He shudders. He wants so much. He is so filled with blood and life. The press of loud music and flesh. The smell of hair and sweat and highway. Of heat and cold. Of leather and denim. Of dark and light.
