by Carole Maso
He will go home later to paint. How he loves this life. He is only twenty-two. Just come to New York from Yale and everything seems new. He is a waiter four nights a week, which is bad, but not that bad. He will not become a doctor like his father; he will not go to architecture school, which would be the practical thing to do. He will paint during the day, wait on tables at night to make money, not a lot, but enough to enjoy this passing Sunday afternoon, to buy food and supplies, in summer enough money to spend a few weeks in Italy with a blond boy or some Greek god on the shores of the Aegean.
He is still innocent of everything. Tell him of a ravaging death only ten years in the future and he will bat his beautiful lashes and say, “Please, save that for a Byron or a Keats.”
A cleft chin.
Dark eyes.
Black hair.
Steven, forty years before this, in another country, would have received a death sentence as well.
Intellectual.
Homosexual.
Jew.
Max Speaks
I get up. Look for her. No, she’s not here. She must have risen early. Such a beautiful face. Gone. Eyes of light.
No note.
I know her passion. I remember such passion from once before.
She’s a few blocks away. A phone call away.
That hair I remember so well. It is like yours, Veronica, thick and wavy, only lighter. How you return whole in a curl of hair on the feverish forehead of our daughter.
She’s told me she’s going to an artist colony for the spring. She came to say good-bye.
Her eyes like sapphires. Her smooth skin.
When she first heard Stravinsky, she said it sounded like zebras walking. My love.
On the table two empty brandy glasses. A pipe. My pipe. A leaf that once wrapped cheese.
Research
Categories have often helped. Research helps.
I make a list of depression clinics: New York Hospital, Mount Sinai, NYU.
A list of sleep clinics.
Electroshock therapy is available at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Mother.
The new fast-acting antidepressants are Asendin, Desyrel, Ludiomil, Tegratol, Xanax.
Light therapy—that sounds nice. We could go to the Affective Disorders Program, Mom. Rochester is not so far.
He’s Hungry
He’s starving. He keeps asking for more and more food. Later we’ll learn it’s because of the medication, but for now it’s just a ravenous appetite that both tortures him and reminds him of what it means to be healthy. He’s baffled. I bring him ham-and-swiss on rye with lettuce and mayo. I bring him bags of Dipsy Doodles, cans and cans of classic Coke. He gains weight in front of me. His face is bloated. “You look like Robert DeNiro in King of Comedy,” I tell him. Steven, you are breaking my heart.
He eats and eats, adding pounds, adding flesh to his body. Adding life. I bring him turkey with tomato on whole wheat. I bring him wonton soup. Italian candies my brother has sent from Perugia wrapped in red and silver and gold foil.
I would bring you Tescher chocolates. Reggiano Parmesan. Sushi. Champagne. Goat’s cheese and pears. I would bring you anything you asked for.
I bring you The Face magazine, hot off the press, your favorite “Let me give you some money,” he says.
“Steven, please.”
“Everyone’s working really hard to get me into the Compound S program,” he says.
“That’s good,” I say. “What about that drug from Mexico?”
“Ribavirin?”
“If you want, I’ll go get it.” I would bring you Ribavirin from Mexico.
“Oh, I love it. I can just see you in your raincoat and sunglasses, crossing the border. You’d be so gorgeous. The Mexicans would kidnap you and leave me here to die.”
We talk about fashion for hours. You devour all kinds of news from the outside. We gossip, about stars, about friends.
“And how’s David?”
“Same. Still working on the restoration. Still bothering me about my book, though he doesn’t really want to hear about it.”
“Yes, I remember. He always liked the success of Delirium but not Delirium itself.”
He smiles and closes his eyes for a moment.
“You look tired, Steven.”
“No, I’m OK. Please stay. Do you want to split a Dove Bar?”
“Sure,” I say.
On my way down I notice that there is no thirteenth floor. I hand back my pass. I laugh out loud. He is dying on the lucky fourteenth floor.
Candace, Dancing
He had said that he loved them.
Candace remembers last year at the summer house. They had gone earlier than usual. She was going to dance a rite of spring.
Her father had looked sad, as if with each step she was dancing away from him, but it was he in fact who was dancing away from her.
He had said that he loved them.
She took out her sketchbook and drew a hand. His hand. She thought that it had meant he would never leave them. She draws a rifle sight on the page and begins to cry.
She would like to kill him and the “actress” and the dog. She would like to kill the dog first.
He had hurt them terribly. He had hurt their mother.
She had thought he loved them. She turns the page. “Fucking Liar,” she writes. She draws his hand reaching up through ice and she lets it go under.
“I do not believe we are powerless,” she writes. “I believe it is still possible to do something.”
She would like to shoot that dopey dog.
She closes her book and gets up. “I do not believe in the limitations of art,” she writes with a bright red lipstick across the wall.
“I do not know if there is a heaven, but I do not believe we are powerless.
“I do not believe there are no solutions.”
She opens the window that looks out on Eleventh Street. “I do not believe in Ronald Reagan,” she shouts.” I do not believe in Ed Koch!”
“Neither do I!” someone shouts back.
“I do not believe in Sigmund Freud. I am not smiling when I say this.
“I do not believe in any of the fathers. I do not believe in Science or Medicine. I do not believe in NASA. I do not believe in God. I do not accept that it is a man’s world.”
“I will not keep quiet,” she writes in red. She calls Biddy’s answering machine. “Fucking liar,” she says, and hangs up.
“I do not believe there are no solutions. I do not believe that we are doing all we can. I do not accept that we are expendable. I do not believe we are powerless.
“I know there are solutions.”
She dips her hands into paint and leaves her fingerprints on the walls in every room of their apartment. “I was someone once,” she says. “I was here.”
“I still believe that anything is possible,” she shouts, and she whirls around the house.
Freud Speaks
I dream I am swimming.
“You are in the birth canal.”
“No, I am swimming in a pool,” I say.
“Very common,” he says. The water sac. The birth canal.
“It’s not even a kidney-shaped pool,” I say. “It’s rectangular, you know, a normal one, nothing fancy.”
He smirks a little. He’s heard this all before.
“It really is a pool. I think it means I want to go swimming.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says.
Good News
Dear C,
In case you hadn’t heard the good news – 7 astronomers (from Carnegie Tech) tell us the Milky Way & neighboring galaxies (over 350 light years across) are moving at one million miles an hour toward the same spot near the Southern Cross. Toward what? An exotic particle? Invisible star? The densest dark matter in creation? They can’t say, but the odd convergence & galactic rush is causing serious reconsideration of Big Bang & ghostly architecture of time/space universe. & – since the Southern Cross is onl
y 150 light years away – you probably only have 2 or 3 thousand years left to finish the novel before …
A Fellow Skywatcher
Ps/ I’ve always been suspicious of Cygnus X–3, myself.
Because Silence Has Always Equaled Death
We are singing for our lives.
He’s back on track today. We talk about Compound S—AZT. “Oh, where’s my blackboard?” he says, as he describes to me how it works.
I read to him from the Science Times about the secret language of elephants, and then about concentration: “‘The seemingly simple act of being fully absorbed in a challenging task is now being seen as akin to some extravagantly euphoric states of mind as might be experienced in drugs or sex.’” We laugh. We are wondering who this is news to.
He begins to cough. “So tell me,” he says, “is there really a God or what? Where do you suppose I’m going next?”
I shrug. The dream of the resurrection breaks in my heart.
“What does NASA stand for?” he asks.
“What?”
“Need Another Seven Astronauts.”
“Right. And what’s the only kind of wood that doesn’t float?”
He looks at me knowingly. “Natalie Wood, of course. Do you know what Matisse said when he was asked if he believed in God?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Yes, when I am working.’”
“What did Christa McAuliffe’s husband say to her right before she left?”
“I’ll feed the dog, you feed the fish.” He tries to smile. He’s tired. “The Salle show is going up soon. Go for me, would you, Caroline?”
“Sure. I’ll give you a full report.”
“Did you see the sets he did for Karole Armitage? Great, huh?”
We go on like this. “I liked My Beautiful Laundrette too. Did you see Parting Glances yet?”
“No.”
“Oh, you really should. It’s about us. Have you heard the new Bronski Beat?” he sings to me. “Have you gotten your dream date yet with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg?”
He smiles. He wants to be around for this, if it ever happens.
He looks in the mirror. “God, I could be a model with these angles.”
He takes out a pencil and paper and draws a little self-portrait.
We are fighting for our lives.
“Tell me a story,” he says, still drawing. “Tell me about Cummington. Tell me about some wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“Did I ever tell you about the Baby Grand Larceny?”
“No!” he smiles.
We are speaking for our lives.
A Message to My Mother
Mother, I do not hold still hour after hour, day after day and then die. I do not.
Jesus Learning to Swim
She’s helping the baby Jesus put on his water wings. Carefully she takes the tiny dimpled arm and bends it at the elbow. First one, then the other. He puts his face in the water. He begins to cry.
“Don’t cry,” Veronica whispers, swirling her hand in the water. “Kick your feet. Keep moving. The dark is not so dark.”
City of Light
I am back in your city of light, Max. City of dark, city of death. City of beauty and scum. Of saliva, your city of saliva, Max.
“Not my city of saliva.”
Yes. Yours.
“Please help me.”
“I am recently widowed.”
“I have no food.”
“My house has burned down.”
“I am a Vietnam vet.”
“I am the Emperor Caesar.”
“I have no food.”
City of the starving and homeless.
Your city of elephants and lions and horses. Goddamnit, Max, who ever dreamed there’d be so many animals in this urban center? City of parakeets and ferrets on the loose. Lost two-legged dogs. City of pieces. Max, why didn’t you ever mention that everywhere around you young men were dying? That you were living in a village of death inside a city of death. How could you not have seen it? How could you have overlooked it? But somehow you did. Never mind the young men wheezing on the streets. Never mind the sudden vacancies in prime downtown apartment buildings. Never mind the unmistakable face of suffering everywhere.
“Why didn’t you ever open a newspaper up there, Caroline? Or put on National Public Radio?”
I am back in your city of small hopes. City of faith, of little miracles. City of fish markets and butchers. Of Italian stores and Korean grocers. City of people not willing to give up.
It should be possible to paint with words.
oranges/ artichokes/ tomatoes/ something green/
City of Steven and me.
It should be possible to make the words work.
I LOVE YOU.
Once, Steven, this city stretched ahead of us in endless night. We stood at the top of the World Trade Towers, where you worked. It was all ours, a carpet of light; I have not forgotten, two walls of light, a vast ceiling of light.
Maggie and Alison Watching
“This is our last chance until spring,” Maggie says, as they climb the hill together to their spot in the garden.
“We’ll see it tonight,” says Alison, “I’ve got a feeling.”
But as the comet passed Jupiter and the thin crescent moon, they saw only darkness. Alison gave out a little cry. Without seeing it, she could feel the comet move into deep space, leaving them there alone on the top of the dark hill.
The Agony in the Garden
He pricks his finger on a rose bush. He begins to bleed. Beads of sweat on his brow turn red. The word “purpura” comes to him.
“The concentric globes of the onion symbolized eternity to the Egyptians,” he says deliriously. He weeps at the sight of trillium—all those perfect threes. “One of you,” he cries, “shall betray me.” He hears the deafening crow of the cock. The hour is at hand.
Now the night sweats come and he knows what they mean. He sees the moon, a luminous wafer in the sky. He gets up, making his nightmare run through the garden. He runs fast, a star blazing on his forehead like some dark horse. He’s begging to live past thirty-three. Why must this be?
He stops abruptly and looks at me, bewildered, drenched. “Nothing is finished,” he says, “or put away.”
“Can you hear me, Father? Can you hear me at all? Nothing is finished. Take this cup away from me.”
Qui Suis-Je?
Etes-vous un homme?
Non.
Etes-vous une femme?
Oui.
Etes-vous la vache qui rit?
Caroline! Non!
Etes-vous morte?
Oui.
Es-tu ma mère?
Oui.
Es-tu triste?
Non, pas maintenant.
An Afternoon at Dean & DeLuca’s
They’re all back this year. The deer and quails hanging from the ceiling in an elaborate Christmas display. I remember the year we stood here together and I shrieked as I looked up at all the feathers and antlers and hooves. “Oh my,” you said, looking up to the sky, to the heavens, past the brown eyeballs, the orange claws. “Can she really be our daughter, Veronica? Can she really be ours?” And she is there with him for a minute, the mother of his children, the subject of all his art, the love of his life, for a minute.
You said to go to Dean & DeLuca’s for smoked salmon, but that Ottomanelli’s has the best game in town and always get veal chops at the Florence Meat Market.
Standing here, missing you, I think of all the weird things you and Mother loved:
grouse
pigeon
partridge
pheasant
quail
hen
squab
venison
boar
buffalo
alligator
hare
Cummington in Winter
A wicker rocking chair against faded wallpaper. Those blue flowers were forget-me-nots, and the orange ones, it’s hard to tell. A ra
g rug. A steam heater. Swiss curtains. So much depends on this.
Plastic covers the windows. We put it up just in time, our final winterizing chore. It’s supposed to keep us safe and warm. The outside, seen through plastic, seems a long way off, unreal.
Winter is the longest season here. It goes on and on. The snow seems like it’s never going to stop, there’s always lots of wind and ice, trees down, power out. I love this falling-apart place, and in the winter the four of us who are here make up little projects to keep us sane, keep us busy when the poems won’t come, when the canvas turns to ice, too slippery to get hold of.
I arrange the spices in the pantry and wonder why I choose such loneliness as this. These ever-darkening December days. Allspice, Anise, Basil, Bay Leaves, Bouillon, Coriander, Cumin, Curry. I discover a strange little bottom shelf of teas: German Camomile, Black Cohosh Tea, Comfrey, Kachina Spirit, Breathing Easy Tea. In the corner, piles of rice cakes.
In the refrigerator: Mushroom Ramen, Buckwheat Ramen, Raw Bee Pollen Granules.
In the bathroom: Tom’s toothpaste with propolis and myrrh, a message on the tube signed “Your friend, Tom.”
I can hear Max on this one—My friend indeed! He is most certainly not my friend. This is how Max predictably went on often. I think it was something he acquired when he was with my mother, as he tried to fill in the great gaps with banter, muttering, the sound of his voice.
Max, it is December 18, 1985, and it is 2:15 p.m. I am in the Vaughn kitchen at the Cummington Community of the Arts in Cummington, Massachusetts. We are far inland and there is seven feet of snow. But what the light looks like as it falls on the giant butcher block table is two huge fish swimming through pale water. They are there and then gone. And then another swims by. And then no more. It is 2:16 now and the large fish are gone. A wide stripe of shimmering light and then no light. Thank you for fish in winter. The light is there and then it is gone. Max, sometimes I am so afraid.
