by Nancy Rue
“We’d have a cup of coffee and talk now and then,” he went on. “But the last few months, she’d kinda fade in and out. I figured it was only temporary because she worked s’dang hard.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t temporary. She’ll just keep getting worse until…well…”
“I see,” he said. He made a clicking sound out of the side of his mouth. “Doesn’t that just jar your preserves? Fine woman. You tell her I’m thinkin’ about her, would you?”
“Sure,” I said, more out of surprise than anything else. “I’m not sure how much she actually understands, but I’ll tell her.”
“Oh, I’m sure she knows. It can’t all go away that fast.” He made the clicking sound again. “Fine woman.”
He passed a hand briefly over his eyebrows, leaving a few of the hairs askew. Then he nodded at me, straightened his suspenders, and turned around to walk off. I was still standing there, staring like an idiot, when he turned back around and said, “I did little repairs for her now and then. If she needs anything like that, tell her I’m still around.”
“Sure,” I said.
We exchanged nods. Once again he turned to leave, and I looked down at the box.
“Uh, Mr.—” Shoot. I couldn’t remember the name on the tag. He stopped anyway.
“I have four boxes loaded up with my mother’s things,” I said. “Could you keep an eye on them until I can arrange for someone to pick them up?”
“Consider it done,” he said and gave me the final nod and walked off, slowly and deliberately.
Now that was a trip, I thought. What other surprises am I going to discover about my mother’s life?
There was, of course, no time to ponder that. I had to go engage in serious dialogue with Socrates.
Exactly why I was doing it—now that was a question to ponder. And I did, all the way back to campus, all the way through the myriad of columned buildings that made up the most academic-looking part of the Stanford campus. It was all very Spanish-mission with its monastic arches and its stone walls cut out in simple rectangles of window-light. The math building—number 380 in the grand scheme of things—was part of it, but since I never ventured far from it, I knew it only as Sloan Hall. It always came as a surprise to me when I did go elsewhere on campus that Stanford was actually a beautiful maze of reverential architecture situated in malls and bordered with graceful palm trees.
The philosophy department was in Building 100 on the main quad, with a mosaic-covered drinking fountain just outside the door, compliments of the class of 1927. I stopped and took a long drink as I asked myself one more time what I was doing there.
Okay, this is going to be on my terms, I reminded myself. We’re talking philosophy, not theology—and I’m only doing that much to appease Max.
And Mother’s tears had nothing to do with it. I shoved my way through the door and scanned the directory.
What the heck was his last name again? Bacharach? No. Vitalis? Why did I have such a block with this guy’s name?
Next to the directory there was a large group photo in a frame with the names, mercifully, printed underneath. I ran a finger across it, looking for the dark, curly hair, on the shaggy side, thin-rimmed glasses, thick eyebrows, olive skin, strong chin—
Good grief, girl! I chided myself. What did you do, take an inventory of the man’s facial features?
I must have—unconsciously—because I knew the face as soon as my finger landed on it. It was sticking up above the crowd, and his arms were thrown lazily around the women on either side of him. He was grinning—not smiling, grinning. What was there to grin about while you were having your photo taken surrounded by Ph.D.’s in philosophy?
This is going to be the shortest philosophical dialogue in history, I thought.
I found the name that corresponded with the face. Bakalis. That was it. Second floor.
Registering the number, I headed up the stairs. Even before I reached the upper hall, I noticed something different about this place, compared to Sloan Hall. It was noisy in here. Except for the freshmen when they flooded out of our classes on roller blades, there wasn’t continuous noise in the math department. In fact, that group of third-year guys could stand in front of a chalkboard for hours never uttering a word. They were a little extreme, of course, but even the rest of us weren’t like these people. Every low-ceilinged room I passed was filled with chatter, and the very doors themselves were “loud” with bulletin boards plastered with cartoons. I glanced at one, but the caption contained the word epistemology. I doubted I would find it humorous.
Dr. Bakalis’ door was open, but at first glance I didn’t see him in there. It gave me a chance to give the place a quick survey.
That took about seven seconds. It was smaller than the office I shared with Jacoboni, or maybe it just seemed that way because three walls were completely lined with books and the one that wasn’t had several stacks of files and books leaning against it. His desk was situated so that it peeked out through a small but welcome window. Above it, from the ceiling, hung the biggest kite I’d ever seen—a huge contraption in primary colors. Its juxtaposition with a bust of Plato placed precariously close to the edge of the desk made me smirk.
Having an identity crisis, Doctor? I thought.
“Hey,” somebody twanged behind me. Somebody with his mouth full. I turned around to find Sam Bakalis holding half of a bulging submarine sandwich and chewing happily. There was a coffee mug in his other hand.
“Sure you won’t join me?” he said, gesturing with the sandwich.
“Yeah,” I said. “I had something a little less Neanderthal earlier.” Might as well let him know I didn’t find him amusing. It would save time.
He chuckled and continued chewing as he offered me a chair. Then he settled himself into one catty-corner from it, rather than retreating behind his desk. I was going to have to work a little harder to make it clear that this was strictly an academic meeting.
Sam set the sandwich on the desk and cradled the coffee mug in his long, slender fingers. Where had I noticed those fingers before—was it at the dinner?
I snapped to and said, “Look, I won’t take up much of your time. I just have some questions of a philosophical nature, and Max, I mean, Dr. Ironto—”
“I remember him. Great guy.”
“Yeah. He suggested I consult you.”
“Consult away,” he said. If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. Behind his glasses, his hazel eyes kept their alert twinkle.
“All right. Well, uh—”
Great start. What the heck was wrong with me? I gave my hair a solid rake. “Okay, I have a decision to make, an ethical decision, and I may need a philosophical frame of reference.”
He glanced around the room. “I might have one of those here someplace.”
I looked at him, straight-faced. “Here’s my question: Is there any real evidence that a person has a soul—something beyond the mind, the thought processes, if you will? Do the great thinkers’ believe that if, say, the mind were to go completely, there is still something else there?”
This was sounding so ridiculous that I was sure I’d just answered my own question. If I couldn’t even describe it, how could it be there? Sam, however, was processing it in his eyes, and he at least had the grace not to give me a condescending smile. I’d have popped him.
“Now, before you answer that,” I said, “understand that I am not religious, and I know you are. I don’t want the Sermon on the Mount, and I’m not interested in being converted. I want to keep this strictly philosophical.”
He was nodding. “That’s right. You practically waved your ‘secular intelligentsia’ membership card in my face that night.”
“It was right up there with your born-again banner,” I said.
“I’m surprised they didn’t collide.”
“If I recall correctly, they did.”
I looked at him steadily. He looked back.
“So let me see if I’m hearing you ri
ght,” he said. “You want to talk about the existence of the soul, but you don’t want to talk about God.”
“Right.”
“So let me ask you this: What exactly do you mean by God?”
“I mean whatever it is you seem to believe it is. Some all-powerful force that controls my life. Nothing controls my life but me.”
“So why are you here?”
“Excuse me?”
He set the coffee mug on the desk beside the half-eaten sandwich and formed his fingers into a pistol point, which he rested under his chin.
Some kind of philosophical pose, I told myself.
“If you control everything in your life, why are you struggling over this decision?”
“Who said I was struggling?”
“You look like you’re struggling.”
“I do not!” I was gripping the arms of the chair. I let my hands go slack and regarded him coolly. “Did I mention that I wanted to keep this impersonal as well as academic?”
“No,” he said. “I must have missed that. Look, I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just trying to get clear on where we’re going here. Have you engaged in much philosophical discourse?”
“No,” I said coldly. Have you computed many derivatives?
“One of the things it’s really important to do is clarify your terms. All philosophy does, really, is seek to clarify so you can get to something richer, better, deeper.”
“And all I want is to know if those richer, better, deeper people think there’s a soul. Yes or no?”
He looked at me almost longer than I could look back. “I’m sorry. That’s not a yes or no question. In fact, I’m not sure I can help you.”
“Fine.” I started to get up.
“Don’t you even want to know why?” His hazel eyes were glowing. I’d never seen eyes with so many different looks. “I’m disappointed.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why?”
He resituated himself in the chair so he could lean toward me. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of moving away.
“I can’t possibly talk about the soul without bringing God into it, and not just a God, but the Christian concept of God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—the whole ball of wax.”
“You’re telling me that you expound on this ‘whole ball of wax’ in your classes? Here at Stanford University? Where did they find you?”
I could see him stiffening. “First of all, this isn’t one of my classes. You came to me with a spiritual question, and I can only give you a spiritual answer. And secondly, are you perhaps casting aspersions on my intellectual ability?”
I couldn’t tell whether he was putting me on or not.
“You’re right,” I said. “You can’t help me. Is there somebody else in the department I could talk to who isn’t fresh out of Sunday school?”
Now I could read him. His eyes narrowed—yet another look—and he shot his glance around the room at sharp angles. One hand came up and rubbed the back of his neck, as if he were smoothing down his hackles.
“I’m sure if you look long enough, you’ll find somebody who will tell you what you want to hear,” he said. “But it won’t be the truth.”
“I’m thinking maybe in this situation, I need to find my own truth,” I said. I groped under the chair for my purse.
“My experience has been that people who are afraid of the truth never do find it,” he said.
I froze, still half leaning out of the chair. “If I were afraid of the truth, I wouldn’t have come here. If anything, I was stupid to think some Jesus freak would even know what it is I want!”
“Then I guess a little of that stupidity rubbed off on me, because I thought for a minute I could crack that modern-pagan façade you’re wearing.”
“No, the stupidity is in calling yourself an intellectual and simultaneously espousing some faith mumbo-jumbo that belongs in the Dark Ages—”
“I think you’d better go.”
He stood up, his taut frame towering over me. His eyes were showing me their final look of the day—they were smoldering. If I hadn’t been smoldering myself, I would have been unnerved.
As it was, I stood up, too, and I didn’t dodge him, so that my face came close to his.
“Not a problem,” I said. “I was leaving anyway.”
Neither of us said another word as I marched to the door. The only sound as I left was a stack of folders cascading across the floor, jarred by my exit.
You might as well toss that whole mess into some boxes, Dr. Socrates, I fumed as I headed for the stairs. You won’t last long around here anyway.
NINE
Fortunately, there wasn’t much time for me to fume about my little confrontation with Dr. Socrates. Although, the way the next week went, I’d have opted for fuming.
Max and I took Mother home the next afternoon. She wandered through the rooms on her crutches as if she were trying to remind herself what she was supposed to do in each one. After pulling out boxes of crackers, pawing through CDs, and picking up pens, she yawned and headed for the stairs. When Max and I jumped in to help her maneuver the crutches up the steps, she batted them at both of us and tried to make it on her own. After three frustrated tries, Max just picked her up bodily and hauled her up to her bedroom. When she pointed to the bed, he put her there, which was no small feat considering the size of the contraption on her leg. Once settled, she slept for several hours.
In fact, she slept for most of the day—that day and every day after that—which meant she rammed around most of the night, knocking things over with those infernal crutches, leaving lights on, and letting the refrigerator door hang open by the hour. I knew, because I wound up sleeping at her house every night.
I had to. The caretaker was a disaster.
She informed me on arrival when I introduced her to Mother as Nurse Rose that she was a home health aide, and that she preferred to be called by her first name, which was Shakti-Shambhala or something. I took several stabs at it and then gave up and resorted to referring to her as Freda II.
She wore what looked like surgical scrubs in a flowered print, but all resemblance to anything medically professional ended there. Her earrings were always made of some combination of beads and feathers, and they hung down to her shoulders. Mother stared at them oddly every time Freda II leaned over her. Which was often. She was constantly pressing her hands in Mother’s and looking deeply into her eyes. Then she’d close her own eyes and sort of moan. When I asked her what the heck she was doing, she told me they were communicating.
Frankly, I didn’t think Mother was communicating a thing. She’d deteriorated so much since the accident it was eerie. She didn’t speak a word, and the only real sound she made was when Freda tried to give her the pain medication—then she fought like a tiger, sort of growling deep in her throat. It was too much for poor Max. Every time Freda announced that it was time for “meds”—and stood moaning over the pills, eyes closed, before she tried to get them down Mother’s throat—Max left the room, or even the house entirely. Often he would go off to purchase yet another kind of pasta to tempt Mother with.
Eating was another source of frustration. Freda cooked, Max cooked, I even made a few feeble attempts—but Mother usually sat staring vacantly at her plate until one of us fed her the first few bites. Then she seemed to get the idea and started in—though she was apt to stop abruptly, get up from the table, and take off on her crutches. Invariably she wanted to go upstairs to her bedroom, the worst possible scenario.
Yet every time Max left with Mother in his arms, Freda II would look at me and say, “She’s an incredible person, isn’t she? You look in her eyes and it’s just…intense.”
After about the third time she said that, I tried looking into Mother’s eyes myself. I saw nothing. It was the most frightening nothing I could imagine.
I wasn’t accustomed to being frightened, so I buried myself in research, teaching, tutoring Tabitha, and generally maintaining the separation between the walking nightmare
of my personal life and the only thing that made sense to me—my work life. But at night I went back to the house and slept on a cot just outside Mother’s bedroom door. That started the very first day, when Freda looked at me blankly as I started to leave after Mother was in bed and said, “Who’s going to stay with Liz? I’m off at eight.”
That was one detail I’d missed in my discussion with Freda I. Max offered to alternate with me, but I could only imagine him sitting up all night fretting, and I declined the offer.
At the end of the first week, as I dozed at the dinner table while Freda II was upstairs coaxing Mother into her pajamas, Max said to me, “Why don’t you just move in here with your mother?”
“I thought I already had,” I said.
“I don’t know about this girl,” Max said, nodding toward the ceiling. “She asked me today if I thought you’d mind if she burned some incense.”
“Absolutely not. Next thing you know she’ll be dragging crystals into Mother’s bedroom.”
“You didn’t see them? She has them hanging over the bed.”
“No, she does not!”
“She does. I just saw them.” Max shrugged. “Who knows, maybe they’ll help. How do we know?”
“It might also help if we made a little Pick’s Disease doll and stuck some pins in it, but we’re not going to do that either.”
Max focused on his water glass.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re thinking something. What is it?”
By that time I was having trouble keeping the sharper side of my tongue from lashing out, even at Max.
“You want to know what I’m thinking?” Max said, his voice thick. “I’m thinking Liz needs you with her, as much as you can be. You’re the only one she follows with her eyes when you walk across the room.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“You don’t see these things. I do. If you could be with her more, I think she could hang on to…something.”
His voice broke. I put my forehead on my fingers, elbows propped on the table. Max, please, no crying, I thought.
