that I have written this manuscript without a mouse.
I have a laptop that is mouseless.
It has a touchpad instead.
The touchpad is like a mini-stage;
my fingers have been mousing around on it.
I took my mouseless laptop with me recently
when my family and I went to Tampa.
We all went to visit my mother
at the assisted-living center.
There was a moment when I was in her apartment
and it was just me and her and my daughter.
It was not quite worlds colliding;
it was three generations of females.
You’d think we would have had a lot to say.
You’d think there would have been many words running around.
Instead there were many pauses,
and the pauses were soft like a bed.
The few words that were spoken
were mostly about objects.
My mother’s apartment has a lot of strange stuff in it,
and my daughter would pick something up to examine it
and then my mother would comment on it;
it was like being at the Met with a docent.
My daughter picked up an old aspirin bottle.
The label had been removed.
It was just a white plastic bottle now,
and it was filled with nickels, dimes, and pennies.
My daughter shook it like a maraca,
and then she grinned at my mother;
it was clear that she wanted this instrument.
My mother gave it to her, smiling,
and her granddaughter smiled back at her,
exclaiming, “I’m rich!”
There was probably less than a dollar in there,
which just goes to show you
that wealth is a matter of perception,
just like luck is.
We sat there, the three of us,
and ate cookies and drank tea.
We sat in the shape of a triangle.
We sat in the shape of a Christmas tree.
We were gigantic in our separate chairs.
We sat and were soft together,
and the change was spread out on the couch
and it was marveled at.
9.
My mother and the mice have arrived at Louse Point.
They have parked without the required permit.
They hope they won’t get caught.
My mother is helping the mice to the beach.
It’s not a very long walk, but the mice can’t carry anything.
My mother is carrying the beach chairs and the blanket and the towels and the food.
My mother still doesn’t have vision in her right eye,
but she is used to it now.
She wears an eye patch like Drosselmeier.
She wears it well; it suits her.
It is going to be sunset soon.
They are going to watch the sunset and drink wine and eat cheese.
My mother picked up a nice bottle of merlot.
She is going to drink just one glass because she is driving.
At last she gets them all settled.
They are sitting there, and the weather is perfect.
And my mother is still in her postsurgery euphoria.
She is nearly crying with joy,
and she suggests to the mice that they get married right then and there
as she is newly vested with the power to perform their marriage.
She shows them the certificate she got off the internet.
And the mice laugh happily and agree to this plan,
and my mother stands to say the words.
She is about to intone the sacred marrying words,
and her black eye patch is ablaze like a comet,
when the drunken cockroach drives up in the gallbladder-car and remembers them, though they don’t remember him.
And he walks onto the beach and is overcome by the sight of them,
and my mother, whom he remembers as older and frailer, is now bright like a spotlight on Broadway.
She is standing there in her simple cotton dress,
looking like the girl Jackson Pollock she was on the farm,
only with an eye patch,
and the cockroach is stunned by her beauty
and also by his own remorse.
And he knows that he can’t return to that moment
on the road in the department store.
He can never return to that road.
That magic show is long gone.
Everything becomes awake,
one word turns into another,
everything becomes a wake,
and he steps up and offers to be their witness, which they had forgotten they needed.
And he stands there silent like a slit gong in a museum
as the mice are married by my mother.
And then they all sit down together and eat and drink.
And it is quiet with the sound of the ocean, which
is almost but not quite like cowbells, triangles, and glockenspiels.
And when it gets dark, my mother and the cockroach
build a fire together out of driftwood,
and later, they all sleep in the Construction,
which is just a construction now,
because it’s in a different world,
a world enlarged by challenging encounters.
It’s like my mouse-mother, Louise Bourgeois,
cradling her penis Fillette in her arms,
or like the slit gong from Vanuatu
in the gallery in the Met,
taking a walk down Fifth Avenue
and getting in a cab to JFK
and flying back home to be hit with wooden mallets,
to stand there on the ceremonial dancing ground,
to have been a tree rooted in the earth,
and to be taken out of the ground and made into a slit gong,
and now to be a slit gong standing among other slit gongs,
to be struck as the dancers whirl,
to be at the center of a holiday party
with all the food and sacred pigs.
To see it all at once like in a mirror,
to be in one world and to multiply,
to be in one world and remember a mother,
to be in one world
and to hold all the others.
RESOURCES
Berkow, Ira. “Joe Louis Was There Earlier.” New York Times, April 22, 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/22/sports/joe-louis-was-there-earlier.html.
Bleiler, E. F. Introduction to The Best Tales of Hoffmann, by E.T.A. Hoffmann, xxiv. New York: Dover, 1967.
Bourgeois, Louise. Destruction of the Father, Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923–1997. Edited by Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. London: Violette Editions, 1998.
Fisher, Jennifer. Nutcracker Nation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Hoffmann, E. T. A. Weird Tales, trans. and biographical memoir by J. T. Bealby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885.
Kaufman, Sarah. “Breaking Pointe: ‘The Nutcracker’ Takes More than It Gives to World of Ballet.” Washington Post, November 22, 2009. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112000316.html.
Kjellgren, Eric. “From Fanla to New York and Back: Recovering the Authorship and Iconography of a Slit Drum from Ambrym Island, Vanuatu.” Journal of Museum Ethnography 17 (2005): 118–29.
Kourlas, Gia. “It’s a Blizzard Onstage. Here’s All the Dirt.” New York Times, December 13, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/arts/dance/its-a-blizzard-onstage-heres-all-the-dirt-mark-morris-the-hart-nut-balanchine-the-nutcracker.html.
Langston, Brett, et al. “Iolanta.” Tchaikovsky Research. Last modified December 24, 2016. http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/index.php?title=Iolanta&oldid=99372.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
. Slit Gong (Atingting kon). Accessed February 9, 2017. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/309995.
Moscow Ballet. “History of The Nutcracker.” Accessed February 9, 2017. http://www.nutcracker.com/about-mb/history-of-nutcracker.
North Carolina Academy of Dance Arts Online. “The History of The Nutcracker.” Accessed June 5, 2017. http://www.danceacademyofnc.com/default.cfm?fa=nutcrackerhistory.
NPR Staff. “No Sugar Plums Here: The Dark, Romantic Roots of The Nutcracker.” All Things Considered. National Public Radio. Aired December 25, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167732828/no-sugar-plums-here-the-dark-romantic-roots-of-the-nutcracker.
Parson, Annie-B. “An Interview with Choreographer, Dancer and Director Annie-B Parson.” By Amy Fusselman. Ohio Edit October 4, 2016. http://ohioedit.com/2016/10/04/an-interview-with-choreographer-and-director-annie-b-parson.
Spice, Nicholas. “Winnicott and Music.” In The Elusive Child, edited by Lesley Caldwell. London: Karnac Books, 2004.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you so much for your support of this project: Elisa Albert, Donnie Boman, Dave Eggers, Anastasia Higginbotham, Molly MacDermot, Sarah Manguso, Spike Medernach, Alma Micic, Leigh Newman, Annie-B Parson, Elena Passarello, Ali Rachel Pearl, Melissa Robbins, Walter Robinson, Tracy Roe, Heather Sellers, Joshua Wolf Shenk, Nicholas Spice, Gilmore Tamny, Lauren Wein, and Matvei Yankelevich.
Thank you to the wonderful crew at Coffee House Press, especially Caroline Casey, Lizzie Davis, Chris Fischbach, and Carla Valadez. Thanks also to cover designer Kyle G. Hunter.
Thank you to my husband, Frank, and my children, King, Mick, and Katie.
I am grateful to Jennifer Fisher for her book Nutcracker Nation and encourage those interested in the ballet to read it.
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AMY FUSSELMAN is the author of three previous books of nonfiction. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and three children.
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