Chapter VII: Revelation
Mitchell went from Brooklyn and the Board of Education directly to Presbyterian Hospital and his father’s room. He ran the last two blocks with his teaching assignment in hand, excited and proud. He would be like his father, a teacher. He had other reasons to be happy. He was brilliant, healthy, good-looking in his own way and a recent graduate of Columbia University, and as expected, he was number one in his class. He was heir to his father’s foundation and he was in love. For Mitchell Mitkin it was the future he courted, and all of it, stretched out in front of him, was beautiful. He believed in the perfection of man, in mankind’s ability to overcome nature. He was sober and yet able to wander into the spectacle of creation and its majesty, and there feel something like love.
Now in front of the colossal hospital, its twin towers showering cool shade upon his sweating brow, he met his father. His father was a part of this building, a dedicated member of the whole, a granite rock in the foundation of the cathedral of science. This is why the hospital never scared Mitkin. Thoughts of it as a place of death never mingled with thoughts of his father. He had grown adept at separating the two. The hospital was good. Besides, Jim Wagner was sure to try another treatment now. For three years, Jim Wagner never wavered from his decision to use chemotherapy, but now the radiation was no longer effective. Because of this, Doctor Wagner had begun to explore Mitchell’s ideas on antibody therapy. Mitchell was ecstatic, but he was also bitter that so much time had been wasted. Waving amicably at the nurses in their stations, Mitkin ducked into the finest room in the building, his father’s room.
He was met by the lone sound of a sucking valve. It sucked its way up and down, and Mitkin slowed. His mother was there, just as she always was, though, uncharacteristically, she was silent. Mitchell moved closer.
“Mitchell?” She sighed. “You’ve made it. Martin’s just fallen asleep.”
Mitchell nodded. His mother invited him to sit down and he took the little chair at the foot of his father’s bed. She began flatly, “He’s tired. He’s trying so hard now, he’s real tired.” She did not look at her son.
“Yes, Mother,” he said, expressionless. “How long has he been sleeping?”
“Not long.”
“How long, Mother? Exactly.”
Startled, she said, “A half hour I think.”
His father was not sleeping. Mitkin could see he was not present, and that thought was disturbing when applied to a man so thoroughly present all his life. He studied his father’s face, the skin barely hanging on, his neck withered, feet pale and sticking out just beyond a thin blue blanket. “So bony,” thought Mitkin. The absence of his father’s mind made Mitchell look hard at his father’s body. Everywhere it was emaciated and Mitkin thought how ridiculous the body looks apart from the mind, and then a sickening feeling overcame him, a feeling that his father had never been alive; like everything he had been was a mirage, an illusion that was now whisked away and made to disappear like a sweet dove in a magic show. He heard his father’s words: “Death is the end of an organism, don’t make it more than it is, Son.” He stared at his mother’s hand so close to her husband’s, one pink and alive, the other ashen and dead.
“Ring for the nurse Mother. He’s dead.”
Cassie Mitkin looked at her son. She was spent and very sad; she would not be strong. “No Son,” she said. “He’s sleeping.”
Mitkin pointed to the chest. “Watch it. It hasn’t heaved since I arrived. Father is dead.”
She studied her husband and then quickly looked back at her son. “What about the alarm? Why hasn’t anyone come?” She stared at the inert body, the pallid aura of death loose in the room. “Oh my God.” She covered her mouth. “Go! Go Mitchell, get Jim.” She screamed, “Doctor Wagner!”
Mitkin didn’t go, and no one came.
“Go now, my God!” And seeing that Mitchell wasn’t moving, Cassie Mitkin ran out of the room. A great deal of commotion could be heard outside, but still Mitchell did not move.
“Don’t be a coward. Don’t cop out.” He used his father’s words again. “The death of an organism, that’s what this is. The death of an organism, nature’s course, that is all.” He reached out and touched the graying toe. “The body’s inability to repair itself leads to secondary and tertiary malfunctions and eventually to a massive breakdown. The heart’s malfunction leaves the body bereft of fuel and absolute breakdown ensues. We all are destined for the same thing. Nature’s course—it is natural. Don’t be a coward, don’t be a hypocrite.” And then gripping the toe, he spoke aloud.
“Be strong.”
A single nurse ran into the room. Immediately, she ran back out. Next came a horde of others, a team. There was pounding and prodding and poking, tubes wiggling here and there.
One went into the gaping mouth. Doctor Jim Wagner came running, too. He had a look of anxious aggression, but there was fear there, too. Mitkin remained in his chair at the foot of the bed, moving only slightly and just enough to give the pounding nurses room to work. He laced his fingers together and placed his hands on his lap. More medical personnel entered. Mitkin’s mother wailed. She screamed orders and cried between ugly, phlegmy coughs. Nurses and doctors hustled in and out, back and forth. They stepped on Mitkin’s feet and bumped his knees, but Mitkin sat, ambivalent. “So, this is it?” A gray pall settled over him. He stared mechanically. A bewildering sense of separation bled between him and everything manic in the room, and in this space quiet grew. It all became mute, like a silent movie, as he stared at his father’s face. It rattled from the pumping, shaking like a doll. But it was the eyes that got him, the left eye, to be more specific. He couldn’t shake it, couldn’t take his eyes off of it. It mesmerized him, sucked him in. It was open but empty, void, and nil. Whatever was there was gone now, gone somewhere else, not far off, not very far off at all. And it had been there. He looked at the ceiling and at the window and then again at the eye. Empty eye.
The power of the past gripped him, and he reeled from images of his father in a tuxedo on New Year’s Eve, in his pajamas on Sunday morning, at a ballgame in Yankee Stadium. He recalled an idyllic lakeside cottage in winter, one that would fill up in the summer with voices and life, and he thought how his father, too, would fill up, one day, with that thing which had just now left the room. It would come back—it was loose and this was a terrifyingly wonderful thing. It made Mitkin sweat. He began to feel lightheaded, just as the distant, lonely cry ascended from the depths of his soul. It fought through his mind and burst in his heart. “My father lied to me. There is more, there was more!” He fought back tears and struggled to his feet. “Nature’s course is a curse, nature’s course.” He repeated with clenched teeth and watery eyes. “Nature’s course…”
He walked out unnoticed.
***
“A liar?” I say, confused.
“That’s what came to mind, dominated my mind, really. It’s what was revealed to me.” I mentally note this, that Mitkin thought his father was duplicitous, but these notes don’t make sense when compared with my mental notes. How could Martin Mitkin have been a liar just like that, alive an icon, dead a liar? Besides, what did that mean for Mitkin? How could he deal with this thing, this new truth? I ask him.
“I didn’t deal with it. Look around. Prison, Dave, we are sitting in a prison and I’m the prisoner.”
“Okay,” I say, “but what about the harsh judgment? One minute one thing, the next, he’s out, over, a liar. What’s up with that?”
He is getting agitated, squirrelly. “See,” he says with his hands up and out, like he is about to measure something, or maybe begin instructions, but in an agitated way, like a foreman on the job. “How can I tell it?” Now his hands go to his head and he is out of character for a moment. He seems confused. He gets out of his chair. “My father died, and I think there were two things right in that room with me. Fear. Fear was one. The other thing was guilt. I felt afraid because death was so final, so inexplicably final and I was afraid that everything I knew about it, death, was a lie. And everything I learned about death, and life, and living, was learned at the feet of my father, and so, I thought, no, the thoughts just came, that he had lied to me, misled me. His corpse, lying there so empty, made me rethink his life, and by extension my own. I was afraid of this.” He is still standing, but with an embarrassed air about him now. He fixes one arm across his chest and stands. He is, well, lovable, somehow.
“What can I tell you, David? It was a revelation. That kind of fear was something I’d never experienced, not even close. And the guilt, I couldn’t believe I was so afraid, so unable to continue with his ideas, his philosophies, his truth. It ran out of me the minute, the second he was gone. I was like a soldier who turns and vomits and cries the minute death starts to pop off all around him. I was soft. It was a bad day.”
I stare at him. He is so earnest, still.
“Do you remember how much of a mess I was, David?”
“I do,” I say. “Raphaella told me you disappeared after the funeral. What happened?”
He says through a laugh, “A whole lot happened.” And then he smiles and says it again. “A whole heck of a lot happened, and all of it right up here.”
“Up here,” he says pointing to his head, and I know that this is where the answers are, the answers to my questions, to the one question that has led me into his life and this prison. I lean over to see the recorder still churning away, and I shift in my seat as if the previews have just ended and the feature film is ready to begin. He continues, undeterred.
CHAPTER VIII: Faith
“It’s Sam, Raphaella, Sam Mitkin.” Two big thronging bangs rattled the door. “Sam Mitkin! Raphaella, hello, are you there?”
It was Saturday, and I was alone in the apartment with Dana. We were playing in the living room under the big bay window, Dana seemingly content with me, and I just beginning to feel like her father, her once-a-week father. The big bangs startled us. Dana even blurted out a little hoo as if she’d just fallen off her chair. I went to the door just as Sam Mitkin began to whack the door again with the fat underside of his fist.
Opening the door, I was greeted with, “Excuse me please, but,” Sam Mitkin stuck his head in the door, “have you seen Mitchell?” He was a tall and wiry man, dressed entirely in black. His suit was functional, comfortable, sturdy but not stylish. He wore thick black glasses. His eyes darted back and forth, and he was very agitated. “I’m sorry, but we are looking for Mitchell. I’m his uncle. Have you seen him?”
I thought how I’d been here before, me on the third floor, in Raphie’s apartment, a Mitkin down below, banging, manic in that very Mitkinesque way. Part of me wanted to be curt and impolite, but in the end I just said, “Haven’t seen him.”
Looking past me, Sam Mitkin said, “Has Raphaella seen him?”
“Aren’t they at the funeral?”
“They were,” he said. “But Mitchell ran away, and then Raphaella chased after him, just as they put him in the ground. Now we can’t find either of them.”
“I can see that,” I said, noticing that Dana had crept her way into the doorway, underfoot. Then, like a sweet little lamb, she offered the skinny oddball sleuth a drink from her very own Kool-Aid cup. She just stuck her hand up over her head and said, “Want some?” Sam Mitkin’s face bunched up and a clear case of emotional gridlock overcame him.
“Princess,” he said while nodding at her, and then he was gone.
I turned to my daughter, and comforted her with, “It will all be fine, sweetheart. She’ll show up soon.” I tried to conceal serious consternation. “They’ll show up, don’t worry.”
And they did, just before midnight, wet and weary like cats caught in the rain. My stomach was in knots, and I felt at any moment I might punch an inanimate object, Mitkin maybe. Looking at him, however, that thought quickly gave way to something more like sympathy. He was muddy from head to toe. On one cheek dried foliage of some sort clung disturbingly, and the other seemed to have been finger painted with mud. His hair was heavy and matted like a shaggy doormat. Raphaella was a tangled mess of dirt and rain and hair. I heard them rumbling around downstairs and poked my head out. Below, on the stairway, I could see Mitkin fumbling with his keys, while Raphaella held him under the arm. I hurried down.
“Don’t ask,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because she said so,” Mitkin suddenly growled. He tottered.
“Can you help me with him?” asked Raphaella. I took him under the other arm, and together we held him steady.
“David, she’s stronger than you,” said Mitkin, again sourly. I gripped him a little harder and twisted slightly. How’s that, I thought.
“Could you stay the night, David?”
“With him?”
“Well, one of us here, the other upstairs, could you?” She opened the door into his very ugly apartment. What used to be an immaculate abode had become a disaster. A plate of half-eaten spaghetti sat on the floor in the living room, an overturned beer bottle nearby. His music collection, and who would think he even had one of these, seemed to have exploded right there in the room, and his dirty clothes bin with it, apparently. I saw at least ten ties sprawled across the apartment, and, unfortunately, more than a few pairs of dirty underwear. His kitchen sink was piled with dishes, and there was a terrible smell in or behind the refrigerator. Helping Mitkin to his room, we passed the bathroom and I noticed flecks of facial hair ringing the white porcelain basin. Passing through this battlefield, it was easy to avoid Raphaella’s question, and it was quite a question, him sleeping with her or me sleeping with him? Great. How about, I just leave.
“How’s Dana?” she asked as we put Mitkin on his bed.
“Fine, sleeping.”
“The goddamned boat had holes, Raphie, it had big bullet holes, like it was in a war… Crimean…” said Mitkin, succumbing to the succor of his pillow. “Damned Crimean Russian bastards…”
I looked sideways and thought, Crimean War?
We moved out into the living room and she said, “I tried to call three times but the pay phone was messed up, and the one time I got through nobody answered. Were you home?”
“We went to get something to eat, but that’s it,” I said, and she nodded.
“Look, I’m sorry. I am. Forgive me. I just couldn’t leave him. He was gonna do something terrible, hurt himself or someone else, I could see it. He wanted to drink and I thought the bar, in public you know, would be good, calm him down. We went to the Ostrich. Then, he just went blazing like a crackhead into Central Park, black suit, tie, little black loafers, right into the pond.”
“A very muddy pond, apparently,” I said.
“He dug out an old boat and tried to launch it, what a disaster. It sunk and I went in after him. I just wanted to help him somehow.” She was tired. “He was wild, out of control. Wow. He’s coming apart, he needed help.”
“Is that why you got drunk together?”
“I’m not drunk.”
Then, from the bedroom came a burst of words, “We’re all drunk you idiots. Drunk, blind, confused, intoxi—” There was a pause, and then, “Cabby! Take me to him, did you know my father’s dead? Would you like a word with him?”
From somewhere came a whispered plea, “Mommy?” We both turned and saw the silhouette of Dana in the doorway, her nightgown wrinkled like her sleep-filled face. “Mommy you’re back, Mommy you came home.”
They hugged and then Dana hugged me too, both of us, together and at the same time. Raphaella was shaken. “I am so sorry, honey. I had an emergency and now everything is okay, don’t worry baby. Let’s go to sleep now, okay honey?”
Dana nodded, relieved, and that sealed the deal. I’d be sleeping with the drunk. I crawled onto Mitkin’s couch, turned over on my back and was immediately met with the sound of tepid air wheezing in and out of his drunken orifices. These were horrid snores—cranky, sputtering sounds, like a machine on the fritz. I don’t know how I managed to fall asleep, but I know how I managed to wake up the first time that night. It was 2:20 a.m. and he was yelling, “Daddy, Daddy!” and then, “Father, Father, hey!”
Then later, seemingly in my ear, “What the hell is this?” Defying all laws of near-death intoxication, Mitkin had gotten up very early, slipped on a natty, beige terrycloth bathrobe, and even brewed a pot of coffee. Oh, and he also managed to get really close to my face, so close that I wished he’d taken a minute or two to brush his teeth.
“What are you doing here David?”
“Huh? What?”
“You, what are you doing here?”
I rolled onto my side and covered my face with my arm. “I’m the cavalry. I’m here to protect you.”
He scratched his head and sipped his coffee, and waited for me to say something else. Still on my side I managed to say, “I’m doing Raphaella a favor.” He took another sip from his coffee and cocked his eyebrow. He was back in his bedroom and back to his melancholic, dirty life before I finally pulled myself off the couch. Getting myself together I yelled, “She didn’t want to sleep here and she didn’t want to leave you alone, so there you go.”
A cough from his room was followed by a scratchy, “What do you want, a Nobel Peace Prize or something?”
The new Mitkin, I thought. “I’m leaving.”
“Bye-bye,” he squawked. “Bye-bye.”
I trudged upstairs and stood in front of Raphaella’s door. It had a rainbow pinned proudly on a message board, the name Dana scribbled in the center. Each little letter of her name had been innocently and earnestly squeezed through her little left hand, delicately and with abundant hope. I imagined Raphaella holding that little hand as it went. The cool air reminded me it was still very early and that they were surely still asleep, so I dropped my fist and did not knock. Instead, I descended the stairs very quietly so that Mitchell Mitkin would not hear and gain the satisfaction of knowing I’d never gotten to say goodbye.
***
On the subway ride home and subsequent walk to my apartment, I was plague-ridden with runaway ruminations.
“I bet they got naked in that pond, oh, no doubt, and then they probably rolled around all nudie, sandwich style, flip-flop like a wrestling thing. He just bolted his dad’s funeral, it’s too bizarre, no one would believe it. He’s ugly, anyway. She loves him like a brother, of course, like a crazy, creepy, brother who moved away and lost track of you and never calls, yeah, brother all right. Too bad about his pop, he’s just not transitioning well, but what the hell, he should transition with someone else’s would-be-wife, and that could be just about anyone including Raphaella I guess, so I guess he can be with her then, wait, strike that thought… Will I be a puddle like that when my father dies? I was pretty cool last night, I obeyed, it worked out well, I’m the man… She probably doesn’t even want to sleep with him anyway, who would? I could take him in a fight unless he turned psycho on me, but he’s already a little psycho so be careful about fighting him, thumb outside, never inside, broken thumb otherwise. Broken hand bad. Pain.”
With my head down and my mind racing, I marched down the street and up my stoop where my knee cracked a kid’s jaw. The kid’s name was Elvis, the handsome, lazy, sixteen-year-old son of Rico, the super. Elvis was probably the most introverted person I’d ever known, but now that would all end, my knee had become acquainted with his face as he sat calmly there on the stoop.
“Damn, yo. What the F—”
“Oh no, my fault,” I said. “Sorry about that kid.” Elvis stood up real fast and puffed his chest. His fists curled and he cock-walked to within an inch of me. “I wasn’t paying attention, I was thinking about some stuff, you know, sorry. I didn’t see—”
Then, that kid punched me. Real square, right on the chin. I stumbled back against the stone banister and held my face. He waited for my reaction, but I was in a daze. “Five dollars,” he said, and pointed.
“What?”
“Five dollars punk, you kicked my drink over.”
I looked down and saw a sideways beer bottle. It oozed foamy beer. “What? You want money for that? You shouldn’t even be drinking that, and in the morning? Forget that. Forget you.”
He stepped up to me again and this time I cracked him, a glancing blow to the chin and neck. We got tangled up and, well, I was in a fight with Elvis. I punched him in the back once or twice and then he bit me and ran. He bit me. I hadn’t even showered yet, and already I had a black eye and bite marks on my arm. All I needed now was a gasoline tire ignited around my neck, or maybe a good quartering. Better yet, how about sheer and utter bureaucratic bafflement at Martin Luther High School, my new place of employment and home to thousands of kids, just like lovely Elvis.
I had to get ready for school, and as I preened in the bathroom mirror I noticed how nicely my new khaki slacks went with my black eye and bite marks. I looked like an idiot. But what could I do? It was my first day of work and three thousand students from all around the city waited for me at Martin Luther High School. MLHS was a magnet school for kids from all five boroughs, but mostly it was a thug school. Luther High attracted very mediocre students every year, a cycle the Board of Education found difficult to break. I was going to be a history teacher—a green, white, rookie. But was I worried? Not really. I was a nice guy, I thought, everyone will love me.
I imagined the days ahead; students clapping and cheering as I finished my lecture, girls and boys lingering after class, asking questions about history and life, kids getting a compass reading on their future. I imagined myself tousling the head of a young whipper-snapper, encouraging him with a heartfelt, “It’s all within your grasp, you can do it, Jerome,” or maybe something like this: “The lessons of degradation we see in Eastern Europe after the war can be applied to our very own history right here in urban America, right here in our own neighborhood.” What a teacher I’d be. I’d reach the Elvises of the world all right.
Then I met the chairman of my department. This man was a well-oiled curriculum machine, a computer really, and he loved handouts. He walked me through files and files of old handouts, the kind made by Rexograph machines about the time James Dean died. “Follow the handouts,” he’d say. “They’ll take you where you need to go.” And he wanted me to log all of my lessons, my witty, instinctive, spontaneous lessons; he wanted them logged. At one point during that first day he actually gave me a sticky:
Rexo #’s 1-25 can be picked up
in my office today. Don’t forget to
LOG YOUR LESSONS.
—Krugs
That was his name, Mr. Krugs. Later, during the second week when he had more time, he actually took me into an empty classroom and went through a series of, what he called, abstracts.
“And if he curses, here,” he pointed to a row of empty chairs, “do you immediately send him out?” He waited but this was rhetorical. “And here again, two more students taking the lead of the first troublemaker, what then?” Then, I’m screwed, I thought. “And do you ever physically restrain the combatants?”
“No?” I peeped.
“Precisely, Mr. Higgins.” I waited for him to salute, but he just hunched his shoulders and said, “Now, it’s only in the doing son. Good luck.”
Why had Mr. Krugs ever chosen to be a teacher? Had he wanted to heal a failed relationship in a faraway city, be a writer, do something good and give something back? Did he just love kids? Did he imagine himself getting standing ovations too? Looking at him I thought, wouldn’t he be better off operating an abacus somewhere? But what did I know, really? Twenty-six years of handouts lie decaying, and I, this new guy named Higgins wasn’t about to stem the great Rexo tide, no chance.
My first day had gone well, at least that’s what Hill said. Hill was short for Hillray, Hillray M. Johnson, but this Hill was anything but short. He was about six-foot-six, 255 pounds. He shaved his head bald, and when he shook hands you were very afraid. He had been at Luther High for seventeen years and knew what I needed to know.
“But they didn’t really listen to me,” I said.
“Think about that for a minute. What you teaching on the first day that they need to be listening to ya? Yep, exactly. It’s if they ain’t listening next month that we need to keep an eye on. You just go ahead and make it mean something to ‘em, they’ll listen.”
Good advice, I thought. He shook my hand, I tried to shake back, but mostly he just moved my arm up and down. Then he just up and walked out the front door of the high school. I looked at my watch—it was only 1:30 p.m., a little early to be leaving, I thought. Looking around I realized that just about everyone was gone on this first day, an administrative day. I decided to use the time to go and see how Dana was doing after her first day of school.
I ran into Mitchell Mitkin struggling with his keys at the front door of the brownstone. He turned around quickly, suspiciously.
“Oh, David.”
“Mitch, how are you?”
Turning back around and trying another key he said, “I don’t know, how do I look?”
“You look okay,” I lied. He was a mismatched, disheveled mess, and he seemed to have spilled coffee on his shirt, down his pants even. “I am sorry about your father. Really, it is, well…” I didn’t know what to say.
He chimed in, “One of life’s tragedies? Whatever.” He opened the door and went inside, letting the door slam with me still on the other side looking in. He mounted the steps, two of them, and stopped. I followed him in and saw him there, waiting. He looked down at me and choked out a throat-clearing cough. I waited for him to speak but he didn’t, he seemed seized by something. I spoke up.
“I’m teaching you know, Mitch. Both of us. If you ever want to talk about teaching and, well, whatever...” There was lugubrious silence. “I got your letter, you know, about how you were going to teach this fall. Looks like you’ve just finished your first day, huh?”
“Yeah, mmmhuh,” he said, oddly. He continued his ascent, disappearing into his second-story room. He had left a loathsome wake.
Upstairs, Raphaella wanted to know if Mitchell had returned. “Yep, he’s back from work, just came in,” I whispered while pointing down the stairwell.
“Did he talk to you?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“I haven’t seen him since the funeral.” She motioned me inside and shut the door. “The kid’s losing it.”
Inside, I saw that everything had changed. Raphaella had taken her vacation time to repaint and refurbish her apartment, a project paid for by Sam Mitkin, the building’s proprietor now. This was the kind of relationship she had with the Mitkin family. She had lived there eight years and not once had she paid a late rent. The family had come to trust her with building matters, and after her “rescue” at the funeral, they had begun to trust her on a personal level. With a thin white smock wrapped lazily around her and a wet paintbrush about to drip a resplendent rose onto her hardwood floor, she stood before me.
“Hold it up,” I said.
“Hold it up?”
“The brush, it’s about to drip.” I grabbed her gently, and turned the brush. I felt the sinew of her supple wrist.
“Wow, to the rescue,” she said. “Thanks.”
“For Dana’s room?” I said.
“Yep. It’s nice right?” I nodded. “Dana’s in the back, sleeping. She doesn’t feel well.”
“Did she go to school?”
“No. She’s sick. Sore throat.” It was her first day and I was disappointed she hadn’t gone. Part of me wanted to scold Raphaella slightly, tell her that the first day is important and maybe reflect a bit on my first day, on my insider’s perspective now that I was a full-blown educator. But I didn’t say anything. I actually fought the urge. Instead, I went with my thoughts on Mitchell.
“He’s always looking a little dirty these days, have you noticed?”
“The man’s father just died,” she said. “I mean, come on. He loved his father.”
“Yeah, but why isn’t he taking care of himself? What’s that all about?”
“Look, the guy loved his father, he believed in every word his father said. He was devoted. Life’s totally empty without his father.”
“What about his mother?” I asked. Raphaella shrugged. “Don’t they get along?”
“Let’s just say he doesn’t get along.” I could tell she knew more but didn’t want to talk about it. I got the feeling she wanted to protect Mitkin. “They just aren’t that close,” she repeated.
“Anyway, I hope he feels better. I’m still waiting for someone I love to die. I’ve been lucky so far.”
She nodded and said, “Maybe it’s not luck, David.”
“Maybe…” I trailed off. “But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. Actually, I’m not here to talk about anything, I came to see Dana. But she’s sick, so, how about you and I watch a movie? I’ll run out and rent one.”
She laughed and said, “I’m working.”
“Well, quit working and come over here and sit down with me.” I cleared a space on the couch and patted it, inviting her.
“What movie, David?”
“Whatever you want, Wall Street just came out on video.”
“Wall Street? Okay.” She gave me the rental card for P.J.’s Video. I ran very, very fast and grabbed the movie and was back before she had taken her painter’s smock off. She smiled and we sat down. The movie clipped by and I sat close enough to feel her warmth, but I didn’t touch her intimately. No slick arm sling followed by a cough, no lazy prostration where her lap became my pillow. I sat, and she sat, but we sat together.
It was a good movie, but I sensed she didn’t think so.
“Sort of sad, isn’t it?” she said at the end.
“How’s that?”
“How doing one thing, like selling stocks, makes it almost impossible to do another, like being good.”
“But selling stocks is good, at least as far as Gekko saw it. It’s the same thing. Selling is being good, it’s the point of being American.”
“Yeah, I heard. Greed is good. The only problem is, it’s not true. It ain’t good. Greed is bad.”
“But that depends, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think so.” Then, as if collecting all of her courage, she said, “God is good. God, not greed.”
There it is, I thought, everything keeps coming back to the same idea. I sensed that this notion of hers was always on the verge of escape, seeping out against her will as if she were possessed by it, as if it were too big for her body. It was unnerving in those days after my return from California.
“You know, Raphie, my mother always taught me to avoid two topics in polite conversation—”
“Yeah, I know David, you’ve told me before. God and politics.”
“Well,” I said, trying to be funny, “given my very recent return to New York, this still qualifies as, well, polite conversation. And so, technically, you’re breaking my mother’s rule, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but you know what, David? We’ve always had nothing but polite-ass conversation. Sorry, I’m not angry as much as, well, clear, you know? I mean, when did we, lovers I remind you, ever talk in depth about anything? When did we ever really have great, deep, hopeful conversation? I mean shouldn’t lovers, of all people, be talking about good things, about love, about things not of this world?”
That was an odd phrase I thought. Not hers.
“Shouldn’t we?” she pleaded.
“Of course, that’s why I came back.”
“Are you sure about that? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure mostly.” I was near a laugh when she sucked her teeth.
“You’re a loser, David,” she said, also on the verge of laughter.
“See, relax,” I said, smiling. “It’s just a movie and we’re just talking. Relax.” I patted her knee. “See there, nice and easy. Relax.”
“I’m relaxed already. Shut up. Seriously, David, you have to wonder about what I am saying. You and I just don’t go very deep.”
Straightening my face, I endeavored to hear her. “Okay then, tell me about this not-of-this-world idea. You think love is not from this world?” I was trying.
“It’s from God. It’s not biological, you know, like a result of our brain activity, or brain maturity or whatever.”
“Some people would disagree with you, you know.”
“You mean some person like Mitchell. Yeah, he would. But he’s wrong too. I think.”
“Mitkin’s wrong? Wow, that’s different.”
“Look, David, you need to know a few things about Mitchell and me. Mitchell came into my life when I was on the verge of a real crisis. Having your child was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made and I am not trying to hurt you by saying that. I think you know, now anyway, that what we had wasn’t real good. Having a baby together wasn’t exactly smart, but I had the baby anyway. Do you know why?” I shook my head though I thought for sure I knew why. “Because I couldn’t have another abortion. I couldn’t stand another cold instrument inside me, another stranger poking around down there. And there was another reason. I wanted to marry you. Really. I wanted you to sweep me off my feet with a proposal the minute I told you I was pregnant.” She looked at me, directly. “But it didn’t work that way, and the rest is history. So that’s what went on in my mind.”
“But why didn’t you tell me? I could never have known all that, especially given the way you treated me.”
“I should have told you, but don’t you see? You didn’t know this stuff for the same reason you don’t know my feelings about God. We, David, were simply incapable of deep conversation. Everything was about something else, everything was just a distraction, a game. I mean shit, David, I was having your baby. Don’t you remember?” I did, clearly. She suddenly got up and peeked into the living room. Dana was fast asleep. She sat back down, focused on finishing this conversation. She was not upset or irritated. She was closer to inspired. “This is not an indictment, but it wasn’t love we had.”
“Sometimes we had it. Don’t you think? Early on maybe?”
She turned a circumspect eye my way. “Oh yeah, like the time I had you crying at the nightclub because you thought I had gone home with the big, leathery guy. Or was it the other time, early on, when you got so mad you dumped me on the side of the freeway upstate? I stood on that damn freeway for almost an hour you know.” It was longer than that, I thought, I couldn’t find a place to turn around. “Or how about the time you took that trip to Minnesota, that guys’ weekend thing? You called me every hour, do you remember that? Every hour, like a freaked-out puppy dog.” She spoke with a bemused twinkle in her eye.
“Yeah, but you were there, right there, sitting with some other guy, doing, well, doing a whole lot.”
“That’s right. You’re making my argument now, dumbass. We never had love.”
“So what was it then? What were we missing?”
Soberly she looked right at me. “I went to see the priest, the one I told you about.”
“Yeah, so?”
“He had an answer to that question.”
I oozed an “Aaaand…” while picturing her on a couch talking about neurosis and her fatherless childhood. I imagined my name being thrown around while both priest and patient connived to make me the bad guy. “What did he say?”
“He said without suffering, there is no joy, and that without sacrifice there is no meaning.”
Sitting there numb I wanted to add an ooooh or an aaaahhh, anything to make his weighty words more palatable and less embarrassing for the both of us. Instead I leapt to defend myself, whining, “So I didn’t sacrifice? Love?” I paused and looked around the room. “We lacked suffering? I don’t get it.”
“Yeah David, maybe.” She pointed at herself. “When did I ever give up what I wanted so you could have what you wanted?” She scoffed, and waited for me to answer, but honestly, I was afraid to answer that crafty question. “For a long time I’ve been thinking that I could have done more,” she went on. “But the problem is, when I get right down to it, I don’t know what that means. It’s like the whole idea of love and suffering is just theory for me. When it comes to actually making the change, the hard part, the whole thing falls to pieces. Do you know what I mean?” I nodded, but I think she knew I was thinking about something else. And what was I thinking about? Reality. Reality starkly protruded through the thin veil of hope I had created for us. The reality was simple; she could no longer entertain any idea of us without entertaining the higher notions of Him. It was like a freshwater lake overrun by a saltwater river.
“So you buy this guy’s premise, about sacrifice?” I said.
“I think so.”
I curled my lip, “Come on, Raphie. You’re telling me that if you hit the jackpot you’d sacrifice the money, give it to someone else.”
“Geez, David, you don’t listen too well, do you? I said I don’t know what I’d do. In fact, my history with you tells me I’d keep it all for myself. But that doesn’t change the idea of, of, doing it right. Of the one thing that is.” She was speaking slowly, confusedly. “It’s the idea, the great idea...” She shook her head and her hands as if to dismiss her words. “Look, don’t miss the whole point, David.”
“But when did you start believing in God, Raphaella?”
She moved down the couch slightly, looking at me as if to get a clearer perspective. “I don’t know if I do believe in God, David. I’m just wondering.”
“Then what’s with the priest already?”
“He seems so sincere, I guess. I felt at home with him.”
“Look, I know a little bit about priests, okay. My father’s side of the family includes a Catholic priest and one of those reader guys. I’ve been churched you know, and a priest is just a man. Don’t get too caught up by the robes and all that.” She was listening. “I could tell you some stories, Raphie.”
“About?”
“Priests.”
“Yeah, duh, David. But what about priests?”
“Well, one my uncle knows kept a diary of all his confessions. He was going to write a book and use the stories, but when the guy in charge found out, the bishop I guess, he just gave him a slap on the wrist, didn’t even stop him from hearing confessions. It’s the same when they’re caught molesting little boys. Sweep it under the rug, that’s what they do all the time. You may be talking to some crazy molester priest, who knows?”
She shook her head vehemently. “It’s not like that! This isn’t about the actual guy, it’s about something else, about the idea. It’s the idea, David, don’t you get it?” She was squeezing the couch pads with her hands. “It’s the idea. Some ideas are just closer to true than others, don’t you think?”
“I think so, I guess.”
“Then aren’t some men truer than others?”
“You mean do some people have the truth? No.”
“That’s it? Just, no?”
“That’s it. Nobody can just be the truth, or know it completely. That’s what I think.” I was growing tired.
“But you’re irrational. If some people can come closer to truth than others, can’t some reach the truth?” She pleaded with upturned palms.
I was struck by the word she used to describe me. Irrational? I was the irrational one, yet she was the one going to see a priest? But that was just it. Who could understand what was going on at this point? It wasn’t the same Raphaella I knew, but, in some ways, this was a good thing. She had lost her acidic tongue, the one that burned me unmercifully when we fought. I sensed a new deliberateness, a stillness that made her less prone to sarcastic attacks. And she was less sure of herself, more inclined to say “I don’t know.” I could envision this conversation coming to a happy end, and that was definitely something new. That’s not to say I still wasn’t convinced she or I could really know truth, but I didn’t care about that, even as I continued. “Truth is sort of like a gas, or a cloud, I’d rather deal with things that I can get my hands around,” I said. With that, I wanted to give her a big grin and a knowing glance, but restrained myself.
Then, as if detached from the conversation, she said, “The more you want to know things, the more pain you get.” Her words were soft between her lips.
“Who said that?”
“The same priest you think is collecting notes on my confession, the double molester guy.” She paused and grimaced. “Ouch, imagine that. My confession as screenplay, written by a pedophile. “
It was funny, but I didn’t laugh. “You had confession with him?”
She just rolled her emerald eyes and shook her head, deeming my question unworthy of an answer. Her corkscrew hair settled over her sculpted face and I was just about to lean and pet it when Dana let out a tired groan. Raphaella went out of the room and I was alone for a moment, in front of the television, a blue screen marking the end of our movie and my visit to 103rd Street. I waited for Raphie to emerge and then gently said goodbye. As I walked the sidewalk to the subway, the setting sun made an impression on me—I had to hurry. Raphaella was moving in a direction that confounded me, and yet, I loved her more than I’d ever loved her before.
I’m really enjoying the story and look forward to the installments each week!