a novella by
2/27/06 - 3/5/07
The Doctor’s
Christian Revival
The Doctor
calls his son through the intercom
Rose unveils
the Reverend’s portrait
“There are two parents in this house.”
Rose decides to go to art school
Under the
sewing machine table
Cranely
College. Freshman Year.
Little Mazzy
surrounds herself with friends
The
International Institute. Madrid, Spain.
Part Two
The Doctor moves downstairs into the guest bedroom
The
Doctor agrees to buy the apartment
An
unfortunate incident with the massage-therapist
A sudden
call disrupts the Doctor’s ski trip with Gabriela
Lethe
ventures into the Projects
A
Conversation with Dr. Offenbach
Creosote de Tucson, a resort for addicts
Some of the
characters at Creosote
Chesterfield and the ex-movie director help out
Lethe meets
Julian in San Francisco
Part One
Rose
never told anyone why she was always in the bathroom—her husband assumed that
her “difficulties” originated in the distant past. She had been married for twelve years before
she met the Doctor, and that was nearly a life-time ago when she lived in a cramped
city apartment without any privacy. Not
until she moved into the house in
And these moments came frequently. Something went off in her mind, like a
trigger, that told her she had to go, she had to go. Rose hurried to the bathroom, remembering
that she shouldn’t hurry, because just last week she fell and bruised her upper
thigh on the hard marble tiles. Her
fingers reached for the edge of the vanity top as she sidled her way to the
toilet. Once she was safe inside the
little chamber, behind the fogged glass door, Rose tried to shut everything out
of her mind. She tried to relax. And sometimes she fell into a state of deep
concentration, wherein the magazine rack on the wall, the toilet paper
dispenser, and the little chamber itself disappeared. During these moments, she was absolutely
alone, and the noises that had been eddying around in her mind all day long,
became suddenly still. Then she would
hear a quiet sound, like a stream, flowing directly beneath her.
But nothing ever seemed to come out. (Sighing.)
Her focus continued—and she could almost feel something giving way—but
no, there was nothing. Her imagination
was deceiving her again. She always thought that she had to go to the bathroom.
Maybe it was just another false alarm.
She waited. Ten minutes
longer. Twenty minutes. She picked up a magazine, Reform Judaism.
Rose’s bathroom looked like one of those
grottos in the South of France where sunlight peeps in through a crack in the
cave and reflects off the crystal ponds inside.
Orchids and azaleas were set in brass at the foot of the oversized
marble Jacuzzi. Bonsai plants sat on
high nooks. The polished floors were
grey and glistening, and mirrors gave the illusion of infinite space.
Despite the splendor and security of Rose’s
bathroom, every so often her son, Lethe, tramped inside, busted open the fogged
glass door, and saw his mother’s naked thighs wedged over the toilet seat. Startled by her son’s intrusion, Rose flexed
the great wing-shapes of her arms. Don’t
you dare come in here Lethe Bashar—she spat out at her son, shooing him away with
her large, flapping arms. Don’t you
dare, don’t you dare. Leave Mommy alone. I said I’m busy. Leave me alone.
Expelled
from his mother’s bathroom, Lethe retreated down into the basement where his
father sat in his pinewood study, skimming medical journals and examining
X-Rays or speaking into a voice-recorder.
His father’s study was the size of a guestroom, with an Italian leather
sofa, a large hardwood desk and a
Lethe’s father held X-Rays up to the light as
he identified the different types of bone fractures and jotted down some
notes. When Lethe stormed into his
private study, he beckoned him closer with an outstretched arm, and the little
boy nestled his head into the side of his father’s ribs. While Lethe could be restless at times, his
father knew how to tame him by applying a small pressure to the nape of his
neck. Feeling the pinch of forefinger
and thumb, Lethe squirmed to get away.
“I heard your mother screaming.”
Lethe’s eyes grew big and expressionless.
“Were you bothering her again? You know you’re not supposed to be in her
bathroom. Lethe? Are you listening to me? Do you want to read now?” Lethe’s father bundled him into his arms.
“Gulliver’s
Travels, Gulliver’s Travels.” The boy’s high-pitched voice rang out.
Together they sat on the Italian leather sofa
and exchanged turns reading from Swift’s masterpiece. The Doctor had a passion for literature, and
young Lethe watched his father’s face change expression, his voice become
fantastical and dreamy.
“Very
good, very good. Continue.” He patted his son on the head.
Sometimes after finishing a chapter, the Doctor
digressed into a story about the country where he was born.
“No, I want to read more Gulliver—”
Again the Doctor affectionately pinched the
nape of his son’s neck, and young Lethe responded by sinking back into the
leather sofa.
“Do you know why they call
The little boy shook his head, angling his eyes
to the closed book on his father’s lap.
“You told me this story already—”
“
The boy didn’t seem to be listening. “Tell me about Grandma. I want to hear the story about Grandma.”
“That’s fine.
I’ll tell you the story about Grandma.
But tomorrow night we’re going to talk more about
Lethe mashed his lips together.
“You can’t ignore history, little man. History is bigger than you think. It’ll eat you up when you’re not looking”
The boy was silent. “I want to hear the story about when Grandma
used to take you to all the different people’s houses.”
“That’s fine.
But you’ll have to promise to go to sleep after that.”
“I promise—did you live in a big house when you
were my age?”
“Yes we lived in my Grandfather’s house and
there were ten of us.”
“You said it was a mansion.”
“Yes, it was very big.”
After
his marriage to Rose, the Doctor bought a big white house for his wife and
children to live in. Rose adored this
two-story ranch house and it was her obsession to make sure it never fell into
a state of disorder. Depending on whom
you asked, some said that Rose’s need to keep her house spotlessly clean was a
neurosis, while others upheld that Rose simply enjoyed having a clean house, or
that she was a perfectionist with high standards. With the exception of the Doctor’s pinewood
study, everything in Rose’s house conformed to white or marble. Rose was preoccupied with the appearance of
her house. Hidden spots of dust and dirt
threatened her household ideal, reminding her of her previous life-time when
she lived in a cramped city apartment.
Every morning she walked through the halls, searching for fingerprints
her two children may have left during the night.
Housecleaning was an activity that had to be
engaged on many levels. There was the
weekly scouring of the house—and there was the regular, daily cleaning. A grey van packed with Polish and Slavic
ladies arrived at Rose’s house every Thursday morning to accomplish the former
of the two missions, which entailed bleaching the grout between the tiles,
cleaning out the refrigerator, vacuuming all the rooms, cleaning mirrors,
wiping windows, polishing cabinets, and various other jobs that are too numerous
and picayune to list here. The battalion
of cleaning ladies was distinct in purpose and duty from the two regular
housekeepers who also acted as nannies.
In accomplishing her vision for a clean house, Rose wanted two women who
could act as her right hand men.
Dora broke stride down the tiled
hallway nearly twenty times a day. Her
tall, lanky build and vigorous arm movements resembled the idiosyncrasies of
the ostrich. The brunt of the work fell
on Dora, who was younger than Mabel, and who strove to meet Rose’s often
unreasonable demands for a clean house.
She also worked in Rose’s art studio, building frames, stretching
canvases, and banging nails into wooden beams.
Often Dora and Rose worked side-by-side, whether they were scrubbing
floors or cleaning paint brushes.
In addition, Dora and Mabel made the beds,
changed the sheets, tidied the bedrooms, did the laundry and dusted the
blinds. They also emptied the garbage
cans, watered the plants, did the grocery shopping and made school lunches. On most days, they also prepared dinner. After a day’s worth of cleaning, the house
looked completely anonymous, and Lethe and his sister had the strange
impression they were staying in a hotel.
Their rooms were in perfect order—the only thing missing—a mint on their
pillows.
Lethe
and Mazzy saw that their mother escaped downstairs into the basement and
sometimes did not return to the upper floor until the next morning. During Rose’s stints of oil-painting, the
housekeepers took care of the children, preparing Macaroni and Cheese dinners,
or helping Lethe and his sister with their homework.
Rose worked tirelessly in her art studio,
making numerous sketches, arranging scenes for her models, and hovering
anxiously over a large commercial easel.
Night and day, the glare of extension lights reflected off the walls in
a harsh, artificial brightness. An old
wine box overflowed with tubes of oil paint, and horsehair brushes soaked in
turpentine. Open cans of solvents and
paint thinners gave off a burning, astringent odor that lingered in the air and
made your eyes water.
In the corner of the room, a breakfast scene
was erected with a small table, chairs, and a television. Mabel and her husband, Ernie, modeled for
Rose. Mabel was a small woman with
curly, white hair. Her husband, an
ex-truck driver, had round shoulders and a large, sedate body. In the pictures, Mabel usually stood beside
her husband nervously, tentatively, either fixing the breakfast or getting
ready to leave the house. Ernie, in
contrast, was always eating at the table or napping in a wingback chair. Rose used lots of props in her paintings,
some of them incongruous with the scene itself.
Scattered across the floor of her studio were the objects she had collected
over the years, African tribal mask, ceramic owl, mannequin, gas mask, snake
cage and sailor’s trunk. In the
background of Rose’s paintings, we see two geese hissing at each other. Flocks of Canadian geese lurked around the
perimeter of a nearby lake and wandered into the residents’ lawns. From her studio-window, Rose looked out at
the ill-tempered birds, and they came to hold a symbolic meaning for her.
In the beginning, Rose’s desire to paint was
completely alien to her husband. He had
never met an artist before nor did he know what motivated a person to want to
create art. He saw his wife’s painting
as a diversion, a hobby at best. When
she transformed one of the rooms in the basement into an art studio, he raised
two concerns: (1) Rose was becoming
obsessed with painting and (2) She was neglecting her duties as mother and
housewife.
And then, Rose began the habit of “dressing
up”. When the Doctor came home one
night, he found his wife wearing purple tights, a white and black striped pullover
and a red silk opera hat. She had
painted her face white with black teardrops under her eyes.
The Doctor exclaimed, “Honey, you look silly
with that outfit on. Why don’t you go
take it off?”
“After dinner—” she replied.
“But we’re eating as a family and you look like
you’re in Vaudeville.”
Rose’s silverware fell to the floor—
She stood up in front of her family. Lethe and his sister were watching
intently. The Doctor looked
alarmed.
Using hand gestures, Rose pretended to be
trapped inside an invisible box. She
struggled and struggled to get out of the box.
Her eyebrows flew up into her forehead and her small pupils became
frantic. The two siblings broke into a
fit of giggles. The Doctor stared at his
wife, blankly.
In the beginning, Rose went to church only to
please her husband . . .
The Christ
Church of Barclay Park, a non-denominational Christian church, received a large
amount of charitable funds from the wealthy members of the surrounding
area. The result of so many donations
was a beautiful sanctuary that held over five hundred people, with pews of dark
mahogany, royal blue carpet, and a panorama of stained glass windows. The stage of the chancel was elevated above
the congregation and divided into three sections. On the far left of the stage, the choir’s
high pews; in the center of the stage, a small baptismal altar; off to the
right of the stage, a leafy alcove with giant Roman candles in gold stands. This is where the Reverend and the senior
Pasteur sat during the service. To give
his sermons, the Reverend had to descend down to the pulpit. The pulpit, a work of art in itself, was an
engraved block of wood representing scenes of the Resurrection and had been
commissioned by the Church Elders.
Occasionally,
she had panic attacks. The Church in
these moments took on a sinister aspect, and she felt, among the hordes of
Christians, as if she were suffocating.
She stood up in the pew, facing the congregation. The mottled faces seemed to be staring at her
with a uniform look of disapproval. She
scrambled out of the aisle, stepping over people’s feet in her haste. The Doctor called out to his wife and began
following after her.
They
stood in the empty hallway outside of the sanctuary. “What’s wrong?” the Doctor asked.
Rose’s
face was flushed. “I can’t sit in
there.”
“Why
not?”
“I’m
uncomfortable.”
“Why
are you uncomfortable?”
“You’re
pressuring me to be here. I’m Jewish.”
At times, Rose’s “neurotic” behavior was simply
baffling to her husband. He couldn’t
understand how such a compassionate environment could excite such hysterical
emotions in a person. He spoke to the
Reverend in private about his difficulties with his wife, stressing the
importance of raising their children Christian.
In a calm, self-assured voice, the Reverend told the Doctor not to
worry. He asked the Doctor to arrange a
meeting where he could sit down with Rose and discuss spirituality.
The
living room, beige carpeted with curio shelves and a white grand piano near the
window, was rarely used. Rose asked the
members of her family, in fact, not to go into the living room. The room was meant to be on display. It was in this room, however, that Rose and
the Reverend “discussed spirituality”.
Surprisingly, she was not averse to meeting with the Reverend. They sat next to each other and Rose inhaled
the Reverend’s cool scent of aftershave and peppermint Listerine. He told Rose about his Dutch-Reform
upbringing, his years as a Pasteur in a small rural church, and then recently
about coming to the Christ Church of Barclay Park.
He reminded her
of her own father, who had died many years ago.
Her father had been a man of quiet sincerity and she remembered him like
an angel. The Reverend also seemed to
carry that gentle bearing. Both men had
clear blue eyes and a soft countenance.
Rose smiled at the Reverend’s good-natured jokes and was enamored with
his soft-spoken eloquence. He helped her
to forget about her negative experiences in the Church. Before their meeting ended, Rose got the idea
to paint the Reverend’s portrait.
“My
portrait?” The Reverend asked,
surprised.
“Why
not?” Rose said. “If you’re willing to sit for me, I’m willing
to paint you.”
“Well,
I suppose we could give it a try. We
might even be able to hang it in the Church.”
Rose
was excited to paint the Reverend’s portrait.
Her eyes lit up when he mentioned hanging the painting in the
Church. She knew that the Reverend was an
important member of the community and that a portrait of him could bring her
notoriety. The next week, having
regained her self-composure, she returned to church with her family.
The Doctor’s Christian Revival
During church service, the Doctor stole a
loving glance at his wife. He was
grateful that Rose was coming to church with him and hopeful about her new
affinity to the Reverend. More than
anything else, he wanted his wife to become a Christian like himself and to
feel comfortable in the Church. He
basked in the lofty ideal of family happiness, imagining that the four of them
would share a sacred bond, husband and wife, sister and brother; together they
would be as one.
He was also
captivated by the hospitality of the church atmosphere, and since he had left
Now that his
wife was attending regularly, the Doctor felt a need to participate more in
church life. During the three months
that Rose was painting the Reverend’s portrait, he signed up for a church
retreat, went to weekly Bible studies and enrolled in a family values seminar. He also registered his son and daughter to
take confirmation classes.
The
Doctor’s enthusiasm for church was sharply curtailed by his twelve-year old
son’s unabashed refusal to obey his father’s orders. This caused a great uproar in the Bashar house. Almost overnight, Lethe seemed to have grown
into a monster. The youth’s “unruly,
obnoxious, intolerable” behavior not only threatened the Doctor’s sense of
order and stability but Lethe was becoming a nemesis to his father’s lofty
ideal of family happiness. While the
Doctor meticulously prepared to have his family ready for church by
nine-fifteen on Sunday mornings, now it was becoming a habit of Lethe’s to
linger in his bedroom, waiting until the last minute to get dressed. As the gray Oldsmobile sat in the driveway
with the engine running, the Doctor rang the doorbell several times. Still without his tie on, Lethe came to the
door.
“Put
on your shoes and get in the car.”
No
answer.
“PUT-ON-YOUR-SHOES.”
No
answer.
“GET-IN-THE-CAR-NOW.”
Finally
Lethe grabbed his coat, slipped on his shoes and hurried to the car.
The intercom system of their house, built in
the 1980’s, was semi-functional, capturing only traces of the human voice, and
transmitting static and incoherent echoes into the serpentine hollows and voids
of the interconnecting circuitry.
Because the members of the Bashar family gravitated to their own
isolated parts of the house, dinner being the exception when they all met
together in one room, speaking through the intercom system became the standard
mode of communication. One member of the
family often demanded the presence of another member in their part of
the house, and no matter what the speaker’s mood, once words were catapulted
through the cacophony of the intercom system, the result always felt like a
babble of anger and resentment.
Lethe could
barely make out his father’s words through the intercom system. But at nine o’clock every night he was
expected to meet his father in the pinewood study for their reading hour. Lethe had grown to despise reading with his
father. He was too old to be reading out
loud. Next year he would be a freshman
in high school. The last time his
friends read to their parents was in the second grade. Lethe began to suspect something was wrong
with him. He grew self-conscious reading
out loud with his father every night.
For the
Doctor’s part, he cherished the time he spent with his son in the
evenings. It was a father’s job to
broaden his son’s horizons, and what better way than reading Classical
Literature? Of course, there was a
selfish motive too, why he wanted to read with his son. This was the nostalgia Lethe’s father had for
certain books, which reminded the Doctor of his own childhood and
adolescence. And there was another
reason. A father and a son had a duty to
bond with each other—reading together provided the perfect opportunity. Sometimes, during their reading hour, the
Doctor took a moment to instruct his son on beliefs and principles that were
dear to him.
“Do you know
the definition of the word, ‘kin’?”
“No,” his son
answered wearily. “Can we be done for
tonight?”
“Not yet. I want to tell you something before you go to
sleep.”
“What?”
“I want to tell
you about the meaning of the word ‘kin’.”
Lethe stared
blankly at his father. “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
“It means . . .
. blood relation. A family sticks together no matter what. It’s different from your relationships to
your friends at school and to your teachers and other adults. ‘Kin’ are the people who are related to you
through blood. Like your aunts and
uncles, Grandma and Grandpa. Your Sister
and me.”
“And Mom?”
“Yes. And your mother. Because family is a bond you can’t
ignore. It’s very hard to separate from
the family. If you do it leaves
scars. Permanent scars. Lethe, are you listening to me? As a family we’re dependent upon each
other. We help each other out. That’s what ‘kin’ means: we’re ‘blood’. Understand?”
“I think so.”
In the middle of the afternoon and then later,
the telephone rang, both times an older man with a raspy voice asking for
Rose’s husband. Rose told the older man
that her husband wasn’t home and that he should call back after six
o’clock. The second time the man called
he identified himself as Uncle Japhed, the Doctor’s great uncle. He told Rose that he had not spoken to his
nephew for over three years, and he was planning to visit him. Rose was silent.
“Hello? Hello?”
The older man crowed.
Expressing some
hesitancy, Rose mentioned that she would have to talk to her husband.
“What was there
to talk about?” Uncle Japhed wanted to know.
Finally had come the time, the great uncle declared, when
For the rest of
the day, Rose painted furiously in her art studio.
When her
husband came home later that evening, she told him about the unexpected calls
from Uncle Japhed. An aura of happiness
appeared on the Doctor’s brow. He hadn’t
spoken to his aunts and uncles in years.
“Did he leave
his number?”
“Before you
call him back,
“Talk about
what?”
“About your
family coming to visit.”
“Did they say
they were coming to visit?”
“Yes.”
“That’s
wonderful. I’ll call him right away.”
“They can’t
stay at our house.”
“What do you
mean? We have a guestroom, don’t we?”
“I don’t want
them in my house.” Rose declared.
“But they’re
family—”
“I’m
family. The kids are family. In
He heard her
talk like this before; it was a preoccupation of hers to be seen as “low
class”. But that had nothing to do with his family. His family in
“What’s the
point of a guestroom if we’re not going to use it?”
“It’s
occupied. I’m using the guestroom for my
artwork.”
“But you have
your own ‘art studio’.”
“Yes but I keep
extra canvasses in the guestroom. It’s
storage space. I already told you,
Was it wrong to want to see his mother and father? His wife stirred up feelings of guilt, she
was good at that. He felt ashamed to
invite his relatives to his house because he couldn’t provide them with the
traditional Middle Eastern hospitality.
He wanted his house to be open to everyone, friends, relatives,
acquaintances, because that’s how it was in
Rose unveils the Reverend’s Portrait
For the night of the unveiling, the Doctor
hired a private chef and two waiters.
The chef would prepare garlic mashed potatoes and rosemary braised lamb
shank with mint jelly on the side.
During the day,
the housekeepers were busy bringing fresh flowers into the house, preparing
trays of assorted cheeses and arranging other fine delicacies from gourmet food
shops. Rose too was busy as she traveled
into the city to get her hair done at her favorite salon, where she told
Eduardo, her stylist, that she wanted “something a little more artsy done to
her hair.” Eduardo said he had an idea
in mind and shaved Rose’s entire head except for a wave of hair that fell over
her forehead. To add to her artistic
look for the evening Rose put one long dangling silver earring in her right
ear, and just a stud in her left.
As Rose
prepared herself in the marble bathroom, Little Mazzy sat on the rim of the
oversized Jacuzzi. Rose’s daughter had
Eskimo eyes and cropped jet-black hair.
She was a very tiny little girl, and her mother’s bathroom was like a
palace. The bright lights and mirrors,
the plants hanging from high places, the powders and perfumes pumped into the
air, produced a fairy-tale-like effect in the child’s mind. She loved to sit and watch her mother try on
different outfits, and fuss in her grown-up way over which necklace to wear
with which dress. Once Rose had even
shown her daughter how to use a lip-liner and an eyebrow pencil.
To the little
girl, the enormous closet in Rose’s bathroom was forbidden world. Her mother told her never to go inside
because the dresses were so expensive and she didn’t want them to get damaged. But the shiny fabrics and hundreds of pairs
of shoes called out to Little Mazzy during the day, especially when her mother
was painting, tempting the little girl to sneak into her mother’s closet and
stuff herself in between the garments.
She inhaled the heady perfumes clinging to the wardrobe in the dark.
Rose plucked
her eyebrows with meticulous care. She
glanced up at the mirror four or five times every thirty seconds. But then it seemed Rose had made a mistake. She had plucked too much—there was a loss of
symmetry. Mazzy watched her mother
become fretful.
“What
wrong?” Her daughter asked.
“I’ve plucked
too many eyebrows, sweetie.” Rose said
taking a deep breath and moving away from the mirror.
“Never do
that. Never pluck too many
eyebrows. You’ll look sick, diseased. Like a cancer patient.”
“Where
mommy? I don’t see anything.”
“Yes,
sweetie. Just look. Look at my face. It’s obvious.
I look horrible now.”
This could only
be expected. Because no matter how much
attention Rose devoted to her physical appearance, there would always be
something that would show itself at the last moment, confounding her. For example, if her makeup was done
perfectly, then she’d notice a chip in her nail polish. Or if her nails were done perfectly, then
she’d find a flaw in her hair. She could
never get everything perfect at the
same time.
This was just
how Rose felt right before the Reverend and his wife came over to her
house. Before having company, she always
became extremely nervous. Hosting dinner
parties was nerve-wracking to Rose. She
worried about her clean house. She
worried about her hired help. And when
the guests arrived, she was thinking about their hands and how they might have
touched the walls, their glasses and how they were placed precariously on the
edges of tables, their shoes and how they were spreading dirt on her white
carpet.
When
the Reverend arrived, a cloud of tear-jerking perfume, Poison, followed Rose from the bathroom into the lighted hallway,
and then, at once, the Doctor appeared.
As the Reverend introduced his family, Rose caught a sour look from his
wife who was wearing a gaudy dress which she did not find very tasteful. The Reverend’s daughter was a facsimile of
her mother with a long brooding face.
The
much-awaited painting sat in the living room with a satin sheet covering
it. The spotless, white room held an
aura of suspense and mystery partly as an effect of this crimson veil and
partly as an effect of the immaculate state of Rose’s house in general. The Doctor and the Reverend sauntered down
the long marble hallway, commenting on what an exciting occasion this was for
everyone, while Rose took the ladies for a quick tour of the house.
Over
dinner
Though
well-intentioned,
After dinner, the waiters brought out
lemon-tarts on white doilies. The Doctor
glanced into the adjoining room and saw a corner of the crimson sheet and
nothing else. The Reverend’s daughter
sipped her coffee. The Reverend seemed
satisfied with his meal. At last, Rose
ushered the party into the living room as the Doctor made the joke, “drum-roll
please.”
The Reverend
walked forward into the center of the room.
His wife and daughter hung on the periphery.
Rose pulled off
the satin sheet and awaited the first words of affirmation. Mother and daughter narrowed their tiny
pupils simultaneously.
“It’s
. . . gothic.” The Reverend’s daughter
blurted out.
“I’m
not very fond of it.” The Reverend’s
wife rejoined.
In
that moment, Rose knew that her portrait of the Reverend would never hang in
the Christ Church of Barclay Park. There
was glint of pain in Rose’s eyes, receding into her distracted glare. Then
After the night of the unveiling, Rose stopped
going to church with her husband. Now
she stayed home on Sundays and painted in her art studio. And
it was not long before young Lethe also refused to go to church.
The grey Oldsmobile was parked in the driveway, the engine humming with
steady agitation, as the Doctor pressed the doorbell.
From his bedroom, Lethe could hear the chime. Rose rushed to the front door.
The door opened, the Doctor’s booming voice came in, a freight of sound
traveling throughout the house all at once, “IT’S NINE-TWENTY FIVE. WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE AGAIN. I TOLD HIM THE LAST TIME THAT IF HE DIDN’T—”
“He’s not going to church today.” Rose
said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Lethe is not going to church.”
“He doesn’t have a choice—”
“I’m a Jew,
“Don’t start this nonsense with me again!
I told him if he wasn’t ready by nine-fifteen, I’d ground him for the
entire month.”
“Stop yelling at me. He doesn’t
have to go to church. He’s old enough to
decide. Leave him alone.”
Marrying an American woman, he had only been asking for this sort of
thing. When his mother and father heard
about Rose, they threatened to never speak to him again. (1) Jewish (2) Divorced (3) With a child from
a previous marriage. These were three
big strikes. But the Doctor married Rose
anyway. He didn’t want to marry a woman from
his own country. He had been attracted
to Rose precisely because she was
independent and strong-willed. But
lately her strong will was getting in the way of their marriage. Everything between them was turning into a
battle. Frustrated, the Doctor stepped
back from the doorway and got into the grey Oldsmobile without his son. Little Mazzy was sitting in the backseat with
her hands in her lap, like a stone effigy.
Lethe had heard the whole argument from the hallway. The youth usually hid in some corner of the
house to listen to his parents feuding.
The aggravated, rising tension in their voices drew his attention like
steel fillings to a magnet. He liked to
spy on his parents.
Rose found her son crouched beside the wall. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“There are two parents in this
house. Don’t you forget that.”
“So I don’t have to go to church anymore?”
Instead of tie and jacket, Lethe threw on a pair of extra-large
sweatpants. He followed his mother down
into her art studio. “You can watch me
paint if you want,” she said.
The paint-bespattered radio was tuned to the voice of Garrison
Keillor. The room was cluttered with
canvases and slats of mirror-glass leaning against the walls. Rose had already begun another painting. The Reverend’s portrait was in the closet.
Under the Doctor’s stern and demanding
exterior, he too was beginning to question the weekly ritual of
church-going. As a child he had attended
a Jesuit high school. In
The Christ
Church of Barclay Park had its charms; the friendly atmosphere; the service;
the sermons; the people; of course, the Reverend. And in a sense the Doctor was carrying on the
tradition of church-going from back home.
His desperate need for his wife to attend church and become a Christian
was not something he reflected on very much.
When Rose told him that Lethe did not have to go to church anymore, the
Doctor was silent for several days.
Night after night, he tried to figure out how this situation could have
arisen.
And then the
strangest thing happened. One or two
weeks out of the month, the Doctor began skipping church service. It almost felt like he was twelve years old
and playing hooky. Especially because
the Church Elders had been calling him for months. They wanted to know when he was ready to
become a Church Elder. But the Doctor
had observed these church-fellows on Sundays, how they stood by the pews like
robots, directing the congregation and handing out programs mechanically. They had hunched, smallish shoulders and a
morbid seriousness about them.
The Doctor
never had the “belief in Christ” that the Church Elders were always talking
about. He simply enjoyed the ritual of
going to Church once a week; it reminded him of back home. When it came to doctrine, he recoiled. He didn’t even know if he believed in God,
though he would never tell anyone that.
Instead, he told himself that the Church was too restrictive, too
dogmatic. The beliefs of the Church were
not his own. So he decided to part from
the Church for a while. Over a period of
three months, the Doctor’s weekly attendance dropped, until finally he
explained to the Reverend that he was investigating “other avenues of spiritual
practice and self-discovery”. The
Reverend lowered his clear blue eyes and nodded his head benevolently.
In
the beginning, he felt like he was indulging himself. He pictured his father and mother scolding
him for his bad behavior. After awhile,
however, he was able to enjoy a slightly more relaxed version of himself. Instead of reading books about Christianity,
he perused a section of the bookstore called “New Age.” The members of the Church disapproved of
these books, but now he could read whatever he pleased.
When he started
reading some of these books, he found them hard to put down. They had a language of their own, thickly
strewn with words like “spirituality,” “holistic,” “journey,” and “path”. It got him excited to think about becoming a
spiritual person.
Rose decides to go to art school
Rose did not see her husband as a “spiritual
person” by any means. In fact, she may
have even considered him the antithesis of a spiritual person. She used words and phrases like “fanatical”
and “totally insensitive” to describe her husband. The harsh language she used in their numerous
fights concealed the fact that she felt ignored by him. Her first husband had never paid much
attention to her. Thinking back Rose
didn’t know which of her husbands were worse, her first husband who kept a
half-dozen girlfriends, or her second husband who seemed incapable of relating
to her in a personal way. When she first
married
When the Doctor
challenged Rose on her decision to go back to school, she said, “You know what
your problem is,
Under
the sewing machine table
Rose
and Dora harnessed on their kneepads like two corporals girding themselves in
body armor. Dora handed Rose a bunch of
old rags from under the sink. Together
they submerged the rags in piping hot solution and lowered themselves on all
fours for combat.
“No, Dora.
I’m serious. I can’t turn
around. I can’t move backwards.”
Dora moved the sewing machine table
out of the way. Lending her arm, she
pulled Rose up from the ground. They
exchanged looks of concern and bewilderment.
“What do you think it could
be?” Dora asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Try walking backwards.”
Rose was unable to take a single
step back. She tried and her legs almost
gave out. Dora stepped in closer, ready
to catch Rose in case she fell.
“Maybe it’s an ear infection.”
“That’s possible . . .”
Rose made a doctor’s appointment the next
morning.
For
almost five years now, Dora had been watching Rose disappear into the basement
to paint in her art studio. When she was
painting, Rose became intoxicated. Dora
had walked into her studio several times without warning. It was during these encounters that she saw a
different side of Rose. Down in the
basement, Rose seemed possessed by another spirit. It reminded Dora of how some children play
with themselves for hours, talking through the voices of other characters.
Dora was concerned for her boss. As she saw it, Rose was taking serious
chances with her health. Her brushes
were soaking in turpentine during the entire time that she was downstairs and
there was no ventilation in the room.
Dora had also seen Rose with the opposite end of a paintbrush in her
mouth. And some of the paints that Rose
used were highly toxic, such as “barium yellow”, “burnt amber”, and “chrome
green”. It concerned Dora that Rose was
possibly exposing herself to toxins. The
latex gloves did nothing to protect her; the chemicals were still getting
absorbed into her skin.
From nine o’clock in the morning to three in
the afternoon, Rose locked herself up in that small, unventilated room. After spending six hours in her studio,
soaking up toxins and inhaling fumes, she hurried upstairs to take a quick
shower. She had fifteen minutes before
her children came home from school. The
water in the shower was scorching hot and steam rolled off Rose’s body in
large, white billows. In the shower,
Rose “purged herself” of the chemicals.
Dora knew that there was something wrong with this situation, but she
was afraid her boss would become upset with her if she suggested the painting
was affecting her health. Until one day
Dora accidentally tripped over a can of turpentine on the floor. As she bent over to pick up the can, she
noticed the warning label on the back:
Can cause
irreversible neurological damage.
She rushed up the stairs, carrying
the can of turpentine. Rose was resting
on her bed with a warm towel over her face.
“Look,” Dora said, pointing to the
warning label.
“Keep
the smoke inside your lungs,” Scar Face said.
“I’m trying to, but I keep coughing.”
“Try holding it in—”
“I’m trying to.”
Scar Face wore lots of zip-up sweaters and
heavy clothing. He had a large, fleshy
face and a head that was overgrown with tangled clumps of black hair. With a sort of pride for his matted hair,
Scar Face let Lethe touch the hard, dense clumps that were wrapped in layers of
frizz. The rest of his body he kept
covered. He didn’t like to wear shorts
because of his hairy legs. Even in the
summer, he wore corduroy pants.
Scar Face could be gregarious and cheerful at
times. When Lethe and his friend talked
in school, an amazing spark passed between them. Lethe always wanted to recapture this
feeling, but after school and on the weekends his friend disappeared. Lethe tried calling his house but nobody
answered.
Behind the baseball dugout, the two friends broke
into wild outbursts of uncontrollable laughter.
Their laughter was an incredible release. Smoking weed intensified everything.
When they returned to math class, the teacher
was putting algebra problems up on the board.
“Lethe,” she called out, “Come up to the front
of the room and demonstrate to the class how this problem is done.”
A tremor of paranoia ran over him. The room was hushed—pregnant with fear. Scar Face looked on, remotely.
Lethe stumbled out of his chair and made his
way clumsily to the front of the room.
The teacher handed him a piece of chalk, which slipped out of his hand
and broke on the floor. Snickers escaped
in the back of the room. Lethe turned
around, confused. The whole class was
staring at him. A couple rowdy students
were pointing fingers and sticking their tongues out.
“Is something wrong?” The teacher asked.
“He’s stoned,” a classmate yelled, followed by
a roar of laughter.
Lethe was escorted down to the Dean’s office.
Cranely
College. Freshman Year.
In
near proximity to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate
On the first day of college, Lethe met Iron
Sandwich. Iron
After the first month of college, Lethe moved
in with
It was common at
In
the beginning, Iron Sandwich shared his Ritalin with Lethe. They crushed up the pills and snorted them
for “fun”. The baby blue powder clung to
the hair follicles on the insides of their nostrils as they chain-smoked and
talked incessantly. Ritalin made them
jittery and compulsive but also intensely focused. During their dorm-room discussions, they
anticipated almost every word the other person was about to say, and oftentimes
the high was so intense that they believed they could read each other’s minds.
When Iron
Sandwich was out of the room, however, Lethe rummaged through his things,
looking for the little blue pills. He
found the prescription bottle hidden underneath his roommate’s socks in his top
dresser drawer, or stuffed in his roommate’s travel bag, or under his
pillow. It was as if Iron Sandwich knew
that Lethe was going through his things because the bottle was hidden in a
different place each time. Lethe
pictured his roommate suddenly opening the door and seeing him with the
pill-container in his hands. He pictured
the gargantuan
After checking
his nose in the mirror to make sure the blue powder wasn’t visible, Lethe
disappeared from the room. He marched to
the college library, hyped up on the pharmaceutical stimulant.
****************************
Lethe spent
most of his days in the library. He was
an excellent student. His father had
been an excellent student. In his youth,
he had three or four private tutors and attended school one summer just so he
could skip a grade the following term.
Behind the Doctor’s discipline for study was a drive to please his
parents, especially his mother. In a
similar pattern, Lethe was driven to academic exhaustion. By college, his studying verged on an
obsession. Even before he started taking
Ritalin to study, Lethe spent hours in the library each day, reading additional
chapters, outlining additional material, and making notes, endless notes. Repetitive behaviors, such as copying and recopying,
or reading and rereading, had a calming effect on him. His meticulous efforts gave him the sensation
that he was doing everything perfectly.
Lethe’s persistence in studying was almost inseparable from a full-fledged
mania. Hiding himself in numberless
study rooms, young Lethe forgot about the world outside. He dedicated himself to each task (all of
them imaginary tasks), until he felt a certain level of satisfaction. Like his father, he clung to the idea that
things could be done perfectly.
When Lethe
discovered Ritalin to study, he had the same blissful encounter that one has
when they first fall in love. Just as
life can seem like a mundane repetition of events at times, so studying to
Lethe was rote and mechanical but necessary for him. Then when he discovered Ritalin, the burden
that he had always felt while studying, immediately dissolved. Now without any effort he could escape into
knowledge and disappear. He entered a
trance of self-absorption. The state of
concentration while studying gave him a rapturous feeling of his unlimited
potential. This fantasy was gratifying
and euphoric, and the longer he studied, the deeper he fell into a hazy mental
abyss.
Ritalin also promoted another desire. The youth had always wanted to be better than
other students; this too he learned from his father. Lethe craved an identity that would set him
apart from the rest. He craved a sort of
excellence that was well beyond his powers.
He knew fully well that he wasn’t a genius, but the very sense of his
own lack of genius, this dearth which felt like a vast expanse of barrenness in
the his genes, prompted him to achieve more and more, until at last
transforming himself into . . . a genius.
Now the idea of “genius” fluttered through the
vast expanse of barrenness like a colorful, flapping butterfly from another
world. “Can one become a genius?” He
wondered.
A
Disease
The
Doctor was beginning to realize the gravity of the situation surrounding his
wife’s illness. Years before when Rose
mentioned that she thought something was wrong with her health, he had brushed
her concerns aside, attributing them to her neurotic personality or the
vagueness of her symptoms. But now the
Doctor was admitting to himself that his wife was indeed sick and something had
to be done. He could clearly see that his wife’s condition was declining—she
lost her balance with more frequency, her energy level was quickly depleted,
she couldn’t drive anymore. All of these
things were causing her to rely on her husband’s assistance more
regularly.
Being in the medical profession, the Doctor
wanted to find out the exact condition she suffered from and how it might be
treated. Together they visited the Mayo
Clinic in
After learning of his wife’s degenerative
disease, there was a sensation in the Doctor’s gut, a sort of dropping out of
the abdomen from the inside. This
uncomfortable roller-coaster sensation reminded the Doctor of when he first
fell in love with Rose. He remembered a
vacation they took before they got married, a vacation to Marco Beach. He couldn’t stop himself from talking about
the future, words leapt out of his mouth, promises about marriage and
kids. And she believed him. She wanted to marry him. After that, he couldn’t break her heart and
tell her it was all a lie.
He knew Rose’s expectations. She didn’t even have to say anything—he felt
her dependence on him.
And what were his options? He had
to assume the role of caretaker; he didn’t have a choice. Luckily, he was good at taking care of
people; that was his profession.
One
evening, Rose asked her husband to sit with her in the bedroom. He propped his wife’s back up against a
couple of throw pillows, and she extended her legs on the mattress. He noticed her thighs were bulbous and
pale.
At first she didn’t speak. Her chest heaved up and down with difficult
breathing. Her glasses fell down to the
tip of her nose and stayed there. Her
small eyes darted for a moment and then rested on her husband. The bedroom had been cleaned that morning and
the scent of citronella radiated off the carpet. Outside in the yard, the setting sun was
casting shadows on the lawn, a small blackbird was cooing in the tall elm
tree.
The Doctor perched on the edge of the bed,
barely sitting. It seemed as though he
might get up at any moment. Rose was
much calmer but her calm was weighted down with a slight sadness. She still had not said a word. He waited silently, anxiously, hoping she
would at last produce one of her sighs and say something.
“We’ll have to put some money aside
for my health.” She said.
“What do mean?” Her husband asked.
“Maybe I’ll need people to take care
of me. You know, eventually.”
“That won’t be necessary. I told you I’m going to help out.”
“But it might be longer than five years—”
“I told you I’m planning on taking
care of you.”
“And what about the children?”
The Doctor’s face furrowed. “Isn’t it a little premature to say anything
to them?”
“Premature? They need to know about their mother.”
“But is it necessary to tell them
right this minute?”
“There’s nothing to keep secret,
“I know you’re sick—”
“I don’t think you do. You’ve ignored my illness for the last two
years.”
“What are you talking about?’
“Before the doctors diagnosed me, I told you I
was sick. I told you I couldn’t keep up
with you on vacations. I needed to rest
all the time and you blamed me as if it were my fault.”
“You don’t have to tell me this, honey. I know you’re sick.”
“I could be dead in five years. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Please
relax. You’re getting all worked up
about this.”
“
Downtown
Rose had mentioned the Arts Festival
in
The Festival was in full swing when
they arrived. This was the largest
outdoor arts festival that Rose had ever been too. On side stages, music and dancing caught
their attention, and both were enchanted by the eccentric artwork and
media-displays. Rose told her husband
that she wanted to meet some of the artists.
As Rose mingled with the local
artists, the Doctor saw that his wife was at home in this community. He could see how comfortable and relaxed she
was among the creative types. He
glimpsed a side of her character he had not seen before. She was enjoying herself immensely, opening
and closing her wings, as if she were a lush, transparent butterfly delighting
in its surroundings. After all these
years he finally understood his wife.
She belonged to this community of artists. Here in
Up in the sky, more than a dozen hot-air
balloons loomed over the city. The silky
reds, bright yellows, and hot pinks seemed to correspond to his amazement and
awe with his wife’s purpose. As the
massive floaters climbed into the blue heights, Rose turned to her husband, and
squeezing his hand, she said, “The International Balloon Competition. I completely forgot.”
That weekend Rose and her husband fell
mysteriously in love again. Their
lovemaking had the fleeting splendor of youth.
They relished each other’s company for the first time in over fifteen
years.
The
last day, as they were leaving the Guadalupe Chapel after a tour, Rose lost her
balance and fell face forward onto the cobblestones. Within seconds the Doctor bent down to lift
Rose’s head up from the ground. Her
glasses were smashed and her face was cut in three places. A large group of people was forming around
them and a man in a Safari jacket was calling an ambulance on his cell
phone. When the ambulance arrived, the
Doctor told the medic, “She has Multiple System Atrophy—it may be getting
worse—this has never happened before.”
While the Doctor sat in the hospital
waiting room, he replayed the accident over and over again in his mind. She had fallen straight onto the
cobblestones. Her reflexes were so bad
that she couldn’t even hold up her hands to block her face. “What’s happening to her?” He thought. “She’s completely vulnerable without
me.” He pictured her face with its
bruises and cuts from the fall—a torrent of sympathy broke inside of him. He couldn’t stop this disease from happening
to her. She wasn’t going to get
better. Things were only going to get
worse.
On
some nights the Doctor waited forty-five or fifty minutes for his wife to
urinate. On some nights she couldn’t
urinate at all. She seemed to think that
she had to go to the bathroom. But maybe
she was wrong. As he waited for her, the
Doctor remembered the surgeries he had scheduled for the next day, his meetings
with other doctors, and matters pertaining to his office staff. In the depths of his mind, he could hear the
ceaseless electric current of frenzied thoughts racing.
He worked nearly ten hours a day, and then came
home in the evenings to take care of his wife.
Soon he was overwhelmed, exhausted and unhappy. There was little communication between the
two of them—only the heavy looks and feelings of resentment as the Doctor
grudgingly obeyed his wife’s orders. He
almost felt as though she were imposing her medical condition on him.
Meanwhile, a horrible spell of insomnia was
taking its toll. Lying in bed, unable to
sleep, he worried endlessly about what he had to do for the next day. He obsessed over his lack of sleep and his
inability to perform his duties at work.
Then his wife roused him out of a daze of semi-consciousness, pleading
for help. In a sullen mood, he led her
to the little chamber, cloddishly lowering her onto the toilet seat.
With less and less sleep, the Doctor was losing
his patience and ability to concentrate at work. In the operating room, he lashed out at the nurses
for not giving him the right instruments, or he complained to the
anesthesiologist for not being on time.
The administrative position that he had taken up was also adding to the
amount of stress in his life. For some
reason, he had the impression that his colleagues on the hospital board were
not respecting his opinions. They wanted
to push their own agendas, rather than concede to his beliefs. Despite the fact that he was expected to be
president of the medical staff next year, he had the sense that he was slowly
becoming surrounded by enemies.
By the end of the day, after numberless
irritations, the Doctor made his forty-five minute drive home. He narrowly averted accidents on the highway
more than once, falling asleep at the wheel.
Though
she tried to hold back her anger toward her mother, Little Mazzy had an
explosive little temperament and a shrill little voice. She relied on her mother to let her go out
with her friends, and when Rose refused, Mazzy threw tantrums.
Mazzy’s violent outbursts were starkly
contrasted by genuine acts of kindness.
For example, on Saturday mornings, she brought an apple to her mother
and sat by her side. As they watched
television together, Little Mazzy massaged her mother’s neck and rubbed her
swollen feet. Mazzy carried some of her
mother’s traits, especially the lighter, playful qualities. She stuck her finger up her nose, pretending
to be mentally retarded, or hung her hair over her face like It from the
Munster Family, and the two of them dissolved into a stream of bubbling
laughter. In a certain mood, Rose could
laugh hysterically at almost anything.
She was quite susceptible to laughter and foolishness.
Because of the Doctor’s difficulties with
taking care of his wife, Little Mazzy offered to sleep in her mother’s room one
night a week. She didn’t mind sleeping
in her mother’s bed. It reminded her of
when she was younger and used to sneak into her parent’s bedroom, crawling in
between them in the middle of the night.
The silk sheets would get tangled between her legs and the vastness of
the queen-sized bed engulfed as if she were a little sea-horse floating on the
surface of the ocean. Before falling
asleep, she peeked over the pillows to the large round mound of her mother’s
body. Her mother had to be put into a
special position before she went to bed.
This position was sort of like a cow lying helpless on its side because
she couldn’t move until someone lifted her up.
At some point during the middle of the night, Rose let out a squeal of
discomfort. This meant that she wished
to be turned over in bed. Rose might
have to squeal and sigh for two or three minutes before Mazzy opened her eyes. Then Mazzy walked around to the other side of
the bed, stood on the side beams (because she was so short) and pulled her
mother to the left or pushed her to the right.
Sometimes her mother needed the position of her legs rearranged. Sometimes she needed to go to the bathroom.
If her mother needed to go to the bathroom,
Mazzy guided her into the little chamber and closed the door. Within ten seconds, Mazzy fell back asleep on
the hard marble tiles. She re-entered
her dreams from inside her mother’s cold, dark bathroom, and soon found herself
chasing after a boy she liked. Then her
mother would rouse her from her dreams and Mazzy would mumble incoherently,
realizing that she was still on the floor of her mother’s bathroom. Standing up, only half-awake, Mazzy led her
mother over to the sink to wash her hands.
Little Mazzy surrounds herself
with friends
The
sheer volume of phone calls that came to the Bashar house was unsettling. Little Mazzy’s growing popularity worried the
Doctor because he wanted his daughter to be more like her brother, “the golden
child”. He wanted her to focus on her
studies and to think about college. It
was only four years away.
Mazzy’s family was often a source of painful
humiliation. Her friends might find out
what they were like. What kind of house
of weirdoes. She never wanted anyone to
know that her mother was sick. That’s
why she always ran to pick up the phone before anyone else did. She could still remember that one time her
mother managed to pick up the phone before her.
A couple days later, a friend asked her if her grandmother had
Alzheimer’s.
There were papers from school that her mother
had to sign. But Rose’s signature looked
like the scribble of a four year old.
And when Mazzy’s friends all decided to skip the period after lunch and
have their mothers call them out, Mazzy couldn’t because the secretary in the
Dean’s office was never able to understand her mother’s voice. It seemed unfair that her mother was
sick. She was jealous of her friends
because they had mothers who were healthy and young and attractive, and who
could take their daughters shopping or play tennis with them. She liked to go over to friends’ houses just
to be around their families. It seemed
like all the other families were normal.
But hers was not.
She surrounded herself with tons of friends. Most of Mazzy’s friends were drama queens; a
swirling commotion followed her everywhere.
Their peppy, high-pitched voices and shrill laughter distracted her
enormously. She forgot about her family
when she was out with her friends. She
felt most comfortable in extremely large crowds.
Her father was “insane”. Everyone knew that. If the phone rang after ten o’clock, her
father told her friends not to call this late.
If she was already on the phone and it had just turned ten o’clock, he
picked up the receiver and said in an icy tone, “It’s time for you to go to bed
now, Mazzy.” This was so annoying
because usually there was this one boy on the other line who she really liked. If she talked on the phone for an extra
minute, her father was likely to burst into the room screaming.
The weekends were even worse. She felt like he was holding her
hostage. If there was a party she wanted
to go to, he wouldn’t let her go until he talked to the parents. But everyone knows that when there’s a party,
the parents are never home.
The
International Institute.
As
Little Mazzy was struggling for her teenage independence, Lethe was in
The first day of class, the building with its
Corinthian pillars and neoclassical pavilion, struck terror in Lethe. The marble and granite interior was cold and
sepulchral. Every morning he arrived at
the Institute in complete disarray.
There was usually only one or two minutes before class started. Out of nervousness, he stole into the
bathroom to check his face in the mirror.
His face was usually fire-red and ringed with sweat from running through
the streets of
For the first three weeks of class, Lethe
lingered in the bathroom on the first floor.
He locked himself in one of the stalls and stared at the ceramic tiles
at his feet. Or he watched the water
drip from the ceiling. By one o’clock in
the afternoon, the heavy door swung open.
A presence entered, moving through the small space, breathing and
peeing. The faucet turned on for a brief
minute. Then Lethe heard the cranking of
the paper towel dispenser. Between every
sound, there was a moment of self-awareness, and Lethe considered changing his
hiding place—until finally, the creaking hinges of the heavy door signaled that
he was alone again.
In
the early afternoon, Lethe returned to the Senora’s apartment for lunch. The study abroad program had assigned him to
live with her. She cooked his meals and
did his laundry. He was only expected to
be polite and clean his room from time to time.
The Senora’s sister, Juanita, lived on the
third floor of the same apartment building.
Juanita’s left eye was permanently sealed shut. She
came down for lunch every day at exactly two o’clock.
Passing the creamed broccoli, the Senora said,
"The weather today is precious."
"Yes," replied Lethe. "There is wind, or no?"
"Eh?"
"Wind? A little cool?"
"Why
not leave the room one day? Go to the
park, a short walk down our street. The
fresh air is good."
Juanita
broke off a piece of fresh bread and offered it to Lethe.
"I
prefer to be here with you," Lethe said to the Senora.
"Hijo.
It's not good for your health."
"I'm not ready to go outside. Not yet.
I need some more time."
“Bueno.
Pues, nada.”
At
nine o’clock every night, Lethe emerged from his bedroom with an unlit
cigarette drooping over his dry bottom lip.
He staggered down the short hallway toward the kitchen. The Senora was always dragging a dust mop
across the kitchen tiles, pretending not to notice him.
"I haven't seen you since lunch," she
said in Spanish.
"Not sleeping.
"When you sleep in the afternoon, you have
difficulty sleeping at night."
"You
have reason. But this afternoon I did
not take a siesta. I read a book. And I wrote a letter to my mother, and one to
my father."
"Bueno.
Pues nada. I will make us rice soup and
a tortilla de patatas for dinner. A
tortilla appetizes me tonight."
The
Senora began cooking diner at nine-fifteen.
Above the stove, the thick chorizo hung from a string on the wall. The Senora took the fat-blotted red sausage
to the cutting board and chopped it up into a pot of rice soup. At dinner time, the pungent smell of greasy
chorizo permeated the little room. At
breakfast time, it was the sweet tang of apricot marmalade.
As
the Senora zipped through the kitchen, Lethe sat rooted in his chair, taking
slow, torturous drags off of his cigarettes.
After one cigarette was finished, he lit up another. He smoked mechanically, with the indifference
of a veteran smoker, and his cough grew inside of him, gathering a sort of
independent existence, becoming deeper and more petulant. But he continued to smoke heedlessly, as if
completely inured to the abuse his cigarettes were causing him. He couldn’t even taste his cigarettes anymore
because they left a permanent bitterness in his mouth. And the residual scent of nicotine saturated
his clothing and surrounded him everywhere he went.
"My cough . . . my cough." He said gasping.
"You're going to cough yourself to
pieces."
"I know.
Is it bad?"
"You will take the eucalyptus
tonight."
"Yes, I want the eucalyptus. My cough is bad."
Every couple months the Senora traveled to
“Stand over the pot,” she ordered. “Put this towel over you head. Inhale the steam.”
"Joder!" He stepped back from the pot of boiling
eucalyptus.
"Claro!”
She said. "Your bowels are
clogged."
"What can I do?"
"Suffer, hijo."
Despite
the wretchedness of his smoking habit, Lethe loved to watch the Senora cook dinner. He was mesmerized by her agility in cooking,
her dexterous hands and godlike powers to conjure up meals. The Senora sliced five whole raw potatoes
with impressive celerity, the sharp blade bouncing off her thumb as the sliced
potatoes flew into the pan, flashing out like a deck of cards. And her aura of energetic love for household
activities, such as folding laundry or sweeping the hall, temporarily lifted
Lethe out of his dull lassitude.
But
his pleasure of watching the Senora zip through the kitchen was only a thin
veil covering up his essential difficulty living in
“When
I was in high school,” she said, “I used to have panic attacks. One day my mother told me not to go to
school. She said she would teach me the
subjects from home . . . The next week she taught me herself and my nerves
relaxed. I was still able to play with
my friends. But now my mother taught me
instead of my teachers at school.” Then
the Senora compared Lethe’s anxiety to “un brazo rompio,” which means, “a
broken arm”. “Would you go to school
with a broken arm?” She asked. “No.
Of course not. You would stay
home until your arm heals.”
The
Senora’s words confirmed what he had been thinking ever since his difficulties
began. Ever since he moved to
But
the Senora knew; she knew. She knew that
he had a “nervous condition,” “un caso de nervios,” and the mere fact that she
could give a label to his anxiety filled him with such inexpressible joy that
the mental disturbance itself subsided, and the very situation that he had been
originally faced with seemed to disappear.
Because now he didn’t have to race through the streets of
During
the day he could do what he wanted, such as writing letters to his friends from
home or writing poetry and short stories.
It didn’t matter what he did—so long as he didn’t have to leave his
room, so long as he continued to live in the Senora’s apartment, and eat her
Spanish meals and enjoy her company. How
he admired the Senora! For all her
native charms, the cooking, the cleaning, the amusing anecdotes and Spanish
sayings. She was like a mother to
him. She didn’t think he was
strange. She didn’t judge him or tell
him to get out . . .
And so Lethe grew more comfortable living with
the Senora. Now he was waking up early
in the morning, eating breakfast and having coffee with her. They talked for about fifteen minutes and she
suggested he go for a walk and “explore the city”. He laid out a map of
Until one day he realized that he had forgotten
to officially drop out of the International Institute. Without an appointment, he rushed over to the
Study Abroad Office, where he asked to speak to the Director.
“I am not in the right mind to continue this
program,” he said. “I’ve been suffering
from horrible anxiety attacks.”
“Is it possible you might still be adjusting to
the foreign setting?” The Director
asked.
“I don’t think so. I’ve been here for almost two months. My senora says that I’m sick and that I
should stay home from school.”
The Director fingered his long mustache, and
then glanced down at the papers on his desk.
“This means we’ll have to terminate you from the Program. What will your parents say about that?”
“They’re fine with it, I’m sure.”
“But if you quit the program, Lethe, you can’t
continue to live with Maria Angeles.”
“That’s no problem. She told me she doesn’t mind. She says I can live with her.”
“You’re missing the point, Lethe. If you quit the program, you are required to
leave the residence at once. It’s in the
papers you signed. I can show you . . .”
“What about my condition? She’s the only one who can help me. ”
“What condition?”
“My nervous condition. Where will I go if I can’t stay with her?”
The Director leveled his glance across the
desk. “Have you thought about going home?”
“I can’t go home.”
“Why not?”
Lethe didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry, then. I can’t help you.”
Secretly
Lethe wanted to prolong his exile in
Within two weeks he met a group of Spanish
friends. He found them one night at the
circular dead-end of a residential city street, under a canopy of leaves,
drinking whiskey and Coke. The Spanish
youth were allowed to drink alcohol in the streets, and often they gathered there
before going out to the bars. He
introduced himself to this group of Spaniards, attempting the language the best
he could, and surprisingly, they talked to him.
Most of them were medical students and engineering students, and Lethe
asked a bunch of questions about the Spanish public universities, wondering how
they differed from American colleges.
He learned that the majority of the Spanish students barely opened up
their textbooks during the semester because there were no official grades until
the end of the term. However, at the end
of the term, which was in one month, the Spanish students had to pass a
comprehensive exam. As Lethe poured
himself another whiskey and Coke, he could feel a warm sensation in his
blood. Under the street lamp haloed by a
swarm of mosquitoes, the band of Spaniards carried on their little soirée with
Lethe at the center of attention, el
Americano. Unlike any group of
people Lethe had ever met before, the Spaniards displayed a manly and cheerful
camaraderie, throwing their arms around his shoulders, toasting to his health
and welcoming him into their gang. As
they drank more whiskey, their gaiety grew cloudy with mirth, until finally at
midnight, they took him to the bars in the plaza. The night was just beginning.
Week after week, Lethe met his Spanish friends
at the circular dead-end to drink whiskey and Coke. The number of them was growing. Moroccans were bringing hashish to sell. Lethe watched how the Spaniards interacted
with the Moroccans in a shady, offhand way.
The Moroccans were pock-faced and surly.
The Spaniards were cavalier and sleek.
In the bars and discothèques, Lethe followed his new friend, Javier,
into the bathroom where they snorted lines of cocaine. Sometimes the Spaniards discreetly passed
around a bala, a small contraption
used to shoot cocaine up into your nose.
It seemed to Lethe that cocaine wasn’t that big of a deal in
But Lethe felt guilty about bringing cocaine
back to the Senora’s apartment and snorting lines in the middle of the
night. He was fortunate enough to be
allowed to stay in her apartment for another two weeks, especially after the
Director had told him it was against the rules.
Could she hear him coming home at night?
Could she hear him cutting up lines on the old wooden desk in his
room? The walls were thin. And that woman knew everything. He had to leave her apartment as soon as
possible.
Lethe
found a room for himself in Plaza Mayor, a vibrant, bustling section of
In the metro station between five and six
o’clock, Lethe met briefly with Javier, who was meticulous about his
appointments, and always phoned beforehand to say which stop to meet at. Their clandestine rendezvous lasted a total
of five minutes: they greeted each other
outside of the station and took a walk around the block. Javier slipped the cellophane into Lethe’s
hand and they parted anonymously.
Over the weeks of partying and drinking, Lethe
found that the only reason he was continuing to meet with his Spanish friends
was because he wanted to buy drugs from them.
There was nothing wrong with his Spanish friends, they were full of
vitality and charm, but social life was becoming a nuisance to Lethe, an
obstacle to his real desire, which was to get more drugs. If, by subtracting the noisy, sweaty
environment of the discothèque, Lethe could keep the cocaine for himself, then
that’s what he wanted. He wanted to be
alone in his room with the drugs. Then
he felt he would have more freedom to enjoy himself while high, doing such
things as writing poetry and reading.
Lethe had collected a large number of books in
He wanted to go deep inside and discover the
secrets of his own mind. Reality was
mundane. Reality was boring. He had read many books—he knew other worlds
existed. He didn’t want to be stuck here
with everyone else. He wanted to be
Someplace Else. He had dreamed of
escaping many times. But he could never
get the journey to begin. Maybe it was
his room . . . putrid, smoky, papers strewn across the floor. Maybe it was . . . that he could never
formulate a single coherent sentence.
How could he explore the depths of his mind if he couldn’t record those
depths? He waited for something big to
happen—for the writing to burst out of him like a jet of water or to blind him
with a ray of light. But nothing ever
happened.
Soon Lethe’s longing to write was turning into
an obsession. On most days, he locked
himself in his room and tried to write but without success. His thoughts kept circling back to the room
he had not managed to escape, with his notebook open and nothing written. He had not gone anywhere. He was condemned to live in reality with
everyone else.
But on the days when he met Javier in the metro
station, things were different. Drugs
wiped out his sense of impotency and replaced it with strength, virility and
mental acuity. For a short time, the
aggravating chaos in Lethe’s mind disappeared.
Now he could travel to those fantastical places the Authors went. Now he could project himself into Ernest
Hemingway or Virginia Woolf. Lethe
reached for his tower of books and copied The Works of Great Authors. He copied them with fervor, angst, and the
legendary hunger of youth.
Lines of cocaine were laid out on the writing
table, next to his books and notebooks.
His ceaseless copying went on for six or seven hours at a time. He lit a cigarette with one hand while
continuing to copy with the other. He
prepared a line and snorted it without even looking up from the page. These nights of copying were delirious and
carnival-like. Glittering and vivid
hallucinations occurred.
Revelations. He overheard
conversations of fictional characters.
The echoes crooned and caroled and he knew a lively discussion was
taking place. His mission had succeeded;
he was indeed Someplace Else.
From the center of his bed, he laughed out loud
exultantly, like a haughty, exiled Arab prince.
The towers of books formed a circle around him and he gazed at the
ordered columns, feeling an inordinate sense of power on his island. The immense labors of copying seemed to
restore his original ambitions. He was
tapping into an unlimited and all-powerful source.
One night he heard the murmur of a
voice he recognized.
“Scar Face is that you?”
Standing five feet away from him was
the ghost of his old high school buddy.
The specter stood there staring at him with burning, insistent eyes.
“Scar Face, talk to me. What happened? Are you dead?”
The translucent cords of Scar Face’s
hair dangled down, almost quivering in the light. Lethe got up from his chair. As he moved closer to his friend, the
apparition faded away into motes of dust and empty air.
Lethe’s remaining five months in
Javier
makes deliveries
When
Javier called one night to arrange their meeting location, Lethe told his
Spanish friend that he was too weak to leave his room. Reluctantly, Javier agreed to bring the drugs
over to the hotel.
The Spaniard had met Lethe when he was vigorous
and sociable; now his American friend appeared dull and melancholy and barely
said a single word. Javier had never
seen a person given over so slavishly to a drug. It was almost insulting to have to visit
someone in this condition. There was a
tradition of manly valor in his country called machismo. The male had to prove that he was master over
himself. In
But Lethe was not a Spaniard and he was not a
man. Americans were weaklings, mere
victims. They couldn’t control their
urges. They gave into their appetites
and balked at taking responsibility.
Javier never felt guilty for supplying his American friend with
drugs.
Lethe groped his way through the hotel room in
a limp of exhaustion, searching for his wallet to pay the Spaniard.
Part Two
“Today I want to talk about the body. You may have heard the saying that the body
is a temple, a holy place. You may have
heard that the body is sacred. But
why? Why should we consider the body
sacred? Eating healthy and moderately,
sleeping regular hours, and exercising create the conditions for happiness in
the body. Whereas overeating, consuming alcohol and drugs, and smoking
cigarettes create the conditions for a physical hell. In this state, the body becomes like an empty
shell that is abused and ignored . . . ”
During the
1960’s, when Omarjeet was still an optometrist, he discovered the value of
transcendental meditation and began following the Indian Saint Ramana
Maharshi. The world famous guru, who had
been recognized by the Beatles and much of the western world, instructed
Omarjeet to go into Aryuveda medicine and to bring the ancient healing
techniques of
Baba’s
seminars were typically held in upscale hotels and retreat centers because they
attracted therapists, physicians, New-Age spiritualists, and psychiatrists, all
of whom could afford the cost of a three-day seminar. On the first day, the Doctor was surprised to
find over five-hundred people in attendance.
Throngs of spiritual seekers flowed into the giant banquet hall. The Doctor merged with the throbbing
crowd. He sat down next to an attractive
woman who looked like she was of Eastern European descent. After a moment of sitting in silence, he
casually remarked to her, “This better be good.
I took three days off of work to come here.”
“You must be
a doctor,” she said with a smile.
“Yes, I
am. How did you know?”
“I work at
Lutheran General; I think I’ve seen you before.
I’m a pediatrician, my name is Gabriela.”
Before the
lecture began, they talked about their families and why they had decided to come
to the seminar. Meeting this friendly
woman on the first day reassured the Doctor he was in the right place.
Baba paced
back and forth on the stage, stopping abruptly and speaking up into the air,
“Every one of us is missing the big picture:
the body is sacred. My latest
book is called Sacred Body, Sacred Mind. After this lecture, you’ll find it in the
back of the room. Go take a look—please,
flip through the pages. Read about how
you’re neglecting the body—and discover how to take care of the body. In the next three days, I’m going to teach
you how to do some of these things. But
first buy my book. Then you will have
both.”
As the short
Indian man with the plum-shaped face delivered his well-practiced speech, the
Doctor was having the sudden experience of revelation. His mind was reeling with enthusiasm, Yes,
Yes, Yes, Yes . . . . The guru’s words made groundbreaking sense to him, and
yet they were nothing profound. But the
words came to him at the right moment, and in the context of his wife’s
sickness and his troubles with work, the spiritual message produced a great
effect on his mind. There was a shift in
the way he looked at things.
Essentially, Baba was telling the Doctor: Take care of yourself. Take care of your body, your mind. You
are the one who needs attention now. How
can you help your wife or your patients before you learn to take care of
yourself?
Since he had
married Rose, nearly twenty-two years ago, the Doctor had been suffering from
reoccurring nightmare. He was trapped
inside a cavern with burning torches lit along the walls. The mouth of the cavern was closed up by a
massive boulder that would not budge. He
tried to move the boulder but with no success.
After searching for a way out and not finding one, an overwhelming fear
told him that some giant, or monster, was returning to cavern. The fear gripped him and he went down on his
knees to pray. As he was praying, he
heard the footfalls of the giant approaching.
His
attention to his wife was unflagging.
Many considered him a “model husband”.
Since Rose was diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy, the Doctor felt
he had done everything in his power to take care of her and to attend to her
needs. He sacrificed for his wife; he
gave up those things dearest to him, such as being with friends and
family. She didn’t approve of his Iraqi
friends. In her eyes, they were “low
class” and she refused to make friends with their wives. Rose had grown to accept
This great
man of spiritual insight, Baba Omarjeet, had the power to drive a spear into
the eye of the monster. His words and
wisdom moved the boulder and freed the Doctor from the metaphorical cave.
Streaks of daylight
swept into the banquet hall. “Mr.
Doctor,” Baba’s voice rang out, “Read my book.
Meditate twice a day. Take up
yoga. Eat healthy. Get better sleep. And you will be free.”
As the day progressed, the Doctor attended
workshops, lectures and vegetarian lunches.
Marveling at the charismatic Omarjeet, gratitude shined on the Doctor’s
face as on the newly-converted. By the
end of the third day, he was gloating over his new-found purpose.
He saw the attractive lady he met the first
day, who asked him if he was taking the extension course.
“What extension course?” He asked.
“They teach you how to meditate,” she said.
The Doctor moves
downstairs into the guest bedroom
After
hearing Baba’s message, the Doctor knew that he had to hire somebody to take
care of his wife. This person would
sleep in the same room with Rose, while the Doctor moved downstairs into the
guestroom. The woman who the Doctor
hired was named Beruita.
Of Slavic descent, Beruita was a stout and
muscular member of her sex who could lift Rose into bed, or lower her onto the
toilet with ease. Beruita was one of
those robust souls who, after enduring many hardships, are endowed with an
abundance of goodwill for others and a cheerful optimism. Her broken English, however, was at times
incomprehensible and this caused some confusion in the house. Rose handed her a Polish-English dictionary
and told her to study it. Later Rose
found out that Beruita was an easily excitable woman, and sometimes,
hysterically emotional. Her new help
might burst into a storm of diabolical laughter or begin wailing out loud for
no apparent reason. Or she would talk
for fifteen minutes uninterrupted without communicating an ounce of meaning.
Rose tried to accept her situation as a person
dependent on other persons. Now she had
to lean on someone’s arm if she wanted to walk around the house. Moving from the kitchen to the bedroom
required forethought and a certain amount of planning. Her illness was getting worse. Her body was changing, slowly giving
out. She was afraid of what was
happening to her. Every two or three
nights, she woke up from a nightmare about being put into a nursing home.
Spotting the first loss of vitality in her
face, Beruita applied special moisturizers to her skin. Dora and Mabel painted her face every morning
with rosy blushes and thick foundation.
Despite the makeup used to enliven Rose’s complexion, bubbles of drool
formed in the corners of her mouth.
Rose and her husband still went to parties from
time to time, but now he left her sitting on a couch next to people she didn’t
even know. She watched her husband dart
through the crowd with a wine glass in his hand. He loved to socialize. He had more friends than anyone she had ever
met. It was as if his love of
socializing was a direct rebuff against their relationship. As if he were saying, “I can’t be happy with
you, so I’m going to surround myself with friends and relatives.”
At the last party they went to, her husband was
talking to another woman. He talked to
her the entire night, and they were doing more than just talking. It looked like they were flirting. And then, before the party was over, he asked
her to dance. From the sofa, Rose
watched her husband having a ball. He
looked so cheery and carefree without her.
That night she said she thought it was “rude”
of him to leave her sitting by herself all night.
“What do you want me to do honey?” He replied, innocently.
“At least act
like I’m your wife.”
“Don’t be silly, of course you’re my wife.”
Overall, the Doctor was very pleased with
Beruita. Now he looked forward to going
to bed at night. At least an hour before
bedtime, he headed downstairs just so that he could read his spiritual books
and enjoy the solitude of his own room.
“During
the Wisdom Seminar I told you about the importance of the body. We must care for the body. This is true.
The body is sacred. Today I am
going to talk about how the physical and spiritual are one. When you take care of the physical—you take care
of spiritual. If you nourish the body,
you nourish the soul. Meditation is how
we nourish the soul. We call it
‘body-breath’ because it unites. Today I
want you to notice how the breath is the doorway to the three dimensions of
body, mind, and spirit.”
Omarjeet promenaded up and down the rows of
cushions, his long robe undulating, his calm, honeyed voice imparting sage
instruction along the way. His students
sensed his presence hovering over them as he adjusted their chins and
straightened their backs. Later in the
afternoon, during a silent group meditation, Omarjeet knelt down beside each
person and whispered a secret mantra in their ear. When the sacred words were uttered, the
Doctor had his first experience of transcendence. Though unable to describe his experience in
words, he would admit to all of his close friends that “something happened that
day.”
After the meditation course, the
Doctor woke up early every morning and applied himself with seriousness,
dedication, and rigorous self-discipline.
He withdrew into himself and his mantra.
When he had difficulty concentrating, he projected the guru on the
screen of his mind. Omarjeet’s
characteristically mellifluous voice reassured him, “your thoughts will
disappear”. Hearing those words, “your
thoughts will disappear,” slowly the Doctor regained his composure on the
mat. Soon he was able to forget the
reality of his wife’s illness and the stresses of his work. He continued to practice assiduously, and for
awhile the meditation seemed to be working.
But then another distraction came
into the picture, disrupting the middle-aged man’s calm and measured
breathing: it was that woman he met at
the seminar. They had kept in touch and
communicated over the phone several times since then. Now they were meeting for coffee, discussing
spirituality and exchanging books. With
each rendezvous, the Doctor was becoming more attracted to this woman who was
also on “the path”.
She was born in Hungry and traveled to the
But more than any of these qualities, it was
Gabriella’s intellect that attracted the Doctor the most. When they met together in cafes, they had
the most stimulating, thought-provoking conversations about science and
religion, medicine and philosophy, Christianity and Buddhism. Gabriella had read M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled and loved
it. As a pediatrician, she knew more
about child psychiatry, German existentialism, and the ideas of Carl Jung,
Freud and Wittgenstein than anyone he had ever met. And the Doctor was beginning to compare
Gabriella to his wife, who never had any interest in intellectual ideas.
Despite his physical attraction to Gabriela,
the Doctor restrained himself from entering into a sexual relationship. Naturally, he was overwhelmed by feelings of
guilt. Although he admired Gabriella in
so many ways, he could never cheat on his wife, who was sick. But their meetings continued, and the
question of his own fidelity began to re-surface in his conscience. He asked himself, “Am I even capable of
cheating on my wife?”
One
morning, Rose asked Ernie, Mabel’s husband, to drive her into the city. Her mother-in-law joined them and helped push
Rose in a wheelchair. This was the first
time that Rose was using a wheelchair.
She brought it “in case of emergencies,” but with the progression of her
disease, she knew she would be depending on it more and more. Once they arrived downtown, Ernie parked the
car and removed the wheelchair from the trunk.
As Nadia, the Doctor’s mother, pushed Rose down
They turned into a men’s clothing store. A well-dressed salesman in his late twenties
approached them. “May I help you find
something?”
Rose craned her neck and said in a muffled
tone, “I want to get my husband a tie, as a surprise.”
There was a look of distraction on the
salesman’s face, as if he didn’t know how to properly respond to a person in a
wheelchair. He repeated his question,
redirecting it to Nadia, “Was there something I could help you find?”
Rose interrupted, asking about the tie. But he continued to ignore her.
It was because of the wheelchair. She had only brought it as a precaution. She wanted to tell him that she was not
disabled. But he quickly pointed out a
table of men’s shirts on sale, and disappeared.
After leaving the men’s clothing store, Rose noticed an advertisement for the
construction of a new luxury high-rise that would be completed in three year’s
time. The location was right across from
the old water tower in the heart of the city, where horses-and-buggies parked
along the sidewalks. The name of the
building was
In the past Rose had expressed a loathing for
the suburbs. She felt isolated and
confined living there. On many occasions
she had pleaded with her husband and children to move with her to the city, but
they refused, saying they preferred their home in
And so Rose was smitten with nervous
excitement when she found out about the
The
Doctor agrees to buy the apartment
The Doctor wanted to do something for his wife
. . .
Lately,
he had been thinking a lot about his spiritual friend, Gabriella. Every time they got together, they had so
much to share about their private lives.
He talked to Gabriella openly about his difficulties with Rose. More than once he mentioned that his wife’s
illness was “depressing to be around.”
“The
whole house is infused with her sickness,” he said. “When I come home, I feel it weighing on me
and I just want to go to my room.”
Gabriella
was a good listener. Although she had
been trained as a pediatrician, she could ease comfortably into the position of
a therapist at any time. She had studied
volumes of works on child psychiatry.
She encouraged the Doctor to feel angry or resentful or whatever he was
feeling toward his wife. When he needed
advice, she gave it to him.
“I
think you should do something for
your wife,” she said.
“What
do you mean?”
“Your
wife is probably having doubts about your marriage.”
“I’m having doubts about my marriage.”
“But
still, you shouldn’t give up—”
“I’ve
been married to her for almost twenty-three years.”
“
On the
day they went to the sales office together, the woman in the black business
suit reappeared and led Rose and her husband into a conference room, offering
them glasses of water with slices of cucumber.
She showed the prospective buyers blueprints of various apartment
layouts and then turned off the lights.
An
overhead projector came down from the ceiling, displaying a virtual tour of two
premium apartments in the
At
the end of the sales meeting, the Doctor offered to buy one of the most
expensive condominiums in the
When Lethe returned to college, it was as if he
had been erased from the collective memory of the student body. Now he wandered around campus, alone. The students carried on their lives more or
less the way he remembered—a swarm of freshman buzzing like flies outside the
dorms, puffing cigarettes and chatting on the stoop, or tossing Frisbee and
lofting bean bags on the quad. In the
distance, beyond the football field, the soccer team was practicing.
Inside the hive-like quarters of the
dormitories, the din of stereo systems, hair driers, vacuum cleaners, and
showers running; videogame junkies hold controllers in transfixed stupors;
couples cuddle on top of bunk beds and disappear under blankets; two female
rugby players perch over their desks, eating pop tarts and sending instant
messages; the quiet, introverted ones are suspended in midday reveries . . .
In the basements, laundry machines vibrate
concrete walls, college girls flip through health and beauty magazines, the air
grows humid, their foreheads dampen. On
the main floor, the communal space is empty but the television is on. A student wanders in and falls asleep on the
cushions, drunk from the night before . . .
Outside, a funnel of sunlight runs through the
chestnut trees throwing shadows on the winding footpaths; the quads serene, the
library stoic, the science buildings, the gym, the English building, the
stately fraternity and sorority houses; the red-brick walkway to the dining
hall, the modern bridge, a student art exhibit on the lawn, professors
chatting. Friends meet with friends; to
class, to meals, to pick up their mail.
He recalls some of their faces.
The students cluster in their friendly bands. The shrill and gossipy notes of the sorority
sisters pierce the air. The frat boys
don their pinstripe Polos . . .
Ten or
twelve of Lethe’s fraternity brothers still remembered him, but not exactly
with pleasure. From the beginning of his
freshman year, the Brothers were wary about how Lethe would turn out. When he returned from
If Lethe
felt any resentment, it was toward Iron Sandwich who now had a girlfriend and
was occupied with her. When
Instead
of wallowing in his dorm room over the loss of a friend, Lethe found reason to
celebrate. He
invoked the lines of Henry David Thoreau: “A man must find his occasions
in himself.”
His drug dealer on campus was a scrawny Arab
with jet-black hair and a mustache.
Shady Lou was one of those business-minded students who build a small
fortune by selling drugs to their college peers. Just about every week Shady Lou returned from
But
soon Lethe was hankering for conversation and human interaction. With the aid of a newer drug that had just
been introduced on campus, he gained the necessary self-confidence to wander
out of his room and explore the dormitory.
There was a warm, fireside glow inside the building. It was a Monday night and most of the
students were in their rooms studying.
Lethe felt the entire warmth of the building as if it were wrapping its
arms around him. In contrast to the
sterile house he grew up in, the dormitory felt like home—the comfortable, lazy
feeling of home. The warm, pleasant glow
surrounded him until he sank into a love for all things. Soon he was waltzing through the halls, doing
somersaults and pirouettes and finding every mundane college-dorm sight
absolutely sublime. He waltzed into the
study room and its geometric layout gratified him. “Magnificento! Perfecto!” he exclaimed in an Italian accent.
Four
female students lived on the floor above him.
On this particular night, Jessica Gerber, a renowned horseback rider and
major in Psychology was watching TV and cutting out magazine advertisements for
her Psych. 301 class, “Abnormal Human Behavior”. Molly Diamond, a snobbish old-money girl from
They
were staring at him because he was half-dressed in a
The
four roommates broke into wavelets of laughter.
Lethe studied his proportions in the full length mirror. “Call me Prin-ci-pessa,” he spoke in his
favorite Italian accent.
From
the bathroom, they brought a pail of beauty supplies—butter cream frosting,
body mists, blackberry lip gloss, creamy lathers, metallic lipstick, and velvet
matte eyeliners. Molly loaned Lethe her
halter top dress. The Cute Mute painted
his toenails. The renowned horseback
rider shaved his legs.
Meanwhile,
between the Doctor and Gabriela, meeting for coffee and discussing books soon became
going for long walks in forest preserves and eating in fancy restaurants. On their nature walks in particular, both
sensed a quiet intimacy growing between them.
And then it happened, the kiss. One afternoon in August, they were parked
outside a forest preserve. They had just
finished their languid, dreamy walk through the woods. Before Gabriela put the key in the ignition,
she paused to look through her purse for her sunglasses. Without thinking, the Doctor bent his head
forward and kissed her. Gabriella
responded with pleasure.
The quivering thrill transported the
Doctor to the days of his adolescence.
Then too he had been sexually frustrated. The constant focus on his studies had led him
to fantasize about the young maids who came to work for his mother. He loved the attention they gave to him. After studying for long hours in his bedroom,
he joined them in gossip. They were
flirtatious and sometimes grew excited, smothering him with kisses . . .
Or the house of Lavasha Alba where his parents
brought him many times. Lavasha was a
tease. He was afraid of her. He was “chicken”. The adults always became distracted, and
Lavasha and
**********************************
Three days later, Gabriella
apologized for what had happened in the car.
Her tone was serious. She said
she didn’t want to get involved with a married man, but she offered to keep
their friendship. The Doctor said that
would be too hard for him. They didn’t
speak to each other for another four months.
An
unfortunate incident with the massage-therapist
She
was not particularly attractive but she did rub in between the grooves of his
shoulders and neck. And she loosened the
tension in his back muscles almost to the point of orgasmic release. More than once his mind drifted into a
fantasy with the brawny massage therapist, but always he restrained
himself. Until the day he could restrain
himself no longer. As she was massaging
his lower back, he had the sensation that she was touching him intimately. He wanted to respond to her and so he
did. He turned around on the massage bed
and embraced her uninhibitedly.
“What are you doing?” She shouted.
“Oh—I was . . . Please forgive me,
I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
She edged toward the door, picking
up a pen and scribbling something down in a flustered state. “This is for you,” she said. “I’m referring you to a professional who can
help you more than I can. She’s a
psychologist, and a friend of mine.
Please see her. You need to go
now.”
With the business card in his sweaty palm, the
Doctor left the massage studio.
Self-loathing churned in the pit of his stomach. He felt like an idiot, like a jerk. What was he thinking, trying to make out with
his massage therapist? Didn’t he know
better than that?
The
waiting room was closet-size, four feet by five, approximately. There was a small magazine rack and two
chairs. A stream of classical music ran
down from a speaker in the ceiling. The
narrow dimensions of the waiting room reminded the Doctor of a confession
booth; though he had never been to confession before. His wife had asked him to go with her to
marriage counseling about ten years ago.
Rose agreed to see the Doctor’s church-recommended psychiatrist, but
later she complained that the psychiatrist was biased in favor of their
separation. The results of every one of
the marriage tests said divorce was inevitable.
They never went to marriage counseling again.
The Doctor was greeted by his new
psychiatrist in a cold, offhand manner.
He stepped out of the closet-sized waiting room and into a slightly
larger office. Her office was on the
fifty-eighth floor of a
“Take a seat,” she said.
Nervously, the Doctor lowered himself onto the
peeling leather couch. Not knowing where
to put his hands, he reached for a Kleenex and began to blow his nose.
With a grey notebook in her lap, she took down
the Doctor’s information.
“Are you sick?”
She asked.
“No, Ma’am.”
“Call me Dr. Levy.” After turning her notebook to a fresh page,
she said, “My girlfriend told me about what happened in the massage studio.”
“Yes . . . I feel horrible.” The Doctor’s posture on the leather couch was
rigid. He held his back from sinking in,
and this was causing some tension in his face.
“Tell me what’s going on with you,
“Well, my wife is sick with a
degenerative disease . . .”
Dr. Levy looked up at him. She had small, penetrating eyes.
The Doctor continued, “I realized
that I couldn’t take care of my wife anymore.
So we hired someone who could lift her out of bed and wash her in the
mornings . . .”
After the Doctor finished the story, he wiped
his neck with a handkerchief. The sweat
was bleeding through his collar.
Dr. Levy jotted a few final notes. “Do you know anything about the theory of
adolescence,
“Other than that my children are in their
adolescence . . . I know what they go through, I think.”
“And what can you tell me about what they’re
going through?”
“My son seems to be doing fine. My daughter on the other hand has some
problems. Too many friends.”
“What do you think happens during adolescence?”
“I’m not exactly sure. It’s the period of teenage independence,
isn’t it?”
“That’s correct. During the period of adolescence a healthy
teenager will undergo a basic change in attitude. The mark of adolescence is a strong
opposition to dependency on the mother and father. Perhaps you can see some of this behavior in
your children. After listening to you
describe your marriage, Dr. Bashar, I’m led to believe that you too are undergoing some of these
changes. You may have never fully
outgrown your adolescence.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“I’m talking about an unconscious teenage
rebellion against your wife/mother.”
“Unconscious teenage rebellion? Up until now I’ve done everything for
her. I don’t understand. I’ve done everything to please my wife.”
“Including cheating on her?”
“But that was a mistake. You can tell I’m not—”
“How can you say that you’ve done everything
for your wife, when before, you just told me you didn’t think you loved her.”
“No, I don’t love her.”
“Then, how can you be a loyal husband?”
“Because I’ve stayed with Rose for almost
twenty-five years.”
“Exactly my point about the theory of
adolescence. You still haven’t broken
away from your dependence on your mother/wife.
If you had developed your adolescent independence, then you would’ve
divorced your wife a long time ago. You
would have broken off the marriage when you first realized things weren’t
working out. But instead, you stayed in
a dependency because it mirrored your dependency on your mother.”
“This may be too Freudian for me to handle!”
“You have to admit Freud changed our view of
human relationships. He is hard to
ignore—especially in your case.”
“I don’t know.”
“
The Doctor looked like he was on the verge of
tears.
“It’s time to grow up,
“What can I do?”
“You can tell your wife the truth. Ask for a divorce. She doesn’t deserve to be lied to anymore.”
On
a Saturday morning at the end of September, the Doctor and his wife took a long
drive up north to attend a wedding of their mutual friends. Over the cornfields, a hazy sun rose into the
sky and a dim, pewter light covered the plains.
Every twenty miles or so, they passed wooded areas and rest stops with
streaks of grayish-violet in the branches.
Rose asked her husband to shut the window because she was feeling a
chill. The Doctor couldn’t understand
how she could possibly be feeling a chill on such a mild, autumn day.
He closed the window; but now it felt stuffy
inside. He turned on the
air-conditioning. But again, his wife
complained about being cold.
“What do you want me to do?” The Doctor said sarcastically. “You’re always cold.”
“I know I am,” she replied.
The Doctor was thinking about the sessions with
his psychologist . . . “You’re stuck in an unconscious teenage rebellion.” Was it true?
Is that why he stayed with her so long?
Dr. Levy’s analysis sounded a bit too “psychological”. Her confidence in summing up his life in a
single sentence bothered him slightly.
He knew that his relationship to Rose was more complicated than
that. But Dr. Levy did help him to
understand that he had been lying to his wife for all these years.
“Honey, I’ve been lying to you. I’ve been lying to me. To everyone.”
But he couldn’t say it. Not yet.
Rose stared out of the window, thinking about
her artwork. Last week Dora had put a
small easel in her bedroom. It wasn’t
even a real artist’s easel like the one she had downstairs. It was a children’s easel.
She couldn’t paint in her art studio
anymore. Walking downstairs was
treacherous. She could barely walk, let
alone use stairs. And the canvases were
too big for her. Her legs grew tired
from standing; her hands began to shake.
With the children’s easel, she was hoping that maybe she could paint
something smaller. “Have Dora bring up a
chair from the basement,” she made a mental note to herself.
As the drive continued, the Doctor looked out
the windows at the haystacks and brush pastures along the way, imagining the
breezy atmosphere, mournfully. Rose
needed to stop at a gas station to use the bathroom. Every time they had to stop, the wheelchair
needed to be taken out of the trunk and reassembled. “Unconscious teenage rebellion,” he said to
himself as he pushed her toward the bathrooms.
“I
want a divorce,” the Doctor said to his wife after twenty-five years of
marriage. The words hung inside the car
like a chemical agent.
He took his eyes off the road to register his
wife’s reaction.
There was a placid melancholy on her face. The reaction was subtle, barely
noticeable. And what emotion he thought
he glimpsed in his wife’s expression was now gone. The lines on her face were disappearing. Her cheeks were becoming as flaccid as those
of an eighty year old woman’s.
He pictured her as a mime, with her face
painted white. She was tense, mute,
rebellious. Like a deaf and dumb
child. His eyes darted from the road to
her face, the road to her face, and back again . . .
His thoughts were racing, “I’ve wanted to say
this to you for the last ten years. But
then we had children. And after the
children, you became sick.”
The Doctor’s head was flooded with
confusion. Her silence was making him
uncomfortable. But she couldn’t say
anything—she couldn’t talk.
“This has been the hardest decision in my life
. . . Rose . . . I can’t live with you anymore.
I need to be honest with myself and that means being honest with
you. It’s not fair to either one of us
anymore. I don’t know what you’re
thinking right now, all I know is that this has been extremely hard for
me. Maybe if I still loved you, Rose, it
would be easier for me to take care of you.
But I’m not at peace with myself in this marriage and my feelings aren’t
there anymore. It’s like I’m an actor
putting on show for everyone else. I
can’t imagine what this must be like for you.
You’re probably going to hate me for awhile. Please Rose, forgive me. I’ve given this decision a lot of
thought. I’ve been talking to a
psychologist . . .”
His voice was exhausted. Once more he looked at his wife to see her
reaction—upset, confused, alarmed?
Her body was slouched into the passenger door,
her face leaning against the window, her eyes lightly shut. The medication sometimes put her to
sleep. He wondered how long she had been
sleeping, and whether he would have to tell her again tomorrow . . .
The window came down. A gust of cool air ran into the car. His forehead was sweating—he needed some air.
After
he asked his wife for a divorce, Dr. Levy recommended that
The idea of taking a spiritual retreat appealed
to the Doctor immensely. Since he had
asked his wife for a divorce (the second time while she was awake), he had the
urge to disappear from the premises and be alone for awhile. The day his psychologist recommended the
conference to him, he booked a flight.
********************************
As he walked toward the stone arches of the
front desk, he heard the twittering of small birds hidden inside tangles of
branches. The tiled foyer of the
Sheraton Hotel, edged with flowering cacti and potted palms, opened into a
Spanish-style lobby with bronze sculptures and an ornate fountain in the
center. The Doctor sauntered through
this dreamy, exotic hotel in a mood of indolence and freedom. A harpist with hair down to her ankles played
beside a white grand piano. Guests
wandered in and out the lobby, meeting friends and arriving for the
conference.
The seekers were gathering and filling the
lobby with their chatter and excitement.
Typically,
But tonight was different. He wanted to be alone. With a serene smile, he watched the guests
meander through the lobby. He wasn’t
contemplating the divorce or even thinking about his wife. Rather he was meditating on a feeling of
emptiness and tranquility. Walking alone
seemed to bring up this quiescent feeling to his awareness. The hotel grounds were extensive and he could
probably walk for hours tonight, around the outdoor pools, the cabanas and down
the long stretch of beach . . .
Several hours later, he heard the voices of
people chanting by the shore. There were
torches in the ground, blazing wildly against the sea breeze. Dancers spun around in the sand like whirling
Dervishes. The whole spectacle was
slightly disturbing to him, and he hesitated to move any closer. But then he recognized the language they were
chanting in. He listened to the words. It was the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. As a little boy, his mother had repeated
those words to him every night before he went to bed. Now he was curious, so he came closer. One of the torches illuminated a woman’s
face—she opened her eyes briefly and reached out her hand to bring him into the
circle where the bodies were flailing.
In the chaos of the dancing, he caught glimpses of others, various ages
and races. Most of them were in a deep
trance. An older man was smiling cheek
to cheek, his face layered in a gleam of sweat.
Women were dancing ecstatically, and he imitated them until he felt the
energy of the group take over. As the
chanting went on into the night, prayers from different faiths were sung,
Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Hebrew prayers.
They
met at a trendy sushi restaurant in downtown
The waiter offered them sparkling water and a
bottle of wine. The Doctor made a
selection from the wine list and Gabriella accepted.
He hadn’t spoken to her in over four
months. They had parted ways without
knowing if they would ever see each other again. But after the conference, he wanted to tell
someone about all of the wonderful things that happened to him in
Digging their spoons into caramel apple pie a
la mode, the Doctor mentioned, “I asked my wife for a divorce . . .”
“Really,” Gabriella looked surprised. She wiped her mouth with a napkin, and some
lipstick came off.
“I don’t think I ever really loved her.”
“That’s horrible. How can you say that?”
“But it’s true.
Twenty-five years of marriage. I
don’t remember being in love once.”
“Come on, it wasn’t all pain and misery . . .”
“No, no, maybe you’re right. After all, we had the children together. And Rose, with her illness, you know, it
wasn’t her fault. I just didn’t love
her. I couldn’t.”
“Why do think?”
Gabriella probed.
The Doctor was silent. He munched on the crust of the caramel apple
pie and muttered, “She was trying to possess me all the time. She made me into a thing.”
“And you never tried to possess her?”
“No, not really. She wanted to be an artist. She wanted to go to school. I never said anything.”
“And when you asked for a divorce, what did you
say?”
“I told her I was unhappy. I said that if had I loved her, then maybe
things would have been different.”
“Mourir pour ce qu’on aime/ C’est un trop doux
effort . . .”
“What’s that?”
“French.
It means: To die for one you
love/ Is too sweet an effort.”
“I couldn’t die for her because I didn’t love
her.”
“I’m sorry.”
Gabriella pouted.
“Don’t be sorry. I have the rest of my life to look forward
to. It’s never too late . . .”
“Do you want to get married again?”
“I’m not sure, we’ll have to see. First things first, I need to get this
divorce out of the way.”
Last
Days in
After the Doctor moved out of the house in
Her mother
was sick, that Little Mazzy understood; but there were other people to take
care of her mother. Her father shouldn’t
have to bear the responsibility for his wife’s illness, especially if he didn’t
love her anymore. In Mazzy’s world, love
was everything, the Alpha and Omega. If
love was gone, then love was gone. You
couldn’t chase after it. You couldn’t
make it come back to you.
The
Doctor moved into a temporary apartment in a neighboring suburb. Mazzy did what she wanted now that her father
wasn’t around to enforce the rules.
After school, she went out to the back patio of
the house and smoked a cigarette. Her
mother mostly sat in her bedroom at the other end of the house. Little Mazzy had taken over the territory of
the kitchen and back patio for herself, which was now being used to hang out
with friends. There were no more
restrictions on the phone, and Mazzy could talk to her friends as late as she
wanted. Boys came over to the house
regularly and her mother even let her shut the door of her bedroom.
Rose
knew that Mazzy was partially taking advantage of her. But as a result of the divorce, the symptoms
of her disease, impending death and the necessity of letting go, Rose was
beginning to resign herself to the circumstances. Put simply, her desperate need for control
was not practical anymore. It was
futile. She couldn’t control the
outside, let alone the deterioration taking place from within. Especially with her loss of speech, all she
could now do was watch everything fall apart.
At times her situation was morbid, a dark sadness enveloped her, but in
other moments, the illness pushed Rose to higher levels of awareness and
understanding.
Late at
night she heard the voices of Mazzy’s friends in the kitchen. She knew they were drinking beer and probably
smoking cigarettes out on the patio. But
strangely, it didn’t bother her; Rose was still able to fall asleep.
On the day Lethe arrived home for Christmas
break, he found his mother sitting in her hospital chair with threads of drool
coming off her mouth. Dismal daytime
television was running in the background.
His mother looked utterly hopeless.
Lethe knew
that his father was to blame. He paced
in circles around his mother’s chair, cursing out loud, “That Asshole— That Jerk—
How could he leave you like this?
Where’s Barbara? Barbaraaaaa!
Clean up this mess—”
Lethe
saw that his father had left him with a gigantic burden. And it didn’t matter that his mother had
people to take care of her because it was mostly an emotional burden. All day
long, Lethe had to listen to her broken mumbling, which was wearisome and
frustrating and required more patience than any normal teenager could possibly
have. Her speech was weak and
indecipherable, tinny and annoying, smothered with heavy sighs and low guttural
moans. She wanted stupid things done for
her, trifles. Do this. Do that.
She nagged him because he avoided her.
She called for him because she was lonely and depressed.
“What
Mom!!!?? WHAT?”
The moment
he shut the door to the guestroom, his mother’s gasping voice beckoned him on
the other side. In his sweaty hands, he
held Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Every time his mother called for him, he cast
a melancholy glance over the novel he hoped to read. Where was his sister during all this? Out with her friends. Just like his father, Mazzy had a knack for
disappearing at the most inconvenient times.
After
helping his mother change the television channel, he returned to the guestroom
with a sullen face and opened up War and
Peace. In his mother’s new apartment
in the city, the walls were bright green with yellow shades. The upholstery was blue tartan. There were art prints hanging everywhere,
Picasso, Schielle, Demuth. Everything in
this room reminded him of his mother. He
shifted in his chair, self-consciously, trying to get comfortable, and reached
for a pillow to lay his head on.
Tolstoy
was a genius. Tolstoy, who spent a
lifetime in near solitude, and when he walked out into the daylight, very few
people recognized him. Lethe longed for
the solitary life. He longed for a safe
place where he could weave his dreams endlessly. I’ve lost touch with my genius, he said to
himself. My mother calls me into her
room every fifteen minutes. What kind of
life is that for a fledgling artist?
And why
does my father get a choice? Why does he
get to walk away from the family? One of
these days, I’m just going to tell her that he doesn’t love her anymore. I’m going to say, “Mom. Dad doesn’t love you. Get over it.
He’s a jerk and that’s that.”
“Leeeeeeth!” Barbara was calling him again.
“What
the fuck?”
“Mummy. Mummy.”
The caretaker said
in a childish voice.
A
sudden call disrupts the Doctor’s ski trip with Gabriela
The
Doctor and Gabriela were vacationing in
“I can barely understand you,
Rose. What’s going on?”
“Drugs.”
“What about drugs?”
“Lethe.”
“Lethe is on drugs?”
“Yes.”
The Doctor glanced over at Gabriela
who was getting out of bed. “Listen,
Rose,” he said, “I’ll be home in a couple days.
When I get home, I promise to speak to him about this.”
Gabriella’s silver negligee
disappeared into the bathroom.
Once more the Doctor reassured his wife that
everything would be okay—that he would speak to his son when he got home. His wife let out another one of her squeals
of discomfort. Finally, he hung up the
phone.
Gabriela stood with her arms
crossed, glaring down at the Doctor. He
looked up from the bed, “What?”
“You need to do something about your
family—”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see they’re controlling
your life?”
“My wife called to tell me that my
son’s taking drugs.”
“Ex-wife. And if your son’s on drugs, there’s nothing
you can do about it. You need to protect
yourself and not let your family walk all over you like this.”
The Doctor fixed his gaze on the
floor.
“It’s almost two o’clock in the morning. We’re getting up in six hours. How are we supposed to go skiing without any
sleep? Your ex-wife is going to ruin
this vacation for us. You need to
distance yourself from them. They’re bad
for you.”
That night, lying up in bed, the
Doctor wanted to talk to his son. It
seemed like he hadn’t had a conversation with Lethe in years. He knew that his son was upset with him. Was it because of the divorce?
Lethe
ventures into the Projects
The
commercial iron gate swung open, clanging against a metal pole. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, Lethe
crossed the hard, crumpled grass of the quadrangle. The air on his face was cold as steel. Forty feet ahead of him, two black men were
rooted under floodlights. They appeared
to be guarding the base of the building, their rugged profiles hidden under
hooded sweatshirts. A hunched black lady
with a little girl was also walking across the quadrangle.
“I need your help.” He said.
The child inched closer to her mother’s
leg.
“What-u need?”
“Dope.
Can you help me?”
“Do I look like a pusherman to you? Not every
black person sells drugs. Can’t you see
I got my baby with me?”
“I’m desperate here. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“How much you got?”
“Fifty bucks.”
“Maybe you should stay away from dem drugs.”
“Sixty?”
“Give me two hundred.”
She strutted with a limp ahead of him. They passed the black men in hooded
sweatshirts, entering the cavern-like darkness of the corridor. The stairs went up the side of the building which
was shielded by chain-metal, cold air pouring through the chinks. On the ninth floor she had him wait while she
went down the hall to knock on somebody’s door.
“What-u doing?”
The little girl asked.
“Just waiting for your mom to come back.”
“She ain’t my momma. She my granny.”
“Sorry.
Your granny—”
“Why my granny buying you drugs?”
“She’s not buying me drugs, okay. She’s doing me a favor.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever you say . . .”
“I just want to get out of here. This place freaks me out.”
“Scardy-cat.”
“Hush, will ya?”
“Crackhead.”
“What did you just say?”
“Crackhead.”
“I’m not a crackhead.”
“Crackhead.
Crackhead.”
His
father’s Middle Eastern nose and black mustache loomed above him. The unforgettable scent of deodorant and
anxiety was radiating from the Doctor’s silk shirt.
Beside the hospital drape, his mother was
hunched over in her wheelchair with a bag of unopened Twizzlers on her
lap. She yawned under the weight of her
slouching upper body. The Doctor made a
motion to the caretaker to pull her up.
As her body was being raised, Rose turned her face upwards to her
son. Spittle ran down the side of the
mouth, which the caretaker was quick to blot with a sodden napkin.
In the fog of a semi-conscious state, Lethe
tried to make out his surroundings.
Coughing, he felt something lodged in his throat.
“You weren’t breathing.” His father’s voice was stern.
“I wasn’t?”
Beside Lethe, a respiratory machine emitted a
constant beep. The Doctor inspected his
son’s eyes.
“The police came to the apartment. They found heroin all over.”
“They did?”
From behind the partitioning drape, voices of
doctors and nurses made a circling chant.
Lethe’s father stepped back from his son, assessing his overall physical
status.
“You’ll be moved into the psych ward later
tonight.”
“I will?”
Lethe turned to his mother. Her pensive gaze was weighing on him. Was she upset? Worried?
“What mom?”
“Your mother brought you some candy.” His father said.
A
Conversation with Dr. Offenbach
The
confines of the mental ward produced a very strange reaction in Lethe. Whereas most of the adolescent patients
rebelled against their captivity in the ward, Lethe found a certain comfort in
being taken care of and treated as if he were different. The schedule for each day involved stretching
in the morning, breakfast, arts and crafts, group therapy, meeting with your
doctor, lunch, naptime, drug and alcohol classes, afternoon activities, and
dinner. He had his own room with a
double-plate glass window that looked out at a heating unit on top of a
hospital building, and his mother and father usually came once a week to bring
him Twizzlers.
Lethe took an extreme pleasure in meeting with
his learned psychiatrist each day. Dr.
Offenbach, having studied psychology for many years, was a precious resource to
Lethe. As Lethe saw it, his doctor was
helping him to discover the secrets of his mind. Dr. Offenbach was like his personal assistant
on the journey toward self-
realization.
Dr. Offenbach wrote in his reports: “the patient says he is cultivating himself
to become a genius” and “the patient says he has to return to college where he
can resume his work in solitude”. When
confronted about his use of drugs, Lethe told the doctor that “he occasionally
took Ritalin to concentrate better”.
“But the police found heroin all over your
mother’s apartment, correct?”
“Heroin?
Yes, I did that.”
“But I thought you were studying to become a
genius.”
“I am. I
have a duty to myself, to cultivate myself.
I can’t be bothered by anyone.”
“What about the heroin, Lethe? Were you taking heroin?”
“Only as an experiment.”
“But the police found fourteen separate plastic
baggies of heroin in your mother’s apartment.
That sounds like a little more than an experiment to me.”
“I liked the way it felt.”
“But you agree that heroin wasn’t going to help
you study?”
“No, it wasn’t going to help me study. But it did more than that. It brought me to that place.”
“What place, Lethe?”
“The place—you know—where Authors go.”
In the meantime, Dr. Offenbach arranged for his
patient to be flown out to
The
Doctor opened up the sequel to The Road
Less Traveled and began reading.
There was a tension between father and son like an elastic band being
stretched to its breaking point and held there for the duration of the
flight. Lethe was writing furiously in a
spiral notebook. He resented his father
for leaving his mother and these feelings were coming out in a malicious
rant.
Lethe was not in denial about his
drug-use. Ever since freshman year in
college, he had been abusing drugs—he would agree to that. He would agree that he spent six months in
hotel room in
And the cause?
His father was mostly to blame.
That man sitting next to him with the self-satisfied grin on his face
and the perfectly trimmed mustache. The
man who used to preach to him about the importance of the family. The man who took care of people for a
living. The man who lectured him about
treating others with respect. Now he
knew his father was all bullshit. A
total hypocrite.
The Doctor continued to read his book as Lethe
openly ridiculed him on the plane. What
his son didn’t understand was that the decision to divorce Lethe’s mother was a
spiritual decision and the result of long, serious meditation. His son was immature. His perception of things was distorted. The Doctor wasn’t going to allow his
twenty-year old to tell him about “reality”.
The Dance of Universal Peace had showed him what was real and what was
not; he would never go back to being a guilty father again. He was free of guilt and self-pity and nobody
had power over him anymore. He had done
the right thing with Lethe’s mother. He
didn’t need to justify himself to his family.
His son was a drug addict and needed help.
Creosote de Tucson, a resort for addicts
In
the late 1990s, following the lead of institutions such as Hazlden and the
Betty Ford Clinic, chemical dependency treatment centers began to sprout up
across the country, turning over a multi-billion dollar industry. Buttressed by his father’s medical insurance
plan, Lethe was admitted to one of these new-fangled 30-day treatment
programs.
In the foothills of the Sonoran Desert, with
over 35 acres of beautiful desert landscape, scenic hiking trails, a luxurious
swimming pool, Native American mosaics, interlacing cactus gardens and ornate fountains,
reposed Creosote de Tucson. Yoga
instruction was offered daily. Massage
therapy. Group therapy. Nature excursions. Individual counseling. And in addition: how to quit smoking, anger management, the
skills of recovery, and the Twelve Steps.
Despite
all of the services in modern addiction treatment that were offered at
Creosote, most male and female patients gravitated to the smoking tables, which
were the hubs of socialization. There
they loafed on the benches most of the day, chain-smoking and talking about
what they were going to do when they finally got out of rehab. Lethe, who made friends quickly, was offered
a place to stay after treatment by another patient.
Some
of the characters at Creosote
Out
by the smoking tables, a lanky, unshaven patient named Morris thrummed on his
guitar and sang country songs in the moonlight.
Around eleven o’clock, Nurse Debra came out to tell him to go to bed,
but he cradled his rickety guitar in his arms and kept on singing, “Oh, Ida
Red, Ida Red, don’t you—don’t you do this again . . .”
From his cabin, Lethe could hear the sonorous
string of laments. He always thought of
Morris as a semi-talented country singer.
Then, one night, Lethe couldn’t sleep and he went over to the smoking
table and listened to Morris for awhile.
He realized that the songs he had been listening to night after night
didn’t make any sense. He had been
hearing the melodies, but now, sitting next to Morris, he heard the words. There were a couple lines in the chorus that
made some mention of a gal from the state of
“Really?” Lethe wanted to know.
“Have you ever seen NYPD Blue? I wrote the first season.”
“So then, you’re famous.”
“No, just a television writer.
“How did you end up here?”
“Too much Ritalin. 120 mg a day.
I snorted it while I was working on scripts.”
Morris wasn’t the only patient who used to have
a job in
“So you never took any drugs?” Lethe asked.
“You kidding me? I did tons of drugs. But it was different back then. Everybody did drugs in the 70’s and
80’s.”
The movie director was always paired up with
Lethe often talked with
He lit up a cigarette. Pall Malls, he smoked.
“I know when I go back to
In a good-natured way, he patted Lethe on the
back, saying, “We’ll never be cured buddy.
Never.”
On
his twenty-seventh day of treatment (one day before completion), Lethe was told
to report to his case-manager’s office.
The confidential air of this order gave Lethe cause to suspect that he
was being summoned for no small potatoes.
As he quickened his steps along the tiled walkway, he tried to guess
what he could have done wrong. Since the
day he arrived at Creosote, he thought he had done everything perfectly. He was expecting to leave in less then a
week.
When he entered the office, Lethe found six
people gathered in a circle looking as if they were about to do a séance. They had sly smiles planted on their lips and
were questionably tranquil. He picked
out his psychiatrist, the director of the program, his parents who must have
flown in that morning, his case-manager, and the yoga instructor. (What was the yoga instructor doing there?)
His father’s face was comical. He looked foolish and proud—just what Don
Quixote must have looked like whenever he was showing Sancho Panza that he was
superior.
Similarly, the Doctor saw that his son had an
asinine expression on his face; Lethe was trying to undermine his authority
again. To avoid looking at him, the
Doctor turned his attention to the case-manager. From all sides, she was a rather large woman,
ornamented with a big, bright flower dress.
“Today is a very important day in your
treatment, Lethe.” She said.
Lethe glanced at his mother who was hunched
over in her wheel chair, spittle dripping down her chin as usual. Her face was angled to the floor with her
small black pupils peering up at him in confused apprehension.
The case-manager resumed: “Let me ask you a question, Lethe. Have you thought about your plans after
treatment?”
“I plan to live on the West Coast.”
The psychiatrist and the Director exchanged a
smile.
“I see,” the case-manager said, nodding her
head incredulously, “the West Coast.”
“First we want you to consider,” she handed him
a glossy brochure showing a wooded area with cabins and young men walking on a
nature trail, “Camp Wo-tuck-a-batche.”
“What language is that?”
“I’m not sure, Lethe. Now your parents arrived here less than an
hour ago and I have been talking to them about this program. This is an outstanding program for young
people.”
Lethe examined the brochure.
“The Camp is located in the
“Hey, there’re only guys in these pictures,”
Lethe observed.
“Yes, this is a male-only program.” Another voice gave the affirmation.
Lethe bolted upright in his chair, “Nobody can
make me go here.”
“Now Lethe,” the Cuban psychiatrist chimed in,
“Your specific medical history requires a great deal of attention. Twenty-eight days is not enough to make a
difference in your life-habits. Over the
course of your stay here, we have diagnosed you with a number of other
disorders including manic-depression, infantile grandiosity syndrome, and
obsessive-compulsive disorder. Camp
Wo-tuck-a-batche has an outstanding reputation in helping adolescents deal with
these issues. We feel that you would
really thrive in an environment like this, and it would only be six or eight
months before you could go home.”
“Six or
eight months?”
“Lethe,” the Doctor’s voice was imperious. “You must
do this program. There is no choice in
the matter.”
“I’m not doing it! You’re not sending me to that place. I already told you I’m going to the West
Coast.”
The Director of the program, who had been
silent up to this point, now spoke. “I’m
afraid, Lethe, if that is your final decision
we are going to have to ask you to leave Creosote.”
“What?”
“Unless you agree to the treatment plan we have
outlined here, I’m afraid we’ll be forced to give you an unsuccessful
discharge.”
“But that’s absurd. We’re in the middle of the desert. Where am I supposed to go?”
“Go to Camp Wo-tuck-a-batche,” the room
chanted.
Lethe
marched to the men’s smoking table, and venting his spleen, said, “Can you believe they’re just going to put me
out on the curb?”
“When?”
They asked.
“Tomorrow.”
The patients commiserated with the frustrated
youth. They patted him on the back and
offered him cigarettes. Then
“I was planning to go to the West Coast but now
I’m going to be stuck here in
“Not if we buy you a plane ticket,” said the
ex-movie director, glancing sidelong at his buddy
“How does
“Who’s going to buy me a ticket?”
“We are.”
His
sheer good-fortune was astounding. He
couldn’t quite figure out how one minute he was confined to a treatment
facility and the next free to roam the continental
As Julian’s brand-new Volkswagen Bug pulled up
to curb, Lethe noticed someone in the front passenger seat. She was twirling her hair distractedly,
almost like a decoy.
The two friends greeted each other, and Julian
introduced his girlfriend.
“So what brings you to
“Just doing a little traveling.”
Julian put on his turn signal and tried to
navigate out of a traffic buildup in the far lane. Once the car got onto the highway, Julian
said, “There’s something I need to tell you Lethe—”
“What?”
“Your father called earlier.”
“Really?”
“He told me you ‘ran away’ from rehab.”
“I was going to tell you—”
“It doesn’t matter now. I’m taking you to
“What’s in
“Your father wants me to drop you off at a
halfway house.”
“Erggghhh.”
Lethe groaned. “I can’t believe
this shit.”
A
The
halfway house sat on an unassuming corner of a suburban street. There were linden trees and a stone bird bath
in the backyard. Everything about the
exterior of the house suggested conventionality, cut grass, plucked weeds,
white-picket fence. Lethe’s fellow residents
included one gay hairdresser, one former steroid junkie/ex-body-builder, a
newly-converted Mormon, a recovering heroine-addict/used car salesman, a
motorcycle mechanic with ADHD, and various others. . . twelve residents in
total.
Walter, the house-senior, was twenty-nine years
old and worked at McDonald’s. There was
a heavy awkwardness about Walter that gave one the impression he might be
autistic. He was reserved and quiet and
lumbered around the halfway house in his slow, heavy manner. You would never guess by looking at him that
he was a recovering drug addict. He
appeared too tame and defenseless to have ever picked up a dangerous
substance.
For over ten years, however, he followed the
Grateful Dead, selling acid in parking lots.
He stayed in motels and trailer homes, and hitchhiked across the
The inside of the halfway house was shadowy and
humid. In certain places, the curtains
were taped to the windowsill to prevent the sun from seeping into the living
room. The wall panels were imitation
wood and the carpet a dull cappuccino color.
Next to the kitchen, there was a payphone on the wall and an antique
Apple computer with a green screen coated in dust.
Attempting a voice of authority, Walter said,
“Before you come into the house you have to take off your shoes.” He was referring to the plaque of House
Rules. “Also, there is no smoking. If you want to smoke, go into the
garage.” The residents had built a
makeshift smoking lounge with secondhand couches and a beat-up Zenith.
All of the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen
were labeled. Each resident was allowed
1/3 of a cabinet and a section of the refrigerator. Walter stressed the importance of everyone
having their own supply of food. Theft
was obviously looked down upon. As they
passed the rooms of the residents who had been living in the halfway house for
a year or longer, Walter discussed seniority.
Seniors were “chiefs” while newcomers were “little Indians”. If you wanted to stick around and get to be a
chief, then you had to clean twice as hard on Sunday mornings. That meant the toilets in both bathrooms and
the weeds out front.
Walter led Lethe up to his room. The newer residents slept in bunk beds on the
second floor. Lethe counted six
roommates total. The room looked like it
would be a bit cramped.
“Everyone’s shoes are tucked neatly underneath
the bed.” Walter highlighted.
Lethe nodded his head, following the
house-senior back downstairs.
Trip to
On the payphone in the front hallway, Lethe called
Julian to tell him how crummy his life was living in a halfway house. He tried to make Julian feel guilty about conspiring
with his father.
“What
else was I supposed to do?” Julian
asked, defensively.
“You
could’ve let me stay at your place.”
“No—it
wouldn’t have worked out.”
“Why
not?”
“Because
I’m living with a girlfriend.”
“So?”
“What’s
wrong with the recovery home?”
“Everyone hates me
here. One of them says I stole his
sugar.”
“And?”
“I thought it was
communal sugar. How was I supposed to
know?”
Julian
was cursed with a brooding conscience.
He felt guilty for dropping Lethe off in
But midway through
the trip, Julian started brooding again.
Maybe
“Why are you turning the car around?” Lethe asked, anxiously.
“We can’t do this, I forgot, Scar Face is a
stoner. There’ll be drugs all over his
house.”
“So? Who cares?”
“You’ll want to get
high.”
“I just want to see
my old buddy. That’s all. I’m not planning on getting stoked.”
Lethe sounded
genuinely upset. Julian was being swayed
to feel guilty in his favor. The
Volkswagen Bug advanced through a hilly, wooded area with flowering oaks, date
palms and eucalyptus trees growing on the edge of the forest. Small ranch homes appeared tucked inside
canopies of wilderness. Scar Face’s
rented bungalow, basking in a pool of sunshine, looked quaint and restful, like
a traveler’s oasis. Lethe got out of the
car and knocked on the front door.
Julian hung back, brooding over his big mistake.
Nobody answered the
front door. They went around back to see
if anyone was home; the sliding door was unlocked. Without hesitation, Lethe walked inside. Julian followed, cautiously.
“Scar Face?”
“You in there?”
“Heeeellooo?”
But nobody
answered. The house was in a disrupted state—drawers
flung open, dirty silverware, dirty plates out on the counter, an empty pizza
box in the sink, the television on. The
curtains were swaying from a breeze through an open window. The moss-green carpet in the living room
looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years.
Empty beer cans littered the floor.
A cat sneaked into
the kitchen to see where the noises were coming from. Lethe continued to search the rooms with
Julian following closely behind him. One
of the bathroom lights was on, with an open tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush
lying out. Long strands of black hair
were clinging to the toilet bowl, bathmat and shower. At the end of the hall was Scar Face’s room
with the small church organ in view of the doorway. On top of the organ, a small plastic fan was
running.
“Watch out.” Lethe said to Julian.
“What?”
“There’s a snake on
his bed.”
“Jesus Christ, that
thing scared the shit out of me.”
Lethe guffawed.
“Can we just get out
of here?”
“First I want to
check the basement.”
They followed the
stairs down into the basement and groped for a light switch in the dark. Lethe felt a string with his fingertips and
pulled. Julian remained on the stairs.
Heaped in the dusty
shadows of the
“It’s a chemical imbalance in your brain,” he
heard his psychiatrist’s voice.
"Why not leave the room? Go to the park, a short walk down our
street. The fresh air is good.” The Senora said.
“It’s in the papers you signed. I can show you . . .” The Director . . .
“Don’t you dare come in here Lethe Bashar.” His mother . . .
“Keep the smoke inside your lungs.”
“Your mother brought you some candy.”
“Come up to the front of the room and
demonstrate to the class how this problem is done.”
“Crackhead.
Crackhead.”
“I think I need some dope.”
“Leeeeeeth!”
The caretaker was calling him from the other room.
Lethe dug his hands
into the black, frizzy hair and matted dreadlocks. Scar Face’s body wriggled loose, unfurling
from the fetal position. His countenance
awoke, the shadows under his nostrils disappeared. Obscene laughter came out of his mouth.
“What?”
“There’s something
important I need to tell you.”
Lethe stopped.
“The residents have
been complaining about your behavior,” Walter stuffed his hands into his
pockets. “The house voted 14-2 to have
you dismissed.”
“FANTASTIC!”
“I’m sorry, Lethe.”
“What are you sorry
about? It’s not your fault. When do I
have to be out of here?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“That soon, huh?”
“Sorry Lethe. Those are the rules.”
Walter hated to do
this sort of thing. He really liked
Lethe. He didn’t want to be the one to
have to tell him to leave the halfway house. That night Walter went through his collection
of Grateful Dead bootlegs and took out his favorite show,
The next morning
Walter woke up and made coffee. Lethe
was lugging his army duffle bag into the front room.
“You can have some of
my coffee if you want. The sugar’s on
the counter.”
“Thanks.” Lethe poured a cup and went into the garage
to smoke a cigarette.
Walter followed, “I
forgot to tell you something last night . . . I’m the one who’s responsible for
getting you kicked out.”
“Oh.” Lethe blew smoke rings. He didn’t really care anymore.
“Before you leave, I
want to give you something.” Walter
handed Lethe a CD.
“What
is it?”
“A
Grateful Dead bootleg. But don’t open it.”
“I don’t
understand. Why are you giving me a
Grateful Dead bootleg?”
“It’s my favorite
show,
Without
thinking, Lethe opened the case; five one-hundred dollar bills sprang out.
“My
wages from the last two weeks—I told you not to open it. That money’s also for you.”
“Don’t
you need this money?”
“I
have an inheritance coming from my grandmother when she dies. Plus, the Church says we’re not supposed to
have too much money.”
Lethe
took one more glance at the makeshift lounge.
The second-hand couches were bursting at the seams.
“Why
don’t you buy a bus ticket with the money?”
Walter asked.
“And go where?”
“Have you ever been
to
“No.”
“Not a bad place to
be if you have loose morals. . .”
A smile appeared on
Lethe’s face. He went to get his duffle
bag.
Copyright 2008.
By CRA.
To visit the writer’s website go to