American Genius: A Comedy Read online

  Beauty is disputed, its relevance to society, whose values are temporary, beauty rises and falls like stock on Wall Street, since its fate is tied to the changing shape of history, crafted by good and bad times and events, and it's either an impediment or an incitement, since it's always arguable how beauty behaves and functions, for what reasons, yet it instills itself, with reasonable and unreasonable demands, holds sway or merely creates an insistent pressure. I have renounced its claims and been possessed and dispossessed by it, or I have embraced it as a renegade, disruptive hero. Once I carved the word beauty into a large bar of Ivory soap and floated the soap in a bath of hot water to efface the letters, it was beautiful. Once I wrote the word beauty a thousand times on a greenboard, but the word didn't become nonsense. Once, late at night, I shouted the word beauty over and over, it never sounded ugly to me, and oddly I could repeat it again and again without its becoming nonsense; it's only a word I said to myself, but I couldn't negate what had happened, because I can't pretend something didn't happen. I told myself it was because the concept joins to something beyond me or so much a part of me I couldn't recognize it, maybe an obstacle to my peace of mind. I like beautiful faces, though what kinds I think beautiful may not be anyone else's, yet often they are, so a perplexing consensus on beauty, when its value is regularly disputed, begets trouble. History is not beautiful, not elegant, the way design and formulae can be. I prefer a beautiful chair and beautiful skin and beautiful fabric. In a corner of my sleeping room, like a soldier, stands a bolt of beautiful fabric, which my father and his beloved brother designed and manufactured. Golden threads are woven through it, a silk and nylon material, Junior may once have carried it in his sturdy arms, and the fabric shimmers when sunlight hits it or when at night I shine my lamp on it. I call it the "Fabric Monolith," at attention and on duty near my bed where I sleep, sometimes fitfully, an object never done but complete in itself, and, in a sense, finished. I have thought of designing and commissioning a shirt from it, but then I would have to undo the bolt, worse, cut into it with big scissors, in the process ruining the integrity of the Fabric Monolith, which may never have been unrolled, except in the presence of my father, his brother, their salesmen, and junior. Now I long to unfurl it across a long, wide, wooden worktable and hear the whooshing noise it emits when it breathes, but I don't. I satisfy myself by imagining it, I can always imagine it without ever ruining it.

  I propel my body off the bed, Where does this will come from? castigating myself for malingering when the promise of mail, drinks, and dinner awaits. Like breakfast, dinner is a complicated affair but, unlike breakfast, the meals are inconsistent, the quality varies widely, they are rarely good, though not regularly as poor or inadequate as lunch consistently is. At dinner, a hot meal is expected, and the head cook is even more constrained by everyone's diets, allergies, and preferences, which are both frivolous and serious, for a diet lacking in Vitamin D will cause rickets or defective bone growth in children, insufficient B1, or thiamin, appetite loss, beri beri, and nervousness, a deficiency in Vitamin E causes sterility in rats and possible sterility in humans, but here many take vitamins, though I imagine the bulimics among us disgorge any nutritional benefits after eating. Of the three meals, dinner most challenges the head cook's capacity to meet, with flavorful, variegated dishes, the residents' diverse tastes, needs, and desires, but a rumor persists that she is leaving, since she has been working a long time, she is past retirement age and pleasing fewer and fewer residents, whom, over time, she views as disagreeable. During dinner, in the same room where breakfast is served, but with a different atmosphere, the lights are lower, because I lower them, disliking the harsh glare of electricity and also publicity, people talk about their day or don't, but most tell stories. Residents are more expansive at dinner than breakfast, and I listen attentively for the eruption of the unanticipated, an exceptional reminiscence, attitude, or behavior that enlivens and affects me, even with consequence. Though this hardly happens, it has, and, at the time, the moment appeared not to have contained a direct consequence, so I was unaware of its potential for harm, as when I spurned the callow advances of a man, who'd sent me a lurid seduction note that accomplished its opposite, but he made sure I'd suffer for my lack of interest, which mission he accomplished stealthily, so our dinner talk and my subsequent rejection had consequence. He is now an enemy, but he behaved dramatically, and a man who would seek revenge and hurt a woman who wouldn't consent to have sex with him is oddly impressive. Revenge is a great motive and regularly indispensable for drama, and, if I ever see him again, especially here, it will be uncomfortable, but I'll pretend I don't know what he has accomplished and be kinder to him than he has reason to expect and for which he might feel unworthy and have sleepless nights. Health professionals, medical doctors, and laypeople have long recognized the importance of restful sleep. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., quoted in How To Sleep and Rest Better, lived by this single rule: "I do not permit myself to look at a timepiece after retiring at night," and I remembered the Count, who surrounded himself with timepieces and looked at them for consolation, but then he didn't retire at night, he arose. Going to bed should never be used as a punishment, the manual says, yet I trust the vengeful man's sleep will be shattered by punitive dreams in which he is rejected constantly, and though cognizant that such a vicious hope might rebound in my own sleep and distress it, I can't stop myself. "Go confidently in the directions of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined," Henry David Thoreau extolled, and I would prefer to be an exalted American dreamer. My mother's sleep is poor, in the middle of the night she awakens not knowing night from day, in thrall to devastating dreams in which she is again with her husband, he's alive, he's waiting for her in the car someplace she can't find, her sister is alive, her brothers, she's with her mother, no one is dead, her dream life is indistinguishable in her damaged brain from a waking reality that includes death, so she is often fearful and confused, and no one can help her when she awakens at 3 a.m. believing that she's not in her own bedroom, that she is a prisoner, and in a way she is, but not imprisoned by anyone, though she can't leave. Unlike Leslie Van Houten my mother has never been in jail, but she can imagine and fear it, the way Kafka did but not Genet.

  Rattled, though wanting to live a life I might imagine, but haven't yet, and to escape myself, in seconds I throw on my thick, all-cotton black trousers and a real red cashmere cardigan sweater, and, with what I believe to be a determined air, quit the sleeping room to engage society again until I may return to this room and sleep unimpinged by its demands. There are loose ends, my mother loses a stitch and picks it up, I lose the will to resolve a problem, then pick it up the next day. Before dinner, when a productive or nonproductive day is nearly done, I can have a drink, often a Campari and soda, for my nervous stomach, my second heart, and read the newspaper, since I remain attached to the world and remote events, which may or may not have significance or consequence to me, like the relationship of the tall balding man and the disconsolate woman, anorectic and psoriatic, and others I notice, who should have no real interest for me, and, still, because I'm discontent or in need of distraction from worse contemplations, I pay a subversive's attention. There is a half hour before dinner, and the main room or lounge is almost empty of people, few residents have arrived, they include the dour man and fretful woman, with whom I have no relationship, or enmity, and to whom I nod and walk past, addressing myself only to the mail room at the side of the main hall. It is larger than a spacious walk-in closet, and once inside this simple enclosure, I have minutes alone to experience hope or disappointment, since mail or no mail is a daily fate. In the wooden slot, with "Helen" marked on it, there is a square, kelly green envelope and a postcard. I open the envelope, invariably it's envelopes first, the envelope's pale green letter contains a one-line question: "Where Were You When It Happened?" The alarming words were printed by a person with sloppy penmanship, which is common, since a neat hand no longer matters and few write by hand, as
I don't. My mother learned a perfect script, but now when she writes, her hand trembles and her words are written by a spider. My father crossed out or wrote over individual letters, to make them clearer, rendering them less readable, but drawing and making graphic the insecurity he felt, and I have often felt, when my mother's handwriting never showed doubt, that it should have, because she killed the cat who loved her more than anyone, to protect me, she explained when I was nine, because the cat had killed my parakeet. I didn't care about my parakeet, and it was soon after my brother left home, before my dog was given to me for Christmas, who was also killed by my parents but for whose sad demise I accept blame. "Where Were You When It Happened?" I read again, and in the closet-like space that smells of pine trees and Murphy's Oil, my skin clamors, my cheeks redden, my nose grows cold, and, quickly, I turn to the second piece of mail for relief from the first, and, as if I'd willed it, which occasionally happens, something I hope for turns up, so I can believe I've caused its appearance, people conjure anything to believe they are in control of their fates, there is a third postcard, this time of a church in Italy, its stamp Italian and franked ten days ago. Typed on its message side, three elliptical sentences: "We are thinking of buying a church. Would you come visit me? I promise you nothing, and everything, too." The familiar, indecipherable, birdlike signature at the bottom, the same as on the other two, might represent two people, or the royal we, so once more I am enmeshed in a serial drama, its welcome embrace, and, instantly, I decide not to think further about its significance but rather to nurse its inscrutable promise. With this third postcard, the series' provocative messages intimated possibility, I could anticipate more treasure as well as cherish the postcards already received from the sender or senders, and, with the third, since good things come in three, though I don't totally subscribe to this, I do usually think it, I may hope for a satisfactory coda.

  Tonight, before dinner, I sit on the plump pillows of a two-seater brocade couch, on impact they make a whooshing sound like the couch in the living room in my family house that was sold against my protests, but I don't have to plump these pillows beneath me now. I reach for the newspaper, scan the headlines of the first section, read all the small items, a man has been indicted for the murder of his female lover, whom he met at a convention for devotees of the 1960s TV show Dark Shadows, then turn to the obituary notices and stock market prices, but in mind I tenderly carry and weigh the image of the scholarly Irishwoman, so when the tall balding man and the disconsolate woman enter, separately but close in time, their intimacy flies around the room with an angel's fragile wings. Now they stand by the fire, not far from me, close to each other, speaking in low tones, as the Count and Contesa emerge through separate, noisy doors. The Count will sit beside me soon enough, and the Turkish poet, who is often late to dinner, which disturbs the staff, especially the head cook, and also Contesa. Though I should resign myself to or accept change, since it's inevitable, and flexibility signifies health in body and mind, though someone who changes too easily is perceived as weak, I dread the arrival of new residents, who may present fresh obstacles, as well as some of the older residents, like the demanding man, who arrives with a sigh and a wave of his hand, so that all will notice him, though most don't. At dinner, he will inevitably grab a chair at any table that has one free. I avoid his company, but it is sometimes thrust on me like a cold. Meanwhile, I discreetly study the fragile couple and new residents who arrived in the afternoon, while I was walking into town, visiting the shop, buying a postcard for the Polish cosmetician, or seeing the kitchen helper and his two buddies, and my dry skin tingles. I sense beet red rouging my cheeks, it could be the heat of the fire, and many here are aware of how sensitive my skin is.

  Without removing her dark glasses and floor-length black fur coat, worn to protect her from the cold, as she is old-school and confirmed in her habits, and, I believe, to annoy the environmentalists and vegetarians, Contesa crooks her index finger and points to a corner of the room, where photographs of local and national birds hang, entreating me into a conspiracy, and, hesitantly I rise, not just because I'm uncertain whether I can manage another conspiracy. I will instantly forfeit my comfortable seat to the dour man and the fretful woman, both shadow my movements and echo them, mimicking me in some way, and, as soon as I rise, with alacrity, they do replace me on the brocade couch. Mentally, I denounce them.

  Contesa has planned an event for the evening, she tells me, ever mischievous, which will happen in the lecture hour after dinner, upstairs in the Rotunda Room above the main hall that has a small stage or raised platform, a reading of her first one-act play on whose creation she has labored in silence, since she wanted to surprise us, the Count and me especially. It's true I desire surprise, but my second heart rebels, my intestines twist slightly, and I blush again, for the play might reveal something I don't want to know or watch. Contesa has enlisted some of the residents, but she won't say whom, as well as others, to play the parts or read them. "You'll have it before your eyes soon enough," she teases, impishly lifting her dark glasses onto the top of her forehead, and her words echo someone else's, but I can't remember whose. We walk to the leather couches where we sit beside each other, while the new arrivals, a sallow, bearded man, who, I learn, is an obituary writer and professional magician, a gregarious, pretty woman, with smooth skin the color of eggplant, a poet and activist, named Rita, or "the saint of lost causes," she explains ironically, and a stout, florid man with a network of broken veins on his bulbous nose, a wine writer and art collector, make conversation with each other. They dot the area of the room near the big fire. Listening to their conversation with my eyes on the floor, I finish my Campari and soda, while Contesa draws out her gin and tonic. The magician has them engrossed in a story about a girl whose mother suddenly disappeared. The police listed the woman as a missing person, and after two years the case was closed. But every night the daughter dreamed her mother was locked up in a place and couldn't move. The nightmare was always the same, and the daughter began to suspect that her mother wasn't missing. One day she remembered that the freezer in the basement was locked, but it hadn't been before her mother's death. So she and her younger sister pried it open, found their mother's body, and went to the police station. Their father confessed to the murder. He had kept her body in the freezer for three years, he explained, because he didn't want to part with her. "Morbid," says Rita, the saint of lost causes. "I'm claustrophobic," says the Wineman. "But you know it gives me faith in people's dreams," says the Magician.

  It is now just past 7:30, and the kitchen helper has entered to announce dinner, he catches my eye slyly, as the Count waits at the doorway of the dining room, staring sympathetically at his gold pocketwatch, and now my skin burns fiercely as if at noon I had stretched out under an August sun. With the announcement, Contesa entwines her arm in mine, and we head toward the dining room. The new residents stroll slowly toward the dining room, and, like most new fellows, two of them hang back, observing the flow and custom of the older residents, and only the stout, florid Wineman or connoisseur has broken away from them to join the other disconsolate woman, they already know each other, since he walks forward with assurance, hovering close to her, and plies her, I believe, with anxious, gratuitous questions, though he might be bringing her news from the outside or spewing his recent biography. When we have entered the dining room, whose lights I discreetly lower, they take seats at a small table near one of the windows, which is close to where I sit, alone for a moment, while the Count and Contesa confer in a corner.

  -Is this table OK? the stout Wineman asks.

  He looks about, so does she, she sees me and nods.

  -Great, she answers.

  I nod to her. The Wineman's fleshy nose is a map of purplish spider veins.

  -I had a stroke last May, he says, loudly. I nearly died.

  -I'm sorry, that's scary.

  With this, he tucks her into her chair.

  -I'm recovered. I just need rest. Want a
glass of wine?

  He sits down.

  -I brought a case of Mouton Rothschild, he says.