American Genius: A Comedy Page 32

  Egypt is the world's largest producer of high grade, long staple cotton, most grown near the Nile Delta, and maintaining the quality of its higher grades has been troublesome; the U.S. imports considerable amounts of it for making thread, lace, and tire cord. Foreign imports, from China, India, and the Far East, have vastly changed the U.S. textile industry, and now mill workers in North Carolina can't find work. Imports drastically affected my father and uncle's business, which was why it wasn't an option for me when I finished college, even though my brother hadn't taken his place in it, but business was bad, it wasn't encouraging, and I hadn't wanted to design fabrics and sell them then, which I regret.

  I looked again at the Fabric Monolith, with its plenty of secrets.

  The following morning, I didn't go to breakfast, I didn't want conversation, contentious or pacific, I didn't want to leave my bed, I wasn't very hungry, I ate a navel orange and banana, and knew there'd be lunch, usually the poorest meal of the day, but edible and eaten in private. The radio voices complained and joked, anonymous company, harbingers or bearers of bad news, prejudice, and expert advice or ignorance. I didn't attend breakfast all week after the seance and, like some of the former residents, entered the dining room when no one was likely to be around, no residents or staff, in order to forage food, so that I wouldn't go hungry until lunch. Dinnertime during that week, the third in the cook's cycle, was subdued, even though the Turkish poet, Contesa, Spike, Henry, and Arthur were in residence, and though there was the usual banter, benign grumbling about the lunches, especially from the demanding man, and the appearance of a few new residents, who blended into the walls, whose acquaintance I didn't want to make, though they appeared to be lively under their skins. After dinner, I hastened to the sanctity of my bedroom, which isn't mine forever. Life, and everything in it, is temporary, and this oppressive, venerable fact I reckon with and contest daily, if subliminally, and, in a modest, morose manner, attack, which doesn't afford peace.

  When I'm at home, I may hold my young wild cat, if he allows it, and, especially when he lies near or on my face and I inhale his familiar musty male feline smell, I feel calm, content and also able to recall the family cat, with her kittens, but not the one who died at birth who lay near her and her other healthy kittens, wrapped in a small piece of black wool. I rub my face against my cat's coal black fur, soft as cashmere, and if loose fur doesn't enter my nostrils and cause me to sneeze, after which he cries-my sneezing upsets him-the cat is a temporary consolation, and when I tuck him even closer in my arms, he objects, usually quickly, and leaps off the bed. When the family cat was given away and killed, because it ate my parakeet, a creature I didn't care about, though it had once jumped into my soft-boiled egg in a small, white bowl, endearingly, I was allowed to adopt a homeless, six-month old pregnant mixed-breed dog, around the time my brother disappeared. I had my dog for nine years, but I've never had another dog, because there can be no other dog but her, or I don't deserve another, since, if I had protected my dog, if I'd been aware, not lost in myself, my parents wouldn't have been able to give her away and kill her, for which I take the blame. I feel sorry for people who treasure their furniture more than animals or for people who are allergic to them, since people live longer who have an animal to pet and love, to be in sympathy with, but some people don't want the bother, have never liked animals, or care more about material possessions and how they appear to others and to themselves than longevity. Allergies are different from intolerances, real food allergies are rare, but here many believe they are allergic to various foods, including milk, which is extremely rare, though some have trouble digesting it; if there is an allergy, an allergic reaction, mild or severe, proceeds, because the immune system is involved, while it's not involved if a person is intolerant of, or just sensitive to, a food group. Intolerance to foods or food idiosyncrasies, as health professionals lately designate food sensitivities, are reactions and discomforts but not allergies, since allergens are not involved, and many believe they are sensitive, women especially like to think they're sensitive. I don't care who sees my black, second-hand, two-seat modernist couch, which my young wild cat recognized as his scratching post and whose raised one hundred percent wool upholstery he ripped, fabric I selected in ecstasy at a warehouse of sumptuous textiles, many of which I touched and smelled, I won't let any people enter my apartment, since my young wild cat might claw them badly and then they might insist I have him put down, or they might imagine they understand me or can defend themselves from me, by what I have on my walls, shelves, and with which furniture I surround myself.

  The next week, I returned to my usual schedule, needing regularity in most things, and it was on this day that, after breakfast, which the head cook prepared, because the assistant cook was ill again, so the head cook was annoyed to be on duty, though she would, we residents now knew with certainty, retire soon, the Magician left. He said he had been doing a flyby, and moments before he left I urged him again to tell me what he'd done, especially to me but also to the Count, during the seance, but he persisted in saying everything that happened I'd wanted to happen, with no coaxing from him, and I don't believe him, so, even if my father appeared, which I question, though it was my wish, he was dead, nothing had changed, but that wasn't the Magician's fault. The Magician shook his head ruefully and told me I didn't understand. The Count was no longer in residence and couldn't argue. The young married man, who didn't appear as content again, but who still liked everything the kitchen presented, left a week and a day after the seance, that is, last night, a Sunday night, Sunday can be the worst day here, and Sunday dinners are often the worst of the dinners.

  This morning, when I rushed into the breakfast room, past the two disconsolate young women, who were both in their pajamas, apparently in distress, I didn't hesitate to ignore them, not engage in their business, especially because they sat near new residents who might be stuck in time or who believed themselves ahead of it, since time was and always is of the essence, time's in everything, it provokes currents and forms in design, it resides in art and history, but I was hungry, nearly late, and feared that the head cook wouldn't allow me breakfast, because she doesn't like me or any of us. After I rushed into the kitchen and printed my order, smiling at the cook, so that I might not earn any more of her wrath, but barely looking at the kitchen helper, though he looked at me, the Magician waved me over to his table, and it was then he told me he was leaving, his work here was done, but since he's an obituary writer, I couldn't imagine what work he'd accomplished, except maybe the seance, which I discounted, and it was at that moment I received his disappointing answer. When he arose, the Magician rang a bell and announced to all assembled that he was about to make himself disappear, which he accomplished by walking out of the dining room. I felt the need to accomplish something, having spent the previous week indifferently or unremarkably, though deliberately so. For instance, empty headed, I rocked and swung in a decent copy of an American swinging porch chair, the original dates from the 1920s, while the snow melted incrementally from the main house's roof and icicles cracked and dropped, and also I reclined on a 1940s leather couch in the library, but didn't read or listen to music, and watched other residents, surreptitiously. I slept at all hours, day and night, in my room, exhausted, as if recovering from major surgery, an amputation of some sort. In the evenings, before dinner, I telephoned my mother's companion and listened most carefully to every complaint, to the nuances and shadings in her voice to detect a reason sufficient for her to abandon my mother, because it can be exhausting to tend a person who asks the same question over and over, or believes she's lost a ten dollar bill, when she hasn't and yet searches, agitated, all day for it, or, worse, a necklace she never owned, and the whole day frets about where it might have gone, since it must be found, and then she wakes up with it on her mind, and if you say it's a fantasy or a dream, she is insulted and furious. These problems might require my return to the place I call home, and, against my will and desire, to bea
r the weight of my mother's care, relinquishing some of my liberty. People move in with their ailing, aging parents, some sacrifice their lives, in a sense, but I'm incapable of it, though in another society with other customs I might, as I might also have eaten human flesh in a ritual ceremony or walked ten paces behind my husband, but in America, where I'm at liberty to make my own mistakes in marriage, which I have, a woman's walking behind men has never been required, probably because of the need for their labor from the start, while, in the Donner Pass, westward-bound settlers who followed a little-used route to California, trapped by snow, cold, starving, and near-mad, ate human flesh. After the Magician, I also left the breakfast room, stopping to make an appointment with the Turkish poet and Spike for drinks after dinner, but Contesa said, reticently, that she was already engaged. "A sweet date?" the Turkish poet asked, teasing her and me, "is it a sweet Medjool date?" Contesa paid no attention to his insinuation, but it awakened something in me, and, later, when no one was around, I walked to the kitchen.

  I like to make any fresh start on Monday mornings, and a few weeks later, on a Monday, I decided on a strenuous, long walk, since usually I don't walk after breakfast, but instead return to the room where I sleep or to the room where I take apart objects and place them in different configurations on the floor, burn old notes and useless designs, or study Zulu and read about chairs, or dwell on some event in or theory about American history, which lies in wait of contemporary interest and whose avid pursuit was once mine. Against myself, another freedom, after changing into suitable hiking boots, appropriate jacket, heavier all-cotton pants and sweater, risking disdain by approaching the head cook to request my lunch in advance, a cheese or turkey sandwich on dry whole-wheat bread and an apple, which she reluctantly dispensed, never looking at me, I walked into a woods in which I'd never ventured and followed a trail I'd never taken with a destination I didn't know. Spring was finally coming, the ground and snow melting lazily, the cloudless sky a poignant, pale blue, while the morning sun burnished the ground, so that I had to shield my eyes from the glare of the last snows which cloaked some of the treetops and still lay on the fields and had forced most creatures into their hiding places, though there was the occasional chipmunk to whom I spoke that as usual scurried away. The sun's rays flared and warmed me, spring warmed me, and I hoped to be alert to my surroundings, part of my renewal strategy on this Monday. A medium-size black bird alighted on a branch and two gray ones, mourning doves, I hoped, streaked across the pale sky, Birdman would have easily recognized the birds, and the farther I walked the less I knew where I was because soon the main house wasn't in sight. In the distance, three deer leaped across my path, a family, sudden and surprising, they stood still for a while, but when I began to approach, they fled, their forelegs kicking in the air like merry-go-round horses. I meant to walk swiftly, until my heart pounded, my leg muscles stretched and loosened, and I tired. Aerobic exercise raises endorphin levels, I've occasionally experienced its benefits, while the tall balding man who runs twenty miles a day and sweats profusely experiences it daily, though it doesn't seem to make him sanguine, unless lust or appetite signals optimism, even when his numerous loves disappoint, which he may desire, as it frees and confirms him, so I walked quickly, then slowed down to pay attention to the vegetation and growth, so my desires were split, I couldn't have them simultaneously. I walked on the path, not fully aware of my surroundings, since I was distracted and didn't know how to be what I wasn't. Tree branches and pine cones littered the way, encrusted in some packed-down snow, melting less because the tall trees hid the sun, and sometimes I slid or slipped. Deer might have leaped across the field, or a pair of mourning doves, who mate for life, might have sailed above me, patterns of brown and gray against a pale blue sky, but I was concentrating on the ground under my feet. Then, before me, about twenty feet ahead, I saw a large clearing and the dregs of a campfire, with some fire or red embers, and knew a person or two must be around, so I turned and looked in all directions, and saw no one, but at the campsite, near the fire, I noticed its almost-burnt configuration, resembling the Count's firebuilding method, since four of its ash-white logs were stacked just as he would have done, at least it appeared to me.

  The Count hadn't disappeared, he'd fled and found residence in a woodland setting, and, since it was daytime, he would he asleep in a cave or under shrubbery, ferns, and his own blankets or in a sleeping bag. The Count's unexplained departure left unresolved more than is usual, usually almost everything is left unresolved, but thinking the Count was asleep nearby placated and also aroused my imagination, though imagination is hampered by its imaginer's limits. The Count's seizure or paroxysm may have been fantastic, crotchety, a delirium, or poetic inspiration-furor poeticus-and, if so, it might approach genius, according to Kant; however, superstition may be compared, he says, with insanity. Kant's Classification of Mental Disorders was on a library shelf and now lies under my bed, unless the housekeepers have moved it, and I don't subscribe to all his categories, superstition, for one thing, can't be insanity, since too many people are; I won't walk under ladders, open an umbrella indoors, or toss a hat on a bed, all of which I heard about and with no reason adopted for myself, so perhaps this is insane, or maybe "normal" comprises a wider range than he thought, since to him "brooding over a spouse's death is utter madness." My mother has brooded over my father's death for many years, with cessations, but grief thrives in her days and nights, and she is not mad, but lonely without her husband and suffering from brain damage, whose cause is organic and unknown, like most of the workings of the brain, while I also brood over dead friends, and I'm not insane, or, if I am, according to Kant's precepts, it doesn't matter to me.

  Across from the near-dead campfire, I sat upon on a large, flat, gray boulder, or natural chair, shaped like an ellipse, at whose center was an indentation appropriate for a human bottom. I gazed into the vast woods, the rotund fir trees, other trees whose branches looked forlorn though some buds and new leaves were evident, while I listened for the woods' sneaky inhabitants, and also looked out for hungry wolves in packs and prowling black bears, since even mountain lions are known in these parts. The brisk wind rustled and shook the trees and solid chunks of old snow fell randomly, black and brown birds shrieked into the sky, then settled elsewhere, chipmunks scampered from one hiding place to another, the forest's floor was alive but ninety-five percent was invisible to me, and soon the fire's embers were dead. It must have been around noon, the sun was directly above, its rays filtered and thwarted by the tall trees, but in my fleece-lined hiking jacket, with its stiff collar that sometimes irritated my skin and my battleship-gray cashmere scarf wrapped about my head and neck, where most warmth leaves the body, I wasn't cold. My thick-soled, ankle-high, waterproof hiking boots, lined with flannel and sheepswool, are functional, occasionally itchy and even too hot, but not on this hike. The Count sleeps all day, so it was senseless to wait for him, and he'd fled to the vast woods, because he didn't want to see people, which I respected, since often I don't want to see people, like at breakfast, so then I lie in bed, though seeing the Count now would be different. I ate the lackluster turkey sandwich and listened to the silence, the wind, the birds whose names I didn't know, and saved the shiny Macoun apple for later.

  The woods stretched ahead, like the universe, with no time and no horizon line to sever sky from earth, only irregular treetops that pointed to the atmosphere which turned lighter and lighter, until there was no color, or white, an absence, or just endlessness. I walked to my own rhythm with an old ditty circling in mind: White is zero, black ten, all the colors, red five, orange four, and pale blue three, paler blue two. Number one? Off-white, a creamy white, there are many whites, or absences, many shades of black, when the entire spectrum is present, so that two whites look strange against each other, two blacks, also. White is zero, black is ten, pink three, yellow three also, and shocking pink slides into number four territory, ordinarily claimed by orange and some shades of green,
though green is usually a six, lime green may be five. Real red like my mother's lipstick is five. Pink is three, orange four, and I repeated numbers and colors as I walked farther into the woods with no fear or sense of mission and time. Occasionally, I hoped something, even I, might give the walk substance and shape, the way a designer constructs a chair to communicate an idea, like a chair by the Eameses, though a designed object also refers to its maker, marks its author, but if I were a Transcendentalist, any walk, a walk itself, in nature might have meaning. I didn't feel this, I was a solitary walker on a path whose direction I followed because it was there, and I wasn't prepared to machete under- and overgrowth, chop down fir trees and shrubs, which is probably illegal in this region and will bring trouble, to forge a new trail, so I was aimlessly treading a well-worn path in the woods, a picture of anonymity or an unrecognizable object, and, if photographed from high above, just a splotch or blot on the forest floor, if that. Discovering the Count in hiding near the community could give me purpose, depending upon what I make of it, what interpretation I pursue or how I bring the news to the community, particularly Contesa, if I do tell her, but I'll mark it, as I do him, so this walk differs from others. If his comedy and tragedy genuinely engages mine, though lately I want to sunder relationships and take things apart, then leave them in desuetude, a true connection has asserted itself. Aqua can be four and sometimes three, a light shade of brown is seven, darker eight, and a brown-black will be nine, while navy blue is always nine, royal blue eight, and if I'd gone into my father's business, I'd have concentrated on the spectrum of colors and sinuous threads, I'd have spent hours handling cloth and smelling it, counting warps and weaves, as I designed and manufactured textiles, since people need clothes, the way they need food and shelter, though what kinds, what styles, and consumed for what intentions, aren't simple, so people budget, steal, or spend inordinate amounts of time and money, expending furies of anxiety and plenty of hope on their selections, though everything is temporary and inconclusive. Clearly, the Count must have run from the seance into the woods, after gathering his necessities, right after the paranormal event, which I'd mostly forgotten, but now it assumed a funny but confusing face-Moira's. I beheld that odd inquisitive woman, destiny, and heard her vivacious, rolling voice: "We all wish to speak to the dead. It's a universal wish." I cringed or started, and looked everywhere around me, but Moira wasn't there. Often I see faces, the dead and living who aren't present, I conjure them, but this is normal, since normal vision fuses incoming sensation with internally generated sensation, when the brain fills in what it's used to seeing or expects to see, which encouraged a vision scientist to conclude, "In a sense, we are all hallucinating all the time," and this explains the haplessness of police line-ups and eyewitness accounts, their innate tendency to inaccuracy, but Leslie Van Houten's complicity was never in doubt, just the measure of her guilt. I've never before had an auditory hallucination, if hearing Moira's voice was one, though it seemed to come from outside me, raising several kinds of doubt, but I hadn't willed it, unless I had, since it's hard discerning a thought from a desire. I might have been thinking aloud, I must have been. It was about 2 or 3 p.m., the sun hung closer to the west, still bright. Wishing on a star is a childish impulse, but I gave in to that wish and, reluctantly, might again, because of a slim hope unknowable forces might help me, there's nothing lost in doing it, except the future of hope's credibility; still, my impulses and desires have left ruinous monuments in their wake. Attending the seance qualified as an impulse, and, even if the seance was unsettling at the time, it was an experience I must have wanted, though I'd never wished for it, didn't ratify it, and, anyway, haven't thought much about it, because there's no place to store it, since a mental apparatus I don't choose-about most things I have no choice-decides its fate, along with other stark, improbable events I can't categorize and remember. Before the seance started, I recalled the tarot card reader's prophesy, which I discount and yet can't forget, hope against hope, to overcome an obstacle or encounter a person who will change my life. Now, "Everyone wishes to speak to the dead" had lodged itself, and so, the odd inquisitive Moira, whom I didn't like, resided in me.