Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia

My mother would get that vague, anxious look as she realized she was searching for something that wasn’t there, and then she would forget it, the forgetting, and move on. She just let things go without a fight, and then she was on to the next thing waiting to be forgotten. I could not let go. I started to talk out loud, I shouted, What the hell is her name? sending the now flavorless gum flying out of my mouth. I retrieved the gum with a tissue as I tried not to swerve the car. And then I began to recite the outlines of the memory as if I were pleading a case to the dementia police — I can’t be losing my memory because I can think of Mamie Van Doren, I can think of the breasts of this poor unnamed actress, I can think of her method of death, for God’s sake, I can think of a stupid movie she was in with Tom Ewell. I can think of Tom Ewell. I have, clearly, an excellent memory, it was merely a glitch. Then I tried to do some lateral move, to think of something else. But really, moving on when you were more or less still assigning a portion of your brain to this elusive memory task, it fooled no one. Ada would say, Just look it up, Mom. But that was easy for her and her young, elastic, fearless brain. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t look it up on the Internet Movie Database or Wikipedia or anywhere else.

Ada doesn’t understand why I need to remember every random piece of nonsense — it is almost as if she believes the internet will be her memory. I want to warn her: I’ve been through this with photographs, it just isn’t the same as actually remembering. I see her point about cluttering your brain with easily looked-up trivia, but there are other things I need to remember. Things not found on Wikipedia. I want to remember my mother before she was sick. I want to remember what Ada smelled like when she was a baby, and I want to remember when I began to suspect things weren’t okay with Nik. I want some accounting for my own behavior, and I want the future to have some clarity. I need my memory for all of that to occur. That is why incidents like this one were so critical. If I couldn’t think, on my own, of this actress’s name, I had no hope for any of the rest of it. So I used Calm Focus (memory technique #5). I inhaled and exhaled. I was so close, I felt it, it was almost there. It was like a brain orgasm, the anticipatory sensation I was feeling, a kind of building. Then I got Anna Nicole Smith, and I couldn’t stop thinking of her hard little eyes and her little doll nose and the same chalky pink lipstick, but it wasn’t Anna Nicole Smith, of course, and now I was stuck again, the closeness receding. I had a name, Mamie Van Doren, and a face, the pudgy pretty face of Anna Nicole Smith, but I was further than ever from my actress. In fact I had to keep pushing these other people off my mind. The only way out of this very frustrating trap was to look it up. Defeat, yes, but peace. I took another deep breath. Damn it. Okay, one last recap: Tom Ewell. Cadillac, decapitated. Pool, lips, breasts. Then I saw it, the book with the black-and-white photos, yes, the picture of her and her breasts, yes, closer, yes, no Mamie, no Marilyn, no Anna, no, but Man, yes, yes, Man, Icouldevenseethecoveredstretcherinthephotoas shewastakenfromthesceneof—

Jayne Mansfield! Jayne Mansfield! Jayne goddamn Mansfield!! Yes, yes. Yes.

So there, happy birthday, it was in there somewhere, all of it. Memory of a photo of a woman and, indexed in synapses and dendrites, a name.

The day after birthday night. I spent the evening with my sort-of boyfriend, Jay. He came by after I got home from work, bringing take-out food and a movie. After we ate, he handed me a box neatly wrapped in red paper.

“Gee, what can it be, I wonder?” I said, as I knew what was coming. I unwrapped the package. It was a Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light ™Lamplight Brooke Music Box. The music box was in the shape of a vaguely nineteenth-century streetlamp. A transparent snowy night scene aglow with a sickening preternatually golden light lined the inside of the glass lamp. I laughed — it was impossible not to.

“It’s hideous, wow,” I said.

“Wait, play the music,” Jay said. I turned it over and wound the key. The music started, and the snowy scene was further illuminated from a bulb within. The music, I realized, was “What the World Needs Now.” Of course. This music lamp was not the first Kinkade item Jay had given me. We had been seeing each other only a few months, and I think he had already given me six Kinkade pieces: the Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light ™Hideaway Coffee Mugs (Hideaway being one of the collections — it referred, apparently, to the fatly pastoral cottage engraved into the porcelain), the Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light ™Holiday Lights Animal Holiday Village, the Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light ™Lighthouse Light, several limited-edition picture plates, and one print “painting,” also limited edition, that featured golden highlights actually painted on the print (not, I would guess, by Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light ™himself, but by little indentured gnomes and elves). Jay gave me the first one about a week after our first date. He just gave me the package with no explanation. I unwrapped it and opened the box to reveal this deeply hideous object. He didn’t laugh at all. He pointed out the Certificate of Authenticity. For some reason I loved it. I don’t even particularly like kitschy stuff. Having grown up in a dilapidated house in Hollywood, I liked actual solidly beautiful things. But Jay taught art history at Wake School, an ultra-elite private arts high school in Westwood. And Jay was British. So somehow he became obsessed with Kinkade. When I asked him why Thomas Kinkade, he just said, “Well, he is America’s most successful artist. And a native Californian as well.” Or he would say, “His name has a trademark — see?” and he would point to the subscript that appeared after his name. He was a brand, Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light ™. And I remembered how Nik would always carefully draw his copyright symbol on the hand-made labels of his records. Whatever publishing company name he had for that group and that record would never fail to have that rights-designation insignia. Jay’s arbitrary fixation amused me, and his focus and repetition impressed me. Even the stupidest joke can become funny with enough pointed repetition. Even the most pointless obsession can yield a certain kind of depth if it is pursued unfailingly. Jay was unrelenting in his obsession. He didn’t veer off subject and suddenly start collecting Ronald Reagan Lobby Cards or vintage Mammy Salt Shakers or mint-in-box Dawn Dolls. He brought only Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light ™, and it wasn’t entirely a joke, he really was fascinated by these objects. It actually isn’t arbitrary, is it, a true obsession, although it may appear that way to an outsider. It may even be mysterious to the obsessed person why something grips him so, and that mystery must feed the obsession, increase the profound hold. (Ask someone who is truly obsessed why they feel that way. They will sputter, they will feel you are interrogating their private world, they may spout a list of reasons, but ultimately they can’t fully explain it. Obsession has an irrational or subrational heart. It is a bit like falling in love, I imagine.) And I believe few things are as despicable and dishonest as faking an obsession. The world is full of the lightly obsessed, the faintly committed, the inch-deep dilettantes. All those contrived and affected and presented passions. Jay was authentic; Jay had depth.

I am drawn to obsessives. I’m not one myself, so I can only guess about this stuff — okay, maybe I have obsessions, but mine are useless, neurotic obsessions. I am talking about aesthetic-driven, artistic obsessives. I sure am surrounded by them: Jay, Nik, even Ada in her way.