Lynne Tillman - Cast in Doubt

I thrust the papers up, holding them at arm’s length to the sun, to benefit from its natural light. I thought I might see through them another message, a code that could not be read on first glance, especially in her room. It was dark as a cave in Smitty’s room. But I see nothing, just that the paper is cheap stationery. I scratch my brow and walk back into her room, look around furtively, to see if, with another stroke of fate, some other bit of evidence would make itself known to me. I wait in silence. I am not sure how many minutes pass. But I wait, conscious of time whiling away as I stand in near darkness. And then it happens, again, a stroke of luck or good fortune: a streak of light pierces the darkness through a crack in the French doors and settles on one of the black walls. I walk over to the lighted area and scrutinize it. I discern that the forms Helen has painted are rather crudely drawn cartoons of male and female genitalia. I stare at these for a while, shocked, I suppose, by the girl’s boldness — and wit. Yes, wit. They are witty drawings in their way, now that I can see them. In shocking pink — chalk, I believe the medium is. Chalk. Then I become sensible again of the stench and decide to leave, to return another day, perhaps, should it be necessary. I have no idea what is producing the smell.

I am satisfied, even fulfilled, for it seems to me clear that Helen has left all this for me. It was her way, I told myself, her young way, to leave abruptly, to split, not to explain but also not to be truly angry, as I had feared and expected. Helen is not really obvious, though she may appear vulgar or crude to one less accustomed than I to the terrible power of the imagination — and to its necessary excesses. It is true I was shocked by some of what I found. The disarray could be understood merely as disarray as poor childhood training even, as youthful revolt, but I am determined to find its sense and reason. And I am assured that she understood that I would recognize this, it, and would have gotten it — felt, as John put it the other night, the groove, or gotten with the groove, I forget which. But most important, and with this I breathed deeply and exhaled fully, surely I knew where she had gone, which had been the intention of my mission. The dot on the map signaled the spot she’d traveled to or, I ventured inwardly as I descended the rotten staircase, it is where the Gypsy woman has taken her — to her home, there to initiate Helen into the mysteries.

Yet, and this is a strange matter, I who am so curious, I who desire nothing if not to know every secret, I was suddenly not certain if I ought to pursue her and whether I ought not to be a little afraid. Of Helen, that is. Though I was certain I would detect an underlying structure, if I thought hard enough, even in her abysmally messy room, there was still evidence of a mind and a life that was foreign to me, more foreign to me than the Greeks. While I knew that Helen was a member of a new breed, that realization, which I’d had early, had been an abstract idea in many ways. When we were together, though we often disagreed, or rather, though I talked and she listened, so that I often did not know her opinion, I did not doubt that I had made an impression upon her. And I also believed that in our souls we were in deep and profound unity. Why I thought this I am not sure, but as I have written elsewhere, she was, I assumed, like me. And again, her youth was an advantage all to itself, her youth and that special androgynous quality of hers that I find and found so compelling. Like that of an angel.

Still, however I regarded her, I had new information. Helen with the Gypsies, Helen living like a Gypsy, as my father would have put it, Helen living in filth and in a kind of insane condition, Helen drawing penises and vaginas in pink chalk on black walls. FUCK EVERYTHING! OEDIPUS WRECKS! And I suppose I must admit that Helen’s being female was a new element in the equation or puzzle. It is not that I had not already noticed and regarded her as a young woman. That was and is obvious. But she was acting in ways that I did not expect from a young woman, as free of that particular bias as I had conceived myself. Thinking this, I began to feel, with some anger and anxiety, that I had more in common with Alicia than I had imagined.

Perhaps Helen’s relationship with the Gypsy woman, for instance, was one that was essentially feminine in nature, which I would have scant access to. But this mental perambulation smacked of magic, witches and superstition, and I rejected this idea quickly, for if Helen was anything, she was not a woman in stereotypical ways, nor would she attend covens. Unless it was a club. I did know this. It must have been the thoroughgoing extent of her wildness that confused me momentarily. Yes, her wildness.

But I realized and had to laugh to myself about my own peculiar and old-fashioned ideas about women, hidden and buried though they were, in the way that what one learns early usually is. Consciously I didn’t accept any of this trite or pernicious thinking any more than I believed that blacks were an inferior race. Still, certain responses are atavistic, and because they are recessive and deep inside one, when they emerge from places that are untouched by reason and education, they are revelatory and must be considered.

But ought I go south? I would never under any circumstances mix with voodoo practices, for instance, not because I believe in voodoo’s power, but because I don’t. That may be a paradox.

Order out of chaos, I tell myself, as I contemplate my return to the harbor — as I’ve said, I always imagine where I am going before I set off — for if one looks rigorously, one finds meaning even in chaos. One must be able to envision in chaos an emergent and eventual form. That is, one must be capable of divining an inspired plan; there is always a plan, a map, beneath the most inchoate formlessness.

I place Helen’s messages in my shirt pocket and look about as if I am being watched. But I am not being watched, at least not by creatures I can recognize; later I felt foolish that I had carried a knife with me. A kitchen knife at that. I march out the door, through the heavy gate and toward the restaurant, to look for Gwen, who, I still hoped, would be at my restaurant, to be my ballast if not my oracle or sphinx. For surely the interpretation of OEDIPUS WRECKS in regard to Smitty called for the wisdom of a sphinx.

Gwen was sitting at my table, drinking my white wine. That doesn’t call for a sphinx, Lulu, she interjected wryly. Maybe a shrink. Sphinx me another drink, Gwen went on, or I may shrink right here in front of you like the incredible shrinking man. Gwen had been reading an out-of-date New York Times , amusing herself with the horrible news, she said. I refilled her glass, as she had asked me to do, and continued to tell her what I had seen.

I was shaken, more shaken even than I knew. I must have looked pale, white as a ghost — I am never robust though I take the sun — but Gwen didn’t seem to acknowledge my shattered state. I know I was shattered, devastated, but perhaps I did not communicate that — one wears masks, after all. I wrote about it not long after.

Gwen claimed that she had not seen me walk around the harbor, the untruth of which I discovered later, to my chagrin, but that is Gwen. She does not ever simply react. She chooses her time. It was probably not the right time for her in many ways, and it certainly wasn’t mine. With Helen’s notes in my pocket, over my heart, I experienced an uncanny sensation — that my chest was on fire, or that my heart was burning inside me, and that racing so quickly, it had turned to flame, pure heat. My head was hot, my arms and back cold, and I longed to jump into the sea with all my clothes on. I tried to pay full attention to Gwen, but all the while I had to restrain myself from leaping into the cool waters, to quench that inner bodily fire.