Lynne Tillman - American Genius - A Comedy

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.

— I'd love it, thanks.

— My son's turned eighteen, lives with my ex-wife in Des Moines, usually. He's the one who found me on the floor, unconscious. I had a seizure.

— That's terrible, but he found you in time. You're lucky.

— I'm alive.

Brusquely, in the manner, it seems, he performs everything, he uncorks the bottle, smells the cork, rolls it in his stubby fingers, pours a splash into his wine glass, swirls the glass, inhales the wine, and drinks, first rolling the wine on his tongue and in his mouth.

— Excellent. Needs to breathe. I think the food here is great compared with other camps I've been-everything but lunch. So, I was in the hospital for three weeks, and they discovered noncancerous polyps.

— You've had your share, she says, drinking greedily. I have asthma.

— I've had three colonoscopies, two angiograms.

— Bodies. I hate bodies, mine especially.

— But I'm good now, I have a clean bill of health. So, what do you think? Like the wine? It's vintage.

— It's great. To health.

She toasts and smiles, shows her red pulpy gums, I'd never seen this solemn twenty-eight-year-old smile broadly, her teeth are uneven and milky gray, as if she hadn't had enough calcium as a child, and, when she smiles, closes her eyes, like an ecstatic or someone who can be happy only when the world is absent. Her lower teeth are especially set back, recessed, which caused her weak chin, I suppose, she couldn't have had braces, orthodontics, as a child, what did her parents think, did they have no money, or didn't believe in straightening teeth, did they think it was just cosmetic, but the face grows with the body, sometimes ahead of it, my nose was suddenly long when I was short, then I shot up, my face filled out, while I lost my puppy fat. Orthodontics might have saved her from this unfortunate structural fault that makes her appear sadder than she may be, because now she hardly smiles, and when she does, displays sickening gums, and I feel an uncomfortable wave of nausea.

My mother often becomes dizzy, but not nauseated, she can barely stand without some dizziness, and when my mother had a seizure, after the first operation on her brain, she sat up in her hospital bed, her head pushed forward, her back bent forward, also, and sewed an invisible cloth, her fingers stitched neatly and never quit moving, in precisely the same way, again and again, seemingly inexhaustible, and she was unseeing, unaware of herself and me, the doctors, she said nothing for hours. Now, when she stands up too quickly, the room whirls pitilessly, her legs weaken under her, she holds her forehead dispiritedly and moans, so I tell her to breathe slowly in and out, count, one, two, three, four, and she does, imitating me like a child, but I have no idea if this actually helps her. In the days before my father died, when his heart failed and he lay in a coma for a day, brain-dead, he recognized trouble, and, ever vigilant about his body and medical condition, in a weak hand he had noted, with few crossings out, his symptoms: 1) I have no appetite, nauseous, 2) some stomach pain (little), 3) sleepy, and, at the top, he wrote: I do not w… He halted then. My father had many fears, of playing the stock market, of heights, of his mother, of incapacitation, of death, as I do, though I believe death is nothing, but then nothing can be frightening when it swallows your days and you don't know where time has gone, which may be why he didn't finish writing the sentence: "I do not w…" I'll never know. On the other side of the note, just a slip of paper, he wrote "wheeze-phlegm-sleeping" and recorded his meds, amiodaroni, lasix, coumadin, lanoxin. My father recognized he was dying, in his last night of consciousness, and he must have been disappointed with himself, afraid and failing again. He admired Winston Churchill, inordinately, for his bravery, and Churchill's final words were, "No more." Before my father fell into a coma from which he never returned, he smiled at his doctor, he was happy to see him, his doctor told me later, maybe he thought he'd beat death, but when my father died, he said nothing.

I notice the Count speaking to one of the new residents, the professional magician and obituary writer, and now he is steering him over. I shift in my chair and arrange the pillow under me, but comfort is not forthcoming, as they are wooden chairs with hard, wooden slats at the hacks and woven cane seats that squeak, designed, built, and carved by JD, and I don't dare complain about them, ever. The Turkish poet has arrived, Henry and Arthur, who enter with him, Spike, and Contesa, too, and suddenly the table is complete. The anorectic disconsolate woman and the tall balding man seat themselves far from her friend and the stout Wineman, when actors j and JJ, and their sidekick, the guilt-ridden, silent lyricist and the demanding man slide into chairs near them. All the others are settling in at various tables, the young married man next to the new resident, Rita, or the saint of lost causes, and beside them the dour man and fretful woman, whose addition surprises me since they generally keep to themselves. My second heart grinds with nameless worry, and ungracious doubt rumbles in my intestines, so I fear gas. JD chooses his seat, his boots muddy, his overalls sticky, he smells of pungent raw honey, I sense when he's around, and he sits next to some nondescript characters, who will stay for a week or maybe two, whose first names I don't know, and who often don't come to breakfast but eat instant oatmeal or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their rooms.

The head cook has created an order and routine to her dinner menus, which, after many, many years, she has honed into a three-week pattern, so that a resident or guest who has been here for a while, as I have, and the Count and Contesa, will have several times eaten her array of dishes and know her preparations, the ingredients of, and dressings for, salads, the sauces for meat, usually leg of lamb or pork chops, fowl, chicken, roast or fried, and roast turkey or turkey loaf, and fish, mostly cod with capers and broiled or poached salmon, the side dishes, rice and beans, broiled mushrooms, always available for vegetarians and vegans, creamed broccoli, fresh, steamed asparagus with a lemon sauce, potatoes gratin, boiled red potatoes served with chives, wild rice, and her range of desserts, chocolate or vanilla ice cream, bread pudding, tapioca and chocolate pudding, cherry, peach, and apple pies, and chocolate, banana, and vanilla cream cakes, there is always a serving of fruit, so dinner is rarely a surprise, except for the night she presented us with bowtie pasta swimming in melted caraway cheese, which caused us all consternation except the young married man, who, though regularly grumpy, likes every meal. The wretched dish reeked of the head cook's despair. Sunday night, when both the head and assistant cooks have the day off, and a substitute cook arrives, it is vegetable risotto and pizza, and all diets are attended to with meatless, cheeseless pizzas, vegetable pizzas with and without cheese, pizza with cheese and pepperoni, pizza with cheese and tomato, pizza with no cheese and no tomatoes, and so on, they are labeled, and there is a generous bowl of green salad, without tomatoes and peppers, but with several dressings, on the side, a term much used here. Sometimes a resident's first name is written on a card that is set on a table, and then you must take that chair, the chairs are serviceable, poorly designed and lacking in any quality, such as charm, and the card's placement indicates you have specific dietary requirements, which have to be accommodated by a special meal, and then you feel singled out, not necessarily in a good way, but a few like any attention, though it's not auspicious to demonstrate certain types of need. It augurs well that the Magician is beside me now, since as soon as I heard him tell Saint Rita that he performs magic for a living, a striking conceit, I hoped to learn about his ancient, perplexing profession.