Lynne Tillman - American Genius - A Comedy

The storm had also passed, and remote, brilliant stars littered the sky. In my room, I stripped, my skin was exceptionally dry, the largest organ of the body stretched to its limit, I slathered on creams and worried about the scaly spot on my leg. Not surprisingly death, or mortality, hung about after the seance, especially when the pressure around my heart turned into sharper pain, heartburn, or an event, as cardiologists call an undetermined episode, and, since my father died of heart disease, I worried, but the pain left in no time, and anyway I'm not prone to hypochondria.

I slept fitfully, awoke twice, walked to the bathroom, hardly concerned about waking the two disconsolate women, since they might occupy other beds, and the third time I awoke, I gazed at the Fabric Monolith, at its hidden potential, its unleashed energy, and imagined I'd unfurl it one day, but only in my imagination. If my bed were covered in Egyptian 600 denier all-cotton sheets, I'd sleep better, but the seance, whatever it is or was, carried novelty's unruliness and disturbed my rest; the sleep of orphan children, the sleep manual reports, is "made more restless when they leave the institution to see a motion picture in the evening," so it exhorts readers to "make their mind as blank as that of a wartime flapper," the Great War, that is, the manual came out in America in 1937, when rationalization, bureaucratization, the New Deal were the rage, like liquor, hard-boiled novels, Communism. With age, it's said you need less sleep, though my mother, who's very old, needs her sleep and often drops off in a serviceable reclining chair, covered in light brown naugahyde, in her living room, watching a movie on TV, but not when she is reading, which she does with near-perfect eyesight and in a state of total concentration, her head craned to the book on her lap, its covers lovingly cradled in her small, white hands. She has a little arthritis, but it's not disfiguring and doesn't keep her from knitting, though as her neurological condition deteriorates, her once-skilled fingers lose their way and trip, she drops a stitch, a line, then complains that it's the fault of the wool-too thin, she says-but it's not. Soon, knitting wearies her, but her skin glows, translucent and smooth, free of wrinkles, though not as plump and lush as her older sister's, who used Jergen's Lotion only, and whom she envied and outlived, but my mother's greatest rival was her husband's mother, whose ancestors emigrated from Egypt, whose green oval eyes and beauty captured him, and whose impetuous, incessant demands he always met. Now my mother envies only youth and worries that her brain will fail her completely and she will not know herself.

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.