Lynne Tillman - American Genius - A Comedy

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 bear 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.