Tara Ison - Ball - Stories

a) the taping of a program for NPR, the interviewer rhapsodizing on his cultural legacy, his role as a shaper of American theater and recontextualized, contemporized historical perspective, the much-needed reemergence of his moral vision, his voice,

b) a parking-lot rally in support of migrant workers and undocumented immigrants, where the verbal sway of his impassioned rejoinders to xenophobic right-wing picketers and his impromptu Bible-quoting debate on the defining Christian tenet of shared brotherhood gets spontaneous applause, gets primetime network and then viral airplay,

c) an added date for his comeback concert, now becoming an actual tour, now a sold-out amphitheater full of nostalgic boomers and cynical hipsters seeking

honed arrows for their toughened hearts, celebrating the rediscovery of his wandering-minstrel lyricism and authenticity,

while she stands to one privileged insider side and smiles and nods her support in response to his anxious, searching-for-her-in-the-pauses eyes. Afterward he is exhilarated but dismissive of the hoopla and noisy acclaim — It is not about that, he tells her, the joy is knowing she was there, with and for him. It was, paradoxically, a moment of their greatest intimacy thus far. He strokes her arm, intimately, describes to her the

a) upstate New York estate he will purchase for her, after this play goes Broadway and Tony and Pulitzer, with verdant grazing land for goats and long, hand-in-hand private walks and she can fill her days making chèvre or going to grad school and getting a doctorate in whatever discipline she likes, while he writes and writes, for the greatest, most inspired work of his life still lies ahead, he knows that now, and evenings before a roaring stone fireplace with wolfhounds or babies at their feet he will read those fresh-inspired pages aloud to her, his Lover, his Muse,

b) Georgetown townhouse they will make their havened own, when this campaign is done and won and he rises to and wins the next-on-the-list prize, a Senate seat, and he will storm the capital on behalf of the downtrodden and disenfranchised while she volunteers at animal shelters and veterans’ hospitals and church soup kitchens, raises their golden children and elegantly DC-hostesses at his side, his Dolly, his Eleanor, his gracious helpmeet bride,

c) charming Craftsman bungalow they will settle in after this album drops and he’s back on steady rotation, a giant Stickley bed and early-L.A. architecture like the profiles in those heavy, high-gloss magazines, and daytimes he will compose and record epic love songs dedicated to her in his state-of-the-art studio out back while she writes poems or novels or paints or sculpts or weaves or has kids, she can do anything she wants, for she is an Artist, too, his Brilliant Other,

the woman he cannot wait to introduce to the world as his. And every night they will make love for hours in mutual ecstasy and he will hold her safe in his arms while they weep gratitude for the relief of their shared pain, their island-in-the-stream togetherness, for their — his word — metamorphosizing love.

She coughs. Let’s maybe take this a little slow, she tells him, a little nervous. Okay? And let’s just keep this between us for now? You are a public figure, but I am a very private sort of person, I guess. I guess I’m not used to all this.

Of course, he assures. He knows what he offers is overwhelming, intense. He respects her privacy, her delicate sensibility. Everything will be up to her; everything will be hers. He is happy to give her as much time as she needs, although it is wrenching, excruciating for him to rein in his racing, galloping heart. He senses she finds him slightly ridiculous, and perhaps he even is. But he is serious, he insists. And he is somewhat hurt, to be honest — a brief shadow to his face — by her lingering skepticism. But she will see. She will open herself to him. She will learn to trust again. And then, once they are truly, fully faithed together, he will achieve his Greatest Things. She will at last be fully, deservedly realized in the world. And he leaves her at her apartment door, merely hand-kissed and cheek-stroked.

I am delighted to court you, he says.

And she is a little grateful for the reprieve, his willingness to keep resetting the clock at courtship and tentative, respectful ladyfair kisses goodnight, and she is — increasingly very — relieved because she tries but cannot ignore the age difference, the lack of actual attraction or sexual pull, or even the faint but growing, creeping-in crawl and distaste at the smell of his skin and breath and hair — when, she wonders, does older merely become old? — and she is happy to encourage this urgently leisurely pace to give her time to adjust, adapt, yes, that’s all she needs, because this vision and dangle of an existence lived at such peaks, such unbound emotional extravagance, is of course overwhelming, just as he says. A touch of altitude sickness is all.

But what if he is right, she wonders, worries, and this is the — one? only? — call to liberation from negligibility, her gifted destiny revealed at last, her inevitable grand role to play, the ultimate Wikipedian narrative arc of her life?

HER FRIENDS ANDco-workers and parents voice hesitant — envy-tinged, she suspects, or is that surprise at his choosing, at this sudden starshine upon her plain Jane face? — concerns; what about his past, they ask her, those old, vague pre-TMZ rumors of addictions and instability and bitter divorces and breakdowns and adolescent run-ins with the law?

Exactly, that is past , she assures them. It is Ancient History 101, it is why he disappeared from the public stage for so long, to confront his demons and finally work all that through. He has been totally upfront and honest about everything, and hasn’t he channeled his furious, damaged genius into positive action and change? Look at what he is creating in the world — hasn’t he risen above such skeptical misunderstanding, such hurtful snark? It is the price of greatness, she supposes to them, sighing, the burden of his brilliance. She allows her own voice to be tinged with status, with ascendency, and the next night shows up determinedly and steeled by Two Buck Chuck Chardonnay at his door to offer herself in reward.

IT IS HERfault, she feels, the awkward and unsync’d grapple of it, then the ultimate, mortifying failure. He is unable because of her lingering bourgeois superficiality, she is sure, her tentative, going-through-the-sexual-motions motions. Chemistry is, well, just chemicals , she chides herself, just Bunsen burner hype, schoolgirl mythology. Get over it. Love is of spirit and souls, and so if her flesh is passive, unmoved — cringes, actually — and her lungs strain for air during his groping, mewling, her-pleasure-is-everything exertions, it is no wonder the potency of his own response is weakened, disempowered, if his own pleasure in her is dulled. She apologizes.

He does not accuse her — on the contrary, he revels in her refinement, contrasts her constantly with other women, the coarse, withholding, pedestrian past

a) girlfriends

b) wives

c) lovers

in whom he placed such mistaken, disappointed faith, who could not rise to meet him at his level of essential truth. He understands she is not yet fully his — a subtle darkening of his voice — but he assures her she is making progress, justifying his trust. He has peeled for her his very soul to pulp and seeds and she cups it so soft in her dear hands. Whatever else he may achieve in this life, his only true dream is to die in her arms. She alone is his last chance for a profound happiness. She has not run, has not fled, and he needs no greater reassurance or evidence of the redemptive promise of her love.