Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

“You’re not going to want to hear this,” Martin said, “but you really ought to call Ogata. If he hears about Cross’s fall from someone else, it’s going to look bad. Remember, Ogata and Cross have a relationship. You can exploit that.”

“I don’t want to exploit anything.”

“Lighten up on the semantics. Am I talking about child labor? No, I’m talking about basic preventative care. Stop stalling and do what you’d do if you were here.”

Peter’s phone felt like a brick in his hand. He sat down on a cement bench, caught his breath, and dialed Ogata’s number.

He expected to be intercepted by a secretary or transferred to a mailbox. Instead, a cheery, up-speaking voice asked Peter a question: “Are you well ?”

Peter identified himself. “I’m trying to reach Dr. Ogata.”

“And you’ve reached him, but are you well?”

Leaning forward, Peter pinched his eyes closed. “I’m okay.”

“And how’s our friend?”

Taciturn. Slippery. Guarded. Probably not a friend. “He tripped coming off the jet last night. He claims Alistair broke his fall, but he wound up with a decent lump on the side of his head. I want to scan him, but he’s not taking my concerns very seriously.”

“You sure Allie didn’t push him?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“I was making a small joke.”

Did Ogata realize Peter didn’t have the freedom to joke?

Ogata continued, “Do you know the first rule of parenting?”

Peter heard people walking past, but he kept his eyes shut. “I don’t have kids.”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyway, Show up is the first rule. The second is Shut up and listen. If a parent follows both rules she’ll look like a genius. The reason I bring it up, they’re also great guidelines for patient care. Show up , then shut up and listen. ”

“Not to sound unappreciative, but I didn’t call looking for advice about medicine. I was hoping you could help me deal with your friend.”

When he responded, Ogata spoke from a lower register. “I just offered you everything I know about how to look after a patient.”

Peter was tired of stroking everyone’s ego. He was tired. “I need to get him into the hospital. Neither one of us is going to look very good if something happens to him while he’s under the care of the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness.”

“Is that actually your title?”

“That’s what they’re calling me.”

“I don’t recall signing off on that.” The tenor of the conversation had changed somehow. “Besides the fall, have there been any other problems?”

“This morning he called his television ‘the spoon.’”

“Fuck me,” Ogata said. “Where is he now?”

Peter opened his eyes. He was staring at a round trash can tiled with small river stones. “We’re in Columbus, Ohio.”

“ Show up , then shut up and listen .”

“Please, no more maxims.”

“You’ve got more power than you know.”

Peter wasn’t talking with Ogata. He was listening to a recording.

Rosalyn doesn’t have any patience for Jane Austen. She wants to hear my story. It turns out I have a story. Rosalyn’s amazed that I’ve cruised on the Yellow River, spent a night in a favela in Rio, been detained by the Berlin Polizie after they mistook me for a vagrant. When I tell her about the time a pack of coyotes took shelter beneath my truck — I miss the image a truck projects — she sees evidence that I live in harmony with nature (in The Holy Screw , a pack of dolphins join Ruben when he goes for a swim in the Mediterranean). I tell her that I once got lost outside Milan and woke up in an orchard of blossoming lemon trees, and Rosalyn makes me touch the goose bumps on her arms.

“I can’t believe Mindy never mentioned you before.”

I say, “I guess she wanted to keep me to herself.” I’m not joking — I’m flirting.

Rosalyn traps her skirt against her legs, then she lifts her toes to the dash and wiggles them. “I almost moved to India to be with a man.”

“When was this?”

She accuses me of trying to determine her age.

Because I’d met her with Mindy, I’d assumed we were contemporaries, but I realize the flaw in my logic. “I don’t care how old you are now, but how old were you ten years ago?”

Rosalyn laughs.

“Tell me a secret.”

“I used to ride a motorcycle.”

I glance over to see if she’s lying.

“A different man. We rode around Los Angeles in leather pants. It was exciting until I discovered he was married.”

I tell Rosalyn I used to be married.

“What do you miss about it?”

“What makes you think I miss anything?”

She rolls her window down, sticks her head out the window, and spits. When the window closes, she says, “You must have missed something.”

“We always did laundry on Sundays. I liked folding our clothes, the three piles — my stuff, Patricia’s smaller things, and, finally, our daughter Gabby’s tiny things. I liked putting everything away.”

“That’s a much better answer.”

“I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

“We contain multitudes, Arthur.”

Rosalyn has put her finger on the problem with the book I want to write. How can one book ever contain Cross’s multitudes? The performer I followed in ’90 is not the same man I followed in ’97 or in ’03 or today. How can I convey Cross’s central enigma: that he is an ever-evolving musician who never abandons the past or stops looking toward the future (imagine, for example, his Tex-Mex band playing a rockabilly version of a folk song he wrote fifty years ago).

I tell Rosalyn a story. On June 4, 2004, Cross delivered a somnambulant performance at Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium. For two dreary hours he shuffled through B-sides, silenced applause with feedback, and turned his back on the audience. It took him most of the show to earn the crowd’s antipathy, but after he’d turned us against him he played the most sublime rendition of “Proud Beatrice.” When the houselights came up, the crowd poured into the streets wearing red-rimmed eyes like badges of honor. I wanted to get some water, so I ducked into the first bodega I came to. Inside I find Cross; he’s staring into a cardboard box of green mangoes. He still had on the yellow shirt he’d worn on stage. Though the place was crowded with people who’d come from the show, nobody recognized him, not the other shoppers nor the clerk, whose attention kept darting to the front door as if anticipating a holdup.

“And it really was him?” Rosalyn asks.

“Sometimes I tell myself I’d see him everywhere, if I could train myself to recognize his different forms.”

In the distance, Columbus rises from the earth. It’s just a city, yes, but it’s a city named after a man who discovered a new world where he’d expected to find the old world. Could a similar miracle happen to me? Might I find a new Arthur Pennyman where I expect the old Arthur Pennyman to be?

Rosalyn says, “I’ve had a rough few months.”

I place my hand on hers.

“I was diagnosed with stage 2 ovarian cancer.”

“You’ll be okay.”

She takes a deep breath. Lets it out. “Well, right now, I’m sick. And neither of us can see the future.”

•••

High above, turkey vultures sail on invisible thermals. The road we’re on is as straight as intention. A tongue of green reveals where groundwater seeps across a brown field.

I say, “My daughter is engaged to someone I haven’t even met.”

Rosalyn turns to me, “Oh, happiness.”