John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

She loved my father; hence

I had to come to Providence.

And now — well. In the Trauma Center it ruined me, because I wasn’t just resurrecting a sour old spirit, I was resurrecting a whole crucifixion, I was resurrecting the whole unhappy Testament back to that first unhappy Garden, back through the Crisis Centers and the Cutty Sark and the Cottage, through the scars across your stepfather’s lovely eyebrow … It ruined me; I was the one in tears last night, Bette like the actress, absolutely dripping onto her lapels, proud black velvet lapels (I never so much as undid my first button), dripping with shame all over again — especially, my baby, when I brought up you.

For of course I did bring up you, my baby.

I’d searched out this woman because of you — not because of me and Dee and, well …

O, all right, I suppose I was also there because I needed to apologize, to make amends: all right, that too — but not just that, not solely that. Rather I journeyed to Providence to speak with two people at once (just as I’m doing now [maybe baby]): with her and, at last, with you.

Mysteries, God knows there are mysteries, and this one strikes me now as badly done: the clues at first are nowhere to be found, and then they come in clumps, the characters seem no better than cardboard cutouts and the villain (the real father [in fact I can only guess who it might be]) remains offstage the whole time. This should all be redone; certainly I can’t let your stepfather see it (Dee was kind to me, finally, and so will be Delete).

Kit didn’t need more clues. Knowing where his wife was headed, he’d long since unplugged the phone and poured the last finger of Johnny Walker back into the bottle. He understood: during the Rampage, she’d become pregnant.

I made a shambles of the clues back in those days, too, back when you were actually folded up there inside and trying to tell me … well. A missed period, there’s a clue, and a stout New England constitution that never misses a period, there’s another; and then your mother began to suffer wooziness in the mornings — though it was wooziness I always put down to the previous night’s rotgut and reefer; oh, I made a shambles of your every clue, my baby; I didn’t want to know. And even so, long thoughts did start to creep up on me, don’t you know, during my rare empty evenings; and I fell into even webbier meditations on what I’d done to Dee, how I’d hurt her and how she’d cared.

Then behind those thoughts there came to mind three or four occasions of conception to choose from, two or three perhaps — the fact is, I can only guess at your real father, my baby; and I don’t believe it was the ghost who’s come back to haunt me lately, the groan over the phone … Then the riding accident, what else? didn’t I say the characters here were nothing but cardboard? nothing but bright grubby subatomics moving in predictable patterns? I fell from my frisky Hepburn (my baby, all my mounts are Hepburns): fell clumsy with rotgut and reefer, fell careless with showing off for some tall-in-the-saddle bedmate; I fell and after my fall I had so much bleeding that I called a halt to my, to my, well … you wouldn’t call them “antics.” But whatever you call them, with the heavy bleeding I called a halt for a while, a while that went on stretching, stretching, just as every night my long thoughts were stretching: until they became so long and dark, my imaginings, that at no point was your mother able to bring herself to a doctor (your mother, me [I, she]: perhaps all I’m really doing these days is seeking a happy medium between first person and third)…

Dee was kind, as I say — Providence-tial and kind, yesterday — though she remained bewildered, and she hadn’t quite lost her frown yet, either; she must have asked me six times if I didn’t want to take off my coat. She had the answers I’d come for, however; and once you learn the vocabulary, my baby, honestly, you start to wonder what all he the fuss was about. Once you learn an expression like “spontaneous abortion,” well. That’s nothing to cry about, is it? and neither is a statistic like one pregnancy in every four. I would guess now that Dee was deliberately, um, underplaying: that she tempered her information, in order not to upset her bizarre midnight visitor any further — as when, for instance, she claimed that miscarriages of one kind or another were so common, we couldn’t even be sure that my riding accident had had anything to do with it. She was clever, actually, not merely kind, just as the neutral blue of her hospital uniform was a color cleverly chosen: restful and reliable: true blue.

And yet Dee’s expert tone and the skill with which she later skated round my soggy offer to get together some time (perhaps on the astral plane, dear) — none of it, nonetheless, undid the basic compulsion at work in my Sunday (and in my Monday, too [I’ve got a lot to Delete])… none of it undid the decision I’d come to, the decision I’ve slept on and now input: my resolution that there’d been a fetus in the first place: there’d been something to miscarry.

Briefly you lived, my baby …

You lived, born of the worst mess of my life, and that mess was born of my father’s: you lived, and from there I scroll back, back … yet really I must Delete.

Really, this should all be, well. The lacerations itch, they ooze, and your mother can’t help but see the sheer silliness in what she’s done today, this weekend: like a talking head up on an interior screen, a perpetual electronic voice declaring: Look at you; Just look at you … (and the men have the same problem, my baby, judging from your stepfather). Your mother can’t help but cave in under the pressure of that head. My baby, I won’t deny you any longer: last night I said you lived in the face of Dee’s power to Delete, and today I’ve input the same, in the face of my own; I’ve said it, I’ve input … but I can’t print out, my baby; I can’t let your stepfather see me like this (not when he’s spending all damn day with that other Mzzzz buzzing around) …

O, what am I talking about? I came to my Apple with something simple to say, plain and simple.

This should all be redone.

*

Kit was thinking of the dead. By now he’d washed his face, splashing away a renewed spasm of moaning and near tears. He’d made more tea and reread the printout, or reread in patches while peeling away the borders and separating the pages. And he’d fought down an impulse to go searching for her again. Bette had faced enough hard cases for one day. She was coming out of this in her own good time, in her own chosen places. Patience, husband. Limit yourself to these few rooms and tools — a half-empty yellow legal pad, a decent black pen. Kit ended up back at the kitchen table, where he’d set the printout under the phone and swept the memo sheets out of the way with one lank robed arm. Thinking of the dead.

Junior was dead. Junior’s victims. Bette’s baby.

Corinna had a sister who’d been shot by a boyfriend. The women’s center across from Sea Level had lost a member to an overdose. A skeleton had turned up at the excavations for the new T station. Then there was Kit’s father, upright beside his cockpit, hard-muscled and sure. Dead.

Leaving the pad and pen untouched, Kit replugged the phone. Uncle Les picked up on the second ring. Les, the other one.

“Listen,” Kit asked as soon as he could, “where’s Mom?”

Silence. More than likely Les had been expecting something about his out-of-the-closet brother.

“Mom,” Kit said. “I, ah, I’d like to talk to my Mom.”

The uncle worked up to his answer, beginning with: “The church.” Eventually Kit understood that his mother was making spaghetti for the Loaves & Fishes dinner at Blue Earth Presbyterian. Thanks to her fundraising, her knack for organization, the church now put on these dinners three nights a week. Lots of folks in need, Les said.