Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

“The Gyuto monks,” said Kit. “They’re making a sand mandala at the Hammer.”

“Oh! I heard about that,” said the actress excitedly.

“It’s very cool. You should really try to get over there.”

“Those are the guys who do that weird throat-chanting thingie?” She imitated the gargling sounds, and Kit laughed.

“Tantric monks,” he said, nodding. “They had a school in Tibet for like five hundred years. They were forced to go to India in ‘fifty-nine — like everybody else. They’ve been making a mandala all week.”

“At the Hammer?”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s so cool.”

“It’s really a kind of meditation. You sit, don’t you?”

“Yes. But not as much as I’d like.”

“No one ever sits as much as they’d like. So you know a little about what they’re doing, then.”

“A very little.”

Lisanne got the feeling Renée was vamping.

“When they’re finished designing the mandala, they destroy it.”

“Destroying the mandala,” she said, with a respectful laugh. “That really sounds amazing.”

“It’s not about making art. That is a component — because the mandala and the meditation itself are both art. It’s really more a way of showing dedication and compassion to all living things.”

“Sentient beings.”

“Right. It’s about impermanence.”

“And they’re doing that today? They’re still doing that today?”

He nodded and lit a cigarette. “The deconsecration ritual isn’t open to the public, but I could definitely arrange for you to go in. If you want to see it. I’m kind of a patron of the San Jose Center.”

“Kit, that would be so great! I would love that.”

• • •

LISANNE PLANNED to take off early from work and finagle her way into the mandala ceremony, but everything conspired against her. A string of tiny crises kept her longer at the office; when she finally got in her car, traffic was gridlocked. Her repertoire of residential street detours failed abysmally.

When she got to the museum, the guard signaled that the exhibition was closed. She stood there downcast.

Moments later a monk in orange robes appeared, on his way in. He was short and radiated a cliché, childlike bliss. Unexpectedly, he took Lisanne’s arm, gently ushering her into the large hall. She felt like Richard Dreyfuss at the end of Close Encounters.

While her eyes adjusted, she looked around for Renée, but the actress wasn’t there. Neither was Kit. One of the masters had already begun sweeping away the colored sand. The Yamantaka deity, an emanation of the Bodhisattva Manjusri, was disappearing. The eight heads and thirty-four arms, two horns—“the two truths”—and sixteen legs (sixteen kinds of emptiness), the nakedness that symbolized abandonment of the mind, the self, and its worldly concerns were all being swept into a container. The monks would offer the commingled grains to an undisclosed local body of water. Water, which reflects both the world and infinity at once.

Now Lisanne had no doubts.

She would keep her baby.

Reunions

KIT GUNNED the Indian down the 60, toward Riverside — the familiar, unfamiliar route. The faux-stucco skin of the old house was thick with cement spray-on coatings, ordered throughout the years by Burke in varying fits of mania. Seasonal cosmetic makeovers were his thing.

The sun-bleached DeVille was in the drive, and a junk car too. It was less than a beater — no wheels and up on blocks. Urchins ogled the chopper.

Kit sat in a ratty chaise, feet propped on a tire swing, sipping beer while scanning love letters and ghostly Polaroids of Rita Julienne. Burke came from the house bearing gifts: coleslaw, corn, and KFC. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have provided something a little more sumptuous,” he said, delighted his son had shown up.

“That’s cool,” said Kit benevolently, softened by the words and images of his beloved mother.

“See? You’re like your old man after all. You arrive unannounced.”

He let the remark slide. “I see the neighborhood hasn’t changed. Still shitty and depressing.”

“That’s Riverside!” said Burke.

He talked about a methamphetamine lab that had been busted up a few blocks from there. A chemical odor hung in the air for weeks— no one could figure out where it was coming from until someone’s lawn caught fire.

“I’m telling you, it was straight out of David Lynch.” He looked over Kit’s shoulder at a snapshot. “Catalina. You were conceived on that trip. Did we ever take you to Catalina?”

“No.”

“We had a wonderful time there. Years later we went back and had a not so wonderful time.” He sighed. “Such is life.”

“Look,” said Kit, neatening the documents. “I think I’m gonna head back.”

“But you didn’t eat,” said Burke, waxing paternal. “Have a bite before you go.”

“Some other time,” said Kit, lighting a cigarette. He lifted his feet off the tire.

“Don’t you want to see your old room? It’s exactly as you left it.”

“Got to keep it authentic for the tour groups, huh, Burke.”

“I thought we could go by the school and have a look at the future Kitchener Lightfoot Auditorium.”

“They’re not going to do that, are they? Name it after me?”

“I know they want to. I’m told ten thousand will make it happen. It’d be nice press,” said Burke, smiling like Cardinal Mahony. “I’m always looking out for you.”

Kit got the notion to fuck with him.

“Do you need ten thousand, Dad?”

The man chuckled like a bad actor.

“I don’t need it. I could use it but I don’t need it. Not personally. The alma mater needs it: Ulysses S. Grant.”

“I’ll send a check over, OK?”

“That would be a beautiful thing.”

“Now who should I make that out to? You, Dad? Or the school? If I made it out to the school, that’d probably be better. For me. I mean, tax-wise.”

“Either way,” said Burke, staring off with stagy indifference. “Either way’ll do. To the school would be fine.” A pause, then, “It’s just… I’m not one hundred percent sure if Grant School is the right entity. I’m not sure they have their funding entity together yet. They could be calling that project something else. So if you write the check to me, that’s fine too, I’ll hold it in escrow then funnel it to the correct entity. No problems. Make it out to me, son — or leave the pay to line blank — not the amount — and I’ll turn it over. Save your business manager the hassle of a reissue.”

Cela appeared at the front fence and made a dash to Kit’s arms. Pleased at the fortuitous arrival, Burke said, “Kit Lightfoot, this is your life!” He went inside so the high school sweethearts could be alone. Kit was certain his father had alerted her, because she was dolled up more than a Saturday afternoon would call for.

“What a surprise. ”

“How you doin, Cela?” She was still gorgeous to him, but drugs had taken their toll. She was old around the edges.

“Slummin today?”

“Just a little,” he said.

Some preteen girls pressed up against the driveway gate and giggled.

“You look great,” said Kit. “You been all right?”

“Not too bad. Burke and I have a pretty good thing going — we do the Sunday Rose Bowl swap, in Pasadena? Find all kinds of stuff then sell it on eBay. I know you’re doin OK.”

“Can’t complain.”

“Oh and hey, thank you for the eight-by-tens. That was a bonanza. People at the swaps go nuts for anything of yours that’s signed. Especially when Burke says he’s your dad — which, to his credit, he doesn’t a lot of the time.”