Mark Leyner - Gone with the Mind

Anyway…Mercedes would bring me scrambled eggs and toast, or macaroni and cheese, or just pastina with butter, or whatever…and she would have made exactly the same thing for herself, so I wouldn’t be envious of what she was eating…And I’d say, You don’t have to do this, y’know — sit here with me and eat, it couldn’t be all that appetizing. And she’d say, I want to. And when we were finished eating she would lie next to me, my catheter trailing down the side of the bed into that bag that I’d lay on the floor…and she’d hold my hand. And I don’t think I ever felt more loved than at that very moment. It was just the most wonderful thing. Isn’t it crazy that when I was in this abject, humiliating state, somehow that week was a kind of honeymoon? Really. Like a kind of honeymoon in Paris or something…It was.

If I were to make a coat of arms, an escutcheon…or perhaps a new tarot card…to represent love, to represent caring…it would feature a catheter, a dish of scrambled eggs, and clasped hands…

It was just the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for me…it was the most romantic thing in the world…For Mercedes…this sweet, sweet person…to hold out her hand to me like that…It was just the most…it was the happiest moment of my life—

Okay, that’s enough…I mean, if we’re going to have any time for questions, for the Q and A. (MARK’S MOM is putting on lipstick, fishing car keys from her bag, ready to go. MARK gives her a…a sort of beseeching look, and then sighs.)

In the words of the great Maximilien Robespierre, “I no longer have the strength to battle the aristocracy’s intrigues.” (He bows deeply.)

Dōmo arigatō.

Q&A (MARK gets down from the table. He notices that both his shoes are untied [they’re brand-new shoes his mother bought him especially for the reading, and they’ve got those slippery, waxy laces that tend to unknot themselves], and he bends down to tie them. And when he stands upright again and looks around, his mom is gone. Gone. He reconnoiters the entirety of the food court, his eyes panning rapidly back and forth as he weaves around the tables and banquettes, and paces several times around the circumference of fast-food franchises — past the Popeyes, Hawaiian Grill, Taste of India, Burger King, Taco Bell, Johnny Rockets, Red Mango, Subway… But she’s nowhere to be found. The PANDA EXPRESS and SBARRO workers have also vanished. The disappearance of his mother immediately triggers a state of acute panic. His pulse thrumming in his ears, a flood of gruesome thoughts and premonitions fills his head.He embarks upon a frantic, redundant search of the adjoining areas of the empty mall, descending the motionless escalator, striding past the You Are Here directory, past the lobby of the AMC multiplex, past the Limited, Clarks, f.y.e., Vans, Macy’s, Foot Locker, Kohl’s, Sears, JC Penney, Sunglass Hut, Bath & Body Works, Sephora, past a threading station, and an electronic-cigarette and tongue-ring kiosk, and then bounding back up the inert escalator several steps at a time, reprising the search of the food court, and then back down the escalator and past the very same stores and the very same kiosks yet again…like those looping, wraparound backgrounds in early video games…until finally, through a corridor of gumball machines, he reaches the restrooms, which somehow he’d failed to notice the first time around.Trembling, his heart pounding in his chest, he knocks on the door to the ladies’ room.There’s no response.He knocks again, harder, more insistently.)

Q. Mom, are you in here?

A. Yes.

Q. Are you okay?

A. Yes.

Q. Mom, I’ve been looking all over for you! I was so worried…I was going crazy.

A. Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. You really need to come in here. I have to show you something. (He stretches his neck, which is clenched tight with tension, takes a deep breath, and lets out a long, long exhalation of relief.)

Q. Show me what, Mom?

A. Just come in. (MARK enters the ladies’ room.)

Q. Where are you?

A. I’m in here. (He walks over to a closed stall.)

Q. Hey, uh…I think I’m gonna wait outside for you, okay?

A. No, come in here. I have to show you something! (He slowly opens the door to the stall. His mother is on her hands and knees in front of the toilet staring down at something on the floor with the intense absorption of a…a myrmecologist examining an anthill.)

A. Look at that.

Q. What? (She points to a web of cracks in the tile.)

A. This face, right here. It’s him! (He squeezes in next to his mother, gets down on his hands and knees, and scrutinizes the craquelure.)

Q. Where do you see a face?

A. Right here. I think that might be the Imaginary Intern!

Q. I don’t see a face.

A. Here, sweetheart, here…these are the eyes, here’s the nose…it’s in sort of semi-profile.

Q. That’s not the Imaginary Intern.

A. It’s not? Are you sure?

Q. I’m sure.

A. I was so excited. I was sitting here and I looked down and I thought, Oh my goodness!

Q. Mom, how would you even know what the Imaginary Intern looks like? You’ve never even seen the Imaginary Intern.

A. I just had a very clear picture in my mind of what he looks like from everything you said about him. (MARK cants his head to the side and, squinting his eyes, gives this particular configuration of cracks another appraisal.)

Q. The Imaginary Intern has a…a fuller face. More boyish. Not so gaunt, y’know? That sort of looks like…like…who’s that guy, that actor with the big nose?

A. Karl Malden?

Q. (Laughing.) No, Mom, today! He was in, uh…he was in that movie The Pianist …and, um…what is that, uh… Summer of Sam . He was in a beer commercial…I think it was a Stella Artois commercial. God, I can picture him perfectly, and I just cannot think of his name…

A. You know something funny? I’ve just never liked beer. It looks so good on a hot day…But I just never liked it.

Q. Oh, that Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris …he was in that…He played Salvador Dalí…Adrien Brody!

A. I love that movie!

Q. Did you ever see Un Chien Andalou ? It’s better. (He sighs.)

Q. You know, you really scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know what happened to you.

A. That’s so silly of you. I just had to pee.

Q. You remember that poor little boy, James Bulger…that, that toddler who was kidnapped from the mall in England, and he was subsequently murdered, and the whole abduction was caught on CCTV cameras? I thought for a minute that — I don’t know — I thought that…that something like that might have happened to you…but sort of inside out, y’know? Here, the mom is kidnapped and the little boy is left in the mall frantically searching for her. I even thought for a minute that those guys might have taken you.

A. What guys?

Q. The Panda Express and the Sbarro guys.

A. I’m not such a pushover, you know. I wouldn’t let two guys just abscond with me like that.

Q. I was freaking, seriously. I was getting the tintinnabulation, the tinea versicolor, the pruritus ani…it was, like, textbook. (MARK’S MOM is examining another pattern of cracks on the floor.)

Q. Mom, why did you stop me before? It seemed like you stopped me just as I started talking about how magnificent and loving Mercedes was when she took care of me.