Kate Braverman - Lithium for Medea

Easy come, easy go, I thought.

“I’m going to check out the rents,” Jason said. “Want to come?”

“No.” My, how easy it was becoming to talk to Jason. A shrug. A grunt. Why, it didn’t require anything at all. “I’ll see you after I paint.” Jason hung up.

I crossed the bridge over Eastern Canal. I crossed Howland and Linnie canals and waited for him to drive away. Then I began carrying his possessions back to his house.

I put his things in a neat pile near the water fountain in his front room. It took six trips to carry everything back. Things were changing, all right, I told myself. I had a pile of hard evidence on the floor near his water fountain. I was becoming certain. When I walked back into my house, the telephone was ringing.

“The old man’s dead,” Jason said.

“The old man?” The room turned black. Why had they called Jason? Jason didn’t even know my father was in the hospital. I was reeling. I was chunks of black ice. And the room was slanting now. There were no edges.

“You know, Gordon? The decrepit old—”

“I know,” I said quickly, said as quickly as I could. The room was slowly returning to a normal color. Mr. Gordon was the old man with a mandolin, wood fine and polished and reddish like a stretched heart. He used to play the mandolin on the roofs in New York in August. He was going to show it to me the last time I saw him. He was looking for it in a back closet but I left. I was afraid to see it.

“He was coming back from his doctor on the bus, on Pacific when—”

“Don’t tell me,” I said, and hung up.

They said it went in threes, didn’t they? If I counted Picasso as the first and Mr. Gordon as the second, there was only one question left. Who was going to be third?

My living room was almost empty. Sunlight spilled across the walls freely, exuberantly. I wondered how I had ever stood the unnecessary clutter. It was much better now. It was airier. It was much easier to breathe, to think clearly and remember.

I stood on my porch. A fat duck floated by, a dark stain on the water. The air was warm. It could have been summer. A dog barked. I felt the sea breeze slowly uncurling and thought if he just lives a few more days, he’ll beat it. Spring would unravel, bewitch and enchant, sun silky across the new wounds. If he could just live a few more days he would eat and walk again. If he could live a few more days he would be victorious. He would be tougher than leather, yes. He would be terribly aged, yes. Crazed, yes. But he would be on his feet, punching. And I was gaining a deep appreciation for being ambulatory. A moving target was considerably harder to hit.

I sat in my bedroom. I became conscious of the clock ticking, ticking, ticking. Ticking like a special secret code. Ticking like small teeth nibbling the dark air. Ticking, the quality of something entering and breaking. The ticking was harsh and whispery. And Daddy had to edge up close to me to speak. He had to put his lips right next to my ear. And Mommy said, when Daddy comes back, he may talk funny. He may talk like Billy. But Billy ate worms. My father wouldn’t eat worms, I knew that.

And the clock was ticking, ticking, ticking. And Francine said, “Listen, kid. Your clock’s ticking. You’re almost thirty. You don’t have forever. A week becomes a month, becomes a year, becomes a life. Define yourself,” my mother said once. Or did she?

I picked up the clock. I threw it on the floor. Then I picked it up and threw it down harder. The fourth time I punched it against the floor, it broke. I realized it didn’t matter anymore what time it was. Time was frozen. It was always now. Terminal now.

The telephone rang. I picked it up with a stiff arm. My hands were shaking. Get it done with, I thought. Butcher the third one and be gone, back to the depths, you bastard, you shark-hearted monster.

“What’s all that crap doing in my painting room?” Jason demanded. He made it sound so exotic, like they weren’t simply boxes but a series of strange tan ornaments.

“I’m just cleaning house,” I said.

“Then you’re not mad.” Jason sounded relieved.

“Of course not,” I said carefully. What in the world do I have to be mad about, mad about, mad about? I howled inside.

“What are you doing?”

I am just thinking about the mind, Jason. Thinking about my father and how night drills and tunnels. How night has harsh sagebrush breath. And my father was pinned in his white hospital bed. A hot wind was blowing. The sirens were screaming. And it was the first moments of April. And I would not let my father die. I would not let him be thrown away like a page from a calendar, cast off with the perfect still squares of February and March.

“I’m thinking,” I said out loud. Yes, Jason. Thinking about the radiated tissue that won’t heal and is opening toward the artery. I was wondering about the skin they took in nice neat squares like white calendar pages from his back and shoulder and thigh.

And they have to build him a new throat or he’ll be stuck with a red plastic feeding tube in his nose forever. And that wouldn’t be a long time. And I’m thinking that I should just tear the phone out of the wall, just sever its stupid thin neck and be done with it, done with it.

“And yourself?” I inquired. My, how nice and formal. Was this the great lull? The calm before the storm. The calm my mother and father settled into right before their divorce. When they stopped shouting and breaking things. When they looked up at the same patch of thin blue sky and realized they saw different dimensions.

“We’ll get dinner. Pick me up in ten minutes,” Jason said.

I felt light and airy. I could let go of the edge of the chair, just unwrap my fingers from their blood-draining tight grip and float to a far wall. Float like light, like smoke, like a big transparent bubble.

I didn’t have a clock anymore. I just left my house and parked my car in the alley behind Jason’s house. I was early. I was always early for him, always waiting. He got into my car.

“Were you painting?” I asked.

“Yep.”

I was driving. “Did you get a lot of work done?” Did you get a beer can perched on a cunt exactly right? Did you find some way to send a rancid shadow through a woman’s thigh? Did you notice I’ve begun hating you? I glanced across the car seat. Jason was staring out the window.

“They repainted the liquor store,” he said, pointing. “See? It’s red and white stripes now.”

My father’s red and white, I thought. Bandages and blood. I felt hot. I wanted a shot. It was a lull.

I parked the car. The market was closing. The lot was practically empty.

“You’re in crooked,” Jason observed.

“I know.” Did he have his sword out? Was it off with my head? And imagine, it wasn’t even dawn yet. “They’re closing the store. There’s only four cars here.” I pointed to the almost deserted parking lot.

“I still don’t like it.” Jason slammed the door shut.

We walked into the market. Two steps forward. Four steps back. I am moth wing. You are fire. You are snow. I’m a steam shovel. Why, it could go on that way indefinitely.

Jason stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re barefoot,” he said. He sounded shocked. He was staring at my bare feet. He looked miserable.

I ignored him. What was he talking about, anyway? I didn’t even have feet. They were white, of course, and somehow attached, but why call them feet? Weren’t they the color and texture of mushrooms? They were a kind of web. They were a form of a pod, clearly a device for locomotion. But then, everything was if you considered time and the wind as part of the equation.

I picked out a shopping cart and began pushing down an aisle. My arms felt very strong and zingalong, zingalong. It wasn’t any trouble at all.