Kate Braverman - Lithium for Medea

I SAID THAT?

“Yes.” I LIED.

“It doesn’t matter. The thing that matters is that you pulled it. The inside straight. You’re going to live.”

I HATE YOUR CARD METAPHORS. INACCURATE.

“You get the idea, though?” I could feel something beginning. It had power and warmth. I was pacing, staring out the window down to the lawn covered by lacy white flowers. It could have been a snowdrift. The hills to the north and east were snow-capped. It was the kind of day when one could consider the possibility of resurrecting the dead. All the dead. And if I counted Picasso as the first and the old man with the mandolin as the second, who would be third? My father? But what if I counted Caroline Murphy as the first? Then Picasso would be the second. Then Mr. Gordon would be the third and that would be enough.

U LOOK SICK.

“I’ve been sick, very sick. But I’m starting to get better.” TALK ABOUT SICK. SAW YOUR MOTHER THIS A.M.

“What happened?”

THOUGHT AFTER 20 YRS W/CANCER NEED SLIVER STAKE 2

STOP ME. WAS WRONG. FRANCINE WORSE THAN CANCER.

It was an old joke. No matter what he was talking about — inflation, Dodger hitting, the county fair cripples they sent down for the Del Mar meet — Francine was worse. I took a deep breath.

“Daddy, I know you’re going to live. You’ll go home.” Back to your perpetually balding ivy, your fruit trees, your patch of pastel sanity in the soft pinkish heart of West Los Angeles. “The doctor said you can drive your car. He said you might even talk again. But I’ve got to leave for a while.”

U WANT 2 SPLIT NOW???

My father wrote the note quickly. It was a black scrawl. It was a kind of black track in white snow. And if I counted Caroline Murphy as the first and Picasso as the second, then Mr. Gordon would be the third and it would be over.

I stared at my father’s note. I didn’t say anything.

BAD TIMING DONT U THINK??

I nodded my head in agreement. And when was it ever the right moment to leave a father?

My father looked down at the floor. There were sun patterns now, spokes of sharp light, a kind of shadowy knife.

I looked at the man in the bed. I was the daughter. We formed a chain. We were letters in the original alphabet. In the beginning there was A as in Adam. A man. In the beginning there was man. He was given Eve later, an afterthought. And everything she did was wrong. She stumbled out the rib cradle wrong. She had an affinity for the forbidden. And she became rage and red, autumnal and partial as an x-ray. She became a dream thing and evil. She sang on rocks and made ships crash. Woman. I am not whole, never whole. The one with the hole. I am the daughter. And when is it ever a good time to leave a father?

DONT LEAVE ME NOW.

I walked to the window. I could see the red roofs of houses stuck like rows of red steps across the hills. It was the yawning mouth of spring, fists of red hibiscus, the sun punched open above ripening lemons. On the lawn below, white flowers were lacy, intricate, crocheted.

A nurse entered the room. She told my father it was time for his walk. I draped his bathrobe across his shoulders. He took small broken steps. His legs were weak, rubbery.

I matched his steps. Suddenly I thought of women hobbling on ruined feet. In China they bound the feet of women. It was the custom there for a millennium, quite a lasting tradition. At age three the soft girl flesh was sealed in special sheets. How they stank in summer! A necessary preparation for the woman stink later. The nights were torn by girl children screaming in their sleep as the bones caved in, as the flesh decayed, as the toes fell off.

The mother stumbling on her crippled stumps cautioned at the crib be thankful the earth coughed crops that year or you would have been drowned. You must be tamed, carried on a litter like a trophy that breathes. You cannot trust her. The forests are filled with madwomen hiding in caves, eating grasshoppers and howling.

My father was leaning against my shoulder. He was gasping for breath. Sweat had broken out across his forehead. His knees were trembling. And what the hell was I mad about, mad about?

His face was flushed red with strain. We had walked halfway down the corridor. The nurse helped my father turn around. We began walking back.

I wanted to explain to my father that one day I had accidentally limped to a window. I saw the road below filled with refugees. It surprised at first, the sheer number of women hobbling. They were selling everything. The linen hooks. The porcelain hooks. The checkbook and children hooks. All the hard evidence, Daddy. They were chewing off their ankle chains with their teeth. They were willing to chew off their feet. Understand, Daddy. The women have been to the quarry. And scraped the mountain clean.

I helped my father back into his bed. He reached for his writing pad.

WHERE WILL U GO?

“I don’t know, Daddy,” I said. I thought of the white tequila sun to the south, creamy and stinging. Sun of the permanent noon and warm harbors, fish smell and gull shriek thickening into jungle and sky under green vines, a crawling grid. I will be windswept, windsong, wingborne, reborn and tossing starsick into shimmering yearning of new, of clean. I will be windchime, sublime in the struggle away from drumbell of loss, loss and pierce into the other, the greater.

“You spent years on the road, Daddy. You know how it works. Things happen.” If you are without anchor, the wind matters. If you are naked, implements of survival appear. Logs will float and stretched skins will catch the winds. I will invent fire, clans, names, boundaries.

My father’s eyes had darkened. He lay back on his pillow, lay very still. He was gray. He was granite. He was the father, fundamental, the beginning. He was the dealer. He was the house. He made it all happen. He struck the first match and the world blazed and spun in circles around his great yellow eye, the sun.

HOW WILL U TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF?

“I’ll trust the intangibles. The most important thing is balancing class and condition. I’ll check times against tracks. I’ll remember California tracks are always fast and cripples run six in one ten and change. Look for Kentucky breds, weight shifts, bandaged horses, hot jocks, the obvious. Try to differentiate between honest and artificial class slips. Remember it’s always hard moving up. Check the past works but don’t rely on them. They only run as fast as they have to.” I looked at my father. “I’m going to try to go the distance.”

U HAVENT SHOWED MUCH FORM. U R ERRATIC. CANT

FIND THE WIRE.

“Condition has been a problem. I haven’t been in good shape.”

FACE IT. U R A CONFIRMED QUITTER.

“There have been some equipment changes. I’m racing without blinders. I’ve been away a long time. I’m fresh. And I’m carrying much less weight, Daddy. I’m an overlay.”

LIFES GONE SO BAD. U. FRANCINE.

My father seemed to sigh. He was granite. He was the mountain with rocks falling down. He was lessening, chipped. Then he began to cry.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice soft, a mere rustle.

I handed my father his pad. His pen had fallen to the gray enamel floor. I picked it up. I was his issue, both more and less than chattel. I was his necessity, his step into unborn generations, the first rung on the ladder to the millennium. I was the moment forced into form, the passion of his manhood, an intrinsic and overwhelming measurement.

WANT IT ALL BACK. YOUTH. DREAMS. CIGARS. WOMEN.

HORSES. START OVER.

“Doesn’t everybody?” I asked. I realized that I did. Maybe everyone wanted it all back. Maybe the only difference was that a few really had a chance. And maybe once someone realized that, it gave a certain edge. I am twenty-seven years old and a pine tree my age knows more. Still, with some equipment changes, the blinders off, the long rest, and a lot less weight …