Kate Braverman - Lithium for Medea

“What stock?”

“The Disney you coughed up when I married Gerald. The ring is five grand. I had it appraised,” I said. I was holding the jewelry and stock certificates out to her. I felt good. A picture card.

“What am I? A bank? A pawnshop?” Francine was getting nervous. You had to bet your hand. I was high. And I had an ace in the hole.

The man coughed somewhere downstairs. A polite cough. Francine glanced at the door. I could sympathize with her. Her parallel worlds were colliding.

“Get rid of him,” I suggested. I was high. Was she going to see me? It was her turn.

“He had a horrible flight from Atlanta. He came back and his house was burglarized. They even took the balls from the tennis court. He just got here. He’s got a heart condition. He’s going to Tokyo tomorrow.” Francine stared at me, trying to read between the lines. Trying to check. Trying to buy time. Bluffing?

Was she going to throw in a chip or not?

“Could we talk then? Tomorrow? You could spend the whole day with me. I’ll take you out for lunch.”

“Put that asshole in a cab, Francine. He only feels comfortable in airports, anyway.” I was still high. It was my bet. I tossed in a chip. “Get rid of that turkey before I give him a stroke.”

Francine studied me in the pink lamplight. She lit another cigarette. Then she picked up the telephone and called a cab. The man left. So she was going to see me after all. She must have something in the hole, too.

I followed Francine into her den. She poured herself a shot of Scotch. I poured myself a glass of Scotch. We sat on low round cream-colored chairs facing one another. Were we going to put our cards on the table?

“What do you need money for?”

“I’m pregnant,” I said and regretted it. A bad lie. The first thing that came to mind. But it didn’t matter. I had a pair of aces underneath. Twin aces.

“Abortion?” Francine tilted her head. She looked as if she was sniffing the air. “That’s a cheap item. Go to the Free Clinic. Tell them you’re a hippie. Get the state to pick up the tab.”

I said no.

“You’re not pregnant,” Francine said suddenly, accurately deciphering the air between us. She looked from my face to the cardboard boxes in the living room. “You’re running,” Francine realized. She seemed to relax. She was getting a lay of the land, all right. She was beginning to feel better about her hand. She might even toss in another chip. See me and raise.

“I’m running,” I admitted. I had the ring, the stock, the cardboard boxes. I threw in another imaginary chip.

“You can’t. What about your father? He needs you. He’s dying.”

“He’s not dying,” I yelled. I stood up. The round glass and chrome table was between us. “Look at me, Mother. Concentrate. Pretend I have a cock, Mother. Pretend what I say is important. I’m telling you, he’s not dying.”

“I talked to the doctors, to specialists. You don’t understand. The prognosis is—”

“Fuck the prognosis. What do they know?” I lit a cigarette. Why did Francine think she had a high hand? Was she raising on the prognosis?

“O.K.,” Francine said. “O.K. But we need you. I’m lonely, don’t you realize that? I’m terrified. And Father needs you. You owe him,” she said, tossing in a big chip. A big black five-hundred-dollar number.

“No I don’t,” I said evenly, seeing her and throwing in another chip. A black one. “Daddy and I are even.”

Francine scrambled. “We need some time to think. You want money and arrangements can be—”

“Don’t jerk me off,” I shouted. “I’m desperate.” I was still standing up. I sat down.

Francine was staring at me through wide yellowish eyes. Her lower lip trembled. “I’m the desperate one,” she said. “The old man is dying. I’ll be all alone. You can’t abandon me. You are the child of my longing, my hopes, my passion. I have no grandchildren. I’ll have nothing,” she said. Somewhere she tossed in another chip.

The pot was getting bigger. I began to wonder what we were really playing for.

“I’ll be alone,” Francine gasped. “I’ll die,” she assured me. “It’s like when I was an orphan. It’s like the time the mice fell on my head. Did you know they sicked a dog on me? A German shepherd? They were Irish, I remember. It was summer. The dog took a chunk out of my leg. I was only five when it happened. I needed nineteen stitches. Look.” Francine pulled her silk bathrobe apart. There was a faint white circle engraved into her thigh. “I’ll be alone.” My mother began to cry.

“But you’re not alone. You have your sister,” I said, seeing her. My mother made an ugly face, as if she had just eaten something foul. Human flesh, perhaps. Was I still high? I took a deep breath.

“You have your own mother,” I said carefully. It was my ace in the hole. I had the stuff. I knew I was going to win.

Francine jumped out of her chair. She seemed to leap up effortlessly. Could she defy gravity? “My mother?” she repeated. “You call that creature who abandoned me a mother?”

“But she’s still alive!” What the hell was wrong? Didn’t Francine see the ace, the pair of aces? “You knew her in childhood. She’s still there in the same apartment. She refuses to move. She wants to stay there so you’ll always know where she is if you need her. She has presents for you, Mommy.”

I looked straight at my mother. I had a pair of aces. I searched her face. Francine didn’t even blink.

“You knew,” I realized slowly. “And your half-sisters and brothers all over the fucking country?”

Francine didn’t say anything. The silence seemed to last a long time.

“Of course, you must have known. Always,” I said.

Silence. So she had two aces underneath, too. I glanced at my mother. She was staring out the plate-glass window at the brick terrace jammed against the mountain, at a pine tree perched on the hill and sending spokes of black shadow into the darkness. Somewhere I threw in an imaginary chip. I had to call, even though I knew she had me beat.

“It was a million-to-one shot,” Francine began. “A man comes up to me at the Regency. I’m eating breakfast. It’s a business trip. I’m in a hurry. He says I look exactly like a woman he knows. Do I have a sister? And I realize he’s not trying to hustle me. His wife is standing next to him. And I say I have a twin in Maine. And the man says no. The woman he’s talking about lives in Seattle. I gave him a business card and the woman calls me. We started talking and bingo.” Francine looked at me, looked into me. “Should I have told you?”

I thought about it. “No. It’s O.K. You win. I give up.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I already have. Just cash me in,” I screamed.

Suddenly Francine sprung awake. She was on her feet. She was moving. “There’s so much you don’t know,” she yelled. She grabbed the cut-crystal vase from the round table and threw it into the plate-glass window. The window seemed to shatter in slow motion, the glass soft and feathered, a flock of yellow birds. I noticed a long splinter of glass had fallen near my ankle. It stuck up from the carpet like a dagger.

“Do you think this crap means anything to me?” Francine demanded. She brought her face very close to mine. Her eyes were enormous, stormy, dangerous. “It’s illusionary. Don’t you think I know that?”

“Stop it,” I yelled. I stood up. I didn’t know what to do.

Francine was hurling whiskey bottles from the bar with the imported black marble surface against her tan and cream walls. The bottles broke and left ugly stains, like urine on alley walls. That’s when I noticed the blood. Her foot was cut. She began hopping through the den, screaming, “It’s nothing,” her bleeding foot curled in the air.