The clematis is here. The clammy little vine curling around me.
Maisie does not like her.
Ethan likes her. I see him looking at her steadily. He was here today. It is hard for him. It was hard for him when Felix died, too, but Felix died fast. I have spoken to him and his sister in the strange voice that now belongs to me, a rasp just above a whisper. I am glad I have told them about Felix and his lovers so that they will not be surprised if they pop up with old keys. I have told it all to them kindly. I am pleased with myself. If I weren’t an ugly, self-soiling creature from the black lagoon, I might pass as a Romantic figure, the wasted mother on her deathbed speaking nobly to her children about their difficult father. The roles are there, ready to be played.
Oh, if I could take away the suffering in Maisie’s face. You are too good, Maisie. I told her that. She said, No, I’m not. I’m not. But only the good feel that they aren’t good. I want her to live and work and soar.
And Maisie leaned over and kissed my head. I admire you so much, Mommy, she said. She has not called me Mommy since she was six.
I speak to Dr. F. on the phone. I can hear sorrow in his voice. It is love. I am grateful for that strange form of intimacy, for the one-way telling. He has known me better than anyone. Strange, but true.
I often return to the Riverside Drive apartment. I walk through the rooms and inspect them. I am in my father’s study and have lifted one of the pipes to my nose to inhale that special smell without being seen. I am worried he will come in. My mother interrupts me. She tells me not to touch the pipes or the pens. No, no, no, he doesn’t like them to be disturbed. His voice comes from the next room. Mother quickly straightens the pipes. I am looking up at her face and in it I see fear and hope. It is terrible to see. It is terrible to see because her expression is a mirror of my own.
She was afraid of him.
I was afraid of him.
He never hit her. He never hit me.
He didn’t have to. We were in thrall.
You did not know how angry you were.
I did not know how angry I was.
How I have raged. I think I cannot rage anymore. I think I am too feeble and then the spite comes up again, a bit weaker, a bit thinner, but there. If only I could feel that I had done my work, that it was finished, that it would not vanish entirely.
Father, you did not know how much I wanted your face to shine when you looked at me. But you were crippled. It helps me to know you were crippled.
I would like the ghost of my mother to come and rock me.
Phinny is coming. I hope he is not too late.
Rachel was here. She reminded me of the Beast with Five Fingers. Another Beast. I had forgotten. I asked her to stroke my hand. Her fingers on my fingers — I feel them now as I write. I told Maisie to take her to look at blazing mother Margaret.
Ethan has talked to me. Ethan has told my own fervid stories back to me. His memory is much better than mine.
I used to remember everything — citations, page numbers, names, papers and the year of their publication — and now it is blur.
Clemmy’s red mouth. Her radiant touch. Those silly stones. Why do I tolerate it?
I am in love with a holy fool.
I have frightened Aven. I am so sorry.
When was he here? Today? Was it today? The Barometer has sent me on my way with an opulent speech. His is an angry God, who bellows from heaven and sends down lightning bolts and brutal winds.
I remember I am a Jew.
I am multitudes.
This earth a spot, a grain, an atom.III
I am made of the dead.
Even my thoughts are not my own anymore.
I. A. C. Robinson could not be traced to any likely text. An article by Lester Bone, “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Emotional Origins of Creativity” appeared in Science and Philosophy Forum 9 (2001). Tracking Bone proved unsuccessful because his affiliation turned out to be fictional. The work was probably written by Burden, as it cites scholars and scientists in several fields.
II. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, trans. Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2002). The heteronym Pessoa used for this book is Bernardo Soares.
III. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VIII, 17–18.
Sweet Autumn Pinkney (edited transcript)
I heard a voice say “Harry.” The man’s voice was pretty loud, and I heard him talking right into my left ear even though nobody was standing anywhere close to me, because it was one thirteen in the morning and only a couple of people were out walking so late at night. I know what time it was because I looked at my cell phone right when it happened outside the Siri Pharmacy on Flatbush Avenue. Kali (she’s the little dog I adopted from S.O.S. — Save Our Strays — half poodle, half terrier, half Chihuahua) was having a pee and a sniff before I took her home. Right away I knew the voice was a sign. If you don’t pay attention to signs they pass on by, and you might miss being called to your rightful fate. No question the voice took me by surprise. I hadn’t even thought about Harry for a long time, and I hadn’t heard from Anton since the postcard, and I’d been concentrating on my spiritual becoming and development and healing gifts and helping people in my practice, Sweet Indigo Spiritual Healing, and I’d been making real progress with some backsliding, mostly in the form of guys I’d fall for who turned out to have bad karma that I would somehow miss. But then, backsliding is part of the progress to enlightenment, too. You have to recognize it and move on. In one of his lectures, the master, Peter Deunov, said, “Your consciousness can travel at the speed of slow trains, it can travel at the speed of light, and it can travel even faster.” I guess my consciousness was catching up to some airplanes by then.
The next morning while I was fixing my blooming green tea, I knew I had to answer the angelic voice by finding Harry, and I looked down at that blossom opening up in my tea and felt the expansion in my sacral plexus chakra, and the feeling of orange drifting up in the room. I remembered Harry’s red, smudgy auras. I found her name in the Brooklyn phone book, and I called her up. I had a speech ready in case she didn’t remember me. I was going to explain about the voice in the street, even though I know Harry wasn’t into the master’s teachings and astrology and chakras or anything like that, but it wasn’t Harry on the phone. The person on the phone said, “I am her daughter and my mother is very sick right now, and she isn’t seeing anyone except her family and closest friends,” and her voice made a little quaver that came right through the phone and into my body as a tremble. I asked her what her name was, and she said, “Maisie,” and I said, “Maisie, this is Sweet Autumn Pinkney. I used to know your mother on account of my relationship with Anton Tish, and I was an assistant for the artworks, and I think I can be useful to her now. You see,” and I spoke the next words slow and clear, “I have been called.” Maisie said, “But you called me,” because she didn’t understand my greater meaning, but that didn’t matter. I put on my vintage paisley purple dress with the full skirt, the best color for emergency healing, and packed up Kali in her carrying case and grabbed my bag of stones and called a car service because Red Hook is the absolute worst for subways. You just can’t get there underground, so I called up Legends, the trusty service I use in times of need.
I had the address written down, but I couldn’t find the exact building, and I saw some kids standing around, and I asked them if they knew where Harry Burden lived, and one boy with a tattoo on his neck and a black baseball cap said, “Oh, you mean the rich witch.” After we talked a little more it was pretty clear we were talking about the same person, and I asked him why he called her that, and he said he didn’t know except there were lots of rumors about “creepy shit” in her studio and crazy noises and yelling about Satan and God that sometimes came from the building. They petted Kali a little bit and then showed me the door, and I rang the bell. I explained to Maisie and to Bruno, who was Harry’s boyfriend, that I had come to see Harry, and he had to go in to Harry and ask her if it was okay to see me, and she said yes, and so I went up the stairs and into a great big room with windows all over the place and light coming in all over and a super beautiful view, and Harry was lying in a hospital bed with the railings, you know, the kind that lift up on both sides, and an IV drip in her arm. I could see her elbow sticking out from under the floppy sleeve of her T-shirt, and sure enough she was just bones, and then I knew she wasn’t going to get well at all. It made me hushed inside.