Broken Sleep (38 page)

With more than a hint of incredulity, Palmer began by asking why my nurse had been off that night. I told him I had no authority to dismiss anyone, so I assumed Alchemy or Laluna gave her the night off because of the Super Bowl party. No denying that Alchemy and I argued earlier that day over Laluna’s refusal to allow me to care for Persephone when they went on vacation. From the first, my relationship with Laluna
had waned and waned farther. I wanted a grandchild, but I’d correctly sniffed her lack of enthusiasm for motherhood.

Palmer kept pushing me to defend my absence from the party. Reason seemed to bounce off his bald head. He couldn’t understand why I always refused to attend that celebration of modern slavery and violence. I told him that I didn’t leave my cottage or studio until later that night, when it was already too late. That was true in all meanings of truth.

“At times you have said that you and Mindswallow were both at your cottage when you heard Moses, Laluna, and Alchemy arguing. At other times you claimed you weren’t sure where Mindswallow was. Which is it?”

“The answer is both. I heard bursts of their yelling when he banged on my door, while he was there. I’d taken some pills and was lost in drowsyland when Ambitious showed up. I’m sure he told you what happened. Why do you need me to confirm it? For all of his inverted thinking, he is not a liar. Nor, as he fancies himself, is he a killer.”

“You have called yourself ‘a homicider’?”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Well, first there was the ‘performance’ with Art Lemczek, then the incident where you stabbed Laban Lively with box cutters. And isn’t it true you tried to burn Nathaniel by setting the house in Charlottesville on fire?”

“Exactly the opposite. A well-trained Pavlovian mind like yours is conditioned to bite only your enemies. I bite my loved ones—to save them. With his blessing, I saved Art from an arduous, painful death. That wasn’t homicide. And I acted to save Nathaniel from himself.”

“By setting a fire outside his locked room? Unique concept. Killing or trying to kill friends and loved ones. Perhaps you thought you were saving your son the nigh—”

I chomped at his hand. He flinched. “I also bite my enemies.”

“And Moses was your enemy. Isn’t that why you told Malcolm Teumer you wished your son Moses had died?”

“How do you know that? Malcolm Teumer was a liar. That’s not what I meant.”

“Maybe, but”—he pointed to Bellows’s computer—“I can arrange it so you can listen to yourself anytime.”

“You were taping my conversations? Or Teumer’s? No matter what you want to believe, I did not kill my son. I’m done.” I stood up and showed him the drawing—his eyebrows as tiny leeches eating away his face.

“Is that me?”

“Oh, yes. I need you to sign it.”

“Why?”

“When you awaken tonight, you’ll know why.”

He mumbled “nutcase” and started packing his things.

Bellows knew me well enough to see I was joking, but not well enough to understand my motivation. Once Palmer left, I said to her that he was trying to intimidate me. People like him are afraid of anything that smacks of the extraordinary. I did what I could to intimidate him back. I admitted to her that I only vaguely remembered the fire. She answered, “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

So many memories are etched on my brain like ineradicable ancient pictographs, and others, so soluble, have been washed
away by the waterfall of human aging and Collier Layne cocktails.

Too clear in my memory is the hollowness of the Harlottesville house. The shadow of my Somersby diddle-daddle ended the pretense of my adaptability to a southern belle jar domestic life. I hoped for a change in the slavish air when Alchemy returned at Thanksgiving. A vicious migraine struck me and ruined the dinner. After hours in my lightless room, I woke up feeling worn-out and unmoored. I stepped gingerly downstairs. Deep into their drinks, Alchemy and Nathaniel were talking intensely while listening to the Louis and Ella sessions. I halted in the hallway and overheard Alchemy ask Nathaniel, “Why do you put up with her antics?”

Antics? I jammed my jaw shut.

“A question I have asked myself, oh, a thousand times. I think she’s as beautiful as the day I first saw her in Max’s. She’s an artistic genius and, at the same time, a child who needs me to take care of her. Her moral compass may seem askew, but she’s never been a phony. She is exactly who she presents herself to be. And she may not see it, and you may not see it, but I need her.”

“I see it but I don’t totally get it.”

“So much of what I struggled to achieve is being trampled by the forces of regression. If it weren’t for Salome, I might’ve fallen into my cups and given up. When she is her best self, she acts with absolute faith in her abilities, in mine, in yours. When she is in a red or blue period …” His voice trailed off. “The year in Paris, when you two stayed in New York, I was miserable without her. I took this teaching gig because I
thought it would help us. Ruggles thought so, too. We were both wrong. What can I say? She drives me almost as batty as she is”—he laughed—“yet I always love her madly.”

“I can’t imagine life with my mom and what it would’ve been like without you. I won’t ever forget.”

How could he not understand how much I’d done for both of them by being with Nathaniel?

I eagerly returned to New York after the New Year while Nathaniel stayed in Virginia. It turned out disastrously. AIDS had denatured the city of so much vitality. Many friends had moved. Or died. The art market had crashed in ’87, Gibbon closed his gallery and now relaxed in style in the Hamptons. The Whitney Biennial curators, who I’d previously brushed aside, now rebuffed me. Leslie Tallent penned a piece on the younger artists I’d influenced, which made me feel like a has-been. I spent some nights with old friends like Xtine and some new ones. And too many alone. My nonstop movable feast of the ’60s and early ’70s seemed to have settled into an antiquated garden party with cocaine on a cracker as an hors d’oeuvre. Instead of burning down the castle, these kids lined up around the block to get inside.

My son’s busy life didn’t include me and my “antics.” Absurda, or Amanda, as we called her then, and I adopted each other as surrogate mother and daughter. When I received the invite to Blind Lemon Socrates’s imminent-death-from-colon-cancer requiem/extravaganza at Alexander Holencraft’s new apartment in the Dakota, I asked Absurda to be my date.

Mostly, I enjoyed the night. I dressed accordingly in ankle-high, rust-red boots, a short but not too short maroon dress, and a half-length silver faux-fur jacket with a pink boa around my neck. I did not enjoy the questions: “Where have you been?” and “How are you?” I asked instead, “How do I look?” The answer was fucking fantastic.

Socrates, with two teenage boys on either side of him, leaned on his cane. The poet Noma Moma Dada read a tribute, and the French filmmaker Matsa Brie announced the upcoming premiere of a documentary on Socrates’s life, before introducing the icon of honor. Socrates dropped his cigarette into his scotch glass and listened to it fizzle out. “I have spent my life attempting to halt the urbane decay that many of you represent,” he said, inching his long neck tauntingly toward a gaggle of young admirers. “I leave you with one thought: If you care more about riches or material goods than about virtue … then I have failed you. And you will fail yourselves.” He shook his head indignantly, as if he foresaw his fate as the forgotten.

Holencraft yelled, “Thank you, Socrates!” and everyone began drinking again. I felt a pinch on my ass. I turned, ready to slap the offender. His body shriveled and colorless, I wouldn’t have recognized Raphael Urso, except for his Willem de Kooning eyes bulging out in flinty disgust at the world. He laughingly said, “Whoa, there, Salome. Where’s Brockton?”

“Virginia.”

“Let’s do what we shoulda done years ago.”

“Raphael …” I snapped my middle finger against his forehead. “That’s all I ever wanted to do to or with you.” Ever
good-humored, he laughed. Alchemy, with a female friend, unexpectedly showed up. “I’m going to talk to my son.”

Absurda had seen him, too, and we arrived by Alchemy’s side at the same moment. Absurda and Holencraft were exiting stage left for a night of indoor sports at the Stanhope. I witnessed a furtive exchange of glances and pursed lips between Alchemy and Absurda. He hummed, twinkle-eyed, “Do wah diddy diddy, dum diddy do …”

I’d never previously decoded the telegraphic signs of desire and denial tapping between them. I sensated the specter of Gravity Disease tainting her soulsmell of suede shoes and a champagne bottle’s cork. I wasn’t sure if the aura of Alchemy hindered or helped her. After a time, she left for California. No matter; she couldn’t truly escape her disease, or him.

New York and I seemed to be vibrating at different frequencies. I found it harder and harder to venture out alone. My immune system began to wilt from loneliness, and the psychic temblors of another bout of Gravity Disease sent me retreating to Harlottesville and Nathaniel’s (mostly) nonjudgmental empathy. I counted the days between Alchemy’s school breaks and waited for a stirring from my psychopomps.

During the Christmas break of Alchemy’s junior/senior year (he was graduating in three years rather than four), we traveled to New York and all decamped at the 3rd Street apartment. Nathaniel intended to talk to him about his postgraduation plans. I didn’t care what he did. Watching the evening news one night, Nathaniel flew off on a predictable tirade
about the impending invasion of Iraq and the brainwashed public. Alchemy seized the opportunity he must’ve known would come.

“Nathaniel, you taught me that when Nixon abolished the draft he did more to undermine the antiwar movement than anything else because it removed the threat to the middle-class and rich kids and their parents.”

Nathaniel nodded.

“You used to quote some French guy, ‘To resist is to create. To create is to resist.’ I think it’s a good motto in art and in life.”

Again, Nathaniel nodded. I sensed something off, but he caught me completely by surprise with what he said next.

“I enlisted in the army. I’ll be going to boot camp in July. I will resist creatively and create with resistance. And it’ll look good in the future.”

Nathaniel clasped my hand. I pulled it away. “Future! What future is that? Do you want to kill yourself to hurt me? To sacrifice, waste years shooting at people! This isn’t the fucking best way to rebel against us.”

“Mom, stop shrieking. Do you think every decision I make is because of you? You are so narcissistic. I’m making my own choices now.”

Nathaniel tried to be reasonable. “Alchemy, the way to protest a war is not to fight in it. It’s—”

“Nathaniel,” I cut him off. “Alchemy”—I lowered the volume of my voice—“I haven’t dedicated my life to you so you can die in a war started by two egomaniacs with penis problems.”

“Mom, don’t make this about anyone else, you’re still making this about yourself. You always make it about you. Whether it’s ten minutes of almost great sex in a Porta-Potty or—”

“Stop. Stop. My son cannot be this cruel.” I got down on my knees and begged him not to punish himself—to punish me, in some other way. Whatever detours I made, how foolish my actions seem, the greatest accomplishment of my life was having him as my son. Still on my knees, my voice a beaten whisper, I said,
“Someday you will ache like I ache right now.” Alchemy’s face implacable, I pleaded with Nathaniel, “Please. Please don’t let him do this. Stop him.”

Nothing could sway him. In July, Alchemy left for Fort Bragg.

Then came the fire. Bellows told me that, according to Dr. Ruggles’s records, I set the
Let’s Fuck Time
pieces afire in the pit outside and then set some of the older
Pearl Diver
drawings afire in the hallway. Nathaniel and I suffered smoke inhalation and his hands suffered minor burns. Guilty and ashamed, Nathaniel agreed with Ruggles to send me back here. And I became forever unfree to walk the streets on my own.

The Social Medium Is Not the Message

Moses wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk now. Since returning from Rio, he’d sent only one e-mail to Alchemy, detailing his meeting with Malcolm. Though he did miss their talks, messaging, and e-mail exchanges.

Moses did not want to speak on the phone.

Moses took a long drink from the bottle of water on his desk.

Again Moses hesitated before typing.