Panorama City (19 page)

 

He asked me to picture a man of the world in my head. He asked me if I saw in my mind's eye a watch on a chain, or a three-piece suit, or alligator shoes. Sure, I said, sure I did. He informed me that I was actually picturing a provincial type, not a man of the world. You can always tell a provincial type by the way he makes a show of reading the newspaper, a provincial type will always hold the newspaper high, and it will never be the local paper, and he will read it as if nothing else matters, but when the provincial type is finished, Paul's words, he leaves his newspaper all over the place, he never folds it properly, he treats it as something to be disposed of sloppily, to be cast aside, with none of the importance it had held for him only moments before. In this way, he demonstrates that he is above the so-called fray. He has used the newspaper to confirm himself, to confirm what is not true, that he is a man of the world, and now he must discard it, he must cast it aside, or be drawn down to its level. But in fact he operates at exactly its level, Paul's words. A newspaper puts the whole world onto a few pages, and provincial types put the whole world into their wine cellars, or well-stamped passports, or art collections. They collect, and they congregate, in packs and clubs, fraternities and cooperatives, civic groups and associations, behind labels and pins, on plaques and lists, in registers and yearbooks. They announce at every turn, in every manner imaginable, their worldliness, but in actuality their response to the human condition is to winnow and huddle, Paul's words, they turn their backs on the world and call it living. This is why provincial types love to say that great minds think alike, it is one of their favorite phrases. But in actuality, and in biological fact, Paul's words, small minds think alike.

 

He squinted at me like he was trying to look through a dirty window, and then he said that the true path was not wide or straight, that he could take me only as far as the trailhead, that above all things a man of the world stood alone, that to deny our fundamental solitude was to persist under a most dangerous illusion. He put his hand on my shoulder and said that sincere friendship, the kind of friendship we shared, was a great balm, but it was only a balm, it did not change the so-called ground rules. There was knocking at my door below. Aunt Liz asked what I was doing, she thought she'd heard voices. I stuck my head down through the ceiling panel and told her I'd been listening to my Bible, she'd been hearing my Bible on tape. Dinner was ready, she said, could I come to dinner?

 

I don't have time here, Juan-George, to tell you about every meal I ate, or every face Aunt Liz made, or every moment of my life, I wish I did, I wish I could take you back in time with me, so that you could stand on my shoulders, so that you could know your father firsthand, but I cannot, there isn't time, there isn't enough tape in the world. But though the terminus approaches, though the dawn I won't see is coming, I want to take a moment to tell you about that night's dinner with Aunt Liz. It wasn't what was said, I was not a great conversationalist that night, I was mainly trying to keep from arousing any suspicion. Aunt Liz talked, she'd spoken with Dr. Rosenkleig, she expressed pleasure and surprise at my turning over a new leaf, her words. I didn't know what to say, I couldn't prop up the illusion, but I didn't dare topple it either. I watched Aunt Liz's hand gripping the spaghetti spoon and putting noodles on my plate, I saw the spots, I saw the muscles and tendons, I saw the strength and the weakness all at once. She went back into the bowl with the spaghetti spoon, this time specifically to grab me an extra meatball. She looked at me, her no-nonsense eyes peering over her reading/ eating glasses, and asked whether there were enough meatballs on my plate or would I like another. And I had the feeling, the overwhelming feeling that Aunt Liz knew well the solitude that Paul had talked about. She was always reaching across the divide.

 

After dinner I returned to the ceiling, I was ready to begin, I was ready to hear what Paul had been working on, and I was ready to assist him however I could, whatever I could do to counteract the pantomime of my life. I was ready to be a double agent, I was ready to fake my way through daily life in order to sustain the illusion that I was on board with Aunt Liz's plan for me. I found Paul lying on a mattress of insulation he'd stripped from between joists, silver with pink fiber guts spilling out the sides. He wore new clothes, and I wondered where he'd gotten them, until I noticed the odd stitching and realized he'd turned his suit inside out. I cleared my throat, but he remained on his back, arms out to the sides, not moving, not speaking, staring at the papers he'd tacked above his head. After what I would now call a protracted silence, he explained that he was reading his old notes, refilling his mind with the basic questions he was trying to solve, he hadn't even reached the point at which progress could be made, he was still catching up with himself, with his former self, he was making himself into a duplicate of who he'd been, this was a fragile phase. He had faced so many obstacles, obstacles upon obstacles, in his journey, that along the way he'd become someone who faces obstacles, rather than someone who advances thinking, and the only way back was to become his former self, a duplicate of his former self. What he was doing was reabsorbing all of his old ideas, was catching up, so to speak, was starting again from where he'd last been interrupted, which was something mankind itself couldn't do, would never do, there was too much history. So-called scholars tried to absorb the research in their fields, but it was mostly paperwork, the contrails of careerism, Paul's words, and as a result those scholars stood on the shoulders of ants. I asked Paul what some of the basic questions were, maybe I could help him think them through from my inflatable mattress, maybe we could engage in some parallel processing, I didn't use that term, I hadn't yet learned that term from Paul, I used some other words I can't remember. Paul told me he appreciated the offer but he himself didn't really know what the basic questions were, he hadn't gotten that far.

 

You see, Juan-George, people tend to be impressed with complex ideas, but the basic questions are the hardest part, the basic questions are the most difficult challenge to any serious thinker. Answers get all of the glamour and attention, answers are what everyone seems to be after, but the real value is in basic questions. This is because once you have an answer you stop, you're done, but life doesn't stop, you become a plaster statue, life begins to pass you by, only by asking questions can you keep moving, and only by asking the right questions can you keep moving in the right direction. Or to put it simply, to put it in clear and concise terms, you have a choice, you can either feel smart or be smart.

 

The next day I sleepwalked through work, nobody noticed. Then Aunt Liz dropped me at the Lighthouse Fellowship for a scheduled Bible group. The discussion topic was Letting Go, Letting God, and it was about how God has a plan for every one of us, and how we can try to fight it but in the end we must all submit to his will. I hadn't expected to engage in the conversation, I had planned to sit in the circle of uncomfortable chairs and nod from time to time while my mind wandered elsewhere. I was only counting down the hours before I could get back up in the ceiling again and help Paul advance thinking for the sake of mankind. But some of the talking made its way into my ears, and all the references to God's plan reminded me of a boy I knew in Madera when I was younger. He and I had been friends, I mean I was friends with everyone, this was before I became a shield, this was when we were very young, our lives were just getting started. He had a baby sister,
they were playing at a winery with some other kids, and I don't know exactly what happened but the baby sister stepped into a puddle, which turned out to be deeper than anyone thought, and she drowned, she was two years old, it was terrible. I don't need to tell you every tragedy I've heard of, turn on the news, they keep coming, I don't mean to add to your burden, I mention Natalie's death only because if God indeed has a plan for everyone, then what kind of plan is living for two years before drowning in a muddy puddle? Since it was already in my head, I mentioned this story to the Bible group. Jan's face turned red and she started to pick at her Band-Aids. Mark, who was leading the group, who was what JB would have called the facilitator, responded to the story of Natalie's death in the strangest way, everyone else looked sad, nobody likes to hear about that sort of thing, everybody looked sad and made faces of sympathy, they made faces that told me it would be okay if I got emotional, they made faces of support, but Mark's face was something different altogether. Mark's wiglike hair migrated farther back on his head, his eyebrows raised, and he looked like I'd just offered him a cookie or a hundred dollars. I had brought up, he said, something he had been wanting to talk about, I had brought to the table the exact question he wanted to address, and I had done it better than he ever could have, he had been planning to talk about an earthquake in Portugal, I had made it personal. If indeed we are living according to
God's plan for us, Mark said, then why is there suffering in the world? A seeming paradox, Mark said, he had a thing for paradoxes, and yet the answer was simple, Mark said, so simple many people missed it completely, the answer was best phrased in the form of a question, Mark said, or two questions, which were, Who are you to question God's plan? Is your wisdom infinite like God's wisdom? Everyone around the table agreed that Mark had made a good point, that there must be some reason for suffering, known only to God, something we couldn't see from where we were standing, so to speak. Now I don't claim to know everything, Juan-George, in fact, I claim to know very little, my areas of expertise are limited and very small, but it seems to me much more reasonable to say that there is no plan, that the reason Natalie drowned had nothing to do with God's will, it was an accident, it happened because she didn't know how deep the puddle was and didn't know how to swim and her big brother was distracted pulling apart a pomegranate. Why am I here in this hospital bed, dying of my injuries, shortly before you are scheduled to arrive? Is it so important to God that we do not meet? I am interested, I have always been interested in trying to make sense of the world, your grandfather was always interested in it, too, and even more so in trying to make the world fair, to make it a fair place, but life is unfair, usually, and sometimes an accident is just an accident. Mark talked about Natalie, who he had never met, and about earthquakes, I can't count how many times he used the phrase
needless suffering.
He smiled when anyone in their right mind would have kept their face serious, he talked about things that were horrible, he talked about things that anyone with any room in their head would recoil from, amputation, combat, poisoning, starvation, and he said that these too were gifts from God, the significance of which would not be revealed until after death. He mentioned Job, everyone perked up, he had ventured into the Old Testament, he seemed pleased with himself, he mentioned Job and misquoted a passage, I did not correct him. There's an expression, seeing something in a new light, it was like that. I could see the cracks, and I could see the dust in the cracks. The Lighthouse Fellowship was a beehive of perversity, the lighthouse was a perverse symbol, all of these things were in my head. They overlay everything I saw and heard. I don't blame the people at the Lighthouse Fellowship, Juan-George, I don't begrudge them their beliefs, everyone is different. I just want you to keep in mind that what we see, what we think we see, I should say, is always changed by the words in our heads, which means that even when we're all looking at the same thing we each see something different.

 

A moment ago I asked why I was here dying in this hospital bed, only a month before you are scheduled to arrive, and when I said it I realized I haven't told you the story. I'm going to interrupt my walking out of the Bible group, I'll get right back to it, because first I want to tell you, because it's more important, I want to tell you how I ended up in this hospital. I haven't told you yet about leaving Panorama City and returning to Madera, about finding your mother again, about setting up housekeeping, as they say, in the old house, I hope I have time, but if the terminus takes me first, your mother was there, she can tell you all about it. What happened was that a few days ago I was riding my blue-flake three-speed Schwinn, as I used to do before your grandfather died, I was riding into Madera. Your mother was home napping, you make her tired sometimes, and so I was riding into town for some groceries. It had been a long time, Juan-George, since I'd been able to enjoy that simplest of pleasures, listening to the burring sound of tires on asphalt, feeling the breeze on my face. And then, as if summoned somehow by my presence, a familiar vehicle appeared on the horizon. The Alvarez brothers' pickup truck, coming my way, drifting across the yellow line toward me. Then there is a blank spot in my memory, I don't know what happened next, my next memory is of waking up here in the Madera Community Hospital.

 

I excused myself from the Bible group as if I was going to the restroom, which was at the back of the Lighthouse Fellowship coffee shop. I thought I would have to sneak past Scott Valdez's door, it was open, but he wasn't at his desk, his
office was empty. I went out the back door, the sunlight was blinding white, everything was bleached. I followed the alley to the end of the mini-mall and came back around to the front. I wasn't planning to see Maria, I was just trying to get away from the perversities, to get fresh air, but as soon as I saw the neon pyramid in the window I knew I was going in. Your mother is snoring at the moment, I can say Maria's name, I don't dare utter it when your mother is in that shifting-around half sleep. I am a jealous god, she likes to say, which is from the Bible, she'll tell you she doesn't remember any of it from school, but that's a direct quotation. I've mentioned before that while I was down in Panorama City your mother had many suitors, I am not jealous of any of them, I am not the jealous type. Your mother says it's because her suitors never so much as nicked her heart. Maria, on the other hand, says your mother, stole my heart, Maria threatens our bond, no matter how far away she is, in distance and time, no matter how I might claim to have no feelings about her now. Your mother says that what's written on the heart stays on the heart, true feelings can never be erased, only written over, they lurk beneath, circling like sharks. That is her philosophy, I'll let her share it with you, later. For my part I can only say that my feelings for Maria and my feelings for your mother reside in two different parts of my heart, and that except for putting my life down on tape, except for telling you my experiences, I haven't done much visiting of the part with my feelings for Maria in it, I haven't seen any reason to, she is gone, long gone, I wouldn't even know where to find her, and besides, I am happy in the part that belongs to your mother.