The History of Great Things (23 page)

T
he year is 2016!

—Mom, that's this year.

—Well, this year is the future from where I'm sitting. I'm not looking to go to outer space.

—Thank god.

The year is 2016! So much happened in the year 2015. The people rose up and said
No more!
There were peaceful demonstrations and a new government was instituted. One person, one vote. The stupid electoral college became a relic of the past. I never understood that anyway.

And that was just the beginning! Because of this new, true democracy, all kinds of scientific breakthroughs that had previously been discovered that couldn't have come into practice under the corporatocracy as it was have now been implemented. Cures for AIDS and cancer, cures for Parkinson's. Cures for many kinds of mental illness. Health care is fucking affordable. Alternative healing and therapy are covered! News is news and entertainment is entertainment! Funds for alternative energies
are created, funds for public education are distributed fairly! College is free! The employment rate is up! Drugs are legal, and we have new gun laws, which is to say: no more guns at all! which means crime is down, which means prisons are closing. Racism is over. Well, no it isn't. Let's be serious. We have work to do there. But we have new, specific civil rights laws and we actually enforce them. And war is over. More or less.

—That's a miraculous near future you've dreamed up there, Mom.

—Well, why not. You've encouraged me to make shit up.

But you and I still have some unresolved issues. So we plan a trip to Machu Picchu. I've wanted to go there for a spiritual experience ever since I read that Shirley MacLaine book. Shirley herself is going up with us as our guide, along with her personal shaman. We fly into Cusco with nothing we can't fit into our backpacks, as dictated by Shirley, as dictated by the shaman. We are told to get good hiking shoes, to pack layers to take on and off, and to bring two things for the fire: a symbol of something to let go of, and an offering. I ask
What kind of an offering?
; you can tell I look nervous. You say
Mom, you're confusing “offering” with “sacrifice”; she's not asking you to bring a puppy to toss into a pyre
; I laugh. Shirley says
Just a small totem you can carry that has meaning to you that you want to give to the earth in gratitude.
We spend the first night in a tent at the bottom to get used to the elevation—of course, I've performed in cities with high elevations before, but this is eleven thousand feet, and you and I are both already dizzy and we're still at the bottom. Shirley—who told us not to bring anything we can't fit into our backpacks—has a donkey to carry what she needs. She's famous, and the rules don't apply to her, so she has a personal shaman and a
donkey. Her shaman doesn't speak English, and though Shirley doesn't speak his language either, she will translate because she understands him psychically. You, I can see, are doing your best not to laugh about this, but I give you a nudge in the side and you let it go.

Shirley lays out a thin mattress stuffed with the hypoallergenic wool of a vicuna, two silk sheets on top of that because she has sensitive skin, and a cashmere blanket on top of that. You and I have one cotton sheet each to lay on the ground, so we put on all our layers and curl up together. The shaman has only the clothes on his back and appears oddly content. Shirley is dead asleep in about two minutes; she snores like a horse, which is hilarious at first, less so when we get no sleep whatsoever. In the morning she wakes us before dawn and we ask why she didn't tell us to pack earplugs, and of course she denies that she snores at all.
Absurd
, she says.
Chop-chop now, it's time for the morning revel.
She leads you out of the tent and adds another log to the fire.
Sit down, sit down.
The shaman hands Shirley what appears to be a bunch of leaves; she proceeds to rub these leaves over our heads and bodies and says a blessing in some unrecognizable language.
Can I ask what that means
, I say, Shirley says
No
. The shaman takes a small bottle from the donkey's pack, hands it to Shirley. She takes a swig, hands it to me, I swig, I hand it to you, you swig. It tastes like dirt mixed with vinegar. We both make faces, hope we haven't just swallowed some kind of hallucinogen.
We are here to heal via becoming one with the earth
, Shirley says,
as all things do. We drink the earth water, we breathe the sacred mountain air, and offer our gifts to the fire as pieces of ourselves.
I am hit with the strong sense that Shirley's version of this ritual is dubious. You, of course, have never had any other sense about it.
We will now contribute to the flames.
Shirley stands up.
I will offer this watch, given to me by my ex-husband. Om, na na, Om na na.
She drops the watch, encrusted with jewels, into the center of the fire. It's hard not to notice that Shirley's tossed in something that we could probably trade for a house.
Lois
. Shirley gestures from me to the fire. I stand, remove a well-worn birthday card my mother had given me when I turned sixteen, when she suspected I was having some issues with my confidence. She hadn't written much on it, but the poem inside was surprisingly moving, about growing up beautifully; that word was underlined twice, and I knew what she was trying to tell me, though it wasn't her way to gush out loud, and it's signed simply
Mother
. I start to well up as I put it into the flames; you reach for my hand as I sit back down. We go around the circle, watching as various meaningful items are thrown in as offerings. You make an offering of your father's and my wedding bands, tied with a small satin ribbon, meant to express gratitude to us for coming together long enough to make you. When we go around the second time, with our items to let go of, I toss in a small suede pouch that contains two marbles I've had since I was a kid, one of those little ring puzzles that I swear is unsolvable, a photo of myself with the top of my head out of the frame, and a tiny starfish with two broken legs.
Whoa
, Shirley says.
That's a whole lot of metaphor for one little pouch. Is this not supposed to be a safe and loving space?
I ask.
Not necessarily
, Shirley says. You stand up and say
Well, since Shirley already tossed my mom in for me, I'll let go of this instead.
You toss in your puffy-eyed picture first grade school photo and a 2017 calendar.
The past and the future
, Shirley says.
Brilliant. You could take a lesson from your daughter, Lois. Shirley, shut the fuck up
, you say. I bust out in cackles.

We are a united front, victorious against Shirley MacLaine.

—This is pretty ridiculous, Mom. I think I'm going to have to cut it.

—I love this chapter!

—It's all right, Mom, but I don't think it really fits. Something about it feels too obvious. Or too silly.

—Let me have it.

—All right, we'll talk about it later.

Y
ou become a successful writer. It was meant to be.

—I don't believe in meant to be.

—Well, you should.

You live happily ever after.

—Oh come on now.

—No, look. You do. I can add this, if it makes you feel better:

You write books, you have relative peace of mind, you have a wonderful circle of friends. You have a solid marriage. Maybe you and Ben still disagree about some things, thirty years in—you want to say the perfect wise thing when he's sad, he doesn't want you to do anything; he wants only to be seen, you think he's going to leave every time you disagree; even after decades, this thought, though ever smaller and smaller, never entirely goes away; this makes sense to me now, but you're together, and you're old and it's good even if you still think he's easily distracted when he lets the dogs off-leash at the beach; he thinks you worry too much, all the same
exact
issues as when you got
your first dog a few years after you were married; but you're both a little bit right, and this sort of thing is such a small part of your existence—the rest of which is sitting on the porch of your house upstate, reading, having dinners with friends, making very, very occasional appearances after you both retire. Here's the thing: one of you will get cancer, or Alzheimer's, or arthritis, or something, or you won't, neither of you, you'll both grow very old and creaky, and right after one dies, the other will die peacefully while sleeping, of heartbreak like they say, or maybe you'll die in a car crash together because you decided to drive long past the time when you should have stopped. The greater likelihood is that one will be left behind. That's just the deal. Do you want to fully understand that right now? I didn't think so. I lived into my sixties with an unresolved story. You've already had a sort of resolution I never got. You don't have to write a different ending for yourself. The worst could happen to you and you'd be okay. That's the difference between you and me. I know this now. You might have some of me in you, I know you do, but you have way more of your father. I don't know why I didn't know this before. Maybe I did and I didn't want to. Or I did and I didn't want to see that it was a good thing.

Enjoy your happy ending. I mean it.

C
APSY THANK-YOUS TO:

Nina Solomon, for reading every draft of every thing, every time. Josh Mohr, Mark Haskell Smith, Gina Frangello, and Jamie Quatro, for your thoughtful notes and for encouraging me with my wacky ideas. Duncan Murrell, for reading that part I left out, and to Lisa Lucas for your late-game read when I was freaking out.

For reading that other book (or wide swaths of it) that I dropped in favor of this book, I give thanks to: Emily Rapp Black, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Melanie Hoopes, and Bryn Magnus.

To Tod Goldberg and all my UCR colleagues, I give thanks for snickerdoodles and support.

To Donny Ward, I thank you for making that movie or whatever. That was cool.

To Lois, Susan, Rob, Reed, Mark, and all people related to me, or who ever met me, for what should seem like (but are not limited to) obvious reasons. I love you.

To Audrey and Inge, for being so sweet.

To Kirk Walsh, for cheerleading, always.

To Bob, for letting us live at your house.

To my adored Kalamazoo people, who continue to grow in number.

To Ben, for that jacket/coat thing. (And for standing next to me that one day, and always.)

And to Cal Morgan, for being patient with my bangs and making this stuff so much better, always!

About the author . . .

. . . and Her Stuff

About the book

The Point, Sort of

Read on

Further Ambiguity

I
COME FROM A PEOPLE
who like to save things. My father, a professor of musicology, used to save for various reasons, historical preservation chief among them; for my mother, an opera singer who lived through more than a few lean times, it was more a matter of “This might come in handy someday” or “That's still perfectly good.” (Even, occasionally, regarding something like a crumpled-up paper towel on the counter. Weirdly, I get that now.) I sometimes think the only people we don't call hoarders are those who can afford extra storage space.

I probably fall somewhere between these two models:
normal human being
and
potential future hoarder
. I myself have carted around any number of boxes of memorabilia dating back to my childhood on the Upper West Side, including, but not limited to: all cards and letters ever written to me; a significant number of rough drafts and/or Xerox copies of letters I've written to others; notebooks and journals that run almost continuously from 1969–present; paper copies and some rough drafts of every piece of fiction I ever wrote, dating from around 1973 to sometime in the last decade, when I decided to trust that I could save things digitally; and non-digital (analog?) photos—I've been an enthusiastic amateur photographer since I was in fifth grade, until I belatedly hopped on that digital train too. I have, currently, three large, heavy archival scrapbooks that my father bought for me when I sold my first book, insisting that now that I was a published author, each and every review—and each and every reprint thereof, in each and every newspaper, journal, or Pennysaver—nay, each and every item on which my name or likeness was ever printed (and especially if it's laminated), I must properly save for my . . . well, having no children, I'm forced to conclude that my father must have envisioned a future in which my archives would matter. I have most of my beloved children's books, though at one point I parted with a few to give to some actual children; I have many, many items that I have knitted, embroidered, or sewed,
including an orangey floral corduroy jumper with a matching disco bag; and I have the shredded remains of my very first pair of Calvin Klein jeans, which I got in tenth or eleventh grade when Calvin Klein jeans first came out. (I know there's one reader out there who's pausing over that phrase—
first came out?
—as though Calvins have been around so long as to have no known origin, but they do, and yes, it was a long time ago.) And this doesn't include other sentimental stuff, much of which takes up even more space than all these things made of paper, all of the things that other people made for me—all the sweaters my grandmother knitted me at my request (one “oversized” sweater, so oversized as to require its own archival box), all the afghans my mother knitted for me. (Honestly, I am kind of amazed I was ever able to relinquish the sofa my mother had reupholstered for me, though I suppose I should be grateful that I have some limits.) But it's with regret that I report that lost forever in the basement of my step-grandparents' house in the Bronx (that as far as I know were still there when the house was sold a few decades after they died) was a dollhouse room my father had lovingly built for me, inlaid with real parquet floors. (I live in hope that it's a treasure in a new home somewhere.) I have a vague memory that, in some move, I decided I could finally part with my college notebooks. (I did my best to tear out the notes I passed between friends. I knew what mattered.) In other moves, I let go of my childhood magazine collections:
TV Guide
,
Seventeen
, most of my
Tiger Beat
and
Partridge Family
magazines. (Now that I own my own home, I regret the latter greatly.)

But wait! That sounds like a lot of stuff, right? But what happens when one parent dies, and then the other, is that you get
still more very important stuff
. So add to the list: handmade quilts and more afghans, all manner of needlework, finished and un-, furniture, dishware, glassware, publications, photos, recordings (my mom tape-recorded her performances whenever possible, and taped every voice lesson she ever took, and she may have taped over some of those, but hundreds still remain, and I can't be expected to throw those away, because often the tapes caught her laughing or chatting, and I might want to listen to that someday. If I ever get a tape player again). Add as well all of their memorabilia, plus countless other things they saved that have been moot for years now (like hundreds of movies on VHS cassettes taped off the TV), and
their
lifetime collections of magazines, like
Life
and
National Geographic
. My father was known to say that one of his great regrets was letting go of the
Superman
No. 1 comic book that he bought, you know, new. I'd also like to say that this inventory is really just off the top of my head, and is in no way comprehensive. So, yeah. Stuff.

In a great moment of foresight, before he died, my father catalogued and donated his vast collection of Jew's harps to the Khomus Museum in Yakutia. So that's one fewer set of boxes for me and my sister to put in our attics and look at once or twice over the course of the rest of our lives. I do wish he'd saved me that chest of drawers of eyeglass lenses from my grandfather's shop. I could have really done something with that.

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