When You Are Engulfed in Flames (11 page)

“That’s OK,” I said.

“Even if I were in prison, and this was the only thing on my wall, I wouldn’t waste my time with it. I’d look at my feet or at my mattress or whatever, but not this, no way.”

I tried my best not to sound too hopeful. “Is someone sending you to prison?”

“No,” he said. “But whoever sold this to you should be there. I don’t know what you paid, but if it was more than ten dollars I think you could probably sue the guy for fraud.” He looked it over one last time and then rubbed his eyes as if they’d been gassed. “God Almighty. What were you thinking?”

“If art is a matter of personal taste, why are you being so aggressive?” I asked.

“Because your taste stinks,” he told me. This led him to reflect upon
Cracked Man,
which still hangs in the foyer beside his living room. “It’s three slabs of clay cemented to a board, and not a day goes by when I don’t sit down and look at that thing,” he said. “I don’t mean glancing, but full-fledged staring. Contemplating, if you catch my drift.”

“I do,” I said.

He then described the piece to Hugh, who had just returned from the grocery store. “It was done by a gal named Proctor. I’m sure you’ve heard of her.”

“Actually, no,” Hugh said.

My father repeated the name in his normal tone of voice. Then he began yelling it, and Hugh interrupted, saying, “Oh, right. I think I’ve read something about her.”

“You’re damn right you have,” my father said.

Before they started collecting art, my parents bought some pretty great things, the best being a concrete lawn ornament they picked up in the early 1960s. It’s a toadstool, maybe three feet tall, with a red spotted cap and a benevolent little troll relaxing at its base. My father placed it just beyond the patio in our backyard, and what struck my sisters and me then, and still does, is the troll’s expression of complete acceptance. Others might cry or get bent out of shape when their personal tastes are denounced and ridiculed, but not him. Icicles hang off his beard, slugs cleave to the tops of his pointed shoes: “Oh, well,” he seems to say. “These things happen.”

Even when we reached our teens and developed a sense of irony, it never occurred to us to think of the troll as tacky. No one ever stuck a lit cigarette in his mouth, or disgraced him with sexual organs, the way we did with
Mr. Balloon Man
or my mother’s kitchen witch. One by one, my sisters and I left home, and the backyard became a dumping ground. Snakes nested beneath broken bicycles and piles of unused building supplies, but on return visits we would each screw up our courage and step onto the patio for an audience with Mr. Toadstool. “You and that lawn ornament,” my mom would say. “Honest to God, you’d think you’d been raised in a trailer.”

Standing in her living room, surrounded by her art collection, our mother frequently warned us that death brought out the worst in people. “You kids might think you’re close, but just wait until your father and I are gone, and you’re left to divide up our property. Then you’ll see what savages you really are.”

My sisters and I had always imagined that when the time came we would calmly move through the house, putting our names on this or that. Lisa would get the dessert plates; Amy, the mixer; and so on, without dissent. It was distressing, then, to discover that the one thing we all want is that toadstool. It’s a symbol of the people our parents used to be, and, more than anything in the house itself, it looks like art to us.

When my father dies, I envision a mad dash through the front door, past the Hibel and the Bradlingtons, past
Cracked Man
and
Mr. Balloon Man,
and into Indian territory, where we’ll push one another down the stairs, six connoisseurs, all with gray hair, charging toward a concrete toadstool.

Memento Mori

For the past fifteen years or so, I’ve made it a habit to carry a small notebook in my front pocket. The model I currently favor is called the Europa, and I pull it out an average of ten times a day, jotting down grocery lists, observations, and little thoughts on how to make money, or torment people. The last page is always reserved for phone numbers, and the second to last I use for gift ideas. These are not things I might give to other people, but things that they might give to me: a shoehorn, for instance — always wanted one. The same goes for a pencil case, which, on the low end, probably costs no more than a doughnut.

I’ve also got ideas in the five-hundred-to-two-thousand-dollar range, though those tend to be more specific. This nineteenth-century portrait of a dog, for example. I’m not what you’d call a dog person, far from it, but this particular one — a whippet, I think — had alarmingly big nipples, huge, like bolts screwed halfway into her belly. More interesting was that she seemed aware of it. You could see it in her eyes as she turned to face the painter. “Oh, not now,” she appeared to be saying. “Have you no decency?”

I saw the portrait at the Portobello Road market in London, and though I petitioned hard for months, nobody bought it for me. I even tried initiating a pool and offered to throw in a few hundred dollars of my own money, but still no one bit. In the end I gave the money to Hugh and had him buy it. Then I had him wrap it up and offer it to me.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

And, following the script, he said, “Do I need a reason to give you a present?”

Then I said, “Awwwww.”

It never works the other way around, though. Ask Hugh what he wants for Christmas or his birthday, and he’ll answer, “You tell me.”

“Well, isn’t there something you’ve had your eye on?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Hugh thinks that lists are the easy way out and says that if I
really
knew him I wouldn’t have to ask what he wanted. It’s not enough to search the shops; I have to search his soul as well. He turns gift-giving into a test, which I don’t think is fair at all. Were I the type to run out at the last minute, he might have a valid complaint, but I start my shopping months in advance. Plus I pay attention. If, say, in the middle of the summer, Hugh should mention that he’d like an electric fan, I’ll buy it that very day and hide it in my gift cupboard. Come Christmas morning, he’ll open his present and frown at it for a while, before I say, “Don’t you remember? You said you were burning up and would give anything for a little relief.”

That’s just a practical gift, though, a stocking stuffer. His main present is what I’m really after, and, knowing this, he offers no help whatsoever. Or, rather, he
used
to offer no help. It wasn’t until this year that he finally dropped a hint, and even then it was fairly cryptic. “Go out the front door and turn right,” he said. “Then take a left and keep walking.”

He did not say “Stop before you reach the boulevard” or “When you come to the Czech border you’ll know you’ve gone too far,” but he didn’t need to. I knew what he was talking about the moment I saw it. It was a human skeleton, the genuine article, hanging in the window of a medical bookstore. Hugh’s old drawing teacher used to have one, and though it had been ten years since he’d taken the woman’s class, I could suddenly recall him talking about it. “If I had a skeleton like Minerva’s . . . ,” he used to say. I don’t remember the rest of the sentence, as I’d always been sidetracked by the teacher’s name, Minerva. Sounds like a witch.

There are things that one enjoys buying and things that one doesn’t. Electronic equipment, for example. I hate shopping for stuff like that, no matter how happy it will make the recipient. I feel the same about gift certificates, and books about golf or investment strategies or how to lose twelve pounds by being yourself. I thought I would enjoy buying a human skeleton, but looking through the shop window I felt a familiar tug of disappointment. This had nothing to do with any moral considerations. I was fine with buying someone who’d been dead for a while; I just didn’t want to wrap him. Finding a box would be a pain, and then there’d be the paper, which would have to be attached in strips because no one sells rolls that wide. Between one thing and another, I was almost relieved when told that the skeleton was not for sale. “He’s our mascot,” the store manager said. “We couldn’t possibly get rid of him.”

In America this translates to “Make me an offer,” but in France they really mean it. There are shops in Paris where nothing is for sale, no matter how hard you beg. I think people get lonely. Their apartments become full, and, rather than rent a storage space, they take over a boutique. Then they sit there in the middle of it, gloating over their fine taste.

Being told that I couldn’t buy a skeleton was just what I needed to make me really want one. Maybe that was the problem all along. It was too easy: “Take a right, take a left, and keep walking.” It took the hunt out of it.

“Do you know anyone who
will
sell me a skeleton?” I asked, and the manager thought for a while. “Well,” she said, “I guess you could try looking on bulletin boards.”

I don’t know what circles this woman runs in, but I have never in my life seen a skeleton advertised on a bulletin board. Used bicycles, yes, but no human bones, or even cartilage for that matter.

“Thank you for your help,” I said.

Because I have nothing better to do with my time than shop, I tend to get excited when someone wants something obscure: an out-of-print novel, a replacement for a shattered teacup. I thought that finding another skeleton would prove difficult, but I came across two more that very afternoon — one a full-grown male and the other a newborn baby. Both were at the flea market, offered by a man who specializes in what he calls “the sorts of things that are not for everyone.”

The baby was tempting because of its size — I could have wrapped it in a shoe box — but ultimately I went for the adult, which is three hundred years old and held together by a network of fine wires. There’s a latch in the center of the forehead, and removing the linchpin allows you to open the skull and either root around or hide things — drugs, say, or small pieces of jewelry. It’s not what one hopes for when thinking about an afterlife (“I’d like for my head to be used as a stash box”), but I didn’t let that bother me. I bought the skeleton the same way I buy most everything. It was just an arrangement of parts to me, no different from a lamp or a chest of drawers.

I didn’t think of it as a former person until Christmas Day, when Hugh opened the cardboard coffin. “If you don’t like the color, we can bleach it,” I said. “Either that or exchange it for the baby.”

I always like to offer a few alternatives, though in this case they were completely unnecessary. Hugh was beside himself, couldn’t have been happier. I assumed he’d be using the skeleton as a model and was a little put off when, instead of taking it to his studio, he carried it into the bedroom and hung it from the ceiling.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked.

The following morning, I reached under the bed for a discarded sock and found what I thought was a three-tiered earring. It looked like something you’d get at a craft fair, not pretty, but definitely handmade, fashioned from what looked like petrified wood. I was just holding it to the side of my head when I thought,
Hang on, this is an index finger.
It must have fallen off while Hugh was carrying in the skeleton. Then he or I or possibly his mother, who was in town for the holidays, accidentally kicked it under the bed.

I don’t think of myself as overly prissy, but it bothered me to find a finger on my bedroom floor. “If this thing is going to start shedding parts, you really
should
put it in your studio,” I said to Hugh, who told me that it was his present and he’d keep it wherever the hell he wanted to. Then he got out some wire and reattached the missing finger.

It’s the things you
don’t
buy that stay with you the longest. This portrait of an unknown woman, for instance. I saw it a few years ago in Rotterdam, and rather than following my instincts I told the dealer that I’d think about it. The next day, I returned, and it was gone, sold, which is maybe for the best. Had I bought it myself, the painting would have gone on my office wall. I’d have admired it for a week or two, and then, little by little, it would have become invisible, just like the portrait of the dog. I wanted it, I wanted it, I wanted it, but the moment it was mine, it ceased to interest me. I no longer see the shame-filled eyes or the oversized nipples, but I do see the unknown woman, her ruddy, pious face, and the lace collar that hugged her neck like an air filter.

As the days pass, I keep hoping that the skeleton will become invisible, but he hasn’t. Dangling between the dresser and the bedroom door, he is the last thing I see before falling asleep, and the first thing I see when opening my eyes in the morning.

It’s funny how certain objects convey a message — my washer and dryer, for example. They can’t speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I’m doing fairly well. “No more laundromat for you,” they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can’t cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, “Well, he must be doing
something.
My numbers are off the charts.” The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary and says only one thing: “You are going to die.”

I’d always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call “understanding” is basically just fantasizing. I think about death all the time, but only in a romantic, self-serving way, beginning, most often, with my tragic illness and ending with my funeral. I see my brother squatting beside my grave, so racked by guilt that he’s unable to stand. “If only I’d paid him back that twenty-five thousand dollars I borrowed,” he says. I see Hugh, drying his eyes on the sleeve of his suit jacket, then crying even harder when he remembers I bought it for him. What I
didn’t
see were all the people who might celebrate my death, but that’s all changed with the skeleton, who assumes features at will.

One moment he’s an elderly Frenchwoman, the one I didn’t give my seat to on the bus. In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings. I think it’s a perfectly valid rule, but it wouldn’t have killed me to take her crutches into consideration.

“I’m sorry,” I say, but before the words are out of my mouth the skeleton has morphed into a guy named Stew, who I once slighted in a drug deal.

Stew and the Frenchwoman will be happy to see me go, and there are hundreds more in line behind them, some I can name, and others I’d managed to hurt and insult without a formal introduction. I hadn’t thought of these people in years, but that’s the skeleton’s cleverness. He gets into my head when I’m asleep and picks through the muck at the bottom of my skull. “Why me?” I ask. “Hugh is lying in the very same bed. How come you don’t go after him?”

And the skeleton says, “You are going to die.”

“But I’m the one who found your finger.”

“You are going to die.”

I say to Hugh, “Are you
sure
you wouldn’t be happier with the baby?”

For the first few weeks, I heard the voice only when I was in the bedroom. Then it spread and took over the entire apartment. I’d be sitting in my office, gossiping on the telephone, and the skeleton would cut in, sounding like an international operator. “You are going to die.”

I stretched out in the bathtub, soaking in fragrant oils, while outside my window beggars were gathered like kittens upon the heating grates.

“You are going to die.”

In the kitchen I threw away a perfectly good egg. In the closet I put on a sweater some half-blind child was paid ten sesame seeds to make. In the living room I took out my notebook and added a bust of Satan to the list of gifts I’d like to receive.

“You are going to die. You are going to die. You are going to die.”

“Do you think you could alter that just a little?” I asked.

But he wouldn’t.

Having been dead for three hundred years, there’s a lot the skeleton doesn’t understand: TV, for instance. “See,” I told him, “you just push this button, and entertainment comes into your home.” He seemed impressed, and so I took it a step further. “I invented it myself, to bring comfort to the old and sick.”

“You are going to die.”

He had the same reaction to the vacuum cleaner, even after I used the nozzle attachment to dust his skull. “You are going to die.”

And that’s when I broke down. “I’ll do anything you like,” I said. “I’ll make amends to the people I’ve hurt, I’ll bathe in rainwater, you name it, just please say something, anything, else.”

The skeleton hesitated a moment. “You are going to be dead . . . some day,” he told me.

And I put away the vacuum cleaner, thinking,
Well, that’s a start.