Your Voice in My Head (16 page)

Unable to draw breath, I wait for oxygen masks to drop from the synagogue ceiling.

“… 
which is why the next day Jacob can go out and meet Esau, his twin, and make peace. When I read that, I realized how enormously important and also in some ways countercultural it was. You can’t open a magazine or read a newspaper without learning how determined you are by your genes, by your environment, by your peers, by your parents, all of us are overprogrammed by all sorts of factors that leave out the possibility that you can transform yourself. Now if you say, well, Jacob, sure he transformed himself but he had the advantage of an angel, I will remind you what the Bible says: Jacob was left alone
 … 
and a man wrestled with him until the coming of the dawn. So if Jacob was alone who wrestled with him? You want to call it an angel? That’s OK but it sounds to me closer to the angels of our better nature of Lincoln than an angel with wings. In other words, it was a struggle with himself. And the product of that struggle: anger, bitterness, resentment, envy or transformation, aspiration, hope, decency
 … 
the product of that struggle is the quality of your life and the nature of your soul.”

I’ve just given over to tears now, like it’s a new fabric I’ve invented and will model for the rest of my life.

“That characterizes what we can loosely call a religious worldview, it is the antideterminist worldview, it is the belief that although lots about this world is given, ultimately what’s not given is the disposition of your soul toward what you have and what you lack. You know we’re about to enter a time where people are going to talk a lot about what they lack, what they don’t have, what they once have that was taken away from them and that’s a painful thing
 … 
but it’s also an opportunity. You can’t have an attitude
toward loss if you haven’t lost, and you can’t know what you really believe about the material goods of this world as long as you are stuffed full of them. This is, if you will, a terrible time for many people, and like all terrible times—a spiritual opportunity. If you are sitting in this congregation, I’ve said it before and will no doubt say it again, if you’re sitting in this congregation you are among the ninety-nine point something percent of the luckiest people who ever lived. Even if your 401k is in the toilet, you still are.”

The thirty-one flavors of pain.

“And the attitude you take toward your good fortune, that’s what determines the level of light in your soul. There’s no one here who’s lost so much that they can’t give. No one. And not only that but there’s no one here whose soul won’t be ennobled by that giving, which is part of the step of self-transformation
.

“You know on Hanukah you put the Hanukia, the Hanukah menorah, where? In the window. Because our tradition tells us you must practice ‘pirsumei nisa,’ which means advertising the miracle, and there are at least two ways of understanding that. One is that you’re advertising a miracle that happened a thousand years ago in a temple that no longer exists, that God who is the creator of the universe managed to make oil last for several nights, which frankly, on the scale of God’s wonders, you know, once you’ve created the world, making oil last is not really
 … 
it’s like a creative housewife, you know? All she’s got is Hamburger Helper, it’s gonna last her all week long, even though if you or I cooked it, we’d get one meal out of it. But there’s another miracle, which is that thousands of years ago the temple was destroyed, which meant that the people who lived in the temple dwelt in darkness, and yet here we are in 2008 putting a Hanukia in our windows. The book of Proverbs says that the soul of
a human being is God’s candle. It’s all about transforming yourself, renewing your light, and knowing that if your light shines it doesn’t only shine for you, that you really can make a difference in the world, that you put the Hanukia in the window so other people can see the light. I hope that in the season that comes, however dark it is, you will be a light and share that light. Shabbat Shalom.”

I GO DOWN TO THE COUNTRY STORE
and buy coffee for the first time in a while. Spike immediately says, “How’s GH?” I draw a breath.

“He’s good.”

“That guy is so in love with you. Lilly and I have been together twenty years and we were saying you rarely see energy like that between two people.”

I clear my throat. I tell him the truth.

Mum and I do the storied House of Blues Gospel Brunch. From shrimp jambalaya to chocolate banana bread pudding, we eat everything. The gospel singer onstage today beams. “There ain’t no party like a Holy Ghost party!” We totally believe her.

Her name is Sunshine and she has very long nails that curl, and she flicks them when she sings “This Little Light of Mine.”

You don’t even understand how much my mother and I danced that morning. We danced our asses off. On the way
out, Mum stops to wrap and put apple fritters in her handbag.
“Don’t
take an old Jewish lady to a buffet!” she snaps, when I roll my eyes.

That evening, we watch
Slumdog Millionaire
, which is getting raves. When the credits roll, Mum turns to me, takes off her glasses, and says, evenly: “You have caused me to watch a film about poo.”

When we wake up, we play tarot, as has become habit. Mum pulls, from the deck, a card with a baroque painting of a blond man holding out a golden bowl. She looks at it. “I would hate it if I went downstairs and instead of there being coffee, there was that guy saying, ‘I got you this bowl.’ ”

She makes me laugh harder than anyone I’ve ever known. And then the next thing she says is:

“I woke up feeling so sad that you cry so much.”

She doesn’t have her contact lenses in yet, so she’s wearing glasses that make her look like a tiny vole.

“It’s OK, Mum. I’m used to it.”

After she’s left, I make the decision that I can’t keep traveling to San Francisco, so I go to see a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, suggested by Dr. K. I am angry about going. I don’t even write down his name, just his suite number. The waiting room looks like a brain. He, himself, looks like all those times when Jim Carrey plays a serious role and never gets an Oscar.

I tell him, straightaway, about losing Dr. R, and how I only found out something was up by calling to make an appointment and getting a message saying the office was closed. And that’s all I knew, until I opened the e-mail from his brother-in-law saying he had died.

“That’s terrible. That’s
not
OK!”

I’m shocked. It sounds like he’s angry at a dog.

I have become used to defending GH; now I’m defending Dr. R.

“Well, aren’t people allowed to die how they want to die? Even if it means leaving their patients in the dark?”

He disagrees most vehemently.

Then I tell him about GH.

“That is appalling!”

I hope, suddenly, that he is easily appalled. I’ve been crying for two months now but all of a sudden I desperately do not want to be right. I want him to say I’ve been having inappropriate reactions. Because I’m crazy. Maybe I’m sick. Maybe my meds are off.

I tell him about the Baskin-Robbins thirty-one flavors of pain and that what I’m going through is really OK in the scheme of things.

“It’s just that we made so many plans and he kept pushing them. The places we were going to go, the children we were going to have.”

“Of course you were making plans. Of course. If you were seventeen. If you were twenty-two, I’d have said “slow down.” Not at thirty-two. That’s why it hurts so much. Because the plans were appropriate.”

I think about Dr. R’s plans with Barbara.

“Well then, I don’t know if it was real, and that makes me feel like I’m going insane again.”

“Absolutely it was real. It was a real,
partial
picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in
the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy and then a desperate desire for the cave. He will get lonely there eventually and come back.”

“To me?”

He doesn’t pause. “To someone new.”

“And I’ll have to watch another girl?”

“You will have to be Cassandra and know what lies ahead for that girl.”

I ask if I can show him a picture of us together. It occurs to me that this doctor, who treats crazy people, has never met me, he knows nothing, he could think I made it all up.

He looks through the photos. “You look extremely happy.”

I frown. “We were.”

As I take back the photos I say: “I just want them both to explain it to me. I want to know how two people I loved, so much, died without me ever knowing they were sick.”

He folds his hands across his knees.

“You absolutely deserve an explanation and you absolutely will not get one.”

After the session, I stop in a department store to buy red lipstick I don’t need—all red lipstick is red lipstick, no red lipstick is needed. The man behind the NARS counter puts it on me. He has dark skin, light hair, and light eyes; he kind of reminds me of Christopher when I met him, but super gay. He tries to match the shade to my skin tone but he’s having trouble. “It’s hard to tell what suits me at the moment because I’ve been crying a lot.”

“A man?”

I nod.

He waves his lipstick brush in my face. “No more of that.”

I wave goodbye to him and skip out into the street, leaning towards mania, most likely, and I dance at the stop sign and I walk and walk as one is not intended to do in Los Angeles. I realize: I am frightening people. It is such a blessing not to feel frightened.

I understand that from the night GH and I met, he was already saying goodbye. I understand that though Dr. R did not prepare me for his death, he was preparing me for the end from the first session. The difference is, I showed up to meet Dr. R bleeding, but I showed up to meet GH healed.

I AGREE TO A BLIND DATE
with a nice Jewish boy. As soon as we meet, he says: “I know your story. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.” He picks me up, takes me to the movies, takes me to dinner, insists on paying for everything. When he kisses me, I cry. I explain it’s not because I wish he were someone else, it’s because it’s such a shock to the system to be desired after feeling so completely abandoned.

We watch
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, with Angela Lansbury. In the film, Dorian worships her and then she sleeps with him and after that, he writes her a letter saying she will never be a part of his life again. When she gets the letter, she kills herself.

The man I’m watching with is a cantor—he’s a fucking cantor—it’s absurd. But it’s no more or less absurd than a movie star. They both work in the realm of projected dreams. The menorah, like true cinema, is an object purely of beauty. It is not functional. It is there only to be admired. Even the Shabbat lights you can read by. I think
of GH. I say a prayer for him and let the cantor drive me home.

In the car, he plays the White Stripes’ cover of Bob Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee.” He plays a cover of my Gypsy Husband’s song that totally rearranges it.

He isn’t the one. But he is kind to me.

When I get home, I start trying to figure out a way to get back my suicide letter from GH. Is it a letter or a note? It’s only eight lines. Novella or even a short story, except it doesn’t have a beginning, middle, and end, it’s a suicide mission statement.

I took back my dresses off his hangers, my shoes from his closet, my underwear from his drawers. I didn’t get back my Magimix, my cake stand, my Star of David necklace. I don’t want to take back any of the poems I wrote him, but I would take back all the poems he wrote about me. I wish we hadn’t prayed together, on our knees, in my garden at 7 a.m. I’d like never to have met him, because he made me so happy.

Mum says a thing that upsets me terribly, and we don’t speak for a few days. What she says when she calls is: “I saw a play about GH last night.” Her voice sounds strained and raw.

“What was the play?”

She takes a breath.
“Hamlet.”

I’m silent.

She adds, “I’ve never wept at
Hamlet
before.”

I still write to him every few weeks: notes that are not even passive-aggressive, they’re just bizarre and random, about what I’m having for dinner and what I’ve just seen
at the movies. I get him a subscription to the Sunday paper. I’ll show you the error of your ways! By arranging for you to receive free delivery of the
New York Times
. There can be a very thin line between heartbreak and performance art.

GH will never, ever answer my texts. There is a greater possibility that Dr. R will reply. But I still send them. My cats come to me because I feed them. It’s in their hotwire—I’ve spoiled them for so long. If I suddenly stopped leaving them food, they would still come to me for it.

Sometimes I feel the texts I send are like leaving prayers at the Wailing Wall. If Dr. R can’t hear me, and GH is deaf too, maybe G-d can? I have so much hope—these are the words that will stir him back to life, G-d or Dr. R or GH. I have so much hope. Until I hit Send. And then I have no faith at all.

At the end of the week, Mum sends me a lovely letter from London.

Reading that letter, I move the loss of GH and the death of Dr. R from being a picture in my wallet I see all through the day to going in a photo album to be looked at on special occasions.