LUCY’S JOURNAL
David seems to be settling down okay now,
or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
He does sound a bit flat on the phone.
But he’s never exactly been Mr. Expressiveness. I suppose I shouldn’t hover over him the way
I do, as if I am merely a minor character in his psychodrama. I’ve always
been envious of his life as a professional musician, one of the highest
callings there is, while I dick around with trying to write a novel, keep my
small family liferaft afloat and play the violin “as a hobby”. That’s like learning CPR as a hobby, if you
ask me.
Anyway, we’re soon heading into the depths
of summer and a complete break from lessons in August while Faith and Zoltán
slip away somewhere and - . Well, it’s none of my business, is it? The frisson
of the recital has left me already and I see ahead of me the ton of technique
(not to mention theory) which I will need to learn if I am ever to be an even
passably-good amateur violinist. Zoltán
feeds it to me in bearable snippets, but there are so many things I have yet to
master, and perhaps never will. “Patience,”
he says to me in his lazily sensuous accent, his eyes silvered with
amusement. Yes, and I want it right now.
It was a little depressing to see Rafe in
the Empire Cafe the other day with a 25-year-old newcomer to the program, all
fluffy blonde hair, feverishly earnest blue eyes still moist from crying, and
big tits straining under a transparent white t-shirt. A baby bird fallen from the nest. Of course in AA these things can be
completely platonic, but I notice the women wear the t-shirts anyway, just in
case. I even know people who go to AA
dances strictly to pick up chicks. The
newly-sober are the neediest people in the world, and predators know it. It’s
nearly as low as the story I heard from a sponsee who was in Riverview for
years – about how men cruise the hospital grounds at night in their cars,
hoping to find female patients who will exchange sexual services for
cigarettes.
I know the thing (fling, or whatever it
was) with Rafe is over, fizzled-out due to lack of any common interests at all,
besides staying sober. (And I sometimes
think that even a reasonably-bright chimp could understand the principles of
AA.) It was a kick while it lasted, but
unsatisfying. The closest thing to empty
sex that I have ever had. Why is the
companionship and communication always so much better with men you absolutely
know you will never sleep with? Like
David, or even Zoltán. Of course they
have demons, but you don’t feel responsible for sorting them out.
Demons.
I suppose we all have them.
Kate’s doing better. She has her
camp-counselling job back for the summer, which is good because she seemed to
enjoy it last year. I have no idea how
to handle the aftermath of an ordeal like hers if the person who experienced it
doesn’t want to talk about it. I’m
forever trying to correct the mistakes my parents made, and one of the worst
was the entrenched alcoholic “no-talk” rule.
I don’t want that to be my legacy to Kate, who sometimes throws it in my
face during arguments that all her problems stem back to my alcoholism, my mental
illness, etc. Etc. While it’s true that
for a long time I was the agent for damage, a damage that goes back for
uncounted generations (and just where did it start?), some years ago I made a
conscious decision to become the agent for something else. Change. Hope.
Grace. Growth.
Don’t be fooled by how good those words
sound. It’s one of the dirtiest jobs in
the world, but the alternative simply isn’t acceptable to me any more.
David wants me to come to the summer pops
concert this weekend – “Scary Hits” or something like that – “Night on Bald
Mountain”, “Danse Macabre,” “March to
the Scaffold” from Symphony Fantastique by
Berlioz, that sort of thing. (I just
love the part where the guillotined man’s head hits the basket – thump on the tympani!) I think they should have saved it for
Hallowe’en. It’s one of those concerts
that’s meant to get kids (and their thick-witted parents) interested in
"classical” music. David wouldn’t
have anything to do with it if it weren’t real music, unlike those Reader’s
Digest homogenized albums of “Classics” which are the aural equivalent of
eating an entire carton of Kool-Whip at one sitting. But it’s still bleeding chunks, hokey excerpts. “The Mozart Quartet in F Major,” David said on the phone. “Did you ever hear the oboe part? Now that’s
scary.” Good God, is he getting his
sense of humor back?
Monika. I must phone Monika. I’ve been
having really strange dreams about a mutilated old Barbie I had when I was only
around eight years old. It just keeps
turning up in my dreams, like an unwanted child. Andrew kept hiding it, burying it in the back
yard, singing the hair off with a lighter, making little nooses and hanging it
from doorknobs, that sort of thing. The
ultimate Barbie sabotage came when I found a shoebox covered with hieroglyphics
under my bed. Lo and behold, inside it
was Barbie, all wrapped in strips of old bedsheet which had been saturated in
my mother’s Chanel No. 5.
Mummified. Ah, my childhood! And that was one of the more normal things
that happened.
Probably the worst of it was the demonic
possession stuff which made such a deep impression on me that I carried that
particular delusion (or whatever it was) into psych wards all across this great
nation of ours for years and years.
Every time I’d get sick (and it was strange how I’d have 2 and
3-year-long periods of being strong and relatively well), that feeling of
“someone or something” taking over my body would come back. Sometimes I think the whole problem was that
Andrew was a complete flop as an exorcist, though pretty good at deeply
instilling a firm conviction in me that I was “possessed”.
What a wholesome activity for teenagers,
eh? – penning ourselves away in Andrew’s stale-smelling, tobaccoey bedroom,
smoking a ton of dope, then sitting in his rotating office chair in virtual
darkness while he circled all around me yelling out incantations to try to make
the “demons” leave my body. “Get out of
my sister!”, he’d yell. He sincerely
wanted to help me and tried his best, but left me “holding the bag”, so to
speak. Odd that he was the one who went
so irretrievably insane, while I came back.
I’ve found out over the years that you
can’t bring this topic up with anyone or they get all freaked. Even therapists. I’ve had whole sessions
where the shrink sat there with his mouth open, trying to believe the things
that I was telling him. And God help you
if you try to go to anyone in the
I suppose I could find a fundamentalist
church which could “cure” me of all this immediately. I’m sure I could go to an evangelical service
and have fits and see visions, fall down on the floor in ecstasy, and have some
fat male patriarchal figure in a white suit “cast out my demons in the name of
Christ”. Then I’d belong to them
completely, I suppose. I’d learn to hate
gays and submit to men and condemn all young women who are driven to have
abortions to the everlasting flames of Hell.
Maybe the
My Lucy is more than a little
depressed. I can tell by the way she
drags the bow across my strings, mechanically playing arpeggios and scales to
try to make up for all the technique she missed in her first year. Zoltán was secretly very impressed with her
progress during that year; in particular she picked up the fundamentals of
fingering very quickly, but now she has hit a wall and doesn’t know how to get
past it. She tells herself that this
feeling of a stone in her chest is the result of taking on the burden of all
her friends’ problems – David’s angst, Monika’s flat joyless mood, the lady she
knows at her church who is dying of cancer, the AA friends who have slipped,
slid or even just disappeared. She tells
herself it is the nothing-mood of summer and hopes for fall to reinvigorate
her. She tells herself it is “hormones”,
the early biochemical nudgings of menopause.
And it’s true that her “cycle” is now more of a cyclone, moody and
unpredictable, coming whenever and wherever it wants to, bleeding her dry, then
staying away for too many weeks, causing Lucy to brood about cancer.
Or she concludes it is her past, the
cracked crystal of her childhood which will always leave a profound residual
ache. She knows all the well-meaning
self-help books and strategies for “healing” are just the best guesses of
people who don’t really know how to do this at all.
At her worst times Lucy almost persuades
herself that she is not musician enough to even approach an instrument as
difficult as the violin,but she could not be more wrong.
The whole problem with Lucy
is that she does have the
sensibilities of a musician. She has the
hypersensitivity, the drivenness, the perfectionism coupled with impatience
that has driven many a talented person over the edge like a stampede of
possessed swine, before they could even begin to fulfill their potential. Does she also have the doggedness and iron
self-discipline? This is the acid
test. Musical sensibilities come in a
package, and single-mindedness is very much an ingredient. This means developing the focus to keep on
working even when there are no appreciable results for a long period of time. Some would call this “doing it on
faith”. Scales and arpeggios are not
much fun to play and Lucy’s bow appears to turn into lead when she plays
them. Sometimes she wonders why she even
bothers, but this is akin to her questioning of life itself, whether it has a
point, and whether she might not be better off facing the end like her
terminally-ill friend. What eventually
short-circuits that line of thought is the realization that what we call
“death” isn’t the end, that it is merely a change of form, and that to throw
back the Creator’s most precious gift is a sin with massively heavy
consequences.
In her deep past Lucy has experienced the
kind of depression that numbs the spirit and paralyzes the mind, so she tends
to dismiss these cyclic passages as “bad patches”, grey and bleak but not
soul-destroying. Yet she perhaps accepts
them a little too readily, as if there is nothing she can do about it. Zoltán would like to free her from her own
bleakness, with music as the key. And I
am the agent, the means, the fuse, the wick, the conveyor of the Light, an incandescent
insistence that yes, yes, life is inherently worthy, full of so much juice and
so much joy, stronger than death, stronger than depression, stronger than
anything. Lucy has a short memory and
too easily forgets her tremendous capacity for enjoyment of living, her lust
for life.
I know it lies coiled tightly within her,
waiting to explode. These wilderness
times are perhaps the only opportunity she gives herself to rest. “Illness is the only acceptable form of
meditation in Western society,” her friend Monika likes to say, quoting some
current health guru. Lucy gets depressed
every time she tries to meditate and would rather go on one of her 90-minute
walks or even try to lose herself in playing me. What’s the best way to manage? she asks herself
. To face everything that’s wrong and collapse, or just keep running? Or do I transcend it all, the way Zoltán
seems to have done? (Seems, for her
beloved teacher is no stranger to depression himself.)
Her best gift, some would say her only gift,
is her ability to persevere even under the most adverse of circumstances, and
even under the worst test of all – the constant abrasion of the everyday. Real heroism is daring to laugh when all isn’t well, embracing life’s sweet,
subversive pleasures without waiting for everything (or anything) to be solved. And
since for Lucy nothing will ever be solved (especially since she has an uncanny
knack for unearthing more problems), this practically guarantees that she will
be forced to draw on her gift for the rest of her life. How can she believe that she is anything but
blessed?
No one had a bloody clue what to do, least
of all me, and except for Roger the English horn player I’m probably closer to
him than anyone else (though he and Rog probably spend most of their time
together talking shop). All through this
- I don’t know what to call it - this “episode”, a little voice in my head
kept saying, “Do something, Cass. Do
something.” What was I supposed to do –
pin him down bodily on the floor and make him put his clothes back on?
The only time I’ve ever heard of something
like this happening to anyone is in a mental institution. I swear he should probably be in the hospital
right now but after he sort of came out of it, he reassured everyone that he
was “fine, just tired”. Only a few of us
saw him, thank God, but you know how word gets around, especially among
musicians.
He always gets to rehearsal ahead of
practically everyone else to warm up and diddle around with his instrument and stand so everything
will be just so. But tonight something
was definitely “off”. I got there
extra-early to practice the fiercely-difficult flute solo in Daphnis et Chloe and saw him wander in
with this strange, removed look on his face.
Not distressed. Not upset. Just sort of remote. (Not that “remote” is so unusual for David.)
Probably only four of us saw this, but he
stood there completely still for a moment, and then began to unbutton his
shirt.
I could’ve said something, should’ve said
something, but I didn’t.
In half a minute or so I realized with an
awful sinking sensation that he wasn’t going to stop there.
He took his shirt off, carefully hanging
it on the back of his chair, stepped out of his shoes and very calmly began to
unbuckle his belt. And I know I should have said or done
something then, but I was completely paralyzed, as were the rest of us who were
probably all praying as hard as I was that Maestro Sergionna wouldn’t suddenly
appear and drop his baton in shock.
Same routine with the pants. Folded carefully over the back of the
chair. Socks off next, one at a time,
then, finally, yes, his underwear. Say
something, Cassandra. Do something. I exchanged terrified glances with Don the 2nd
clarinetist but we were both immobilized by shock. And then he got down on the floor and curled
himself into a fetal position beside his chair.
Then, thank God, Rog came in and said, “My
God.” He went right over to him (as I
probably should have done long before) and began to call out to him loudly,
“David. David, come on, David, I think
you need some help here. Come on, David,
let’s get these clothes back on you, okay?”
It didn’t take long for him to sit up and
respond. Grabbing his underwear, he
began to get dressed again just as calmly and methodically as he had got
himself undressed. Rog came over to me
and we had a small, hushed, panic-stricken conversation.
“Do you think I should take him to the
hospital?”
“I don’t know. Have you noticed him acting strangely
lately?”
“No, he just seemed quieter than
usual. He hasn’t missed a rehearsal.”
“At least you’d better drive him home.”
“I don’t know. Should he be left alone, do you think?” –
etc., etc. And then David walked up to
us as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Uh, David – “
“Something wrong here?”
“Um, listen David, maybe I’d better give
you a lift home. You look tired.”
“No, I think I’m fine.”
“David, don’t you realize. . . “
“I need sleep, that’s all. It’s sleep deprivation. But I can still play.”
“Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”
“I just need a good night’s sleep.” He yawned.
People were trickling in. The
four of us in the room exchanged a glance which silently telegraphed, “Don’t
talk about this” - at least not
openly. And don’t tell Sergionna.
And that’s how the situation will stay
unless someone does something. Zoe
absolutely freaked when I told her about it.
“That’s it,” she said. “This proves
that my baby will be nuts.” As if that’s
all she can think about. I really do
care about David and even though he played fine and seemed OK by the end of the
rehearsal, I know better. He’s having a
breakdown and no one seems to be able to do a damn thing to help him.
What is it that pushes people to this
point? They’re carrying these megatons
of emotional baggage for years, even decades, and then - . There’s a shift in the tectonic plates, and –
earthquake. Complete collapse. Yet he’s still functioning. It’s almost macabre. And so is the way everyone is pretending it
isn’t really happening. Did we all come
from dysfunctional homes, or what? I
knew musicians were sick, but I didn’t think they were that sick. Is there some
kind of see-no-evil code in our society which allows something totally
unacceptable to continue?
Zoë says I analyse everything too
much. Zoë says I should be more
concerned about the baby, about the fragile genes she’ll inherit. Zoë says David might be a bad influence on
the baby and maybe we should be thinking about moving away. Moving away!
What about my career? Does Zoë
think I can just casually get a job as a professional flutist in
He needs a good shrink, of course, so he
can sort out all this guilt shit around Leslie, as if he has anything to do
with her fragile state. Some people are
just born that way, David, and you’re not exactly Mr. Strength yourself. Lately it looks as if you’ve been forgetting
to eat and sleep. Do some people push
themselves towards breakdown, so they can finally have all this out and stop
lugging it around with them? I suppose
we should have him over for dinner some time to talk about his exact role here,
but Zoë would freak. She’s gotten
awfully strange during this pregnancy, sort of flighty and unpredictable, and
I’ve had no luck at all getting her to quit smoking. So I’ll have a smaller baby, she says. It’ll be easier to pop out. I mention the possibility that the child
could have a smaller brain and she
tunes me out completely.
I’m thinking of Sage for a name. Zoë says “we can’t name our kid from the
spice rack”. But Sage is so soft and
lovely, and suitable for either sex.
Sage. . . Artemis. . . Martin.
All right, Artemis is a goddess, and I said I wouldn’t do that. I thought of Astarte to begin with, but Zoë
vetoed it. She wants to call it Damon,
which is too much like that horror-movie character from The Omen. I want to avoid anything trendy as it’s
likely the child will go into the arts,
and it’s hard enough making it in this field without being saddled with a hokey
name. (Speaking of. Zoë used to be called Susan. She legally renamed herself when she finally got
away from her father.) Zoë keeps wanting
to inflict that last name of hers on the kid and I honestly don’t know how
anyone could spell it. I’m the main
breadwinner here, we’re sort of married, so shouldn’t she acquiesce to using
Martin as a last name? Double-barrelled
names are so cumbersome anyway, and they don’t work at all in succeeding
generations where you’d end up with four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two last
names. We’ve got to be practical here.
As for David, I’ll have to keep an eye on
him. I’m still thinking I should do
something. What? Corner him in a room and tell him, “David, I
think you should be committed”? How can
you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, or who’s already so far gone
that he doesn’t even see that there’s a problem?
Something
very weird is happening with Mums and this friend of hers, this David. There was a message on the answering machine
when I got home the other day that made my hair stand on end. It went like this:
“Lucy.
She’s gone, Lucy. There was
nothing I could do to save her. Please come.”
The voice was thick and hoarse and sounded desperate. I didn’t even know who it was until Mums
finally got home, listened to it and said, “Oh my God, it must be Leslie.” I tried to get her to explain who Leslie was
(one of her AA rehabilitation projects?), but she was flying all over the
place, trying to find her keys, her coat, her other shoe.
“Is this someone from AA?”
“No, it’s David’s sister. She’s been in the hospital lately and
something must’ve happened to her. I
have to go to him.”
“For God’s sake, Mums, why does it always
have to be you? Doesn’t he have any other friends?”
“I’m sorry, kiddo, but this is an
emergency.” We’d had serious plans to
hang out together that night, make some popcorn, watch a video. So much for that.
“Yeah, but your whole life is an
emergency.”
“Kate, that’s not fair!”
“Well, what’s the point of all this
‘recovery’ stuff if all your friends are so totally fucked up? Is it your responsibility to try to save
them?”
“It’s my responsibility to love them.”
“But what about me?” I knew I sounded whiny and petulant, like a
little kid. But geez. It wasn’t long ago she had to rush this David
character off to emergency for “accidentally” cutting himself. Doesn’t he know how to dial
“You know I love you. David’s going through a rough patch right now
and this is going to hit him awfully hard.
I need to be there for him. I
promise we’ll do the movie tomorrow night.”
“Great.
You watch. Someone’ll fall off
the wagon tomorrow night and you’ll have to be there to hold their head while
they puke into the toilet bowl.”
“I don’t do that, Kate.”
“But practically.”
“I promise. Tomorrow night. Don’t wait up.” Then she flew off. I swear she enjoys this emergency stuff
because it gets her blood up, like the old days when everything was a
crisis. She’s still addicted to
chaos. After she left I did the only
thing possible under the circumstances – invited Brian over (I hadn’t seen him
in nearly a week and he’d scored two joints from somebody at work). Renting the movie turned out to be a bit of a
waste because we were sort of busy, but at least I wasn’t lonely.
Then about
“How’s Leslie?” I asked, trying to
be helpful.
“Oh, Leslie’s fine. It’s David who should be institutionalized.”
“Is he okay?”
“’She’s gone, Lucy. She’s gone,’ he says. ‘There was nothing I could do to save her.’ I
said something like, ‘David, Leslie has had problems for years and years. You know something like this would happen
eventually.’ And he gives me the blank
look of all time. ‘Leslie?’ he
says. ‘No, she’s still in the
hospital. It’s Stanzi.’ ‘Stanzi?’
‘You know, Constanza, the cinnamon tabby.’”
“The cat.”
“The cat.
Apparently she got out and dashed across the street and was hit by a
van. David saw it happen.”
“Well, that’s pretty traumatic.”
“It gets worse. He brought her out in a box.”
Brian, rousing himself, broke into stoned
laughter.
“I said I didn’t want to see her but David
insisted. He was absolutely beside
himself with grief. I asked him what he
was going to do with the body and he said he’s thinking of having her cremated.”
At this, Brian totally lost it. Then the rest of us started laughing
too. It was awful but that’s what we
did. There’s nothing more hilarious than
somebody else’s tragedy.
“What’s he gonna do with the ashes?” Brian
guffawed. “Bury them in the litter-box?”
“Never mind. Stanzi’s in kitty heaven now,” Mums said,
wiping her eyes, “which is more than I can say for David. Not that he’s alone in the world. I mean, he still has Fanny and Clara for
company.”
“Fanny and Clara! What, no Anna Magdalena?”
“Those cats mean a lot to him.”
“Obviously. Will there be a memorial service?” I said,
trying to keep the mood going.
“I’ll sing ‘Memory’,” Brian helpfully
offered, setting us all off again.
There must be a 12-step program out there
for people whose friends are a total mess.
Mums complains about it all the time but the situation doesn’t seem to
get any better. I think fucked-up people
are attracted to her because she managed to get so much better, and they want
to know her “secret”. There isn’t one,
except hard work and courage, but these people all want it the easy way, as if
they can siphon emotional strength directly out of her veins. I know what it took Mums to get herself
better and there were no short cuts. If
you’re to believe the books, I’ll end up with all sorts of emotional problems
myself from being an “ACOA”. I’m just
glad she’s not drinking any more, glad I more or less know what to expect when
I come in the door. But I wish she had
better judgement in her choice of friends.
She still picks people who echo the way she used to be, as if she just
can’t quite let go of the chaos. Doesn’t
she feel she deserves a bit of peace?
I could have sworn I saw her the other day
when I was out walking. Heard the sound
of a voice that could only be her, and then I saw her running towards me as if
in slow motion. Then I saw the red van
turning the corner, heard the squeal of brakes being applied too late, felt
myself lurching forward – Stanzi! Stanzi! The awful sight! The driver apologizing, almost crying, and
hearing myself say to him, “Look – look
what you’ve done!” Cradling her broken
little body in my hands. Dear God. He offered to pay for a “replacement” and I
told him to get lost. Will it be this
way every time I go out? Will I keep
seeing things to remind me? Hearing her
voice?
People are acting funny around me now, as
if they’re afraid I’ll fall apart at rehearsal or do something bizarre. They ask about the cuts. It’s nothing.
It’s just that I seem to cut myself every morning when I shave, probably
because I’m just not sleeping very well.
Haven’t slept well in a couple of months. Losing Stanzi has made everything infinitely
worse. Fanny and Clara are grieving. Clara hasn’t eaten in three days and she’s
thin to begin with. Fanny howls out the
window, a primal and most uncatly noise, trying to bring her back. But gone is gone. Fan won’t even let me pick her up. She writhes out of my arms like a snake. I can’t stand having anybody near me
either. Everyone wants to tell me what
to do. Even when Lucy came over she was
full of advice. “Did you forget to shave
today?” “What’s that smell – did
something go bad in the garbage?” “My
God, you’ve got nothing in the fridge! Are you trying to starve yourself to
death?” And she didn’t want to look at
Stanzi, even though I couldn’t stop looking at her, opening the box again and
again and again.
All I have left is my instrument, and I
practice at night now and try to sleep during the day. Sometimes I kind of lose track of what time
it is. Must have spent fifteen minutes
standing in my closet today, unable to decide whether to wear the blue shirt or
the brown shirt – the blue shirt or the brown shirt – the blue or the brown –
the blue or the brown - .
It’s exhausting how many
decisions you have to make in a single day.
Even ordering a cup of coffee is an ordeal. Skim milk or whole milk? Skim milk or whole milk?
When we were kids, we used to tell each
other everything. I never needed a best
friend, and she didn’t either, because we had each other and it was absolutely
magical. Lucy thinks she knows how it
used to be with us. She talks about her
brother Andrew who went crazy and died.
But I swear this was different.
This was like finding the lost half of my soul. We had a language no one else spoke or even
knew existed. I know how it must have
looked. Some of the kids at school even
made jokes about it – crude, horrible jokes.
But they’d never known what this was like, this absolute understanding,
this melding of souls. How many people
experience that much intimacy in a lifetime?
Who were they to say it was unhealthy?
And when they sent her away – is it any wonder she got so sick? Who else
understood her? She must have felt
completely abandoned. And she’s never
been the same. She went someplace where
I couldn’t follow. Now I think I know what it must have been like for her. The world is too ugly, grotesque and riddled
with loss. Everyone makes their own
reality. What other way is there to
survive? Lucy talks about how love is
stronger than anything, even stronger than death, but I think the world spins
on raw greed. The sensitive are crushed
like insects. They end up in a twilight
world, full of drugs that are supposed to “help”, punished for their poetry,
poisoned on their own gift. If this is
what comes of their strengths, what hope for their weaknesses?
It’s getting to the point where it’s not
safe to listen to my answering-machine messages any more. Every day seems to bring its bombshell: like the other morning when I had a message
from Cassandra Martin, one of David’s two queer ex-girl-friends. “I have a message from David Lukasiewicz,”
she stated rather primly. “David would
like to know if you’d be able to take the cats while he’s away.” (Away?
Away where?) “If you can only
take one cat he’d prefer that it be Fanny, because Clara may need special
treatment for her eating disorder and might have to go into the clinic for a
few days. Please let me know when you
can pick them up as soon as possible.”
I’d never had much to do with Cassandra, though I did meet her once and
thought, “Waif. I see why David likes
her.” The skinny big-eyed type. I wasn’t looking forward to calling her to
let her know that our Manx Max would eat
another cat and looking after even one of David’s neurotic little pussies would
be out of the question. But I did need
to know what was going on. I didn’t like
the sound of that “away”. Like a sick or
wounded animal, was he going to run off somewhere and hide himself in the
woods?
“Hello, Cassandra, it’s Lucy.”
“Oh, thank God. We’ve been having the hardest time placing
these cats.”
“Placing. . . “
“I’m afraid Zoë and I can’t take them in
because they set off Zoë’s allergies.
There’s also that – what’s it called?
Toxoplasmosis? You know, that
thing a pregnant woman can get from a cat-box?”
“Where is David? How is he?
“Oh, on a leave of absence. He had a ton of holiday time accumulated
anyway. He just had to go away for a
while and begged me not to ask any questions.”
“Is he. . . you know. . . “
“There’s not much I can tell you. Stanzi’s death affected him terribly, we’re
heading into our fall season and I think the stress just got to him. Maybe he went on a little trip.”
“Do you think he’s in any danger?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“The problem is, we have a cat already and
he’s – “
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“He’s very territorial, not to mentioned
spoiled rotten. Our condo isn’t very big
and-“
“Do you know of anyone else, then? The problem is, David had to leave right away
so he had a friend bring the cats over to our place. They can only stay here on the most temporary
basis because of Zoë’s condition.”
I racked my brains. “Kate’s boy friend loves cats,” I said,
thinking of the way Brian howled at the story of Stanzi’s tragic end. “But I’d have to talk to him about it first.”
“Oh, could you? It’d be such a big help. I have to admit I’ve been concerned about
David’s health lately and I really think he needs some time to himself.”
“So long as he’s okay.”
“Well, at least he’s doing something.”
“Yes, I guess so.” (Why do I take these things on? Why does it always seem to fall on me?) “I’ll call Brian and then give you a call
back,” I heard myself say.
Of course then Brian had to try to
persuade his parents to let him temporarily adopt two traumatized creatures he’d
never seen before, as a favor to his girl friend’s mother who sweetened the
deal with a $50.00 incentive (but he did seem pretty eager to take them in;
Brian was good with animals and small children). Then of course it fell on me to go pick up
the cats and get them safely to Brian’s.
I got to meet the fabled Zoë, a bizarre-looking white-skinned creature
with a pierced eyebrow and a rose tattoo on her shoulder, spiky black hair,
blue fingernails and lips, and a round jutting belly (I’d say about six months
along) that looked as if it had been grafted on to her gaunt, gangly body. David’s turkey-baster baby. She was chewing gum and smoking at the same
time and making bitchy remarks while Cassie struggled to get the cats into a
box. I hated to see them go through more
trauma when they had already lost their “sister” and – temporarily – their
Dad. But there was no other way to do
it. The two of them howled all the way
to Coquitlam. I could tell that Brian’s
parents weren’t thrilled to see me, though Brian and Kate were in their
element, fawning and crooning over the two of them who sniffed everything
warily, sure that this latest development would lead to no good. I instructed Brian in how to administer
Clara’s appetite-stimulant drops. She’s
a beautiful cat really, smoke-colored, slim as a snake, with exotic greenish
eyes. A designer cat. Fanny is a sort of white angora, like a
sweater on legs, and David must have been brushing her religiously every day to
keep her coat that immaculate. Never
mind. Brian will make a big fuss over
them and a lot of attention is just what they need at the moment.
And now for David. Has he bolted? Is he wandering the streets muttering to
himself, or has he gone to visit Leslie in
It must have taken him something to dump
September, the “band’s” busiest time in preparation for the new season. As for me and Kate, it’s back to the grind,
school, work, lessons, writing the damned novel, and down to earth with a thump
with Harriet – back to the drawing-board, scales and arpeggios and Kreutzer
etudes which I can only play at a miserably slow pace. “Speed and intonation!” Zoltán cries.
“Make them fun!” How can I tell
him arpeggios are about as fun as a dental-hygiene appointment? I know they’re necessary to fill all the
monstrous gaps in my technique. It’s all
part of the process, but where is the romance?
“You are worried,” Z. stated at our last
lesson. Not a question.
“A friend of mine is. . . “ I waved
vaguely.
“It is mental?”
“I suspect. How did you – “
“He will be stronger. Soon.”
“He’s a musician.”
“Yes, I know.” When he makes statements like that it
unnerves me. “He will discover his real
strength.”
“He has this sister. . . “
“Yes, she lives in the east. She is stronger than he is.” Part of me wondered, “where do you get off,
you little Hungarian pipsqueak, making these arrogant suppositions about people
you don’t even know?” Another part had
mental goose-bumps and almost didn’t want to hear any more.
There was a silence. Then:
“Raff,” he said.
“Raff.”
I swung up Harriet and began to play the Cavatine with a slight deepening and brightening of tone. Perhaps all this sorrow is good for my
playing.
I know an elderly woman named Sandra who
is dying of brain cancer, and somehow this disease has focused her, burnished
her bright, lit her from within in a way that seems to intimidate some people
terribly. What do you mean, there’s
nothing they can do? Her dying is an
affront. Everyone is looking for someone
to blame for her ephipany. I am
beginning to see the phenomenal cost of real spiritual growth. I hope all this applies to David. I pray he won’t have to self-destruct in
order to purify himself. There are
better ways. I know of them. I have a little shadow that goes in and out
with me, and that shadow carries the awful whiff of the psych ward. It was my crucible, though of course I didn’t
know it at the time. At the time it was
a swim through sludge, like being trapped in a sewer. Jean Valjean has nothing on me, let me tell
you. But like Valjean, I escaped, or was
set free. I don’t understand it, but I
did have the good grace to accept it.
And so the chaos was over, and a new sort of life began. It strikes me that it would take an awful lot
for David to abandon his cats, however temporarily. Is this his shaman’s journey, his ritual of
purification? The trouble is, the
wilderness can kill you if you stay out there for too long. God in all her loving kindness can burn like
a merciless laser, slicing away the tumors of grief without even the blessing
of an anaesthetic.
LESLIE LUKASIEWICZ
Mama
and Pa just about had a fit when I told them I was getting my own place. “But you’re not well enough!” Mama exclaimed,
maybe worried that the key organizing activity in her life (taking care of me)
was being taken away from her. But I
just don’t think I need taking care of any more. The new combination of meds is working really
well, with no side effects except a mild euphoria, which frankly I welcome
after everything I’ve been through. I’m
sleeping reasonably well and my short-term memory is coming back. I know people are still taken aback by the
whole idea of “shock treaments”, but then they’ve never been so immobilized by
depression that they found it hard to draw their next breath. I remember standing in front of my closet for
fifteen minutes every morning thinking, “This dress or that one? This dress or that one? This one or that?”, when it really didn’t
make any difference at all which one I chose.
Something happened with this last round of
treatment, some mysterious shift in the chemistry, and I’m beginning to feel
like a human being again. Food tastes
better, I’m putting on some much-needed weight and I really want to get back to
my teaching as soon as I can. “Ach, she
could’ve had a career,” I can still hear Pa saying, adding under his breath,
“What a waste.” To him, anything less
than the highest pinnacle of success is a total write-off. But I’m just beginning to reassess myself professionally and I’m coming
to the realization that teaching is a calling unto itself, a valid way to
convey the joy and vitality of music. Pa
can’t let go of the idea that his little girl won’t be pounding the keys at
Carnegie Hall. David made it – well,
more or less, though Pa wanted a violinist and won’t ever let David forget
it. But even that isn’t enough. My father is this big walking blob of
unfulfilled ambition. I don’t like to
lay blame here but I don’t think his attitude contributed anything very
positive to my mental health, to say the least.
I think about David quite a lot these days
and I know I owe him a letter. But some
kind of chasm opened up between us at a certain point and we’ve never quite
been able to bridge it. I remember how
it was between the two of us when we were young and I wonder if he has found a
way to deal with it all. He has always
seemed like the strong one, but he lives a monastic sort of life, alone with
his oboe and all those cats. I wonder if
our childhood just warped him in a slightly different way than it did me. Who’s to say why it is that one person in a
family cracks up and another one doesn’t?
Maybe I cracked up because I “could” – because I could sense some sort
of light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how flickering and dim. Maybe I knew it was the only way I could
eventually reclaim my life for my own.
Psychiatric institutions are nasty but they can serve as a sort of
crucible, a place to begin rebirth.
Maybe so much wiring had to be redone that I basically had to start all
over again, razing the structure to its foundation. I was lucky in that I survived. I don’t blame David at all for the things
that happened back then – we were just a couple of neurotic kids pushed almost
beyond endurance, and all we had was each other. We created a world, impenetrable by anyone
else, full of tenderness and hilarity, and it was the only release either of us
ever had from Pa’s bullying and Mama’s incessant, dithering concern. If there was damage along the way, then maybe
that was the price we had to pay for surviving our childhood.
I think Mama secretly resents the fact
that I’ve regained my powers of decision and can begin to call the shots in my
life once again. Her sickness is that
she can’t let go of my sickness.
Living apart from them will help. Lately
I’ve had calls from friends I haven’t seen since university. (Psychosis really cramps your social
life.) Someone remarked to me the other
day, “You know, you’ve finally got some color in your face.” Yes, that’s it – a blush of health creeping
back into my formerly bloodless life.
Though it’s tempting to become a professional invalid, another sort of
life is beginning to make itself possible, even probable, if I can only keep putting
one foot in front of the other. There
may be deeper meaning and purpose in my going crazy – I hope it redeemed David
in some mysterious way, or at least saved him from cracking up. Maybe I went crazy for both of us. But as seductive as madness can be, health is
ultimately stronger. Health wants me
back, and I am more than willing to let it take me.
I am only eight years old, and for most of that time I sat in a glass display-case unplayed. Now I am in my second year of vibration, my molecules deliciously disturbed in a way which shivers my strings and mellows my wood. Is it the experience of being played, only? – or could it be a slight change in the level of Lucy’s skill? For whatever reason, even though I am female and nowhere near the level of adolescence, my voice is changing.
Three times in a piece, perhaps, just for
an instant, Lucy forgets herself, or gains enough courage, and a new resonance
pops through, a sound in three layers: a
sheeny bright surface, a vibrant middle and a foundation warm as
wood-grain. These true notes come almost
by accident, though Lucy longs to sound that way all the time. Her usual tone is greeny and sallow,
sometimes almost grainy, too thin in the upper register, too thick-tongued in
the lower, like a recording of a human voice on the wrong speed. But when these magical tone-pops happen, the
violin even feels different in Lucy’s hands.
For a split-second, I become alive.
Is this Lucy’s first hint of the reward
that is coming her way if she stays with this instrument for the rest of her
life? She still goes through
crisis-points when she wonders what she has undertaken here, and whether it
might not be easier on her mental health just to quit. But something always intervenes. Her friend Sandra from church, the one who
has the cancer, invited her over for tea one afternoon and tacked this on to
the invitation: “By the way, I’d be
delighted if you’d bring over your violin.”
It threw Lucy into one of her famous tailspins at first: no, I don’t sound good enough, it’s too soon,
I’m not ready, I should wait a year – and then it occurred to her that her
friend probably doesn’t have a year. So
she toted me over and played me as well as she could, with the usual hesitations,
bow-slips, hasty pitch-corrections and greenish, amateur sound. But her friend knows enough about music to
catch those tone-pops, those tiny flashes of enlightenment, the breakthrough of
what will one day be my true voice if Lucy can only stay with it. “Never apologize for how you sound,” Sandra
told her firmly. “If someone criticizes
you, keep this in mind. You can do
something they can’t do. You can play the violin.”
No one had ever spelled it out in those
terms before, which is probably why Lucy broke into gooseflesh at her words. She was thinking to herself: I can play the violin. Shakily.
Imperfectly. Everything,
everything needs refinement and improvement.
Still, I can play. I can do what
others cannot do, perhaps because they never dared.
Lucy dares. It is the whole reason she is still
here. It’s the reason she still gets up
in the morning even when her native tendency towards depression wants to
enclose her like a hand. She gets up. She eats.
She walks. She plays. She puts words on the page, not knowing if
anyone will ever even see them. It is a
form of devotion. Faith and persistence
are close cousins. At conception, some
force must have endowed her with a keep-on gene, perhaps to counterbalance that
other awful gene which reads, “Die.”
When her time comes, Lucy would like to die like her sick friend, her face turned toward the light. But there are a million miles of living ahead of that mysterious crossover, sweaty, tedious, straining, boring, trying, outrageously ordinary living. Did I say she had a keep-on gene? There is another, deeply encoded, only activated recently in her middle age, which reads, “Make your own meaning.” For meaning is the real essence of life, transcending even purpose or worth. Those who know this can survive anything. Some wait for meaning, and generally speaking they wait forever. Some, of course, run out of patience and give up. And some learn to create it, summoning it up out of the muck and murder of reality. These are truly blessed, though what drives them to try is almost always appalling misfortune, mistreatment and loss. The oyster brings forth the pearl not to make a beautiful gem, but to survive laceration. Is this why Lucy grabbed back the most potent symbol of her youth (in fact, of her oppression) – as a means of healing more powerful than any $90 per hour Gestalt session? Will my gold strings and blonde hair draw transforming mercy from her cracked heart, like hidden waters welling from the pitiless severity of the wilderness?
Link to Part Six: A Singing Tree (Part Six of Six)
