trip

Tripbeauty

I. Terrible beauty Triptych: Living as a dialogue on dying

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Andrew Herder sat in his den with his friend Dennis. They sipped iced tea and nibbled extra-salted pretzels. Outside the sun was trying to shine. The endless fall of 2001. Gold and red leaves wanted to be brilliant. Here the room was in shadow, fit for old men able to leave the day behind. Often they sat this way and talked the past into being again. Usually one of them took the lead while the other was like a chorus. Today Andrew talked. Dennis knew it was for him to follow the thread.

But the old past was not on Andrew's mind. It was the recent past. The attack on America was fresh. He could think of little else. The haunting black-on-black cover of The New Yorker magazine sat on his coffee table. Already ritualized without his saying how. He wouldn't put it away in the rack. Andrew held it up in front of his face for his friend Dennis to see.

Dennis looked expectantly. "Well? What?" He studied the black shadows representing the buildings that were gone while he turned toward his friend Andrew.

"Sitting too many hours looking at CNN," said Andrew. "The whole circle of feeling, from 0 to 360 and around again. Anger, sorrow, vengefulness, hopelessness, resolve. I felt oddly reflective that day. The brilliance of the fireball on the side of the tower when it first hit. People in free fall from the top floors of the towers. The impossible becoming the possible before my eyes."

"The fall of the towers on themselves," Dennis said, like a refrain.

"Forgive me for this," continued Andrew. "'What a terrible beauty' ran through my head at one point. I had to have that thought before the ugliness of the reality behind the picture could register, I think. I hope. The majestic fall of each tower, the cloud of debris rising. As if somebody could have choreographed it. Not toppling over--falling in on themselves, like poetry. The debris was people. I thought of that from the start. How could you fall from the eightieth floor to the ground and live? I had an answer in that moment. In the softness of the cloud of debris."

Dennis said, "A cloud of death, it turned out."

Andrew went on: "That too I thought at the start. But it would not digest in my head. What could it mean? I knew my young friend Judy used to work on the 100th floor of the south tower. I didn't know she didn't work there anymore. Until a day later, when I got up the courage to call. Thanked me for remembering. For calling. I thanked her. The possibility of her being one of the divers from the upper floors got me past the sense of terrible beauty."

Dennis said, "Past TV viewing."

And Andrew went on: "I keep clinging to the TV now, looking for a direction. A connection from this event to that event. It doesn't provide it but it gives me the feeling that it could, if I just listen enough, if I just concentrate my mind on it. We see the effects. But we don't see the cause. Who did this? Who did the anthrax terror? Right now I have this vast uncertainty about every event."

Dennis nodded and said, "As if anything can go in any direction and no one will be responsible...."

Andrew said, "Disintegration. Worlds ending."

Dennis said, "Like death."

Andrew agreed: "Death."

end I

I. Terrible beauty II. Itching III. Guilted

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itching

II. Itching Triptych: Living as a dialogue on dying

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Next time they met at the home of Dennis. Andrew Herder could get there by driving his '93 Olds down Clamer and over Derr. (When he had heard GM would be phasing out the Olds, he had thought of it as a stroke of fate and had resolved to run his old bucket until he or it died first.) There were few cars mid-morning. His slowness wasn't likely to arouse someone's rage.

Driving at night had ended for him a year before. Oncoming lights had started to make halos, leading him to wonder what had really been coming at him and what not. Old men's tales had warned of authorities requiring them to turn in their driver's licenses. Better not to risk a night accident.

This morning behind the wheel, cruising down the avenues, Andrew had a feeling of return, as if youth remained visitable, however briefly: the feeling of friction suspended, smoothness in motion. By the time he arrived at Dennis's little Cape Cod cottage, grey and maroon in the morning light, he was feeling light, like the choral voice he knew that he would be.

Andrew watched Dennis pour coffee into mugs. He seemed to measure it as if he were dealing with hemlock--what a thought, Andrew said to himself.

But then Dennis said, "You'll want cream." And Andrew changed his reading of his old friend. He was just tired.

"It's not that I can't sleep--I nap a lot." Dennis squeezed his mug. "When I wake up, I'm thinking about it before my feet hit the floor. It's just a mole. It started itching months ago. I think it's changing color but that could be imagination, now that I'm thinking about it."

Andrew said, "It itches and changes color? It's grown too, maybe?"

"It's grown, maybe," Dennis repeated. "Maybe not. I tell you, when I look in the mirror I have to turn so I can see it. It's here on my side so I never see it head-on. I don't think it's grown. The moment I wake up, though, I think otherwise because I can feel it itching. It doesn't hurt. It tingles. It actually feels pleasant sometimes. When somebody rubs your back you get a satisfying feeling. It's a little like that, but just in the one small place."

"If it feels good maybe it's okay," Andrew said, wanting to buoy up his friend.

"I tell myself that after I'm awake a little while and I can get my head around it, so to speak. Anything I've ever read about cancer has said that a mole is a sure sign if it starts acting up. So I should have been to the doctor months ago but I keep putting it off. Why do I keep putting it off, you wonder."

"I wonder," Andrew said.

Dennis thought a while before he said, "What you don't know may not kill you. That's the best I've come up with so far. How often have you heard of a guy who looked fine, went for a check-up, learned he had it, came home and soon died."

"Pretty often," Andrew said.

"Without the check-up, maybe the other events don't fall into line," Dennis went on.

"You wish," Andrew said.

"Look, you old seahorse. How old are we? How much more can we experience and get a kick out of it? I've had two wives, two boys, a girl, their children. I've been under arms. I've seen Japan. I've flown to Finland and back. I've voted for nincompoops and asses. Paid taxes. Gave to the Red Cross. Used to attend church. I went to Broadway for big shows. I saw off-off-Broadway."

"Etcetera," Andrew mumbled after a sip of his cooling coffee.

"When is enough enough then?" asked Dennis.

"When?" asked Andrew.

"You tell me. Isn't it enough now? The medical system would put me into a regimen, you know. I would not be me, I would be a cancer patient. It would infantilize me. I could not think for myself. I could not decide what to do about it. The system would decide. As long as you and I are here drinking coffee, I'm in charge of whatever this damned spot is. That's what's enough."

"You're telling me," said Andrew.

"It's not as if I'm afraid of death," Dennis went on. "It's just that I don't like it. I don't want to have to negotiate with death."

"Death," Andrew echoed, more to himself than to Dennis.

He soon left Dennis's little Cape Cod cottage. Somewhere he had to drive before the traffic got heavier toward noon. He found himself driving extra carefully now. Just to pick up a coat at the cleaners, he thought.

end II

I. Terrible beauty II. Itching III. Guilted

...

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guilted

III. Guilted Triptych: Living as a dialogue on dying

...

Months later, Andrew and Dennis were sitting on Andrew's back yard patio under a warming sky in a gentle breeze and it was only early spring.

Andrew was reluctant to speak, though it was his role when they were at his place. Dennis remained quiet too. They were sipping cool drinks with something in them, a rum-and-something. The rum seemed to stop their tongues from moving. Two old guys silent in the sun and never a penny for either of their thoughts. It was then that Andrew's son Lloyd arrived with a bang of the patio door.

Lloyd had his own small apartment down in the center of town. "Where the weirdos congregate," Andrew had once said to Dennis.

Subsidized housing, won after years of trying to get something out of the welfare system. Two small rooms, with kitchenette and bath. Paper-thin walls. The odor of something Andrew could never quite pinpoint. Maybe from his boyhood when he visited the kitchens of buddies whose mothers were from Yugoslavia. Cabbage. "It gives him a place," Andrew had said. "It gives me some peace. I'd be nuts too if we were together all the time."

"Sure," Dennis had said. "Nuts."

"Little bastards in shitty pants romping in the hallways," Andrew had told Dennis. Fat women chain smoking, watching them. Men like Lloyd, alone, in various states of disrepair, permanently. The super watching over his tenants like a trusty. "County pays $249, he pays $51. Comes out of his Social Security disability payment," Andrew had told Dennis. "If he stays on his meds," Andrew had said, "he can boil water and cook soup, drink milk, smear bread, that kind of cooking."

Lloyd did not always stay on his meds. It was the nature of his mental illness to reject the means for alleviating its effects, once the effects were alleviated. "In other words," Andrew had said to Dennis, "he hates the side effects of the meds. When he gets to be fairly functional, he wants to be free of the side effects. His tongue thrusts--he says so, anyway. He gets diarrhea. But the meds remove chemical blocks in his brain. Some doctors call it paranoid schizophrenia. Some bipolar disorder. Some say both. Whatever, meds allow him to think a bit like a human being."

"Instead of..." Dennis had queried.

"Instead of a fractured human being. When he goes off meds, his behavior becomes outrageous. He retells his story of persecution."

Dennis looked cautiously in Lloyd's direction as he flopped down on a chair next to his father. Thick dark hair, uncombed, framed an unshaven face. He wore a soiled sweatshirt that bagged outside his shapeless trousers. One sneaker was tied, the other not. Lloyd was thirty-five but Dennis thought he could be taken for years older.

Lloyd seemed unaware that Dennis was present. He was focusing on Andrew. Dennis figured he was off meds.

"I can't believe you would allow them to abuse your only son, beyond any imagination," Lloyd said, staring into his father's face. He had been a singer as a young man, before he was diagnosed. The ring in his voice still was there.

"So much attention on me....everybody's everywhere. Too much telephonism. Too much electrificationism. All my numbers stolen. Erased from my Cassio watch. Like that. Who would allow that? How could any father allow them to do that to a son? So much lack of privacy, beyond all comprehension. Mind-melting pain. Nobody knows the pain I've endured. Demoralization. Phone torture."

Lloyd stood up and paced back and forth in front of the two aging men. He lit a fresh cigarette off the one he was finishing.

Dennis got up to go. "I'll be going," he said to Andrew.

Andrew shrugged, a way of saying sorry, there was nothing he could do right now.

Suddenly Lloyd recognized Dennis and riveted him with his gaze. "HE won't answer," Lloyd said to Dennis with a dismissive wave toward his father. "I've been screaming in pain, all the way across America and back, but, no, what do I get from my family?"

It was the first time for Dennis to see the behavior that Andrew had described to him. He mumbled something to try to demonstrate that somehow he cared but it was too late. Lloyd was onto the next wave and Dennis became invisible again.

"Too much womanism," Lloyd said, speaking to the air between Andrew and Dennis. "Bestism--weddings, blah-blah-blah. Dating Mindy--a suicide. Dating Cathy--more suicide. They push you into it and then they all beat you up. Ganged up on me. Set me up. No privacy. Assholes about penises. Really sick. They guilted me. Made me feel it was my responsibility for billions of viruses, all my fault. Steve Martinization. 'Blame me,' they said and I did. Blamed me. Mind trips, all aiming at me."

Andrew knew better than to try to engage with Lloyd in this discussion; he tried to signal Dennis not to take Lloyd's going on seriously.

Andrew long since had learned that what the doctors called "delusional material" was symptomatic of the malfunctioning brain. The material expected no reply or refutation or affirmation. "You mean it doesn't mean anything?" he once had asked Dr. Rufo. The doctor had replied that, of course, it meant something, but it didn't mean what it seemed to mean. It meant that Lloyd was sick. His brain was misprocessing material that it legitimately had registered. The women he knew at the time that his illness was first becoming florid, many years ago, continued to play key roles in his mind.

Andrew had explained some of this to Dennis in conversations. He was so familiar with Lloyd's mental illness that now he failed to see how distressing Dennis felt it to be, seeing it for himself.

"Such a fool. Saying too much to everybody. Yo, Dad, privacy, right? Privacy, before it ruins me totally, got to get outa here...."

And he left as abruptly as he had arrived.

"There's no real cure," Andrew said.

"No cure," Dennis echoed.

"It's a kind of death before dying," Andrew said.

Dennis returned to his seat and drank the last of his rum-and-something, tilting the glass upward and sucking the ice cubes. "Kind of death," he murmured then. He didn't want to affirm Andrew's outlook. He didn't want to disagree with his old friend either.

Dennis heard Andrew say, "I used to wonder what it means."

Dennis said, "Something, I would guess."

Andrew said, "Now I just let it go by. It'll just keep coming."

Dennis almost added "until death" to Andrew's words but he held it back and there was a silence on the patio. Soon Dennis left and Andrew was alone with his thoughts. He was thinking that the unexpected scene with Lloyd, while Dennis was watching, had precipitated a kind of convergence of consciousness. A harmony of parts, he thought.

end III

...I. Terrible beauty II. Itching III. Guilted

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