Sun House, page 32
We throw things away as if we think there’s a place
called “away.”
—Julia Butterfly Hill
“HI, DAVE.”
“Risa! Wonderful to hear your voice! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Oh, sadness, self-loathing, overwhelming resentment. Stuff like that.”
“Sweetheart! Are you all right? You’re not! What’s happened?”
“Well, I’ve been working in Portland for starters. But don’t ask about that. I—”
“Portland? How can you attend U Dub if you’re—”
“Dave! Face it. You call so seldom I couldn’t catch you up if I talked for a week. So please. Just listen. Promise me you’ll listen.”
“But—”
“DAVE!”
“Gosh! Okay, okay. I promise to listen.”
“Thanks. My first news is happy. It concerns a woman you once knew, Moira O’Reilly. After fifteen years and, my best guess, something like three thousand fifths of Smirnoff, she crawled out of her troll cave. She’s in rehab in Woodburn, Dave, and I’m so proud of her I—”
“My God, Risa! I had no idea she drank like—”
“DAVE! When you interrupt, the thread gets lost or you throw what I’m saying into reverse. Don’t talk. Listen. Hell yes, she drank like that! She’s a devout Catholic whose nuns and priests forced her as a child to memorize the same line they made me memorize. ‘A ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death.’ A human power named Dave then dissolved her marriage, damning her to hell. To get even, or forget hell, or have fun or something, she chased a few men and, surprise, surprise, rhythm method struck again. Knocked up, unsure of the father, too ashamed to confess, she chose abortion. So her first rhythm method child, me, got to listen to Moira’s repeated confessions of having murdered my sibling, doubly damning her to hell. Turned out I wasn’t much of a priest at age eight, so Father Smirnoff took over. Then, at Bonneville Power, where she works, came a fall down a stairwell in which she’d snuck off to drink. Pint bottle in her culotte, blood and vodka everywhere. When a coworker tried to help her, Moira roared, ‘I’m fine!’ Bonneville Power didn’t see it that way. Loss of job and pension if she refused the rehab. But you know Moira. Wait. Correct that. You don’t know her at all. She refused. Then came the nightmares. Mine, not hers. Homeless Bag Lady Mom following me everywhere for the rest of our lives type thing. But the bad dreams lit a fire in me. I’ve been working, by the way, on two huge Portland renovation projects. A crash course in Moving and Shaking. Turns out I’ve got a gift. It felt like child’s play to turn to renovating a mere mom.”
“Huge renovations in Portland? During your final year at U Dub? I’m so confused I—”
“Citation Two, Dave. See how the thread just got lost again?”
“Sorry! Very sorry, Risa. Please, go on.”
“To renovate Moira I phoned every O’Reilly in or near Portland, three BPA coworker pals, her old priest Father Flaherty, and two young priests I recently heard her say were ‘as cute as those early apostles.’ Cute early apostles. The Smirnoff was really working for her. So it’s no wonder that when her clan, priests, pals, and I descended in intervention mode she flew into a rage, calling us ‘Hannibal’s Ambush.’ Nice historical reference, Drunk Lady! When her friends began describing the dangers she poses to herself and Western Civilization—her driving, my God—she kept roaring, ‘I don’t have a problem!’ So I left the room, returning moments later with five full Smirnoff bottles I pulled out of hidey holes. That only made her try to run. And Father Flaherty did run! The sight of all that booze made them both thirsty! I figured we’d lost the battle, but then the smallest thing tipped her. ‘Mom,’ I said, and her eyes got big. ‘I know, I haven’t called you Mom since I was little,’ I said. ‘But if you’ll go through rehab, whether it works or not, you’ll be no one but Mom to me from this day forward.’ Her face clouded then, and I braced for a sob fest, but the ornery Cathoholic jumped back out. ‘That’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me since your father left us,’ she huffed. ‘Which shows how nice you aren’t. But I’ll go into rehab this very day on one condition.’ With which she started batting her eyes at the Cute Apostles. ‘If you two will drive me,’ she said, ‘the rest of this bunch can get off its high horse and go home.’ So the rest of us did.
“Moira calls her new digs the ‘Betty Boop Center.’ The Smirnoff translation of Betty Ford Center. She’s six weeks in, and had a rough go for a month—DTs, wild mood swings, rage, tears, the works. But she’s better by the day, she’s made some poignant damaged friends, and she appears to even have some kind of boyfriend.”
“That’s good, that’s excellent, I’m glad to hear it, Risa. But you have to understand, I loved Moira very much before we—”
“YOU have to understand, Dave, that this is your third citation for interrupting!”
“To be treated like a child by my child does not sit very—”
“WHEN I INTERRUPT YOU, like this, it’s hard to remember what you were saying, isn’t it? But you don’t just interrupt. All my life you’ve wiped out my words or fucked up the gist of them by trying to charm me into mute admiration of your pretty, poetic, completely irrelevant interruptions, so my truth never gets told. That’s why I’m holding you to your damned promise! Don’t charm, interpret, confuse, or question. Just. Bloody. Listen.”
“…………!”
“Tonight’s other topic. Working crazy hours in Portland, I only saw Grady every other weekend, and there’s still no end in sight to the work I’m doing. So, naturally, Grady started making plans that didn’t include me. Quit his master’s program. Planned a road trip to clear his head. The trip, especially, made me realize I didn’t want to lose him, so I bought him a sweet old guitar and, very early this morning, drove it to Seattle to surprise him. But when I snuck the guitar in our door at sunrise, he’d gone out for coffee and scones, and the woman in our bed had kiss-swollen lips, and a waist and hips way sexier than the guitar’s. The rose tattoo on her shoulder was cute too. So I named her Rose.”
“Oh my God, Risa! I’m so sorry you—”
“OH YOUR GOD!? Is that our topic now!? Do you even know you’re breaking your worthless promise for the fourth time?”
“Jesus! You’re right. I’m so sorry, Risa!”
“I’ll wrap this up so you can get back to confusing and interrupting people who might enjoy it. The main reason I called was to tell you what happened after I met Rose. Grady came in, and Rose was not at all happy to see him, but I played the diplomat and we made nice for a few minutes. Then I left on the long drive I’d just made alone, in reverse, back to Portland. It’s my experience en route that I want to share. In the slow lane on I-5, near Centralia, I turned eight years old again. I’m not being metaphorical, Dave. I turned so entirely eight I could barely see over the steering wheel. I turned so eight I was sure I’d arrive home in 1975, and you’d be God knows where with God knows who, leaving me to my soused blur of a so-called mother, slumped on the couch slurring insults at the TV, leaving me no choice but to trundle back to my room and turn myself into a weirdo by listening to the scratchy old blues records you gave me to serve as my father. And think, Dave. Don’t speak! Just think. My poor boyfriend Grady, up until today, was trying to live with and love that wounded, blues-stunted eight-year-old so alive in me still.
“And here’s the déjà doozy, Dave. Guess where my ex is headed, but not out loud! All questions for the remainder of this chat will be rhetorical. He’s headed for the Elkmoons. To find himself. Or lose me anyway. And why there? Because you once took him out to coffee and threw an Elkmoon spell over him. Isn’t that a mind fuck? Don’t answer! Rhetorical. It’s a major mind fuck. Because who else do we know who drove to the same mountains every summer starting the year I became Moira’s child priest, then came back to tell me how amazing the Elkmoons are, and how I had to go there with him, then didn’t invite me year after year, because he had lady friends to take. ‘But next year, Risa! The Elkmoons! You’ve got to see them!’”
“Risa, you’re going through too much, and I’ve been too selfish and blind, to handle this with a phone call. Let me drive down right now. A phone is just not the way to—”
“Are you interrupting for the FIFTH TIME to tell me phone calls are fucked!? Do you think I don’t know that!? Do you think that, after fourteen YEARS of fucked-up phone fathering, driving down here now would handle this? To even begin to handle this, Dave, you’d have to time-travel back to when I was seven and leave Moira in an honest, evenhanded way that didn’t turn me into your worshipper and her tormentor. You’d then have to abandon me during the years that followed without constantly saying, by phone, ‘I’m here for you, sweetheart,’ when you were and still are nowhere for me. And most of all, Dave, you’d have to ungive me the goddamned blues records you used to pick me up and dance to, so that, in your constant absence and Mom’s besotted presence, my furious brain wouldn’t start chanting to my crushed heart, Never be soft again! Be steel. Be invincible. Be the Vedic Ātman, Risa. Because look at Moira. Look at yourself. Look at how men rip you to shreds when you’re soft!”
“Risa, please! You’ve made me sorrier than I can say. And it’s all true. But it’s only a fraction of the truth. And the rest is a miracle! The rest, dear girl, is that in spite of my failures you’ve become a brilliant, beautiful, compassionate, entirely appealing—”
“—mass of hurts and yearnings that left Grady trying to love a woman as fun to be in bed with, most nights, as a garden shovel! You should have seen him try to court me. Happy as a puppy, he’d say, ‘Let’s go watch the playoffs at this cool sports bar I know.’ Without even pulling my nose from my book, I’d murmur, ‘You go,’ because the mere thought of sports bars, though I’ve never been to one, conjured Moira’s drinking. ‘Okay then,’ he’d say. ‘Why don’t you pull on that tight skirt and those beat-up brown boots I love while I round up some of my shitty poems, and we’ll go to the open mike at The Small Good Thing to celebrate how great great poetry is by listening to shitty poetry?’ A charming invitation if ever there was one. But miles beneath the dignity of Risa the Vedic Ātman Incarnate. So off I rushed to Portland to work saintly deeds for TJ, abandoning my beau—sound familiar?—till finally Grady did what most any appealing young man in an empty bed would do. And when I got a good look at Rose in the rosy dawn light this morning, seeing her whole body singing, See what it is to be soft? oh, did I feel my hardness! And I know you and Moira were too fucked up to help yourselves, let alone me. I just wish I’d realized how fucked up that made me, and addressed it. I wish I’d gone to those open mikes and sports bars with the boyfriend I loved. And if I couldn’t handle ’em I wish I’d been brave enough to say, ‘Grady! Please, help me! I love you and want to trust you. But how can I when the first man in my life thinks it’s love to ask me to dinner at SeaTac! right before his fucking flight! where he reads from a book that says I make happiness fill the space of his sadness, then runs off down the concourse happy, I’m supposed to stand alone and think. That kind of thing would drive a soft girl fucking insane! So I’m hard. But I don’t want to be. So please, Grady. Help me soften.’ But no such talk ever fell from Vedic Risa’s steely lips. So away my man flew to some wonderland that you, of all people, planted in his heart!”
“Risa, please. This all had to be said. And the parts about me are terrible and true. But hear one thing. I insist. You’re lovely! Just as you are. I won’t hear otherwise. Brilliant and sensitive. Steely and soft. You’re perfection, my girl. And when it comes to the steeliness, don’t forget how, when Son House laid that broken bottleneck against those steely strands of American—”
“I can’t STAND this! I can’t!”
“Oh, Risa! I’m inexcusably sorry! But I can break this pattern. No more phone fathering! That’s a promise! And thank you so much for this brave…”
As Dave fell silent and realized the phone had been dead for some time, the echo of his own voice nearly made him vomit out of self-disgust.
IX. People of the Purse
(Portland, 1989, and Ixhuatán, Mexico, a rewind to 1986)
God created man to suffer agonies of the heart.
If it had only been a question of obedience
there was no scarcity of angels.
—Khwaja Mir Dard
SEPTEMBER VANISHED. PORTLAND, with its brilliant hardwood leaves and angled October sunlight, became a working-class Augustinian City o’ God. Blind to the ambient glory, TJ kept vigil at his brother’s side, Jervis kept breathing, and his face, despite permanent disfigurement, healed. Much of his body, though emaciated, also healed. Physical therapists began to work his arms and legs. Metabolic disturbances grew rare. No signs of paralysis. Five weeks into the coma Doc Phillipa told TJ, “Keep the faith. He’s tenacious. His chances are much better than I thought when he was admitted.” Then in roared staph infection.
Vancomycin was prescribed and Jervis responded just enough to keep breathing. But he lost even more weight, all talk of his chances ceased, and TJ began to wrestle sheer despair. To lose hope is to lose energy. TJ’s long sympathy coma began to exhaust him to a dangerous degree. When he felt too weak to remain at Jervis’s side, he’d tell the staff, “If anything changes, you know where to find me,” then retreat to the chapel, stretch out on a pew, and try to doze. But the Burnside Community Hospital Chapel presented its own challenges.
It had been designed as a conference room, then converted to a place of worship as an afterthought. It was low-ceilinged, carpeted, and entirely enclosed by windowless walls. But the worst of it was the crucifix. A wooden, Caucasian-looking Jesus hung from a cross that reached from the carpeted floor to the off-white, acoustic-tiled ceiling. He was painted entirely in pastels. His wounds leaked a watery version of red that looked like weak Kool-Aid. His expression evinced no awareness of even his own suffering, let alone anyone else’s. Gigantic in the claustrophobic room, the Big Jesus radiated the violent idiocy that only truly bad religious art can. To wait out his brother’s coma in such a creature’s presence felt like lying in the reeking dumpster in which Jervis had been found.
TJ lay there even so.
SEVEN WEEKS INTO the coma, Risa walked into the chapel one morning with her usual futile list of Pearl and Waterfront questions. She found TJ in the backmost pew, bent slightly forward in what she took to be prayer. Stepping quietly up behind him to wait until he’d finished, she accidentally got a clear look at what he’d kept hidden in the little purse round his neck all this time: TJ was whispering—and then, it seemed, avidly listening—to a tiny, bright-colored Mexican trouble doll. The listening, especially, caused Risa to fear TJ was breaking down completely. Unsure how to react, she slipped soundlessly out of the chapel to ponder her next move. But there was no next move without TJ.
A short time later she returned to find him in the same pew, looking utterly spent. Steeling herself, she sat down beside him.
“I came in earlier,” she began, “but left without speaking when I saw you were already conversing. With a little trouble doll. Listening to it too, it seemed. Sorry if that sounds accusatory, but that’s what I saw.”
TJ’s surprise overshadowed his exhaustion. Gathering his wits, he said, “You caught me in my sanctuary. It’s…an icon for me, the little figure you saw. Very special. And yes, we were…communing. That’s how prayer works. And Thomas Merton, whom I know you respect, says that the viability of a person’s spiritual sanctuary depends on secrecy. A truth we both believe so strongly it feels unnecessary to say it to you. My prayers and icons need to remain secrets, Risa. I’m sure you understand.”
“TJ!” Risa began, but her voice broke, tears began spilling, and TJ saw a desperation as deep as his own. Angrily swiping at her tears, she let fly:
“I didn’t mean to play the boo-hoo card. But listen. At your request I upended my school life, crashed and burned my love life, and am still trying my utmost to help you. But in trying my utmost I’ve been living in your damned sanctuary, which I don’t like doing any more than you or Merton like it! While I’ve been fighting off crises and lawsuits for you, making countless decisions, and spending countless dollars as if I know what I’m doing when I don’t, I’ve had no damned choice but to hear your prayers for forty-three days. Meanwhile your secret sanctuary blocked every straight answer to my how-the-hell-do-I-do-this questions. And yeah, your projects are still afloat. But I was already feeling completely alone when…when Grady fled. So this talking to little dolls thing gets to me. I mean, if all you’re doing in your sanctuary is falling to pieces, wow! I’m really alone! So if you refuse to explain your little icon dolls, that’s your call, TJ. But if it is your call, then my call, here and now, is: I quit.”
TJ lowered his face, looked lost in concentration for a moment, patted his shirtfront where the little purse lay hidden, and gave a quick nod of resolve. When he then stood and started out of the chapel, Risa took it to mean she should go ahead and quit, and her heart sank. But when he opened the chapel door, he remained standing in it, holding it for her with a pallid hint of a smile. And as she passed through, he said, “Thank you.”
Without another word he led them down the four-story stairwell, out a side door of the hospital, into the brilliant sunlight of a working-class City o’ God.
They crossed Burnside at Northwest 21st, walked the six blocks north to Hoyt, and took the stairs up onto the porch of Jervis’s first-floor monk’s-cell apartment. Unlocking the door, TJ again held it for Risa, and again murmured, “Thank you.”
HAVING LIVED SEVEN weeks in TJ’s elegant townhouse, it was obvious to Risa that he’d left Jervis’s apartment just as he’d found it. Her first impression: indoor homeless camp. Two wooden fruit crates served as a coffee table and a bedside shelf. The bed was a thin, worn-out futon on the floor in a corner. Venetian blinds made the whole place dark. There was no kitchen table. The “appliances” were a Coleman camp stove, cheap Styrofoam cooler, and toaster oven. One small frying pan, one saucepan, one plate, one bowl, one coffee mug. A half-empty pint of Jim Beam stood by two small Ball jars, the only drinking glasses. A chipped porcelain sink was stained blue where the faucet dripped. No rugs, no curtains, no radio, no art, and an antique TV with no cable. A goosenecked reading lamp stood on the fruit crate by the futon to allow him to read. A few spiral notebooks and a five-inch stack of what looked like letters lay atop the crate, and a row of used books stood inside it, bookended at one end by a pair of bricks Risa recognized from the Waterfront project.
called “away.”
—Julia Butterfly Hill
“HI, DAVE.”
“Risa! Wonderful to hear your voice! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Oh, sadness, self-loathing, overwhelming resentment. Stuff like that.”
“Sweetheart! Are you all right? You’re not! What’s happened?”
“Well, I’ve been working in Portland for starters. But don’t ask about that. I—”
“Portland? How can you attend U Dub if you’re—”
“Dave! Face it. You call so seldom I couldn’t catch you up if I talked for a week. So please. Just listen. Promise me you’ll listen.”
“But—”
“DAVE!”
“Gosh! Okay, okay. I promise to listen.”
“Thanks. My first news is happy. It concerns a woman you once knew, Moira O’Reilly. After fifteen years and, my best guess, something like three thousand fifths of Smirnoff, she crawled out of her troll cave. She’s in rehab in Woodburn, Dave, and I’m so proud of her I—”
“My God, Risa! I had no idea she drank like—”
“DAVE! When you interrupt, the thread gets lost or you throw what I’m saying into reverse. Don’t talk. Listen. Hell yes, she drank like that! She’s a devout Catholic whose nuns and priests forced her as a child to memorize the same line they made me memorize. ‘A ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death.’ A human power named Dave then dissolved her marriage, damning her to hell. To get even, or forget hell, or have fun or something, she chased a few men and, surprise, surprise, rhythm method struck again. Knocked up, unsure of the father, too ashamed to confess, she chose abortion. So her first rhythm method child, me, got to listen to Moira’s repeated confessions of having murdered my sibling, doubly damning her to hell. Turned out I wasn’t much of a priest at age eight, so Father Smirnoff took over. Then, at Bonneville Power, where she works, came a fall down a stairwell in which she’d snuck off to drink. Pint bottle in her culotte, blood and vodka everywhere. When a coworker tried to help her, Moira roared, ‘I’m fine!’ Bonneville Power didn’t see it that way. Loss of job and pension if she refused the rehab. But you know Moira. Wait. Correct that. You don’t know her at all. She refused. Then came the nightmares. Mine, not hers. Homeless Bag Lady Mom following me everywhere for the rest of our lives type thing. But the bad dreams lit a fire in me. I’ve been working, by the way, on two huge Portland renovation projects. A crash course in Moving and Shaking. Turns out I’ve got a gift. It felt like child’s play to turn to renovating a mere mom.”
“Huge renovations in Portland? During your final year at U Dub? I’m so confused I—”
“Citation Two, Dave. See how the thread just got lost again?”
“Sorry! Very sorry, Risa. Please, go on.”
“To renovate Moira I phoned every O’Reilly in or near Portland, three BPA coworker pals, her old priest Father Flaherty, and two young priests I recently heard her say were ‘as cute as those early apostles.’ Cute early apostles. The Smirnoff was really working for her. So it’s no wonder that when her clan, priests, pals, and I descended in intervention mode she flew into a rage, calling us ‘Hannibal’s Ambush.’ Nice historical reference, Drunk Lady! When her friends began describing the dangers she poses to herself and Western Civilization—her driving, my God—she kept roaring, ‘I don’t have a problem!’ So I left the room, returning moments later with five full Smirnoff bottles I pulled out of hidey holes. That only made her try to run. And Father Flaherty did run! The sight of all that booze made them both thirsty! I figured we’d lost the battle, but then the smallest thing tipped her. ‘Mom,’ I said, and her eyes got big. ‘I know, I haven’t called you Mom since I was little,’ I said. ‘But if you’ll go through rehab, whether it works or not, you’ll be no one but Mom to me from this day forward.’ Her face clouded then, and I braced for a sob fest, but the ornery Cathoholic jumped back out. ‘That’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me since your father left us,’ she huffed. ‘Which shows how nice you aren’t. But I’ll go into rehab this very day on one condition.’ With which she started batting her eyes at the Cute Apostles. ‘If you two will drive me,’ she said, ‘the rest of this bunch can get off its high horse and go home.’ So the rest of us did.
“Moira calls her new digs the ‘Betty Boop Center.’ The Smirnoff translation of Betty Ford Center. She’s six weeks in, and had a rough go for a month—DTs, wild mood swings, rage, tears, the works. But she’s better by the day, she’s made some poignant damaged friends, and she appears to even have some kind of boyfriend.”
“That’s good, that’s excellent, I’m glad to hear it, Risa. But you have to understand, I loved Moira very much before we—”
“YOU have to understand, Dave, that this is your third citation for interrupting!”
“To be treated like a child by my child does not sit very—”
“WHEN I INTERRUPT YOU, like this, it’s hard to remember what you were saying, isn’t it? But you don’t just interrupt. All my life you’ve wiped out my words or fucked up the gist of them by trying to charm me into mute admiration of your pretty, poetic, completely irrelevant interruptions, so my truth never gets told. That’s why I’m holding you to your damned promise! Don’t charm, interpret, confuse, or question. Just. Bloody. Listen.”
“…………!”
“Tonight’s other topic. Working crazy hours in Portland, I only saw Grady every other weekend, and there’s still no end in sight to the work I’m doing. So, naturally, Grady started making plans that didn’t include me. Quit his master’s program. Planned a road trip to clear his head. The trip, especially, made me realize I didn’t want to lose him, so I bought him a sweet old guitar and, very early this morning, drove it to Seattle to surprise him. But when I snuck the guitar in our door at sunrise, he’d gone out for coffee and scones, and the woman in our bed had kiss-swollen lips, and a waist and hips way sexier than the guitar’s. The rose tattoo on her shoulder was cute too. So I named her Rose.”
“Oh my God, Risa! I’m so sorry you—”
“OH YOUR GOD!? Is that our topic now!? Do you even know you’re breaking your worthless promise for the fourth time?”
“Jesus! You’re right. I’m so sorry, Risa!”
“I’ll wrap this up so you can get back to confusing and interrupting people who might enjoy it. The main reason I called was to tell you what happened after I met Rose. Grady came in, and Rose was not at all happy to see him, but I played the diplomat and we made nice for a few minutes. Then I left on the long drive I’d just made alone, in reverse, back to Portland. It’s my experience en route that I want to share. In the slow lane on I-5, near Centralia, I turned eight years old again. I’m not being metaphorical, Dave. I turned so entirely eight I could barely see over the steering wheel. I turned so eight I was sure I’d arrive home in 1975, and you’d be God knows where with God knows who, leaving me to my soused blur of a so-called mother, slumped on the couch slurring insults at the TV, leaving me no choice but to trundle back to my room and turn myself into a weirdo by listening to the scratchy old blues records you gave me to serve as my father. And think, Dave. Don’t speak! Just think. My poor boyfriend Grady, up until today, was trying to live with and love that wounded, blues-stunted eight-year-old so alive in me still.
“And here’s the déjà doozy, Dave. Guess where my ex is headed, but not out loud! All questions for the remainder of this chat will be rhetorical. He’s headed for the Elkmoons. To find himself. Or lose me anyway. And why there? Because you once took him out to coffee and threw an Elkmoon spell over him. Isn’t that a mind fuck? Don’t answer! Rhetorical. It’s a major mind fuck. Because who else do we know who drove to the same mountains every summer starting the year I became Moira’s child priest, then came back to tell me how amazing the Elkmoons are, and how I had to go there with him, then didn’t invite me year after year, because he had lady friends to take. ‘But next year, Risa! The Elkmoons! You’ve got to see them!’”
“Risa, you’re going through too much, and I’ve been too selfish and blind, to handle this with a phone call. Let me drive down right now. A phone is just not the way to—”
“Are you interrupting for the FIFTH TIME to tell me phone calls are fucked!? Do you think I don’t know that!? Do you think that, after fourteen YEARS of fucked-up phone fathering, driving down here now would handle this? To even begin to handle this, Dave, you’d have to time-travel back to when I was seven and leave Moira in an honest, evenhanded way that didn’t turn me into your worshipper and her tormentor. You’d then have to abandon me during the years that followed without constantly saying, by phone, ‘I’m here for you, sweetheart,’ when you were and still are nowhere for me. And most of all, Dave, you’d have to ungive me the goddamned blues records you used to pick me up and dance to, so that, in your constant absence and Mom’s besotted presence, my furious brain wouldn’t start chanting to my crushed heart, Never be soft again! Be steel. Be invincible. Be the Vedic Ātman, Risa. Because look at Moira. Look at yourself. Look at how men rip you to shreds when you’re soft!”
“Risa, please! You’ve made me sorrier than I can say. And it’s all true. But it’s only a fraction of the truth. And the rest is a miracle! The rest, dear girl, is that in spite of my failures you’ve become a brilliant, beautiful, compassionate, entirely appealing—”
“—mass of hurts and yearnings that left Grady trying to love a woman as fun to be in bed with, most nights, as a garden shovel! You should have seen him try to court me. Happy as a puppy, he’d say, ‘Let’s go watch the playoffs at this cool sports bar I know.’ Without even pulling my nose from my book, I’d murmur, ‘You go,’ because the mere thought of sports bars, though I’ve never been to one, conjured Moira’s drinking. ‘Okay then,’ he’d say. ‘Why don’t you pull on that tight skirt and those beat-up brown boots I love while I round up some of my shitty poems, and we’ll go to the open mike at The Small Good Thing to celebrate how great great poetry is by listening to shitty poetry?’ A charming invitation if ever there was one. But miles beneath the dignity of Risa the Vedic Ātman Incarnate. So off I rushed to Portland to work saintly deeds for TJ, abandoning my beau—sound familiar?—till finally Grady did what most any appealing young man in an empty bed would do. And when I got a good look at Rose in the rosy dawn light this morning, seeing her whole body singing, See what it is to be soft? oh, did I feel my hardness! And I know you and Moira were too fucked up to help yourselves, let alone me. I just wish I’d realized how fucked up that made me, and addressed it. I wish I’d gone to those open mikes and sports bars with the boyfriend I loved. And if I couldn’t handle ’em I wish I’d been brave enough to say, ‘Grady! Please, help me! I love you and want to trust you. But how can I when the first man in my life thinks it’s love to ask me to dinner at SeaTac! right before his fucking flight! where he reads from a book that says I make happiness fill the space of his sadness, then runs off down the concourse happy, I’m supposed to stand alone and think. That kind of thing would drive a soft girl fucking insane! So I’m hard. But I don’t want to be. So please, Grady. Help me soften.’ But no such talk ever fell from Vedic Risa’s steely lips. So away my man flew to some wonderland that you, of all people, planted in his heart!”
“Risa, please. This all had to be said. And the parts about me are terrible and true. But hear one thing. I insist. You’re lovely! Just as you are. I won’t hear otherwise. Brilliant and sensitive. Steely and soft. You’re perfection, my girl. And when it comes to the steeliness, don’t forget how, when Son House laid that broken bottleneck against those steely strands of American—”
“I can’t STAND this! I can’t!”
“Oh, Risa! I’m inexcusably sorry! But I can break this pattern. No more phone fathering! That’s a promise! And thank you so much for this brave…”
As Dave fell silent and realized the phone had been dead for some time, the echo of his own voice nearly made him vomit out of self-disgust.
IX. People of the Purse
(Portland, 1989, and Ixhuatán, Mexico, a rewind to 1986)
God created man to suffer agonies of the heart.
If it had only been a question of obedience
there was no scarcity of angels.
—Khwaja Mir Dard
SEPTEMBER VANISHED. PORTLAND, with its brilliant hardwood leaves and angled October sunlight, became a working-class Augustinian City o’ God. Blind to the ambient glory, TJ kept vigil at his brother’s side, Jervis kept breathing, and his face, despite permanent disfigurement, healed. Much of his body, though emaciated, also healed. Physical therapists began to work his arms and legs. Metabolic disturbances grew rare. No signs of paralysis. Five weeks into the coma Doc Phillipa told TJ, “Keep the faith. He’s tenacious. His chances are much better than I thought when he was admitted.” Then in roared staph infection.
Vancomycin was prescribed and Jervis responded just enough to keep breathing. But he lost even more weight, all talk of his chances ceased, and TJ began to wrestle sheer despair. To lose hope is to lose energy. TJ’s long sympathy coma began to exhaust him to a dangerous degree. When he felt too weak to remain at Jervis’s side, he’d tell the staff, “If anything changes, you know where to find me,” then retreat to the chapel, stretch out on a pew, and try to doze. But the Burnside Community Hospital Chapel presented its own challenges.
It had been designed as a conference room, then converted to a place of worship as an afterthought. It was low-ceilinged, carpeted, and entirely enclosed by windowless walls. But the worst of it was the crucifix. A wooden, Caucasian-looking Jesus hung from a cross that reached from the carpeted floor to the off-white, acoustic-tiled ceiling. He was painted entirely in pastels. His wounds leaked a watery version of red that looked like weak Kool-Aid. His expression evinced no awareness of even his own suffering, let alone anyone else’s. Gigantic in the claustrophobic room, the Big Jesus radiated the violent idiocy that only truly bad religious art can. To wait out his brother’s coma in such a creature’s presence felt like lying in the reeking dumpster in which Jervis had been found.
TJ lay there even so.
SEVEN WEEKS INTO the coma, Risa walked into the chapel one morning with her usual futile list of Pearl and Waterfront questions. She found TJ in the backmost pew, bent slightly forward in what she took to be prayer. Stepping quietly up behind him to wait until he’d finished, she accidentally got a clear look at what he’d kept hidden in the little purse round his neck all this time: TJ was whispering—and then, it seemed, avidly listening—to a tiny, bright-colored Mexican trouble doll. The listening, especially, caused Risa to fear TJ was breaking down completely. Unsure how to react, she slipped soundlessly out of the chapel to ponder her next move. But there was no next move without TJ.
A short time later she returned to find him in the same pew, looking utterly spent. Steeling herself, she sat down beside him.
“I came in earlier,” she began, “but left without speaking when I saw you were already conversing. With a little trouble doll. Listening to it too, it seemed. Sorry if that sounds accusatory, but that’s what I saw.”
TJ’s surprise overshadowed his exhaustion. Gathering his wits, he said, “You caught me in my sanctuary. It’s…an icon for me, the little figure you saw. Very special. And yes, we were…communing. That’s how prayer works. And Thomas Merton, whom I know you respect, says that the viability of a person’s spiritual sanctuary depends on secrecy. A truth we both believe so strongly it feels unnecessary to say it to you. My prayers and icons need to remain secrets, Risa. I’m sure you understand.”
“TJ!” Risa began, but her voice broke, tears began spilling, and TJ saw a desperation as deep as his own. Angrily swiping at her tears, she let fly:
“I didn’t mean to play the boo-hoo card. But listen. At your request I upended my school life, crashed and burned my love life, and am still trying my utmost to help you. But in trying my utmost I’ve been living in your damned sanctuary, which I don’t like doing any more than you or Merton like it! While I’ve been fighting off crises and lawsuits for you, making countless decisions, and spending countless dollars as if I know what I’m doing when I don’t, I’ve had no damned choice but to hear your prayers for forty-three days. Meanwhile your secret sanctuary blocked every straight answer to my how-the-hell-do-I-do-this questions. And yeah, your projects are still afloat. But I was already feeling completely alone when…when Grady fled. So this talking to little dolls thing gets to me. I mean, if all you’re doing in your sanctuary is falling to pieces, wow! I’m really alone! So if you refuse to explain your little icon dolls, that’s your call, TJ. But if it is your call, then my call, here and now, is: I quit.”
TJ lowered his face, looked lost in concentration for a moment, patted his shirtfront where the little purse lay hidden, and gave a quick nod of resolve. When he then stood and started out of the chapel, Risa took it to mean she should go ahead and quit, and her heart sank. But when he opened the chapel door, he remained standing in it, holding it for her with a pallid hint of a smile. And as she passed through, he said, “Thank you.”
Without another word he led them down the four-story stairwell, out a side door of the hospital, into the brilliant sunlight of a working-class City o’ God.
They crossed Burnside at Northwest 21st, walked the six blocks north to Hoyt, and took the stairs up onto the porch of Jervis’s first-floor monk’s-cell apartment. Unlocking the door, TJ again held it for Risa, and again murmured, “Thank you.”
HAVING LIVED SEVEN weeks in TJ’s elegant townhouse, it was obvious to Risa that he’d left Jervis’s apartment just as he’d found it. Her first impression: indoor homeless camp. Two wooden fruit crates served as a coffee table and a bedside shelf. The bed was a thin, worn-out futon on the floor in a corner. Venetian blinds made the whole place dark. There was no kitchen table. The “appliances” were a Coleman camp stove, cheap Styrofoam cooler, and toaster oven. One small frying pan, one saucepan, one plate, one bowl, one coffee mug. A half-empty pint of Jim Beam stood by two small Ball jars, the only drinking glasses. A chipped porcelain sink was stained blue where the faucet dripped. No rugs, no curtains, no radio, no art, and an antique TV with no cable. A goosenecked reading lamp stood on the fruit crate by the futon to allow him to read. A few spiral notebooks and a five-inch stack of what looked like letters lay atop the crate, and a row of used books stood inside it, bookended at one end by a pair of bricks Risa recognized from the Waterfront project.
