adapting.
He wasn’t sad or angry any longer. Eva Truilly, Zora Diamond, and Lulu Lawes had stopped appearing on the top of his mind, fluffing their feathers. His legs had become unstable, tipping him this way and that, and he blamed it on his shoes. Always his shoes. He refused to use a cane, instead propelling himself around the apartment by holding on to furniture and doorjambs.
He slept through the day, waking now and again to say he had work to do, although he was incapable of affixing a postage stamp, much less creating a collage. The journey to his desk began. Once there, he made a show of playing with his pencils and rulers, riffling his drawing pads. After a few minutes of aimlessness, he would declare he’d done enough, and the return journey to the bed began.
Friends visited, and he was cheerful, professing delight at seeing them, talking about future projects, important phone calls he’d received, a book in the works, a show at a gallery, filling in the gaps in his thoughts with orotund repetitions. Confabulating, as neurologists call it. He was careful not to leave his chair to show his infirmity. After they were gone, he invariably asked, “Who was that?”
To my consternation, some of these friends not only believed what he told them but could detect very little wrong with him. They called me to say that he seemed himself, a clear note of accusation in their voice, as if I were exaggerating his condition, making up the illness for some diabolical reason. I didn’t bother to tell them that he had no clue who they were and forgot the visit within minutes of their departure. They probably wouldn’t have believed me; I was learning that not many people can admit to being expunged from someone’s memory, even by disease.
When alone with me, he mostly had on an expression of anxious vacancy. On good days, though, this was replaced by disbelief at his diminishment. That’s what I remember: his startled, panicky disbelief. That, and how tired I was. I closed my eyes whenever I could. On the subway, in elevators, on escalators. I slept like a horse, standing up.
I had moved on from William Tabbert and Alfred Drake to Louis Armstrong:
When we are dancin’ / And you’re dangerously near me / I get ideas, I get ideas…
14
“Did you know,” said Mike, “that Mussolini admired American corporations?”
I hadn’t known. I had commented on the stifling, autocratic structure of corporations, ironic, at least for me, because I sprinkled speeches with references to a flat hierarchy and a collegiate, consensus-driven, meritocratic culture. Tra-la.
That morning, to illustrate the suppleness of our corporate hierarchy, Niedecker’s CEO had turned to me and said, “Cath, you’re only five removed from me.” The CEO was a pedantic Midwesterner. As people say, to be polite, more a tactician than a visionary. Whenever I was in his company, I thought of Bill Murray taking the mickey out of his drill sergeant in the movie
Stripes
by telling him that he accepted his leadership because “Every foot needs a big toe.” Our bland CEO was the quintessential Big Toe. “That’s right,” I replied, nodding brightly. In reality, a drop-off on the scale of the continental shelf existed between the CEO and me.
“Yeah, you’re lower than whale shit,” said Mike, when I relayed this to him. And then added the bit about Mussolini.
In front of us, water slapped against the hulls of fat fiberglass boats with names such as
Marjorie Morningstar
,
Powerplay
,
Excalibur
,
Momentum.
One of them had a miniature helipad complete with helicopter. Flags fluttered. Behind us, a bridal party with a photographer in tow traipsed across the pink marble paving. Asian and African-American couples treated the Winter Garden and the marina as if it were a giant photographic studio. It wasn’t unusual to see three or four bridal parties waiting their turns at the most coveted spots: shy brides in frothy tulle veils, bridesmaids in
He wasn’t sad or angry any longer. Eva Truilly, Zora Diamond, and Lulu Lawes had stopped appearing on the top of his mind, fluffing their feathers. His legs had become unstable, tipping him this way and that, and he blamed it on his shoes. Always his shoes. He refused to use a cane, instead propelling himself around the apartment by holding on to furniture and doorjambs.
He slept through the day, waking now and again to say he had work to do, although he was incapable of affixing a postage stamp, much less creating a collage. The journey to his desk began. Once there, he made a show of playing with his pencils and rulers, riffling his drawing pads. After a few minutes of aimlessness, he would declare he’d done enough, and the return journey to the bed began.
Friends visited, and he was cheerful, professing delight at seeing them, talking about future projects, important phone calls he’d received, a book in the works, a show at a gallery, filling in the gaps in his thoughts with orotund repetitions. Confabulating, as neurologists call it. He was careful not to leave his chair to show his infirmity. After they were gone, he invariably asked, “Who was that?”
To my consternation, some of these friends not only believed what he told them but could detect very little wrong with him. They called me to say that he seemed himself, a clear note of accusation in their voice, as if I were exaggerating his condition, making up the illness for some diabolical reason. I didn’t bother to tell them that he had no clue who they were and forgot the visit within minutes of their departure. They probably wouldn’t have believed me; I was learning that not many people can admit to being expunged from someone’s memory, even by disease.
When alone with me, he mostly had on an expression of anxious vacancy. On good days, though, this was replaced by disbelief at his diminishment. That’s what I remember: his startled, panicky disbelief. That, and how tired I was. I closed my eyes whenever I could. On the subway, in elevators, on escalators. I slept like a horse, standing up.
I had moved on from William Tabbert and Alfred Drake to Louis Armstrong:
When we are dancin’ / And you’re dangerously near me / I get ideas, I get ideas…
14
“Did you know,” said Mike, “that Mussolini admired American corporations?”
I hadn’t known. I had commented on the stifling, autocratic structure of corporations, ironic, at least for me, because I sprinkled speeches with references to a flat hierarchy and a collegiate, consensus-driven, meritocratic culture. Tra-la.
That morning, to illustrate the suppleness of our corporate hierarchy, Niedecker’s CEO had turned to me and said, “Cath, you’re only five removed from me.” The CEO was a pedantic Midwesterner. As people say, to be polite, more a tactician than a visionary. Whenever I was in his company, I thought of Bill Murray taking the mickey out of his drill sergeant in the movie
Stripes
by telling him that he accepted his leadership because “Every foot needs a big toe.” Our bland CEO was the quintessential Big Toe. “That’s right,” I replied, nodding brightly. In reality, a drop-off on the scale of the continental shelf existed between the CEO and me.
“Yeah, you’re lower than whale shit,” said Mike, when I relayed this to him. And then added the bit about Mussolini.
In front of us, water slapped against the hulls of fat fiberglass boats with names such as
Marjorie Morningstar
,
Powerplay
,
Excalibur
,
Momentum.
One of them had a miniature helipad complete with helicopter. Flags fluttered. Behind us, a bridal party with a photographer in tow traipsed across the pink marble paving. Asian and African-American couples treated the Winter Garden and the marina as if it were a giant photographic studio. It wasn’t unusual to see three or four bridal parties waiting their turns at the most coveted spots: shy brides in frothy tulle veils, bridesmaids in
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