Pat Boone Fan Club (8 page)

At a funeral for a friend killed in a car crash, I begin, now in my twenties, to question whether I should relinquish my hold on things, at least a little. I sense, during the service, the warm mahogany of the casket. I am awash in red roses, white carnations, yellow lilies, the perfume and aftershave of mourners pressed together in pews. People weep. Tears runnel through makeup, staining silk dresses.

I am unable to mourn, to weep. As much as I wonder why, I am equally consumed with the idea that things don’t betray you in this way, don’t die.

Or do they?

I am seized by two contradictory notions: that things don’t die; that they do. I am suddenly bereft when I realize I haven’t seen my rosary for over a decade. During which move did I lose it? Or were the beads, at some unremembered time, inadvertently crushed? Might I have even thrown away the rosary, my affections aglow with some new object of desire? Oh, the effusiveness of color in marbles, the destiny of red and yellow on
beach balls, the surrender of book covers waiting to be opened, the eagerness of Jujubes yearning to be devoured! I feel craven by my own deceit. That I am unfaithful. That I might have discarded the rosary after falling in love with an ivory button. How could I not have noticed—in
my
all-too-human way—that I, too, failed to be consistent, not always tender toward the feelings and needs of things?

Sitting in the pew in this church at this funeral, I grieve. Only now, I fully understand that, over the years, handkerchiefs shred. Ribbons unravel to lint. Ravenous moths fray feather collections. I, alone, am responsible for the loss, these deaths. Yet I never stopped to pay attention as
my
attention so willingly drifted from this sequin to that burnt sienna crayon . . . years of bijoux, bangles, bracelets. How sorrowfully I neglected my duties, even as I am solely in charge of their care.

But even if I maintain constant vigilance over my things, what will happen to them when
I
die? What will happen to my objects when I’m gone? Who will care for them, these things allowing themselves to be lovingly explored by me in all their dimensions? These things, all my things, are almost mortal themselves in the way
they
have been with me during my most intense experiences. They, in fact, have
been
my most intense experiences. I have held them, caressed them, licked them, examined them, inhaled them, heard them, savored them.

The church service ends. I find myself outside on the sidewalk, alone, here where I’m now living in Galveston, Texas. The day is sunny, hot, blue. The pallbearers slide the casket into the hearse. The door closes long before I know how to say good-bye to a human friend.

I seek therapy following the funeral, in the midst of these anxieties and contemplations. I need to understand my newly realized confusion about things—as much as I must learn to accept the everyday world of people to be as reliable, as enticing, as soulful as—well—
real
as objects, as things.

Instead, during hour-long therapy sessions with Dr. Gripon, I eye a bamboo tissue box on the coffee table. I begin, after a few sessions, to surreptitiously peel off slivers of wood. I slide them between my fingers. How delicate, this chartreuse aroma of hollow woody stems swaying in an Asian breeze.

It is
this
airy, fluty sound of bamboo I hear more than I’m able to distinguish Dr. Gripon’s voice when he asks how I feel, when he tries to define what’s wrong. Besides, unsure of my own voice, I’m unable to answer. How, after all, can I say I
feel
like a rosary bead, a hankie, a bamboo twig? It’s as if I never learned the words of human feelings. I know how a marble feels; I can feel like a marble.

But how do I feel like
me
?

I stop therapy after three years even though I still don’t know the right words to say to him. I’m unable to describe what’s wrong. Nevertheless, at our last session, I want to give him a going-away present. Maybe he’ll finally understand who I am if I give him my marble with the white swirl.

As I hand it to him, however, I drop it. It rolls under his desk. While I meant for this moment to be plush with meaning—presenting him the marble as if it’s a new world for him to explore—instead I’m on my hands and knees poking around dust balls and bits of paper. I now consider whether I’d have felt more comfortable sitting
here
—partially obscured by his desk—inhaling powdery dust. Its grit provides texture to my own transparent-feeling skin. He chuckles as I search for the marble, asking what’s going on, what have I dropped, what am I doing?

I finally retrieve the marble, but I’m too mortified to show it to him, let alone give him this present. Despite his name, I realize I’m unable to “grip on.” To him. To what he considers real. He’ll never understand the marble. Things. Me.

I return home, placing the marble on a bed of gauze in an antique
ORIENTAL
TOOTH
PASTE
jar, which I found at an excavation site in Galveston. It’s as if the marble, feverish in its swoon af
ter inhaling the fumes of Dr. Gripon’s office, is contaminated. It rests, quarantined, quietly recovering from its brush with reality.

It will take years—and the threat of divorce—before
I
am the one to understand: understand the words and the world of people. Eventually, after ten more therapists likewise fail to correctly diagnose my condition, I finally find one, Randy Groskind (after I move to Georgia), who does. I present a conch shell to him, one from St. Thomas. He nods when I explain that in its whoosh of breath, I hear words circling the whorls of my own ears. He doesn’t laugh. Nor does he smile. He is perfectly quiet—as still and quiet as a thing—not rudely disturbing the presence of things.

Randy is always Randy. Like his last name, his kindness is large. Unlike other people, he never loses his essential quality, the reliable properties of “Randy Groskind.”

In his silence, in his consistency, I finally find a way to say that when I was a girl my father hurt me. He, my own father, was
particularly
opaque, unpredictable, unknowable. One moment he was a loving daddy who built me a dollhouse out of construction paper; the next moment he wasn’t a daddy at all.

I tell Randy about dropping the marble in Dr. Gripon’s office. I explain what I have now come to understand about that moment. That, for the first time, it’s as if I saw the marble for what it was—lying alone, helpless, hiding in shadows beneath the desk, as if ashamed, as if it had lost its magic. The white swirl seemed shriveled. The incorporeal essence of the marble dead.

Or maybe I, as a little girl, was the one who lost my own personal magic, only discovering the magic of childhood in things.
I
was the one who would have been feverish without them. I would have been dull, dark, contaminated, soulless in the heavy folds of loss without my beloved things.

It is then that I say, “But I was really a little girl. Not a marble. Not a thing.”

I don’t believe there’s only one reason why I became this way in the first place. Yes, maybe it was the particular betrayal of parents and teachers. Maybe I suffered chronic metaphysical crises or semantic fugues. Maybe, lacking real religion, I found comfort in totems, artifacts, and talismans. Or maybe the fault is solely mine—a daydreamer, a slothful, lazy person who loves to commune with marbles and beads. I allowed myself to be porous, to become things, to be transported wherever they lead.

Years later, the marble remains in the
ORIENTAL
TOOTH
PASTE
jar (
“CLEANSING,
BEAUTIFYING,
PRESERVING
THE
TEETH
AND
GUMS
~~
PREPARED
BY
JEWSBURY
&
BROWN”
), with its gray and white marbleized surface. The rim of the jar is chipped from when my cat once knocked it off my desk. Now I accept such flaws and inconsistencies in things, in people. In me.

Yet on days when the earth seems paused on its axis, or when the day moon fails to rise, I remove the marble from its nest. I savor its cool wonder in the palm of my hand.

Prepositioning John Travolta

Perhaps it’s because you recently moved to Texas and can’t figure out if you live
in
Galveston or
on
Galveston Island that you begin to confuse prepositions. In any event, the first serious outbreak of this prepositional virus blooms at (during?) the time you find yourself, rumpled and damp, before (against?, beside?) the barrette counter in the “notions” aisle in the un-air-conditioned Woolworth’s. You believe that if you purchase a white silk camellia—a clasp attached to its short stem—and use it to pin up the left side of your hair, away from your face, that you will resemble Stephanie, John Travolta’s love interest, in
Saturday Night Fever
.

No, you will actually
be
Stephanie in
Saturday Night Fever
.

But—what with phrasal prepositions compounding your problem—will you be her
in addition to
yourself?
In spite of
your own obvious self?
Apart from
yourself? Or
with the exception of
your rumpled and damp self?

Maybe an unhappy marriage, maybe the fact that you gave up a good job on Capitol Hill to move here for (with) your husband, maybe Galveston’s humidity that clings to (upon) your skin like a moist membrane, or maybe simple longing contribute to the prepositional crisis that causes you to stare into (toward) the tarnished, wavy mirror, fasten the fake camellia, and hope for the best.

You tilt your neck to catch a different view of yourself from (in) another mirror, one aisle over in “makeup.” This double, wavy image casts you, you’re convinced, in a more romantic light. A soft-focus-publicity-photo kind of light. Which helps.

Because the thing is, you aren’t particularly upset to find yourself floundering in this psychotic-cum-prepositional break.
In
(inside, within) this break, or
during
this break, you can actually believe that this warped wood floor in Woolworth’s is mere prelude to the neon dance floor of 2001 Odyssey, the disco in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Surely you already smell polyester-y cologne, taste Seven and Sevens, inhale salt-grit air rising around the Verrazano Bridge, all more pungent and real than this dusty Woolworth’s.

In other words (or toward other words, or concerning other words, with respect to other words),
in
this prepositional confusion, you actually feel a modicum of comfort
by reason of
or
with respect to
the fact that reality, even in the best of times, is slippery and unpredictable. Not unlike prepositions.

At the same time, however, here in notions, because of this prepositional impasse, you’re not, ironically, able to consider the notion that it’s as if you, yourself, are trapped between (inside, within, against) two tarnished, wavy mirrors. Prepositionally speaking, you do not see that your love of (for) John Travolta occurs
in spite of
your trapped life. Or is it
on account of
or
due to
it? Do you love him
in place of
any other life whatsoever? Love him
in lieu of
a life of your own?

In short, in this prepositional chaos you don’t see the Big Picture. Or even know if there is a Big Picture, let alone its origins or what it means.

A few years later, now divorced from (without) your Galveston husband, and with (beside) your Houston husband but still entrenched in (or with, during, among) your prepositional crisis (but definitely not
between
prepositional crises, thus crossing one preposition off the list), you stand before (but thankfully not be
tween) racks of shoes in Marshall’s searching for a pair of cowboy boots. You just saw
Urban Cowboy
and want, more than anything, to resemble Debra Winger, or the character Sissy, whom John Travolta’s character, Bud, marries, loses, loves again.

You don’t have enough money to purchase Tony Lamas. You pull on a pair of red-fringed, faux-suede boots, instead . . . Texan enough to dance the two-step with John Travolta at Gilley’s.

John Travolta films
Urban Cowboy
in Houston. You almost see him in person, but don’t. You haven’t quite recovered from the near miss.

As you sit in your therapist’s office (or
on
the couch
in
his office) for your weekly appointment, you discover how close you came to seeing him. Before you’re able to speak, however, you can’t help but silently ruminate about whether one sits
on
a porch or
in
a porch . . . and do you sit
in
or
on
a wicker chair
on
that porch
beside
(inside of) the railing? As you try to sort out these prepositional conundrums, you begin (dare you admit it?) to succumb to the weariness of this confusion. You even wonder if whoever invented prepositions in the first place ultimately ended up in (around, near, inside) the eighth or ninth circle of hell. And decide probably the latter.

Dr. Gripon, due to your delay in speaking, finally says, “Guess what?”

Still in your Stephanie phase, you wear the white camellia (now shredding) with a polyester outfit and platform shoes.

“My wife and I saw John Travolta last night having dinner . . .”

“The
real
him?” you ask, incredulous.

Dr. Gripon has never been informed about your personal prepositional maelstrom or the cause and effect between it and your crush on John Travolta. In fact, by now, you yourself aren’t one hundred percent sure which came first, the chicken or the egg, or in this case, the prepositions or John Travolta, though you suspect the former.

Nevertheless, what with this unsolved mystery—coupled with the dilemma as to which preposition would best express your love for (with, of) John Travolta—you have only mentioned him in passing to Dr. Gripon.

“He’s in town filming that movie.”

Urban Cowboy.

“My wife got his autograph.”

So now John Travolta has fallen madly in love with your therapist’s wife
, you actually think. Because, after all, if he has seen her
in place of you
, isn’t it just as likely that he has fallen
in
love with her . . . now, for the first time, worrying that people, just like prepositions, are interchangeable.

Interchangeable because, though you don’t like to admit it, even John Travolta is interchangeable.

You once equally had a crush on Paul Newman. Whom you
did
meet in person.

This was when you worked on (in) Capitol Hill and helped out at a Democratic fund-raiser. At one point during the evening, you found yourself standing beside (around, near, within speaking distance of—or to) Paul Newman, who asked you for a cigarette. Unfortunately, you don’t smoke. Which is what you told him.

Which caused your first missed opportunity.

Because you should have told Paul Newman to just stay put while you found a cigarette. And you should have moved both heaven and earth—above, across, behind, below, underneath, off, inside—and every other possible prepositional direction—
on account of
your search to find one. Because then he might have fallen in (into) love with you. Except you didn’t. So he didn’t.

But even if you had (you try to reason), by the time you actually found your way out of the smoky prepositional maze, Paul Newman would probably have found a cigarette from some other girl hovering before, behind, around him. And he would have fallen in love with her. Because if prepositions and movie stars are interchangeable, aren’t, likewise, lonely girls?

Before your mind further descends into a prepositional meltdown, you say to Dr. Gripon, “But you didn’t call me from the restaurant!”

Thus resulting in the aforementioned missed opportunity to drive there to meet John Travolta.

Now, what with a growing number of missed opportunities—and, by association, loss, alienation, an existential crisis—all entering the (prepositional) equation simultaneously, you wonder whether your prepositional breakdown is the root cause of
all
your problems, from the get-go.

Maybe your prepositions were never neatly aligned inside (throughout, within) your mind in the first place.

How
can
they be when even your religious beliefs are
out
of alignment by reason of (with respect to) your Jewish father’s damaging love—to say nothing of the seduction of popular culture and its ever-changing fads. Why wouldn’t you want to dance with (beside, along with) Catholic Italian John Travolta, aka Tony Manero and/or good ol’ Texas boy Bud, whether it’s disco or the Texas two-step? After all, if Jewish Debra Winger can masquerade in (with) what surely must be Christian cowgirl boots (real Jews, after all, never wear cowboy boots), why can’t you?

So how can you possibly expect prepositions to clarify life when your whole identity from day one decidedly stood apart from (beside, without) whoever might be the “real” you?

For the very first time since beginning therapy you weep. Though you aren’t really sure if it’s because of John Travolta, Paul Newman, your Galveston (ex)husband, your fast-fading Houston husband, or the state of your soul—as confused as prepositions.

Compounding the problem is that you are now so endlessly mired in (with reference to) your prepositional nightmare, you can’t even explain it to Dr. Gripon. You likewise generally avoid discussing your childhood—and its religious implications—to him altogether, due to (on account of) your inability to select the one correct preposition to highlight the divide between (among!)
genuine love, movie-star love, spiritual love, pop-culture love, and/or your father’s so-called love.

To make matters worse, while still sitting on the couch in (within) Dr. Gripon’s office, you realize that
his
very name
itself
is adrift in the equivalent of a prepositional hazardous waste site. You worry you are losing your grip on him. For how can you grip
on to
him in order to save your sanity, with his name morphing (and why not?) into Dr. Gripoff.

In any event, there is simply no way to discuss life and its various losses, confusions, and missed opportunities within the context of—and given the nuances of—so many prepositions and phrasal prepositions—even if you cross one (such as “between”) off the list—as you tried to do. Though you suspect, given the right circumstances, it could just as easily return, as in “you are
between
two no-win prepositional propositions. Unless you are
among
more than two lose-lose prepositional proposals.”

Years later, as it so happens, your doctor prescribes an antibiotic for an infection, and the antibiotic severely disrupts your intestinal tract.

While you wait to either recover or die (now, without any husband), you watch old movies on television and see a young, glistening Paul Newman in
The Long, Hot Summer
. One Saturday evening, channel surfing, you also catch
Saturday Night Fever
 . . . now sure that your life is flashing before (beyond, near) your eyes. How young and healthy John Travolta likewise looks in (with) that white suit boogying on (across) that neon-flashing dance floor. (It should be noted that although you have, by now, lost the camellia, the red-suede boots still occupy space on the floor of your closet—or perhaps simply in the closet—but at any rate not
on
your feet, which is where they should be if you are to die nobly.)

You now wonder, in your frail condition, if you want(-ed) to be Stephanie and be
in
(within, inside)
Saturday Night Fever
because then you wouldn’t be
outside
it, susceptible, as you are, to
disease, grammatically challenged childhoods, failed marriages, death . . . well, susceptible, after all, to
life
. Because you would forever be inside (within) the screen itself.

To be dead is to be
in
(below, beneath, underneath, within) the ground. Or to be
up
in crematorium smoke. Or, if you believe in the hereafter—heaven, hell, limbo, purgatory, or whatever—which you don’t (or do you?), you’d still be above, beyond, off, outside the earth.

Which would be all right if you are an astronaut. And now that you think of it, you always wanted to be an astronaut.

But as you grow older, well, as you
age
and opportunities lessen, while, at the same time, prepositions metastasize out of control, you realize you’ll never be an astronaut—a stretch even in your twenties unless you played one on screen—which you would have liked to be—or to do. Just float in space . . . watching the marble of the earth sink farther and farther away, observing the earth (life, death, etc.) with perspective, while, at the same time, also gain perspective on prepositions and, finally, yourself.

Imagining all this—as if you
are
either inside a movie or outside gravity—you realize: it doesn’t really matter if you mess up a few prepositions in your life; the problems, after all, of 56 little prepositions don’t amount to a hill of beans in (with regard to) this crazy world—because we all die anyway, boots on or off.

Which leads you to (toward) the realization that you deliberately trapped yourself inside (among, below, behind, or underneath) prepositions in the first place because you
want
to be trapped as if between (yes, for once, you’re sure this is the right word) those wavy, almost-funhouse Woolworth’s mirrors in lieu of (in spite of, in addition to, or even in place of) reality, of life.

All of which is to say: you might have figured out the Big Picture earlier if you’d confided in Dr. Gripon. But what with prepositions running amok, you lived in (inside) John Travolta’s world, a beautiful friendship, except for (with the exception of) the fact that it wasn’t yours to live.