The History of Luminous Motion (9 page)

15

“SHE’S
BEAUTIFUL,” DAD said.

“I
don’t think she’s awake.”

“Her
eyes are open.”

“Sometimes
her eyes are open but she’s not awake.”

“Has
she been eating properly?”

“I
do my best.”

“What
about vitamin and mineral supplements?”

“I
started leaving them out for her, but I don’t know if she’s been taking them.”

“What
about cigarettes?”

“I
think she’s stopped. She’s still drinking, though.”

“That’ll
have to stop too. We’ll want her eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, more
salads. Hot soups and plenty of juices and mineral water. Mainly she needs
exercise, sunlight, a few less worries. She’ll need to see a good doctor,
perhaps a nutritionist.”

“I
think she’s better off staying at home.”

“I’ll
find a doctor who makes house calls.”

“Mom
needs her own space, Dad.”

“Everybody
needs their own space, son. But sometimes their space isn’t just theirs.
Sometimes their personal space infringes on the personal space of other people.
That’s just a way of saying we all have responsibilities, son. I’ve told you
before. We all have responsibilities to people other than ourselves, whether we
like it or not.” Dad was cautiously approaching Mom like some aborigine trying
to console an electric light bulb.

“Dad.
 
I don’t understand.”

Finally,
gently, Dad sat down on the edge of Mom’s bed. The springs emitted a tiny, querulous
creak. He wasn’t looking at me either. He was looking at the empty bottles of
Jack Daniel’s and Wild Turkey piled in the corner beside some tattered,
outdated issues of
TV Guide
. The
neglected vitamins lay heaped on the untidy bureau. Dad’s hand gently stroked
Mom’s stomach underneath the blankets. Mom’s face was flushed and serene, like
the face of a Madonna. She really was just as beautiful as ever, I thought.

“What
I’m trying to say, son, is that very soon you’re not going to be alone anymore.
You’re going to have a little brother, or maybe even a little sister, to take
care of. Your mother’s going to have a baby.”

For
a few moments, nothing moved in the entire universe.

“Just
look at your Mom’s smile and you’ll know,” Dad said. “Just look at her. Your
mother always did have an unforgettable smile.”

UNDERSTANDABLY,
I GREETED Dad’s arrival with mixed emotions, to say the least. Because he was
my dad I loved him, but because Mom was his wife that meant he loved her too. There
were enough men in Mom’s life already, I thought, preparing breakfast for four
now instead of two. Dad’s laptop IBM computer was equipped with a modem, which
he usually plugged into the telephone line about the same time I began frying
bacon and eggs. Dad sat very erect and deadly serious at the new dining room
table he had bought us while strange graphs and data flashed on the amber
screen. The laptop made beeping sounds every once in a while. “What’s the
dividend yield on that?” Dad asked the phone, when his computer wasn’t on it. “Why
can’t we convert to unit trusts? Sure, sure, but I can’t make a living on
theories, Harry. I can put credit in the bank. I can invest future
expectations. But I can’t buy a meal with theories. I can’t even buy a good
song.” Sometimes Dad just sat there and listened. He always wore freshly
laundered, pressed striped shirts and pure wool slacks. His face was always
closely shaven. He wore a mild, minty cologne. “All right,” he told the phone.
He punched buttons on his laptop, reengaged telephone and modem. “You can start
transmitting now.” Additional figures and charts emerged from the bright
screen. Sometimes Dad paused for a while, watching cool articulate data emerge
from the humming monitor.

Dad
communicated all over the world with stock investment analysis coordinators,
banking investment consultants, corporate holdings portfolio advisers,
industrial efficiency maintenance engineers, agents and brokers and realtors
and accountants and bankers. While I set the table and prepared our meals,
while Mom lay in her bed growing my young, immaculate and ethereal sibling in
her womb, Dad spoke words not with other people, but with the system of language
itself. Dad didn’t speak things, he spoke systems. Just as systems, I was
equally sure, spoke him.

“One
of these days we’ll get you started managing your own money,” Dad told me one
day, drinking Dos Equis and reading the Dow figures as they unreeled from his
ink-jet Epsom printer.

“I’ve
got a little money put aside already,” I said. I was pouring green soap powder
into the soap dispenser of our new Whirlpool dishwasher. I closed the lid,
cranked it shut, and engaged the first rinse cycle. “You know, in case of
emergencies.” The spraying water sounded like static on the radio.

I
brought Dad the latest Sears money market statement. I brought him the Dividend
Reinvestment figures for my 200 shares of San Diego Gas and Electric. I brought
him the joint savings account Rodney and I held at Bank of America. I brought
him the savings deposit key. The savings deposit box contained a number of gold
and silver coins, some small diversified holdings in various California utility
companies, and Mom’s diamond wedding band.

Dad
examined the various documents for a while. Figures were flashing on the screen
of his laptop, but he wasn’t watching them. Every once in a while he whistled a
tiny, indefinite melody, not with his lips but with the tip of his tongue
against the hard edge of his palate. Ever since I could remember, I always
wanted to whistle like that.

When
Dad finally looked up at me, his eyes held that reflectionless, distracted
expression they usually held whenever he spoke about Mom. He gestured with the
various papers in his hand.

“This
isn’t too bad,” he said after a while.

“WHEN’S
HE LEAVING?” Rodney asked. “I thought you said he was leaving yesterday.”

Dad
was in the shower. I had detached the phone from the laptop, which had emitted
a treacherous little beep.

“That’s
what he told me.”

“Why
don’t you tell him to leave?”

“I
can’t just do that. He’s my dad.”

“Your
mom doesn’t want him around, does she? What’s your mom think about all this?

“I
don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what Mom thinks about anything anymore.”

In
fact, Mom seemed a lot more peaceful and happy now that Dad was back to take
care of us again. Because Mom refused to take the lithium Dad’s doctor
prescribed, every afternoon around four o’clock a private nurse named Syd arrived
and gave her an injection. Mom didn’t resist with anything but her eyes. “Now
be a good girl,” Syd said, and officiously posted me from the room. When I
returned later, Mom was holding a tiny ball of cotton against the inside of her
arm.

“It’s
OK,” Mom told me afterwards. Her right arm was growing more and more tracked
with tiny scabs. “It didn’t hurt at all.”

I
brought Mom cool pitchers of water, fresh apples and citrus fruits, carrots and
hummus sandwiches. Her stomach seemed taut and smooth when I touched it, like the
expanded tube of a tire.

EVERY
MORNING DAD worked on the dining room table with his laptop and made phone
calls. In the afternoons he took trips into Westwood, Hollywood, Burbank, and
often returned long after I was asleep. Mom, meanwhile, lay in her bed, awaited
her daily injections and grew more placid and content. This was the only
movement left us now, the movement in Mom’s stomach. Sometimes she let me place
my ear against her smooth and ageless skin. I felt its tiny kick at the world
outside. Kick. Kick again. I liked to place my lips against Mom’s stomach and
speak to it. “When you come out here, don’t expect any free ride,” I said. “I
think I’m working through a lot of the anxieties and insecurities your arrival
may bring. By the time you get here, I hope I’ll be able to treat you with love
and respect for your individuality. I hope I won’t burden you with a lot of
silly resentment you won’t even understand.”

Kick,
it said. Kick kick.

“That
other noise you hear is just the TV,” I said. “Those aren’t real gunshots, but
just fake gunshots on TV. Sometimes you’ll see men fall over dead on TV, but
they’re not really dead. They’re just pretending. That’s the way TV works. People
get paid to act like they’re people in real life. But they’re not, really. They’re
just actors. On the news, sometimes, you’ll see real dead people. I’ll have to
explain that part all over again when you come out. That stuff about dead
people on TV always confused me when I was little.”

I
didn’t want any child of Mom’s to be confused about anything. Even though Mom
had retreated into her formal silence, I wanted our baby to enjoy all the warm
immanent attention I had enjoyed, to find itself enveloped by that same
constant and imperturbable voice of Mom’s that had once enveloped me. “In a
minute, you’ll hear the vacuum cleaner,” I told it. “I use the vacuum for
cleaning the rug. The suction sucks all the dirt and grime and lint from the
floor through this long rubbery hose, and then puts it into this big blue paper
sack. Every once in a while, you have to put a new vacuum sack in it. Now that
I’ve finished cleaning, I’m going to be leaving you and Mom for a little while
so I can cook us all a good dinner. A pot roast. I roast it in the hot oven. I
serve it with vegetables and gravy. That’s what you’ll be tasting later when it
arrives through Mom’s umbilical cord. Pot roast and gravy.” I never left until
the baby had given me some response. A kick, perhaps, or a hormonal grumble. Then
I patted Mom’s warm stomach in telegraphic farewell. I wanted the baby to know
I wasn’t just talking at it. I was talking with it. We were family already,
with our without Mom, with or without Dad, with or without the entire universe
of motion and light.

I
RARELY SAW Mom and Dad together during the day, but often at night I would
awake to the sound of Mom screaming. She wasn’t screaming words, she was just
screaming. This was another world that emerged in our dark house at night, the
screaming of Mom’s voice. It was even comforting in a way, formalized by the
grammar of our household, by the deep structure of our seemingly eternal and
regenerate family. Mom’s scream was just a word, like Mom herself, Dad, Dad’s
laptop and car, the garage, Mom’s TV, and the tiny rough scabs sprinkling Mom’s
arm like crushed white grains of salt. Covert in my room, I awaited Mom’s
screams each night like a kiss on the forehead or a glass of warm milk. She’d
start screaming for what seemed like hours and hours some nights, as if with
her screams she were trying to inflate some enormous circus balloon. One night
I went to my bedroom door and peeked across the hall into Mom’s room. All the
lights were on. The TV was blaring. Mom’s face was twisted and angry, flushed
and mottled with tears. She gestured wildly with the jeweled compact Dad had
bought her from Westwood two days before. She screamed and threw it, and I
heard things breaking. She was wearing the white hospital robe Syd made her
wear. The robe hung open, revealing her quaking breasts and pale concave chest.
And Dad in the doorway too, turning to look at me. He was still wearing his
three-piece suit. The buttons of his vest were all undone, and his hair mussed.
“Go back to bed, Phillip,” he said. Dad’s voice was the sternest word. Dad’s
voice was the world’s first word. “Everything’s all right. Your mom and I are
just talking.” Then I closed my door again and lay in my cold bed listening to
her screaming until Dad finally gave her one of her injections, a sedative
prescribed by one of Dad’s “specialists,” and then presumably they went back to
bed together and fell asleep.

16

SUDDENLY
I BEGAN to feel different and talk different, as if a different person entirely
were developing from my thin body. Dad’s arrival really had begun to teach me
things about personal responsibility. Every morning I padded softly into Mom’s
bedroom where I found only the impression of Dad’s body lingering in the mattress
and pillow beside her. She didn’t even look like Mom anymore, but more and more
like one of those crepuscular figures who emerged from Mom’s dark bed in my most
feverish nightmares of Mom. Her mouth hung open, revealing cold crowns and
silver cavities. This was Mom’s skull, that deep interior world into which Mom
could retreat whenever she wanted, and where I could never follow. Mom snored
deep in her throat. Her eyes were lashed with milky sleep. “Mom,” I said,
pushing her shoulder. Her entire body shook with the force of my hand. “Mom,
it’s me.”

The
drained hypodermics with their needles snapped off lay in the wicker basket,
bedded by bloody Kleenex and balls of cotton. I could hear Dad in the living
room, his fingers clacking against the dull cushioned keys of his laptop. Every
once in a while the laptop beeped or the phone range. Dad’s dark, muffled and
sinewy voice would sometimes turn underneath Mom’s bed like a buried stream or
a shifting geological plate.

“Before
your dad came I thought everything was starting to work out,” Mom said. She
slurred a lot. With a Kleenex I wiped flecks of saliva from the corners of her
mouth. “Before your dad came I was beginning not to be afraid anymore. The
spell of my blood actually made sense to me. Sometimes I even looked forward to
having the darkness take me places. It took me down luminous rivers on large
rotting rafts and barges. I saw strange birds flying overhead, and the eyes of
other creatures emerging from the mucky water. I traveled down the river where
twisted houses sat on shores filled with dark men who wouldn’t come outside. The
dark men were inside whispering about me. They held heavy spears and weapons by
their side while their addled women cooked large pots of gristly meat and hung
their washing out to dry. The men wore loincloths and streaks of paint on their
arms and faces. A few mangy dogs lay around outside, contemplating the dim
fire. One of the dark men was my father.”

Mom
sat there and stared into space. She clasped the half-pint bottle of Seagram’s
against her breast. The bottle was almost empty. Every few nights or so I would
go down to our local Liquor Mart, purchase some milk and beef jerky and request
cardboard boxes from the bespectacled elderly clerk. While he was out of the
store I stuffed bottles of gin and whiskey under my blue Derby jacket. Later,
while Dad was away on business, I smuggled them into Mom’s room. The bottles, I
hoped, would keep Mom company when I couldn’t.

“That’s
not your dreams, Mom,” I said. “That’s Conrad. That’s
Apocalypse Now
. Don’t you remember? We saw
Apocalypse Now
at the Sunset Drive-In in San Luis Obispo last
summer. At the end, Martin Sheen kills a bull with an ax.”

“My
father was always a very gentle man with my mother,” Mom said. “He had big soft
hands. Sometimes he placed one of his hands on my knee when he drove me places
in the car. He drove me to doctors mostly. We used to sit together in the
waiting rooms and read slick magazines. I always liked
Vogue
best, but my father preferred
Popular Mechanics
. Sometimes it seemed like we were sitting in
those waiting rooms for days and days, and all the time my father’s hand was on
my knee. It looked like some sort of animal. I was never really sure if I liked
my father’s hand there on my knee or not.”

“IT’S
OK TO be a little confused,” Beatrice told me one night on the phone. “It’s
even all right to be a little afraid. Give your emotions some credit, Phillip. Stop
trying to be in
control
of everything
all the time.”

“I’m
not afraid or confused,” I said. “I’m not trying to
control
anybody. It’s just that I feel there are a lot of decisions
being left up to me, and frankly, Beatrice, I don’t know if I’m up to them. I
love my mom, but I love my dad too.”

“You
love the idea of your dad, Phillip. You don’t love
him
. You love what you want your dad to be. What you want to make
him.”

“I
don’t want my dad to be anything, Beatrice. He’s just there. I didn’t ask him
to come.”

“Yes
you did. You asked him to come.”

“No
I didn’t. He just came, Beatrice. I swear. I didn’t have anything to do with
it.”

“You’re
afraid it’ll all turn out exactly the way you want it to. You never loved your
mom, Phillip. You only loved the idea of your dad.”

“I
love my mom,” I said.

“You
never loved her, Phillip. You’re a man. You’re weapons, notions, deeds. You’re
technology. Your mom’s the earth. She’s the woods. Your mom’s the rain and the
wind. Your mom’s nature. Your mom’s what men’s words wreck. Your mom’s
abundance, but men are cold and hungry. Your mom’s life, while men aren’t even
death, they’re just nothing. They’re just the cold gray void death presumes to
be. Men are the end of space and the beginning of metal.”

“I
never hear from Rodney anymore,” I said. Beatrice’s words swirled in my head. I
felt dizzy and weightless, like a space-walking astronaut. I leaned against the
wall and tried to find assurance in my house’s body and mass. I considered
tying myself down to something–the kitchen cabinet, or the dining room
table. I might float off the face of the planet otherwise, and then I’d never
have any idea where I was. A dull ache began to throb in my head. “I call and
leave messages, but Ethel says he’s out with his friends. She says he’ll call
me soon. He’s just going through a stage, she says. It’s just a stage he’s
going through.”

“Rodney’s
feeling a little hurt, Phillip. I don’t think you should have done that to his
dog.”

I
wasn’t sure I knew what Beatrice meant. Dogs guarded houses. Sometimes they
crawled into your lap and slept there until their owners returned home. My mom
had once considered buying me a dog.

“Rodney
used to be my best friend,” I said after a while. “Rodney and I used to go
everywhere together.”

I
WAS ONLY a child. How was I to know what was real and what wasn’t? I slept in
my clothes–a habit learned during the years of Mom’s motion–and
often late at night while Mom screamed in the other room I would get out of bed
and go to my bedroom door. I had no reason to believe sound was real or even
important. While Mom screamed I might also hear the sound of Dad’s firm and
reasonable voice. “Now, Margaret, you’ll wake Phillip.” “Especially in your
condition.” “No you don’t. You don’t really want to.” “I love you, Margaret.
You know that. Because somewhere in your heart you love me too.”

I
would sneak down the hall, down the back stairs and into the backyard, where
tall weeds towered over me, amber and dead. Morose spiders spun glistening webs
in the moonlight, and the high power lines sizzled in the starless sky like
Dad’s voice. The power lines were filled with the voices of the world’s other
dads, calling their sons on the telephone. The world’s other dads were real
too. They were real people who dealt with real things in the real world.
Sometimes they found bits and pieces of the world that were not real, and then
they had to make them so, or dispense with them altogether. Things were never
as real as they could be for the world’s dads. Someday everything in the entire
universe would be real, and the world’s dads would finally prevail. When that
day arrived, civilization and not nature would be rampant. When that day
arrived, you could talk to everybody in the universe on the telephone.

“Hello,
son.”

“Hello,
Dad.”

“We’ll
go to the ball game. We’ll go to the beach. On the Fourth of July we’ll watch
the fireworks. Then you and Judy and I’ll go see Judy’s parents. You’ll like
Judy’s parents’ house. How’s your mom? Is there anything you’d like to talk
about? Did you finish your science project? Did you get your report card? Is
your mom still seeing What’s-his-name? Is your mom alone right now? Are you
sure? What
is
his name, anyway? I thought
I heard a voice. What
is
she doing?
What sort of television show? I didn’t think that was on tonight. Oh, just in
summer, huh? You’re sure? You can tell me if she’s not alone, son. You know
that, don’t you? Your mom has other friends now who may sleep with her from
time to time, and that’s perfectly natural, OK? There’s nothing wrong with that
at all. But don’t worry. Don’t worry one little bit. You don’t have to tell me anything
if you don’t want to. No, of course I don’t think that. But just the same. Did
she want to talk to me? Are you sure? Do you want to check? Just in case. I’ll
wait. If she’s busy, I’ll understand. If she’s got company, don’t bother her.
I’ll understand, I really will. I was thinking the weekend after next we’d all
drive out to Marineland. Of course Judy’ll come too. You like Judy, don’t you?
I thought so. And she likes you too. In fact, Judy likes you very much, son. I
think sometimes Judy likes you as much as if you were her own son.”

I
could even hear Mom screaming out here in the overgrown backyard, standing in
that strange inverted darkness I found comforting after Dad came to live with
us. In Los Angeles the night simmered with its own logic and ceremony. I heard
the buzzing earth, the whispering light, the conspiracies of mere matter. Our
yard was filled with the ruins of a fallen cement birdbath and weed-sprung
brick barbecue. Collapsed trellises, moldering rosebeds, strange, twisted bushes
and syllableless insects. I could step into the high weeds and actually feel
the language out there, like a human body, like Dad’s firm words. Broken cinder
blocks, decomposing garbage, the corpse of a sad, tiny sparrow chewed and
discarded by some spiteful tomcat. Forgotten civilizations I had read about in
books. Mu, Atlantis, Greece, Egypt, Crete, Babylon. Perfect calendars and
ritual sacrifice. People torn apart by dark machines. Virgins devoured by sharp
blades. The hard inedible fruits of the weeds with hard bright colors. If I
owned a telescope and lived on a high mountaintop I could see the stars. Not
the stars on a wall map but the stars themselves. Stars exploded and collapsed.
They turned and spun. If other people lived in the universe they might be
looking at my sun now and contemplating me while I contemplated them. They
might be creatures composed of gas or foam or rock or fire. They might live
forever. They might love their moms. They might travel across landscapes filled
with strange sounds, plants, birds and clouds. They might eat time or fart
philosophical propositions. They might live language or speak matter. They may
never have heard a single note of music in their entire lives. They might
possess the advanced technology required to journey from sun to sun, but then
they might be too lazy and self-involved to bother. Some nights I stood there
in the darkness and cried for my lost mom. I was finally beginning to realize
that just because I hated Dad didn’t mean I didn’t love him too. Dad was a
house. Mom was just infinite space which Dad’s house isolated and defined. Mom
was the sadness I couldn’t express. She didn’t stand a chance. To be perfectly fair,
Mom hadn’t stood a chance from the very beginning.