Watch Your Mouth (12 page)

“What?”

“Now here, not nowhere. You’ve never heard of this?”

I blinked. The audience fidgets, waiting for more sex, or a stabbing or something. Be patient, please. Stop crinkling the playbills; outside, I believe I have mentioned, it was a windy day. “Now here?”

“Now here and nowhere are the same word. You know, they’re made of the same letters. It all depends on how you look at it. God is
nowhere
. God is
now here
. You understand? It’s in the Talmud.”

“I thought the Talmud was in Hebrew.”

“The
idea
is in the Talmud. It was modernized by somebody. It’s a modern idea—that’s why I’ll be using it today, to help

Mimi. She thinks, in her state, that nothing’s left. She thinks she’s
nowhere
. But there’s no reason to give up hope. She can be
now here
. It’s all in how she looks at it. I’ll be trying to offer her my own Gospel. I’ll be trying to offer her God—but not a judgmental God. Not the kind of God who would track her down and punish her this way. I’m offering her God as therapist, a God that can help her. She needs to find courage. And the real
irony
is”—he looked at me significantly—“she should just look around her. The heroines of operas are always triumphing over adversity—
real
operas, anyway, not the schmutz they’re passing off this summer.” He paused. “Look at
Medea.
Now
there’s
a brave woman. She knew she was
now here
. At the end of
that
opera—have you seen it?”

“No.”

“At the end, they ask her, Medea, what is left? Everything is destroyed, everything is gone. And you know what Medea says? She says, ‘What is left? There is me.’
There’s
a woman for you. ‘What do you mean what’s left? Everything is left.
I
am left.’
There’s
an opera they should show the world.”

“Doesn’t Medea kill her children?” I asked.

“Yes,” croaked somebody behind us, and there was Mimi, slung in the doorway of the living room like something hanging to dry. She had a smudge of clay on her face from the Props Studio and she looked tired. How long had she been there, on stage? Her costume will have to match the drapes or something, so she can emerge gradually and no one will notice her until that one word, low in her range:
Yes.

Rabbi Tsouris stood up. “Mimi,” he said, and glided over to her. He took her arm like an old movie, and settled her down

on a slipcovered chair. Mimi let these things happen to her like they were part of an examination. “Yes, Medea killed her chil- dren,” she said meanwhile, looking at me.

“Will you excuse us?” the Rabbi asked me stiffly, and Mimi began to tremble. Her skin made little shivering crackles on the slipcover and I stepped backwards out of the living room.

It’s difficult to construct a soliloquy when I’m narrating this to begin with. A further soliloquy, a meta-soliloquy maybe. Rabbi Tsouris and Mimi begin mouthing things to one another, while the lighting focuses on Joseph, lurking by the curtains that match Mimi’s costume:
Ah! Mimi looks terrible. And why is she home in the middle of the day? Why did she have an appoint- ment with the rabbi? Does she suspect that Cyn and Ben are sleep- ing together during these afternoons of quality time? Ah, quality time—the very concept sounds suspect! Ah, Jewish house of intrigue and misery! Ah, my tainted Cyn! My lovely flower gone rancid in Mimi’s twisted and evil kitchen! My precious porcelain figurine shattered like ceramic bone in the operating room of her fa- ther! Reduced to a one-molecule width by the lecherous laser of her brother! Oh, my turbulent head, blowing like the wind outside, be- cause outside it is a windy day, signified by the roll of the timpani!
And roll it does, a tempest of T.U.D., as Joseph stumbles past the curtains like he’s drunk poison, careening in billiard angles from one wall of the hallway to the next. Mimi and Tsouris freeze in a tableau of conference so we know we’re supposed to keep looking at Joseph and because, obviously, I wasn’t there to listen in on them. I was there in the hallway, though, when the signal is given to the stagehand. He’s slightly overweight and has a pen in his mouth because he’s not allowed to smoke

on the set. Since “it’s exhausting to think about, but if you drive around a neighborhood . . .” he’s been standing with his hand on the doorknob of Stephen’s bedroom, listening through head- phones for the signal to pull it open as the wind rises and makes good on its foreshadowing. Outside, I hope you know by now, it was a windy day, and that window was open, the one above the little wrought-iron table with little claw feet. You will re- member that wind, because of some air pressure or wind rush- ing thing, opens doors and exposes nudity.

It will require, I suppose, a brave tenor, though with tricky enough lighting you could have a body double, with the real Stephen moaning the high A-flat behind a scrim, while Cyn’s hand reaches for the erection of some guy they get from wherever they get naked people for art classes. In some
Salome
s it’s downright embarrassing, when the typically-shaped operatic soprano removes the seventh veil and we wonder why Herod lusts after his niece-turned-stepdaughter when there are so many healthy, more slender objects available in his stable. But opera is sort of a myth, and a myth is sort of a truth, and truly, Stephen’s body was delectably formed. Even in horror you can find lust, and such was mine that I understood the mother (still tableaued across stage) who didn’t want to be
friends.
Damp, Stephen was framed in the doorway like a gift, his eyes glassy with eagerness, his arms hovering in mid-reach, aching with the paralysis of a readiness afraid to show itself too keenly and spoil everything. I’m sure even our pen-chomping stagehand, hiding behind the door with the doorknob poking him, leans to look at Stephen’s body, and pokes back.

Having been cooked up by Mimi, it should be no surprise Stephen looked so delicious. His shoulders were delectable, the

knobs of his shoulder blades rising like drumsticks of perfectly- roasted chicken. His legs were trembling like a watched pot, and the landing-strip triangle of downy hair cleaved the cutting board of his chest like those perfectly sheared scars down a loaf of fine bread. And
no,
we won’t call it a baguette, that’s too French and large. Stephen’s whole family is short; Cyn, in fifth grade, was nicknamed Shrimp. Stephen’s shrimp was curled, like a real one, and damp from the pupil of the shrimp’s one eager eye to the bouquet of coral around its base, damp with late-teen musk as familiar and crave-inducing as garlic butter.

Dinner was ready. Cyn’s hand was half-clenched like she was picking up a fork, while Stephen was the most eager of waiters, not the ones who scowl “Who had the scampi?” but croon, whisper, whimper, “Please. Please.” And the rest moans. A-flat, over a chord of violins thin as a bedsheet. Behind Stephen, everything was familiar, although I’d only seen his bedroom during a brief tour the day of my arrival. I didn’t have to see any more of Cyn, just the forearm, just the foreplay. The blan- kets and sheets had been thrown to the bottom of the bed, hanging on to the mattress in a frozen grimace of rippled cor- ners, leaving the playing field bare for unencumbered gymnas- tics. The pillows were scrunched at the other end, cowering against the wall; I remembered how many times my thrusts had scooted Cyn and me to the very top of the bed, her spidery hand grabbing a pillow and stuffing it behind her head to stop the knocking on her skull. I saw Stephen’s underwear and pants, fallen in concentric puddles near his arched bare feet. I didn’t have to see Cyn to know she had pulled them down. I didn’t have to see her face because I knew what she looked like when she was hungry; it was the same expression I could sense each

night when her father scooted her to
her
wall, when she left me alone in the attic. I didn’t have to see any more than her spidery hand. I had seen enough.

The last A-flat melts right into the most tempestous T.U.D. yet, topped only by the finale in Act IV, Scene Two. The timpani rolls again and our headphoned stagehand shuts the door as the body double is brought a robe to dull the chill, and shoes so he won’t step on some stray set-building nail as he walks to the dressing room.

Mimi saw me re-enter the living room, and her whole body snapped like she’d been in tableau during my absence, or had been talking about something she didn’t want me to hear. She changed the subject as briskly as changing beddings, casting a new thin layer of whiteness over the stains of whatever had been going on.

“But how do you make one, really?” she asked Rabbi Tsouris. Tsouris sighed with the trombones. “I didn’t come here to talk about golems,” he said. “You know I’m not taking sides on

the summer season, Mrs.—”

“Mimi,”
she almost snarled, “
Mimi. Please.
Can’t you
please

tell me? It’s important.”

“I really came here to talk about your illness. I want you to know, Mimi, that God—”

“Is a therapist, I know,” she said. Her hand was as spidery as her daughter’s, now that I looked at it. “I
know
that. But if you really want to make me feel better—
I want to know.
”

“O.K.,” he said carefully, shifting and squeaking on the slip- cover. “Well, it’s a myth, of course, so the actual process is debated.” Mimi shrugged impatiently, almost a tic. “But it’s gen-

erally agreed that you need mud from a river, you know: river clay. And the creator is a rabbi.”

“Does it have to be a rabbi?” Mimi asked sharply. “It’s a
myth,
” Rabbi Tsouris said.

“Isn’t a myth a sort of truth?”

“Mimi, I don’t think we should be talking about this. Obvi- ously you’re upset. You’re ill, and—Joseph, would you excuse us?”

“Don’t change the subject!”
Mimi snarled. Her spidery hand flickered out to me again. I sat down instantly like she’d cast a spell. Stephen’s buttocks (I didn’t mention those, did I? Ripe, magnificent.) were probably squirming on the sheets now, bucking towards Cyn’s hungry mouth, but mine were stiff on an uncomfortable chair in the corner.
“Tell me.”

“I guess it doesn’t have to be a rabbi,” the rabbi said. “It could be anyone. It’s a
myth,
Mimi. We have to talk about what’s
really
happening right now.” The wind blew outside and I wondered what other doors had opened, had shut. What was
really
hap- pening, here? “But if only to satisfy your curiosity, I’ll tell you, briefly. The rabbi would use river clay and lay it out in the shape of a man. He’d dress entirely in white—”

“The golem?”

“No, no, the rabbi. The golem, I guess, was naked. I mean, he was made of
clay,
so I guess we could call it naked.”

“And?”
The coffee table trembled, and so did I, and probably Stephen, and Cyn, and the cellos.

“
And,
there’s not much else. He lights the candle, as I remem- ber, and circles the body and does some sort of a chant. Mimi, I don’t know why you’re asking me about this, frankly—there’s

a golem ceremony in one of the operas, isn’t there?
Golem?
Some sort of—”

“
Alphabetical
chant?” Mimi asked. “Isn’t it
alphabetical?
” “You know,” the Rabbi said, and stood up. His legs shook

slightly. Mimi looked at him like he was going to boil over. “You know,” he said again, “we shouldn’t be talking about this. You’re very upset, Mimi, and you need your rest at a time like this.”

“Alphabetical?”
she asked again. “Just
tell
me. In the opera, it’s alphabetical, it’s something like ‘Ah, By Clay Destroy Evil Forces, Golem, Help, Justice!’ Wait, there’s no I there, what begins with I?”

“I don’t know,”
the rabbi said, and started towards the door. “You’re very upset, Mimi, and I came here to offer you—I didn’t come here to talk about Jewish myths, for God’s sake. You can’t seek comfort in myths, Mimi. You have to seek comfort from your troubles with truth, with God. And I’m not offering you a judgmental God. You think God is
nowhere
. But he can be
now here
. I’m offering you God as Therapist—”

“I don’t want a therapist,” she said. “I want a golem.” “We’ll talk later,” Tsouris said, in a voice that said: “You’re

crazy.” He opened the front door. Outside the air prowled down Frost Road, Hemingway Way and Byron Circle like a stranger in a car. I stood up and walked to the doorway and watched his spidery hands as they buttoned his blazer. They were as spidery as Mimi’s, as spidery as Cyn’s; everybody’s hands were spidery. Everybody’s hands looked alike; from the wrists to the finger- prints we were all identical. Mimi took a few steps towards him, and he raised both hands defensively, halfway between bene- diction and shoving somebody off a cliff. “Will you make sure

she gets some rest, Joseph?” he said to me. “I’ll talk to her later.” He turned to leave,
now here,
but soon
nowhere.
Behind me the wind blew some door shut—a sudden snare drum from the back of the orchestra. “You need some rest, Mimi,” he said, all God as Therapist. “Go to bed.” And as the rabbi turned to me I realized it didn’t have to be Therapist. It could be The Rapist. It could be God as The Rapist.

“Take her to bed,” he said to me, and it all depended on how you looked at it.

ACT III, SCENE TWO

The Glass home, in the dead of night. An early scene in
Alma
takes place in a graveyard in the dead of night. We know it’s the dead of night because we hear three tones of a church bell: “Bing! Bing! Bing!” The tolling takes its toll; just three notes from Christ’s sanctuary and the rabbis clutch their heads in agony and support themselves on headstones Mimi has fash- ioned out of plaster. But the Glass home didn’t have any church bells, or even a grandfather clock with its pendulum tongue hanging low and loose like impotence. It was a doorbell, ringing three times at three in the morning, that woke me up.