September 2008 Archives
"The Bonesetter's Daughter" must be one of the least appealing titles ever hung on a work of performance art, but no matter. For Marlou and I are already underway, hurtling north on the great freeway of life, toward San Francisco. Every mile seems fateful. The recent tire blowout I had on another stretch of the same motorway has left its mark. Anything can happen anytime. And it's hard to know if I should stay in the right lane, forever ready to pull onto the shoulder if disaster strikes. Or just forget it, and drive.
There is no answer. Only more miles. And the two of us, Marlou and I, have the good sense to praise the parking gods as I pull my massive van into the disabled space behind the Opera House. One should not take this for granted. One should not take anything for granted. Here, on the ground floor of a massive and often overflowing carpark structure, is a space, an empty space, for me. Our seats in the dress circle are less than 300 meters from my parked van, as the crow flies. And, I am convinced, some crows are actually flying. There's something about "The Bonesetter's Daughter" that attracts crows, and I'm not being snide. The opera is full of dark fate and death, and a black bird or two would hardly be noticed.
Marlou and I both brighten at our safe arrival, at the sense of urban hustle in this part of San Francisco. We have lunch where we always do. The menu has changed slightly, but oddly our table never does. We have been together long enough to have, and to appreciate, certain pleasant routines. Marlou goes for the fried green tomatoes Florentine. I have a breakfast sandwich that is not a sandwich. Not to worry. My double latte is doing the trick.
I need all the caffeinated tricks I can muster these days. Sleep is unsettled, insufficient. Marlou's cancer news has unnerved us both. Things are improving, however. Last night, for example, I woke briefly, downed about an ounce of chocolate, and hit the slumber road. A better night, but there seems to be a backlog, some sort of sleep deficit. Which may explain why as soon as the opera house lights go dim, I go dark.
I catch the first part of the Amy Tan epic onstage, but as the story unfolds, I keep drifting into the sleepy darkness. Finally, the drifts add up to a rest and I return to the action. There are spirits flying through the air of an opera stage scrim, followed by a scene in a San Francisco restaurant. A Jewish couple is dining with a Chinese-American couple, united in the enjoyment of what both cultures agree is a ritual meal: Chinese. I'm thinking that these people on stage should have ordered take-out, for the first act is dragging. The bonesetter turns out to have nothing to do with orthopedics and lots to do with melodramatic bad behavior. The guy is a scumbag on a truly operatic scale. The scale, however, is repetitive. Three notes and a gong, as Marlou describes it. Followed by another three notes, another gong, and, you guessed it, more of the same, until intermission.
By the time the final curtain falls, I feel rather glad to been there. The final scene is a hospital room. And something about this moment seems the most authentic. A woman is trying to retrieve stories of her life, pulling them in like netted fish from the sea, before she drifts away forever. I notice that Marlou is crying beside me in the darkened house. I say nothing. Nothing needs to be said. Mortality and the shortening and summing up of life is on both of our minds these days. We don't know what's going to happen, I keep telling Marlou. Life and illness may have some pleasant surprises for us. While this is true, the sad possibilities confront us.
"Us" is, quite miraculously, what we are now. Even with the national economy tanking, Marlou and I are more concerned with each other. There's a presidential campaign happening out there, but what's happening in here, in our apartment, is us. It's hard to say how or why this has happened. Marlou turns to me over a post-opera coffee and tells me something about work. It's an amusing anecdote, a moment in an office meeting, but the amusement comes from the teller. Marlou understands the story's irony in her own particular way. These days her face, while it contains sorrow, also contains her. I sense her vulnerability, appreciate it, and am grateful for it. For this seems part of a grand mystery, one only opening to me late in life. Vulnerability is something we share. It is the channel that connects us. Keeping that channel open has become natural. It has become our life.
There is no answer. Only more miles. And the two of us, Marlou and I, have the good sense to praise the parking gods as I pull my massive van into the disabled space behind the Opera House. One should not take this for granted. One should not take anything for granted. Here, on the ground floor of a massive and often overflowing carpark structure, is a space, an empty space, for me. Our seats in the dress circle are less than 300 meters from my parked van, as the crow flies. And, I am convinced, some crows are actually flying. There's something about "The Bonesetter's Daughter" that attracts crows, and I'm not being snide. The opera is full of dark fate and death, and a black bird or two would hardly be noticed.
Marlou and I both brighten at our safe arrival, at the sense of urban hustle in this part of San Francisco. We have lunch where we always do. The menu has changed slightly, but oddly our table never does. We have been together long enough to have, and to appreciate, certain pleasant routines. Marlou goes for the fried green tomatoes Florentine. I have a breakfast sandwich that is not a sandwich. Not to worry. My double latte is doing the trick.
I need all the caffeinated tricks I can muster these days. Sleep is unsettled, insufficient. Marlou's cancer news has unnerved us both. Things are improving, however. Last night, for example, I woke briefly, downed about an ounce of chocolate, and hit the slumber road. A better night, but there seems to be a backlog, some sort of sleep deficit. Which may explain why as soon as the opera house lights go dim, I go dark.
I catch the first part of the Amy Tan epic onstage, but as the story unfolds, I keep drifting into the sleepy darkness. Finally, the drifts add up to a rest and I return to the action. There are spirits flying through the air of an opera stage scrim, followed by a scene in a San Francisco restaurant. A Jewish couple is dining with a Chinese-American couple, united in the enjoyment of what both cultures agree is a ritual meal: Chinese. I'm thinking that these people on stage should have ordered take-out, for the first act is dragging. The bonesetter turns out to have nothing to do with orthopedics and lots to do with melodramatic bad behavior. The guy is a scumbag on a truly operatic scale. The scale, however, is repetitive. Three notes and a gong, as Marlou describes it. Followed by another three notes, another gong, and, you guessed it, more of the same, until intermission.
By the time the final curtain falls, I feel rather glad to been there. The final scene is a hospital room. And something about this moment seems the most authentic. A woman is trying to retrieve stories of her life, pulling them in like netted fish from the sea, before she drifts away forever. I notice that Marlou is crying beside me in the darkened house. I say nothing. Nothing needs to be said. Mortality and the shortening and summing up of life is on both of our minds these days. We don't know what's going to happen, I keep telling Marlou. Life and illness may have some pleasant surprises for us. While this is true, the sad possibilities confront us.
"Us" is, quite miraculously, what we are now. Even with the national economy tanking, Marlou and I are more concerned with each other. There's a presidential campaign happening out there, but what's happening in here, in our apartment, is us. It's hard to say how or why this has happened. Marlou turns to me over a post-opera coffee and tells me something about work. It's an amusing anecdote, a moment in an office meeting, but the amusement comes from the teller. Marlou understands the story's irony in her own particular way. These days her face, while it contains sorrow, also contains her. I sense her vulnerability, appreciate it, and am grateful for it. For this seems part of a grand mystery, one only opening to me late in life. Vulnerability is something we share. It is the channel that connects us. Keeping that channel open has become natural. It has become our life.
It is as inescapable as Fresno, only more diffuse. I feel it all the time, sometimes describing the thing as age, at other times loss of confidence. But it boils down to this. Things are slowing. They are also seizing up, refusing to flex and, increasingly, pretending to be lost. I reach for a glass of wine and knock over the salt. I reach for a glass in the cupboard and find that I have lost my balance, or almost. There is no one single neuromuscular failing I can cite. Just a general sense of failing. And why not? I have been bounding about the quadriplegic world rather successfully for decades. So what if I have to pull in and pull back?
Furthermore, there is a general disturbance in the atmosphere. My atmosphere, that is. Or, as we say in California, my aura. The personal force field around me has gone jagged. I can feel it, particularly when I am driving north on 101, the main motorway that leads up the coast from San Francisco. Actually, the first thing I notice is the smell. Someone is burning rubber, which is fine, since it must be someone else. I'm not pressing on the brakes. I relax. And relaxing is a good thing, because this other thing is happening. It's a shuddering, sinking thing, and it is accompanied by a floppy sound. Having just relaxed, it is a simple enough matter to steer to the right. My heavy Ford fan is slowing drastically, while my adrenaline is giving me something of a surge, forgive the expression. Now the van is halted. Early rush-hour traffic whooshes by, just inches from my left door. I know what has happened, and there is not much I can do about it except extract my mobile phone and call the auto club.
I have no hesitation in telling the AAA operator that, in addition to having blown a tire, I have also blown out much of my spinal cord. The picture emerges from my lips in stark, even poignant, detail. There is a disabled driver, a man who uses a wheelchair, and he is now stranded just south of Cotati. How you spell that, the operator asks? I spell Cotati, trying not to sound snotty. What state is that in? The state of emergency should be obvious, and maybe it is, that we go through this fumbling Cotati-finding stuff at his end, while I try not to hyperventilate at mine.
It seems to me that since I parked at the edge of this 60 mph steel torrent, the traffic flow has actually increased. When the man tells me that a tow truck is on its way, I start the engine and limp a few inches closer to the edge of the freeway. The trouble is that I am on an overpass, a bridge over a stream or a road, I cannot tell. A concrete wall just high enough to obscure the view blocks what is probably a perfectly pleasant section of Sonoma County. This is farm country, dairy country, wine country, suburb country and, as in my case, weekend tourist country. I am on my way to see Jim, a friend in Sebastopol. Why the Russian name? Someone knows, but that someone is 10 miles away as the crow flies. And, trust me, the crow is flying. So is the buzzard. They have spotted carrion on the roadway. It's not carrion yet, but give it time. The quadriplegic in the white van is a sitting duck.
Marlou has cancer, and I, in fact, don't have much of a spinal cord left these days, which may make me a little more worried about getting rear-ended while I wait for a tow truck. But mostly I am anxious. It is Marlou, and me, and everything. I don't know. There's a truck in the distance backing down the freeway.
There's always a turning point in a plot, and the element of surprise is essential. You don expect to see salvation backing down the shoulder of the motorway. You expect it to drive up behind you and flash its lights, speak through a loudspeaker mounted on the roof. Or, in another scenario, to pull up alongside, park in front and disgorge its driver. The latter will be uniformed and readily identifiable. This backing-down-the-freeway technique, while credible, also arouses suspicion. This guy could be a freeway marauder. This could be one of the most sophisticated carjacking ploys ever invented. In fact, my mobile phone conversation revealing my cripple plight could have been intercepted. Who is this guy?
The answer soon appears. For he has parked 100 meters up the motorway and is now walking toward me. Hello. He tells me that he is from the Highway Patrol, the California state troopers. I am unconvinced. He hands me a brochure. As a former brochure writer, we are now 50% closer to credibility. My mobile phone rings. The auto club towtruck is drawing closer. This guy from the State is telling me to start my van and drive to his own State-of-California towtruck. He can't change my tire on a freeway overpass, he explains. I don't know what to do about the AAA towtruck. So I give the State guy my mobile phone. The crippled man cannot drive and talk at the same time, he must have observed. I have put this man in charge. He sends the auto club towtruck away.
The Highway Patrol guy is now jacking up my van, whirring a pneumatic wrench, rolling the flat tire into view. The thing has exploded. The side of the tire has separated from the tread. There is a steel and rubber loop lying floppy on the ground, and beside it, there is a cross-section of black doughnut, what used to be sidewall.
When this is over, I try to give the man some money. He refuses. Instead, he askes me to fill in a survey. To complete the experience, he talks me through the process of getting up to speed and getting back on the freeway. The latter, he understands, is not so simple. I drive a heavy truck, and the motorway is climbing a northbound hill. Not to worry. When the time comes, his left turn signals flash like the approach lights at San Francisco Airport, rush-hour drivers slow in alarm and I follow the towtruck into traffic. The whole thing, from disaster to rescue and restoration, has taken half an hour.
Furthermore, there is a general disturbance in the atmosphere. My atmosphere, that is. Or, as we say in California, my aura. The personal force field around me has gone jagged. I can feel it, particularly when I am driving north on 101, the main motorway that leads up the coast from San Francisco. Actually, the first thing I notice is the smell. Someone is burning rubber, which is fine, since it must be someone else. I'm not pressing on the brakes. I relax. And relaxing is a good thing, because this other thing is happening. It's a shuddering, sinking thing, and it is accompanied by a floppy sound. Having just relaxed, it is a simple enough matter to steer to the right. My heavy Ford fan is slowing drastically, while my adrenaline is giving me something of a surge, forgive the expression. Now the van is halted. Early rush-hour traffic whooshes by, just inches from my left door. I know what has happened, and there is not much I can do about it except extract my mobile phone and call the auto club.
I have no hesitation in telling the AAA operator that, in addition to having blown a tire, I have also blown out much of my spinal cord. The picture emerges from my lips in stark, even poignant, detail. There is a disabled driver, a man who uses a wheelchair, and he is now stranded just south of Cotati. How you spell that, the operator asks? I spell Cotati, trying not to sound snotty. What state is that in? The state of emergency should be obvious, and maybe it is, that we go through this fumbling Cotati-finding stuff at his end, while I try not to hyperventilate at mine.
It seems to me that since I parked at the edge of this 60 mph steel torrent, the traffic flow has actually increased. When the man tells me that a tow truck is on its way, I start the engine and limp a few inches closer to the edge of the freeway. The trouble is that I am on an overpass, a bridge over a stream or a road, I cannot tell. A concrete wall just high enough to obscure the view blocks what is probably a perfectly pleasant section of Sonoma County. This is farm country, dairy country, wine country, suburb country and, as in my case, weekend tourist country. I am on my way to see Jim, a friend in Sebastopol. Why the Russian name? Someone knows, but that someone is 10 miles away as the crow flies. And, trust me, the crow is flying. So is the buzzard. They have spotted carrion on the roadway. It's not carrion yet, but give it time. The quadriplegic in the white van is a sitting duck.
Marlou has cancer, and I, in fact, don't have much of a spinal cord left these days, which may make me a little more worried about getting rear-ended while I wait for a tow truck. But mostly I am anxious. It is Marlou, and me, and everything. I don't know. There's a truck in the distance backing down the freeway.
There's always a turning point in a plot, and the element of surprise is essential. You don expect to see salvation backing down the shoulder of the motorway. You expect it to drive up behind you and flash its lights, speak through a loudspeaker mounted on the roof. Or, in another scenario, to pull up alongside, park in front and disgorge its driver. The latter will be uniformed and readily identifiable. This backing-down-the-freeway technique, while credible, also arouses suspicion. This guy could be a freeway marauder. This could be one of the most sophisticated carjacking ploys ever invented. In fact, my mobile phone conversation revealing my cripple plight could have been intercepted. Who is this guy?
The answer soon appears. For he has parked 100 meters up the motorway and is now walking toward me. Hello. He tells me that he is from the Highway Patrol, the California state troopers. I am unconvinced. He hands me a brochure. As a former brochure writer, we are now 50% closer to credibility. My mobile phone rings. The auto club towtruck is drawing closer. This guy from the State is telling me to start my van and drive to his own State-of-California towtruck. He can't change my tire on a freeway overpass, he explains. I don't know what to do about the AAA towtruck. So I give the State guy my mobile phone. The crippled man cannot drive and talk at the same time, he must have observed. I have put this man in charge. He sends the auto club towtruck away.
The Highway Patrol guy is now jacking up my van, whirring a pneumatic wrench, rolling the flat tire into view. The thing has exploded. The side of the tire has separated from the tread. There is a steel and rubber loop lying floppy on the ground, and beside it, there is a cross-section of black doughnut, what used to be sidewall.
When this is over, I try to give the man some money. He refuses. Instead, he askes me to fill in a survey. To complete the experience, he talks me through the process of getting up to speed and getting back on the freeway. The latter, he understands, is not so simple. I drive a heavy truck, and the motorway is climbing a northbound hill. Not to worry. When the time comes, his left turn signals flash like the approach lights at San Francisco Airport, rush-hour drivers slow in alarm and I follow the towtruck into traffic. The whole thing, from disaster to rescue and restoration, has taken half an hour.
Louisianians may flee the coast when a storm approaches, but Marlou and I do just the opposite. We head for the water and hunker down. How else to explain the two weeks we spent above the waters of Tomales Bay in August, 2006, just weeks before Marlou's cancer diagnosis? And what is there to say about our latest stay right on the same bay? This time we had the diagnosis, just not the update.
The latter was coming. The storm warnings were up, low-lying areas evacuated. The storm hit and things scattered. In this case, Marlou's cancer cells. They've spread themselves around, and now there are no forecasts, and the evacuees are returning.
We had met with Marlou's doctor and heard about the new tests, new drugs and new game plan. Things were serious, but there was still time, still hope. So, on the following day we looked around and wondered what to do next. Go to the coast, of course. The coast was clear. So what was there to do, but load up the van, crank up the speed and hurtle over the hill?
Half Moon Bay, Marlou observes as we wind down the coastal canyon, is looking awfully spruce. The pumpkin fields, site of the imminent and ever mindnumbing Pumpkin Festival, are raked and tidy. The garden centers are looking awfully, well, centered. And the only produce stand along the highway keeps up a certain standard with its four-dollar-per-box strawberries.
Turning onto the coastal highway, the Pacific spray predominates. Now everything to the left of the northbound road is about the setting sun, rising mist and rolling waves. Pacific Brown Pelicans, almost extinct from DDT exposure in my childhood, are out in force. In fact, they have opened a diving range just off shore.
Our friend Tom drives up, parks and joins us on the front. Like Navy jets, the pelicans take off, circle, identify the target, go into a dive. And now they do what no Navy jet ever has or will. They go into the water and actually submerge. Marlou's theory is that they stun their prey. I'm not so sure. I think they have a contract with Lockheed Martin for real-time lock on prey detection and acquisition. Fish got to swim. Birds gotta fly. And pelicans gotta do both.
Every few seconds the birds plunk into the water. The Pacific's roar blanks out the sound. The lowering sun heightens the sparkle from the spray. I point out the pelicans' deficiencies in air traffic control. Marlou laughs in her inimitable way. Her eyes lock on mine the way the pelicans do on the fish. We agree on the target, the laughter target. It's not the pelicans -- it's each other.
We are locking onto some wavelength that in times of soul weariness opens up to people in distress. It's an emergency frequency solely for the transmission of observed data. Our topic happens to be pelican airspace management. But that's only today. Tomorrow the topic will change, but the channel will remain open. Marlou's capacity to be emotionally present, to maintain a perspective on the world that is at once wry and openhearted, this is what I love in a timeless way. And since we're both destined to have only so many trips to Half Moon Bay, this particular visit keeps expanding in both scope and significance.
Marlou, Tom and I wander along the shore. The two of them wander into a fanciful garden of a New Agey healing center. It's an utterly California phenomenon with a politically incorrect five inch step blocking wheelchair access. For which, in this case, I am grateful. You can take the boy out of the curmudgeon, but you can't take the curmudgeon out of the boy. I want to tell this to Marlou and to Tom, but both have disappeared into the garden. Never mind. For I am thinking of my own.
My raised garden beds. The tomatoes keep arriving at a steady clip. There is lettuce. Now and then a forgotten Spanish onion surfaces. As for the basil, it is overripe, overgrown and bursting with neglect. I have neither the time nor the will to make pesto. Most mornings I just stare at the basil, then make tracks. I was just about to do so this morning when the gardeners arrived in their truck with ear-shattering leaf blowers and went to work blasting garden waste off available surfaces.
It was time for the annual offering, my homage to Wendell Berry. To the Hispanic gardening assistant to whom I give 30 bucks each spring for pitchforking my cover crop back into the ground, I also give vegetables. This year the ritual has come awfully late. I yell at him enough to be heard through his earplugs and over the sound of the leaf blower. He follows me down the walkway where I pull off a meager harvest. A couple of tomatoes. Some scrawny lettuce. One onion. It's very token this year. Even halfhearted. It's just the principle of the thing. And I'm not even sure what the principle is. Something about sharing the fruits of the earth. Sharing the earth itself. I notice that he is graying about the temples, this gardener. He knows very little about English, very much about leaf blowing, and he's not young. I thank him and hope he enjoys the vegetables.
* * *
A few days later, Marlou brings up the topic of wills. Actually, I am focusing on objects. Marlou has a glass case full of them. This piece of furniture, it turns out, is called a breakfront. Part of my education as a male, not to mention an undomesticated person, is this word, an item for storage and display, which does have a front but, no, is not broken. I long ago absorbed the apparent misnomer. What I am absorbing now is the ceramic contents, the figures and knickknacks that Marlou will want to bequeath to others. Our relationship has its limits.
I am staring at the pre-bequest figurines, because I do not want to acknowledge the situation regarding wills. Marlou has written hers. I, inexplicably, have not written mine. Superficially, my reason is that it doesn't matter. I have no kids. The ridiculousness of this is transparent, of course. I will die and leave behind people and things, and a will is designed to connect these two. It's a practical matter. And the truth could not be simpler. I have avoided willmaking. I don't have the will.
Marlou does. She made hers long ago. In this regard, Marlou has taken the lead. I want her to know this. She does not think of herself naturally in a leading role. But it is not up to us to choose the lead. That's up to Central Casting. Marlou has been chosen. The part has been written for her, and it is sad and funny and warm, just as she is. The rest of us have supporting roles, and the action and meaning emanate from Marlou. I would like to say she is my star, but truly, she is ours.
The latter was coming. The storm warnings were up, low-lying areas evacuated. The storm hit and things scattered. In this case, Marlou's cancer cells. They've spread themselves around, and now there are no forecasts, and the evacuees are returning.
We had met with Marlou's doctor and heard about the new tests, new drugs and new game plan. Things were serious, but there was still time, still hope. So, on the following day we looked around and wondered what to do next. Go to the coast, of course. The coast was clear. So what was there to do, but load up the van, crank up the speed and hurtle over the hill?
Half Moon Bay, Marlou observes as we wind down the coastal canyon, is looking awfully spruce. The pumpkin fields, site of the imminent and ever mindnumbing Pumpkin Festival, are raked and tidy. The garden centers are looking awfully, well, centered. And the only produce stand along the highway keeps up a certain standard with its four-dollar-per-box strawberries.
Turning onto the coastal highway, the Pacific spray predominates. Now everything to the left of the northbound road is about the setting sun, rising mist and rolling waves. Pacific Brown Pelicans, almost extinct from DDT exposure in my childhood, are out in force. In fact, they have opened a diving range just off shore.
Our friend Tom drives up, parks and joins us on the front. Like Navy jets, the pelicans take off, circle, identify the target, go into a dive. And now they do what no Navy jet ever has or will. They go into the water and actually submerge. Marlou's theory is that they stun their prey. I'm not so sure. I think they have a contract with Lockheed Martin for real-time lock on prey detection and acquisition. Fish got to swim. Birds gotta fly. And pelicans gotta do both.
Every few seconds the birds plunk into the water. The Pacific's roar blanks out the sound. The lowering sun heightens the sparkle from the spray. I point out the pelicans' deficiencies in air traffic control. Marlou laughs in her inimitable way. Her eyes lock on mine the way the pelicans do on the fish. We agree on the target, the laughter target. It's not the pelicans -- it's each other.
We are locking onto some wavelength that in times of soul weariness opens up to people in distress. It's an emergency frequency solely for the transmission of observed data. Our topic happens to be pelican airspace management. But that's only today. Tomorrow the topic will change, but the channel will remain open. Marlou's capacity to be emotionally present, to maintain a perspective on the world that is at once wry and openhearted, this is what I love in a timeless way. And since we're both destined to have only so many trips to Half Moon Bay, this particular visit keeps expanding in both scope and significance.
Marlou, Tom and I wander along the shore. The two of them wander into a fanciful garden of a New Agey healing center. It's an utterly California phenomenon with a politically incorrect five inch step blocking wheelchair access. For which, in this case, I am grateful. You can take the boy out of the curmudgeon, but you can't take the curmudgeon out of the boy. I want to tell this to Marlou and to Tom, but both have disappeared into the garden. Never mind. For I am thinking of my own.
My raised garden beds. The tomatoes keep arriving at a steady clip. There is lettuce. Now and then a forgotten Spanish onion surfaces. As for the basil, it is overripe, overgrown and bursting with neglect. I have neither the time nor the will to make pesto. Most mornings I just stare at the basil, then make tracks. I was just about to do so this morning when the gardeners arrived in their truck with ear-shattering leaf blowers and went to work blasting garden waste off available surfaces.
It was time for the annual offering, my homage to Wendell Berry. To the Hispanic gardening assistant to whom I give 30 bucks each spring for pitchforking my cover crop back into the ground, I also give vegetables. This year the ritual has come awfully late. I yell at him enough to be heard through his earplugs and over the sound of the leaf blower. He follows me down the walkway where I pull off a meager harvest. A couple of tomatoes. Some scrawny lettuce. One onion. It's very token this year. Even halfhearted. It's just the principle of the thing. And I'm not even sure what the principle is. Something about sharing the fruits of the earth. Sharing the earth itself. I notice that he is graying about the temples, this gardener. He knows very little about English, very much about leaf blowing, and he's not young. I thank him and hope he enjoys the vegetables.
* * *
A few days later, Marlou brings up the topic of wills. Actually, I am focusing on objects. Marlou has a glass case full of them. This piece of furniture, it turns out, is called a breakfront. Part of my education as a male, not to mention an undomesticated person, is this word, an item for storage and display, which does have a front but, no, is not broken. I long ago absorbed the apparent misnomer. What I am absorbing now is the ceramic contents, the figures and knickknacks that Marlou will want to bequeath to others. Our relationship has its limits.
I am staring at the pre-bequest figurines, because I do not want to acknowledge the situation regarding wills. Marlou has written hers. I, inexplicably, have not written mine. Superficially, my reason is that it doesn't matter. I have no kids. The ridiculousness of this is transparent, of course. I will die and leave behind people and things, and a will is designed to connect these two. It's a practical matter. And the truth could not be simpler. I have avoided willmaking. I don't have the will.
Marlou does. She made hers long ago. In this regard, Marlou has taken the lead. I want her to know this. She does not think of herself naturally in a leading role. But it is not up to us to choose the lead. That's up to Central Casting. Marlou has been chosen. The part has been written for her, and it is sad and funny and warm, just as she is. The rest of us have supporting roles, and the action and meaning emanate from Marlou. I would like to say she is my star, but truly, she is ours.
