This Footstool Earth. John Zeugner
she was rocking him in mewling pain, holding him softly in that cramped vertical striped room, rocking, creaking in the polished maple chair. He thought but was too wracked or embarrassed to say (he couldn’t tell which)—you were the one I wanted to see, wanted to say goodbye to, because I doubt I’ll come back, doubt I’ll need to come back, or want to come back. You meant so much to me, put safety in my hands—your hands. I wanted to know you were still in this world, available in this world and here I am three inches away spreading my leaking blood lasso around whatever it was that meant so much to me. I cannot tell you, cannot say. So, I found you, after nights of looking, listening, waiting. Here I am nudging my stupidity through your door and relieved you’re not letting me in. Beyond her was a gleaming light blueness, shimmering in his mind. I can speak through all embarrassment now. Yes, I can speak straight out in a way I couldn’t, or wouldn’t ever before. But now, but now. Now it’s truly irrelevant any restriction on my saying anything. The freedom of last moments—maybe you don’t feel it. But in soft grey water and drifting pain one can speak only honestly, think honestly. So here I am. Didn’t biblical figures say as much? Addressed in extremis, all that could be acknowledged was Here I am, Lord. Here I am.
“It’s so nice Louie for you to come by. So very nice, but I’m not in a good place just now. Not now. I sees what’s troubling you, and I have saw it often, but not now.”
“Saw it often,” he repeated, smiling. “Saw it off, and I get it. I just wanted to see you and say goodbye. I won’t come again. You don’t have to worry about that. I absolve you from that worry.”
“Don’t say that, Louie. Don’t be mean, Louie. Don’t.”
“What’s mean about the truth?
“Don’t be mean, Louie.”
It’s truth. I have been mean. I see that, feel that now. How cold it feels how watery cold. So let me gather back all my meanness, take it up and gather it in again, pull it toward me, ensnared in my bleeding come back to me. Healing at last as the pain drains off, spiraling elsewhere in the quiet grey pool all around. All around.
-§-
But B interrupts, “I think you’re drifting off target—setting up your own hang-ups and not Lewis’s. And why does she call him Louie?”
“That’s what she always called him.” C answers.
“Artistic license,” B says brusquely. “We don’t know anything about Lewis. Why should we care about his expiration in the rice paddy—itself pretty much a trite turn of events.”
A says, “From the play you should have a good idea of the failure of Lewis’s life. Ah, but then you haven’t read the play, and not having read it, you must remain ignorant of all his motivations.”
“So, tell me about the play. Maybe I can be spared the delight of plowing through it.”
“It’s not much delight,” A says. “But it does explain a good bit. But I wonder if you really want explanation. The story is involving, or it isn’t. I don’t see how context or background helps anything.”
“Well, I raised a question and it seems no one can answer.”
“I can answer,” C says, “the play details the family dysfunction that leads Lewis to join the Army—in particular it lays bare, so to speak, the peculiar way the family has of creating and buttressing and utterly inhabiting a completely bogus reality, a projection of family as might be imagined by a third rate sit-com writer who had nonetheless memorized Hallowell’s Guide to Upper Class Imitation, and who passionately longed to have children able to carry milk glass rectangles of menthol cigarettes for invited guests.”
“Pretty bitter . . . and dated. Nobody passes cigarettes now. Nobody,” B says, smiling. “So, the negress behind the chained door—”
“Not chained,” C insisted, “merely foot wedged at about three inches open.”
“My mistake,” B continued, “and doubtless a crucial element. So, the Negress—”
“Annie May,” C said.
“All right, Annie May, refuses to let Lewis in, and to explain that we need to have the play in hand. So why not put the play in before the Lewis’s death account?”
“I’ll take that under advisement. I had asked you to read the play beforehand.”
“Requesting is not structure,” B answered.
“I wanted the sweetest moment of his life to continue,” C said. “The absolute sweetest, as if we could only summon that sweetness at the crucial end.”
“He is a pathetic child,” A interjected. “But we’re pulling for him, while lamenting the lack he suffered in extremis. Can I say that?”
“You can say it, but it’s a distancing I was really trying to eliminate.”
“What saves us you cannot eliminate.”
“Understood, but not accepted,” C said. “Understood. I’ll rework his death.”
-§-
Later in Meguro, at the Cat Hospital, C said to Madame Vincouvier, “They rejected Lewis’s death utterly. Were unmoved by it. And now I’ll have to rework it entirely. So much energy for such disappointment.”
“You poor boy,” she answered. “You failed, didn’t you? And not for trying hard. Indeed, you tried very, very hard, but your energy was unfocused, almost useless. Useless. You need discipline, don’t you, my disappointed boy. Shall I discipline you?”
“Yes, please.”
“With no easing off?”
“Yes, please, no easing off this time.”
“No safety phrase stopping everything?”
“No safety phrase. Just the punishment I deserve.”
“But only if you pass on your stories of Lewis’s background, as well as your half-plays.”
“They have them already, but already isn’t all read.”
“For a lame pun, punishment is all red.” And Mne Vincouvier ran her tongue slowly across her upper lip.
-§-
The Riches of This World, Part A
Lewis’s Back Stories in 2.2. Chapters
(Chapter One: The Toughest Bar in Worcester)
In the last, most profitable act of his Brahmin life Walter Jelliffe convinced his son, Waldo, to marry Suzan Corcoran, the slightly unhinged daughter of Worcester’s richest family. That union brought Waldo the one enterprise he could fathom and embrace: publisher of Worcester’s “alternative” weekly newspaper, The New Worcester Spy. Thus did Mayflower power fuse with the apparently limitless acquisitions flowing from Corcoran Abrasives. The linkage generated a certain amount of friction, and the titular Walter had been characteristically blunt with his son: “Anyone who marries for money earns every penny of it, but let’s face it, there’s sweat-earnings versus suck-up earnings. And from what I’ve seen of you, Waldo, the latter seems more natural, more in line with your tastes.” There was a wondrous gentleness in the squeeze the old man applied to his son’s shoulder and mind.
“I’ll work at it, Daddy,” Waldo replied. And he did. In the early years of the marriage Waldo spent hours on the fifth floor of Worcester Memorial Hospital’s psych ward, listening to Suzan explain how she had made him rope sandals, and beaded leather wallets. He kept her on her lithium and constantly reassured her that given her situation she could have married almost anyone in Worcester–that he was in fact only the best of a long line of suitors. He worked hard to get her admitted to his luncheon club, The Worcester Club. It was largely through his efforts that women were eventually permitted even in the smoking rooms.
Waldo also worked hard at his publisher position–though he easily understood–as