Broken for You (41 page)

"Short for 'Tinker Bell,'" Margaret explained. "Believe me, Bob, it suits her perfectly."

"Well then, I'll see you in three months," he said, standing to shake Margaret's hand. "Unless, of course," he added with a slight surge of energy, "you experience any change in your symptoms before then."

Babs planned a huge gala for the opening exhibit. Those invited included journalists, friends, members of the art community, and political, civic, and religious leaders. Also in attendance would be several Holocaust survivors who wanted to show their support for the project—including Babs's great-aunt Tessa.

Clearly, in Babs's mind the event was part art opening, part diplomatic detente. "I want to get all the people who are talking about desecration-this and responsibility-that in the same room, face-to-face, in dressy clothes. I want them to hear from Tessa and the other survivors—who are the only real authorities on anything. Most of these protesting, indignant types haven't even seen Tink's work, much less made anything but the most reactionary response."

Furthermore, she was adamant that Margaret attend. "You have to be there," she stated. "Your not coming to the other openings, I have to tell you, has made people think you're ashamed."

"But I am ashamed," Margaret said.

"Of what? You're not some Nazi sympathizer."

"My father was."

"Yes. And here you are, not hiding that fact, doing so much more than just being sorry."

Margaret massaged her temples. "But it took me so long, Babs," she said. "Too long."

"There's no statute of limitations on good deeds," Babs concluded. She squeezed Margaret's hand and then went back to perusing a last-minute checklist. "By the way," she said, "did I tell you that you're getting a special award from the Mercer Island Chapter of B'nai B'rith? I'll be introducing you."

"You mean I have to stand up in front of people and say something?" "They'll clap, you'll smile. Nothing to it. You'll be perfect."

Margaret heard Gus return from the bathroom. He pressed a warm, lavender-and-rosemary-scented cloth onto her forehead. "Grim, is it, lassie?"

"A bit," Margaret muttered. She tried to concentrate on Gus's gentle touch, on the pleasantly resinous smell of the herbs, on the agitated slashes, loops, and pinpricks of light—like a foreign alphabet—written on the inside of her eyelids. What did the words say? In what language were they written? She tried to send healing, even breaths deep into her core, as Gus had taught her, tried to smother the molten pain in her head with a cooling blanket of blue.

"Shall I go get Susan? Should we tell them we can't come?" "Oh no, Gus, I can't disappoint them. I'll just rest a bit longer."
Margaret's mother was on her left, filing her nails; Daniel was on her right, nearer the foot of the bed. He was crashing metal Hot Wheels cars back and forth over the knobby terrain of Margaret's knees, shins, and ankles, and providing the requisite nerve-twanging vrooms.

They'd appeared around five, just as she started to get ready. Hovering on either side of the vanity table mirror as she fixed her hair and applied her makeup, they primped too. Darting amongst clothes, shoes, hatboxes, and garment bags in the walk-in closet, they acquired their fancy clothes when she did. Now they were sitting close as she lay on the bed. Margaret couldn't remember exactly when Daniel had evolved from a barely visualized aura to a distinct and multiwardrobed figure; lately, however, he'd found not only defined form but enthusiastic speech.

You loo
k
great, Mom!
he cried.
Loo
k
at this! Screeeeeech! It's the Grand Prix!

Than
k
you, sweetheart; you loo
k
nice too. But you know, this is a grownup affair. . . .

She heard Gus's voice as if from afar. "Are you sure, Margaret? Should I call the doctor?"

They were never with her at this time of day. In the morning, yes, she expected them, and true, sometimes they shadowed her until well into the afternoon, when finally and almost always they'd drift away, make themselves scarce, do whatever it is that dead mothers and children do when they're not socializing with the dying. But they shouldn't be here now, in the early evening. And not tonight, of all nights.

She had to get up. It was almost time to go.

You're just afraid someone will call you names or throw rotten produce,
Margaret's mother said.

I'm afraid of more than that, Mother.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. You didn't expect to stay in the shadows forever, did you?

I expected,
Margaret emphasized,
to be a worm sandwich.

Daniel laughed. It felt as though the inside of her skull were being excavated with a pickax.

Oh, Margaret, really! You must enjoy this hoopla while you can. Believe me when I tell you that it's no fun being part of a scandal after you're dead.

Come on, Mom! It's time to go!

She rose then, slowly. Gus helped her to her feet. She looked into his eyes and found in their blue depths a brief, cooling offshore breeze. She
smiled at him and straightened his tie. "Ach, laddie," she said, in her best attempt at a Scottish accent. "Don't you look fine in your fancy clothes!"

He laughed, took her arm, and they started downstairs.

The pain in her head, slicing and dense, had the force of millions of exploding stars.

The installation, entitled,
The Magdalen Kitchen, 19J2,
had three walls which enclosed a completely realistic kitchen. Aunt Maureen's kitchen, to be exact. Every surface, including the floor, was covered in tesserae. There was a sinkful of dishes, a stove, a fridge, cupboards. Every minute detail had been attended to, down to the grease spots on the dishcloths and the dead fly on the windowsill. From a mosaicked radio on the kitchen counter came period music. A crazy-quilt tesserae clock kept time. Placed within this setting was a long table covered by a mosaicked cloth. Crowded on the upstage edge of the table was a family of seven boys eating breakfast. And pouring juice for the boys was Aunt Maureen, dressed not as a 1970s housewife and mother, but as a fifteenth-century servant.

This was not what anyone had expected. The room vibrated with the sound of voices engaged in discussion, praise, celebration, and debate. Babs couldn't have been more pleased.

After an hour, she moved to a microphone and got everyone's attention. She welcomed and thanked the guests. She directed a speech of special thanks and recognition to the survivors. Then she began her introduction. She reiterated what everyone already knew about Margaret's collection. She described Margaret as "a woman who has cherished, maintained, and protected a precious part of Jewish history and culture—in the same way that many brave individuals during the Holocaust tried to protect the persecuted Jews from whom these things were stolen." Babs paused and made eye contact with a few select members of the audience. "Although no person asked her, no secular laws required her, and no religious laws commanded her, Margaret Hughes chose to be generous enough—and courageous enough—to come forward and share the gift of her collection with all of us now, in this way. It is a gift that will resonate for generations to come. Please join me in recognizing Margaret Hughes."

The room exploded in applause. Babs kissed Margaret on the cheek and presented her with her award.

Margaret stepped up to the microphone. She gripped it with one hand and smiled. She noticed her mother and Daniel beaming at her from the back of the room. "Thank you!" she said. She tried to smile again and stepped aside.

Wanda then made a speech thanking Margaret, Mrs. Cohen, Troy, and all the volunteers. "Had it not been for the help of all these remarkable people,
Magdalen Kitchen
would have taken years to finish. You'd be looking at a ninety-year-old."

There was laughter, more applause, and then Babs leaned into the microphone. "So go! Eat! Drink! Discuss!"

The crowd dispersed and the babble of voices resumed.

"Are you all right?" Gus said, taking Margaret lightly by the elbow.

"Some water. Please, dear heart. Could you?" Margaret said.

It was the last thing she would remember.

She regained consciousness in the Radiology Department, in the arms of a CT technologist. "Well hello, Mrs. Hughes!" It was Gerald, one of her favorites. He positioned her carefully in the CT coil. "That's quite a getup you were wearing when they brought you in. You didn't need to dress up on my account. Clothes don't make the gal, you know. How about some Bach transcriptions for cello?"

Margaret smiled weakly. She had come to know all the hospital personnel by name—the admitting staff, the technologists, the radiologists. Goodness, it had been more than two years that she'd been coming here! The technologists she knew especially well; they treated her so kindly, called her by name, played music during the procedures.

Gus had taught her breathing techniques that kept her relaxed while she lay confined in the CT coil and the machine acquired helical pictures of her brain. She used these techniques every time she was in the coil, but they were a special comfort on this occasion; it was the first time Margaret had felt genuinely frightened—not only because she dreaded the results of the scan, but because there was no escaping it now: She would finally have to tell Wanda about The Star.

"You can see, right here"—Dr. Leising pointed to one of the images— "how there's been growth compared to the previous study."
There were a few moments of silence.

"Have you had a worsening of your symptoms, Margaret?" Dr. Leising wanted to know.

Gus and Susan stared at her. She felt exactly as if she'd been summoned to the principal's office for cheating on a test or filching extra desserts from the lunch line.

"Margaret," Gus said, taking her hand. "The doctor is asking you a question."

She glanced toward the door. Wanda and Troy were on the other side, in the lobby.

"Will you excuse me for a moment?" she asked.

She got up and went through the door to the reception area.

"Where's Wanda?"

"In the bathroom," Troy answered. "Down the hall. I'll take you." She could hear crying even before she pushed the door open. "She knows?"

Troy looked pained. "Couldn't really keep it a secret after this. I'm sorry, Margaret."

She reached up and squeezed his shoulders. "It's all right, dear. You did the right thing. I'm just sorry that you had to be the one to tell her. I should have done it long ago." She faced the door. "Will you wait?"

"Of course."

Margaret went into the bathroom. Wanda's crying instantly stopped. Margaret located the bottom of a black silk skirt in one of the stalls. She opened the door next to it, put down the lid, and sat. "Well," she began, "here we are again."

Reviews of
The Magdalen Kitchen
were mixed:

"The source of Schultz's tesserae is well-known, and many Jewish community members regard the new direction and subject matter of her work as a betrayal."

Another: "Smoke and mirrors. A clear case of the Emperor's New Clothes. Were it not for the incendiary nature and scope of Schultz's achievement—it's BIG, all right, no one can argue with that—her work would rank among that of the average mosaicist."

Another: "When will we see the end of this trend? No matter what the subject matter or the materials used, 'art' of this nature is best left to Girl Scouts and Martha Stewart devotees."

And: "What distinguishes Ms. Schultz's work is the scandal surrounding it. Other than that, she takes us to no new ground in terms of artistic significance. Ever since Judy Chicago, we've had feminists reinterpreting 'women's work'—i.e., the family kitchen, hearth and home, etc. etc. ad nauseam. My prediction is that this flash-in-the-pan body of work, once the legal and ethical issues it has raised recede into the distant past, will be quickly forgotten."

These reviews were in the minority, however, and most art critics agreed that
The Magdalen Kitchen
secured Tink Schultz a significant place in the world of contemporary art.

But setting aside these critical analyses, good and bad, consider the artist's point of view. When she creates, she does not imagine the world entire, but one—just one—of us, as her audience. It is that person's tokens she carries, that one she labors for, longs to please, and holds in her heart.

She wouldn't want us to be intimidated by fancy French phrases or the ubiquitous Art with a capital A; we all harbor something of the crazy plate stealer. We may not have the intimate and (let's face it) just-this-side-of-pathological relationship with objects that Margaret does, nor are we likely to be inclined toward Wanda's laissez-faire attitude regarding the destruction of material goods. But we've all been involved in willful damage and reconstruction. Every last one of us.

"Everyone else knew, Margaret. Why not me?"

"I'm sorry, Tink. I just never found the right time."

Most of us can't keep our eyes off mosaics, especially if they're like Wanda's, built up from the damaged, the cast off, the orphaned. They are infinitely seductive. We marvel at the time involved, the patience, the technical mastery, the detail. We do this with other kinds of art too, but why does a mosaic invite our bodies—as well as our eyes and intellects—in a way that the
Mona Lisa
does not? Why are we content to keep our distance from the Sistine Chapel? Would we really want to touch it, even if we could? Whereas, if someone tried to keep us from laying our hands on a mosaic, especially a
pique assiette
mosaic, we'd feel deprived, wronged, pissed as hell. These are good questions to ponder.

"You lied, Margaret. From the very beginning. From the first day we met."

"You were fragile."

"Bullshit."

"You cried in the powder room."

"That's not the reason."

The surface of any mosaic, even the most artfully executed, is always slightly irregular, and a patchwork of textures. We can be sure that touching the marble of Michelangelo's
Pieta
would be a different experience than touching Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, or the patio of Raymond Isidore's house in Chartres, or Isaiah Zagar's outdoor murals in the South Street neighborhood of Philadelphia.

"You were busy with your play, your technical rehearsal, your performances."

"I was not busy with my play every waking moment, Margaret." Of course, no one can fault the
Pieta.
She's exquisite. A masterpiece.

But with her smooth sinews of bloodless marble, who can deny that she

is also intimidating?

"Then there was the accident. You were recuperating. You were weak." "I was strong enough to hear about your Nazi father. You showed

me
that
closet of skeletons."

Imagine the
pique assiette pietas
that Wanda will make someday: A

rabbi cradling the corpse of an Auschwitz prisoner. A father holding a

young victim of a gang war. A mother clasping the body of a son who

has died of AIDS.

"There was no change in the tumor for so long. I hoped, maybe ..." ". . . it would get better? That's no excuse, Margaret. You still should have told me."

Mosaics also appeal to the side of us that has been reprimanded, punished, shamed. They are our rescued mistakes. Vindication.
Pique assiette
is revenge against those who inhaled sharply when we fumbled something, lifted a hand to us in anger, called us names—Idiot! Clumsy! Failure! Fool!—and said, Now look what you've done, what a mess you've made!

"If you'd known I was ill, would you have stayed?" "Of course not. No. Absolutely not." "Well, then. There's your reason."

When confronted with a dropped plate, what is your proclivity? Keep it? Repair it? Relegate it to the dump? Sometimes a single
I'm sorry
is all it takes; sometimes a person can say
I'm sorry
a thousand times and that glue will never dry.

"I'm a selfish old woman. For years I looked forward to dying in that house with nothing but those things and their ghosts. It was the only picture of my life that gave it value. I don't know why I changed. I just got an idea that I'd been wrong all along about what penance looks like. I never cared what it would cost you. I wanted someone to know me before I went. I'm sorry that person had to be you."

This metaphor culminates, obviously, in relationship, which is, after all, a marvel of construction, built up over time and out of fragments of shared experience.

"Margaret. Please, don't cry. Come out of there now."

Maybe we feel such a strong kinship with
pique assiette
because it is the visual metaphor that best describes us; after all, we spend much of our lives hurling bits of the figurative and literal past into the world's landfill—and then regret it. We build our identities from that detritus of regret. Every relationship worth keeping sustains, at the very least, splintered glazes, hairline fractures, cracks. And aren't these flaws the prerequisites of intimacy?

"It's all right, Margaret. Please come out. Of course I'm not leaving. How could I leave?"

The next time you break something, consider the action that might not immediately come to mind: Say a prayer of thanks over what has been broken.

Then, give it a place of honor.

Build it a shrine.

Twenty-nine

Like God in Paris

You thought I was serious about this being one of those AARP trips, didn't you?"

M.J. gave a monosyllabic response, but didn't look up.

"Sight-seeing by bus," Irma went on. "Lunch stops at McDonald's. Mai tais by the hotel pool."

He was planting plumeria seedlings along a park trail. The flowers were white, delicate, waxy—unlike anything M.J. had ever seen. Their centers were illumed with blurred stars the color of softened butter. There were clusters of people grouped along the trail—their traveling companions—all doing the same thing.

"Admit it, mister. You were expecting a lot of blue hair and bingo." They spent their days on Kauai like this, engaged in habitat restoration one day, trail maintenance another. Last week they'd helped a local farmer put in a taro field.

"You're right, Mrs. K. A service trip with the Sierra Club was not what I envisioned."

This work was new to him, and he enjoyed it. He tamped down the soil around a plant, making sure it was snuggled into its new bed. He brushed rich, dark crumbs of earth from his hands and took up another seedling.

They were a diverse group, ranging in age from ten to eighty-five. One of them had caught M.J.'s attention: a middle-aged woman with long hair and freckles. He'd noticed her right away, from the moment they boarded the plane in Seattle a week ago. He kept finding her in his field of view; there she was now, working intently by herself on the other side of the trail.

Irma punched him on the arm. "See? What have I been telling you? Life is full of surprises!"

Their hotel was in the Marais district in the eastern part of Paris, convenient to the airport buses, the Metro, and a major hospital. It was a quiet, working-class section of the city, within walking distance of tree-lined bridges, canals, locks, and barges that put Margaret in mind of the locks back home. Paris had the same compactness born of geographic necessity as Seattle.

As for the Parisians, they were nothing like the arch, contemptuous snobs of most Americans' imaginings; on the contrary, Margaret found them to be friendly and helpful. But then, Gus and Susan—who thus far had done all the talking—spoke impeccable French. Every tourist knows, or should know, that speaking good French to a Frenchman guarantees you a saint's welcome; speaking bad French lands you in the same moral sludge as that of a murderer.

Margaret's plan was to stay in Paris for the first four weeks and then relocate to Chartres, from whence they would make day trips to rural sites. A two-month vacation in all. Not surprisingly, Dr. Leising had objected strongly.

"They have physicians in France, don't they?" Margaret had cooed, borrowing a lilting cadence from her mother's voice. "I'll be accompanied by a registered nurse; we'll be near a hospital. It's not as though waiting around is going to make the tumor get better, is it?"

Robert regarded her coolly. His jaw clenched. "No, Margaret. It will not get better."

"I die in Seattle, I die in France.
...
I ask you, Bob: What's the difference?"

To that, he had no response but a sigh.

Gus was more sympathetic to Margaret's wishes, but Susan—whose demeanor had changed a good deal now that she was functioning in fullblown Licensed Registered Nurse mode—had made no secret of her opinion that the plan was unreasonably ambitious, even foolish, and her efforts to deter Margaret had been tireless to the point of stridency. No one had had the heart to tell her that her protestations were futile— clearly, short of physical restraint, Margaret was going to board that plane and travel to France—and no one had yet found words forceful enough to shut her up.

"Couldn't we at least stay in North America?" she'd implored one night as she, Wanda, and Margaret were setting the dinner table. "How about a trip to French-speaking Quebec?"

Bruce's voice called from the kitchen: "I can cook all the souffles you want right here!"

Susan turned to Wanda. "I mean really, don't you think she's being irresponsible?"

Wanda plopped a dinner plate heavily on the table and turned to face her. "I think," she said, in the voice of a head ward nurse in a Catholic hospital, "that the job of a hospice caregiver is to give the dying the dignity of their final choices. Now let it go, Miss Meriweather."

Susan's eyes widened, her lips wobbled, she burst into tears and ran into the kitchen.

"Sorry," Wanda said sheepishly. "Somebody had to do it."

"Thank you, Tink," Margaret said, then hollered, "Dinner, boys! Time to wash up!"

A week later, Gus, Susan, and Margaret arrived in Paris.

In the beginning, they made the usual tourist expeditions: to Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, the Tuileries. Susan and Gus were very strict, allowing Margaret only one major outing per day. If they went sight-seeing in the morning, she was required to rest for the remainder of the afternoon and evening. If they were planning dinner out, followed by a night at the opera, cinema, or theatre, she was practically kept under lock and key from sunup to sundown. The slightest sign of fatigue on her part was met with extreme consternation.

She had experienced only one seizure—a far less serious seizure, Margaret was quick to remind them, than the one after the gallery opening. She had not even lost consciousness, for goodness' sake; it was just
a mild episode of hemiparesis. The hospital was less than five minutes away, the medical staff spoke even better English than Susan and Gus spoke French, and she'd received excellent care. It had been nothing, really. But after that, she practically had to beg them to stay.

Their vigilance was such a burden, not at all what she had wished for. Even though she understood that they were motivated by concern, and that all this constant supervision was probably necessary, she chafed under it. This was her first trip—her only trip—to the place she'd dreamed of since she was a girl. Everything, even the astonishing sight of Winged Victory, was tainted by the awareness that Gus and Susan were unable to relax, even for a moment, because they were the self-appropriated caretakers of a woman who, in their minds anyway, could drop dead at any second.

One morning, she woke up early. They had been to the theatre the night before, and Gus was still asleep. She got up carefully and listened at the adjoining door. There was no sound coming from Susan's room either. She felt especially well, the morning air was laden with the earthy smells of spring, and so she decided to go for a walk.

After taking her medications and tiptoeing into her clothes, she wrote a note: "Please don't worry. I've gone for a stroll. Meet me as planned at the Musee Picasso at ten. I have to see how my French holds up without you two! Love, M."

She went downstairs to the dining room and asked the maitre d' if she might take her breakfast with her. "I'm going for a walk this morning," she explained.
"Une
promenade."

The maitre d' smiled. It was a genuine smile, Margaret felt. Maybe her accent wasn't too terrible. "Really? Where are you going, madame?"

"La Musee de Picasso," she enunciated, with special attention to the u in "Musee."