Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (4 page)

“Change?” the guard asks.

I feel around in my pants pockets, but there is none. “No. Nothing.”

“Lift your arms and spread your legs apart for me please,” the guard says. His tone is casual, bored. I feel anxiety building. I try to sweep it away, wish it away, blow it away. Nothing. It’s nothing. Feel nothing.

He takes his electronic wand and sweeps it up the outside of one leg and across my chest and the thing goes off like a siren. “Empty your jacket pockets please, sir.”

I reach inside my breast pocket and immediately know what it is, though I have no idea how it got there.

“Sir.”

No memory of putting it there.

“Sir?”

My throat closes as my fingers follow the rough, corrugated ridges up to the imperfectly punched hole. I roll the little metal chain between my fingers. A heavy, soul-splitting ache falls over me. I let my thumb pass lightly over her picture and can feel her face: dimpled chin, fine blonde eyebrows, small, impossibly soft ears. I am conscious of pain at the back of my skull, of pressure building behind my eyes, of the burning in my esophagus. I cannot swallow.

“SIR!”

“Yes. Yes,” I say. Or try to. But there are tears where the words should be. And a very long line behind me. My head is bowed and I am dripping onto the dirty LAX airport floor.

No.

Please. God. Pleasepleasemakeitstop.

I do not realize that I have sunk my teeth into the inside of my cheek until I am forced to open my mouth, gasping for breath. A small spray of blood hits the floor alongside the other fluids I cannot seem to contain.

“Is there a … problem, sir?” the guard asks. “Are you … ill?” His hand is reaching for the walkie-talkie holstered at his side. I whip my head around and look at the exit doors behind me. Then back at the departure gates ahead. For several seconds all I can hear is the sound of my heart thrumming in my ears.

She is better off without you; you are no good to her; you are useless; go, just go; Jesus Christ, you weak piece of shit, just pull the fucking Band-Aid off.

And I pull out my handkerchief, blow my nose, and clear my throat. And I put Willa’s keychain into the gray plastic tub.

“Allergies,” I say. And I step through the metal detectors without incident. I smile pleasantly at him. “I’m fine.”

The lie I have been telling for twenty years.

New York, 1994
. I wake up feeling like shit. My head is pounding, every muscle in my body aches, and to top it all off, looking around, I have no idea where the fuck I am. That’s not a completely new phenomenon for me, but usually I’m in an unfamiliar house and I’ve just gotten laid. I try to sit up, but the feeling that I’ve been hit by a truck changes my plan.

Days, weeks, months all carry the same weight and currency. I am beginning to get the feeling something bad has happened to me. What exactly, is a blank. But, as I look down at the hospital gown I’m wearing and the bloody IV shunt sticking out of the top of my hand, my surroundings begin to coalesce. As does the pain. And I begin to think it’s probably more than just one bad thing. Maybe even several. I could ask someone. How did I get here? How bad off am I?

But then the shapes around me come into sharper focus. There are drooling morons and bedpans and plastic-covered monitors. I reach a hand up to touch my aching head and encounter a small patch of sticky, semi-dried gel. There is another just like it on the other side. I know now that I am far more terrified by the answers than I am by the questions. I close my eyes, slide down, pull the covers over my head and pray silently that this will all be gone when I wake up next time.

SECOND

The truth is technical, clinical, not well understood. Essentially, somewhere behind my overactive, often dysfunctional frontal lobe, my hippocampus is getting hot, and in the back of my brain, deep inside the little, almond-shaped amygdala, flashes of light are igniting a fire that burns through my memory like a box of random photos left for too long in a dusty firetrap of an attic. Some are vivid, bright, resplendent in the superior technology that preserves their detail, context, meaning. Truth. Others, many in fact, are so faded I can hardly see the contrast of negative on positive. I can barely remember the incidents, events, places, and people that were, for whatever reason, worth recording
.

Where does the brain stop and the mind begin? Which part of my movie is merely mechanical, chemical? And how do fantasy, fear, desire, joy, loss emerge to become the story? If there is an answer, it’s all in the editing
.

For most of my life, my memories have been cut together, if not perfectly, then according to some system that has allowed me reasonable access to my story. To what I wanted to remember and how I chose to remember it. I had final cut
.

Now they are a mess. A beautiful mess, cut and recut, and playing in no particular order across the insides of my eyelids, running both forward and backward in time as the electrical fire in my brain chases them down and ignites them
.

I want to reach out my hand. I want to salvage one or two of my favorite frames. But memory is fast and my hands are strapped to this table
.

Rome, 1984
. I am in a giant Byzantine cathedral deciding whether to wait in line behind these pizza-eating American tourists just to get a look at Jesus’ foreskin. Alleged foreskin.

Pigeons soar and dive overhead, disturbing the phantasmagoric comic strip told in stained glass. Sun strikes panes, illuminating the bloodshed. It is a cloudless day.

Across town, in the monastery of Vivarium, a rival foreskin lies in another heavily guarded, jewel-encrusted reliquary. It’s been there for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The guardians of the foreskins have more or less just agreed to disagree, I guess. Seeing all the tour buses, though, you get the sense there is a sort of Mets/Yankees feud that bolsters business for both parties.

I am not a joiner—an understatement—but wandering in Rome for some time without any purpose, feeling as if I should have a wife or a client or a life to meet up with at some museum or restaurant or set, I decided that a structured activity was in order. So I signed up for a day tour of the relics. I’m not sure what I was expecting—a little archeology, a little history. Perhaps something dark and self-flagellating to match my mood. But the tour has not lived up to my expectations. If I were in a room, I’d pitch it as “Jerry Falwell meets
Night of the Living Dead
.” I guess I was hoping for the art-house version. The other relic-seekers don’t seem the least bit disappointed though. Which is probably why
Police Academy
was so successful.

From what I’ve observed, relic pilgrims seem to fall into one of two groups. The first is the eggs-in-one-basket variety, who throw all their faith behind the relic they’ve designated as being authentic and eschew all the others—thereby cutting down significantly on the time they spend looking at crowns of thorns, threadbare shrouds, severed heads, and bones that leak saint juice. The relic hounds are more the cover-all-the-bases type. Easily taken in by anything boasting a bit of coagulated blood, they cannot take the chance that the one piece of ancient flesh, bone, or tunic they forego might in fact be the answer to their prayers. There are enough “authentic” splinters of The Cross floating around Europe to reforest the Amazon.

I’m told the best time to come here is really January first. Then, on the annual Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, the tiny tip is removed from its box, hoisted high on a velvet pillow, and paraded around all day. Some people plan their year around it.

This bottleneck is becoming absurd. “Jesus Christ, how long does it take to look at a fucking foreskin,” I mutter under my breath. Or so I thought. The overly made-up girls in line behind me giggle. They are scandalized and titillated as only former Catholic schoolgirls can be. I turn and smile at them apologetically. “Save my place?” I ask. One of them reaches up and fiddles with the crucifix that dangles in her cleavage. She nods and giggles some more. She is from Buffalo. Or the Midwest. Same difference.

I step out of line and walk around the back of the cavernous church. There are a few old women in the pews crossing themselves and praying. Cross and pray, cross and pray. It reminds me of the pat-your-head-and-rub-your-stomach game I used to play with Willa. It is only midafternoon but there are already hundreds and hundreds of candles lit. There is something comforting and familiar about the smell. Hard to place.

I inhale deeply. Fill my lungs with the smell of dripping, pooling wax and the old stones beneath my feet. Leathery. Warm and cool. Musky.

I close my eyes and breathe in one more time. And then I know—the church smells just like our dogs’ feet, like the warm, soft spaces in between their toe pads. I never would have known the pleasures of that particular comfort except that once Willa made me put my nose there. After that, I did it all the time. When no one was around. Dog huffing.

I try to inhale again, but I feel my throat closing and my tear ducts straining. I am going into emotional anaphylactic shock. I walk up to the giant altar of candles and discreetly hold my palm over one of the tickling flames. Just until the pain is unbearable. My throat dilates and the tears recede. I look over my shoulder at the endless line of penis pilgrims and decide life—even mine—is too short for this shit.

The afternoon sun is bright compared with the gloom of the church, and the piazza outside is too big, too busy, and too full of light and noise. The pulse of the square throbs in time with my blistered palm. It is both inside and out. Sound, color, voices—everything is both inside and out.

I turn onto a side street and, like a blind man, feel my way along the ancient stone buildings. It is blissfully quiet. I follow the wall around a corner. My eyes have not yet begun to adjust, but my ear picks up a faint and welcoming sound. Not English, but not foreign. Perhaps it is a stretch but I decide I am going to take it as a sign. And when I do, my heart slows its pace and I can take a full, deep breath again. Because I am missing home, in the form of my dimwitted, overbred Irish setters, and out of nowhere I have landed at the doors of an Irish pub—in the middle of Rome. The message couldn’t be more clear: God wants me to drink. And I am only too happy to oblige.

Though the place isn’t quite hopping at this hour, I imagine it must be the hub of the Celtic expat community, if Rome has one. Four big-screen TVs simultaneously play different soccer and rugby games. There are dartboards and billiard tables where half a dozen unattractive teenagers—boys too tall, girls too wide, all wearing the same navy blazers with Saint Something embroidered on them—are fooling around, goosing each other with pool cues. And in the back, there’s a stage set up where live Irish music threatens to be played. I sit at the bar, order a pint of Guinness, a shot of Glenlivet, and promise myself I’ll leave before any of that festive shit happens.

Frankly, it’s a little too Saint Paddy’s Day for my taste, but when I wrap my throbbing palm around the cold glass and take my first swig of the bitter brown stout, I forget all about Danny Boy and decide I’ve come to the right place after all. As I raise my glass and silently toast the dogs, I am interrupted by shouting and giggling coming from the pool tables behind me. I shoot the kids a dirty look. The man nursing his beer next to me swivels on his bar stool. “Come on people, I told you once already, if you can’t keep it down we’re going to have to split!” The guy, a few years younger than me but almost as tired-looking, swivels back, sighs, and stares into his nearly empty glass.

“They all yours?” I ask.

He smiles weakly. “They belong to me. I’m sorry for the noise.” I reach my empty shot glass out toward the bartender.

“A couple more of these and I won’t hear a thing.” I’m not sure, but I think the look he gives me has some judgment, some holier-than-thou crap around the edges.

“You know, with six kids you really should be drinking something stronger than beer,” I say, picking up the gauntlet. “Bartender! Two shots of Glenlivet over here.”

“No, no,” the guy says. “Thanks. But … I can’t. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“And why’s that? Are you driving?” I ask.

“No. I have to be a good role model. It’s my job”

“That’s a terrible job.”

The guy laughs. “No, it isn’t. I’m a good teacher. And a good Catholic.”

“Oh,” I say, as if I know what either of those things means. All I really know is that I’m pretty sure he could use that shot. So I motion the bartender to set it down between us and to leave the bottle. “So they aren’t really yours.”

“They’re in my
care
,” he says, trying to smooth a long, blond wisp of hair behind his ear. “Confirmation class trip. Saint Ignatius of Antioch.”

I nod. “I don’t know it. Him.”

He shakes my hand. “Matt Gerson. We’re from Billings. But he—the bishop—was martyred in Rome.”

“Nice to meet you. Rick Blaine,” I say, using my current alias. “And the kids—they get a lot out of this, do they?” We look over and watch as one boy uses another for a dartboard.

“I have a reputation for relating well with the … rambunctious kids,” Matt says. “So I tend to get assigned the more … challenging children on trips like this. I try to think of it as a calling.”

“I’d call it getting shafted, Matt.”

“I take it you’re not a religious man …”

“I was religious against my will. And then only briefly.” But I tell Matt about it anyway.

Beverly Hills, 1958
. I had no choice in the matter. Neither did my parents. The stucco duplex we lived in, built in the 1920s and designed to look like a Tudor castle, belonged to my father’s father, who owned and ran a liquor store on Hollywood Boulevard. Twenty years ago, my grandfather, a man with virtually no education who read only Yiddish and spoke a garbled combination of the Old and New Worlds, had recognized a good investment. Since then, it had gone up in value tenfold—something he never missed an opportunity to remind my father of. “If my son was a real man,” he’d say, as if Pop weren’t in the room, “he could take care of his own family. Then I could sell this place for a bundle and retire.”