Walking the Dog (21 page)

THE STARBUCKS SHOWDOWN

Starbucks is an Edward Hopper painting turned inside out. Darkened booths and coffee-buffet flavors. The atmosphere of so-called privacy and isolation is destroyed by mismatched couches, chairs, and stools. The darkness and noise pull you inside yourself if you want to work. You could never carry out an affectionate bonding in Starbucks, so it was the perfect choice to meet someone from whom you wanted distance. Students in the Bleecker Street coffee shop huddled together and yelped and guffawed as if they were telling stories from partying the night before. At the other tables the laughter was quiet and sporadic. The long line for the various coffees was full of the poses of young people trying to give off the impression that they had no interest in making an impression.

I'd spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to decide what to wear for this silent movie. I didn't know whether I should dress more like a conservative mother and wear one of the two dresses I owned or just a blue jean skirt and simple V-neck T-shirt. What was the impression I wanted to make? “No, I am not a monster. I am hip.” “I am not too street to go to temple.” “I enjoy clothes.” “Clothes are irrelevant.” Why the fuck was I going through all this? Did I really care? This was a little girl. I knew absolutely nothing about what the species went for. She was, in words, “
my
little girl.” But I knew nothing about how to
know her. So the clothes took on all the importance. I decided on faded, but nicely fitting, blue jeans, a striped blue-and-white T-shirt, and a blue jean jacket that matched the pants, but not exactly. I also picked out the least beat-up cowboy boots I had. They were brown and blue and had a nice pattern woven through them. I didn't know if this little girl was against fur, leather, and killing animals, but my sneakers were filthy high-tops (from dog walking) and the prim and proper girl I'd met before wouldn't approve. I remembered she was a bit pudgy. My hair was impossible anyway because it was so thick. It went past my shoulders and did what it wanted. The gray-and-white stripes made me feel like a middle-aged drug addict, but I refused to cut it because I'd be reminded of prison.

I was more animal than human. The unexplained rages, attacks, seizures. How could I possibly look normal? Not in her eyes. My hands were permanently red and raw, and I never wore jewelry except for a charm necklace made for me at Clayton by one of my roommates as an award when I began to act civilized. She was “spiritual.” She said it would protect me from the gods on earth disguised as humans who were trying to turn me into a wild animal. There was a Jewish star, an evil eye, a cross, a silver dog, an Islamic Hand of Fatima, two astrological signs, a fish, a skull from the Day of the Dead, and a tiny kachina doll. It wasn't a glamorous necklace, but it was all silver and each piece had its place in her list of spiritual cleaning devices. I was still unaccustomed to dressing for the seasons, so I alternated between sweating and experiencing a chill that was like an ache through my jeans, socks, and boots.

I'd arrived at the Starbucks an hour early. I'd brought an unpretentious medium sketchpad with me. Along with that, I had a box of charcoal and pastel pencils in a smaller purse inside a straw tote bag. I realized I'd forgotten to bring a bag of treats and a Pluto squeaky toy in case I ran into one of my dogs.
Shit, this kid was sabotaging me. I never let my dogs down. I hadn't forgotten the Swiss Army knife I used to untangle ropes and leashes and open difficult cans of food. This made me nervous. What if she saw it and it scared her? But she wasn't going to march into Starbucks and pat me down. She just wanted to look at me. This child, whose expertise was placing me in the middle of a tornado, was becoming more than just an object of my curiosity. I didn't know what I wanted from her, so how could she possibly know what she wanted from me? I almost left my chair a few times in self-disgust. I thought of all the women who were fucked over by a biological clock and took hormone shots and had eggs implanted in them as if they were an ultragourmet dish. Those women who flew hours to Russia, Romania, or China to pick up abandoned or outlawed babies just so they could have—what was it that they longed for so badly? What was this animalistic hunger women felt to have children growing parallel to their changing and softening lives? What was this love they described that was like no other? Carleen Kepper had no desires that carried that kind of passion. I barely kept up the fight to survive from day to day.

I thought I'd sketch at Starbucks. My wrist needed to loosen up. I couldn't draw nearly as precisely as I used to. I hadn't been able to for over ten years. Bringing the pads was a facade—as much for me as for her. I would be more than a woman who was a dog walker. I sat stiffly, aching for a cigarette, tightening up as each person came through the door. People resemble animals in how they creep or walk languidly, or step with false pride, or jump with protective impulse. Many are in an imaginary fashion show, so there's a subtle watchfulness to even the loosest, most clown-like moves. The kids that streamed in and out were all college age. I found myself actively leaning forward every time a girl came through the door. I was a human divining rod. Twenty or thirty minutes
had passed since 3:00 p.m. and I realized she'd backed out, decided it wasn't worth it, and damned if I didn't feel a kind of humiliation. I was so new to the civilized world that I still took part in games that other people planned for me. I slowly gathered up my pads and drawing utensils. I almost kicked a chair.

And then I saw a small figure that was standing with the stillness of a ballet poster. She was perfectly placed outside in the middle of the Starbucks window. She was clearly and fearlessly looking in. Her long red hair was made greenish by the windows, but I could see she was wearing a maroon velvet dress with a white lace collar. She could've been created by one of the Brontë sisters. Her hair was pulled back so her whole face was exposed. She had a very high forehead and a widow's peak. I couldn't see the color of her eyes, but I remembered they were intelligent, sad, greenish blue. Large eyes. Not exactly symmetrical. She had a small nose and a slight overbite. I'd been through this before, but I felt I was fulfilling an assignment. Her braces made her self-conscious, and she kept lowering her upper lip as if trying to get something out of her teeth. She didn't change position and I didn't wave, thank God. I wondered what she thought of my quite battered (maybe still striking) Semitic face and the eyes that were so fearful and betrayed. We actually stared at each other until I thought I saw her make a move toward the door. I tried to get up from my chair to greet her, but she abruptly turned around and disappeared across the street. Before I could stand up completely I collapsed back into the chair and laughed to myself. The game was over. From now on it was normal communication or nothing at all. We were no longer in a mental institution or a futuristic video game where daughters kill their mothers with lasers beaming from betrayed eyes.

MEETINGS

I finally forced myself to attend another NA meeting. A balding man in his fifties spoke. He had a mustache and was a caricature of exactly what he'd been, a car salesman. Honda or Mitsubishi—I couldn't tell the difference, though it seemed very important to him. He'd been proud of the brand, and his pride shone through because he was a top salesman. The story went on and my favorite part was when he hit bottom.

At 2:00 a.m. one morning he was drunk out of his mind and he tumbled into his place of work and took the keys to all the cars off their hooks. He proceeded to get into each individual car, go as fast as he could, and smash it into another car on the lot. He explained that the air bags on these particular models were fabulous so he never got hurt. He just kept going until his drunken game of bumper cars had demolished twelve or fifteen cars. They found him passed out on a deflated air bag the next morning. He was arrested for malicious mischief and drunk driving, and I don't remember if he went to jail or not. Though he was still paying off the cars, I don't think his wife left him, and his boss suspended him for six months and gave him a desk job. White man's grief. My attention drifted in and out, but I empathized with him when he said he felt worse for what he'd done to the cars than any people involved. He loved
those Hondas or Mitsubishis and was trying to forgive himself for what he'd done to their “sculptural” (my word) “magnificence” (his).

As I walked out of the meeting, David Sessions was sitting on the steps, speaking directly to the pigeons waiting for crumbs.

“You're no better than the legless vets on skateboards who claim they can't walk,” he scolded them. “Buck up! Find jobs for yourself. I can't stand all this whining about unemployment.”

I didn't have the energy to avoid him. I sat down next to him. He was wearing the usual Persian pants with the low crotch and a tie-dyed T-shirt with some kind of Romanian or Bulgarian vest. His bald head shone. Age had loosened the skin on his face a bit. I was sure he'd had a face-lift or used Botox.

“You look like Mr. Clean,” I said.

“He's my idol. I think he's gay,” David replied.

“Stop stalking me, David. I don't want to make up or talk it out or go over it or under it or around it.” I felt my anger rising the more I talked. I stood up to walk away.

“I don't want you to forgive me,” he said, “but I have valuable information.” I stopped. He was full of shit.

“About what?”

“They're sending you to Afghanistan. They want you to carve huge heads of our forefathers on the rocks right where the Taliban is slaughtering our marines. They think it will be inspirational.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

He leaped up beside me. He was still very agile for a heavyset painter who never exercised and was always on the edge of being an alcoholic, but not quite making it.

“Stop punishing me, Carmine, Carleen, Camilla, whatever your name is. For ten years you've never answered one letter
and you never came out when I visited. Nor have you acknowledged my appearance on talk shows on your behalf.”

“You didn't do any of that,” I said. “You dropped me, disappeared, became an artistic icon and forgot me. You're following me around now because you're curious about what jail's like. You're worried that I might tell all your worshippers that the great David Sessions is a selfish motherfucker.”

“Well, everyone already knows that,” David said. “But there's an obvious lack of vital information and communication going on here because, Carleen—Essie—I did everything I just said I did.”

My body crumbled. David caught me.

He still had the same enormous loft. It must've been a whole floor of a factory. He put me down on his huge couch made for elegant decadence. It was white. New canvases, half-finished paintings, ladders, palettes, brushes, and tools lay in the otherwise empty space. A Japanese bedroom was visible in the back. David hated clutter in his personal life, and the same sensibility was reflected in his spare, abstract landscapes with his made-up languages done in precise, varied calligraphies across his seas, oceans, mountains, and flatlands. For years art critics had tried to translate or find the source or the meaning of the sentences on his paintings in pristine letters that were neither Asian nor Arabic nor Sanskrit. It was a combination and a negation of them all.

“Steal anyone's ideas lately?” I mumbled, but his news to me had made a sick kind of vertigo overtake my body, and I rushed to his bathroom and threw up. I kept throwing up until I'd emptied myself out.

“Shall I call the hospital or would you like a Tums?” David asked through the door.

“Water.”

I jerked my way out of the bathroom, drank down a large bottle of Pellegrino, and lay back down on his couch.

“I take it you didn't know I was trying to find you all these years?”

“It didn't matter,” I replied. “I hated the thought of you anyway.”

“I wanted to explain,” David said.

“No one came forward as a character witness. No one. It was as if I was the founder of this satanic cult and had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”

“The prosecution made the choice very difficult, darling. Testifying on your behalf could've ended up a nightmare.”

I didn't trust him.

“Oh really, David? You couldn't tell them I enslaved myself to you, worshipped you, was your puppy, your fag hag?”

“Listen, if you
can
listen, you must LISTEN, Essie Carlene Carmine Brianna—what do you want me to call you?”

“I don't know anymore.” I felt sick, but I held it in.

“Okay then, NAMELESS. The prosecution told me that if I testified on your behalf they'd question my integrity—my sexual integrity.”

“Since when have you been in the closet? You always say, ‘I swish with the best. I'm more flamboyant than Divine, and without a touch of lipstick.'”

“No, that wasn't it,” David said. “They warned me they'd start looking for proof of rumors that I'd been seducing underage students.”

I said nothing.

“It wasn't true. There was nothing to prove. Besides, that kind of thing sells paintings. But oooh they were getting nasty. They made me take them to the tree house and saw all your crazy paintings and sculptures, and, being the refined art critics
they are, they came to the conclusion that this work could only be done under the influence of drugs.”

“That's probably true,” I said.

“But darling, they planted bags of weed right in front of my eyes, and they said that if I spoke on your behalf they'd have to bring up my knowledge of your drug use, and how good would it sound if I admitted you were a drug addict. They implied they'd nail me as your dealer.”

I felt no pity.

“They said I'd be a disaster as a character witness in a small town in New York. A swish with a drug habit. Then they threatened to arrest me and put me in a penitentiary where fags rarely came out alive.”

“That's possible,” I replied, longing for champagne, “but I didn't know shit about this.”

“Well how could you, darling? No one would let me near you. They said you told them to tell me to die. And the Feds began auditing my taxes for every penny. They still do.”

“Stupid pigs,” I mumbled.

“You're hardly a Mensa candidate, Essie. Murdering state troopers is like killing Jesus and painting Jewish stars all over his martyred body.”

“I didn't murder anyone.” I was back in time. Denying. Rejecting. Refusing. Defending.

“Do you think I didn't know that? It was that stupid-ass Malaysian stud of yours, Miro or Milkman.”

“Miko.”

“You're the stupid ass for teaming up with him.”

“I don't want to do this, David.” And I really didn't.

“Though he was stunning.”

“I can't do this, David,” I urged him.

“Then let me provide you with knowledge you can process
when your mechanisms are in working order, darling. None of your prisons allowed communication with you. No one could speak, visit, write, skywrite, send blimps. You were to be cut off from all communication. I asked a lawyer—a very expensive lawyer, by the way—if that wasn't somehow unconstitutional under the ‘cruel and unusual punishment' label, and he said I had no idea how easily federal penitentiaries could manipulate the law. Later he found out that the FBI—can you imagine, it would be sexy if it wasn't ludicrous and sadistic—suspected that you were connected to an international drug corporation, manufacturing and distributing crystal meth all around the world. A murderous corporation. One that makes Mexico and Colombia look like Club Med for toddlers.

“Why on earth would they pick me?”

“Why on earth, my darling?”

“They were suspicious of me even at Clayton?” I felt like I had a virus. I was shaking. I couldn't see.

“You mean the ‘Gloria Steinem Reformatory for Women Who Did Bad Things because this is a Misogynist Society'? Yes, they were under orders to be quite cautious. And maybe that place does arts and crafts, but they use ECT like cable and experiment with loopy psychiatric drugs. You know the ones with side effects like death. God, how I prayed they didn't put you there.”

“They did,” I said, quietly.

David held out his arms to me.

“I don't touch people,” I said stiffly. “Plus, I was nuts. Really nuts. I had brain damage and stuff and the drugs screwed my perceptions and I kept doing weird shit and being put back and punished for it. It was Dante's Ferris Wheel. Around and around. It never stopped.”

We sat silently for quite a while. For once there were no
flashbacks, just quiet waves as if I were in a swimming pool on one of those posh vinyl floats.

I could tell that David was going over something in his overly educated, quite corrupt mind. He was making checks and balances, weighing and measuring what to say or not to say.

“I'm an Amazon now,” I said. “I'm Wonder Woman, or more like the Hulk.”

“I was thinking of making a movie about superheroes that meet daily at a table at the Algonquin,” he said. “They drink martinis and discuss poetry, philosophy, and music. At night they throw babies into burning buildings and bulldoze graveyards. Purely evil intellectuals.”

“I have to go,” I said. “I'm on a strict schedule.”

David took my hand. I tried to pull away, but he held on. It was like being gripped by the paw of a panda bear.

“So what do you think of me now?” He tried to catch my eyes, but I avoided him.

“I understand more,” I replied.

“Can you love me again?” he asked.

“The question is more will I remember you when I leave this house. Or will I remember you but forget what to believe. Or care. Does it matter if I remember, believe, or care?” David stood up. He was crying.

“You were so young,” he said. “Such a unique delinquent.” When I didn't answer he went on. “When you want them, I have all your paintings from college. Unfortunately the authorities still have the sculptures from the woods.”

I let out a sound like a laugh. “The idea of Sheriff Rex Waddles of Duchess County, NY, owning an original Ester Rosenthal sculpture thrills me. Remember I called that the Dorian Gray masterpiece?”

“I'm worried you'll walk out this door and that'll be it. What do I have to do to break through that Patty Hearst rage? How do I get you back in my life? Somehow a dinner party doesn't seem like the choice. What do I have to do?”

“Get a dog,” I said, and left David Sessions's historic loft.