A Long String of Subtraction

When you were four, Gabriel, we rode the bus, and I told you stories from The Whale.

You were rereading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or The Marvelous Land or maybe Ozma, when I began telling you how Tashtego rode the head of a slaughtered whale, skating barefoot on the rim, guiding the cooper’s buckets into the unctuous aspic in the tun. The tun is the severed head. Unctuous means oily. And aspic is like a Jello made by slow-boiling meat bones for their marrow.

Years later, you mailed to say that, because of the rain, you would melt s’mores over a candle. You wrote,

If we cannot find—5 syllables, as it ought to be

A flame of the scentless kind—7 syllables, as it ought to be

We’ll be in a bind—5 syllables, as it ought to be

In 1851, only spermaceti burned unscented, and, slipping, Tashtego plunged in, and the tun dropped into the ocean.

Recently, I saw an Amish boy near the gate-stone. He lifted the heel shafts, backed up the horse-cart. His sister helped. She turned back the spokes of the wheel. The boy looked nothing like you, Gabriel, when you were that age. He’s awful with the wrong kind of nostalgia.

A personal relationship linked me to Robert Souza while he was alive, and it did not end with his death. I can’t claim even the illusion of impartiality in what follows. I won’t deal with Bob as others knew him, but only with my Bobby. Which is why I can tell you about his mother, Elizabeth, when she was living with him and Joy—before Elizabeth died, years before Bobby’s heart attack. Which is why some stories feel like they were interrupted. Which is why the past tense is a cruel tense. As in the sentence I liked it there. Elizabeth said it to no one in particular and she meant Spruce Street, the last house she owned. The room where she died was a guest room. Lit by a dimmer bulb, it had the orange glow of lamplight. Elizabeth lay in a hospital bed, rented by the month and paid for by Medicare. It wasn’t fancy—a word in her vocabulary that meant suspicious—it adjusted with hand cranks, had aluminum sidebars that locked and a rolling overbed table for over her lap. A full bowl of macaroni was on the table, and a book of crosswords, Gone With the Wind, and a glass of milk. Bobby drank the milk. No reason to waste food. The bed propped Elizabeth halfway between sitting and lying down. She had a beige blanket for warmth. A white sheet folded over the blanket at the top to catch spills. Joy bleached the sheets. Otherwise the filth would be unbearable. She put cover-up on Elizabeth’s spotted skin. It tasted like powder if you kissed her there. Better to kiss the lips, even though they’re dry and don’t really feel like lips anymore.

Bobby said that her breathing, a quiet hollow rasp as if from a damp cave, reminded him that he had pneumonia as a small child, and that his mother woke him up every four hours in the night. She spooned bitter syrup into his mouth while he was drowsy and confused. The spoon pressed his tongue flat. It was cold and large enough to feel invasive. The bed tilted under her weight, gravity held him to her. He fell asleep to soft slaps on his back, loosening the mucus in his lungs.

On the opposite wall was a window trimmed with ivory-painted pine. There were stenciled lilacs above the baseboard. Hanging on the wall at the foot of the bed was a wreath of quilted fabric and a framed counted cross-stitch of fat cherubs with small wings. Bobby was scared for her even though, he said, It didn’t make any sense. She was eighty-seven years old. In a roundabout way, I suggested that he was scared for himself. He said, Maybe, but knowing that doesn’t help much. Now I wish I hadn’t said that. Not only because of what happened—he was perfectly healthy when I said it— but because now, it seems, I’m scared for him. Even though, he said, it doesn’t make any sense.

“I wish your father was here to keep us company,” she said. “He always was a talker, like Jason.”

“JJ’s not really a talker, Ma,” he said. “He’s the quiet one, remember?”

“You know what I mean,” she said, “your father was. I must look like I’m on death’s door.”

“Are you sure your thinking about Dad? I don’t remember him being a talker.”

She scowled at the disobedience. “Of course I know who I’m talking about. I knew your father long before you were born. By the time you were noticing he had talked himself out. Everyone here is so old. It’s disgusting.”

“Who Ma? There’s nobody here.”

“You know, Mary Cassity and Greta.”

“Ma, they aren’t here. Those people have already passed.”

“I know that dear.” She was irritated. “It’s just that they are always talking about how sick they feel and they stink like urine. I don’t understand it. Don’t they have the sense to wash themselves?”

“Greta’s been dead for a couple of years now. You and Dad went to the funeral.”

“Yes, I remember,” she said.

“How are you feeling, Ma? Is there anything I can do for you? Are you hungry?”

She sighed. “Not really, dear, the girl gave me some food.”

“That’s Joy, ma. And that was a while ago. You should eat again.”

“I don’t think so. There’s only this stuff here. It’s barely edible. There are recipes in my book. I don’t understand why she makes this when she knows I won’t eat it.”

Queequeg dived into the ocean to save Tashtego who was trapped in a sinking whale head. With his sword, he scuttled a hole at the bottom, slipped his long arms inward, and tugged out first—a leg. Knowing that’s a breech birth, not as it ought to be, he thrust Tashtego back inside to turn him in the womb. Gabriel—you weren’t born like Tashtego, cut out by the sword—though your cousin Leo was. Your mother said it hurt like hell and never wanted another. I’ve told you that before. But it was a while back. And yesterday, on the phone, you said you told your mother about the first time you ate a hamburger, how you had to spit it out. On the phone you said you were surprised she hadn’t heard that story. Still surprised when you returned to the subject saying, “I wonder why she never heard that story?” You are amazed because your mother has always been a scholar of your past.

“That girl,” said Elizabeth, “has a lot of gall to come into my house and change things around.”

“What is it, Ma? If you don’t like something we can change it back.”

“For instance, that wall of my bedroom used to have two windows that got quite a lot of morning light, and she went and covered them up with those little photographs there. I don’t know how she did it. They’re so small.”

“That was your old bedroom, Ma, at the house on Spruce Street. You don’t live there anymore.”

She looked suddenly cogent. “Oh. Yes. I’m pooped is all. It’s a good thing your father isn’t here to see me like this. He was only part Irish, you know. All the Irish are wretched. They’re all of them damned to Hell. Your father was wicked too. I pray that someday he’ll love me again.”

“I love you, Ma.”

“You’re a good boy.”

Bobby kissed her goodnight. He rolled away the overbed table and began to crank the bed flat. His mother closed her eyes. Peacefully descending, arms on her stomach.

“How did this happen to me?” said Elizabeth, not looking at him.

“What, Ma?”

“Everyday, I have to remind myself over and over. That man is Bobby. He’s your baby boy and you love him.”

I guess I haven’t said very much about Bobby himself. Only repeated a story he told me about his mother. But I remember so clearly, how he told it without thinking at all about me, as if she alone were on his mind, and his story was a way to hold on to his missing her. Now, here I am, telling a story, as if to myself, about when he felt the way I do now, with him already gone. Though maybe he was telling it to me because I mattered too. Because, Gabriel, I’m telling this story, and for me, you are the one that matters. My Gabriel, always my Gabriel. I write this here for you to read whenever I am gone. Even now, I feel myself more gone from you. God forbid but it’s true; it will only get worse. So I write this down here once forever. You are the only one in this story that truly matters, out of all that I’ve ever been told or have ever seen.

It’s hard to remember what I have seen. Rain gathered in a reservoir where I learned how to float. What’s new is the first step to forgetting. Can the skull ever keep its grease? At times I’ve walked away from my students, trying to show them how to be alone. There was a girl with a middle name Rose and another girl with a middle name Rose. In the center of a valentine’s heart lined with lace there was a photo of an old woman in mourning clothes. The caption in cursive read Let’s grow old together. Sometimes our touch was too much. There are two basic elements to worship: the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the table. The table has a shy density. The darkest window has the dove of peace. Which is another way to see a faraway spirit up close. The pews were capped with beveled fleur-de-lis. One pew ended with two pressed together like bodies. Which is why the phrase can be the word for love—a child’s knit sweater with a twin-rib stitch, which you would never wear and she might never fill. If anyone one asked who she was she tilted her head. See the false lashes and the five glass beads glued to her cheek? Fireflies in the dark treetops follow thunderstorms. Naivety. The dead. A long string of subtraction. Everywhere, voices flare up like firefly light. Which is why to say—remember me when you come into the room, remember me when you leave. Gabriel, in stories the most overused technique is the list. Palaver across a stopwatch that takes forever to stop. Say, stop it.