“You Can’t Go Home Again In My Room, I Have To Sleep There”

1     Ralph recognized me instantly, though he had never really seen me before.

1.1   When I was absent, he pictured me as very blonde.

1.2   He considered me a saving grace of the new job.

1.3   Later I imagined these to be the first pale sprouts of love.

2–4   The night he made me green spaghetti, Ralph kept touching me. He would brush against my shoulder, reaching to fetch a pot or spoon. Once, too, he moved me aside with his hand.

“Excuse me – excuse me – excuse me,” Ralph said.

I wouldn’t say it was all right for fear of sounding eager.

He was telling the story of his daredevil sister.

5     She and Ralph had not grown up together, but only met in Kathmandu when he was twelve and she was fourteen. Immediately she spirited young Ralph away to the Himalayas, stealing 10,000 dollars from her father for this purpose. The same winter, she eloped with a dashing con artist, who later bled to death in her arms, gunned down by shadowy villains. That brought her up to eighteen years old.

6     I would find my own con artist: I would go to those mountains.

6.1   I would brave enemy lines to deliver the needed ambulance.

6.2   I would strap myself to the crown of a sequoia, defying the lumber interests.

6.3   Time was running out: I was going to be 30.

7     When I was thinking this, I was convinced spitefully Ralph was no more illuminated than a dishcloth (there was a dishcloth lying on the sink, looking very inanimate). It even occurred to me that I could trump his sister by becoming enlightened. This might be less of a wrench, I thought, given my fear of strangers.

8     Ralph talked for about ten minutes. Washing up the plates, he fell silent.

8.1   Then I muttered something like “Excuse me,” and went to bed.

9     In bed, it occurred to me Ralph’s stories might not be true.

9.1   He might be embroidering, to impress a girl.

9.2   Ralph-guru might have invented them for me as a test.

9.3   Responding with puerile envy, I’d revealed my inner meanness.

9.4   “C’est la vie,” I said aloud, in a carefree sophisticate’s alto,

10. BY THE WAY

to the Jackson Pollock hanging over my bed.

This Jackson Pollock was the real article, a big canvas in oils. Once it had been the centerpiece of our parlor. It was blue and black and grand beyond question, even the contractors liked it, we as children liked it. It was worth about 50,000 dollars, even then.

When Eddie was fourteen, he’d painted a mustache over the abstract streamers and blots. He used fingernail polish, then panicked and attempted to remove it with fingernail polish remover. We hid it under my bed: I was fourteen too and kept clutching my heart, saying, “Mom is so gonna slaughter you, or what?”

Well, that was 50,000 dollars down the drain.

Mom was initially crazy, as you would expect. She screamed and ran downstairs to get her tequila from the fridge. Then she ran back up with the bottle in her hand and stood there fiddling with the bottle cap, staring at the big gorgeous painting on the floor with its weird scrubbed central mustache.

At last she opened the tequila and handed the bottle cap to Eddie. She took a mighty swig and said, “C’est la vie, Jack!” in the voice above described.