CHAPTER TEN
THE MOON (STRANGE ATTRACTOR)

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

—Carl Sandburg

If I were a coyote I’d be howling at the moon, even though coyotes really don’t do that. But moonlight does induce howling deep in the forest when the flowers close up at night. The light of the moon triggers odd behavior, like sleepwalking and fits of violence. The Londoner Charles Hyde committed a series of abominable crimes under a full moon, as did the infamous Son of Sam. Hippocrates attributed night terrors to a moon goddess in the habit of visiting dreamers in their sleep. The moon’s gravity is thought to tug on large bodies with terrific force. I would certainly be howling at this very moment, under moonlight no less, if I weren’t talking to myself. There’s no one else. I keep looking around the house for someone, anyone, to talk with.

I’m worried about what an extended silence will do to my brain. It’s not like I have any margin for error. I’m beginning to feel like a cyclops, a solitary boob. You probably didn’t know this but when two people “click,” they experience something like a Vulcan mind meld. The two brains link up. Their neurological responses, including higher brain areas, begin to mirror one another. Once there’s a neural match-up, the listener and the speaker heighten mutual understanding by anticipating what the other says and means, which in turns strengthens the neural match-up, and so on. There’s a feedback loop, and this is really what love is, a feedback loop. That doesn’t bode well for me—or for melancholy types in general. The human brain in isolation is sad and gooey. Simply to exist calls for interaction. All alone, I could turn into a troubled rhesus monkey, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling the living room repeatedly, and even marring myself. I cling tightly to my blanket. My faith in existence is of no more substance than a moonbeam.

Plus I sometimes whimper. Coyotes do that too, yip and whimper. Grief reaches down into the animal side of nature, releasing pent-up sounds. I feel something warm and fluid welling up inside, followed by boiling-hot tears and a series of choked-off wailing sounds. Not really sobs but whimpers. I surprised myself the first time I made these sounds. My lips did indeed quiver, in fact my whole body jerked, which made me feel childish and undignified. As if something crawled out of my chest and into my throat. It was a bit like a howl but it wasn’t a howl. It was deeper than a howl. A screaming comes out of my heart. It’s embarrassing so I try to save most of my weeping for home. Whimpering in public is humiliating. At least I’m not falling ridiculously to the floor, but I am whimpering.

Why do humans cry? Some say to purge the body of toxins caused by stress. Puppies whine to rouse help. It’s even possible that tears contain a natural painkiller, I’ve read. Men cry an estimated ten times a year. As far as I go, a thousand tears would be a very conservative guess. The Homeric sound of that is appealing, as if my grief were of epic proportion. Achilles and Odysseus, by the way, cried their eyes out. Achilles lost a dear friend, Odysseus was simply lost. But you, a classics major, know that. As Edgar Allan Poe writes, deep in earth my love is lying and I must weep alone.

They say angels come nearest those who cry. I sometimes listen closely for the flapping of wings, but all I here is my juvenile whimpering. Tears form, tears fall. Never did anyone look so sad. Friends avoid your name in my company for fear I might cry. It would be awkward for them, which is true. Bob Newhart said he laughed to keep from crying. Apparently, there is no natural limit to tears. They are produced by the lacrimal gland, a secretory duct that drains into a canal along the lower eye. With weeping, the canal floods easily and down your cheeks the tears cascade. Beckett writes that the tears of the world are a constant quantity. Every time someone stops weeping another weeper somewhere else begins anew. Maybe I need a testosterone shot, which inhibits crying. But then, of course, I’d lose out on the catharsis. People with Sjögren’s syndrome have great difficulty producing tears. That doesn’t sound good.

I was surprised by your decision to chair the English department at Iowa. You didn’t seem the type. For one, you didn’t have a big mouth, and for two, you didn’t relish attention. But then there you were directing Bread Loaf for several summers. Your first stint was in Alaska. I made fun of you in the beginning. My native perversity. You were a natural, though. I see you now at a lectern welcoming students to Juneau. “Hello everyone, I’m Claire Sponsler, the on-site director of Bread Loaf, Juneau, and I’d like to welcome you to the edge of the universe.” That got a laugh, especially from the preppy types who were spooked by the isolation. It’s early summer but only fifty-four degrees outside. It’s misty and raining. Out the window to your left the Sitka spruces look cold. In the near distance, the Chilkat Mountains loom over the channel. Milo is summering in Cincinnati with your mom and dad. He’s chasing squirrels and getting fat. This is not a pet-friendly place. If the bears don’t eat him, the hunters will. You really take to Juneau. You love its strangeness, the wandering misfits, the hardy women, Tlingit culture. There are few if any cars, just boats and float planes. On weekends we walk down to Auke Bay and watch the fisherman slice up salmon and halibut. The halibut are huge, bigger than Hemingway. Overhead eagles flock. Of all the bald eagles in the world, you say, about 50 percent live in Alaska. Wow, I say. We look up in amazement. A pair swoop down, skimming the water. One grabs a herring. Wow, we both say.

My goodness but this chair thing is demanding. You’re in your study and it’s ten thirty. Milo is curled up on your lap. I have to leave for school but drop in to say bye and cheer you up. Each morning you respond to e-mails. I don’t know how you do it. You’ll start at nine and go until noon. There’s an e-mail from a colleague who needs time off for medical reasons. This will set off a chain of twenty-six more e-mails involving a half a dozen different people. There’s a complaint from someone who is not making enough money. A warning from the dean’s office that so-and-so’s classes are underenrolled. You’ll have to break the news to so-and-so about the cancellation and then find a makeup class. Someone has spilled coffee on his laptop and lost most of his files. He needs a thousand dollars for hard-disk recovery. I shake my head.

You answer every e-mail, no matter how half-baked, thoughtfully and tactfully. I’m of little help. Why don’t you tell so-and-so to chill out, I offer, but you only roll your eyes. I have to watch what I say, you warn, as there’s a paper trail in every case. You wouldn’t last five minutes on the job, you say to me. No kidding, I say. In the morning over coffee, you’ll rant about the greed and vanity of certain parties—of he- or she-who-must-not-be named, you’ll say. I’ll feign indifference only to get you talking more. I’m embarrassed to admit, but learning things I would never have guessed about he- or she-who-must-not-be-named is really tantalizing. Why are you doing this? I’ll ask every now and then. Someone has to stick up for the women in the department, you say. Otherwise, the guys will take everything.

Undeniably, you are really good at this. You may look shy and retiring but you are fierce. And driven. Not by ambition or anything like that but simply by the need to get things right. That includes me. You want to get me right too. Not straight or virtuous but more complete and productive. Attentive too. It takes me four years to realize this, and when I do I wish you all the luck in the world. Good luck, I say, because I’m a lawless son of a bitch with an incurably wayward mind. You smile. I’ve seen worse, you say. Little do I know how stubborn you are. By now you know I’m a softie inside, a pushover in fact. So much for the bad boy of Foggy Bottom.

What worries me about your managerial stint at school is that you can’t hear a thing, not even now as I sneak up behind you. The floor creaks like a haunted house and my sneakers are squeaking. Milo turns and gives me a wary eye. He knows how devilish I am. Noisy as a Kakapo I am, but you hear nothing. I’m looming behind you as you type another e-mail reply. The sender wants you to visit Maryland for a keynote speech. That’s great, I say, breaking the silence, and could be fun. You can drop by DC. My voice startles you and Milo leaps down from your lap. He likes peace and quiet. What are you doing here? you ask. Nosy Parker, I say. I begin kneading your shoulders. This is a nice gig, I say again. You don’t agree. I don’t like these events, you say. They’re awkward and embarrassing. I can’t hear anyone. How can I answer questions or hold a conversation? You read lips, don’t you? It’s hard with strangers, you say. Golly, I didn’t know the hearing thing was that bad, I say, truly surprised. You go anyway, and it’s not that terrible, you later tell me. But there’s a toll on your brain, I can’t help but think. All that chronic stress. Your hearing is lousy and yet you are inclined, given your tremendous civic spirit, to take on leadership roles. This is not a good equation.

One day in March you will show me an article from the New York Times about a saint’s festival in Brooklyn. You’re researching a book about medieval rituals in Europe that wind up in America. The festival occurs every July in Brooklyn. It’s an Italian-American thing, right up your alley, you tell me. Who’s the saint? It says here he supposedly freed his fellow townspeople from slavery. Why are you interested? I ask. The festival came to Brooklyn from Nola, a small town outside Naples. It goes way back to the 1500s. Perfect fit for my book. Anyway, you continue, you need a film project, right? Yes, I do. Well, what do you think? Sure.

So come July we fly to New York. We’ve been married four years, and this will be the first test of our marriage. I’m not the problem—it’s my film gear. There’s so much of it. This is twenty years ago when cameras were as big as Fiats. You sure you need all of this? you ask me. Lights, batteries, stands, tripod, camera, microphones, cables, more batteries, chargers, tapes, more tapes. Of course, I say.

The taxi drops us off at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish on Havemeyer and North 8th Street in Williamsburg. It’s Monday morning, July 15, 1996. We wait inside the lobby for Monsignor David Cassato. We’re both already exhausted from hauling the film stuff. It’s hot.

The monsignor joins us after a short wait. He is charming. Early forties. Fit. He has thick, dark, well-manicured hair, a Burt Reynolds mustache, and an untroubled smile. He’s in a purple-trimmed black cassock with a sash. Take away the cassock and you’re looking at a talented high school principal with political ambitions. He says there’s another film crew here to document the festival. The monsignor likes media attention. Although the “feast,” as he calls it, has been celebrated for decades, it has only recently captured the national eye, thanks to the New York Times, he says. So when I ask to film an interview with him, he’s hot to trot.

It takes half an hour to set things up, and while I’m connecting this to that you are sweet-talking the monsignor. I overhear you ask him how the parish came to host the festival. It hasn’t always been church-supported, you add, but now that it’s affiliated with the parish it seems to have gained some stability. You have short hair for this trip, a boy’s cut. You look like a teenager and very cute in your jeans, white T-shirt, and black vest. I glance up to see a look of surprise on Monsignor Cassato’s face. His eyes light up.

I’m wondering where to put the five-hundred-watt light as the monsignor begins a spirited reply to your question. Oh no, I’m thinking, I need to capture this. Wait, wait, I say, wait for the camera you guys! The monsignor stops in midsentence because he too doesn’t want to waste a word. He feels especially bright and articulate this morning. I see a hint of makeup on his cheeks. We quickly reposition his eminence, you clip the lavalier microphone to his cassock, I set the white balance, adjust the iris, and check microphone levels. I give you a thumbs-up signal and away we go.

Have you seen much change in the feast over the past few decades? you ask the monsignor. I got to tell you the truth, he says. It’s changed but it hasn’t changed radically. But the neighborhood is stable. It’s a very strong, stable neighborhood. We’ve heard, you say, that a lot of Italians are leaving the area as other ethnic groups move in. Is this a problem? you ask. Well, I also feel, whether I’d be right or wrong on this—I’m not a sociologist on the issue—but I feel that this neighborhood has remained stable partly because of the feast and the parish. The monsignor is happy with this answer but before he can reach for his coffee you ask another question. I noticed that many spectators are not from Brooklyn, you say. They’re from all over the country, Florida, California, Arizona. What are they looking for?

I never told you this but I’m so glad you are asking the questions and I’m just the camera guy. The monsignor pauses for a moment, gathers his thoughts, and then talks to the camera. You might use the word anachronistic, he says. And now he has begun moving his hands. What magnificent hair, I’m thinking to myself as I follow his head in the viewfinder. I don’t know if I could agree with that, though, he continues, because I think today people by and large are searching and going back to their roots. Speaking of hair! You are nodding politely but I can detect a degree of wariness in your eyes when I glance up. You know firsthand how well Italian men like to pitch a story.

This goes on for another twenty minutes, but finally the monsignor has to run. He looks at his watch and offers his hand. He’s a great interview—photogenic, good soundbites, terrific gestures. We follow this up with more interviews, speaking with guys who run the show and who seem a bit like mobsters. I don’t tell you this but I’m suddenly feeling ethnically indeterminate—the machismo of these guys!—and that’s making me a little woozy. These clannish societies, you say.

I haven’t done my homework so I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this event while lugging my camera around. At the heart of the festival is the Giglio, an attention-getting structure. The word means lily in Italian, but the structure is anything but a delicate flower. The massive five-story, four-ton steeple is made of papier-mâché saints, angels, and florets, and includes a platform large enough to hold a singer and a twelve-person brass-and-drum band. The tower is topped by a statue of Saint Paulinus. The whole thing is kind of preposterous.

The poor guys who lift this are all different sizes and ages, many who don’t seem what I would call fit. You will point out several in their late sixties with big bellies and red, contorted faces. Point the camera over there, you say, where that old guy is toiling. I like the word toiling. The labor that goes into this is the whole point, you tell me. Through the viewfinder I’m seeing a lot of that. With my zoom, I can see their grimaces and buckling shoulders. Everyone is suffering, young and old. Their faces belong in a Bruegel painting. But still they come out in the blazing heat of mid-July to lift this absurdly large tower. I pan the camera to where I can see the life-size Saint Paulinus in full bishopric regalia, bobbling and swaying on top of the Giglio. He seems well rested.

We’re on the roof of the parish where we have a commanding view of the festival. In the distance, Manhattan looms up tall and majestic. Reaching the rooftop was a chore. Talk about toiling. We have to haul the film gear here, a hundred and fifty pounds of ungainly electronics. That means climbing thirty feet up the fixed-access ladder from the subroof to the rooftop—twice. I’m now feeling pretty guilty and keep saying, Let me do this, let me do that. But you’re not one to shrug off hard work. You grab the leather battery belt and the cumbersome recharger and up the ladder you go.

It’s eleven thirty and the sun is sizzling hot. You keep lathering up with Aveeno sunblock. What a view up here. I’m setting the camera up close to the edge of the roof, right above the heart of the festival. You pass me the wa ter bottle and an unfriendly look, which says, No good man makes his wife do what you just made me do. I feel terrible—but also giddy. Up here, we can see everything. I feel like Gary Powers. Once you take in the view, you smile too.

We have an hour before things begin, so we gaze at the street vendors. There’s a sausage guy with long white hair in two braids and a Don Quixote white mustache. He’s loading his skewer with fresh links. Delicate feathers trail down from the side of his hair. My camera pans from the sausage man to the dark-haired sausage lady flipping links over an open grill. Her face is hidden by swirling smoke. Hot peppers hang down from the canopy. I’ve never seen so much sausage in my life.

I’m on the rooftop with a zoom lens. No guy should be allowed to do this. I begin to feel like Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, spying on the private lives of urban villagers. The voyeurism bothers you more than it does me. What are you looking at? you ask. Interesting faces, I reply. I don’t say a word about spying on the dark-haired Italian girls in the booths, but you know what I’m doing. Back on the street, an Asian family is frying strips of chicken. A small parade commences at the front of the church. The monsignor in his purple vestment and several stocky Italian-American males with that patented mafioso look. They glance warily around. Firecrackers are going off.

You point my lens toward the corner of North 8th Street. There, I see a middle-aged man limping with a cane wearing blue shorts and a white hat. “Pa, como sta, Pa?” he greets his father. They hug and continue on, the son’s arm around his father’s shoulder. The son has blue eyes and gray-blond hair, and a bit of a beer belly. He is probably much younger than he looks. The father is diminutive and bald and has a crooked nose.

The smoke rises up toward us. You rub your eyes and then point again to the crowd below where a nun in a traditional habit wanders through the large crowd requesting donations. Zoom in on the nun, you say. Shrewdly, she stops by a couple in the midst of eating fried sausages buried in onions and peppers. A guy in a green hat passes his sausage to his companion and reaches into his pocket for a couple of bucks. Later, the companion scowls at the nun. Did you get that? you ask. Yep, got the dirty look.

Funny how you could see everything without a camera lens, I thought later. I was lost without my zoom. Your hearing may have been poor, but your visual acuity was off the charts.

Copy, we have sync, I say. Another message from Space Boy. I don’t know if this is a leak or what, he says, but a tiny rush of blue zodiacal dust is streaming my way from the Advanced Matter Accumulator, running in a straight line down the forward hull into a half-drunk cup of coffee near the Warp Plasma Conduit. Space Boy sounds stressed. Hope it’s not seepage or blue rust or something even weirder, I radio back. I have no idea how to repair a space leak, Space Boy says. What if it’s a leak, say a gash in the hull, and blue zodiacal dust is seeping through a stab wound? I’m not sure I follow, I radio back, a bit alarmed. What’s with Space Boy? I wonder. It’s not like him to go off the handle. That’s my job. Maybe we’re looking at a sentient life form, he continues in this bizarre way, maybe I’m not alone after all. Poor kid. Must be weird out there flying solo.

I ordered an urn at long last, a vase-shaped cherrywood urn, for your ashes. This took forever. So much resistance to finality. From Stardust Memorials in Traverse, Michigan. A thriving business. They’re staffed with twenty employees and a dog, all women, except for the golden retriever. The urn is simple but lovely. It’s on the dining room table and startles me on the way to the kitchen. Among other things, Stardust advertises urn accessories, bags, nameplates, pendants, appliqués, stands. They have urns by size and theme. Every hour over six thousand people die. We are a fatal species.

Friday night and we have a dinner date. You’re upstairs trying on different outfits. How’s this? you ask. Gray pinstriped wool slacks with white blouse, charcoal sweater, and light-blue corduroy jacket. It’s a good look for you, I say. Stylish and casual. You look great, I add. You beg to differ, however, approaching the mirror and complaining of being hag-like. You’re nuts, I say. I look like an old woman, you say. Like a Gorgon. At first I don’t know if you’re being ironic about your appearance or dissatisfied with your wardrobe. I’m a fussy guy—how could you not be a beauty? Not fussy enough, you say. I think you really mean it. You disrobe and quickly climb into a different outfit. Jeans, dark sweater, smart green jacket, silk scarf. Frankly, you look great, but I keep it to myself. You’re in a funk. I want to say you are very attractive but I know you won’t believe me. Nothing I can do to convince you. I usually feel like a gnarly old coot myself but have little trouble deluding myself. I’m aging gracefully, I think to myself, and have managed to harness my eccentricities in clever ways. That’s untrue but I pretend otherwise. That’s a difference between you and me. You suffer no illusions—but I worry you are too self-critical. Brains and beauty, I say, often go together. You’re obviously suffering from the halo effect, you say.

It’s been awhile since I last saw the little blue smudge (the earth) in my rearview mirror, Space Boy tells me. He has begun sending more messages lately. Must be the isolation. Interstellar space is big and empty, he complains. Well, not really empty, being chock-full of debris, but kind of empty in an existential way as there is no one at home out here. What did you expect? I reply. Space never ends, he radios me. It’s endless. He’s griping a lot and qualifying his sentences. He’s beginning to sound more like me, which makes me nervous, and then I remember he is me.

The extremities of interstellar space are testing the nerve of Space Boy. I think I know what he’s going through, even out there where the stars whirl around the center of the galaxy. Everything is reeling, really. The universe is reeling. And me too, I’m really reeling. I’m right here on planet earth but I feel so far away from home. Space Boy evidently feels this too, homelessness, only it’s more visceral. Where he is no birds are chirping. No dogs or cats. No cows. Nothing of home but a stink bug.

Says Space Boy: She made those strange sounds—do you remember—the unforgettable gasping, a sound neither of us heard before? Yes, I say, of course—how could I forget? I remember only too well. I shot out of my chair, my coffee went flying, I rumbled up the stairs. It was the sound of death and no light in her eyes. That’s when you flew away, dashed into space beyond Saturn, past Pluto, left me behind pulling my hair out. A large chunk of me was hurled into space, a very significant fraction of my allocation of being, flung into space without ceremony. How could I ever forget?

You weren’t the only one suffering, Space Boy says. What do you mean? I radio back. Escape velocity was pure trauma. Try it sometime, he says. I’m listening, I say. My entire body cringing under the force of gravity. One G, then two Gs. I felt four times my normal weight, over six hundred pounds. The G-force crushed my head back into my chair. I couldn’t move my arms. Three Gs. A terrific drop in blood pressure, a rise in cerebral hypoxia. Ruptured capillaries, small bruises on the back of the neck. Four Gs. Blood flow ceased to the retinal receptors.

Space Boy enjoys telling this tale, which is a new twist in our relationship. He fancies himself a storyteller. I don’t know if this is good or bad. I couldn’t see a thing, he says. My stomach was in my throat—I can’t see the globules of vomit floating by my face, tissues swelling in my head. Five Gs. And then the convulsions, a seizure-like episode of jerks and spasms, like a funky chicken. What a way to go, he says. He radios me frequently now with excerpts from his journal, such as the above. He says he is writing a memoir. Nonsense, I say. Why not? he replies.