Twisting
The following day, I woke up early. Erica had already gotten up and was making coffee in the kitchen. I was happy to see that she was functional on some mundane level. I joined her in the kitchen, where she seemed occupied but untroubled.
“Lindquist wants me to see four of his friends, to see if I can help them,” I said. “He wants me to go out there tonight.”
“You should go,” Erica replied.
“You should join me,” I said.
“You don’t need me.”
“I think I do,” I said. “I need some boundaries, because right now, I’m in danger of playing my hands badly.”
“It’s good that you view this as a game, at least for now,” she said.
“I didn’t see that comment coming,” I replied.
Erica opened the refrigerator door and seemed preoccupied with finding something to eat. “Right now, the most important thing is that you move forward, that you help people. Your attitude is less important than your abilities.” She turned toward me. “I want to call that healer you found in Oregon,” she said. “And you should go for a ride before you see Lindquist. I think riding helps you.”
She was fatigued, and I calculated that it would have been pointless to challenge her in any further discussion. I handed her the printout from Matthias Kristen’s website and embraced her.
“I’m worried about you,” I said. “This ‘kundalini’ business is baffling to me. Maybe I shouldn’t leave you alone.”
“No,” she said, somewhat emphatically, and it was good to watch her lethargy dissipate, even for just an instant. “Go, go now.”
I rode up the Palisades Parkway and had lunch at the top of Perkins Memorial Drive in Bear Mountain State Park, about an hour north of Lindquist’s house in Chappaqua. The view from the Perkins observatory took in four states, and I could see the faint skyline of Manhattan through a wispy veil of scattered clouds. The Drive was an established hangout for grizzled bikers, who spent hours lounging in each other’s company, finding as much enjoyment in talking about motorcycles as riding them. After lunch, I sent a brief text to Erica. “I hope you’re well, and I think I can understand why you need some isolation now.”
I felt great. I was . . . maneuverable. And I was even more surprised that I felt no anxiety about meeting Lindquist’s friends. I took comfort in a comment my father had made years ago when he considered purchasing a small piece of property in Florida: “You’re never so strong as when you’re willing to walk away from a deal.” I had nothing invested in this evening, no dreams of a change in career. I would promise nothing, and if I delivered nothing, I would have broken no promises.
I rode across the Bear Mountain Bridge, and the road curved sharply south, hugging an imposing wall formed by hills rising steeply over the Hudson River. The majestic view was marred by the twin concrete domes of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, from which a steady stream of pure white smoke floated west toward Harriman State Park. Soon, though, I veered inland, away from the Hudson, and headed south toward Chappaqua. I was early, so I rode back and forth on Whippoorwill Road, a narrow road connecting Chappaqua to Armonk. I explored a number of cul-de-sacs and noticed a pattern of conventional houses anchored by imposing mansions, a stark manifestation of the rich separated from the filthy rich. The sun began to set around 7:45 p.m., and I set the GPS to Lindquist’s address on Jeffrey Lane, an unremarkable street until one reached Lindquist’s driveway toward the end of the road, which climbed quickly and then flattened into a circle in front of a Georgian-style mansion. Lindquist’s house was a square block of red brick with thick pillars and stately verandas.
I parked the bike in front of the entrance, and as I commenced the tedious process of shedding my gear, Lindquist approached. “Why does this not surprise me?” he said. “My primary means of transportation in college was a Honda CT90, all of 90 cc’s in engine size. That came to an end when I got married. Can I show you the property?”
We walked around the east side of the house and down a gentle hill, where a wooden fence encircled an Olympic-size swimming pool. The back of the house sat on top of a grassy hill with a pond at the bottom, choked with overgrown shrubbery and trees. At the end of a path strewn with wood chips, leading away from the west side of the house, was a clay tennis court, neatly groomed, with the bright white lines cleanly swept. “Every brick in this house was imported from Belgium,” Lindquist said. “And for years, it was the only house on Jeffrey Lane. When I first moved here, you could see the house easily from the main road, Route 117. Now it’s hidden by the trees. Probably better that way.”
We walked onto the tennis court. “This is such a pain in the ass to maintain,” Lindquist said. “Once a week, you have to drag one-hundredpound bags of clay down here, sprinkle the product evenly over the court, flatten it, water it, sweep it . . . it exhausts me just to think about it. Worth it, though. Do you play? This stuff is really easy on the joints, and you can extend your playing by years.”
We sat down on a bench outside the court. “They’re all here,” he said. “I should give you a quick preview, and then, frankly, you’ll take it where you will. So in no particular order, you’ll meet Evelyn Jackson, I’d say in her late sixties. Really smart, spends most of her time working at Katonah Art Museum. It’s a spectacular place, actually, flies under the radar in the arts world, but it’s something of a subtle force in local cultural affairs, and that means something when the locality you’re talking about is northern Westchester.”
“What is her . . . issue?” I asked.
“It won’t sound like much, nothing more than chronic sinus infections, but the emphasis is on the word ‘chronic.’ She’s always mildly sick, always grappling with congestion and fatigue. And these ailments aren’t so severe that they stop her in her tracks, but her life is one lousy prolonged physical battle with a foe she can stay in the ring with but not quite defeat.”
Lindquist bent down, picked up a twig, and began to bend it just shy of the breaking point. “Then, we have Maureen Silver, in her fifties,” he continued. “I count it as something of a victory that I convinced her to come at all. She has no diagnosable ailment, although that may be simply because she refuses to seek psychological treatment. She’s always sullen and unhappy and can’t really figure out why. She’s married to a very dull lawyer, and of course, that may be the problem, but I think the issues run deeper. Ever since my diagnosis, we’ve become good friends. It seems to me like she’s refined her listening skills so she can become caught up in other people’s problems and forget about her own.”
The sun was setting quickly now, and the shadows of the trees fell across the tennis court in parallel lines. “Two more. Robert Kravitz, pancreatic cancer. He is, honestly, way more desperate than the others, because the survival rate is so low. His most recent diagnosis was stage four, and he’s had a combination of surgery and radiation therapy and probably other treatments. His prognosis overall is not good.”
A sudden burst of wind spiraled up dust from the center of the court, like a controlled tornado, scattering flecks of clay across the white boundary lines. Pancreatic cancer. “What does Kravitz do for a living?” I asked.
“Not much. He worked a little in real estate in his family business and then came into some money when his father passed away, and now— when he’s not occupied with the procedure of managing cancer—does some stuff with charities and fundraisers.”
“And the last one?”
“Sarah Perkins, close to your age, probably a little younger, the daughter of good friends. She grew up down the street. She practically lived at our house as a child, coming here whenever she wanted to, sometimes just hopping into the swimming pool without even letting us know she was here. She really felt at home, and that was fine with us. Anyway, Sarah has post-herpetic neuralgia as a result of undiagnosed shingles. She’s in constant pain and is suffering from the kind of depression you would expect from this condition. She used to be a terrific athlete, but she’s put on a lot of weight. No exercise in years. She lives with her parents and is on permanent disability.”
I looked toward the house. “What have you told them about me?” I asked.
“Not much. I quoted Shakespeare. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ They know and respect me, and they wouldn’t be here without my . . . what would I call it . . . endorsement? No, that’s not it. My . . . willingness to entertain possibilities and the fact that I believe you may have helped me. I certainly communicated that to them. They’re not in any hurry, but they are waiting for us. I told them I’d show you around for a few minutes, then bring you in.”
“I’m ready,” I said, standing up.
We walked through the main entrance of the house, and, at the end of a tastefully decorated foyer, Lindquist turned left, grabbed the handles of two doors, and pushed them open wide. He then looked over his shoulder and beckoned me to follow. “I’d like to introduce you to Will Alexander,” he said, and stepped aside. I entered and gently nodded as I established eye contact with the group, then found myself pushed back by the surroundings. The room was large and rectangular, with views facing three directions. It was full of bold artistic statements. Pre-Columbian statues stood on pedestals placed in random locations, where one would expect cocktail guests to congregate. Large abstract paintings hovered prominently, refusing to be ignored. Chairs and sofas were crammed in the center, apparently to force the guests into an attitude of submission. The four guests were seated on two plush leather settees facing outward and positioned under a gigantic painting of daring blue streaks, wider than the mantel to which it was assigned.
Lindquist guided me to a lounge chair positioned directly in front of the group, then stepped back and stood next to a statue of Mayan origin and crossed his arms. I had hoped for more of an introduction, not because I needed to collect my thoughts but because I had counted on some preamble to suggest what my first words might be. I always found first words to be so crucial. I never had to write out entire arguments for the court or questions for depositions, with the exception of the introductory words. Those I needed to spell out for myself, word for word, and then, more often than not, I would find a momentum that would carry me through the proceeding.
Not now. I looked downward, hoping to find a drink or something to occupy my hands. Then, I raised my head to look more directly at the group. The youngest, Sarah, shifted uneasily. She was pretty, but inflated, like the reflection of a fashion model in a fun-house mirror.
“I just have to say, I feel silly just being here,” she said. I nodded.
“I feel silly too,” I said. “I really mean that.”
The oldest, apparently Evelyn Jackson, leaned forward and pointed at me. “Don’t feel silly,” she said to Sarah, while continuing to direct her finger toward me. “It’s easy to understand why we’re here. Each in our own way, we’re desperate, and we can be forgiven the occasional act of silliness. But here’s a question that occurs to me, Mr. Alexander. If you feel silly as well, then what are you doing here?”
“In fact,” Kravitz said, “just for my own sense of dignity, if nothing else, I’d like you to tell us something about yourself, about who you are, apart from any mystical power you may possess.” He was a small man who looked like he might have been plump at one time but had wasted away. The others seemed wary and vaguely detached. But Kravitz was focused. “I need to say something straight off,” he told me. “I’m here because Mark practically twisted my arm. ‘What can it hurt?’ he said. ‘You show up, nothing happens, and you’re in no worse position.’ But you know what, Mark, I’ve thought about that, and you’re wrong. The damage from a meeting like this goes far beyond the little bit of time involved. The damage involves the roller coaster of hope, which in my situation is completely irrational.”
He paused for a moment, and Lindquist uncrossed his arms, about to speak. Kravitz shook his head vigorously and sipped his drink. “Let me finish, Mark. Do you believe, Mr. Alexander, that one can be convinced, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually—in other words, on every plane of perception—that something’s hopeless? Take this for example. This is all nonsense. You know it. I know it. And I know it on every plane of perception. Do you fully understand me? I don’t have a shred of hope, so you can get that out of your head about why I’m here. Would you like to hear the real reason?”
“Bob,” Lindquist whispered, “please . . .”
“I’m going to ask you to remain quiet, Mark. You can do that for me, right? For a moment longer? So here’s the true reason, Mr. Alexander, two actually.” He swallowed more of his drink and swept his gaze around the room to enforce silence. “So reason number one was just to shut Mark up. Jesus, Mark, you are so annoying. Why does it not surprise me that you actually stalked this gentleman through the streets of New York? This is who you are, Mark, an annoying, pestering, brutally meddling individual . . . probably why you’re so successful and probably why your disease has gone into some kind of remission. It’s not magical or mystical or spiritual . . . it’s so much simpler. Your disease is sick of you. Jesus, the disease said to itself, all I wanted to do was to rot away someone’s body; I sure as hell didn’t sign up to hang out with this fucking asshole.”
Kravitz stood up and faced me, his shaking hand spilling a few drops from his glass onto the polished wood floor. “Here’s my second reason, Mr. Alexander, and that is to confront you, sir—to look you in the eye and say, how dare you? How dare you do this? How dare you hold yourself out as someone who can help others in the way you say you can? I have cancer. The worst kind. Do you think this is a joke? Do you think this is a game? Or some kind of experiment? Do you think just because you may not measurably hurt someone, this still gives you a license to do what you do? There’s a deep, shocking absence of morality, of feeling, of decency in who you are, at your very core. If I accomplish nothing else tonight, if I accomplish nothing else in my life, maybe at least now I can die more easily knowing I communicated this to you.”
Silence fell, the kind that warned against intrusion until the passage of an appropriate interval. “I’m not good at math,” Maureen Silver finally said. She was thin, with taut skin pulled back at irregular angles, creating a series of smooth patches next to wrinkled ones. “But it occurs to me, if my calculations are correct, that Mr. Alexander has uttered exactly eight words tonight. Even con artists deserve a hearing, Bob. So I say, let’s keep him on a short leash, but let him have his say.”
Kravitz continued to stand and considered whether or not to stay. He then sat down, still trembling. Lindquist moved away from the statue and sat down on an ottoman slightly behind me. No one spoke now, and I could hear the faint rumble of traffic from the main road.
“I’m going to try to put all of this in some perspective,” I said, “and then, frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might just leave, if that is the general consensus. But I need to say a few things. Mark, I would really appreciate a drink. Maybe some red wine.”
Lindquist left the room and returned with a full glass, which I drank quickly. “I am sorry, Mr. Kravitz, for what you’re going through, but with all due respect, your comments are unfair. I do not hold myself out as capable of doing anything.” I faced the group as a whole. “You want answers. You want explanations. You’ll let me have my say, apparently, and I appreciate that, but the reality is this: I have nothing to say. I have no answers, and I have no explanations. I can’t even answer the simple question, What am I doing here? It is very possible, maybe even probable, that I am a farce, but I am not a fraud. If you would like, I can start there and see where this leads. But I won’t plead for your indulgence or acceptance.”
It surprised me as much as it surprised the group that I had pushed back. “Start there, then,” Kravitz said. He had stopped shaking.
“Mark asked me to come here,” I said. “Sorry, Mark, if this sounds like an excuse, and I’m sorry if this is a convenient way to deflect some of the anger away from me and onto you, but this observation does have the benefit of being true.”
Everyone was looking at me now, expectantly, and the anger had drained away from Kravitz’s expression.
“Mark thinks that I’ve helped him. And a few other people believe that I’ve helped, and still others believe that I have some power to transmit healing energy, whatever that means, and I keep coming back to the fact that I am just an associate at a New York City law firm, who, not long ago, was all but telling Mark here, who had indeed stalked me through the streets of New York, to get out of my face and stop suggesting that I was a healer.”
Lindquist soundlessly refilled my glass to the top, and I took a few sips. “I got caught up in this,” I continued, “and I’ll admit that I rode it out for a certain distance, and if this is the end of the line, so be it. If I’m a complete joke, which is more than just a little bit possible, then I’m glad to have found this out here, and I’ll leave, with an apology for having wasted your time. But I want to say one more thing, because there is a suggestion here that I might be a con artist.”
I stood up and wobbled badly and sat back down. “I have had way too much to drink.”
“Are healers allowed to get drunk?” Kravitz asked. “Isn’t there some, I don’t know, code or disciplinary rule against that?” Sarah laughed, and the other two women chuckled.
“Well,” I said, “my cosmic license is probably going to get yanked tonight, so I might as well go down in flames.” I leaned backward, grabbed the bottle of wine out of Lindquist’s hands, poured the wine to the top, and swallowed rapidly.
“Come on, Mark,” Kravitz said, “we can’t let the plastered healer drink alone.” Lindquist quickly refilled everyone’s glasses.
“You want to hear something funny?” I asked. “So Mark and I are at this diner somewhere on the East Side. And I tell him that I am not a healer, so you know what he does? He grabs my tea bag, holds it over his mouth, and squeezes every last drop into his throat.”
“True story,” Lindquist said.
“Then, he storms out, furious, and why? Because I told him that I was not a healer. So here’s the thing, folks. If you believe in the short time since that encounter that I reinvented my life to concoct a scheme to convince all who come before me that I can heal their ailments, whatever those may be, if you believe that, then, frankly, your belief system is nuttier than the faith of those who believe I can heal people.”
“You grabbed the tea bag out of his cup?” Kravitz asked.
“I did that,” Lindquist said.
“Help me out here, Mark, help me understand what was going through your mind . . .”
“It’s pretty simple,” Lindquist said. “I figured if this guy was a healer . . . I don’t know, maybe when he drank his tea, his lips secreted a certain amount of healing saliva, which in turn dissolved into the liquid in the cup, following which it made its way into the tea bag. Anyway, don’t ask me. Ask Will. He’s the healer.”
“Traditionally, we in the healing community have found tea bags to act effectively as conduits,” I said.
“Well, that seems pretty straightforward,” Kravitz said. “That was my thinking as well,” Lindquist said.
Kravitz laughed; then, everyone else did too. “Let’s break out the tea bags,” he said. “Better yet, as long as you’re here, place your hands upon me, and let the healing energy flow.”
“Oh, I’ll do better than that,” I said. “You see, I don’t even have to touch you. In fact, if I understand this correctly, I can heal you remotely. We don’t even have to be in the same room.”
“That is so cool,” Sarah said. “Maybe you can heal by texting.”
“Only if we’re on the same plan,” I said.
“What if you make a typo?” Sarah asked.
“I could always dictate with Siri,” I said.
“You’ll run into problems with autocorrect,” Sarah said.
“You’d have to make the text really simple,” Maureen Silver said, “to rule out misinterpretation. How about, ‘You are cured.’”
“Jews are blurred.”
“Pools are absurd.”
“Fools are nerds.”
Everyone drank and came up with more interpretations, and at some point, Kravitz fell off his chair and rolled onto his side, his face awash with tears. Lindquist raced out again and brought back bottles of hard liquor and red wine and poured freely.
Still on the floor, Kravitz sat up and raised his right hand to silence us. “So a healer walks into a bar,” he said, and spittle flew through his teeth. The women laughed loudly. Kravitz tried to continue but was gasping for air. “I can’t breathe,” he said.
“Wait, you have to finish the joke,” Lindquist said. “A healer walks into a bar . . .”
“A healer walks into a bar with a frog on his head,” Kravitz said, regaining some composure.
“A white frog?” Lindquist asked.
“I did not see that question coming,” Kravitz said. “Usually, when I tell this joke, no one cares about the color of the frog.”
“It’s important,” Lindquist said. “Think, Bob, think, was it a white frog?”
“I wasn’t there, Mark, I really couldn’t say.”
“Well, someone was there. Surely, there must be a way to get this information.”
“Actually,” Kravitz said, “come to think of it, yes, it was a white frog, a big-ass white frog.”
“I knew it,” Lindquist said. “There are no coincidences.”
“So can I finish this joke?” Kravitz asked. “A healer walks into a bar with a big, bright, gleaming, white frog sitting on his head. And we’re talking one massive, amphibious beast. And the bartender goes, ‘Whoa, what the fuck is that?’ And the frog says, ‘I don’t know. It all started when I developed this huge wart on my butt.’“
We were spluttering now, the women trying to maintain some modicum of dignity but failing. Lindquist was not able to pour quickly enough, so I leaned over and swallowed Kravitz’s glass.
“Did you see that?” Kravitz said. “He actually drank my whisky. You’re a disgrace to healers everywhere.”
Lindquist refilled Kravitz’s glass with straight rye. “No harm, no foul,” he said.
“First of all, I did not drink your whisky. I was inspecting it for defects,” I said. “Let me show you what I mean,” and I grabbed his glass again and swallowed its contents. “This one is defect-free as well,” I said, at which point Kravitz reached over, grabbed my glass and swallowed the wine.
“That’s remarkable,” he said, “no defects there either.”
“See? There really are no coincidences,” I said. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch at Bear Mountain, and my lack of planning caught up to me abruptly. I spun off my chair and landed on my side with a thud, joining Kravitz on the floor. Then, I blacked out, but probably only for a moment, as I felt myself revived with a bouncy tune that Lindquist must have been piping through his stereo system. I wasn’t dizzy, but I couldn’t open my eyes, at least not at first, and the music became louder, though not painfully so. I recognized the chord changes from one of those doowop variations that almost every song from the fifties followed.
With my eyes still closed, I hauled myself back onto my chair, and then, I could see Kravitz, and he was considerably plumper, and I had the uncharitable thought that he looked more interesting as an emaciated cancer victim. Then, I blacked out again, and I know that a fair amount of time must have passed, but the music played on, and then, I opened my eyes, and Kravitz pointed at me and sang, “Here’s a man in evening clothes . . .”
Then, the screen really went blank, and the music got louder, and I recognized Sam Cooke singing “Twistin’ the Night Away.” But when the lights came back on, it was a roly-poly Kravitz singing and pivoting across the stage like Chubby Checker, with an old-fashioned, oversized microphone clutched in his right hand. The three women were behind him singing backup, and Kravitz was good, really good, and the music was contagious, infectious, and we all started dancing, everyone, even Sondra and Josh, although I didn’t see Erica there, but she was recovering, so that was understandable. And I knew the song well and knew that it was relatively short, but the song kept playing without being repetitive. Good Lord, we were having fun, and I asked my parents to join, and my mother was willing, but my father demurred, but that was fine, because he loved watching Sally dance. And Sally was good. She joined Kravitz in synchronous gyrations, and we formed a circle around them and began clapping to the beat. I felt the music in my gut. It just felt so damn good, so alive. No one then, and no one now, could listen to this song and not be elevated beyond despondency and illness.