"No, because they don't love those animal instincts, which are so much a part of us. At best, they make fun of them. Ever think about that, Sasha? I'm sure not.
"Knowing my son, I'm sure he astutely explained their complete etiology and 'semiotic importance' to you: all the intellectually swank and blah-blah terms that are spread over society's opinions like expensive jam nowadays. But when you bite into it, it's still a shit sandwich, jam or not. People like Philip invent those terms to spread over their work so we don't realize. . . .
"Listen, I know he hated me –"
Mrs. Strayhorn put a hand on his arm and cooed to calm him down. He ignored her and kept spitting bullets at Sasha.
"– but that was his right. Maybe we raised him and his sister wrong. That could be. I'll tell you something, though – I feel sad he killed himself, but not guilty. He believed perfection was possible. All his life he said that. But that was his trouble. I'm sure he made those movies as a 'strange and vital' way of telling people they were dangerous and in trouble, so they'd better start looking inside to find out why they liked films like Midnight I understand that. It's one way of doing it. But he made the money and success knowing his work was popular for all the wrong reasons. He continued to show us again and again how utterly evil and disgusting we can be to each other. That's what people came to see, not preposterous, tacked-on moral endings with smiling faces and false sunrises. The slime and the crackpots like that man in the cemetery ended up buying all the tickets.
"I noticed Pauline Kael didn't say anything about the last film, did she? You know who did? Fangoria magazine. Their review ran next to a full-color photo of someone in a pig mask covered with blood, carrying a chain saw. You know what they called my son's greatest creation, the being he wanted to instruct the people with? Pus Puss."
"Puke Puss." His wife corrected him.
"Excuse me. Puke Puss."
Sasha sat at her kitchen table while I made lunch. She'd changed into a bathrobe and bedroom slippers.
"Do you think his father was right?"
I began peeling an apple. "Yes, I think to a degree. But it's damned hard not to get comfortable inside success. It's like falling into a soft chair at the end of a hard day. Especially when you're someone like Phil who went through years of trouble before making it. He hit on a successful formula with Midnight and more or less stuck with it. Nothing wrong with that."
"You didn't do it. Every one of your films is different."
"Sash, don't compare us. I stopped making films. I threw in the towel."
"Why? Not because of that earthquake."
"That was part of it. Phil once gave his sister a line that stuck in my head. The world doesn't need me for anything, but I need to tell the world some things.' After the quake I didn't feel I had anymore to 'tell' in films.
"Something else. Remember when I shared those dreams with Cullen James?"
She took a piece of apple off the plate. "Yes. I read Bones of the Moon."
"Cullen asked me not to talk about it, but I'll tell you this: For a few weeks in my life, I had a feeling for what the miraculous really is. It's not making films."
She was about to put the apple in her mouth when she stopped and looked at me. "Do you know what the miraculous is?"
"So far, all I've figured out is it's somewhere in real life, not in fantasy or art. You might be able to reach it through those things, but it's across the bridge."
She shook her head. "I don't know what you mean."
I took the salt and pepper shakers and put them near each other: the pylons of my bridge. "The only thing art can do is suggest how to cross this bridge. Better eyes than ours, better ears, have experienced things, maybe truths, that help instruct how to do it. What's on the other side? Salvation and peace.
"But you can find salvation without art. Sure, lots of artists like Van Gogh who had horrible lives found release through their art. But I don't think it was the art that saved them; it was the work, the love of the human act involved, that brought them peace. Their work just happened to be putting paint on a canvas, or whatever.
The miracle is somewhere in the human act. The only difference I see between an artist and a ditchdigger who loves his work is this: When the artist is working well, he's also able to control some of the chaos of his life through his work, besides enjoying the effort. The ditchdigger only moves dirt from here to there.
"But don't get me wrong – if he loves that movement, he's still a hell of a lot better off than many people."
She smiled. "You stopped making pictures because it didn't satisfy you anymore?"
"Hell, no! I loved making films. I still do. It's like having a conversation with someone you really like and admire. But when you run out of words or things to say, your listener can be the most fascinating person and you're still stuck.
"That's why I started the Cancer Theater Group. There's a million things to say there."
"Because the actors are dying?"
"No, because they're all hungry for whatever they can get. I feel that every day, and it makes me hungry too – for life, not art."
"What about art raising life to a higher level?"
"From my experience with this group, art at its best only raises life to an all-encompassing now. It forces us to forget time, or death, or anything and just allows us to live now. That's why the actors are so excited by what they're doing. For a couple of hours in their terminal day-today, they don't have to think about pills or chemotherapy. They're immortal."
"I have cancer too."
"That's what you said. Do you want to talk about it?" I didn't look up or change the tone of my voice.
"Not yet. Cancer, and I'm pregnant. Some combination, huh? Life and death living in one stomach, hand in hand! I don't even know where the baby came from."
"We can talk whenever you want. In the meantime, do you have any horseradish?"
When things are bad I often go into the nearest kitchen and cook. I try to make the acts of cutting and measuring, pouring and stirring, into little Zen masterpieces that, taken together, might someday metamorphose into mini-Satori. I don't close my eyes and shoot arrows into bull's-eyes, I stir-fry.
While I put things together, Sasha asked if it'd be all right to go in and lie down till lunch was ready. That was fine because good meals are temperamental – if, while preparing, you don't give them your full attention they often turn out flat and sulky, hiding in their room behind too much salt or spice.
About ten minutes later, deep into the secrets of shaving carrots, I didn't notice when she entered the room.
"Oh, carrots! Can I have one?" She wore a blue-and-white sailor-boy skirt and blouse, white knee socks, and patent leather shoes. The heart-breakers were the little white gloves and patent leather purse that looked brand new.
My first thought was to look beyond her, down the hall toward Sasha's bedroom.
Seeing this she spoke again, her voice pouty and hurt. "If you want me to go away, wake her up. That's all you have to do, if you don't want me around!"
"Come here!" Taking her small gloved hand, I pulled her into a room off the kitchen where Sasha kept a television and an old couch. "Where were you? Where have you been?"
"At the graveyard. I took Phil some flowers."
"Where did you go the other day? When we were up at his house?"
Snapping her shiny purse open and closed, open and closed, she just shrugged.
"Only one of you can be here at a time. Is that right?"
She looked at her purse, opened and closed it again, and nodded without looking at me.