I was incarcerated here and heavily sedated at the time that she physically died. One day, perhaps a year or more after she passed, Ruggles squirreled his way toward my little chambre d’enfer, gnawing at his knuckles outside my door.
“Good Morning, Doctor,” I greeted him. He had weaned me off the worst of the drugs by then. “Hmmm. You smell like you have a question. My olfactory senses are especially keen this morning. Your unpleasant question has the textured odor of the burned plastic of cheap shoes.”
“Salome, you are right. I wondered, after our session yesterday, if you remember the time we discussed your mother’s passing.”
I didn’t recall that session. But I had read about Greta’s death later, in the papers.
Ruggles’s face said he was appalled by my lack of reaction.
“Am I supposed to care? I don’t.” Unlike when Dad or Hilda or Nathaniel passed away and the weight felt like it was severing my heart from my body, I felt nothing.
16 THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2001)
Maybe We Ain’t Us
It is no profound revelation to posit that we experience days or weeks or months in our lives that we remember as if they took place five minutes before. There are years that meld and dissolve as the memories race over us in seconds. Perhaps they stay fresh because we continually relive and reinterpret them. What is bewildering, often frightening, are the moments that we relive like cancerous lesions on the unconscious that turn a dream to a nightmare, or strike capriciously while lolling down the street. One would think that it was Alchemy’s selfless act that Moses would remember most fondly or most distressingly from those first few months of their initial meeting. But no, it was not that at all.
Moses immediately got swept up as another passenger on the juggernaut that was Alchemy’s life from the moment the Insatiables became an essential phrase in the cultural grammar in 1994. A ride that Moses would jump off and on for many years hence.
The fiery speed at which Alchemy lived his life was antithetical to Moses’s contemplative nature and slow dialectic of reason, where he could spend hours deliberating whether to give a student an A or A—. Even though he had long accepted chaos and uncontrollability as the determining forces thwarting one’s will and intentions, he always did his best to foresee the vicissitudes of life. The cloistered safety of a tenured job perfectly fit his self-image. Unlike too many denizens of the academy, he accepted that he was, at best, a concubine to the central culture. Even with the looming imminence of death, Moses speculated his worldview might change under the optimistic sway of Alchemy, of Alchemy’s lightning-fast processes of both calculation and instinct. Could he rediscover the momentary, youthful adventurousness that had once led him to Israel?
As the Focus passed through Albuquerque and sped west along I40, Alchemy began assessing and planning the days ahead. “I have to call my managers.” Moses dialed the number and handed Alchemy the phone. “Hey, Sue, I’m out … No, it wasn’t exactly jail … Listen, I’m coming to L.A. tomorrow … No, to my brother’s … Yes, brother … No, he doesn’t want money.”
They glanced at each other, smiling, while Alchemy held the phone in one hand and the wheel in the other.
“Not a cent,” Moses said.
“Just my blood … Yes, I am sure. He’s a professor. Sue, any change on Nathaniel?… Tell him to stop worrying and I’ll either take him or go to the WTO protests for him … Sue, fuck my image … Yes, time meditating made me want to be more active … I’ll see Nathaniel as soon as I can, but he can’t tell my mom I’m out … I don’t care about anyone else’s e-mails or calls. Tell no one else for now.” Moses flinched as the car swerved to the right. Alchemy didn’t stop talking. “Right, not Ambitious or Lux. I can’t deal until we fix up my bro here. Later.” He hung up. “I assume it’s okay to stay at your place in L.A. One night. If I go anywhere near my home, a snapping finger of stalkertude will be nearby.”
“Of course. Um, I’m a little tired.”
“No problem. Take a nap.”
Moses tilted the seat back and gazed out the window. He regretted having spent so little time excavating the history of this part of the country. He envisioned a scene directed by John Ford, written by John Steinbeck, scored to Woody Guthrie, and photographed by Walker Evans — his mix of western myths conjoined into a false majesty. The true director of the early twentieth-century West was not John but Henry Ford, and the real producers were Harry Chandler and William Randolph Hearst. Maybe one day he’d even write an essay about this mix of myth and history, Moses thought.
Soon, he dozed off. He didn’t awaken until they entered Gallup, a sun-scorched and desolate, mainly Native American town, whose streets and storefronts of liquor, pawn-, and gun shops were interspersed alongside the ubiquitous McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King.
Alchemy flicked on the radio and bypassed the harangues of Rush Limbaugh and Louise Urban Vulter. He settled on a station with Native American music, which the deejay interrupted to speak words neither of them understood except for the hyperenunciated English “Big Sale at Gallup Ford” and “NO Money Down” repeated about seven times. At the same second, they both cracked up. It was one of those seemingly insignificant moments that made them feel like brothers who had shared a childhood of birthdays and Christmases or Passovers, silly games and arcane TV shows, lost toys and cracked bones, angry fights with sorrowful partings, first loves and ruptured hearts, and alliances with and against their parents.
“We need gas. Way, way back we played two high schools around here, and there was a great Mex restaurant we ended up finding at three A.M. after doing peyote. No time to look, I guess.” They pulled into the station. Alchemy ambled inside to get supplies and Moses pumped the gas. Then he called Jay. “Hey, I found him!” His voice burst out with a rare effervescence.
“Good, no, great. How are you feeling? Where are you?”
“New Mexico. We’re driving. And I’m fine. Better than fine.”
“Oh, Moses, I miss you.”
“In less than twenty-four hours I’ll be home.”
“I’m so scared.”
“I don’t know why, but I’m less scared now. You’ll see. He wants to stay at our place. Can you call Dr. Fielding? Tell my mom, too. I’ll call her later. The phone service goes in and out.”
“Alchemy’s staying with us?”
“Yep. Tidy up my room, okay? He can sleep on the futon in there.” He was talking too fast and out of character; he didn’t absorb the meaning of the beats between her silences or the tremulous cadences.
“Moses, it’s such a—”
“Look, it’ll be fine. Jay, I’ll … Shit, there’s a small mob gathering inside the gas station. Love you, and see you soon.”
Someone had a digital camera, and then everyone in the minimart wanted a picture with Alchemy. Moses stepped inside and Alchemy mouthed to him, “Wait in the car.”
A few minutes later Alchemy came jogging out. He hopped in the car and tossed two plastic bags filled with water, Cokes, Gatorades, chocolate bars, doughnuts, potato chips, and pretzels into the backseat. He placed a copy of the Star on Moses’s lap. It was open to two gruesome pictures of Absurda, one of her gaunt body, half naked with a needle by her side, dead on her bedroom floor and another photo of the obviously grieving Alchemy slumped beside her casket. The headline read, “The Tragic Last Days of the Nightingale.”
“This is exactly what I wanted to get away from. Guy handed that to me so I could autograph it for him. I do autographs, and most of the people in there were respectful, but that is too much. Too much.”