39 THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2008)
It’s Alive!
As the January opening drew ever closer, Moses felt as if he were trapped in a horror movie where everyone awaits the coming apocalypse, but despite all the precautions, nothing can halt the onslaught. The Enquirer article was not yet scheduled for publication, while Alchemy’s lawyers and PR people searched for a way to squash it.
His preparation included agreeing to Jay’s plan, slightly adapted. Prior to the Members’ Preview, there would be a lunch for fifteen, twenty prime movers, tastemakers, and close friends, which they’d attend.
On the Tuesday morning of the Hammer luncheon, Jay found Moses sitting half dressed on the closed toilet seat cover, hands pressed against the throbbing blood vessels in his temples, trying to clear his mind from the two Xanax he’d taken at 4 A.M. He’d dreamt that he was hanging upside down from a tree in Central Park while the rubber-hosed arms of whinnying cops flogged his back, and on the grass beneath him, his brother lay atop Jay as cameras snapped all around them.
“Moses, are you going to be able to go? You want some more coffee?” He didn’t look up. She inched over to him from the bathroom doorway, already dressed in an olive green alpaca sweater and powder blue jeans. “Let’s cancel.”
“Jay, I’d prefer to go alone.”
“What? Why?” Jay’s eyes opened and closed and opened again in disbelief. Sure, they had some problems. Who didn’t? But they were still a team. Bound by love. ’Til death do them part.
“Why?” Moses said just above a whisper. The cap blown off his self-editing mechanism, he spewed the unmentionable. “Why’d you have to fuck him? That’s why. Were you fucking him while you were fucking me?”
Jay’s insides clenched in fury and desolation, her emotions awash in a dizzying eddy of confusion. “I don’t …” Unable to finish her sentence, Jay faced an ineradicable truth: No matter what he said, time had not healed this wound and in his heart he’d never forgiven her for sleeping with his half brother before they’d goddamned ever met.
Holding her head high, she turned and wobbled out of the bathroom, choking back tears, and retreated to the confines of her backyard office.
One hour later, upon entering the Hammer lobby alone from the garage, Moses was reassuring himself that, when Jay cooled down, she would understand that he attacked her out only of fear and insecurity. He hadn’t meant it. He’d plead for her to have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of. And he was so sure she loved him. His thoughts stopped when he spotted Curt Scoggins, the gangly, curly-gray-haired curator with a tortoiselike neck, officially welcoming the guests. He pointed to the wide staircase. “Salome is upstairs. She’ll take you through the show later.” Moses inhaled and was submerged into the flash of a daymare.
A woman, head covered by a mourning veil, launches her baby carriage down a flowing waterfall above a marble staircase. It’s Shalom, the dybbuk, singing softly, “99 crying babies on the wall …” A lifeguard rushes from behind to catch the carriage before it reaches the ocean. Shalom strips off her clothing and the lifeguard stops to watch. She cackles as the carriage crashes, and the baby spins through the air, disappearing into the sea. She sings on, “… 98 crying babies …”
That same morning, as Alchemy downed his second cup of coffee, Xtine, who had flown in for the festivities, walked in from the guest house. “Your mother is in a nasty mood.”
“No kidding. She knocked on my door after one last night threatening to boycott the entire week.” He mimicked her peevish tone: “ ‘I won’t perform like an art monkey waiting to be fed some gruel by her museum keepers.’ As always, her timing is excellent. Ambitious keeps calling me when he is drunk, leaving crazy, apologetic messages, or when I answer he just curses me out for being a two-faced prick. Mr. No Bullshit giving me only bullshit.”
Xtine clasped his hand in hers as she had done since he was a little boy, when her hair was dark brown rather than white, her figure svelte rather than round, and she towered over him rather than coming up to his shoulders. They strode to the guest cottage. Salome was already dressed. Not in a flamboyant outfit or a pantsuit befitting an attractive woman of sixty-five. She had chosen a purple sweatshirt with its hood over her head, a black scarf around her neck, sunglasses, no makeup, too-short baggy brown pants, and work boots.
The Salome contingent arrived at the Hammer twenty minutes before the scheduled lunch. Tom Hayden awaited them in the lobby entrance; he assumed care of Nathaniel, his wheelchair-bound protest pal, and they commiserated about old times and present frustrations.
Alchemy’s cell rang not two minutes after they arrived. He didn’t pick up but waited for the voice mail message. “It’s Jay. Moses is coming alone. We had a fight. He’s in terrible shape. He can explain.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Triple fuck,” he said to no one and called her back. She didn’t answer. Distracted, he entered the first floor’s Project Room, which held the just-erected Pillzapoppin’ and Electroshocked Ladyland installations. He hadn’t found time to preview the exhibition. A 10′-×-10′-×-8′ chamber, composed of thousands of multicolored psychotropic pills, which held a Salome-designed table connected to a mock ETC machine where you could lie down and be administered a mild shock to temples and ankles while the headphones played Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at top volume.
“Try it. Experience a scintilla of the pain inflicted upon your mother.” Alchemy turned to see that Salome had put on black silk gloves and powdered her face but still wore the sweatshirt and work boots.
“Maybe later.”
“Brave boy.” She took off one glove and pinched his arm, making sure her chartreuse-manicured nails dug into his skin. “It’s no more painful than that.”
He foresaw the karmic wheel spinning toward a long day that would unleash Salome, homicider. “Let’s look upstairs,” he offered as innocuously as possible.
The first four rooms contained a retrospective covering the gamut of her almost forty years of creative output. The last room housed never-before-exhibited silkscreen prints and collages. Immediately, Alchemy’s gaze was drawn to the wall that read Baddist Boys. He examined the first print, a brownish-yellowish wash with Photoshopped images of his father and Salome in a rapturous pose inside a bathroom. The title card read Getting Bent.
“It’s a funny piece, no? I won’t sell it.”
“Jesus, Mom, I’ve worked to keep this from the public for fifteen years.”
“Oh, grow up. The fact that reprobate has survived so long augurs well for you.”
“I wish you’d asked—”
“Asked what? Your permission?”
“Not asked. Informed.”
“Consider yourself duly informed. My boy, when it suits you, you’re as sensitive as a baby’s ass,” she hissed.
Ignoring her, he examined the second print, titled Which Whore, Bitch? His eyes caught sight of the third print. He froze at the image of a seminaked Salome, a gold star covering her vagina and a Jewish shawl draped over her shoulders and partially covering her breasts, holding a plastic bag in her hand, while she danced for a German soldier. In miniswastikas she’d scrawled “Arbeit Mocks Frei.” The title card read Mal de TeuMer.
“Oh, shit,” he mumbled. The veins in his neck pulsated as Mose, the art dealer Marlene Passant, the catalog essayist Frank Peters, and three others whom he didn’t recognize approached.