We “celebrated” with a BBQ on Labor Day, the day before Nathaniel would drive Alchemy to New York. He’d stay the week and see some old friends. Alchemy preferred to say goodbye to me here. I think we were all afraid of what might happen if I went to New York.
That night, my son and I strolled around the Magnolia grounds before sitting on the lakeside dock, feet dipped in the warmish water. Feeling a bit shaky, I expressed regret about our peripatetic life and asked if he had any regrets of his own. He teased me, “Not really. Besides, Mom, stability of any kind is not your strong suit.” I laughed and asked him one favor. “Please, no more Scott. You are Alchemy.”
He turned serious and his eyes gazed into a beyond. My son was no longer a teenage boy. Consciously or not, he had transcended linear time. His voice, inhabited by the DNA of lives past, echoed with such resolve and steely calculation that he unnerved me with his certainty. “No one who wants to change the world can be called Alchemy. And I intend to change things.”
“Change what? You’re a musician. An artist. You can do anything by being you.”
He put his arm over my shoulders and nuzzled up close. “Mom, I am going to justify your faith.”
I wish I’d believed in him a little less. Challenged him that night on exactly what he intended to change. Told him that whatever he did, even if it was hanging on a street corner playing his guitar for a nickel, it would satisfy me.
Back at the house, after Alchemy went to bed, I went into the dark bedroom. I stepped to the bedside, turned on my flashlight, and pointed the light at the sleeping Nathaniel.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, panic in his voice.
“Why did you tell Alchemy to call himself Scott?”
He reached to turn on the nightstand lamp. I stopped him and kept the flashlight’s focus on him. “Salome, I didn’t.”
“Maybe not directly. What did you say?”
“It was years ago. I vaguely remember saying, ‘Do what you want.’ ”
“That’s it? Be an honest man.”
“We’d been musing about art and politics, and I joked that Abe, Tom, and Franklin were our greatest presidents, and guys with names like Grover, Ulysses, and Lyndon, not so much.”
“Not funny. Did you encourage him to leave me?”
“No. Never. Still, it’s healthy for him to get away from both of us.”
“That’s one man’s opinion. Being around me is not unhealthy for my son.”
Furious, I left a note, stormed over to the Magnolia stable, saddled up, and under the moonlight rode off into the Shenandoahs. I napped for a few hours in a meadow and returned when I was sure they were speeding up the Jersey Turnpike.
In the midst of a second night of fast-tempo sleeplessness, Frau Lou appeared and raged, “Don’t you see that you and Nathaniel are reenacting your version of his parents’ lives? Stop it, now!”
Over forty-eight frenetic hours I painted two series of twenty-four 6-×-6 V-shaped boards numbered 1–12, and then set them down on the floor using each piece as a number in a diamond-shaped clock. I painted “i deny time” and “be beyond time,” “time kills in time” and “let’s fuck time.” I used Savant Red or Savant Blue for the backgrounds and white letters for A.M. hours and black letters for P.M. hours.
Finally finished, I collapsed on the cot in my studio. When my eyes opened, Somersby was kneeling beside me, his long eyelashes fluttering. “Nathaniel called. I raced over. He’s been trying to reach you for two days and—”
“He presumed I’d done something unhealthy.”
“Worried more than presumed. He’s just being cautious,” Somersby stroked my hair, knotted from dried sweat and paint, with his manicured fingernails.
“I need to wash up. I’m a mess.”
“An undeniably lovely mess.”
“Somersby, are you flirting with me?”
“I’d say more than flirting …”
Somersby turned out to be quite a bit more Scarlet Pimpernel than Scarlett O’Hara. We enjoyed a fun few days in my studio and his house, but never inside our house. Somersby assured Nathaniel that I was “doing just peachy,” and I avoided talking to him. Hours before Nathaniel’s return, we relaxed with an afternoon refreshment in the gazebo on Somersby’s back lawn. He asked, “So?”
“So nothing. Was fun. Over.”
He exhaled. Relieved. “I will talk to Nathaniel about my breach of honor,” his tone lugubrious.
“So noble of you. Men! You always act like triumphant cavemen when you ‘had’ another man’s woman. We fucked because I chose to do it. I decide if and when to tell Nathaniel.”
When Nathaniel arrived, exhausted from the seven-hour drive, I threw my arms around him with genuine affection.
He drank a beer while talking about how Alchemy had already started a band with Amanda, who later became Absurda Nightingale. He asked if Somersby had taken good care of me.
“Yes,” I said perfunctorily, although I could not look him in the eyes.
“How good?” He twitched and fidgeted as if he suspected something.
“Very good.”
“What does that mean? Exactly.” His right foot tapped uncontrollably against the floor.
“Polyamorously good.”
He slammed the bottle on the counter and his voice trembled. “You did this because you’re angry at me.”
“You think I planned it?”
“Not consciously. You’re too impulsive. But when you’re angry, sex is your weapon. You seduced him to hurt me.”
“No man gets seduced.”
“By you, any man or every man can be seduced.”
“Stop. I’m not going to see him again. Only I can’t live in this backwoods. I can’t. I have to move back to New York at least part time.”
“Do you want to leave me?”
“No! Do you want me to repent? To admit I feel guilty? You want me to say you have saved me? Ha. I saved you. But do I wish I could be monogamous for you? Maybe. If I could change that one thing in me — maybe — but then I wouldn’t be me. I’d be someone else and I don’t want to be anyone else and if I were, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with me.”
“Impeccable Salome logic.” To steady his trembling hands, he gripped the kitchen counter. Then he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with his palms and faced me again. I spoke first.
“You’ve hurt me, too.” I didn’t mean his Parisian fling — that didn’t hurt me deeply — but his belief that Somersby or anyone could replace him, that scalded to my core.
He reached for a tissue from the box on the counter and blew his nose.
“Nathaniel, do you hate me now?”
“Of course not.” He put on his glasses. “I don’t want you to be anyone but you. I want only you, and for you to have what you want.” He walked to my side and cupped my head in his hands and kissed my hair. “I’ll serve notice that we’re taking back the apartment after January first.”
47 THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2008)
Child Is Father of the Man
Moses deplaned in Rio and took a taxi to a hotel in the Leblon section of the city. He ate dinner by himself at a churrascaria recommended by the concierge and spent the evening rehearsing his questions and the possible paths of the meeting.
In the morning, a hired car drove him to Alphaville, the walled and segregated wealthy community about fifteen miles from Rio. One thousand guards patrolled the city itself with its own parks, shops, and restaurants. At the north gate, the driver handed one of the guards a piece of paper with words written in Portuguese. “Please tell Malcolm Teumer that Moses is here.” Addressing the driver, the guard, dressed in militarystyle uniform, appeared to say something akin to “only preapproved visitors.” Moses stuck his head out the window and made an insistent dialing motion. “Call him.” After a brief phone conversation, the guard pointed, indicating they needed to pull to the side and wait. Moses leaned back. Breathed deep. Closed his eyes. Tried to visualize floating on a tranquil lake. The lake became a typhoon.