BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

CHAPTER 12-CONTEXT

JUSTIN’S POV
it comes down to reality

When you opened your eyes in the darkened room, it took you a minute to remember where you were…and why you had a headache. The absence of anything on the mantel reminded you that you shouldn’t take Brian’s left arm flung over your chest for granted. Indeed, you were probably fortunate not to be observing his sleeping form from outside The Rockford, where, if memory served, you probably belonged. And trying to figure out what sexy Darrin from Bewitched had to do with any of this was only making your headache worse. Or maybe you were still drunk; perhaps that explained the visions of gnome-like creatures doing an infuriated River Dance in your head.

Either way, lying underneath the weight of Brian’s arm and feeling his steady breath on your neck was sort of making everything better. Turning your head to the right, you noticed a figurine that Brian had forgotten as he’d sanitized your room, the one he’d been using as an ashtray. The gnome glared at you, as if holding you personally responsible for forcing him to dance alone. You tried not to stare at him, eventually just flipping him off. And then you turned your head slowly to the left to glance at Brian’s face; he didn’t look pissed, he looked peaceful and beautiful, and as your eyes swept down his body, much, much sexier than any Darrin. You closed your eyes again. That was the image you wanted behind them.

You were a married man. A married man. The concept seemed to be just sinking in. After years in New York trying to discover yourself, you’d come home and in less than two weeks, gotten hitched. And although your very recent past was with Brian and all that had happened since you’d returned, your mind was never far away from the city.

********************
you act like you were just born tonight
face down in a memory but feeling all right

As you rode the bus back to New York that Saturday in November 2008, you made a decision not to over-explain your absence to Daniel or Harper or anyone. Simply put, you were tired of being defined by tragedy. Daniel’s only question for you when you arrived back at your studio Sunday morning, almost tingling with inspiration, was, “That man, he’s your lover?”

Had Daniel not wanted to be that man, you might’ve taken that opportunity to further define yourself for him, but, as it was, you knew that any sympathy he felt for you would feel like something more to him.

So instead you stood on the stairs, anxious to have the studio all to your to yourself for the entire day, and responded, “Yeah, he is.”

Daniel stepped backwards, as if backing into the kitchen, both hands on his coffee cup and nodded, “Well, he’s a lucky man.”

So am I, you thought as you walked to the second floor.

Every blank canvas in your studio seemed to perk up when you walked into the room, closing the door behind you.

********************
sail on silver girl,
sail on by

Daniel wasn’t around for very much longer that day, his departure announced by a quiet knock on your door. When you opened it, he was in tears. “My mother, my mother has died. I have to go. I’ll be gone for probably at least a week—"

“Daniel, I’m so sorry. Oh god,” you said as you hugged him. “Where are you going?”

“Silver Spring, Maryland. That’s where she is, where she was, the home she lived in.”

“Okay.”

“Stay here, look after the place. I don’t have time to stop the mail, the paper, the—"

“Sure. Don't worry about it. Just go.”

As you walked downstairs with him, Jonathon was in the foyer. He was crying, too. He put his arm around Daniel’s shoulders and led him to the waiting cab. You walked behind them with Daniel’s suitcase. Your wave to them as they drove away was un-returned.

You would find out after Daniel returned that both his mother and Jonathon’s were in that home together, that the death of Emma Cartwright was destroying Sandra Massey. Losing her best friend was more than the eighty-six year old woman could take. Jonathon’s tears that day were foreshadowing. Sandra would die four months later after refusing to come live with Jonathon; she chose to keep her memories company.

********************
and the course of a lifetime runs
over and over again

Harper had been scarce now that Amelia was a toddler and unable to sleep quietly through her mother’s creative notions. You missed having her there, her and Amelia; the baby’s presence had meant that the two of you had to work in silence. You began to feel calm and centered when Harper would arrive with the baby carrier. It always meant an afternoon of peace, quiet, and inspiration. The dark tones germane to most of Harper’s work began to morph into pastels, into shades of innocence tinted with pink.

Harper would often take a break in the afternoon just to walk down the street, to do something that didn’t have anything to do with being a mother for a few minutes, and you were left alone with Amelia. The first time she woke up while in your care, she smiled at you, giggled, and burped. You rocked her carrier, and she fell back to sleep. The second time she woke up, she shit everywhere. When Harper returned, you feigned ignorance.

“Is Uncle Eggo allergic to dirty diapers?” Harper asked to Amelia in her baby voice as she changed her on the futon.

Amelia waved her little hand in the air and said, “Ah…ah!” as if confirming her mother’s suspicions.

So when Daniel left to bury his mother, you were truly alone, alone with your thoughts of Brian, of Chris, of Meredith and her son. Brian had more or less deposited you in bed after your post-funeral shower that day. Your brush, thick with paint, ran over the canvas with the ease and predictability of Brian’s hands over your body. He’d made love to you so slowly that day, as if he was patiently waiting for you to join him wherever he was. The safety you felt in his arms almost made you feel guilty. Brian had a way of fucking you so deliberately when words seem to fail him.

And not that you didn’t often return the favor, it was just that fucking wasn’t art to you. It was filling a need, expressing affection, a very, very nice way of making hours and hours seem like seconds.

Art was something that fought you, that struggled to be understood on its own terms, to define itself. There was no struggle when you and Brian made love; the two of you anticipated and met each other’s every need. You moved together flawlessly. Fucking Brian was like a dance; the music might change, but nothing else ever did.

You were sitting on the front steps of Daniel’s brownstone finishing a cigarette, contemplating the unpredictability of life, when you saw him walking toward you. Alan.

“What’s up? Full moon’s not ‘til the twenty-seventh.” You couldn’t be a friend of Harper’s and just not naturally come to know these things.

“Thought I’d mix it up a bit,” Alan joked with you, joining you on the steps. “Josie here?”

You offered him a cigarette and he took it, “No. I think she’s on an unofficial leave of absence now that Amelia’s crawling everywhere.”

“Dr. Dan?”

You laughed, “No,” and then you spoke before thinking, “His mother died yesterday.” You regretted the words as soon as you’d said them. Harper always made a point of protecting Alan from things, even memories.

A cloud came over Alan’s face, “Oh god. Poor guy.” He seemed genuinely concerned for Daniel; the sorrow you saw on his face was only for him. “I really needed her,” he said, as if he was talking to the sky.

“You can come in and take a shower. It’s okay.”

Alan smiled and laughed a little, “I needed her for more than that,” but he followed you inside anyway, taking you up on your offer. You made soup and sandwiches for the two of you while he showered and changed. He always looked like a completely different guy once he’d bathed. And he was much easier to talk to when he didn’t smell.

********************
two disappointed believers
two people playing the game

It always struck you that for someone who was homeless and lived how he did, Alan seemed to have manners and for the most part, was a pretty polite guy. The only time you’d ever seen him behave in a way that concerned you was when he was with Harper. He came downstairs with wet hair and thanked you for lunch as he sat down at the table across from you.

“It’s no problem. And I can make more, if you’re still hungry.”

Alan remarked that peanut butter and jelly was his favorite, and then, “I like that picture you’re painting. It’s really interesting.” It wasn’t uncommon for Alan to venture into the studio when he came over, almost like he was collecting pieces of his imagination as he looked over Harper’s work. But Harper didn’t have anything in progress in the studio that day, so he must’ve looked at yours.

“Thanks.”

“Is it you? In the cemetery?”

“Yeah.”

It was you. Probably the most realistic likeness you’d ever painted, albeit more of you as a young boy than the man you now were. You weren’t usually your own subject. Up until that day, no one had seen the painting you’d been working on; you’d started locking your studio, not that Daniel would’ve ever intruded. That wasn’t his style. You hadn’t wanted anyone to see it because you’d have to explain it. And explaining it made it feel too real. But Alan didn’t know your past and didn’t want anything from you beyond a shower and a meal, so you didn’t avoid the subject when he kept bringing it up, “The headstone is so much bigger than you. Sort of like a reverse-perspective.”

“I know.”

“And the long shadow cast over you, the perspective’s fucked up on that, too. It’s like you don’t know whose point of view that painting is supposed to be. Makes you stare at it a lot trying to figure it out—“

“Alan, can I ask you something?” you said, practically interrupting him.

“Sure.”

“Are you really crazy? I mean, mentally ill; you know what I mean.”

“Are you?”

The question struck you as odd, but somehow justified. “I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think I am either. I’m just supposed to be.”

“Supposed to be?” you asked, bringing the bread, peanut butter and jelly back to the table to make more sandwiches. Something inside told you that if you kept feeding him, he’d keep talking. There was more Debbie in you than you liked to admit.

Alan gave you a funny look, as if he was sizing you up, deciding if he could trust you, “From what I can remember, I had a rough time of it when my mother killed herself.”

“Well, that’s understandable. Anybody would, especially a little kid.”

Alan stacked two more sandwiches on his plate and cut them both at the same time, “I became what they like to call a ‘problem child.’” The way he said it, made you laugh. Alan laughed, too. “My grades fell, my teachers were worried about me. The school system started to battle with my Dad to have me evaluated.”

“Your teachers knew about your mother?”

“And that I found her. Once that information gets into your file in the school system, everybody knows.”

“Shit.”

“The funny thing is that my father would’ve jerked me at out of school and left me at home if it was legal, but he couldn’t. And he refused to let the school evaluate me, so he took me to my mother’s doctor instead. It was his way of rebelling or something.”

“And your mother’s doctor--?”

“Said I was crazy. Everyone in that hospital hated my father and felt like he was responsible for her death because he made her leave the hospital when she wasn’t well. I told the doctor that my father didn’t want me evaluated, and somehow a convenient diagnosis got in my records.”

“Alan, that is seriously fucked up.”

“There was a method to their madness, if not to mine. I started getting special services. Smaller classes, tutors, therapy, meds, you name it. As far as I was concerned, my life got a lot better, except that it made Josie’s maternal instincts come roaring out of her before she was even thirteen. Once I was ‘sick,’ it was like she made it her personal mission to take care of me, and she’s only a year older than me, but that didn’t stop her. She was hell bent on being a mother I could count on.”

“And was she?”

“She did what she could, tried to protect me from my Dad, who became angrier and angrier at me every time he thought about me being ‘sick’ like my mother. I dropped out of school in my junior year and disappeared. The rest, I guess, is history.”

“So you’re not crazy, then? Do you want some more milk?” Never had you thought those two questions would find themselves in the same utterance.

“Sure. I guess I’m not. I’m just extremely reluctant to live up to other people’s expectations. Every adult I ever met was more interested in diagnosing me than getting to know me.”

“But Harper believes that you’re really sick. She says your behavior is erratic, that you can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality.”

“More fun that way. Reality sucks.”

“It’s fun to lead her on?”

“No, it’s kind to let her be who she wants to be. Our lives were shit when we were little, and the only thing that ever seemed to make Josie happy was taking care of me. It’s who she is, who she wants to be.”

“Her denial runs that deep?”

“Doesn’t everybody’s, Eggo?”

********************
the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

“You know, this is really weird for me,” you told Alan after the two of you had gone upstairs. He was laying on the futon, no doubt getting ready to fall asleep like he always did and watching you paint. You never minded painting in front of Alan; he seemed to blend in like furniture.

“What’s really weird?”

“It’s just that you’ve always been such a tragic figure to me; it’s hard for me to see you any other way.”

“Yeah, well that’s true for everybody. We all see everybody through our own filter.”

“I guess you’re right,” you said to him as he got up and started looking through Harper’s desk. “Are you looking for something?”

“Did Josie keep any of Amelia’s baby clothes here? The real little ones?”

“Why?”

“I just need a couple things.”

“Why?”

Alan seemed to get agitated as you questioned him, finally sitting on the chair in front of Harper’s desk, “There’s a girl, a woman I know, who just had a baby, and she needs stuff. She doesn’t have anything.”

You opened the bottom drawer of Harper’s desk where she kept extra clothes for Amelia, “There’s stuff in here. Don’t you think you should ask her first?”

“She won’t mind,” Alan said, working his way through the drawer of pink, white, and lavender things until he found something that he thought would work. He took two pairs of pajamas and a pair of little white socks with lace on them.

“Don’t take those. Those are Amelia’s favorite socks.” The idea that an infant had a favorite pair of socks was preposterous, but they were her favorite.

“They don’t fit her anymore do they? They look like they’re for a newborn.”

He was right, “Yeah, you’re right. They don’t fit her anymore.”

“This is all I need,” he said, closing the drawer.

The question was bubbling inside you, and you finally got it out, “Is this your baby?”

Alan laughed, “God, no. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve fucked somebody?” You shook your head; you obviously had no idea. “It’s someone in our community; she just had it last night.”

“She had it in a hospital?”

Alan shook his head and his put the clothes into his coat pocket, “No, she had it with us.” And then his voice became agitated again, “And don’t tell me that we should’ve taken her to a hospital.”

“You should’ve—"

“She didn’t want to go.” He sat back down on the futon defeated, “None of them will go because they say they’ll help them get on their feet, but they don’t. They take their children away and the women end up back on the street.”

“You can’t raise a child in an abandoned subway tunnel,” you told him, your anger beginning to show. This was ridiculous.

“We never do. They never live. The mother’s have no milk. The baby will be dead in a few days. I just wanted her to have something so she could see how pretty her daughter is before—"

“Alan.”

“They don’t want to give their children away. They won’t. It’s just the way it goes. Besides, most of the babies would never live anyway; they’re addicted to drugs.” He got up to leave and you didn’t stop him, “So just let it go. This is the best thing I can do for her right now. I want her to see her baby like the pretty girl she is, so that’s how she’ll remember her.”

You looked back at your painting of the cemetery and thought of that little baby in Amelia’s clothes, “What’s her name?”

“The mother’s name is Tracy, but that’s not her real name. I don’t know her real name. Don’t need to know it. Thanks for lunch and letting me use the shower and all.”

“No, I mean the baby. What’s the baby’s name?”

“It’s better if they don’t name them. It just makes it worse for everyone.”

You stood in Daniel’s doorway, watching Alan walk down the street, how he kept his head down the entire time. You couldn’t shake the image in your mind of Alan in the stench underneath the streets trying so desperately to give this woman a memory she could hang onto.

He and Harper are more alike than he thinks, you thought as you went back inside.

********************
what is the point of this story?
what information pertains?
the thought that life could be better
is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains

Daniel returned from his mother’s funeral and put his nose to the grindstone. He spoke at conference after conference, stayed in his office until way past his usual bedtime reading and taking notes, started coming home later and later, the fault of his bigger patient load. Jonathon told you it was self-inflicted, “It’s the way he deals with everything. He lets something else consume him. He’ll settle down in a few months.”

But he didn’t. He began to volunteer his services to local Assisted Living communities that were woefully short staffed. He told you that at those places, he was mostly just a highly-educated listener. “Those people don’t need my skills, they need human interaction.”

You wanted to tell him that you thought he did to, but in Daniel’s very quiet way, there always seemed to be something slightly angry buried beneath his skin. You were afraid to scratch it for fear of setting it free. Denial and avoidance weren’t new concepts to you; you’d fallen in love with both of them years ago.

But what fueled that denial and avoidance?

That was more of a mystery to you, one whose answer had to lie within you because you could feel it down there somewhere, feel your fingers stretching and stretching as it was always just out of reach. In the two years that followed your return to the city, you tried to find the answer to that question everywhere. And instead of an answer to that question, you found answers to ones that you didn’t even realize you were asking:

That Harper married Sam because she was pregnant and prays everyday for her marriage to work, even though she doesn’t believe in god.

That Zeek was only good for two things: fucking and disappearing.

That the day that Maya broke up with her boyfriend, Brian, was one of the happiest days of your life, but you’d never tell her that. Never. Until she started dating a guy named Larry, and you broke down and begged for her to stop ignoring Brian’s repeated, apologetic phone calls and take him back.

That Alan chose the life he led under the city because it gave him some sort of purpose, because he wanted to define his own circumstances, and, perhaps, because it served as some sort of necessary shield for him from the rest of the world.

That Jonathon shopped when he was unhappy, and ecstatic, and bored, and under the weather, and, once, even when he was horny. And sometimes when Daniel was busier and busier, he took you with him and made you pick out clothes that he thought more suited your ‘current station in life.’ Jonathon’s denial lived in his wallet.

That working out of the home of one of New York’s most respected psychiatrists and art lovers gave you an instant connection to galleries, collectors, and influential people. More than once, Daniel had dined with a friend who just happened to know a friend who had a daughter who ran a gallery in SoHo…Chelsea…Manhattan, and that these contacts actually landed the mayor of New York City at one of your shows. And one of your paintings, fancied by his wife, is now hanging in his house.

That Amelia would never learn your name because her mother told her you were ‘the waffle man, the waffle man, do you know the waffle man?’ And Amelia loves waffles with ‘surp.’ And you.

That everyone you’d grown to love and care about in the city seemed to be living for some purpose or someone. And as you worked late one night trying to finish a piece that you just wanted to be done with, you heard Daniel’s crush-of-late through the walls of your studio, “Daniel”.

That you missed hearing your name whispered and moaned like that. A lot. You went downstairs to Daniel’s study, staring at one of your paintings above his desk, picked up the phone, and called him.

Brian answered quickly, right in the middle of the deep breath you were taking. You said what you wanted to say, what you needed to say, and hung up before he could answer you. When he called right back, you jumped in your chair.

Daniel wandered downstairs a few minutes later as you laid on the sofa in the living room thinking about what Brian had just said, “Who was that?” he asked you, taking two bottles of water out of the fridge.

“Sorry, that was Brian. I used your phone; my cell is dead.”

Daniel sat on the edge of the sofa, “That’s fine. When my phone rings this late at night, it’s usually because of a patient.”

“Oh, yeah. I didn’t think about that.” You looked at the clock; it was almost eleven thirty.

“Everything okay? You look a little numb.”

You ran your fingers through your hair, “Yeah, I’m okay… It’s just that… I’m going home.”

Lyrics taken from Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind, Rosanne Cash’s Seven Year Ache, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion, Paul Simon’s Train in the Distance, Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence, and Paul Simon’s Train in the Distance.