The Rescuer

  It was true, I now shopped for my brother. I prepared meals for my brother which sometimes he ate, or partially ate. There was an unexpected pleasure in this—the simplicity of providing meals for another. To prepare something that would give pleasure to another in the next several minutes. For otherwise, my connection to the world was purely abstract.

  Rarely did I think now of Professor A. Or of my room in Newcomb Hall where the residence advisor must have thought I’d quit graduate school without notifying anyone.

  Each morning I vowed to re-establish my residence at the University, if only through a telephone call or e-mail. For I very much feared that my stipend installments would be terminated.

  By each evening, I’d forgotten.

  Harvey seemed less resentful of me now. He seemed to have accepted it, I’d moved into his life.

  His secret life, I’d never entirely penetrated. Though I had ideas of what this secret life was—obviously.

  More frequently Harvey began to confide in me. When the shadow-grime was gone from his eyes, and his eyes were relatively clear. When his voice wasn’t raddled with phlegm but relatively clear. And the space where his tooth was missing wasn’t so visible.

  He hadn’t given up the seminary, he insisted. He was on a kind of—sabbatical.

  Nor had he given up his scholarly project. If I heard him muttering in his room, it was Aramaic he was speaking—to himself.

  “Obviously, a scholar who knows six languages is more equipped than one who knows only three or four. A scholar who knows sixteen languages is more equipped than one who knows only six. There’s no place for specialists who immerse themselves in a single culture now—that’s not the way things are done today.”

  He couldn’t proceed, Harvey said, without a more complete knowledge of Sanskrit than he had. He’d never learned ancient Macedonian, and knew just the rudiments of Mycenaean Greek.

  His voice quavered. I saw the madness shimmering before him like a mirage—you will never know enough languages, you will never know enough of anything. You are broken, defeated. You must throw your life away to avoid humiliation.

  Problem was, Harvey continued, his brain had finally cracked like a patch of arid earth. You’ve seen cracks in the earth, so Harvey described his cracked brain.

  This had happened, this cracking, about eighteen months before. He’d tried to keep going for as long as he could with his cracked brain but finally even his prescribed medications had failed him. He’d had to remove himself to Trenton where there were “some people” he’d come to know—“To save my life.”

  Only a week before I’d arrived Harvey had collapsed on the street, been brought by ambulance to the local ER where it was discovered that he was “severely dehydrated,” and so he was hospitalized, and IV fluids dripped into his veins to prevent renal failure. On the third day of his hospitalization he’d detached the IV line from the crook of his arm and managed to slip out of the hospital and find his way back to Grindell Park.

  Are you a drug addict?—I could not bring myself to ask. Are you a junkie?

  He needed to have professional help, I told him. If he’d allow me, I could assist him.

  “Help? Too late.”

  “A clinic, rehab—”

  “Rehab? Too late.”

  Harvey sneered, laughing. His eyes, which I’d believed to be clear and alert, seemed to be occluding over.

  Daringly I said, “What exactly is—what is it, Harvey? I wish you’d tell me.”

  “Nothing to tell except I’ve been rehabilitated. What you see before you is rehabilitation.”

  The air in Harvey’s apartment was so close and stale, I had to stagger out, outside. In my car parked at the curb I sat for a while dazed and stunned until several of the gangsta boys in Grindell Park drifted around the car, tapped at the windows, grinned and laughed at me mouthing words—(obscenities?)—my averted eyes could not decipher.

  Eventually, they drifted away. As dusk neared, their customers began to arrive. Quite possibly, I was under Leander’s protection. They would know this. They would honor this. I was one of Leander’s white girls, safe in his protection.

  * * *

  Here was Harvey’s secret, revealed at last: he was writing poetry.

  “Poetry? You?”

  Chiseling poetry, it felt like. Digging in stone with his fingernails.

  (Saying this, Harvey lifted his hands to stare at his ragged broken nails. The stump of his smallest finger, right hand.)

  I did not know what to say in reply to Harvey’s sudden pronouncement. I associated poetry-writing with a brave and reckless futility beyond that of scholarly research into extinct languages and could not imagine taking up such a futility, of my own volition.

  Surely poetry-writing was a curse. Particularly in America where the poetry of street-speech, the poetry of popular culture, and the poetry of finance were supreme.

  “Can I see some of your poems, Harvey? Please.”

  It was one of our dinnertimes. When Harvey consented to eat, or partially eat, one of the meals I prepared for him. Many of our dinners were pasta, with (canned) tomato sauce to which I’d added onions, fresh tomatoes, and spices—oregano, basil, red pepper. Another of our meals was scrambled eggs, or an approximation of an omelet into which I’d stirred fried onions, red peppers, mushrooms. If Harvey was in an Up Mood he would eat, hungrily. (For poor Harvey was wasting away, his hands big-knuckled as the skin shrank and tightened over the knobby bones.) In an Up Mood, he might even praise me which suffused my heart like a surge of warm blood—how yearning I was, to be praised, therefore loved! (Though Harvey might also muddle my name, confusing “Lydia” with another of our sisters, to whom he’d been closer when we were growing up.)

  In a Down Mood, Harvey could not eat. And if he tried to eat, he became nauseated and began to gag. (And worse.) In a Down Mood Harvey was too restless to sit still for long but paced about the apartment’s airless rooms muttering to himself—Aramaic? (It might as well have been Sanskrit or Mycenaean Greek for all that I knew.) Compulsively he went to the window to peer out, and down at the street; he went to the door, to open it and peer out into the hall; each time his cell phone rang, he leapt to answer it; each time there was a noise out in the street, or on the stairs, he twitched and jumped as if he were being exquisitely tortured.

  If a call came on Harvey’s cell, he spoke in a lowered voice so that I couldn’t hear. Shortly afterward he would leave the apartment not to return until late that evening and if I tried to call his cell, which he’d taken with him, my call went directly to voice mail leaving me in a void.

  But it was in one of Harvey’s Up Moods that he told me about writing poetry—his “decision” to become a poet.

  At dinner he’d had two or three glasses of wine with our spicy spaghetti sauce and pasta. He was led to confide in me: “Poetry is not statement but sound. Poetry is music.”

  And: “A poet is one who communicates to the heart, through sound.”

  I asked Harvey to read me one or two of his poems but he seemed shy suddenly. Or whatever Harvey was when he retreated inside his head—stubborn, sulky.

  “You wouldn’t understand. You’re an ‘intellectual.’ ”

  I wanted to protest You’re an intellectual! I am just an imitation.

  “None of my poems are finished. I have hundreds of fragments—shimmering and transient as flies’ wings. Poetry is our revenge against the stupidity of society. Poetry is beautiful but can hurt, like whirring blades.”

  I had not heard Harvey speak so passionately for years. Once, he’d spoken in such a tone about God.

  In a voice carefully controlled so that no emotion was revealed Harvey recited: “ ‘Dawn-dusk-dew. Even-ing. Lunar scape. Rhomboidal radiance.’ ” He waited, breathing audibly. It was as if my very private brother had torn open his shirt to reveal his naked chest, his b
eating heart, to me.

  I felt a wild impulse to laugh. Rhomboidal radiance! It would be futile to ask what this could possibly mean, for of course, as Harvey would say, poetry does not mean.

  Harvey said, “It’s the dreamy vowels of ‘dawn-dusk-dew’ that are seductive. And the beautiful word which I’ve broken into twin spondees—‘even-ing.’ Note the drawn-out sound of ‘lunar’ and the harsher nasal sound of the ‘a’ of ‘scape.’ ”

  I told Harvey that it was very—interesting.

  “A poetry of sheer sound. For the inner ear—the soul.”

  Harvey paused, shutting his eyes. A noise in the near distance, as of a firecracker exploding, or gunfire, did not distract him. “ ‘Sleek-sleet-sky-shattering.’ ”

  “Very—striking.”

  “ ‘Tight fists of shit.’ ”

  Seeing my startled reaction Harvey laughed, pleased.

  “Actually, that’s my single complete poem, a haiku. The title explains all—‘Self-Portrait America 2012—‘Tight fists of shit.’ ”

  This “haiku” was stunning to me. The ferocity with which Harvey recited it suggested a meaning far deeper than the merely musical.

  “It’s ingenious, Harvey. Three spondees, isn’t it?”

  “Essentially, yes. ‘Tight fists’ and ‘shit’ are spondees—‘of’ is lightly stressed. If read properly, the poem embodies its (unintended) meaning: ‘Tight fists of shit.’ You will note the strong ‘i’ repetition.”

  Harvey opened his eyes wide now, and was staring rudely at me. As if he’d detected something forced and fraudulent beneath my schoolgirl enthusiasm.

  “Do you have any other poems? I’d like to—”

  “Not that you’d like, I think.”

  Harvey’s face shut up tight. A few seconds later, as if the caller had been purposefully waiting, his cell phone rang and he staggered off to answer it, in the other room.

  * * *

  Then, there were interrupted mealtimes.

  Loud knocking at the door, and it was Leander, Tin, and Maralena.

  Harvey hurried to let them in. Harvey offered them wine, ordering me in a lowered voice to wash our glass tumblers.

  “Lydia was just making dinner. Will you stay? Eat with us?”

  Leander grinned and shrugged, as if he were doing us a favor. Tin frowned, staring down at the floor; he seemed deeply moved. Festive Maralena said, “Ohhh thank you, Har-vey! We would sure love that.”

  Maralena insisted upon helping me at the stove. Boiling pasta, checking to see if it was al dente before dumping it into the colander. In the cramped kitchen area Maralena laughed and gossiped with me as if we were old friends, or sisters. Several times she nudged against me as if accidentally, like a big upright purring cat.

  The men sat at the table, drinking. But they drank red wine as if it were beer, or a soft drink. Leander’s wild dreadlocks tumbled down his narrow muscled back and the Maori tattoo on his face glared whitely against his purplish-dark skin. Tin, flat-faced, small-eyed, vaguely Asian, was so solid-fleshed, the chair he sat in creaked and wobbled. Leander teased, “You fat-ass! Watch you’self you gon break these people’s nice chair.” It was part of Leander’s humor, the chair in which Tin was sitting was secondhand and the vinyl seat soiled and certainly not nice.

  Tin muttered what sounded like Fuck you. His flat face darkened with blood.

  Harvey seemed dazed by our visitors, whose presence transformed the bleak setting. Leander was swaggering and charismatic as a rap star, Maralena gorgeous as the singer whose name I didn’t know how to pronounce—Beyoncé. Even Tin, homely, strangely self-effacing, with a small mouth like a vise, exerted a curious sort of attraction. Beside these so physical individuals Harvey and I felt to ourselves like white-skinned wraiths.

  And there was Maralena carrying plates of steaming-hot food to the table, slyly nudging her thigh against Harvey’s arm.

  Maralena wore gold lamé pants so tight they might have been poured molten onto her shapely buttocks, belly and legs. And, on her shapely torso, a black jersey tank top. When she’d arrived at the door she’d been wearing a faux-fox jacket over these clothes and on her head her shoulder-length cornrowed hair quivered like slithery little snakes.

  Though I was nervous in the presence of our unexpected guests it was exciting to me to be feeding them. And my brother Harvey, who was my entire family now. Again I felt the happiness of bringing pleasure to others in an immediate and observable way.

  Leander, Tin, and Maralena ate hungrily. At the ShopRite I’d bought a loaf of French bread which they broke into large pieces, shoved into the spaghetti sauce, and devoured.

  “Real good, Lyd’ja!”

  “Re-al good, girl.”

  Maralena seemed just slightly surprised, my cooking was so tasty.

  They ate, and they drank. In a daze of happiness Harvey filled their tumblers with red wine. Flat-faced Tin never spoke but only grunted, moving his jaws like a masticating insect.

  After dinner, Maralena helped me clear away the plates, rinse and wash them by hand. “You a true sister to you’ brother, Lyd’ja. L’nd’r be takin note of that.”

  What Maralena meant, I had no idea. Her exotic eyes were fixed on me, I found it difficult to breathe.

  And Maralena’s special fragrance, that wafted from her hair and from the dip of her black jersey tank top revealing a shadowy crevice between her breasts.

  “Thing is, girl, you’ brother in some deep shit-hole with L’nd’r. Feedin him some nice meal like this is a good thing. L’nd’r got heart, no matter what his enemies say of him he be stone cold killer.”

  Maralena had spoken just loudly enough so that Leander could overhear this remark if he wished. He’d been leaning back in his chair and now let the legs slam against the floor, hard. “Shut you’ mouth, ’Lena, or somebody shut it for you. You read me?”

  Maralena giggled, shivering. To me she said, “That boy just talkin. He ain’t gon touch any blood-kin of his, he know what that bring on his head.”

  Leander sneered, “You sure of that, girl?”

  Boldly Maralena said, “Dint I just say I was?”

  Now the table was cleared, Leander suggested that they play poker—just him, Tin, and Harvey.

  Leander flourished a pack of cards. Showily shuffling them like a professional player.

  I saw that Harvey wanted to say yes. But that Harvey knew he should say no.

  Harvey tugged at his mutilated ear, which was slow to heal and often itched.

  “You, Tin? You in, eh?”

  Tin nodded impassively.

  “Har-vey, my man?”

  Harvey moved his head, numbly. A foolish smile transforming Harvey’s stubbled face.

  Maralena said to me, “They be practicin for ’Lantic City, where they gon get their asses kicked at poker.” She giggled, running her fingers through her cousin’s greased plaits in a way that seemed daring to me, provocative. Leander slapped at her hand. Maralena laughed and stepped away from Leander who was glaring at her, not smiling. Just slightly shaken—(I think this was so)—Maralena slid her arm around my waist, tight. “My girlfriend Lyd’ja and me gon hang out in Lyd’ja’s room listenin to some mad cool music. You boys be nice to you’ host now, you hear me?”

  Maralena walked me out of the living room and in the direction of the bedroom. It seemed strange to me, Maralena seemed to know her way around my brother’s apartment. Behind us I heard Harvey’s slow voice: “What kind of—stakes? Are we playing for money? The problem is, Leander—I don’t have much cash right on hand, which you might know.”

  “Shit man, sure I know. This be some friendly way Tin an me, we gon give you the opportunity to win big, climb up out of you’ deep hole. See?”

  Maralena led me forcibly away. Though it didn’t feel forcible since I didn’t try to resist.

  *
* *

  Next day, Harvey lay comatose in his bed until noon.

  He’d lost—oh Christ!—money to the boys.

  How much, I asked.

  Too much, Harvey said.

  How much, please tell me.

  Harvey flung his arm over his face, shivering and shuddering. He seemed about to speak further to me but then I heard his shallow erratic breathing, indicating that he’d fallen back to sleep.

  All that I knew was that the three men had been playing poker and drinking and (just possibly) smoking hashish after Maralena had gone home at midnight and I’d lain on my bed partially undressed, and fell asleep to voices laughing and cursing in the other room.

  It is family life almost.

  They would not hurt family—would they?

  * * *

  The situation seemed grave to me. Soon, Leander would come by to collect.

  More than a finger-stub. More than a part of an ear.

  There was thirteen hundred dollars in my bank account. I would write a check for half this amount, to give to Harvey—if Harvey would promise me he wouldn’t spend it on something else but give it to Leander.

  “Of course,” Harvey said eagerly.

  “But—you promise? You will give it to Leander?”

  Harvey insisted, yes.

  I didn’t trust Harvey. But I didn’t think that I had any choice in the matter.

  * * *

  In my bedroom, which was also my study, we’d listened to music from Maralena’s iPhone. Heated dance music it sounded to me, a Latin beat, rap from the islands Maralena said, the DR where she’d been born and from which she’d been brought—by her mother—at the age of five. Much of what Maralena confided in me I didn’t understand, mesmerized by her rich warm musical voice and by her rich warm fragrant skin, the Maralena eyes, the Maralena nose, the Maralena mouth tasting of wine kissing me, lifting her wineglass to my mouth, urging me to drink, red wine that was nutty-sweet, a dark-nutty-sweetness that numbed the interior of my mouth and the interior of my skull as Maralena kissed my forehead, my nose, my mouth and Maralena kissed the ticklish inside of my neck so that I squirmed breathless and helpless and I was lying on the sofa that Harvey and I had dragged into the room which served now as my bed, badly stained and sagging sofa of a kind you’d see abandoned behind a Dumpster, but over this I’d draped a blanket so you couldn’t see the stains and wear and tear of decades and Maralena was sharp-voiced suddenly wanting to keep me from falling asleep, shaking my shoulders and her talon fingernails sinking into my skin—“You, girl! Lyd-ja! Wake up!”—her voice urgent, alarmed; so that I thought She has fed me something. Some drug but the thought was a frail straw not nearly substantial enough to jolt me into wakefulness.