“All things are possible until they are proved impossible. Even the impossible may only be so, as of now.” Pearl S. Buck
I am not sure what I bring out in my sister, why since childhood she disrobes around me. When my mother was alive, she told me it might have to do with our father covering up everything. He could not bare to see people confessing on the reality shows. He covered his face, while watching the TV, for fear his own shame might be revealed. He covered his body, while fishing with my mother in the sunlight of the Atlantic Ocean to hide his growing waist and self-revulsion, and he denied his illegal activities as CEO of a major American manufacturing company, even when the judge fined him and he lost his position. “She is compensating,” said my mother. “Your father was withdrawn. Ignore Harriet. That is what I did to your father. It worked. He divorced me.”
It was hard for me to ignore Harriet. When Harriet was five, and I was nine, she called me to her room. Her room was all girlie pink with a white canopy bed. Harriet’s pale body was naked on a pink teddy bear shaped shag rug. The violets on the wallpaper were small and shy. Not like Harriet. She said, “Hey, look at this. It looks like an onion. Don’t you think?” She spread her legs and showed me her privates. She had done this before.
My mother told Harriet repeatedly to keep her privates to herself. “Cross those legs, Harriet. Don’t show your panties to anyone.”
“Yes,” said Harriet. Harriet must have developed an early case of senility, for those words were erased from her mind. She kept nothing closed or covered, when we were together. Harriet’s disrobed more frequently as we both matured. She was casual about getting undressed in front of me, when we changed into swimsuits at the beach and had no problem running half naked through the hallway to the bathroom, when she was late for school. It made me realize how uncomfortable I was with the female body. When I told my mother Harriet was up to her old tricks, my mother told me to be patient. “She’s eight years old, “ I protested. “ What do you mean be patient? She should know better by now.”
Since Harriet behaved normally in front of everyone else but me (she was the nasty younger sister, whacking the baby when the adults left the room), my mother did not take what I said seriously. “Remember, I told you to divorce her. You can divorce yourself from anyone.”
“How do I do that since we are not married?”
“You can be married to people in many different ways, Earl. Life will show you,” she said and went off to do something away from her annoying husband and offspring.
When I turned twenty- five, I decided it was time to divorce Harriet. It wasn’t easy. We lived in the same city. She telephoned me weekly, until I caved in and went out to eat with her or agreed to meet her at some dark club, where guys wore spiked heels, pierced their tongues, and dressed in police uniforms. For a while, I was able to keep these meetings to a minimum by telling her I was working overtime and making lots of money. She understood the need to make money. She had several jobs to support herself. She worked in the evenings as a stripper at a club called Honey. The club was on Route 20, hidden between truck stops and used car dealerships. She also cleaned affluent women’s homes in the suburbs.
It was Harriet’s twenty- first birthday last Tuesday. I agreed to meet at the usual Chinese restaurant for lunch. I was running late. Since Harriet has no stamina for waiting, she came to my office. She wore a plastic yellow raincoat. I ignored her nipple peeping through one undone button. It wasn’t easy for the guys in my office to see my sister dressed like Marilyn Monroe. “I’m going to a costume party tonight. I want to test out my costume. How do I look?” she asked. Her red lips were alluring. Her short blonde hair perfect. She wore glasses like Marilyn did in “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” She acted stupid which was easy for her. “I am Marilyn Mon ....roe,” she told the guys in a breathless voice.
The guys in my office gaped at her peek a boo breast and asked her to do the famous Marilyn pose, where Marilyn stood over a vent on the sidewalk and air blew her dress upward. There happened to be such a vent near Joe Michlen’s desk. I said nothing. I never commented on her lack of clothing or her actions or her monologues on the phone (ignoring her odd comments and actions was my divorce plan) about how she had played strip poker and scrabble with a fellow worker. “Of course he won. I was down to my undies in ten minutes.”
I am not a good brother. I take no interest in Harriet’s daily life. I don’t know if she has friends. What did I have in common with my whacko sister except DNA? I know little about her except her strange behavior. It may be seeing her onion that turned the tide of our relationship. It could also have been the fact that I was not fond of women. I knew this since I was thirteen, when looking at Sam Wilker, the boy who sat next to me in Math class, gave me an erection. I knew this definitely, when Sam and I shared our feelings for one another behind the lockers in the gym. The janitor found us with our pants down. He told my mother. She told me to ignore my feelings and not let boys touch me in those private spaces.
“How do I do that?” I asked.
She replied, “Life will teach you.”
Before working in the business world, I was employed as a teacher in a school for disturbed adolescent boys on the grounds of the state hospital. They let me go because of questionable activity with a ten-year-old student. I had asked him, if he wanted to look at a Mapplethorpe art photo of two naked men. I thought the sight of male anatomy would be inspiring and give him self-esteem. He was shy and withdrawn. He had eyes as brown as a bowl of dark chocolate and his skin was olive. He had a twitch in his left eye that aroused my desire to care for him.
I worshiped him. The boy was not a God. He was a tattletale. I found this out, when the principal asked for my resignation. “Mr. Lowe, we are concerned with the rehabilitation of disturbed boys, not the exploitation. Therefore the board is asking you to resign, or we will have to take unpleasant measures.” Could anything be more unpleasant than dealing with Harriet? Even though I didn’t think so, I resigned.
I became a financial planner. This job lasted two and a half years. I didn’t reach my quota of clients for over six months towards the end of this period. My supervisor tried to help me. He suggested a new wardrobe, a public speaking class. I didn’t care. I ‘d lost interest in profit and numbers. I’d lost interest in people. I blame Harriet. She has stalked me in a strange way and distorted my thinking. Because of Harriet, I am attracted to unusual people with whom I have little contact. People who make no sense to me, like the man with the long violin case who lives above me in the rooming house.
The man left every day at 11:05 a.m. not earlier, not later. He wore a long black trench coat rain or shine, and he had a pair of sunglasses that were studded with white diamond looking shapes. His head was covered with a wide brimmed hat. He passed the streams of cars that floated by in this busy yet somber mid sized city, walked to the river across from our brownstone, and then he disappeared behind the pine tree that clung ardently to its pine cones, while the noise of chainsaws dismantled a younger sister a few feet away. It must be unbearable to see a species member being torn apart. We can’t hear the cries of trees, but I know they make loud unruly noises like my sister Harriet, when things are not going well. They might whimper, “My pine cones look like turnips,”or some remark about tree reproductive organs.
I named the mystery man Edgar. The mystery of Edgar makes my heart race. I conjure up images of what is in his violin case, and what is under his coat. I’ve never heard music from his room. I’ve never heard anything from his room. It is quiet like sheep on a vacant looking hillside far from humanity.
Waiting for Edgar had become the central light of my thoughts. I began to crave him. I undressed him with my mind. Some days, before he came walking from behind the trees, I imagined he would decide to walk to my apartment, ring my bell and say, “What’s for dinner?” like we had known each other for years. As I dreamt of him, I sat on the floor raising my eyes above the windowsill, not enough to be seen, only enough to see the object of my desire. I composed pictures of his face, his skin, the way he looked underneath the raincoat. I cut out pictures of men in magazines and started an Edgar bulletin board. I could not stop thinking about what was in the dark violin case, with the unreadable words on its surface.
I listened to the radio and waited for him to leave and return. I rarely washed and ate little. I looked at magazines where Harriet was the model to pass more time. Ignoring Harriet had created a bizarre reverse effect. She took to dressing up. Her interest in clothing got her a weekend job modeling. She was in the latest issue of Oh Funky Chic, wearing a striped towel made of Egyptian cotton in an incredibly high thread count. Her skin was tinged brown from the tanning, her hair was frizzy. She was a beige creature who I barely recognized, wearing a tight yellow t-shirt and a flouncey purple woven skirt. I never noticed before that my sister was beautiful and statuesque. She was like a flamingo, colorful and strong and fragile looking standing in a blue ocean, where the picture was taken. I followed the contours of her skirt and how it lay flat against her legs. Would I ever feel okay about Harriet?
I watched Edgar, as if he were a continuous movie. I set the pace of my day by his activities. I noticed flashes of color under his coat on days, when the wind blew from the river. I thought I saw red or was it maroon or crimson? They are my favorite colors. It could have been the floaters in my eyes. I have had a lot lately. I think it is a kind of subliminal message to myself of my impending demise, or perhaps a warning of global Armageddon beeping to me from some alien part of myself. I often feel I could spontaneously combust from the curiosity of this man in the black coat. There are warnings walking around now that terror has entered the world. Is Edgar a suicide bomber disguised as a violinist?
I spoke to Harriet an hour ago. I try to meet with her only on the phone, unless she persists for twenty-minute intervals whining about a live meeting. She told me she has taken up worshipping the sun. It sounded like a cult, until she told me she was going to a tanning salon. Harriet is undressing again. She vacillates about most everything. This time it is for a purpose I can understand.
“Why don’t you come with me to the tanning salon? You could use some colour,” she said during the conversation.
“How do you know I could use colour? Do you have a picture phone?” Harriet did not answer.
“I am busy,” I said. I was waiting for Edgar. It didn’t matter that I was white as powder and Harriet offered to pay for the tanning treatment. Edgar would be arriving home. I had to stay at my post like the sentinel.
“I am waiting for Edgar,” I told Harriet
“Who is Edgar?” said Harriet.
“A violinist friend from the Boston Pops.”
“Lucky you. Musicians are interesting people.”
I shivered with excitement. It could only mean one thing. Edgar was coming home.
“Are you there?” said Harriet.
“Do you mean that literally?”
Harriet hung up the phone. She could not comprehend that I had no interest in changing my skin color, or that people are not always present, when you speak to them. I watched Edgar walk down the street past the Wong’s corner grocery store and the cleaners and the Pentecostal church I had attended briefly (I was never able to get slain in the spirit), and the dog park. He held the black violin case under his arm. I never saw his eyes. The glasses were always on blocking the view. It was getting dark earlier. We were on the other side of summer. When I raised my binoculars to look at Edgar, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing him in the correct light. He looked different tonight as the summer faded. He looked older. As he turned to pick up a dropped glove, I saw his face for the first time in profile. He had a turned up nose. For a moment I thought it was abnormally short like a pug’s, and then another glance and it was nothing unusual. My eyes had been playing tricks on me recently. I thought tall things were short and long things tall. The world was getting wider and condensed at the same time.
I noticed Edgar’s fingers as he tightly held the violin case. They were long and tapered like candles. He turned the key in the door and was gone. I saw this as I peered over the window ledge of my garden apartment. I decided that Edgar was definitely a violinist who traveled each day to rehearsals. He wore the glasses to protect his delicate eyes that felt and saw events too painful for a mere mortal. Edgar was a genius. There was a knock on my door.
I looked through the peephole and thought I saw my sister, tall and statuesque with a hat of fruit on her head and holding a picnic basket saying, “You need a good meal.” And so I let her in, but it was Edgar dressed in his black coat and carrying his violin case.
“I hate to disturb you,” he said. “I’m your upstairs neighbor. I’m locked out. I need to call a friend to get a key.”
“Come in,” I said stunned, as if I had been shot by a policeman, while getting into my own car. “I’m Earl.”
Edgar was tall like my sister. He took off his hat, and his hair was curly like hers. He asked me, if he could sit down on my imitation Louis the 14th chair, while he waited for his friend and the key.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “ Can I take your coat?”
“Sure,” he said. When he removed the coat, I saw Harriet in her string thong and her face was Edgar’s. To my surprise Edgar had breasts and hips. Edgar was a woman. She sat on the chair and removed her glasses, and I saw her blue eyes and lashes as long as Harriet’s. She wore a cashmere sweater and a short jean skirt. I pointed to her violin case. “Do you play?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
“No, I crochet.”
“What?” I said.
“I work at a craft store. I carry my yarn in this case. Cool, huh?”
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s a promotion to sell yarn. My boss asked me to dress this way. Keeps people guessing. It was my mother’s violin case. She wanted me to play the violin. I had no ear for it, but she pressured me. When she died, I threw the violin out and used the case for my yarn and needles. Would you like to learn to crochet?”
“I use my mother’s fishing pole as a clothesline,” I said lying.
“Isn’t life strange?” she said.
“No,” I said about the crocheting. “Yes,” I said about life. After she left, I took my position at the window waiting for someone wearing a long dark coat that covered his boxer shorts.
***
I live next to Earl. He has a silent forlorn expression around his lips, as if he’s angry with someone who abandoned him, on a desolate salty island out in the sea, without one concerned thought. I’ve watched him for the five years I’ve lived here in this brick apartment complex, where mostly old people live. There was litheness in his step in the early years, when I saw him leave each morning. He had a job once, I imagine. He is a young man. Over time he became weary, like a hunched over woman with bone deformities. I suppose he did not drink enough milk (many men living alone do not know how to eat right), if you believe that milk will keep your bones strong. I do not believe in milk. My doctor tells me to drink it. I ignore him.
I believe in nettle and dandelion greens and the power of thought, (Norman Vincent Peale, you know him?). I used to pick dandelion greens from the spaces between the cement sidewalk blocks, when I went out for walks. All that has stopped. I am too old to do anything but look out my window and eat frozen dinners heated in my microwave, (when I have an appetite and the microwave works). Something odd has happened in the recent months. I can see beyond the periphery of things. It is what happens with age. I guess. I have no one to ask, to compare experience with. Everything diffuses, even the sunlight in the park. It has a wide internal glow like my hands, and it is inside every object I see.
In my youth, that ephemeral thing of memory, I earned a reputation as a printmaker. I etched images in copper. Acid burned them to life. It is the way it was and is for me. The need to form shapes. My work was opaque in the early years and stiff. Now it is crashing softly like autumn leaves. It is urgent and full.
At ninety-five, I am skeletal except for my skin that looks like rice paper. When I hold my hands to the light, the light goes through my palm. This saturation makes me shine, as if my source is a heated electric coil. Some days I am not sure if time or I exist. No one from the world outside my window visits me, and the phone does not ring. My friends, my three husbands are gone. I am entombed in silence, except for food deliveries twice a month from a man who wears a long coat, a hat, and sunglasses. I am fascinated by the deliveryman in the long trench coat. He speaks few words.
I mark on my calendar the two days the man arrives at my door with cans of Ensure. The doctor was afraid I would vanish without added nutrients. I drink the last can from the previous delivery and watch from my window and wait. His shape began to stick to my mind. One day I drew him on paper. I can hold large children’s crayons in my hand. I drew him with a black crayon and then filled in the spaces. He was flat and full of crayola blackness. It was a fluid blackness. Each time he came to deliver groceries, I noticed something new. The way his fingers curled, the way he tilted his head. I drew the outline of him in many ways. One day when the weather changed, I did not see his familiar silhouette walking toward my apartment. He had changed into a softer contour with blonde curly hair and hips. I studied him until I understood.
Fatima became frail and hired a housekeeper to help her through the day.
“The man in black, the one I have been drawing,” she said to the housekeeper, “is a she.”
“How is that possible, Fatima?” said the housekeeper.
“It is my eyes. They are old,” she said. “They make mistakes.”
“Yes, that must be the reason,” said the housekeeper.
Fatima drew the new contour of the new person without the black coat in many ways and the housekeeper counted them. One hundred and two drawings of the Person In Black.
. “The world has changed,” Fatima said and went on drawing. The man in black became the woman in white.
***
I continue to sit at the window. I do not wait for the girl who was Edgar. I look at everyone suspiciously. What else is there to do? Everyone lied to me. My mother said I would learn from life. I have not. It’s all the same. I haven’t seen Harriet for two months. She went on a modeling assignment to Tahiti. But when she returns it will all be the same.
I met Fatima by the dumpster in the back yard. She is so old. I fear she will crumble. Her housekeeper walked her outside. Fatima wanted to see the glow of the sun her housekeeper told me as Fatima looked at the trash around the dumpster, coke bottles, old cardboard boxes, pizza cartons, an old high heel shoe.
“I told her,” the housekeeper said, “I am going to the dumpster to throw garbage out. It is not a pretty place.” Fatima said to me, ‘I want to come. I want to see objects close-up. They have stories like closed feelings. And the light is different outside or maybe it is all the same.’”
“I could not refuse Fatima,” the housekeeper said.
Fatima smiled when she saw me. “I like you. Why don’t you visit me? Come soon. I am old and time is a fist about to close.”
I visited Fatima the next week. She had a pile of sketchbooks on her kitchen table. She asked, “Would you like to see my pictures?” She told me she was an artist.
I said, “Yes.” When she opened the sketchpads, there was Edgar. And there was the girl who was Edgar in white.
“The man in black, my delivery man, was really a woman in white cotton,” she told me. “I want to remember how I felt, when I drew the man in black, before my vision changed. I want to remember how temporal form is. I look at both pictures of the same woman and wonder what else I have not seen. It was exhilarating to think of this form as a man in black. I had memories of men wearing black coats and suits, and my husband’s tuxedo is clear in my mind, like the day he was wearing it, and I was twenty-five. And it is exhilarating to see the woman in white.”
Earl did not tell Fatima he longed for the man in black to be a real man. He did not tell Fatima how in need he was of touch.
“But if the man you drew was not who you thought he was, why long for what was not?” said Earl.
“Earl,” said Fatima, “ We have to long for what is not. It is the impossible we must search for. And when we find it, it is no longer impossible. It has form and is alive.
I visited Fatima every day for the next month. I watched her draw people from the street. There was the garbage man who looked like he needed a makeover on one of those TV shows. To Fatima he was the form of a dove.
“How can you draw him that way? Look at his smelly hands, his torn jeans, the cigarette hanging out of his snarly lips.”
“Earl, I don’t see that. I see a light that comes from his face and the way he moves. I can feel the earth happy under his animated walk. He is so rugged like my second husband the mountain climber.”
Fatima drew the obese man who walked his Pekinese dog each morning and the middle-aged woman with the over colored red hair and fake fur coat. She drew the lines of the clouds in the night sky and in the day when it was hot, and the fire hydrants stood out in the withering landscape in crayola yellow. Fatima rested in-between the drawings. At the end of the month there were a thousand more pictures on the walls and in sketchbooks. Earl had not thought of Edgar or his sister for days. He was deciding how he would draw Fatima, if he could draw. He told Fatima about Harriet. She said draw her. Earl told her he never drew anything before, but when he took Fatima’s fat crayons in his hand it was an epiphany.
He worshiped Fatima’s visions and the power of his hands and eyes. His skin became transparent like a newborn’s. He ate again. When Harriet called to get together, he agreed. When Harriet talked about her modeling job, he was interested. He drew his sister as she sat and told him what it was like to be her and her dreams of being famous and loved by millions of readers of fashion magazine. “I want to be on the cover of Elle Magazine, unclothed or clothed. It doesn’t matter as long as the photographer sees who I am and doesn’t run away from me, like you have done all my life.”
Earl called his drawings the Thousand Eyes of Harriet. She was the source of his vision. He felt renewed. When Harriet revealed the top of her breast, he saw her need for affirmation and her grace, and he drew her with a slim elegant charcoal pencil, and he didn’t fill her form in with color. The gesture of her was enough. He used watercolors on other days. She became a brilliant shade of amphibious winter hues. He admired the way her legs bent at the knee and the way she threw her head back to push her hair off her face. He loved the slant of her eyes. He listened to what she said. They had dinner and went to the tanning salon together. They talked on the phone. He brought her to meet Fatima. He sat at the window, not thinking about Edgar anymore. One day he called a dating service, removed his disguise. Fatima transitioned a year later. Her ashes seeded the park across the street, where the trees were struggling to survive, and some were placed near the dumpster behind the apartment building.
As the years passed, Earl became a well-known artist (he made a lot of money), and he had many men in his life that wore long raincoats (took them off for him) with boxer shorts underneath. He felt at peace, finally knowing how to divorce himself from what did not make him happy.
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER - Gimpel the Fool
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