But Edith’s legs were beautiful! And here was another:
What was going on here? What could Edith want with these pathetic invitations? What went on at 134 East 92nd Street? Was it an amputated-leg pool? In a corner of the drawer, half-soaked, was the beginning of the explanation. I can still see it. I can still reproduce it in my brain, word for word.
The paper in my fist, I ran from the bedroom. Edith and F. were asleep on the couch, respectably apart. On the coffee table were strewn the gruesome appliances of their habit, the needles, the eyedroppers, the belt, and – a dozen empty Perpetual Lourdes Water Ampules. I shook them both by their clothes.
– How long has this been going on?
I visited each of them with a close-up of the ad.
– How long have you been putting this into your bodies?
– Tell him, Edith, F. whispered.
– This is the first time we’ve used it.
– Tell him everything, Edith.
– Yes, I demand to know everything.
– We made a mixture.
– We mixed two different types of water.
– I’m listening.
– Well, some of the water was from the Lourdes Ampules and some of it was from –
– Yes?
– Tell him, Edith.
– Was from Tekakwitha’s Spring.
– So you’re not drug addicts any more?
– Is that all you want to ask? F. said wearily.
– Leave him alone, F. Come sit between us.
– I don’t like sitting between you naked.
– We won’t look.
– All right.
I checked their eyes with a match, I threw punches that didn’t land, and when I was sure they weren’t peeking I sat down.
– Well, what does it do?
– We don’t know.
– Tell him the truth, Edith.
– We do know.
And, as if she were about to begin an explanation with an anecdote, Edith fumbled for my hand and told me the story of Catherine Tekakwitha’s Feast long ago in Québec. F. took my other hand as she spoke. I think they were both weeping, for there was mucus in her voice, and F. seemed to tremble like someone falling off to sleep. That night in the bedroom Edith did whatever I wanted. I used not one radio command for her busy mouth. A week later she was under the elevator, a “suicide.”
45
I’m freezing to death in this damn treehouse. I thought Nature would be better than my little semen basement kitchen. I thought the noise of bird would be more sweet than the noise of elevator. Experts with tape recorders say that what we hear as a single bird note is really ten or twelve tones with which the animal weaves many various beautiful liquid harmonies. This he proves by slowing down his tape. I demand National Health! I demand an operation! I want a slow transistor machine sewn in my head. Otherwise let Science keep its insights out of the newspapers. The Canadian summer passed like a Halloween mask, now the cold countryside day after day. Is this all the candies we get? Where is the science-fiction world of tomorrow they promised us today? I demand a change of climate. What bravado impelled me to come here without my radio? Three months without my radio, humming the obsolete Top Ten, my Top Ten removed so abruptly from history, cut off from the dynamic changes of jukebox stock market, my poor Top Ten that no thirteen-year-olds energize by slippery necking on the carpet beside the hi-fi, my over-serious Top Ten goose-stepping through my head like the generals of a junta who do not know the coup d’état has been staged the very night of the formal ball, my dear old Top Ten like a battalion of gold-sleeved tramway conductors patiently steering for seniority and retirement while the subway has been decreed in a board room and all the streetcars are in museums, my awkward Top Ten of electric echoes and longing puberty voices crying down my heart like a squad of bare-thighed cheer-leaderettes turning cartwheels before the empty benches, their delicate bra-straps bunching the skin ever so sweetly, their shiny fluorescent underwear flashing out of little upside-down pleated skirts as they pivot on their friendship fingers, their school-spirit satin-clad gym-trained firm little rah-rah bums describing unutterably lovely and brief rainbow-shaped streaks of mauve and orange, the round metal mouthpieces of their megaphones warm with Alma Maters and smelling of white lipstick, and for whom these moist Technicolor acrobatics? for whom these inflammatory arcs of unskirted exhibition panties gleaming through the cheers like so many expertly peeled fresh figs, yes, a million seedy secrets in each sealed purse, wheeling down the damp sidelines into the stumpy mouth of time? for whom do you sail, little bums of the Top Ten? The Leader of the Pack lies mangled under his Honda in a wreck of job prospects, the ghostly Negro fullback floats down the wintry gridiron into Law School prizes, and the lucky football you autographed takes pictures of the moon. Oh, my poor Top Ten, longing to
