< Apart From Love: Chapter 9 >

Where Was There

Since noon—more precisely, since that conversation with my father, from which I was fortunate enough to break away—I have spent hours running in circles, trying not to think about what I have learned from him, and about having to face her, because maybe it is not mom I would be facing, but her illness.

I have been bouncing back and forth between Abbot Kinney and Wilshire, losing myself in a web of streets. Some scenes, especially those close to the Santa Monica bay, seem vaguely familiar; I figure I must have visited them a long time ago, as a child. My hands still keep the memory, the touch of wet sand, and the sequence of scooping it, packing it tightly into a bucket, turning it upside down, away from the wave rolling in, then lifting the bucket away to see a castle take shape. But on the whole, gazing at this town now from a higher elevation, I feel detached.

A foreigner, that’s me: Unwanted and unwelcome in a strange, foreign place.

Car horns can be heard honking as I dart across the street. From time to time a police car cruises by my side and I can sense a quick, curious glance, which I ignore. I have no idea where the hell I am going; which makes attacking the streets with such anger, such blind, aimless haste a bit confusing, because of being unable to tell whether I have arrived—or whether I am still at the outset of a new ramble.

Between one footfall and another I am not here, I am not there; neither at the end of a journey, nor at the beginning.

Forced to slow down I push my way through the thick of a crowd, some of which are walking about without a care in the world other than nibbling on candy bars, sipping expensive coffee out of paper cups, chatting loudly about nothing in particular, and checking out the jewelry stores, boutiques, nail salons and massage parlors, all of which abound here, in this affluent neighborhood near Montana; while others, the outcasts among us, are beginning to shrink away, fading stealthily into dark corners, to prepare themselves for the coming of the night.

They are lonesome, faceless figures. Right there, where the shadows of one streetlamp crisscross the shadows of another, a panhandler is unfolding his torn piece of cardboard on the pavement, stiffly laying his limbs on it. In the alley, some distance away, another layabout is arranging a foul-smelling, brown blanket on some rotting sofa, with the stuffing ripped out of it, which someone has discarded next to the trash cans. In a minute he will be not just covered—but entirely erased from view.

My pace has picked up again; I am running furiously, like someone chased by ghosts. By now I find myself not only drifting, not only lost, and not only short of cash, which I have left back there, in my bedroom—but above all, short of breath; all of which are better, in my opinion, than turning around to find my way back home. I am utterly driven to go astray.

So I push myself father and farther away, sickened at the mere thought of that place, where the whitewashed facade of the apartment building seems to conceal some secrets; where—behind this or that window—you can spot an eye taking a peek, following you through a crack between the blinds; and where inside, the air is stale.

Home. That is the place where, ten years ago, the gossip surrounding my family, together with the silence, that sudden muteness between my parents, drove me to despair. So I tried to distance myself from both of them. At the age of seventeen I thought I would go crazy—or else, to escape madness, take my own life. The walls had been closing in on me; and even more so—on my mom.

I remember the last time we talked, which was also the last time I was given the chance to hug her—and missed it.

It was well after midnight and my homework was still far from complete, when suddenly, inspiration struck: I came to the realization that come what may, trigonometry was not a subject in which I would ever excel. So for a while I sat idly in my bedroom, scribbling and looking blankly out the window, after which I closed my notebooks with a slap; and then, on my way to the bathroom I noticed her door, which was slightly ajar, and through which I could hear some noise. Mom was packing a suitcase.

“Ben?” she said. “As long as you are still up, can you do me a favor, bring me that thing from there—”

“What?” I asked, reluctantly; which made her turn her back to me and say, “Oh, never mind. I will do it myself.”

I repeated, this time more willingly, “What, mom?” And a minute later, “I am already here, so let me help,” followed with, “please, mom,” but to no avail. “That’s all right,” she stated. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself. It would be easier than having to explain.”

I resented the way she said it, which allowed me to go back to my room—but at the same time, placed a weight on my shoulders, saddling me with the burden of guilt. Back then, nothing was more annoying than, “Never mind, I will do it myself.” I wondered, why would she ask for my help—only to reverse herself immediately, and refuse it? Was it her way to needle me? To show the extent of my weakness, laziness, dependence? To match it with an equal measure, the measure of her sacrifice?

Quite often mom would frustrate me by insisting on doing it herself—whatever it was—and each time, for a slightly different variant of the same basic reasoning: Because she wanted the thing to be done right, or because she was afraid it would be too heavy for me, or too hot to handle, or something.

All these years I have been playing her voice over and over in my head, rewinding this last conversation, and tormenting myself by focusing on the wrong phrase: the one at the end. Now—only now, at nightfall—do I realize my mistake. Suddenly, as if discovering a new twist in an old piece of music, I can detect a certain stress, and discern how it pushed her to the limit right from the beginning, when she opened with the phrase, “Bring me that thing from there.”

So I slow down the replay, and listen carefully to each one of these words—only to wonder about the other words, the unspoken ones, those that were missing, strangely, from the conversation: What thing? Where was there? Why would doing it be easier than having to explain? And how could I be so dumb as to miss the early, telltale signs, back then when she started forgetting things?

Simple things, like the names of her students, and how to teach music. And later, how to write words on paper, and mail me a letter, and why not call me, why not tell me the truth; and how to talk to him, to my father; and most of all, how to forgive betrayal.  

So for me, home is where her illness has been buried, up to now, under a thin, undisturbed layer of memories. Or should I call them lies.

I think that in the future, I should refrain from talking to my father, and especially, from asking him any more questions about her. Let him not upset that image, which I have been striving so hard to construct, the image of mom, framed by their life together; because if this image collapses, so will I.

Still, I am unsure if her forgetfulness should be called an illness. Those doctors, they could have made a mistake. Two years in medical school taught me one thing, which is how terribly easy it can be to make an incorrect diagnosis. I recall a study of brain autopsies, in which roughly half of those who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's before death did not, in fact, show evidence, I mean, evidence of the right degree of brain lesions to support the diagnosis.

Yesterday, arriving at LAX, I hoped this could be a short visit, short enough just to take my father out of the hospital and make sure he is all right. I planned to spend no more that a week; but now that I know more about my mom, and about where she is, I may have to stay longer and think about my next steps.  

At this point, the crowd has thinned out to the point of disappearing altogether, somewhere there, in the distance behind me. Looking straight ahead I can see the outlines of two or three runners, jogging along the wide grass median, which is splitting the traffic; and in a few minutes they, too, have receded from view. I look around me and suddenly, I know where I am.

This is San Vicente Boulevard, where homes are known to be among the most expensive in Los Angeles County, and the people living in them are so fantastically rich and so content and successful that you, a mere mortal, can never catch even a glimpse of them, because of the barriers of carefully trimmed vegetation, and the towering trees, and the fancy fences, and the gates within gates.

You can only imagine the picturesque views spreading before them out of their back yards, views of the Pacific Ocean or the Santa Monica Canyon, which must give them great joy, and persuade them to stay there, nestled in their safe, secluded existence.

The reason I know this place, the reason it ignites such emotion, such passion in me, is not the sight of these homes—but the majestic trees, whispering in the night air. Planted at regular intervals along the median, as long as the eye can see, they are named Naked Coral Trees; Naked because—according to my father—they shed their leaves annually.

I know this because at the age of fifteen I used to come here with him, every Saturday for an entire spring. During that period he worked for the Landmark Division of the City of Santa Monica, reviewing applications for the Landmark Designation of trees. To this day I have no idea what that means.

Dad talked little about his job, and cared for it even less. He was a writer at heart, and during spells of unemployment he would acquire new skills—which he did with great ease—and change his line of work, trying to make do until someday, some fine day when he would strike gold with his yet unfinished, original screenplay.

During our walks that spring, dad would point out the trees: Their fiery red flowers, that looked like fat pinecones at the tips of irregular, twisting branches, and the seeds, which in certain species were used for medicinal purposes by indigenous peoples. They were toxic, he warned, and could cause fatal poisoning. I learned that mature Coral trees should be watered frequently—but not during the summer months. In fact, he said, the less water in summer, the more flowers you can expect the following spring.

I cross two lanes of traffic, come closer to one of those Naked Coral Trees, and  with great awe, brush my fingers across the trunk. It is a contorted, elephantine thing, with a roughly textured bark, and thick roots clinging fiercely to the earth. This being early October there are no flowers, no leaves, even. The tree seems to take on a humanoid appearance, as if it were the body of a character, or even several characters, mangled beyond recognition.

It is a stunning sight, which has fascinated me since childhood. Above me, the bare limbs—some of which have been pruned recently—are branching apart, and looking at them you can imagine a knee here, an elbow there, someone wrestling, someone in embrace.

As you walk past them, the trees seem to tell you a story line by line, scene by scene. In one tree I could see a man and a woman, kissing; in another, a father and son.

I remember one time, during our Saturday stroll, I asked my father for some details about his family. At first he seemed relaxed enough to tell me—at more length than usual—about my grandfather, whom I never met, because he had died long before I was born. I got a distinct sense that dad was, somehow, still afraid of the old man, who had pressed him hard to achieve that which he himself had failed to become: A lawyer.

“So,” I asked, “what did you do?”

A brief laughter erupted on his lips. “I told him that I had enrolled at the university, and was majoring in Law; but somehow I neglected to mention that the closest I ever came to enrolling was flipping through an outdated course catalog on the toilet.”

“And,” I hesitated to ask, “did he ever find out?”

“Well,” said my father, and in a flash, his face turned red, “if it occurred to the old man that this might have been a nasty lie, he admirably concealed it.”

I listen to his voice, which is still here, echoing in my head, and all of a sudden I grasp that he grew embarrassed not only because of his obligation to his father—but to me as well. Perhaps a sudden sense of shame caught up to him, shame for falling short of becoming an acceptable role model. Or else he had a premonition, a fear, even, of how I would treat him, not too far in the future.

Which makes me realize one thing: I spent a whole decade in diametrical opposition to my father, and wound up living a life based directly on his, as though I had never left home.

At daybreak I wake up at the foot of the tree to a sharp pang of hunger, which drives me back home.

The moment I arrive at the apartment building, the sprinklers come alive, first with an intermittent stutter, and then with a full-throated singsong; which makes me take a step back, and notice a rainbow hovering, trembling there, in the spray of water. It brings back a moment, an unforgettable moment of that morning, ten years ago, when my mother walked out slowly, with her head held high, as if she was blind to the splash.

Now I wonder if she knew where she was going. Where, in God’s name, was her there? Mom receded into the distance with her packed suitcase, which seemed to become soggy after a few steps, never once stopping to wipe it, or to turn her head back.

I wait for the nozzle to go through its circular motion, and then slip past it, sensing the last of the mist, right here on my skin. At that moment I imagine myself crossing right through her ghost. Perhaps there is a touch between us, as she fades away and I come in.

Without asking a single question, my father opens the door and to my surprise, he wraps his arms around my shoulders and kisses me; which makes me mumble, “Were you waiting up for me? Oh. Sorry, dad. I guess I was lost.”

“Really?” he says. “Getting lost here, in Santa Monica? How do you manage to do that? This city is no bigger than two miles in any direction—”

“I am not sure,” I have to admit. “It takes time, I suppose; it takes concentration, and above all, it takes some kind of effort.”