Three Women

On inhale I said I’d do it, and by exhale I already regretted it. Nobody ever says no to Gramma. She was bleating away on the telephone with my mother about my Aunt Margot. Bleh Bleh Bleh   I heard Mom say, “I hate to think about what’s happened this time. It’s such a tragedy.” Then I heard, “Don’t worry, Mother. I’m sure that Peter would be glad to help.”     

I looked at Dad. He kept a low profile hunkered down behind the newspaper. I looked at my sister Jane. She had that smirk on her face that said “wimp.” I couldn’t say no to my mother, not now. She’s been through a lot.     

The thing is, when I think of Margot, I remember how much fun she was when Jane and I were little. Gramma and Pop had a place at the shore. It was kid heaven. When Margot came down we stayed up late playing capture the flag and matchstick Poker. She always brought fireworks - the good kind, Salutes, Black Cats and bottle rockets, the kind you can’t buy legally.

And, that woman could fish! Early or late, we’d go surfcasting. She wasn’t girlie about it either. She’s the one who taught me to thread live eel on the fishhook, in the eye, out the mouth. The stripers just glom on to the bait. They don’t even know they’ve been caught.

Do you know what a Striped Bass looks like? They’re so beautiful they break your heart. I think that’s why Margot fished. It was her artist thing. Color. Those suckers sparkle. Their scales are this glittery Technicolor iridescence. It’s kind of sad watching them die though. In super slo mo they fade out to gray. I understood Margot’s passion, at least on the fish level.

She was something. I was just a kid, but my body was paying attention. Her body had it’s own rhythm section that jiggled and bounced. I kind of fixated on her breasts. They looked like they were about to bust out of her clothes. I wanted to be there to rescue them. I spent a lot time sneaking around the outdoor shower trying to get a closer look.

When we were cleaning up Margot’s apartment, we found a photograph of the family at the beach cottage. I remember that summer. Jane and I always refer to it as the summer of the cake. I don’t really remember Margot being around too much after that vacation. It was my grandfather’s birthday. In the photo everybody is nested around Pop: Jane is sitting in his lap, I’m standing inside his arm, Gramma is sitting on the lawn chair to his right, Mom is hovering behind us and Margot is off to the left posed like a classical Venus. I can’t see her breasts because she’s draped in some kind bizarre psychedelic toga, and she’s wearing those crazy 3-D glasses of hers. Dad always volunteered to be cameraman, probably to keep out of Gramma’s way.

O.K. The cake. Margot always had these crazy art projects for Jane and me. Her plan was to make Pop’s birthday cake and have the frosting be a masterpiece of Post Impressionist colored dots.  “Po an teel ees ma” she enunciated – one semester in Paris goes a long way. 

Mom wasn’t convinced about the project, but Margot told her not to be so uptight, because she was building our artistic vocabulary. She said, “Relax, go outside and have a cocktail. Save Jack from mother. I’ll take care of the children.” It sounded reasonable. Jane and I made solemn vows, “We’ll be good! We promise!”

We went wild. The cake was the canvas, a vanilla frosted canvas. The “pigments” were these little squeeze bottles of red, blue and yellow food coloring mixed with the frosting “medium.” The music, the dancing, the tickling, the sugar transformed us into abstract expressionists. We were heavy into action painting in that kitchen. It was my idea to fill Gramma’s spray bottle with the food coloring.

We looked at Margot’s art history book. Jane and I were pretty engrossed looking at all the naked people on our way through the book to the chapter on Pointillism. All of a sudden the adult inquisition from the patio appeared on the scene.

Jane gave up every whiney detail. Then there was this huge uproar.   My mother was pointing at Margot, teeth bared. I was deaf and mute during the fracas, catatonic with love. I only remember the spotlight on my beloved Margot, hands cradling her face, a halo of wild curls framing the lovely crimson O of her lips. Ooooooooooo  The scarlet slap blooming on her cheek. Oooooooo  The perfumed cherry vanilla icing was still on my lips. My first kiss.

Gramma

Daniel and I always supported our daughter Margot’s affinity for the arts, though God knows what those people see in that painted mish mash. Margot was such a trial; we lavished everything on her. She just threw it in our face. Her sister, Jill, has some of Margot’s paintings in her house. For the life of me, I can’t imagine living with such garish decor. And now, to add to the burden, Jill has cancer. We tried everything to help Margot, even shock therapy. I’ll never forgive Dr. Weiner for prescribing those Goddamn pills.

Daniel spoiled her right until the end, fifty-three years. He always bailed her out behind my back. I always thought that the best thing for Margot was this thing called tough love. I read about in The Journal. Juvenile delinquents are left to fend for themselves until they fall flat on their faces. Then they crawl back home begging for forgiveness. But, who would want Margot, especially now that she’s fat?

Well, of course we knew something was wrong after Margot’s accident. “Color headaches” she called them. Personally I think that those colored glasses were a flimflam. But, there were so many failures. We were willing to try anything. Oh, they used all the scientific jargon, PPP Syndrome - Perceptual Processing Problem - the result of head injuries. She was only a little girl when it happened, just turned ten, walking home from school. The driver got off scott free, not even a speeding ticket.

Margot was a beautiful child. Jill was very athletic, but certainly not a beauty. Even then she had artistic talent. I still have the sweetest portrait that she drew of me nursing Jill. It was so carefully rendered, so tender. I don’t understand that jumble she’s doing now. She was so brilliant. Margot, I had such aspirations for you, until that idiot knocked you fifteen feet. . . I really must be careful about my blood pressure.

Little Jimmy Carlyle saw it happen. He ran to our house to get me. Of course I didn’t believe him at first. I scolded him, “Jimmy don’t you lie to me.” She was a mess, arms and legs at crazy angles. They had to cut off her dress. The lovely imported blue print with smocking. She was unconscious for days. I kept vigil in her hospital room sleeping on a cot next to her; Daniel brought me clean clothes every single day.  I remember her face, a porcelain angel in repose under the veil of the oxygen tent. We were so relieved when she came back to us, but that was not the end of our travails, just the beginning.

Daniel and I exhausted our lives for her. We tried everything. I told you about the glasses? They were ridiculous goggles with violet lenses for the headaches. Margot was delighted, though I sometimes wondered if they weren’t just part of some eccentric conceit on her part. After that she went through a yellow period, a blue period, and for the last few years she has been wearing glasses with one red and one green lens. She says it gives her the third dimension when she’s painting. Margot always goes too far, too far.

She didn’t want us, and I didn’t want her, though I know Daniel would moon after her and secretly wire her some money, plead with her to come see us. We did see her occasionally in July when she knew Jill’s family would be with us at the beach house. She loved the children; I was always afraid she’d make a scene in front of Jane and Peter. We could not have that.

It was a downward spiral. Sad really. She seemed to hold her own when she lived with Vince; they seemed to have the same proclivities toward art, whatever those were.  Daniel thought that his death really was the turning point, nothing to hope for. My opinion is that he probably died of mortification, not heart failure.

We were always left to clean each time she was evicted. You wouldn’t believe how she lives, the filth, wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling, pack rat, art rubbish, months of leftover food and cigarette butts. I always wear rubber gloves: I learned that after the time when I found a pistol in the toilet. “An installation piece”, she said. Such nonsense.

She stopped answering the phone. Jill and I tried to reach her. After six months in the hospital – at considerable cost - we were so hopeful that she had turned the corner. I must say that she was such a comfort at the end, when Danny was failing. But, Danny’s gone now. I can’t do this alone. I will not go on with it. Love isn’t a cure for addiction. It would take a miracle.

Her apartment was in a very rough part of the city, a ghetto really. I asked my grandson, Peter, to accompany me. He’s a lawyer now, so sensible. I thought, maybe he could do something. Margot was always very fond of him. But, Margot was fifty-three now. What could be done?

She didn’t answer the buzzer, so Peter rang the apartment manager who came with the key. No he hadn’t seen Margot for a while. We were very nervous I can tell you. Margot always threatened. Peter knocked several times and called out. There was no response, so he unlocked the door and we entered.

Peter’s face just crumpled. He hadn’t seen her for so long; He just was not prepared. Margot was slumped – beached really - on a couch, catatonic. The rolls of her body, her lips and chin, were smeared with brown goo.  Good Lord, those grown men just stood there gawking; they were purely impotent to do anything. There was nothing to be done but clean her up. I was her mother after all.

It turned out to be chocolate. She painted her body with the sweetest thing she could think of. She wasn’t dead. But it was suicide none-the-less, just a downward spiral.

Jill

If you think I hated Margot, you’d be wrong. I was “her baby.” She was the one – not my mother – who doted on me. When I got my first period, it was Margot who took care of me. She patiently tutored me in the art of inserting a Tampax. I remember her saying “Forget that shit about tampons ruining your virginity. This is about liberation.” That was so Margot.

Those were crazy times growing up, an anti-establishment caldron of youth culture. The Technicolor neon, mind-altering philosophy fit Margot perfectly. Mother had a hissy fit when Margot gave up on underwear.

In high school Margot was so hip, so beautiful and fun. Those colored glasses of hers, her wild escapades, seemed to fit in with the psychedelic times. I was one of her most enthusiastic groupies; of course, being seven years younger was definitely a hindrance to hanging out with her crowd. I took sides. Margot was cool and my parents were jerks.

When she left for college, she essentially left my life. I missed her for a while, but while Mother and Daddy were preoccupied with Margot, I pretty much followed my own agenda, which, I will admit, was pretty mundane. I just plodded along toward a married sitcom life, two normal kids.

Sometimes I thank my lucky stars that Margot created a diversion that kept my mother off my case.  Mother was shocked that I didn’t marry a “professional.” Screw her. I can actually say that Jack and I are happily bourgeois. One thing though, I really, really hate to admit. Mother was right when she said, “Just wait until you have children.” I had to let go of Margot. She’d gone too far. It’s a tragedy really.

Funny. I was the steady, reliable one in the family, but since the diagnosis, I became an expert in obsession. Cancer has made me crazy, and totally self-absorbed. I look like a ghoul, a bald extraterrestrial, riding this insane roller coaster with my family, a sickening free fall between hope and despair. I’ve become a slut for any cure.

The paintings arrived with my first dose of Tamoxifen. No return address, but I recognized Margot’s handwriting.  Don’t ask me why, but I understood immediately, which is strange; I was always numbers not art.  This was her prescription for a cure.

Jack and the kids have lived with Margot’s limited warranty all their lives. I caught a little of their mute conversation. I looked at Jack; his bushy eyebrows worked up and down like semaphore signals, “Looney,” they transmitted. Jane’s eyes worked in Morse code, “totally fucked up,” they blinked. Peter kept his head down.

I felt hurt, because, actually, this was the first time I got it, the art thing, the visceral quotient, that other universe we know intuitively, the ancient message from beyond, trembling through our soul, making contact. 

She sent three painting talismans. Each one was swaddled in a cocoon of soft muslin. Yes. Metamorphosis. Mine. Ours. Three intimate paintings, a trinity, power of three, three-color schemata. I got it. And, I understood one more thing. Margot knew that she wasn’t going to recover, but she was going to save me.

No words are up to it. Shame on language. Saturated colors, translucent stratified layers of color soaked into the canvas, a visual geology of the world within, and a vision of the celestial prism of life beyond. Even though the paintings were abstract, you could see that she was in full control, rendering each expressive brush stroke with confidence and precision. This was Margot’s world.  Supple swathes of paint created momentum across the canvas, bursting from the genesis of the white field, creamy as frosting.  Paint burnished to a shimmering finish, and areas excavated with a palette knife.

The first painting was the tawny, variegated color of a fawn, umber sienna ebony red sable, dapples of white like filtered forest light. Velvet comfort. It made my lips remember the smooth satin edge of my baby blanket.

Brush strokes of viridian, manganese and Céladon.  The second painting was not green. It was billows of meadow fescue waving joyfully in the warm breeze. Primavera. It was like lying on a ruffled pillow of clover, smelling the oven-baked odors of moist earth and pollen, the ground pulsing excitement, sex and regeneration.

I was wrong. Miracles do happen. They’re tiny things, and I was thinking they’d arrive like a huge flash of lightning. I was concentrating on the shadows not the light. They accumulate, these tiny morsels, and if you’re lucky, if you’re paying attention, they are made manifest. Thank you, Margot.

The last was blue, blue, blue, like floating in the warm amniotic bath of a tropical sea, ultramarine sky, cerulean water, and a scalloped carpet of sand stippled chrome yellow. Underneath the dome of the watery firmament, drifting with the current, I’m welcomed back to my memory. I’m humming a sonic gurgle of bubbles. I see my family through my goggle vision, bronzed legs, treading together, in an underwater choreography of life and salvation.

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