Antiquity

"Our own personal heaven," Celeste said, awakening me from from sleep. It is a daughter and grandson day, twice a month. I described the dream to her, a house with beautiful old glass, rare objects, matte blue, hand painted. Couldn't call them tchotchkes, too nice.

Carole, you and I were together in a mansion sort of house, a bit dilapidated, the front roof a porch titling downwards but not ready to collapse, inside like an unadorned mansion, high ceilings, Romanesque columns, mostly empty, huge lovely space. Underneath the tilting roof were hand carved boxes, perhaps Persian or Chinese, old, grayish: antiquity. They slid from under the roof, you and I laughed, the roof didn't tumble down.

But in this world, my current reality, my world actually did cave the day you died.

January 3, 2012. Happy Birthday Carole, for us.

Hi Carole, I bought chocolates in a fine crystal bowl to my writing class today, a tribute .... you'd have liked them along with everyone there. Craig had told me you'd joined a workshop in Key West, were jubilant, getting material ready, but never returned, died instead. Passed he said, jumped ship. I hear his voce as if yesterday, see you leaning against the door frame between my kitchen and computer room mere hours ago. Hey, I turn, but you are not there, not in sight, yet every where. Always.

Thirty-Five

I saw you last night, on a bright winter afternoon, briskly walking in a denim pants suit with a matching color denim top - not tucked in. More tailored than is worn today. You were 35, my daughter, Celeste's's age in a few day, November 18, and you were as well fashioned as she. Maybe we were on South Beach the lower end with the tchotchke store fronts, or maybe a local strip mall. The day was sparkly sunny, you lively and lovely, brown hair bouncy walking a fast clip, your broad smile across your face. I saw saw as if passing by, next to or a few feet apart on wide walkway, your profile sideways, forward stepping and it was you, into my life again, as always.

Danny and his girl Jesi went to Key West for your yahrzeit. Your son tossed a rose, as he usually does. A rose settled atop of the sea, your ocean grave, floaty, regenerating. Perhaps you touched. On the actual day, October 19, Miguel and Celeste visited. I was so very happy they came over; grateful. It was a Wednesday, midweek, a candle on my fireplace. Miguel is a bundle, 7-years-old, born after you died but am trusting you have seen him, his brown eyes the shape and color of yours.

Infinite Jest

Hi Carole,

Read an article in The New Yorker (April 2011) about David Foster Wallace, relaying how despondent he became after completing Infinite Jest, even as I continue working on our manuscript. Have changed it some, adding parallel universes to reach you. A fine report by Jonathan Franzen, had not read him previously, the mood he captured! Have a print out of Wallace’s Wiggle Room published in the same magazine. Bought his uncompleted The Pale King from Border’s closing, can you imagine that icon shutting down? Our Borders!!

Anyway, you were dressed and heavily face painted like a Jester, perhaps from the title book, and you were happy, living a run down place. I must rekey the following, grrrr, cannot type, actually Curt did it for me. I so relate to what JF wrote:

“…That he was blocked with his work when he decided to quit Nardil — was bored with his old tricks and unable to muster enough excitement about his new novel to find a way forward with it — is not inconsequential. He’d loved writing fiction, “Infinite Jest” in particular, and he’d been very explicit, in our many discussions of the purpose of novels, about his belief that fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude….”

Justly so.

Love, Hope

House cleaning

Carole, so ordinary and simple, we were together, you showing me how to change the vacuum cleaner bag, we with our chatter above the roar, or maybe silence. The bag was designed with a single wide spiral twist off, more resembling a space image from the Hubble spacecraft, the one of a spiraling universe, minus the colors, the vacuum part a dull plastic beige but similar in its swirling shape. How I miss you you.

Larger than Life

Today, Valentine's Day, we squeezed and squeezed .... somehow a wheelchair that you surely didn't need, so vibrant, hugging and hugging ... 3, am not sure what the folded wheelchair symbolized ...

Gold Encrusted

8 AM, January 18, 2011.

Mocha was barking to be let back in and I finally arose from bed yet it wasn’t my house I was in. The hallway was painted blue directly across from my bedroom door, blue like the sea as children would color it. I saw two different doggies in the house in separate bedrooms, they were not mine. Then I saw movement in the closet, a wiggle under something and you emerged from underneath blankets or silk sheets and you were beautiful as if costumed for a play, a harlequin of glittering golden powdered seashells angled diagonally across your chin, up to the tip of your cheekbone, returning to your neck with a loosely strung ivory chiffon ribboned bow like a frilly boa necklace against your cotton shirt: a gift. Your body felt thin and lithe as if seventeen-years-old. I pulled you into the light pouring from the window, the sunlight streaming on you, validating your presence, and we held each other, cradled in arms, I kissed your lips and we stood and stood and stood and I kept asking you, staring at you, to make sure it was you with the sunlight against your face highlighting the shell glitter sparking even as your eyes focused over my shoulder, non committal.

From those ashes scattered in Key West into my arms, a radiant youthful you bathed in sunlight on a new dawning day.

January 3, 2011. Happy Birthday Carole, we're still going strong, together.

Creative non-fiction, circa mid-1990's, a work in progress my sister and I began, but could not finish together. Please note, apparently meta links to IMC and HCA change the formatting and I can't figure it out. Still relevant today, in Florida, the beat goes on.

Excerpt from Three Attention Deficit Sisters and the Mafia

by Hope Marcus and Carole Marcus

“I don’t know yet, but it’s more than gobbledygook. Think manna from the farm into my arms. Passports, receipts from Panamanian companies, DynCorp, Florida medical clinics — HMO’s, some guy’s Florida driver’s license, still valid.”

I picked up a piece of paper, held it on the edge. “Absolutely nasty, pitch them. They even smell moldy.”

“Leslie, look at them, open your eyes!”

“Look at what? There’s nothing to see! You and your trash treasures.”

Carolee’s hands went to work, rearranging the pieces, making a jigsaw puzzle with parts missing. Torn squares, rectangles, jagged edges, a few legible words and a smattering of numbers. Two airline tickets, Miami to Mexico, Mexico to Miami, Aeromexico, sections of them, enough to tell. An ID card from an HMO. Photos angled from the side, the front, plus a passport. Another social security card. Different numbers, the same name — doubles in Spanish.

My sister turned to me, her eyes wide orbs. I didn’t know what to make of things.

“Holy moley, can’t you see? For the past twenty-one years I’ve been staring across the table at Lou, reading his newspapers, the Miami Herald delivered to our door. Medicare fraud, think IMC and all those clinics, even the newest, HCA. Just you wait. And tickets to Mexico, next stop Columbia, to buy what? Hello Leslie, wake up. These names are headliners!”

Front pages? I nearly drowned on a diet soda, ran to the kitchen sink, choking. Carolee trailed after me.

“You’re so off base, if you think for one lousy minute I’m falling for this, you don’t expect me to believe … .” My sister threw me one of her primal stares, like a guided missile homing in, smart bombs aiming straight for me, her eyes converging into one enormous penetrable, oy ve mia, hallelujah sister.

“You’ve got balls, cojones.” I said.

She pulled her shoulders back, stuck out her chest and strutted out of the kitchen, back to the couch spread with her finds. “I’ve got boobs, potency, and these," she said, pointing to the papers. "Chutzpah, cojones, and these!"

October 19

Carole, we awoke together his morning at 6 AM, as if a clock mattered. You were helping me straighten the tablecloth, a cranberry-rust color. All the leaves to Nana’s table were in, a long rectangle as if getting ready for a party, our family, who else? You sat under the repro Matisse painting, in that spot of the room, and had a dark short sleeve top on, probably with shorts along with that beatific smile of yours. I’d pitched some bagel pieces along with an old bag of bread rolls from the fridge and was setting fresh ones, a dozen or two I’d just bought, hard crust rolls sprinkled with poppy seeds. It was so joyous ordinary and at first I was happy then thought, of course you'd come today — it is your yahrzeit — 8 years since you died, and I cried and cried. It is stupendous that you came today, if only the tears would stop.

Carole Connection

Rosh Hashana Weds. September 8, 2010
Written upon awakening.

The workman drilled holes through walls, smack dab in the middle of them, not the bottom or top as might be expected, holes for a cable wire although I didn't know what they'd connect to, the roof from a hole in the middle of the wall? the men supposedly working in my home because a new ordinance said I had to raise the roof for a new building code. They were noisy but nice and they kept showing me their business cards with phone numbers to call the boss, Nautilus, to take up the issue of their being in my house, making a ruckus, drilling through the walls, the center of the gypsum boards. In the dream my house more like your former one on 64 Street, In my dream, the phone line was always busy. During one of my attempts to reach Nautilus, I heard a conversation with a another guy, crossed wires, he leaving a message, not vile or angry but saying he was trying to reach the owner too … I handed to phone to one of the workers at my house … then Nautilus called me, saying everything was all right, he’d take care of things, not to worry. Nautilus from the sea, telling me he’d take care of things, reassuring, Nautilus from the sea the same sea we’d scattered your ashes into, Nautilus, a species surviving relatively unchanged for millions of years.

After a while you called, but there was so much noise, two little girls running around me, and the counter where the phone was, two daughters of the workers, who were using loud tools. I wanted your phone number, told you I’d had been trying to reach you for days, telling you I’d up been cooking until 3. You started to give it to me but I couldn’t read my own writing, and the paper I was writing on, the one in front of me, was loaded with doodads, and the pen was near dry, barely inked. I said hold on, when I came back you fudged with the phone number, gave me a few false starts, one beginning with a 500, like the 800 free calls … then said you couldn’t make it over, asking who would pick up Daniel, Agustin? You didn’t want to see Agustin, no way — I said Josh would get him, and you said OK, you’d come since Josh would pick up Danny in his car and bring him to my house.

You were frightened, hesitant, didn’t want to be seen.

Our older sister had been over earlier and I demanded that she leave even as she had looked innocuous, like her 30 year old self. Mom’s presence was a distant hint in the yonder.

Mostly I’d wanted you and your phone number you finally gave it to me, it began with a 271—had a 6 in it, maybe your former number that I no longer remember? Then you said you’d come…you were still mulling it over, I could tell, still thinking but so close to yes even as the background between us on the phone was obtrusive and distracting.

Then in real time I awoke to the sounds of lawn mowing outside and I was in tears, and in real time, Madeline called minutes later, unusual for her to phone that time of the morning. She was the ONLY person I could talk to just then, in real life, synchronicity, our friend Madeleine the real time connector who’d truly understand … and I told her about Nautilus from the sea, telling me he’d take care of things, the same sea home to your scattered ashes, that freeing sea.