the vastly differing stories of three lady pianists
Friday 21 May 2004 | I like a cookie
I specially like this one story Tori told about her little daughter Natasha:
Tori: She said, I want to learn to play the piano, Mommy. And so I said, Well, okay. And I try to find her a piano teacher. I said, I am not teaching because that is not good. So I couldn’t find anyone who would teach a three-year-old, so I put on this hat and became Mrs. Paris. And so, she goes to lessons with Mrs. Paris.
Ryan Seacrest: That’s great! So she doesn’t realize that it’s you?
Tori: Well [pauses and looks away, audience laughs], do you know what she said to Mrs. Paris?
Ryan: I have no idea.
Tori: Because I put my hair up and have the hat on and everything.
Ryan: Of course.
Tori: I said, do butterfly on the piano—that is how you start, with animals on the piano, so they can make a relationship with the Bösendorfer. She [the Böse, since Tori always refers to them as “the girls”] is so big.
Ryan: And then you, essentially, as mom, become Snufalufagus, because you’re not—you’re never there at the same time, right?
Tori: Well, and—until she said, Mrs. Paris, could you teach my mom how to play the piano?
The only person who’s been here, for all practical purposes, in this hell realm which is Methodist Hospital in San Antonio—in this room with the gray-and-white mottled floor and the mauve doors with the metal handles and the acoustic ceiling tiles which lift up gently with every breeze and then clatter quietly back down—is Mandarin. She too has cautiously unwrapped rice pecan or hazelnut crackers whilst trying not to make horrible crackly noises. She’s been here with me, carefully spooning up slices of avocado (sprinkled with the inevitable lime juice) and trying not to let the spoon click against the sides of the tupperware container or my teeth. She’s been here with me, for hours, in my head anyway, watching Maman’s face, listening to her breathing, listening to the sirens, feeling that fucked-with-blood-sugar headache settle into the sinuses behind my eyes, sipping peach yogurt smoothie (without the magical green powder, alas) (but made with the first Texas peaches of the year, and Wallaby “European style” lowfat yogurt) from the green Tailgate Picnic mug, typing as silently as I possibly can, realizing with horror that I have only 40% power left and didn’t bring the AC connector cord, trying to think what are the most burningly important things to tell Mandarin.
I suppose the main thing is that today Maman is suddenly worse, after some days of remarkable improvement and the sense that we might even be able to go home early next week when her radiations are finished (Tuesday or Wednesday). She hasn’t had pain or morphine in 5-6 days, and is pretty much not vomiting uncontrollably (how’s that for a positive spin). BUT now as of about four this morning, her J-tube may have become infected—she’s spiked a fever, it was 102.5 though now after some IV paracetamol/acetominophen, it’s about 100. And she keeps telling us urgently there is a button in her chest, a button, won’t we please undo it, and take it off, remove this nametag, there’s a pin or a button, there’s a quarter-note or a half-note stuck in her chest, sometimes she says that Andrew is in there, sometimes spells out C-H-A-R-L-I-E as she goes down, moving her vague fingers down her chest, from along throat through thorax to sternum, trying to undo the letters, button by button. We went in the ambulance to radiation about two hours ago and she caught my hand and said with quiet agitation, It’s the letters, you see, they want to take them—gesturing toward her lower abdomen. Oh, I know they do, but we’ll take care of the letters later, sweetie, first let’s go to radiation, I suggested, and she nodded agreement and closed her eyes. She’s more how she was at the beginning—not watching telly or commenting on clothes, sleeping all the time, weak and febrile when awakened for a med or to be moved, dozing off in mid-sentence, disoriented, exhausted. She still insists on walking to the toilet though, which is good. Will this fever now be responsible for a new layer of elemental dissolution—from water to fire, where previously she went from herself to earth, from earth to water? I watch these shifting now hourly and I understand in my marrow, we are made to unravel, to unbind. Though she can and will retrace her steps back to solidity, for a time.
M. and I spoke last night for about a hour, a useful, reassuring conversation, but not a particularly marital one—as we discussed being both caregivers, and caregivers for other caregivers. He is frustrated at his perceived inability to help his sister in her wild attachment to outcome; basically, as long as she can delude herself and Mum into thoughts of recovery, they’re okay, but as soon as the going gets tough (as this most recent chemo round has been) and Mum starts saying I wish I were dead, you’d all be better off if I were, his sister falls into total despair. I’m so very grateful that my funny new blonde sister Z. and I are so deeply, unexpectedly likeminded. There’s grief but less despair it seems as we watch a beloved body slowly undoing itself—though she may be mostly numb. And not much longing for to any outcome; when Maman says, I wish I could go home, we say, yes darling, we hope for that too. And also isn’t it wonderful to sit here and hold hands and look at the sky outside the window?
Total change of subject. I tried to call the Young Monk at his mother’s (!) house all last night (but come now, why should it be so shocking, Mandarin and I stay with our mothers all the time) and couldn’t raise him so had the aforementioned conversation with M., a hot bath (no faeries in the tub though), and then blissful horizontal besheeted bed. Tried again to call late this morning, no answer, no machine. Then this afternoon he rang just as we were leaving for radiation, so I was abrupt and basically barked, I can’t talk now and I’ll call you back in 20 minutes. Of course when I called back he wasn’t there, so I talked to…his mother. Who, frankly, sounds like she’s my age. But she’s got to be at least 45, right? [Addendum, inserted much later: actually she’s nearly 60.] Anyway. It was very weird, because the Young Monk had written me a letter in the interval and she insisted on reading it to me over the phone and I stood in the hallway of the Methodist Cancer Center feeling embarrassed and adolescent and with a huge grin on my face.
There were supremely awkward moments, as when she launched into “He’s told me so much about you and why you’re a poet too aren’t you and how wonderful that you met each other,” and I just stood there wheezing lamely, how nice, thank you—or when she revealed her lack of appropriate social boundaries, comorbid with what he’s told me about her, by abruptly confiding all kinds of stuff to me: You know my own mother had breast cancer which was really difficult but she’s better now and my younger son is graduating from high school today and well that’s really hard for me aaaaa. I hung up and put my head in my hands and laughed with relief and horror. The EMTs and lab techs briefly stared at me and then went back to their paperwork. Oh me oh my oh, would you look at Miss Ohio.
The Young Monk must have a better name, and here’s one I’ve thought about. When I told the Film Critic about the Young Monk many weeks ago during an all-night conversation, he sniffed and said disparagingly, jealously, hilariously, “Hmp. Have you noticed that young guys have these ridiculous Biblical names now? When we were kids only old black men who didn’t wear shirts under their overalls had these names. [Pauses.] But I’m sorry, I interrupted—you were telling me all about Methuselah.” Of course this made me laugh and so I never finished telling him about Methuselah. It’s not actually an inappropriate name, the oldest man in the Old Testament (nine hundred and something were his years, I seem to recall), considering that the Young Monk could easily be my kid brother and yet has some eerie maturity that he doesn’t seem to have earned…is he, gasp of horror, an Indigo Child? But Methuselah is too hard to type every time, it’s worse than the Librarian, so let’s refer to the Young Monk as N. which is his first initial anyway. Phew.
And M. is M., and Mandarin is Mandarin, and I’m afraid the Film Critic will have to stay that, and the Librarian, and thank God there are no more peoples for now. Only my new blonde sister will be called Z., because that’s her real-life nickname. Real life?! What is this, primetime?
•
Here there was an interval of about an hour, beginning with the moment in which Maman suddenly woke up and coughed/sneezed all at once. I laughed and said Bless you! She looked at me with some disbelief, a little as if she pitied me, as if I were rather dimwitted, and then protractedly vomited a thick dark bright green grass-clipping-colored stuff, like liquid chlorophyll supplement. I guiltily realize her inapsine/droperomol is half-an-hour late, I didn’t nag the nurses, she would probably have vomited anyway, oh bugger. Now she’s asleep again, except for waking up once to ask, Does the man want the tickets, he wants them, what are we going to do with them. I soothe her back into sleep, there’s no tickets baby, don’t worry about them just now. I watch my power supply, hanging at 17%. When it’s at around 9% it starts threatening to shut down on me, at around 6-7% it cuts off “to preserve memory function.”
What is going on with delirium? Why do we worry so much about letters, numbers, shapes, colors—I’m forever doing math problems or composing music when I have a temperature. Fever must hit that precise lobe/quadrant of the brain where computational stuff and pattern recognition is stored. But there’s often this anxiety/social component as well, where you worry about a nameless faceless person or people and they want various things from you. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about it; but wouldn’t an analysis of delirium make a magnificent NYer article?
And I’ve had a couple of moments myself today (16%) during which I felt like my cogs were slipping a bit. Those moments of cognitive dislocation where you think you know, for a fraction of a second, what it might feel like to have a real psychotic break. Where reality shifts under your hands, just a tiny disjuncture, a little slip, and for a moment you’re not sure if it’s 1604 or 2004 or 2404, and who are all those funny-looking people-shaped objects, and what is this machine I’m driving, what’s a car, what are those square and round things I see through the windshield, I just typed “mindshield” and that’s what we have, and it doesn’t always work so well, this reality filter, this sensation damper (15%). And just going back over this entry so far and lightly editing it, I’m at 14% and I’d better quit while I’m ahead.
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