M. Stefan Strozier
Cat's Eyes
Trains -- they rolled across the flat, Midwest landscape, and he could see them as if he were flying in a plane overhead. From above, they did not seem very long, but looking out from his parents' car window, the trains seemed to stretch on forever. He had driven with his parents across Texas that summer many years ago. He remembered it had taken three long days to get through the state, and his mother, who was ill, complained a lot about the boring landscape. She would comb her long, black hair, pull the hair from the teeth of the comb, neatly ball it up, and put it out a crack in the window. He watched her every time from the back seat, as the hairball would get sucked out the window in a split-second. Every now and then, she would take the brush and smack his father with it on the shoulder. His father just drove their beat-up car and stared out the window ahead of him in silence. He would tap the dashboard in time with the music from the radio.
Mary had arranged for the two of them to stay with some of her friends in San Francisco. It was a nice apartment near a small marina. From the living room, the sailboats in the harbor were observable, bobbing gently in the water. It was winter, and the cold wind blew against the big windows of the house and made them shake. She was trying to make things better between them, but the tumors in his head had started to spread, and it was only a matter of time before he would die.
"I bought you a new hat today, Mark. It's a Greek fisherman's cap."
He looked up at her, and the only thing that prevented him from calling her a bitch just then was a sudden, sharp pain from one of his tumors. He could feel each one of them now.
"I already have a hat."
"You have a baseball cap, silly, and it's not even a San Francisco team. This is a Greek fisherman's cap. Don't you like it?"
"Mary, why don't you take your Greek fisherman's hat and shove it up your ass?"
"Mark, please, you're being bitter. I can't stand it when you're so bitter. I can't take it..."
"You're so damn stupid sometimes. Funny thing is, it's too late to even try and tell you just how stupid you are. It won't make any difference anymore."
"Mark, what are you talking about?"
He got up from watching TV and walked to the kitchen to get a beer. He stared her down as he walked by and then, when he returned, he could see her eyes were misting and she would start crying in a moment.
"Just sit on the couch with me. Leave the hat in the closet," he told her as she stood in the foyer. She opened the closet door and threw the cap to the top shelf; as far back as she possibly could, behind a red and black scarf, winter gloves, and black, collapsible umbrellas.
The park on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge was his favorite place in the city. He had ridden his motorcycle across California to the city one summer. He had tried to find the Golden Gate Bridge but ended up on the Washington Bridge instead. He had gone back and forth a couple of times until he stumbled onto a small island. He found a Naval base and got in with the military ID card that he still had. He went to the docks and watched as a huge ship pulled out. The water churned in massive circles, lined with white froth. Then he finally found the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped at the park on the other side, just as the sun was setting. The skyscrapers reflected the soft, orange glow from the setting sun, and the metal bridge seemed to get an even darker hue of red. Clay hills split the landscape, and the bay was full of white caps and sailboats. The big islands in the bay seemed to be uninhabited. He had wished he could be on one of those islands, alone. There were wildflowers everywhere and the air smelled sweet. It was all so beautiful.
There were so many things he wanted to write about, and he was still young. It was like a calling he had to answer. But it would all be over soon, probably this week. Hell, maybe tonight. There was no way of knowing for sure. The doctors had said he had less then a month left. How could they know? It had been three days since they had told him. He had felt a strange chill this afternoon, too. It was a new feeling he did not recognize and it had scared him. It was like death's breath. He thought if he stopped fighting, then maybe it would be tonight. He was tired of fighting, especially with her. She was not dealing with it at all. She had to make things up, and he had to fight that too. Then, once it was obvious she was lying to herself and to him, he had to deal with her being sorry.
"Mark, I just want you to be happy."
"Jesus, Mary, I'm dying. Okay. All right. Can you get me my pills?"
"Mark, you're not supposed to take your medicine when you drink."
He leaned his head back against the couch and rolled his eyes and then she quickly went to get his pills. She returned after a moment with his pills and handed them to him. He took out five and washed them down with his beer.
They were watching the nightly news, and it was starting to get dark. He looked over at her. Her brown hair rested gently, barely touching her shoulders. She was easy on the eyes and her skin was soft to the touch. She had a way in bed, too. She always took what he had, each subtle step by subtle step, submissive yet unrelenting and unafraid. He did not want to leave her; she was all he had left now.
"I got us a movie," she said to the living room in front of her, without turning her head, aware that he was studying her.
"What is it?"
"You'll see," she said and got up to hook the VCR cable to the TV and start the movie. He watched her as she moved gracefully. As he watched her, he thought about how good she looked and what he liked to do to her. If nothing else, being with her had made the time pass a little easier, even made the pain seem a little less real. He should not be so mean to her. It was just hard to ignore the pain and deal with her problems too. There was only a little time left now. It was best to leave her with some good memories of him. She sat back down on the sofa and he leaned on her shoulder. She put her arm around him.
The doctors had said brain cancer was unusual for a thirty-three year old man. It was just so damn painful. His mother had had breast cancer, and she went through all the same treatment and lost all her hair too, just before she died. There was no denying it anymore. It was just so hard to admit. He knew a guy a while back that he had worked with who died from brain cancer. He did not visit that guy in the hospital, just as Mary had not visited him. He had been too busy living back then, when that guy had died. Right after he had returned from the Gulf War, in New York City. But that guy had just been a co-worker, more of an acquaintance, than a friend. She was his woman.
There was a little bar on Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem by Columbia University that had poetry readings every Friday night. He would take the 5 train alone and go there to listen to the poetry, but often, there was also a game on TV. The bartender would turn the volume all the way down, but he would still watch the game, especially if it was a playoff game with Jordon and the bulls beating the Knicks. His mind would wander and be in two places at once, like an organ player. Poetry and the playoffs, it was almost too much to take. Every time he left there with a woman. That was where he met her. She loved to come watch him read poetry. It had been very romantic, especially for her.
But the Gulf War had done something to him, changed him for the worse. The syndrome that a lot of vets were having problems with. It simply had to be. They had all taken the pills, the shots, the black smoke that spilled on your clothes, the unfired uranium rounds everywhere, and the chemical weapons. How could it not be that he was dying from brain cancer because of something he came into contact with in the Gulf War?
He had so much to write about. But he had never really written anything, he had only planned on writing. Now, when he finally reached the place in his life where he would write for real, he was going to die. He had only just started to write, living in the small studio here in San Francisco, and her weaving in and out of his life. He was going to finally put her at arm's length and move his writing to the front seat. And there was nothing she could do about that. He had it all planned out. Best laid plans and good intentions.
Then he found out something else, as he started to seriously write. That if you do not write all along, you will not be any good when you finally get started for real. And he remembered all the writers he had seen on TV, or read about, and they always said one thing without fail: the first thing you need to do is write. That was something he had not liked to hear. Of course he had to write. When the time came, he would be able to write dialogue, a character sketch, a plot, or anything else he needed to write. Now, he realized there was some hidden meaning to that statement, which he had not understood at the time. But he was in his thirties and there was plenty of time to catch up. Besides, he had so much material, and that is what most writers do not have. Still, he knew that he should have been writing all along.
But all that did not matter now. And what did he have to show for it all? This woman. This woman who had taken away his art. She was the wind-sail on his back, not the wind at his back. She had not allowed him to be free; had not allowed him to become an artist. And it was not as if she were doing it subconsciously. No, she was jealous of his ability to create art, but her envy was not enough. She had acted out on her envy, making a conscious effort to always create just enough of a problem in their relationship so that his art would suffer, or at least never advance forward. He had even caught her a few times saying things like, "I do not want you to be a writer," or, "all you do is write on the computer, I'm leaving if you don't stop." And if he did turn his attention to trying to write, she would sabotage him somehow. What was the reason for it? He did not have an answer for that one, but it was the cold, hard truth, nonetheless. Hell, she would probably admit it to his face right now, if he asked her. But he did not want to bother with her anymore.
"Why did you do that?" He said to the darkness and then woke and saw she was gone. He sat up and saw the TV was just white fuzz. She always left at the most inopportune moments. They had been together for so long, but could never seem to turn the corner of their relationship. It seemed to him now like the best years of his life had vanished, chasing a dream that would never become reality. Half of the thing was his fault. He knew that. But she always held something back. Every time they got close, she would find a way to drift apart. Now it was too late. He had won the argument, but lost the war. And it had cost him his life.
The cat was sitting on the living room table, staring at him with wide, piercing eyes. He hated that cat, but as he stared back, into its eyes, they seemed to enter his mind for a minute and stay there, somehow not unwelcome. He reached over and grabbed the vial of pills on the table and the cat jumped off and ran away. He took out six pills out and washed them down with the last sip from his beer on the table and then he leaned back down on the couch. After a few moments, he felt the now familiar blissful waves of calmness lapping at his mind. The tide was coming in again.
The feeling that came every now and then was here again. It was as if everything around him were screaming: the room, the walls, and his thoughts. He was awake and listening, but something else was with him, right over his shoulder. It usually went away after a few minutes. It seemed like he was in the middle of a vast open space that was suffocating him. He felt the same chill again too, this time closer and colder. He had felt that same chill that very afternoon when they had gone in the taxi to get lunch. He had not wanted to go, but she had insisted, and they sat at the table, as he watched all the people walk by and sometimes stare back at him. Just about anyone who looked noticed him with his cap and bald head, which you could tell was bald, even with the hat on, and his thin body. He could see them piece it together, and then he had wanted to go back home. He promised himself he would not go out anymore but right at that moment, he had felt a cold chill slice down his back. It only lasted for a second, but then he had wanted to go home for real. If he stayed home, it was not such a bad way to die, just a little fear. But he did not like the chill. No, not at all. It felt like cold water, but worse.
The only thing he could remember that compared with it was the summer he helped his cousin build his house in the New Mexico desert. There were two Mexicans that had helped them work, but at night they would all sit around the fire and take mushrooms. He had gotten too high, and had walked out to the dark by himself and found a river. He put his head under the water, pretending to drown, but not quite, as he looked up at the stars and watched them get blurry under the cold water. Then his cousin and the two Mexicans suddenly grabbed him out of the water and had carried him back to the fire. He dried his clothes off and slept late the next day. He eventually caught the plane back home, and as he had looked out of the window, he saw the waves crashing below him on the beach in L. A. The ocean waves were so small, and he thought about how insignificant he was. Everyone was insignificant. His life had been insignificant.
Mary was sitting on the end of the couch, right by his head with her arm over him. God, how he loved her. He loved everything about her: her hair, her smell, her way of making love, her touch.
"I'm glad you didn't go anywhere."
"Mark, you know I am not going anywhere."
He closed his eyes again.
He hated people now, all of them. They were so highbrow in this city. They moved as if everything is so under control, as if they were something special. They were all young and getting rich on computer chips. The land of the hippies was now the land of the thirty-second commercial for zinfandel wine. Large bank accounts and everything copied; copied life. They drink martinis to copy another age they cannot recreate because they do not understand what it means to live. So everything they did was a copy. This was his generation: the copy-cat generation. And it had found its way into fiction too. There had not been any good fiction in the country since Hemingway had died. He could write about that. He had thought about all of this, and it was all going to make it to paper. How all the great American writers lived in the first part of the twentieth century and then everything died. Then there were no good writers at all. Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison. Funny how the Nobel Prize winner is a black female. Their writing is girlish, blase, and politically correct. It's not even about femininity. Flannery O'Connor wrote ten times better than either of these old people. And where were all the young writers? Where are you? All this he wanted to write about. But he had only started, just started. But when it came time to put them to paper, there she was at the door with some kind of situation. He had gone too, because he could not help but to. Because he loved her. And she had loved him, in her own way, but that way had damaged his art.
He heard the door close. She walked over to the couch in the dark room and he slowly sat up. She saw he was awake. She whispered, "Mark, I just want you to know that I love you."
"Where did you go?"
"For a walk."
"Is it cold?"
"Yes. The wind is blowing very hard. Do you want some soup?"
"No." There it was again, the cold chill.
"Do you want a blanket? Are you going to sleep on the couch?"
"Yes."
She got up and went upstairs to get a blanket. She returned and threw it over him and then she turned the TV off and sat down on the couch next to him. He leaned down and put his head in her lap. It felt warm and calm.
"I feel...cold."
If he could just put it all through a telescope, like Hemingway said. It was possible, he supposed. But was it really? No, it was not possible. It might be possible to make all of your art through a telescope, but it is not possible to pen all your art through it. Not now, not ever. And then, what were the things he would write about? There were stories that just flowed through his head and never stopped, like the time he had driven a tiny, rent-a-car to Italy after the war, when he had been on leave. He had left from Germany, knowing he only had one month of leave to burn, before he would have to return to the base to ship home, and sign out of the army for good. But he had said to hell with it, and had driven through Germany and Switzerland, and then Italy. He had gone through Bavaria and stopped at every small pub he could find and talked with the Germans and thought how much he disliked their ways. How they shut everything off at precisely nine at nigh,t and only the Gashouse would be open in the small towns. And everyone had a well-manicured garden. And how he had stopped at ten or more Gashouses and had slept there with German women sometimes, because he was the American. Then he had gone through Switzerland and the high mountains that were so beautiful with their snow-capped peaks, which never lost their snow, and the lush, green valleys with some fields of crops that grew, angled with the hills. The roads would wind up and down and through the hills and there were small taverns at every stop that he had stopped at too. He would talk in broken English to the girls and they would be eager to be with him. He would drink wine with them and talk about how his country was so powerful. But he had never mentioned writing, he had only thought about writing in his mind. Still, he knew these were the stories he would one day write.
Then he had reached northern Italy, but had run out of cash, so he had stopped at an army base near Livorno and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And how the Tower was highly overrated because what is the big deal about a structurally flawed building? He had thought about stopping to pen some of that, but he did not. Instead, he managed to get a loan and had kept on, making it to Venice, checking into a hotel there. And Venice was such a beautiful city, but instead of doing the tourist thing, he had wandered into the heart of the city to a small cafe. He had ordered some food, and then had drank coffee. He met an old, nice Venetian woman there who spoke in English well enough and had stayed until it got dark, talking with her about both their countries, war, politics, religion, sex, and just about everything else. He had wanted to go back to his room and put the experience to paper, just to save it, but he had not.
So instead, he had caught a train to Rome and there he saw the Coliseum and had wondered about what it meant to be a gladiator and what it meant to die. He had seen the catacombs and wondered about the Christians, and a story came to his mind about that too. But he dismissed it and went back to his room. And then he had wanted to make it go Greece on a ferry across the Mediterranean, but he ran out of time and had to buy a train ticket from Rome back to Frankfurt. Still, he rode the train back and three girls were in his compartment and when it got dark, they had pulled the seats out and slept together, and had welcomed him in with them. He had wanted to write about how the European girls were nothing like American girls, but where would he write about it? Then the train pulled into the stop at Frankfurt and he got out and walked back to his Caserne. He showed his ID to the MP, went through the gate, walked to his barracks and his bed, and went to sleep.
And then his Squad Leader had woken him up first thing in the morning. The guy was a Mexican who served in Vietnam, and he had won the Medal of Honor. How Mark had thought that it was so ironic, because they had never gotten along, and how this man had been so successful in life and how he knew he would be successful as a writer. And how his Squad Leader had realized he just might have it, and if he ever needed anything to help him be an artist, to make it, he would be willing to facilitate that. All of that he had wanted to write about, but now he would not.
"I want to write about it!" He said to the darkness of the room, in front of him.
"Mark, are you okay?"
He was okay. He was dying.
"Mark, you're going to make it, I know you are. And I love you."
His grandparents had a farm with horses. He would set out cinder blocks and put boards on top of them with his mother for the big quarter horse to jump. Then he would ride the quarter horse, and as it jumped, it would scare him a little bit each time. His mother would watch him very proudly. He could tell she was proud of him by the way she lifted her head up each time the horse went over the boards. His father had ridden the big quarter horse but he was so tall that the quarter horse had thrown him off, and he had broken his wrist. His father came back from the hospital that night with a cast on and they had all waited up for him. That night he snuck out of his bed and went to the field where all the horses were. He walked over and tried to lead the quarter horse back to the coral but it would not go with him. So he jumped on the horse and it ran all over the field as he held on for dear life. He did not want to break his wrist as his father had. Finally, the horse stopped and he climbed down and yelled at the horse like it was a dog, but it did not run away. Then he snuck back inside the house to his bed and went to sleep. He had strange dreams that night. His dreams were always strange. His dreams and his feelings. He wanted to write about those, too. And his childhood and the war and everything else that he had seen in his life.
Now, it was almost over, and then again he felt the chill, in his dreams. This time, it came like a wave crashing over him, making him cold and weak at once. He tried to fight it, but it seemed so strong. Mary had gotten up and left again. He had turned over and his face was against the back of the couch. He had pushed the blanket off and now it was on the floor. When she came back from wherever she had gone, she saw his face buried in the couch and the blanket on the floor. The cat was sitting on his shoulder, still and silent, looking at her with wide, vexing eyes. "Kitty, what are you doing?" she said, as she reached down and picked up the cat. She stroked her hand softly down its back a few times and then dropped it. The cat hit the floor with a thud and ran away.
"Mark, you silly boy, don't you want the blanket? Here, I'll put it on you," she said graciously, and a little nervously, as she bent over to pick up the blanket. She threw the blanket over him but he did not move. She stepped back in a rigid movement. Then she slowly reached down, and with her open hand slowly pulled his shoulder back, but his whole body followed.
"Mark? Mark, oh my God, no!" she said, and covered her face with her hands and started to quietly sob. From somewhere in the dark room, the cat started hissing at her. And the sound of the cat's hissing sounded like the cold wind rolling in from the bay, over the waves and the sailboats, right against the big windows, making them shake.
©2006 by M. Stefan Strozier
