The saskiad, p.37
The Saskiad, page 37
Anyway, they all came back, and Thomas lasted as long as he could stand it, until he had to run away from Thomasness again. Last time he shattered first, but this time, having learned his lesson, he left before he started beating people up. Saskia thought he had left because she disappointed him, but maybe when he closed the front door that morning, escaping cleanly, what he felt was the loosening of vines around his chest. Will a card arrive at the Old Place in six months, saying, "Lauren and my Saskia and Quentin"? Will there be a photo enclosed of Thomas and a black and white puppy?
Where does Saskia fit in all this? Does Thomas think at all about his various Saskias when he's not with them, or does he merely whistle for his dog and thank his lucky stars that he doesn't have any albatrosses for the moment around his neck? Can she honestly expect any more from him? Why should he care about her? She is no perfect companion. Look at the wreckage she has caused. She boxed Quinny's ears and made him piss on the floor, and then abandoned him and left him blubbering. She plotted to get Bluffaroo booted, and on the day he left he was crying in his trailer and he turned and saw her at the door and sobbed, "Are you satisfied?" and yes, in fact, she was, she was so satisfied she didn't give another thought to him, she disappeared him the way Mrs. Sing disappeared the can opener. She pushed Jane into Thomas's arms, all the while surely knowing that Jane would fall madly in love with him, as any woman must, but that Thomas would assuredly want to trade up to Lauren, or at least diversify, and in any case he would eventually escape, and Jane would be devastated. And for her next trick, she went down to the City and tore out the heart of the first person she met, and in the very act of ripping his heart out, she managed to twist the blade, being merciful enough to give him her address but not merciful enough to give him her real one, but instead the address of her record company:
13 Road to Dis
Stygian Fields, New Jersey
54321
It probably wasn't even mercy, but merely squeamishness.
How did all this happen? How did she cause so much trouble, so much suffering? She wondered once if she would ever be the heroine of her own story. It never occurred to her that she might end up being the villainess.
Everything is more complicated than she thought. Are cows motherly saints who fit into their spaces better than any of God's creatures, or are they stupid creations of evil Man who are desertifying the world? If you protect the chickens and eat their eggs you're not a true vegetarian, but if you let a raccoon eat the chickens' heads, then you are? You can't really let a thousand babies die, can you? But what about ten thousand babies the next time around? Is Saskia human if she can't understand humans? If she isn't human, why is she menstruating like one? Why is she menstruating after smoking so much hemp? Or was that another of Thomas's lies? Why does Thomas lie? Was Thomas lying about the whales? If Man's brain is too big, why are whales' brains, which are bigger, not too big?
Saskia leans her head against the glass. Her brain hurts. What does she know? Does she know any more than that this window is cold? Cogito ergo sum.
An image keeps returning to her. She and Jane and Thomas are drinking champagne in the tent by the river of ichor, knee to knee to knee: an equilateral triangle. It felt incomplete at the time, so why does it look complete now? Surely that was the true Paradise, that one brief hour. And she didn't even recognize it. She sinned, wanting more. She thought Jane and Thomas could be yin and yang, and she the eely line between them. She didn't realize she was the snake in Paradise.
The web is torn, and Saskia is falling. In the City, the web had felt like a trap, carrying her down dark streets where she was afraid to go, forcing her to do things with Russell she didn't want to do. So is she free now, as she falls? Perhaps this, and not the other, is the Essence of Freedom: vertigo, terror.
11
Down into Ithaca's glacial ditch, past clapboard houses, the Masonic temple, the center for homeless women. Once she would have imagined herself disguised, coming secretly to pass tests (but which?) and save someone (but whom?), but she is just Saskia, returning to her vomit.
She doesn't even know who to call from the station, but settles finally, guiltily, on Jo, quailing at the prospect of Lauren asking why she never called her. As it turns out, Lauren isn't even at the Old Place, but "off jigging around a fire somewhere," as Jo puts it. So tonight is the solstice, then.
Did Jo sound relieved on the phone? Happy? Who knows? She didn't say, "Glad you're back, honey," if that's what you are wondering. As her Honda pulls into the lot, she cranes her head out the window, gaping. "What did you do to your hair?" Saskia gets in. "Is that the style in New York?"
"Yeah, they have these big shaving salons."
"No kidding. You look like a lightbulb."
"Thanks."
"And Lauren with such short hair now, too. Maybe I should get cropped."
"It's a mistake. It's cold."
On the way to Tyler, Saskia gets the latest. Bill is back.
"Already?" So he crawled back for more.
Saskia tries to reformulate Jo during the drive home, but doesn't get very far. She is chain-smoking, filling the Honda with a fog of nicotine, driving fast, muttering at drivers who get in her way but not bothering to get angry at them. Why should she? They are hardly obstacles, as she swerves past them on blind curves and hills. Thomas had sex with this woman. Is that drooping lower lip fun to kiss? Is she a wildcat in bed?
Construction paper signs festoon the front door of the Old Place: a big "Welcome Home, Saskia!" above and, below, drawings of kids crying tears as big as cherries, and exhaling cartoon balloons: "Don't go away again!" The one with shading must be Shannon's, the cute bugs saying "We love you!" are vintage Mim, while the crude crowd of stick figures could only come from the pen of Quentin. Even Austin contributed, as he makes sure she realizes: the block letters of the welcome banner are all his. Perhaps it would have been a touching reunion, but her looks frighten them. Mim bursts into tears.
"I think it looks cool," Austin says. "Can I shave my head, too?"
Studying them, she wonders if they could have grown up so much just in the weeks she was away. Mim will be wearing a bra soon, and Saskia makes a mental note to teach her about tampons and, more importantly, to shield her from the dread mensis meal. She looks hardest at Quentin. Almost eight, in second grade, no longer slobbering much. Are those water-blue eyes weak, or watchful? Doesn't his love for his dinosaurs indicate a sensitive streak?
"So what did you guys think of Thomas?" she asks curiously.
"He was super!" Mim says.
"Anh, he was OK," Austin demurs. "Kind of a slave driver. Is he coming back?"
"I don't think so."
"So hopefully we can have a normal Thanksgiving next time. That couch thing was really dumb."
Gorgon is back to being a house cat, and already getting fatter, as she no doubt pigs out to console herself for her absent god. And Bill? Some things never change. "Hey, Sas!"
"I don't answer to 'Sas.'"
"Whoa, Jo told me about the haircut." He makes a frame with his two hands and peers through it. "I like it, I like it!"
"That makes one of us."
"Lauren was really worried about you," he says, dropping the banter. "She even had a psychic spend a night in your bed."
"Yeah? What did the psychic say?"
"She said you were among a lot of people, and you were near water."
"Since I told Jo I was in New York, that's not too amazing."
Saskia unpacks in her room, wondering how she feels about being back. She can only conclude it has been a confusing year. In Tycho's day, they used to annually devise a motto that captured the spirit of the past twelve months. The trick was, all the letters in the motto that were Roman numerals had to add up to the year. To get through the last hour of the bus ride, Saskia slaved over one, which she now tacks on the outside of her door:
SASKIA CAPTURES JANE, LURES BUT LOSES THOMAS,
LEAVES LAUREN, EXPERIENCES EXILE,
RETURNS STUPIDER THAN EVER.
Not very comforting. But she remembers having read a book once that predicted this would be an awful year.
At dinner, Bill appears in the doorway holding a bottle of sparkling cider and leads the whole table in a rendition of "For She's a Prodigal Daughter." She remembers what she was thinking on the bus about her inability to understand people, and she looks hard at him — yes, even at him — trying to reformulate him. Pudgy, pretentious, clownish. But does he mean badly? When she brings her plate into the kitchen, she pauses by him at the sink. "Thanks for the cider. That was nice."
He looks at her, the nostrils of his tiny blob of a nose flaring faintly in surprise. "You're welcome."
All this time, she has bitten back the big question, because she has been afraid to ask, but Jo is in the kitchen, too, and she and Bill will be going to their trailers soon, so this may be Saskia's last chance until tomorrow. "Do either of you know what happened to Jane?"
Bill gazes uncomfortably into the dishwater. Jo waggles her head, a sour expression curdling her face. "That poor kid," she says.
"She's dead, isn't she?" Saskia feels hands closing around her throat. "You can tell me."
"What?" Bill says. "Nothing like that."
"If I'd known he was fooling with her, I woulda kicked him in the nuts," Jo says.
"So what happened to her?" Saskia persists.
"Her parents sent her away," Bill says.
"Because she's pregnant! I knew it!"
"No," Jo says. "They sent her to some boarding school with lots of shrinks."
Jane once told Saskia that if she was ever sent to a boarding school again, it would be one with searchlights on towers, and slavering German shepherds. Saskia will have to swing down on a rope with a Tarzan yell to rescue her. But will Jane want to be rescued by Saskia? Will Jane ever forgive her?
Outside, it is snowing.
She feels better when she wakes in the morning darkness. How comforting to wake in her own bed, with her mind clear! Opening her door, she finds a note attached below hers. Doodah green rag-paper, four pile-driven thumbtacks:
WELCOME BACK, SASKlA! I HOPE NEXT YEAR WE WILL BE FRIENDS.
XX, BILL
Her first thought is, he blew it, it adds up to one too much. But then she realizes, no, he means next year. He even says next year, stupido.
As she goes downstairs to get to work, she wonders how they can ever be friends if she is always so willing to think the worst of him.
She pops the corn, and wakes the crew, and together they watch the light bleed back into the world. "Happy winter solstice!" she says to them when her meteorological table tells her the sun has risen behind the clouds. Since she had no presents to give them, she made extra popcorn, and as they wish each other a happy solstice, they throw it in the air like confetti, and pelt each other, and stuff it down each other's shirts. So it's childish. So shoot her.
The morning light has revealed that it snowed heavily during the night, and Saskia wonders what kind of awful, uncomfortable night Lauren spent. At 10 a.m. Betsy comes creeping down the road, turning gingerly at the switchback and almost getting stuck in front of the garage. Saskia is sitting alone in the kitchen when the back hall door opens, letting in a blast of arctic air before Lauren slams it shut. She turns to take off her coat.
When Thomas came, Saskia was deprived, because of her own blabbiness, of the sight of calm Lauren looking surprised for once in her life. Maybe there was method to her madness, because missing it before makes the sight now of Lauren's jaw dropping, her hands stopping in mid-unbutton, doubly sweet. "Saskia!"
"Hi."
"You're back!"
"I guess so," she giggles.
"Your hair!"
"Oh. Yeah. I —" Saskia wonders how to explain, but before she can think of anything, she finds herself getting hugged.
"I was so worried!"
"That's what everyone's been saying," Saskia says, thoroughly delighted.
"I had a psychic sleep in your bed."
"Bill told me."
"She said you were all right, so I didn't worry as much after that."
Premature death of delight. "Oh, great. And what if the psychic was wrong?"
"She's a very good psychic."
So all the danger lying in wait for Saskia — the pimps in the station, the molesters on the street, Russell in his Hole, and James in the hall — all of them mean nothing because of a lousy psychic? Saskia is already irritated. But Lauren is still hugging her, so Saskia holds on tight, using her Discipline to expand these few seconds into hours, and supplies her own running text: I missed you so much, honey! I'm so glad you're back, sweetheart! I love you so much! Don't ever leave me again!
"You had a rough night," Saskia says.
"You're not kidding. I'm exhausted!"
"Why don't I make us some coffee?"
"That would be nice." Lauren takes off her coat and collapses in a chair while Saskia goes about getting the coffee ready. "So what did you do to your hair?" And for a couple of minutes they cover the basics, catching up, until Lauren asks the biggie, with anger in her voice: "Why did you run away?"
"I don't know," Saskia says honestly. "Why did Thomas run away?"
"Thomas didn't run away. He had things to do."
"When people don't say goodbye, I call it running away."
Lauren is silent.
"He told you he was going, didn't he?" Saskia says, trying not to sound accusing.
"Only the night before. We knew he had to leave sometime, what does the timing matter?"
"What did he say?"
Lauren shrugs. "He said he had to go."
"He had no choice, right?"
"What?"
"And what would he think about Bill being back?" Saskia can't resist this. Lauren's bovine acceptance of everything Thomas does irks her so.
But Lauren merely raises her eyebrows, surprised at Saskia's ob-tuseness. "He told me to take Bill back."
The coffee machine is hissing. Saskia pours a cup and sets it by Lauren's cradled chin. Lauren sniffs it, sits up, sips, sighs. "Why does Thomas lie?" "What are you talking about?" "All this stuff about the guru, when he was the guru." "That was to protect you." "Seems like it was more to protect himself." "You were four at the time, Saskia, and bound to ask all sorts of questions later. What could we have told you that you would have been able to understand? Thomas was right."
"How about the other things? He told me stories about things he did that weren't true."
"All teachers tell stories. They're guides to understanding. Saskia, this is the simplest thing! You'll understand later. And a few things, no, maybe you'll never understand. There are some things I don't understand. But you learn not to judge what you don't understand." "Ours not to reason why?"
"You can put it snidely if you want to, but yes, that's right." "I'm sorry, I think I deserve a few explanations." "Obviously, you've been talking too much to Jo. She's never forgiven Thomas for Mitch leaving her. I wouldn't believe much of what she says."
Saskia's not sure she can take any more for the moment. But there's one last thing: "Do you remember a cake that came for me around Christmastime, when I was maybe three or four?" "Sure. They came every Christmas." "Who were they from?"
"Thomas's parents. A sweet thought, but they really were awful things, all sugar. Thomas never told them he threw them away." "This was before his parents died?"
Lauren looks curiously through the rising steam of her cup. "Who said they died?" "Forget it." Lauren is quite revived from her sleepless night, and will no doubt
work hard all day. "Thanks for making this." And glancing up at Saskia, she says seriously, "I'm glad you're back." Honey. She looks away, to take the curse off the question. "And you're glad to be back?"
Saskia thinks about how even now and probably for years to come she will be tripping over little items that Thomas lied about, for no apparent reason, merely for the love of tricking people. She thinks about the twinkle in his blue eyes, and the beautiful hands. She thinks about the first thing she will do now that she is back, which will be to walk barefoot in the snow to the boarding school with the searchlights and the slavering German shepherds, and to kneel outside the gate with her head bowed in shame until the gatekeeper asks her for the password, and to cry past him, up to the windows of the towers in which the homeless girls are locked away, "Friend! Friend!" She thinks about her own name, whose meaning she still does not know, and she thinks of all the years she waited to ask him, then never asking him when she had the chance, and how it is just as well, because even if he had said something other than "I just liked the sound of it," it probably would have been a lie. She thinks about Lauren, who all these years has never betrayed Thomas, and how hard and thankless a job that was, when Saskia was pestering her for information when she felt she could give none, and she thinks about Thomas, who betrayed Lauren at every turn, saying, among so many other things, when she was thousands of miles away and could not defend herself, that it was her fault that he had left Godhead and subsequently stayed away. She thinks about him telling Lauren to go back to Bill, which was just one more order in a long string of orders, and this makes her think about the note he left for her, which, now that she thinks about it, was also an order: not "I'm sorry," but "Forgive me." Who says he's sorry? She thinks about the one thing she can do, the last scrap of power he left her, which is to refuse to forgive him. "Yeah," she says. "I'm glad I'm back."
And thinks: I think.
author's note
The books that Saskia has read and reread are real books, and bits of their texts have lodged themselves in her mind. Since her unconscious borrowings could hardly be flagged with quotation marks, I should acknowledge my debts here. The biography of Tycho Brahe that Saskia picked up in the Round Tower is by J. L. E. Dreyer. Her favorite book on alchemy is Jacques Sadoul's Alchemists and Gold. Many of her naval and Napoleonic turns of phrase hail from C. S. Forester. Marco Polo and the various Tartar Khans sometimes speak in the words of Ronald Latham, translator for the Penguin edition of The Travels.
