Chapter 2

The herb chipped at his pain and refunded him with pleasant, mysterious memories. After twenty-two it all went down hill, the narrow concave rut where there was little opportunity for change or growth, a no-man’s land between adolescence and adulthood, as though he had encountered a developmental glitch at childhood which led to his present misery. But the weed adopted a smooth effect. Memories flooded him, mostly memories of his mother, a frail but comely woman with golden hair and thin, sallow cheeks, which were signs of malnutrition and self-sacrifice. He thought of her when his misery hit a nadir, and from this lowest point these gentle memories thrust him suddenly to a zenith, a view of magnolias and orchids from on-high, these same flowers within a strange garden vanishing and appearing with the cycle of seasons, and upon this peak he envisioned this wonderful garden, these flowers sunning themselves, and young children of different ethnicities dancing hand-in-hand, a collection of rainbow streaks over them, and the band playing in a continuous melody, not a rant, but a chorus of angelic song and praise, a utopian vision neither feasible nor reliable, but a product of his imaginings. And somehow these random impressions of joy and beauty served as the only representation of what his mother meant.

“Noble? Noble? Are you awake?” he heard in the distance.

The young Noble, who lived in the same room, felt a soothing hand upon his back. His mother’s hand did not erase what he dreamt. It assisted his transition from the unconscious realm to that moment when the hand stroking his back brought him gracefully to her voice, a gentle Eurydice tempting an impatient Orpheus.

“Awww, mom.”

“You wanted to go to the park today, didn’t you? It’s Saturday and a very gorgeous day. Do you still want to go?”

“Let’s go then,” he said weakly.

He wore pajamas with action figures on them, his bed sheet one sprawling cartoon. His school books were piled on a small desk, his clothes in a chest of drawers. This was Noble before his obsession with music. He was a simple child who walked on weekdays to the elementary school which catered to the old money, and teachers who examined carefully some students but not others.

His mother packed a basket of cold-cuts and soft rolls for this particular outing, and after he had dressed and bathed, he walked with her to the park in the center of town. At the park’s center stood a statue erected in the mid-nineteenth century of the town’s first mayor. His mother spread the blanket near this statue. They sat for some time, curious of the people around them, the bright sunshine asking nothing in return.

“Mom?” he asked while munching on a sandwich, “I don’t wanna go to school no more.”

His mother smiled, as she had had the same thoughts once.

“What’s the matter with school?”

“I don’t like it. Miss Drudgeson always yells at me.”

“That’s because you’re not doing well. If you improve, she’ll stop yelling at you.”

“I don’t wanna go back. I don’t wanna learn arithmetic anymore. It’s so bad and boring.”

She pat him on the head a few times and laughed.

“Is Daddy sending me to military school?”

“Your father just says that, because your grades are so low. He won’t send you away. About you’re father, he’s under a lot of pressure lately.”

“He’s mean to me,” said Noble.

“That’s because he loves you. He’s only trying to do what’s best. He may not show it, but he does love you.”

“But you love me more than he does.”

“Never compare our love for you, Noble.”

“Do you love Daddy?”

She wiped off a gob of mayonnaise below his lip.

“You shouldn’t be asking these questions, but I’ll tell you, only if you act like an adult about it.”

“Do you love Dad?”

“Yes, I love him,” she said. “He’s a good, responsible man, and he takes care of us.”

“I don’t love him. He never says anything. He makes angry looks and stuff, and I hear you fighting all the time. You don’t love him neither, especially when he yells and stuff.”

She looked into the cloud spotted sky, sighing, confronted by his persistent curiosity and precociousness.

“Noble, it’s never easy,” she said. “You’re father and I have disagreements like any couple, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. When we first met, we were very young, and very much in love.”

“Even when he hits you?”

“He doesn’t hit me.”

“Then what’s all that noise?”

“Well, we exercise a lot, and sometimes it makes a lot of noise.”

Noble believed her, although he had never seen them exercise before.

“Love is a wonderful thing,” she continued, “but also very hard, and your father and I were very much in love. He was twenty-two, and I was seventeen when we married, and ever since we loved each other, and although he doesn’t show it at all, he loves us, and when we had you, our love grew stronger.”

Her words sounded good. He was paying attention, not to the meaning of her words, but her elocution, her soft and patient tones akin to her hand stroking his back, her palm patting his head. He didn’t care so much about his father’s anger and neglect. His mother filled that void, acting as both mother and father. Her love for her son never gushed or overflowed with sentimentality. She became firm and resolute when his discipline wandered, when his room was messy, when he refused the main entre¢e and craved only the desert, when he didn’t brush his teeth, or when he vehemently declined trips to the barber. And this duality weighed upon her, to Noble innocent ignorance, because she hid sweetness in favor of a more aggressive and disciplined approach. Rarely did she answer his many questions with avidity as she did in the park that morning. Noble was too young to recognize the distinction. Ironically she understood her limitations as a disciplinarian, unlike McCoy McCloud. She buried her anger like a hatchet in a log. She raised her voice only to her husband, never to her child, and as a result she paid the price both physically and emotionally, as her husband served as a vent which belched back a greater, more damaging heat.

Noble admired her. He trusted her, the only person he could trust. Besides she cooked a mean fried chicken, and at these special meals she relaxed and let the young Noble lick his fingers.

Their meals were solitary occasions, McCoy McCloud noticeably absent. He spent his time after work at a local tavern on the North side of Waspachick, far enough from his wife who couldn’t intrude with any convenience. Noble and his mother would sit in a comfortable silence, their conversations spent but their mutual affections lingering. His mother seemed more severe inside the house than outside, as though the poor relationship with her husband was revealed on the yellowing walls, the sofa where a sharp spring poked through the cushion, and the wall-hangings layered with dust.

On occasion she helped Noble with his homework. She wasn’t employed in the conventional sense, so she had many an opportunity to read her romance novels purchased from the supermarket. Noble, after school, watched his mother sprawled on the sofa, patiently reading.

Noble had just learned how to read, but did not include books among his few activities. He would have rather played in the mud, or drink cola, or stare at the black and white television screen for hours, as though these shows reflected the truth and not the jolly, shiny, and downright fake values of fantastic liars who espoused values no one on this planet ever adhered to, but a steady stream of false happiness which encouraged him to act properly while hiding valid feelings, forcing him to dislike himself amidst these men built by factory engineers and these women who were the products of plastic, silicone, airbrushing, and cosmetics thicker than icing.

Reading took too much effort, and television very little, so little that his brain cells burned. The activities he found most enjoyable led him closer to stupidity, insanity, and death. Noble’s mother knew of his affinity for the television, and when he watched for too long, she would shut the chatterbox off. She sat him on her lap and read passages from the latest romance novel, words which her child could not comprehend. He was soothed instead by her inflections, the way she pronounced the multisyllables, the diphthongs at each consonant which flowed from her mouth like an instrument rich in tone, as though each word were a note, and the combination of words a symphony played by vibrating vocal chords. These chords showered him with riffs and landscapes.

After a chapter or two he grew tired of her speech due to his intense but futile effort to understand. And the information received only elicited song. He used these words out of context, as though establishing sound instead of sense, and he regurgitated these complex sounds in the classroom.

For some time his second grade teacher thought him bright, advanced, and learned, until she read his compositions which didn’t make any sense at all. And so Noble listened attentively when his mother read. He smiled with her during the romantic interludes and cried when tears rolled down her cheeks.

He returned to the television after these readings, as though the people within these compartmentalized boxes, inducing a thirty-minute resolution to conflict, kept him company in a way his mother could not. He witnessed perfect families- the wise and gentle father smoking a pipe in his study, the mother who prepared gourmet meals and mopped the floors with a friendly, bald-headed bodyguard wearing a gold earring, the brother who broke a window with a baseball, the cute toddler who smiled but said nothing. In short, the television and even the few films he saw reflected everything Noble was not, the result being a generous dearth of reality, and when thrown into the ordinary world, things seemed drab and boring, and his young fantasies grandiose, his ambitions high as a dramatic overachiever, a status which resulted in his inability to handle the simplest arithmetic and most lucid paragraphs. He could not concentrate on anything for a reasonable period of time, the remote control pressed every few seconds, searching and eventually finding anything to entertain him.

He relaxed with his mother at the town statue and ate the sandwiches, but drew little pleasure from it. He wanted more. Every day had to be a carnival. He had little idea of the work involved to create a ceaseless and steady stream of fun. He merely watched and then dreamed without taking any action, a characteristic which haunted him to this day.

“Simple pleasures,” said his mother in the park. “That bird over there...”

“Where’s the bird?” he asked.

“That red bird hopping over there- his life is spent gathering worms and feeding his young. And when the day is sunny and warm, he enjoys it, all within his working life, and one day school will end. It doesn’t continue forever. What do you want to be when you get older, Noble? Have you given it any thought?”

“I don’t know,” he said sheepishly.

“If you could be anything you wanted, what would it be?”

“I wanna be a movie star,” he said suddenly.

“A movie star? Do you know I wanted to be a dancer on Broadway?”

“That’s for girls.”

“Oh, really? I knew a lot of men who were dancers, good dancers too.”

“Why aren’t you dancing then?”

“Well, life has this special way of knocking things down to size. I mean, if I were a dancer, I’d never have had you.”

“Did you buy me in a store? That’s what Shylock says.”

She smiled gently, even though she had little idea how to respond.

“A stork delivered you,” she said, “right to our doorstep. A huge bird with a big sack under his beak, and the bird carried you from the bird world into Waspachick, and he delivered you on your birthday.”

“Where’s the stork now?”

“Delivering other babies.”

This sounded plausible enough, until the intimation of stardom returned.

“I wanna be on television.”

“Why television? Do you like acting?”

“Acting?”

“Sure. One has to act in order to be on television. You can’t just wander on the set and play a role without practice and training. Are you sure about this? I wanted to be a dancer, a great dancer, the most famous dancer like Anna Pavlova or Isadora Duncan. And I dreamed about being on the stage, and my father took me to dance classes everyday after school. And I practiced and practiced. I ate only fruits and vegetables, and soon enough I wore away.”

“Huh?”

“I grew very skinny, too skinny, and Mommy had to go to the hospital, because she wanted to be a dancer so much, and only a precious few make it out there. There are so many who try so hard, even at the expense of their own lives. Actors are the same way. So are painters and sculptors. They want fame and fortune, and they use their artistry as a big boat carrying them to glory and recognition, but when one uses art in that manner, one always fails, as I failed. I realized, after I went to the hospital, that dancing was only a way of making me noticed, so that more people would pay attention to me, admire me, comment that I was beautiful. Do you feel the same way? Do you want more attention from Daddy and me?”

“I don’t like Dad. He always yells and stuff. I want to become an actor like you said.”

“Acting isn’t easy. Maybe the top one percent get famous and live off they’re acting. I’m not saying that you don’t have a chance, Noble, I’m not saying that at all. You can do anything, anything you want, as long as you work for it, pay taxes, and the rent, utilities, and the food. Nothing’s for free. Everything has a price, and the arts has an enormous price tag, so large that even the rich folk on the North side avoid it. The best thing, Noble, is to do well in school for now and not worry so much. Enjoy your youth, because it only comes around once. It’s not easy being young, but it’s a lot harder being old.”

“And then we die? Where do we go, mom?”

“Wherever you want, wherever you believe you should go, be that heaven or hell, outer-space, back to earth, or even eaten by worms underground. It’s all up to you.”

“I’d go to the movies.”

“And I’d be on the stage, dancing with Nureyev and Barishnikov,” as she giggled and ruffled his hair.

At these rare moments Noble connected with her. The days and nights of solemnity and austerity were eviscerated for her laughter and genuine happiness at letting herself smile and giggle. She became another woman when she discussed dancing. She kept this simple dream. Noble had little conception of this, and understood little of what she said, only that she was at one point a dancer, and it was partially his fault that she gave up.

“If I wasn’t here, you would dance still?” asked Noble.

“Having you is ten-times better than dancing. Things change over time, and it changes for the better. Without you, my life would be, would be, not the same as it is now. Do you get it?” she asked as though seeking affirmation.

“When I’m grown up, I’ll buy you a dance place, and you can dance all day, and I’ll also get a room with my friends and see you dance.”