The Largesse of the Sea Maiden Page 4

  Well Grandma that was entertaining what you pulled in Family Group last Sunday but ridiculous. Come on back sometime but keep a lid on it, Okay?

  I’m through being the one to explain this family to each other. I know how in your eyes Grandma it’s like every one of us is the runt from a litter of geniuses, we just need extra feeding and we’ll sprout. But the total number of times it adds up to that the jail doors have clanged on us is pretty impressive Grandma, and those are the statistics, they speak for themselves. Whatever these people in this rehab are doing to help me I think we should pause and consider it. I’m shocked to hear myself say that, but the last four years my habits have drug me behind them over some pretty rough ground and now I’m teachable. Let’s set our ideas aside and just listen. I thought you were listening at the Family Day group session on Sunday but I’m sorry, it turned out you were more like laying in wait to pounce like a slobbering cougar on poor Jerry, who I happen to despise, but he’s the one clean and sober three years while meanwhile I’m the one drunk not a week ago. I’ve just got nothing left to say. I get around a mirror and it isn’t pretty.

  I don’t need grandmotherly help, I need trained and certified counselors to point a few things out. And I can’t have my Grandma at Family Group red-dogging the whole discussion and preaching about Jesus Christ and Satan, or anyway the last thirty minutes of a two-hour group, that’s how much time you took up jiving on Heaven and Hell, thanks a million. Luckily Jerry has a sense of humor. Thank you for representing the Cassandra family in a most stand-out way. I am not surrounded by demons here. These are trained and certified counselors.

  I am through explaining this family to each other. It’s G-damn ridiculous is what it is. I guess I can swear here as you won’t be receiving this as I won’t be sending it. Do you remember when the Starlight was a motel? I remember when it was a motel and whores used to sit out on the bench at the bus stop across the street, really miserable gals with blotchy skin and dents in their head after getting run out of San Francisco. You have to be pretty down on your luck to get knocked off the market in the Tenderloin. I mean you wouldn’t cross the street for them, but I guess once in a while some desperate character from one of these rooms in the Starlight would make the journey. Do you know what? I’ve had one or two minutes here when I might’ve done it myself. But the whores are gone, the bus-stop benches are empty. I don’t think the bus runs past here no more.

  I mean this is not a family to get their coat of arms tattooed on your chest. Do you remember when Bro broke his girlfriend’s nose in the living room and said “There, I rest my case.” Do you remember when Dad scooped his hand down in his soggy cereal and just sat there staring at nothing for about twenty-two minutes with a glop of it in his hand? Do you remember when John got his picture in the papers in Dallas being arrested, and he sent it to us in the mail like it was really something to write home about? You know what I remember most about that picture? The borders were all ragged because he had to tear it out of the page with his fingers. My oldest brother is somebody who the state of Texas won’t let him possess scissors.

  Incidentally, if this rehab program works and if I get it together, if I reach a point of balance, I will enroll in college. That’s not what I started out to say, but if I get so I can look people in the eye, get so I can make change and carry on conversations, I will get a part-time job and enroll in college. But as for my Grandma, as for last Family Group day

  Dear Pope John Paul

  Do you have two first names, or is Paul your last name, like you’re Mr. Paul.

  And I know it’s not just dumb luck, I know I ordered the circumstances.

  At first I was interested in getting high, I liked to laugh at nothing and get my feet crossed and go down on my ass. Then later it was torture, but it was a button I could push to destroy the known world.

  I mean it’s like I get that glass as far as just touching against my lower lip, and next thing I know I’m on the Ghost-Bus to Vegas. There’s a certain power in that you know, it’s like if you don’t like the movie you’re in you just grab this jug going by and it takes you and flings you into a completely different story.

  What do they feed you when you’re the Pope? Try the stuff around here sometime. For lunch they give you a marshmaller and a coffee bean. It’s a salvage yard for people who totaled their souls called the Starlight Recovery Center in Ukiah, California, on Idaho Avenue. Ah hell what’s wrong with me? I won’t be sending no letter to the Pope.

  But I’m telling you I think I’ve been dealing with the Devil and I could use some expert coaching. There really is a Devil, he really does talk to me, and I think it might be coming from some Antabuse giving me side effects, but be that as it may I need to know the rules. So far I think I’ve found out that I don’t have to obey his orders, I can just ignore him, sort of, but if I keep pissing him off is he going to get after my people?

  Mark Cassandra

  Dear Satan,

  Senor Mr. Business, you are one big fuckin bubble and I’d hate to be there when you go POP because then I’d get a lot of really rank stuff on me.

  I mean I’m here to change or die trying but all I can think about is if this was still the old Starlight, the Motel Of Bad Dreams, I’d scrape together a couple hundred dollars and lay up here drunk until they smelled my corpse and broke the lock. But everything changes, and the Starlight’s all new and different, and I’d better get new and different too, and find a better way of filling up than alcohol. I like the thing this guy Wendell was saying in group, he put out the idea of pouring in the right thoughts into our poison thinking—like pouring good water into a glass of dirty water—until I’m filling up and spilling over and just keep going like that till I’m running clean.

  My Grandma puts it that Cass if you keep drinking your babies will come out crosseyed, and you’ll end up buried in a strange town with your name spelled wrong on your grave.

  Dear Sis

  Here I am—yep—again—same old story.

  But this time I swear it’s feeling different. You’re the one person I’ve never jived, so that’s as far as I’ll go with that one. It’s feeling different, that’s as much as I’ll swear to.

  If you want to come to Family Group you can. I have had one Family Group but nobody came but dear old Grandma and that led to an incident. I realize you’re stuck in Dallas but if you come home for a vacation, I wouldn’t mind seeing a friendly face. And if it was my sister Marigold, I’d be smiling. Marigold, sister Marigold. My noble young petunia. It’s every Sunday, Two PM. You’ll do better than Grandma I’d lay odds. She didn’t have a word to say, not until about three-fifteen. Family Group goes for two hours—the wives, husbands, children, any close people, they all come for group therapy. Mostly sitting with rods up their butts and every face pulled tight, nobody knows if they’re about to get ratted out, get their covers yanked. Playing it close, in other words, as far as the twisted little games they play with their loved ones. Jerry asking “What would you say to your loved one,” and they say, “I don’t know. I pass,” like that. But this one guy Calvin who’s been in these places plenty, he looks at his wife when it’s their turn and just comes out with it—he looked at her—“I love you.” He was looking straight at her and he was sniffling, crying. She looked at him and went “I—I—I—” She looked at him like he was trying to get her to jump from a high-rise fire to save herself, but she just couldn’t quite say something real. “I don’t care about these people” Calvin said “I don’t give a damn about anything except that I love you.”…“I love you too,” she said, “Baby I love you too!” and while we all watched, and I mean Grandma too, this couple were embracing and crying for about five minutes. I don’t know how much long-run good it does to be doing that, but I tell you this, it certainly livens up the Family Day when you see that kind of thing happening, it just keeps the whole thing fascinating. So I was going to tell you about Grandma. So Jerry there, they call him the counselor or facilitator, Jerry, at
the start of the session, he comes out with a pretty harmless lecture about how the booze isn’t anybody’s fault, it might be in the genes, in the blood, inherited. Grandma’s sitting there like Sunday school with her hands in her lap for I’d say one and one half hours, never a peep until I notice she’s cutting her eyes at Jerry, I mean they’re down to burning slits, man, and right in the middle of somebody else’s stuff she just lays into him with something to the effect of “Jerry if that’s really your name I think you’d climb a tree and tell a lie before you’d stand on the ground and tell the natural truth.” Jerry’s going wuh wuh wuh and she just draws up another lungful of this good old California air which she always claims is poison and says “Do you mean to say you’re going to pin all this on me his grandmother and on my ancestors too when we are good Nantahala Mountain people who never should’ve left North Carolina and my husband wrote speeches for the Mayor of Odessa Texas and our blood’s as good as yours and you say it’s passing down alcoholic generations like the sins of the fathers?” and rolls right along with a whole bitter lecture of her own about “you’ve got to stand on your own two feet and not blame your relatives for your own miserable mistakes” with her face three inches from Jerry’s. He looked like he was ready to go out and hang himself. I enjoyed that.

  Needless to say, the subject of Jesus came up in this discussion, right about thirteen seconds into it. “The Alcoholic Anonymous is an arm of Satan, you might as well get that through your head, and shut your trap,” and so on.

  Like I say, they hold Family Group on Sundays at two pm. Two to Four pm. And I’m required to be in attendance like I say, and if I don’t have any family at Family Group, what’s the point? So you’re invited. I mean if they ever let you out of Dallas.

  Over and out. Over and out. They give us Antabuse in here, and it makes you sleepy. Over and out.

  Dear Bro

  I got too near the edge of the ride and flew off.

  I am done done done man. Yeah, get out your fork.

  You know it will be my 33rd birthday next October but in just the last couple years I’ve had at least three of those experiences where afterward you wake up and remember nothing and some medical expert is attaching back on various parts of you and saying “Son you are lucky to be breathing.”

  But did you ever think that maybe there actually is a devil and he actually does get his claws in certain people and they actually do get dragged through the garbage of an evil life on their way to actually going to hell?

  Here’s the thing, Luke. Last year I told you how I went to Texas. Houston, Dallas, Odessa, all of that. But I didn’t tell you that since then, since the last time I saw you, when you behaved like an atomic shit-bomb in the harmless home of our dear old Dad and Grandma, since that night when you broke your girlfriend’s nose in the living room in front of the whole family and calmly said, “There, I rest my case,” I went to the good old prison in good old Gatesville to see good old Mom.

  Yeah. I went to see our mother.

  She shrank to a dot right while I was looking at her.

  She said,

  I’d take a nap and at some point I’d wake up,

  Because I’d hear a dog whimpering, and I’d wake up,

  And the dog was inside me, a puppy

  Was crying to break its little heart inside me.

  She said,

  Your father rose a little bit above my origins

  But I sank you all back down to my level

  Fujiyama Mama, that was her song. Remember?

  I’m a fujiyama mama and I’m just about to blow my top.

  and when I start erupting

  I don’t know when I’m ever gonna stop

  Is that a real song, or did she make that up?

  Excuse me, I have to burn this page and write a letter to God while it’s on fire. Question is, God, where are you? What the fuck on earth do you think you’re doing, man? We are in HELL down here, HELL down here, HELL. You know? Where’s Superman?

  When Grandma showed up here for a demented visit she took me aside and says, “You are surrounded by demons. God has his hand around your guts and he is dragging you out of Hell.” Well, this is the longest ride out of Hell I ever heard about, and if I’m out of Hell, whose meat is that I smell frying? God has put his feet up and screwed the head off a Bud and has drifted off into a nap while I sit here burning and stinking on the barbecue.

  Dear Melanie,

  —you know, I’m glad I met you and heard the story from you in group about your daughter dying, and your purse. It would have made me even sicker if it was just a story about some person I could only think about. Like somebody I could only imagine. But it isn’t as hard since I got to really meet you. And hear about it in person. Because you have a sweet sincere quality, you’re bouncy, smiley, young for 61 years, and no matter how hard you’ve been knocked around I saw you in a light, you’re beautiful.

  These last four years have chewed several giant holes right through me. I thought I was finished before. But that was minimum damage compared to this.

  Your fellow inmate

  Mark Cassandra (Cass)

  Dear Satan

  I did not enjoy it at your Jamboree last night

  Dear Doctor

  I’m gonna roll a cigaret and I’d like to light it and get through the entire thing in a state of sanity.

  I did see the Devil one time.

  Dear Doc,

  To continue, this woman in group, Melanie, she’s old enough to be an old lady but she’s not, she’s sweet, soft, very easy in her soul, it seems like. She starts off talking soft and matter of fact—then it’s getting to be a regular thing, somebody who starts out like that suddenly breaks down, full of tragedy—she, Melanie, lost her daughter and two grandkids in a fire last year. “My daughter was a Good Christian girl. Two fine good beautiful kids, she raised them right, raised them Christian.” Lost them in an apartment fire. Now. Here’s one for you Doctor—

  While she, Melanie, slept in the waiting room at the Burn Unit and her daughter died, somebody snuck out their hand and stole her purse. Took the money out and threw the purse in the trashcan. She found it in the trashcan later, after they told her that her daughter and two grandkids were dead.

  In group the other night a guy just like me said, “I Woke up in Vegas sticky, broke, and confused”—a perfect description of that place—I’ve never GONE there, just WOKE UP there. That guy was funny. Reminded me of Gary Cooper, a real cowpoke down on his luck in the smelly cities that ate the prairie. How long was he around, two days? I heard he went to the Redwood Motel two blocks east of here at the corner of Fourth, and he’s shacking up with some Mexican kid, not a girl, a boy, I mean that’s the trouble inside him, he’s got two acts going at once, he’s a rope-em ride-em cowboy and he’s a happy little sodomizer, and it’s shorting him out. That’s what we gotta do is get down to just one story, the true person we are, and live it all the way out.

  I’m getting depressed. Depressed. I think this Antabuse is going wrong on me. You said we’d feel run down or sleepy two or three days to start with, but you forgot to say prepare to fall down through a trap door in the bottom of your soul. Also I’ve heard people talking right outside my window who aren’t there when I go look. Around other folks, I mean real folks, folks who are really there, I feel absolutely fine. They talk, I talk, everything appears as normal. Get in this room and shut the door behind me and I’m alone with somebody who’s not there.

  Dear Friends and Neighbors in the Universe

  Dear Rolling Stone and TV Guide

  I think I need to tell you I am totally out of Kools. Some kind person has donated a whole can of Bugler that we can roll out of, but I tell you what, Bugler smoke burns like fire from your lips on down to the pit of your lungs. So—if you brought me a couple packs of my brand. Know what I mean? Kools.

  I have written thousands upon thousands of these letters and the reason I don’t run out of ink—I don’t think I’m actually writing too m
any of them down. Or any of them. I think I’m just wandering hiking marching all around this room like it’s a small tiny mental institution hallucinating.