American Melancholy Read online

boy’s face.

  Because sweetness and hurt were conjoined in that face.

  Because you took up the glove dropped by Eva Marie Saint, and put

  it on your hand, appropriating the blond Catholic girl and wearing

  her like a glove.

  Because you exposed your soul in yearning—I could’ve been a

  contender!—knowing how defeat, failure, ignominy would be your

  fate.

  Because in 1955 at the age of thirty-one, after having won an

  Academy Award for On the Waterfront, you were interviewed by

  Edward R. Murrow wreathed in cigarette smoke like a shroud and

  in your rented stucco house in the hills above Los Angeles already

  you were speaking of trying to be “normal.” Because you endured

  the interviewer’s lame questions—“Have you discovered that success

  can have its own problems?”—“Are you planning a long career as an

  actor?”

  Because you conceded, “I can’t do anything else well.”

  Because you said you wanted to sing and dance on screen, you

  wanted to be “superficial”—you wanted to “entertain.”

  Because on the mantel of the rented house was a portrait of your

  mother at forty, your alcoholic mother who’d failed to love you

  enough.

  Because your discomfort with the interview was evident.

  Because you spoke of the fear of losing “anonymity” when already

  “anonymity” was lost.

  Because the awkwardly staged interview ended with you playing

  bongo drums with another drummer, in the bizarrely decorated

  basement of the rented house. Because quickly then your hands

  slapped the drums with a kind of manic precision, your eyes half-

  shut, a goofy happiness softened your face.

  Because at this moment it was not (yet) too late.

  Because you grew into the predator male careless in fatherhood

  fathering eleven children whom you would scarcely know and of

  whom three were with your Guatemalan housekeeper.

  Because you were the absent father of a drug-addled son most like

  yourself except lacking your talent (“Christian”) who shot to death

  the fiancé of his younger sister (“Cheyenne”) in your house in Los

  Angeles, was incarcerated for manslaughter, and died young; and

  the absent father of the “Cheyenne” who hanged herself soon after

  the murder, aged twenty-five.

  Because your beauty seduced you, and made of you a prankster.

  Because the prankster always goes too far, that is the essence of prank.

  Because you were a prankster, sowing death like semen.

  Because all you had, you had to squander.

  Because you tried, like Paul Muni, to disappear into film.

  Because you were Mark Antony, Sky Masterson, Zapata, Fletcher

  Christian, Napoleon! You were the clownish cross-dresser-outlaw

  of One-Eyed Jacks—a film debacle you’d directed yourself. You

  were Vito Corleone and you were the garrulous bald fat Kurtz of

  Apocalypse Now, mumbling and staggering in the dark, bloated

  American madness.

  Because as the widower Paul of Last Tango in Paris you stripped

  your sick soul bare, in the radiance of disintegration. Because you

  were stunned in terror of annihilation yet played the clown, baring

  your buttocks on a Parisian dance floor.

  Because confounded by the corpse of the dead beautiful wife framed

  ludicrously in flowers you could hardly speak, and then you spoke

  too much. Because you were stupid in grief. Because you could not

  forgive.

  Wipe off the cosmetic mask! You hadn’t known the dead woman,

  and you would not know the dead woman, who had not been

  faithful to you. All you can know is the compliant body of your

  lover far too young for you, and only as a body.

  The futility of male sexuality, as a bulwark against death.

  The farce of male sexuality, as a bulwark against death.

  Because nonetheless you danced with astonishing drunken grace,

  with the girl young as a daughter. On the tango dance floor you

  spun, you fell to your knees, you shrugged off your coat, you were

  wearing a proper shirt and a tie to belie drunkenness and despair,

  fell flat on your back on the dance floor amid oblivious dancers and

  yet at once in rebuke of all expectation you were on your feet again

  and—dancing . . .

  And in a drunken parody of tango you were unexpectedly light

  on your feet, radiant in playfulness, clowning, in mockery of the

  heightened emotions and sexual drama of tango—as in your youth

  you’d wanted to be “superficial” and to “entertain”—

  And then, lowering your trousers and baring your buttocks in the

  exhilaration of contempt.

  Because the actor does not exist, if he is not the center of attention.

  Because the actor’s heart is an emptiness, no amount of adulation

  can fill.

  Because after the slapstick-tango you lay curled in the exhaustion

  of grief and in the muteness of grief, a fetal corpse on a balcony in

  gray-lit Paris.

  In Hell, there is tango. The other dancers dance on.

  Because you made of self-loathing a caprice of art.

  Because what was good in you, your social conscience, your

  generosity to liberal causes, was swallowed up in the other.

  Because you squandered yourself in a sequence of stupid films as if

  in defiance of your talent and of our expectations of that talent.

  Because by late middle age you’d lived too long.

  Where there has been such love,

  there can be no forgiveness

  Because at eighty you’d endured successive stages of yourself, like a

  great tree suffocated in its own rings, beginning to rot from within.

  Because when you died, we understood that you had died long

  before.

  Because we could not forgive you, who had thrown greatness away.

  Because you have left us. And we are lonely.

  And we would join you in Hell, if you would have us.

  Too Young to Marry But Not Too Young to Die

  Drowned together in his car in Lake Chippewa.

  It was a bright cold starry night on Lake Chippewa.

  Lake Chippewa was a “living” lake then

  though soon afterward it would choke and die.

  In the bright cold morning after we could spy

  them only through a patch of ice brushed clear of snow.

  Scarcely three feet below,

  they were oblivious to us.

  Together beneath the ice in each other’s arms.

  Jean-Marie’s head rested on Troy’s shoulder.

  Their hair had floated up and was frozen.

  Their eyes were open in the perfect lucidity of death.

  Calmly they sat upright. Not a breath!

  It was 1967, there were no seat belts

  to keep them apart. Beautiful

  as mannequins in Slater Brothers’ window.

  Faces flawless, not a blemish.

  Yet—you could believe

  they might be breath-

  ing, for some trick

  of scintillate light revealed

  tiny bubbles in the ice,

  and a motion like a smile

  in Jean-Marie’s perfect face.

  How far Troy’d driven the car onto Lake Chippewa

  before the ice creaked, and cracked, and opened

  like
the parting of giant jaws—at least fifty feet!

  This was a feat like Troy’s 7-foot-3.8-inch high jump.

  In the briny snow you could see the car tracks

  along the shore where in summer sand

  we’d sprawl and soak up sun

  in defiance of skin carcinomas-to-come. And you could see

  how deftly he’d turned the wheel onto the ice

  at just the right place.

  And on the ice you could see

  how he’d made the tires spin and grab

  and Jean-Marie clutching his hand Oh oh oh!

  The sinking would be silent, and slow.

  Eastern edge of Lake Chippewa, shallower

  than most of the lake but deep enough at twelve feet

  to suck down Mr. Dupuy’s Chevy

  so all that was visible from shore

  was the gaping ice wound.

  And then in the starry night

  a drop to –5 degrees Fahrenheit

  and ice freezing over the sunken car.

  Who would have guessed it, of Lake Chippewa!

  Now in the morning through the swept ice

  there’s a shocking intimacy just below.

  With our mittens we brush away powder snow.

  With our boots we kick away ice chunks.

  Lie flat and stare through the ice

  Seeing Jean-Marie Schuter and Troy Dupuy

  as we’d never seen them in life.

  Our breaths steam in Sunday-morning light.

  It will be something we must live with—

  the couple do not care about our astonishment.

  Perfect in love, and needing no one to applaud

  as they’d been oblivious to our applause

  at the Herkimer Junior High prom where they were

  crowned Queen and King three years before.

  (In Herkimer County, New York, you grew up fast.

  The body matured, the brain lagged behind

  like the slowest runner on the track team

  we’d applaud with affection mistaken for teen mockery.)

  No one wanted to summon help just yet.

  It was a dreamy silence above ice as below.

  And the ice a shifting hue—silvery, ghost-gray, pale

  blue—as the sky shifts overhead

  like a frowning parent. What!

  Lake Chippewa was where some of us went ice-fishing

  with our grandfathers. Sometimes, we skated.

  Summers there were speedboats, canoes. There’d been

  drownings in Lake Chippewa we’d heard

  but no one of ours.

  Police, firetruck, ambulance sirens would rend the air.

  Strangers would shout at one another.

  We’d be ordered back—off the ice of Lake Chippewa

  that shone with beauty and onto the littered shore.

  By harsh daylight made to see

  Mr. Dupuy’s 1963 Chevy

  hooked like a great doomed fish.

  All that privacy yanked upward pitiless

  and streaming icy rivulets!

  We knew it was wrong to disturb the frozen lovers

  and make of them mere bodies.

  Sweet-lethal embrace of Lake Chippewa

  But no embrace can survive thawing.

  One of us, Gordy Garrison, would write a song,

  “Too Young to Marry but Not Too Young to Die”

  (echo of Bill Monroe’s “I Saw Her Little Footprints

  in the Snow”), which he’d sing with his band the Raiders,

  accompanying himself on the Little Martin guitar

  he’d bought from his cousin Art Garrison

  when Art enlisted in the U.S. Navy and for a while

  it was all you’d hear at Herkimer High, where the Raiders

  played for Friday-night dances in the gym, but then

  we graduated and things changed and nothing

  more came of Gordy’s song or of the Raiders.

  “TOO YOUNG TO MARRY BUT NOT TOO YOUNG TO DIE”

  was the headline in the Herkimer Packet.

  We scissored out the front-page article, kept it for decades in a

  bedroom drawer.

  (No one ever moves in Herkimer except

  those who move away, and never come back.)

  The clipping is yellowed, deeply creased,

  and beginning to tear. When some of us stare

  at the photos our hearts cease beating—oh, just a beat!

  It was something we’d learned to live with—

  there’d been no boy desperate to die with any of us.

  We’d have accepted, probably—yes.

  Deep breath, shuttered eyes—yes, Troy.

  Secret kept yellowed and creased in the drawer

  though if you ask, laughingly we’d deny it.

  We see Gordy sometimes, and his wife, June. Our grand-

  children are friends. Hum Gordy’s old song

  to make Gordy blush a fierce apricot hue

  but it seems cruel, we’re all on blood

  thinners now.

  Doctor Help Me

  Because no one can know.

  Because they would hate me forever.

  Because they would never forgive me for shaming them.

  Because they would kill me.

  Because it was my first time, what he made me do.

  Because it was only that once. Because it is not fair!

  Because I am afraid of how it will hurt to have a baby, I am so

  afraid.

  Because they will know at school. They will send me home.

  Because my grandma is very sick, it will be a shameful shock

  to her.

  Because I am too old. I have had my babies, I have had five babies

  that lived. If there is another now I think I will die.

  Because I told my husband, it was a risk. Because he did not

  listen.

  Because I hate him. Because I am so tired.

  Because I am not well . . .

  Because I am out of breath and there is a pain in my chest,

  sometimes I think that I will faint.

  On the stairs at work I will faint, I will fall and everyone will know.

  Because if they lift me, and my shirt is lifted, they will see the

  belly, and the waist of the jeans that no longer snaps shut.

  Because my husband will know it was not him.

  Because that will be the end of our family.

  Because I will have to kill myself before that.

  Because there is diabetes in our family, I am afraid to have a

  blood test.

  Because I have never been to any hospital. No one in our family has.

  Because we do not believe in blood transplants—(is that what it is

  called?)—the Bible forbids.

  Because the father is gone. Because he is not coming back.

  Because the father would kill me, if he knew.

  Because the father is married.

  Because the father has too many children already!

  Because the father would deny it, he would say that I am lying.

  Because the father would say that it was my fault, that I did not

  stop him.

  Because he has called me bitch, slut when he was angry, when

  there was no reason.

  Because he would never love me again.

  Because I am too young, doctor! Because I want to finish school.

  Because I don’t know how this happened. I did not want it to

  happen.

  Because it is the same man as with my sister.

  Because he is engaged to my sister. Because my sister cannot

  know!

  Because it is a secret, he said he would strangle me if I told.

  Because I will lose my job. Because I can’t keep lifting heavy

  sacks, if they find out they will fire me.

  Because I won’t be able to commute nin
ety minutes a day.

  Because I can’t afford to lose my job, I will be evicted.

  Because I have three children already, they would be shamed.

  Because he is so old!

  Because he is too young, he is immature and shiftless.

  Because he went away into the Army. Because he could not come

  home out of shame.

  Because he is my best friend’s father.

  Because he lives next door. Because we would see him all the

  time and his family would see the baby.

  Because they would not believe me if I told his name.

  Because he is a “man of God,” they would believe him, anything

  he said.

  Because he has made me promise, no one can know.

  Because it was not my fault!

  Because I did not want to be with him in that way but he made

  me to prove that I loved him. Because if there is a baby he will

  never love me again.

  Because we might become engaged. If this goes away.

  Because nobody will love me again and I would not blame them.

  Because everyone who knows will speak of me in scorn and

  disgust. Because they will say of me, she has broken her parents’

  heart, she is a

  whore.

  Because I tried to do it to myself, with an icepick. But I was too

  afraid, I could not.

  Because I hit myself with my fists in the stomach. Because I was

  sick to my stomach, vomiting and choking, but it did not help.

  Because there is no hope for me, doctor. If you do not help me.

  Because God will understand. It is just this one time.

  Old America Has Come Home to Die

  Old America has come home to die.

  From Oklahoma oil fields where the sun

  beat his head and brains boiling in a stew

  of old memories. Penance for my sins

  I never owned up to.

  From Juneau, Alaska, where he’d fished

  coho salmon on the Mary Flynn.

  From Black Fly, Ontario,

  where he’d been a hobo farmhand,

  and from New Jericho, Manitoba,

  where he’d mined gypsum sand,

  Old America has come home to die.

  Bad memories like shreds of tobacco on the tongue,

  you can’t spit off.

  From Big Sky, Montana, where

  he’d been a cowboy. From

  Western Pacific, Sandusky,

  and Santa Fe Railway, from the Gulf

  Islands and Skagit River, Washington,

  where he’d worked construction,