My Famous Brain: A Novel

Copyright © 2021, Diane Wald

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-205-9

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-206-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021908385

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

In memory of Garth Pitman:

wisest of colleagues,

sweetest of friends.

"There are so many little dyings that

it doesn’t matter which of them is death."

—Kenneth Patchen

CONTENTS

1.   Cunning and Theatrics

2.   I’m No Angel

3.   A Cheap Plastic Clock

4.   Cybèle, Luther, and an Evening Surprise

5.   Frances, in Love and Disillusion

6.   Lunch with Dr. Sarah

7.   Sarah, Grace, and My Knighthood

8.   Don at Howard Johnson’s

9.   Sleeping with Edith Wharton

10. Eliza Accepts Two Books

11. Dinner with Al Capone

12. A Priest, a Barber, and a Psychologist…

13. Hansel and Gretel

14. Sarah, Lost and Found

15. Eliza’s Inheritance

16. I Listen to Eliza’s Dream

17. I Steal an Ashtray

18. Listen to My Nothing

19. Like an Actress in a Silent Movie

20. Don Tells a Story

21. A Lousy Proposal

22. Lined with Pine Boughs

23. Sherlock Takes a Case

24. A Lucky Doggie

25. Hail, Full of Grace

26. Making a Date with Don

27. It Really Is a Dress Rehearsal

28. A Funeral, Frances, and a Moment of Clarity

29. A Twirling Nosedive

30. Turning Out the Patio Lights

31. Don in a Pith Helmet

32. Happy Talk and the Water Cure

33. An Elevator Dream

34. A Red Velvet Kneeler

35. Don’t Worry About a Thing

36. A Perfect Patient

37. I Don’t Really Think She Forgot

38. Meeep

39. As Long as You Live, or Longer

40. Let Her Be Spoiled

41. Dreaming of Innocence

42. Don’s Dilemma

43. A Sky Bar

44. A Mental Bookmark

45. Don’s New Robe

46. Epilogue: As Clear as the Sky Above the Fog

1. Cunning and Theatrics

Icalled Eliza’s mother, whom I had never met, about a year and a half after Eliza and I had parted. I don’t know what I expected from that call, except that it fell into the general scheme of tidying up one’s affairs, one of the tasks I had assigned myself before moving from New Jersey to Massachusetts. It was almost noon, and I wasn’t dressed yet. I was gravely ill. No one, I think, among my modest circle of acquaintances—except of course for Eliza, and later, Don Rath—quite realized the extent to which my condition had deteriorated, nor did they understand that my exodus from Norman State University in Clifton, New Jersey, where I had been teaching in the psychology department, was, for me, a final and mercilessly passed sentence.

I had managed pretty well, through cunning and theatrics, to conceal my illness. After a series of frightening episodes, including a concussive headlong fall off what I had perceived as a very shallow step, a brief period of semi-blindness, and a bout of memory loss, I was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was benign, but growing, and it was positioned in what was then determined to be an inoperable location. Benign is a funny word, because eventually it would kill me. Truly frightening was the morning I woke up, opened my eyes, and saw all the world as wobbly and dim. Fortunately, this effect passed in a few weeks, but the insult, as my ophthalmologist called it, had done quite a bit of damage to my vision. Quarter-inch-thick spectacles were prescribed for me, but they were really little more than a prop. I wore the glasses because I thought they made me look distinguished and bookish, but they didn’t help a whole lot. My vision was deemed uncorrectable. I could read pretty well if I held the page fairly close to my face, and I could do most things without assistance. I was functional, but paranoid and feeling immensely vulnerable. That vulnerability pretty much ruled my existence. Fearful that something would happen to reveal my situation, I had become a virtual prisoner in my office at NSU, venturing out only to teach my classes, visit the lavatory, and make my way to and from the parking lot. I still had a few private patients, but they would come to see me in my office after my teaching hours, so that worked out fine.

You will wonder about the parking lot: it’s true that I continued to drive. The fact that I did not have a fatal accident—or murder someone else—is an amazing one. And one that only increases my belief that there must be someone—something—guiding our fates. Each weekday morning and evening I would fold myself into my aging Cadillac with both trepidation and resignation, knowing full well that the worst might easily occur and fearing only that my life might be spared over that of some innocent who had blundered into my darkened path. I knew the route more than by heart; the only stop I ever made was at a small gas station near my apartment where the proprietor, Benny, treated me like royalty. (He was also the one who kept my automotive relic in top repair.) I was able to distinguish traffic lights and police car lights, and I traveled only in the daytime, to increase my chances of survival. In the winter, I had to abandon my afternoon schedule of classes, which I could hardly afford to do: they would have kept me out after dark.

At any rate, there I was in my office prison that sweet-smelling May morning, when I decided to call Eliza’s home. I knew the chances of Eliza being at her mother’s house were slim, but I felt the need to contact, if not Eliza herself, something in her world. The phone rang three times, then a pleasant-sounding woman picked up.

Hello, Mrs. Harder, this is Jack MacLeod from Norman State, an old friend of your daughter’s. I wonder if you remember my name?

There was a short pause, then the woman’s voice became instantly warm and kind. Dr. MacLeod, of course I remember you. How are you? (What, exactly, I wondered, for the millionth time, had Eliza told her mother about me?)

Fine, thank you. I hope you’re well too. I know it’s been some time since I’ve spoken to Eliza, but I wonder if f you could tell me how to get in touch with her?

This time the pause was longer, and, for the first time, I became afraid. Deep in my own miseries for so long, it had not occurred to me that anything bad could have happened to my Lizzie—for that is what I sometimes called her. Fear shot through my already throbbing head like a fiery arrow, and I thought, dear God, not that: that I could not bear. All those long months, a smiling image of Lizzie in her funny multicolored beret had illuminated my way. To think that she might have come to some harm filled me not only with pain and sorrow, but with the crippling guilt of the suddenly self-identified egotist. I realized I had been endlessly selfish, had thought only of myself all along. I was so relieved when Mrs. Harder finally spoke, I nearly dropped the phone.

Well, I can tell you how to get in touch with her, Dr. MacLeod, she said, but did you know that Eliza’s married now?

Although I suppose this piece of news was not really what I had wanted to hear, I was terribly relieved. Lizzie lived and thrived. I tried to sound avuncular and cheerful.

Ah, no, I didn’t know that. I’m so happy for her, I lied. When did all of this happen? I’m afraid I’ve been really out of touch for quite a while.

Mrs. Harder must have bought my uncle act, because she opened right up. She told me that Eliza had married someone she’d known at NSU, a boy a few years her senior (not, then, the boyfriend she’d had when I first met her), and that they were living and working happily in a town a few miles from Mrs. Harder’s own. There were no children yet, she added, with a little smile in her voice. I wondered if Lizzie had changed her opinion about having children.

After a few more exchanges, which I suppose allowed her to convince herself of my benevolent intentions, Mrs. Harder offered me Eliza’s phone number, which I pretended to write down. I knew I’d remember it anyway. I have a prodigious memory—a rather famous one, in fact. But more about all that later.

I thanked her, we exchanged a few parting pleasantries, and we said goodbye. I just sat there in my bathrobe, feeling like a complete fool. I turned on the radio. Then I turned off the radio and searched through the little stack of record albums I kept in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet. The one I was looking for was one Lizzie had left with me the last time she’d visited me at this apartment. When I’d first heard it, with my head resting on Lizzie’s lap, I hadn’t liked it much; I’d never heard anything quite like it before. But over time I’d come to love the songs and the eerie voice of the young woman my darling admired so much. I hadn’t played it in a long time. I located the fourth cut, which seemed to me to echo my relationship with Lizzie, then carefully placed it on the turntable of my little stereo. The lyrics told the story of a chance meeting in a bar between the singer and an older man. She seemed to feel a magical connection with him, as well as a terrible premonition of chaos to come, but she was drawn to him, nevertheless.

I still found the song seductively disturbing, but I wasn’t sure why. I wanted to talk to Eliza more than ever after I heard it. I was tempted to call her. Why not? I asked myself: what harm could come of it? In my heart of hearts, I could not name the harm, but I was quite sure there was one. Nevertheless, as George Eliot once wrote, The fear of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst. I dialed.

A young man answered. He had a slight New York accent. I’m sorry, I said, I must have the wrong number. I beg your pardon.

That’s okay, he said.

I never tried to call her again.

2. I’m No Angel

When I realized I had died (it happened in January, 1974), I expected to be privy to a great deal of knowledge, expected to have the mysteries of the universe open up to me like water lilies in the sunlight, but, alas, that isn’t what happened at all. Probably we give much too much attention to our physical bodies. I was alive, and then I was dead. I was the guru of nothing but my own life. That’s saying a lot, though, really, as it included remembering everywhere I’d ever been, everything I’d ever experienced, everyone I’d ever known. Remembering everything feels like this: imagine a photograph of about fifty beautiful sky-blue rowboats floating on a sunny day in a pretty harbor. That’s from one angle. From another angle, you can see the warships floating right next door. Everything depends on where you focus.

I couldn’t feel my body anymore. It was just gone. No heaviness, no pain, no hunger or thirst or heat or cold. I was no longer lonely (that may be what is meant by heaven). And my entire, absolutely entire, life as John Tilford MacLeod unfolded before me, from the moment of my birth. I’ve tried to remember life before birth in my mother’s womb, but there’s simply nothing there—I suppose one mustn’t be greedy. I found it was as easy to call up a day from my life as a one-year-old as it was to recall Eliza’s face in Thompson Park when we fed the swans, or Don Rath’s funny little laughing cough, or the doctors in St. Sebastian’s as they stood chatting around my father’s death bed, unaware that their words were being recorded on some celestial tape loop for future reference by the deceased son of the nearly deceased. Once in a while I catch sight of my sons, and they seem to be in their thirties. But I could be wrong; my perceptions have altered radically, and, as I’ve told you, I still haven’t learned to understand them too well in terms of earthly time.

I now remember things I didn’t even know had happened to me, and I’ve been re-viewing (as I call it) all of it ever since I died. I don’t actually know how long ago I did lose my life, since I can no longer follow the events of living humans with any chronological accuracy, but I suspect it was about fifteen years ago. By the way, I don’t think I really lost my life; I just experienced a radical shift of some kind. I also suspect that those theories about the flow of time being an illusion, with the past, present, and future existing simultaneously, are probably true. I’d always loved what Lewis Carroll’s Queen said in Through the Looking Glass: It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

By the way, I’m no angel. I never was, of course, but I’m certainly not one now. No wings, no halo, no access to Jimmy Stewart. I don’t know what I am. A soul, I suppose. How I can communicate with you this way is not something I understand. All I know is, it’s not a hoax. I know what true means. I’m not going to disguise anybody or make things up. It’s hard enough just to recount everything without doing anything like that. I’ll probably skip around a bit though, since time is such a mystery to me now. I find the big picture more interesting than the details. Bear with me.

3. A Cheap Plastic Clock

Ifrequently see myself sitting in my office musing about Eliza Harder, or my Lizzie, as I liked to call her. A scene from the early days after my divorce recurs frequently. I felt those days were hell then, and I was right. Not even the gradually accelerating physical illness that would plague me in the following months and years would come close to causing me the pain that such intense loneliness had occasioned. I wasn’t just missing my marriage; I was deeply missing my boys. It was devastating. I played with the idea of suicide daily, but never got very far. I think, predictable self-worshipper that I was, I was mostly just afraid that if I killed myself I would miss something. But this day, I was excited: Lizzie was going to visit me.

There I was, ensconced in what could truly be called a bachelor pad in a semi modern complex called Maplewood, about seven miles from NSU. I’d taken the first place I could afford. My world was shrinking, in every possible way. The new apartment was smaller than anywhere I’d ever lived. I tried to adjust. I tried to fit my body, such as it was, into its new environment. This effort was complicated by the fact that I had headaches often. To compensate, I would run a comforting hand across the crown of my head, slowly ruffling what I thought of as my remaining feathers; heredity plus months of sickness and anxiety had depopulated my roundish pate of all but a fringe of babyish down. The very feel of my skull, its smooth, reliable hardness, soothed me. It was ironic, this comfort, for all my troubles were deep inside that skull, flowering microscopically like some gorgeous but lethal underwater plant. Soon, I knew, there would be no more room for such flowering: something would have to give.

I looked around my weirdly designed efficiency living-dining room and was pleased in spite of myself. Ceiling to floor, along all six walls, and even extending into the area called the breakfast nook that had been much heralded by the real estate agent, my books lined the space like a beautifully crafted battle-shield that might protect me somehow from the forces without. I had splurged and commissioned specially designed shelves for them.

Their spines made a familiar, glossy mosaic. There were no paperbacks, except for a few on the little corner table—mostly gifts or items from the library. I was an inveterate book snob. Once I had been wealthy enough (and snobbish enough) to purchase only hardcover books, and once I had believed that even if I could not manage to live forever and enjoy them myself, that I might pass them along to my sons, and they to their sons and daughters, and so on: books like mind-edible candy jewels—gorgeous, useful jewels with juicy centers to be read and memorized and rearranged on their shelves like pieces of a perfectly crafted, ever-changing pattern.

Memorized. I’d memorized many of them—not just sections, not just favored passages, but entire books, and while I knew this was not a common practice, to me it was simply a deeper, even more pleasurable, reading experience. It was part of the way I read, in fact, the way another man might underline phrases or copy out words, lines, or paragraphs. I would often lose myself in the delight of recitation for hours, lying on my back on the sofa, my lips barely moving, my mind playing back whole chapters as swiftly as I wished, or as slowly.

There was no time for that now, however. I had only allowed myself half an hour for rest and contemplation; had I begun to recite a book, even a short one, like The Old Man and the Sea, the evening would quickly be gone. And also, although the idea did not terrify me as it once had, there was the certainty that someday soon I’d forget something—maybe everything. The more or less constant headaches reminded me that my celebrated brain was no longer entirely on my side. I had no idea how the disaster would happen. Before it did happen, though, I wanted to give over at the very least a whole day to recitation, and to plan with the greatest care which book or books would constitute this ultimate, sure, and holy performance. After that, I would not try it again. It would be like retiring from baseball immediately after hitting a grand slam in the final, victorious game of the World Series.

I continued to examine the room, trying to ignore a burgeoning headache. In one corner, and using up most of the available space, was my old piano, the one I’d had since childhood. I’d been forced to leave the new one, the budget-busting Bösendorfer, with my wife, who could not play. The old piano, my beloved Baldwin, had my brother Duncan’s baby teeth marks on one of its legs. I could barely make them out anymore, but my fingers still knew just where to find them, and when I touched the tiny, notched indentations, I imagined I could smell Duncan’s sweet, baby-moist, silky hair and feel his velvety, warm skin as I lifted him away from the piano.

The rest of the furnishings were new, ugly, rented; I passed my eyes over them as if they weren’t there. I looked at the cheap plastic clock: fifteen minutes to Lizzie. The pain in my head was becoming hard to ignore. I reached into the desk drawer, drew out a bottle of Percodan, and swallowed a half-dose, dry. I would have to shave and change my shirt at least. I wanted to shower, but there was no time—or, possibly there was time, but if Lizzie should come early, if she should knock timidly and no one answered, she might just go away. I couldn’t risk it. My loneliness bore down on me like a bag of heavy gravel. Besides its terrible weight, I could feel its filth seeping through the burlap and covering me everywhere. A shower. I would take the chance.

I got up slowly and turned off the desk lamp. Without turning on any lights in the tiny bedroom, I laid out clean clothes, arranging them on the bed in the order in which I’d put them on: a thin, beige, cashmere Perry Como sweater on the bottom, then a pale blue button-down shirt, then an undershirt on top. I chose new socks and shorts and decided the chino pants I was already wearing would have to do. I wished I had some jeans like Lizzie’s, then I laughed at myself. Jeans for the young, the whole, the with-it. Not for me.

Then, in the warm dark of the bathroom, I took off my clothes. I ran my hands over my chest, which, like my skull, still pleased me. I found myself gingerly touching my body more and more of late, suddenly valuing it, finding it a blessing. I paid no attention to my skinny arms and legs. Where, I wondered, not for the first time, did all those swimming muscles go? Gone to academia, one by one, I sang to the tune of a popular protest song, giggling. The headache was letting up, leaving the slightly drunken feeling I’d come to recognize, if not fully welcome. At least I’d remembered to break the tablet in half; Lizzie probably wouldn’t notice any change in my behavior. I decided, in honor of my galloping anxiety, to take an incredibly fast shower, extremely hot. After that, I dressed as quickly as I could without making myself dizzy. Then I sat down on the bed and prayed.

I prayed for the pair of swans in Thompson Park: that they’d stay and make a home there; that their unquestioning fidelity to each other would reward them with peace, good health, and many offspring; that no one would offer them junk food that would make them ill; that no one would taunt them and risk their righteous slashing; and that someday, very soon, I would take Eliza there to meet them. She would like the swans, and, what’s more, she would know what I had prayed for without my having to tell her.

Repeating soon, I went back to my desk and checked the clock. Five past the hour. Maybe the clock was fast, or she’d had car trouble, gotten lost, or simply decided against coming at the last minute. But all of that was unlikely. Eliza seemed shy, but her will was unbreakable. She’d said she was coming, and she would come, I was sure of it. Any minute now she’d arrive, or else she’d call to say what had detained her. She knew I would worry. She wouldn’t leave me hanging.

I thought about her last semester in my psychology class. To my initial amazement, this shadow from the back of the room had stood up for her point of view time and time again, courageously and unflinchingly. Sometimes, playing devil’s advocate, I would instigate extra discussions, just to see her in action. Her classmates would become exasperated with her at times, but if she thought she was right, she would not budge; she would calmly state and restate her position until the others would grudgingly grant her if not their concurrence, at least a portion of their respect. This mysteriously quiet girl: who would have thought it of her? I never interrupted her once she gained some verbal momentum. I allowed her, as I thought of it, to do my work for me, to teach for me (she was unquestionably my brightest student in many years), and to amuse and deeply interest me as well. There was something of the young John MacLeod in her, and I was drawn to it gratefully.

When she wasn’t debating some finely tuned point, however, Eliza was invisible in the classroom, as motionless as the tall-windowed classroom’s afternoon light, a little long-haired figure in the back row, seated deliberately behind some broad-shouldered hulk, or next to one of the classroom’s thick, four-sided columns, so she could lean against it and make herself even harder to see from the front of the room. I knew it was only because she liked me so much that she bothered to speak at all: that flattered me. I imagined it meant she knew how much she could help me, though she didn’t know the nature of the help, or why I needed it so desperately. Eliza didn’t have much use for school, or school as she knew it. I always wished I’d met her when I was younger and richer, when I could have plucked her out of this state penitentiary of a learning institution and helped her to attend some saner, more classical, and just generally sounder university. But here she was, luckily for me, and she seemed to really take to my field, to be truly interested in my lectures.

The pain in my head wasn’t pain anymore, but it had taken over. It was like a stocking cap of thin, highly elasticized material pressed all around my skull. I imagined there were tiny lights in it, flashing on and off like starry pinpricks on a map of the night-roads of America. This made me laugh, and the sound of the laugh frightened me: it was a child’s laugh. Suddenly I was on the street corner in Boxwood, New York again, and seven years old. I tossed handfuls of dirt into the twilit air to see the bats rush at the particles, as if they were insects, food. The strength of their instinct amazed me, how they never doubted the evidence of their senses, how they experienced what they needed to see. When the streetlights finally went on in my memory of Boxwood, I remembered to look once more at the clock.

Twelve after, and no Lizzie. The stocking cap of pain somehow kept my head from exploding, although that might have given me some relief. I remembered a time, not too long ago at all, when allowing myself strong emotions had been as natural as breathing; now I was advised to avoid them, and I’d learned that that advice was wise. I hardly noticed feeling sad—I’d become inured to sadness—but I imagined Lizzie slowly slipping away, and myself unable to stop her, unable to summon up the passion such a motion would demand. Was it worth it, or would it be better to plunge into so-called normal reactions, and give my dear Lizzie a taste of what my feeling for her was truly made of? I didn’t know the answer, doubted if I even had the strength anymore to find it out. But one thing I did know: that if Eliza slipped away, I would not try to replace her. Even had there been a great deal more time left to me, the chances of again meeting someone so miraculously intuitive to my situation, so respectful and yet so sweetly