The Cerebral Catalyst

Madeline's roses hadn't been watered in four days. Usually at 5:30 every morning, she'd rise with the sun, her bones thorny underneath her wrinkly skin. She'd walk down to the basement she always had to beg Bud to clean. She'd carefully step onto a silver stool so that she could reach the rusty spigot that turned on the hose outside. With a jolt, the pipes would awaken and Madeline, every morning, would place her right hand around the pipe and feel the rush of water. She liked it.

Madeline died today in the hospital with her hands around the plastic tube of water that contributed to what life she had left. For the past three days, the nurses, like static pendulums, walked into the room and out; walking in with answers and leaving with questions. The doctor was just a man with half a face. His touch was cold, rubbery, plastic. The blankets were like large, soft hands pushing her into the mattress. Squeezing the life from her. Every time she opened her eyes, a gray blur sat in the distance. With time, it took the form of an unshaven man with a tan fishing hat. There were shiny hooks, a license, and bulbs loose and sagging onto the visor. He wore a black, white, and gray argyle sweater with a red button-down shirt underneath. His black mechanic's pants were loose and hung like a fallen tent around his ankles. Bud hadn't changed his clothes since he found Madeline three mornings ago, at nine in the morning, collapsed on the cold cement ground of their basement. Upon seeing her husband, she wanted to laugh but the weight of the blankets, the pressure of pain at the base of her head, kept her from doing so.

Bud brought her roses this morning. These roses were from a particular bush that they purchased together on their fifty-third anniversary in May. They were browsing through Sam's Floral after the 11:00 brunch at McKenzy's Restaurant. A big sign with big, red letters caught Bud's attention. "Celebrate Spring With Your Love Bug!" The "o" in "Love" was in the shape of a heart and the dot above the "i" in "spring" was a ladybug. Below the sign were pots of roses with provocative names such as Floribunda Playgirl and Grandiflora Gold Medal. Madeline smelled the pink, ruffle-petaled Playgirl as Bud approached her with a pot of roses, peach colored blossoms. The petals were abundant and the whole head looked like a cloud made of peach sherbet. "Floribunda Sexy Rexy," Bud whispered to his wife as he winked and nudged her. Sexy Rexy now adorns their lawn. It uses the house as its' ladder to the sky. When angry with each other, the plant was a reminder of their timeline.

"You wanted to see The Marriage of Figaro today," Bud says to his dead wife as he unclasps her hands from around the tube. "You told me, 'Bud, you go ahead on that damn fishing trip this weekend and I'll just go see the opera by myself!' You called me a cranky old bum as you scrubbed my dirty breakfast dish. I went upstairs, took a look at myself in the bathroom mirror, and asked myself how I stayed married so long to a hag like you. I'm sure you asked the same question, too. I guess that's why we stayed together." Bud glances at Sexy Rexy in the glass vase next to the hospital bed. Tiny air bubbles skitter along the base of the stem and make their way up to the base of the leaves.

"Mr. Chinaski?" the familiar doctorate, there's nothing more that we can do voice is sharp and deep like thorns in the silence. Bud doesn't turn around. He stares at the heavy blankets on his wife.

"Yeah?"

"Mr. Chinaski, please have a seat. Let's talk." Bud turns around to face the young, newly married, newly pregnant, Rolex wearing, stethoscope carrying white coat. "Your wife—she died a healthy woman." The doctor's hands clasp together at his abdomen. He looks at Madeline, unblinking, thinking about how his father broke the news to him when his Grammy Tilly died when he was twelve and wanted to be a photographer, capturing moments, never forgetting. His father, tall and stiff, had grabbed his future doctorate son by the bony shoulders and sat him down at the kitchen table. Later that evening when his mom and dad left the house to visit grieving relatives, he snuck into their room and thumbed through faded pictures of when his grandma was his age and younger. Crying, he took the sepia toned pictures from their snug plastic beds and hid them in his favorite photography book. He held on to the picture of his grandma helping him walk for the first time across the yellow kitchen floor. He kept it under his pillow, safe from the tears that stained the pillow that night and some nights after. The photograph is now plastered to the wall of his leather wallet.

"Does that make her death any different?" Bud asks, interrupting the doctor, the white coat, the prick. Silence. The doctor shifts his weight to a different foot, unclasps his hands.

"Yes, it is different. It's different because you see, Mr. Chinaski, your wife was an organ donor, and well," Bud stands up. The hooks on his hat twinkle in the fluorescent light.

"No way in hell will anyone walk away with pieces of my wife!" Giving one last glance at his hushed wife, he brushes past doctor what's his face and out the door, through the two-way doors that you can always expect to see in hospitals. A green exit sign over an archway welcomes Bud back into a world where people walk away from the reality that death is that shadow that follows, that stalks. The doctor walks over to the door, shuts it slowly. He drags the bulky, wooden chair closer to his dead patient and sits, looking at her. He wonders. The papers aren't signed. Was she a grandmother? I have to contact Jim in morgue. Did she have children? She was a healthy woman; clean, healthy cadaver. "Dr. Fairchild to line 34. Emergency. Dr. Fairchild, line 34," the receptionist's voice is static. Madeline sleeps. Sexy Rexy is immodest to the doctor's eyes. He sits.

"Honey, I'm home!" a twenty-something Bud said one evening while walking through the screen door, in an attempt to mock couples from TV, a place where actors can portray perfection in a way that makes the majority of the audience, the real-lifers, envious. The house was dark. Boiling water hissed on the stove, overflowing from too much heat. Bud hurried and turned the flame off. "Madeline?" He heard a wretching cough from the bathroom. A moan. Bud quickly paced to the yellow slit of light from beneath the bathroom door and opened it. Madeline sat propped against the wall, mucus and spittle dribbling down her chin, onto her shirt. Her white shorts were a crumbled ball of material and brown-black blood. Blood was trickled all over the toilet seat. He walked over to the toilet but before he can see what was in the bowl, Madeline screamed and convulsed, pulled her hair. She clawed at the wall and Bud dropped to his knees, onto the slick tile floors covered in mucus, blood, and hair. He held his wife's body close to his and shielded her eyes so she couldn't see the blood. So she couldn't see the worried look on his face. So she couldn't see her miscarried child. For the next month, after being released from the hospital for more mental than physical help, Madeline stayed with her parents in Oakland while Bud cleaned every trace of the incident from the bathroom and the path of blood they trailed across the carpet of the house when leaving for the hospital. He repapered the walls and bought a new toilet.

Bud sits in the children's park across the street from Citizen's General Hospital; where he sat for the past few days when he needed to get away from his dying wife's body. Cross-legged, he smokes a cigarette. A habit he picked up after the incident. Cleaning the bathroom left his stomach unsettled, so he went to the nearby Sheetz to buy ginger ale. While waiting in line, he stared at the rainbow of cigarette containers and wondered why he hadn't started earlier. All the guys did it at the garage. He picked up a pack of Camels and felt like a man. Children laugh at each other in the sandbox behind him as the smoke and frenzied cigarette ashes blow towards them. Stupid squirrels skitter about the ground, at the bases of trees, forgetting where they buried their nuts. "I know how you feel, little man," Bud says to the rampant squirrel near the trash bin full of hollow juice cartons and empty chip bags. Bud thinks about the sweet and salty mouths of children as he stands up and walks to the vacant bus stop. A bright orange, tattered flyer poorly stapled on a telephone pole pulsates with the wind. "Le Nozze di Figaro at Heinz Hall on Saturday, October 1st."

"Why did I even marry you? You're an uncultured hick son-of-a-bitch!" Madeline said sarcastically to Bud, who was knotting his hooks onto the fishing line at the dinner table. "We're in our mid-forties, Bud. We need to start planning what we're going to do or see." Bud didn't look up from his project. Taking a forkful of lasagna to her lips, Madeline thought about her mother. Never get married, Madeline, her mother had told her plenty of times. Take care of yourself and never let some brute keep you from anything. You hear? Madeline put down her fork and eased out her chair. "You can clean up, tonight," she said to her brute. He grunted in response, his fishing pole nearly skittering along the swooshing petals of the ceiling fan. Bud never knew where his wife went off to that evening. She didn't take her car. It was cool outside and her red shawl was gone. Bud ate what was on both plates and put the rest in the fridge, not covering it. Bud never knew what time she came home. He fell asleep in an attempt to stay awake until she came home. Bud didn't know that she met with Sam at his flower shop. Bud didn't know that they walked down to The Point, where the three rivers of Pittsburgh—Monongahela, Ohio, and the Allegheny—met. Bud didn't know that they talked for hours out in the city's biting air about Mozart's madness and his requiem. Bud doesn't know that they stole a warm kiss at the end of their evening. Madeline didn't know that her husband spent two hours looking at pictures of their wedding in Mount Washington and had tried to stay up and wait for her to come home to him. Wherever she went, Bud thinks to himself as a bus rounds the corner, she needed to go.

Bud knows that he should go home. He knows that he should water the roses for his wife. He knows that he should call back all the empty faces, empty voices with names and numbers that are most likely on his answering machine. He knows that he should call his chess buddies and her knitting hens and tell them what happened. Bud knows that he should be a decent man and do decent things. But Madeline didn't marry a decent man, Bud thinks. And she knew that. "Let the roses crumble," Bud says to himself as he steps into the hissing entrance of the bus.

Other people with their lives, their losses, their pasts, sit in the rows thinking about anything but their lives, their losses, or their pasts. They all sit there like they all were created from the same clay. Bud sits next to a man, his foil, cloaked in black and clean-shaven. The priest smiles warmly, nods at his unkempt fellow passenger. His hands are folded on his lap and a gold crucifix hangs around his neck. Jesus' body wasn't on this crucifix. This crucifix was shiny, slick, metallic. Not bloody, splintered, or heavy on the shoulders or back.

Bud looks down at his own hands. Hands that worked, loved, trimmed Sexy Rexy, scrubbed dishes on those nights when he felt like being a good husband. The wedding band on his finger felt attached to his skin like a growth; a rough, golden callous.

"She sure did love that ring I got for her," Bud says aloud to his hand, himself, the priest.

"Pardon?" The priest shifts his body to face Bud. He breathes in and seems to hold his breath. The red button-down shirt Bud wears reminds him of Mother Mary's cloak and pew cushions.

"My wife, when I asked her to marry me and showed her the ring, she said yes to the ring. The diamond spoke to her. The diamond was on my side." Bud smiles at the priest. When was the last time I smiled? he thinks to himself.

The priest exhales slowly, comfortably. "I'm sure that your wife is a lovely woman that loves you," he says happily. "I bet you're a lucky man." The priest pats Bud on the shoulder. The bus comes to a stop and just outside the window, past the priest's head, is a billboard with a large, yellow smiley face on it—the priest's head centers perfectly within the circle, appearing to be surrounded by a halo.

"You're the lucky one, Father," Bud says. "You have the ability to love something you cannot see or prove. You can love something that might have never been there in the first place. You love it without question."

The priest smiles and looks toward the front of the bus. His head hurts from last night when he was alone in church, crying at the ankles of Jesus. Something in his life is missing. Something that can make a madman break down. No matter how hard he had tried to reveal the truth to God, God's son kept looking down at the little priest from high up on his nail-throne. The priest, bereft of a love he could not have, a wholeness he couldn't fill, cried until he felt pain in his palms, an ache in his arms and feet, and a stabbing throb in his sides.

Bud is relieved that the priest is quiet, but he is also curious. "But yeah, I guess I am pretty lucky. The woman makes my socks. She must love me," Bud says as he lifts his pant legs above his ankles, exposing knitted socks the color of communion wafers; a pale white with a hint of yellow. "You know, Father, I have so many of these damned socks. Last Christmas, I received a wicker basket full of these here knitted socks, a scarf, and a hat, all from the hands of my wife. Her name's Madeline." Bud struggles to grab his foot, but manages and he pulls off his favorite brown boots and then tugs the thick socks off his feet and hands them to the priest. The priest takes them. He rubs his fingers over the material.

Guess who I made this for, he could hear his mother say to him when he was a little boy. She approached him with a blanket—red, black, and gray, and wrapped her pockmarked son in it. It felt soft like Heaven on his irritated skin. So soft he could cry. Now... Guess who I love this much! Her arms spread past her small body, his dimly lit bedroom, the house, Pittsburgh, the Earth, the universe. Her fingertips touched God on both sides. Me, he said to his mother through the yarn of his blanket. Me, mama.

"Thank you," says the priest as the bus makes a sharp turn into the Cultural District in Downtown Pittsburgh. The buildings themselves look like props for a stage; two dimensional and leaning against the sky. The bus comes to a halt at the beginning of a block of street vendors lined up one after another.

"This is my stop, Father," Bud says as he stands up. Shaking hands with Bud, the priest smiles at the feeling of Bud's father-like hands on his. He thinks of his father's hands—rough hands that produced one intricate painting after another. They were always crusty and brown from the concoction of pigments—and time. So much time.

"Good bye, son," the priest says to Bud, who is already at the front of the bus, making his exit.

"When you die, I'm going to laugh my way to the bank," Madeline said, taking a sip from Bud's fresh-squeezed lemonade he bought from the vendor.

"And you're just so sure that I'm gonna croak before you, huh?" Bud replied through a mouthful of chilidog with cheese.

"If you keep eating that shit, you will. You'll have a heart attack, I know it."

Bud and Madeline sat on a blanket in Roosevelt Park on the evening of Independence Day, 1983. This was the year before two children were kidnapped from the park and it became an intersection for drug addicts and gang members.

"Look at your shirt, you slob. There are children here that have better manners than you'll ever have," Madeline complained as she adjusted a free patriotic pin on her shirt. Bud felt the warm chunk of chili permeate through his favorite fishing shirt.

"God damnit. Can't you let a man enjoy a chilidog? You're the one that dragged me here in the first place. We could have at least brought the boat with us and gone down the river to watch the fireworks. That way, I could be fishing and you could see your goddamned fireworks." Bud finished his chilidog. "But we're here now with these snot-nosed brats, so let's just make the best of it, shall we?"

"You used to like children, Bud," said Madeline while looking around to make sure no one heard her rude bastard of a husband. She managed to keep her tears at bay.

"Yeah," Bud said. "I did."

Silence. Children in the distance danced like pixies with pink, green, and white sparklers. Some kids screamed, dropped the sparking heads of color, and ran away crying. Some kids cried because they didn't have sparklers. Some kids cried because they knew that they could get away with not having a reason to cry.

As the fireworks were being displayed, Madeline looked at Bud, at the reflection of the dazzling explosions on his glasses. Bud intently looked at the sky, past the fireworks and the skeletal smoke they left behind. It wasn't until he felt the hot, sun-burnt shoulders of his wife rub against his arm and her hand, like a cool firework, cover his knee, that he was able to be thankful for pyrotechnics, for that day of independence. It was the day that he realized that he was anything but independent. That was his grand finale.

"Hi, uhh, yeah, I'll have a chilidog with cheese, please," Bud says to the hotdog vendor while handing him two dollars. He places his fishing hat on the counter and takes off his thick sweater and puts his hat back on.

"It's a beautiful evening," the vendor says while handing the heart attack to Bud. The vendor looks at the sky. "No clouds," he says through a smile. "Just beautiful."

"I second that," Bud says. "Not one cloud."

Elaborately dressed couples sashay down the street, not giving a passing glance to the street vendors. They spent their day at Belle Vista Ristorante on Mount Washington—a restaurant with an aerial view of the whole city. They are all heading to Heinz Hall to see Le Nozze di Figaro. They'll sit and laugh as Marcellina and Susanna compete with each other or at Cherubino as he hides underneath the table at Barbarina's house. A street performer plays his guitar as his child shakes his tambourine to the beat. A man in flip-flops carries an armful of flowers. He approaches Bud.

"Buy some flowers for your wife, sir. Does she like red? Of course she likes red! Look at this, look what I got," the man holds out a wide variety of flowers and goes on and on. Bud brushes past him and continues walking toward Heinz Hall with the rest of the opulent crowd in their tuxedos and flowing gowns. He finishes his chilidog.

"I bought you a ticket anyway, Bud," Madeline said while Bud relaxed from a day of yard work. She handed it to him. "I know you won't go, but it's just in case you want to join your wife for a wonderful time. Keep it in your wallet." She disappeared into the kitchen where she started baking cookies for the neighbors. The ticket was gold and flimsy in his hand. Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at Heinz Hall. Saturday, October 1st, 2005, 7:30pm. Bud stuffed the ticket in his wallet between three business cards for Bud's Autobody and seventeen dollars. He turned the volume up on the History Channel as Madeline's electric mixer squealed in the kitchen.

Bud, in his black mechanic's pants, fishing hat, red, button-down shirt and his five o'clock shadow, stands in line among the intellectual and musically eclectic couples of Pittsburgh. They talk about movements in music and some woman named Maria Callas. The sky darkens and Bud wonders what his wife is doing. He never wanted to know so much in his life. His chest begins to feel like a hollow cavity and the muscles in his throat begin to tense as he watches the man in front of him slip his arm around the silky hips of his wife.

The carpet in the lobby is a plush red and feels good enough to sleep on. Bud follows the usher to row FF, seat 13. He awkwardly stumbles past the seated couples, wondering what way is the polite way to face when doing things like this. Ass towards them or crotch towards them? He takes his seat, squeezing the program to the opera into a winding tube. The seats are pretty good, he guesses. The lit stage is sepia toned like an old photograph and red curtains hang like a scarf around the whole display. Bud takes off his hat and places his sweater and the hat on his lap. A young, blonde broad sits next to him on the left. She smells like she tries to smell good. So unlike Madeline.

It was Christmas Eve,1991, and Bud hadn't purchased anything for his wife, yet. He found himself at the mall after work, wondering what he could buy. Madeline always says not to buy anything for her, but Bud isn't so dumb to take that as the truth. Damn women and their lies... making things more difficult. He meanders into JC Penny's and finds himself looking at perfumes; little bottles of peach, rose, mauve, and golden potions. A young girl was at the counter. Her nametag was red and green and said Hope. "May I help you with anything this evening, sir?" she asked, tucking her short, brown hair behind her ear and then caressing her curve of her ear with her index finger. A habit she picked up from her older sister. She's adorable, Bud thought immediately. They spent forty-five minutes talking about the hassles of Christmas shopping with some perfume shop talk tied in. She told him about how hard it was to figure out what her father wanted for Christmas because her parents were divorced and he began a new life with a younger woman in Toledo, Ohio. Her mother was depressed and didn't have the initiative to decorate the house or even put up her favorite wreath. After Bud decided on a perfume called Sunflower, the young girl's shift was over and Bud treated her to ice cream in the mall's cafeteria. He talked about his wife and how hard it was to celebrate Christmas without the echo of children's laughter in the house. The girl listened and Bud never felt so listened to in his life.

When he got home, the house was dark and Madeline was asleep on the couch as Nat King Cole sang "Blue Christmas." He took the gift of perfume out of the bag. Hope had wrapped it for him for free. He could smell the perfume through the metallic wrapping paper. He ate a decorated cookie in the shape of a snowman that Madeline had made the previous day and covered Madeline in her favorite fleece blanket. He kissed her on the cheek and sat on the other couch, wishing that Madeline could have met Hope; thinking about how that experience would have been worth so much more than a bottle of smell. Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree won't mean a thing if you're not here with me...

Bud looks at the empty seat to his right. He reaches out and caresses the seat where Madeline's leg would be. Bud wonders if anyone else notices this empty seat—that someone is supposed to fill it. I doubt it, he thinks to himself as he rests his arm on the arm of the seat and holds his wife's hand. He can feel her squeeze his hand in excitement. He smiles down at his sweater and his hat. His cold feet. The lights dim. Voices dull. The opera begins with the fluttering toot of the flute. It's moving. It's true. It's beautiful. Other wind instruments flow in and the drum beats like a heart. A couple, Figaro and Susanna, appear on stage, fighting and bickering over room accommodations. Bud and Madeline look at each other knowingly and quietly chuckle. Madeline returns her attention to the stage as Bud continues to stare at his wife's profile, the curve of her cheek, the fine, gray hair bordering her face. Couples all around Bud laugh at the characters on stage as they continue to rattle off complaints at one another. Bud's view of his wife becomes distorted with oncoming tears. He takes his hand away from hers for just a moment to wipe them away as quickly as possible.

Opening his eyes and replacing his hand, he feels nothing. He looks toward Madeline, an empty seat, an open space like his chest. His eyes burn with tears and he lets out a groan that rumbles from his gut. The tears are salty strangers to his cheeks. His face tightens in the realization that Madeline is gone. His face in his hands, he lets the tears escape from between his fingers and fall into the fabric of the sweater and crash on the metal hooks of his hat. His acoustic cry bellows through the ears of the audience. Arrogant whispers surround Bud as his shoulders convulse in back spraining sobs. An usher shines a flashlight on Bud, trying to beckon him from his seat. Bud doesn't move. He sobs louder than Figaro's angry aria. He sobs until pain flourishes like roses in his palm, his feet and arms begin to ache, and a stabbing throb pains his sides.

______________________________________
posted 02.27.06.

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