In fact, Naomi could not call Kinch anything except, if she could not avoid it, “you.”
When she’d returned to New York City from the first of her Midwestern trips, to Muskegee Falls, it was to discover that Madelena had become cheerfully “resigned.” Prematurely “resigned.” There was a new airiness, lightness in her grandmother’s bones. It wasn’t the ravages of chemotherapy—rather a ravage of the soul. A rarefying of the soul. To her surprise Naomi discovered, and would have liked to toss out into the incinerator chute in the corridor, a copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead on Madelena’s nightside table.
She’d leafed through the book dreading what she might read. She knew how derisive Gus had been of “wisdom” literature—the sacred texts of the great religions, apologias for oppression, ignorance, superstition, pacifism in the face of political tyranny. Not to mention enslavement and mistreatment of women. No “wisdom” is worth such ignorance, Gus had said. And it was laced with anti-science as with anthrax.
Naomi supposed that The Tibetan Book of the Dead was not to be taken literally but rather symbolically. The subtitle was Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State.
For you did not die instantaneously, it was claimed. By degrees you died, as your consciousness waned. Many days and many nights were required for complete extinction. Possibly this was once true, or true in some way, before modern medical technology. Now, consciousness in the dying individual waned, and was extinguished, while the body continued to live a zombie-life in its reduced state. This was living—but only physically.
Naomi put the book down, and did not confront her grandmother with it. For she knew that, if she did, Madelena would make a joke of it in some way painful to Naomi.
She missed Madelena’s former contentiousness. Madelena’s contrarian spirit. Since the onset of the cancer Madelena scarcely seemed to care if someone disagreed with her—she rarely troubled to disagree with others. She had lost her strong opinions as you might lose bulky household objects and never miss them. She did not refute colleagues, she did not take sides in disputes. When Kinch said something preposterous, or provocative, Madelena simply smiled.
Clasped her hands tightly together, as if in restraint. Smiled.
When Naomi told Madelena that she thought she might have at last found her “subject”—(“A film documentary about women boxers”)—Madelena had said, “Good!”—and had not raised the obvious objections Naomi had expected.
“Will you apply for a grant? From the Institute? Or—are you looking for private investors? If so, maybe I can help.”
Quickly Naomi told her grandmother that she wasn’t looking for money—yet. It was mortifying to her that Madelena would offer to support her documentary filmmaking, along with allowing her to live in her apartment for no rent.
Madelena said, “But I want to help you, in any way I can. Why would I not want to help you, Naomi? You’re my granddaughter: I love you.”
SHE’D SEEN THIS CLEARLY: Madelena had intended to maneuver her into a relationship of some intimacy with the half-uncle Kinch. She’d known almost at once. Oh, she had known.
Yet, it had happened nonetheless. Not that she’d been powerless to stop it but that she had not stopped it, as if powerless.
As she’d come to love Madelena over a period of time so she’d come to love Karl Kinch. (To a degree.)
My family. Mine!
She didn’t know whether to smile over this, or to cry. Often she had a fleeting vision of something—ashes, bone—swirling sucked away into a stream.
Until Madelena’s illness Naomi had never visited Kinch without her—of course. It had seemed very strange, awkward—visiting the half-uncle without her grandmother present.
When she came alone to see Kinch he was bright, cheerful, garrulous and inquisitive as usual. He’d made an effort to groom himself: fresh-laundered white shirt, shaving cologne. With playful rudeness he sent the dour Sonia away to “molder” in a back room and not bother them. Yet: he didn’t ask in detail about Madelena.
He didn’t tease Naomi nearly so much as he had at the start of their acquaintance. She’d become for him a familiar presence, a “relative”—almost, a relative he’d known for a long time, about whom there was no need to ask probing questions.
Kinch liked to surprise Naomi by giving her presents at unpredictable times. A pristine first edition of Selected Poems of Marianne Moore. A paperback copy of Julian Jaynes’s The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind with Kinch’s own annotations in the margins. A copy of Kinch’s own, early book of poems Tristes published when he’d been Naomi’s age, and out of print (as Kinch said) for three decades, with a lavishly obscure inscription—To my dear niece Naomi with hope for the happiness of her life to come. Yrs with Love, “Uncle Karl.”