Polly's Morphism (1) “What would you do if all that you had believed in left you gasping with your mouth all agape as lives go sliding across the floor I can see the moray eel sitting there looking quite smug in his sagging bathrobe Medusa always reminded me of a lost adnocana straining in the metamorphosis she was forced to uphold and perfect only because we say it to be Dracula peered at me with one eye once the other covered by a fur coat that went beyond his head How can I tell you about the raging wars when the chiefs of the tribe won’t allow us to become what the caged bird always longed for That’s why you should stay awake tonight tonight tonight…” She was always leaving unpunctuated passages like that strewn about, wherever she happened to find herself in any given moment of the day or night. If her writing wasn’t complete, then she’d carry it with her from chair, to floor, to couch, to bed, to toilet, and back to chair. But when it was done, it was a sure, unhesitating thing — she would simply walk away from it, not caring a wit whether the missive landed in the garbage, or ended up in one of the numerous files compiled on her troubled behalf atop some doctor’s desk. Having no need to communicate with the other uneasy souls around her, as well as possessing a preference for unending solitude, she hadn’t spoken in all the time I’d known this strange, enigmatic woman, since that day she was carried in from the rain. Half naked, nearly soaked to the bone, and dragging some remnant of what seemed to be a scaly, desiccated fisherman’s net, she had been placed here, under my care, she expressing no partialities, whatsoever, as to the final outcome of her stay. For a few weeks after her arrival, she kept on writing out the words “shoondugewannopollezog.” I tried reading it back to her every way imaginable — fast, slow, loud, soft, backwards, forwards — all to no avail. My efforts were futile, as she sat there, day after day, legs drawn close to her chest, arms clasped tightly around her knees, rocking back and forth, back and forth, gazing down on the dreary streets below. So, I gave her a name based on a snippet of the word she had written incessantly, and then, just as suddenly, never wrote again. ‘Polly’ would be her adopted moniker, since no one had come to make any sort of claim for her. Words don’t sufficiently describe the sorrow I felt for this beautiful young girl, damaged beyond all repair, or so it seemed to the medical establishment. Her fingerprints weren’t in any of the databases. There were no dental records to be consulted. Nobody had filled out a ‘Missing Persons’ report on her behalf, in any part of the country, going back at least five years. Which left her here, in the state’s loony bin, not presenting a problem to anyone, but neither showing any signs of improvement. In addition to her writing skills, Polly was also an accomplished artist. Truly disturbing scenes; things I’ve not encountered in all my perusings of the world’s art repositories. Mostly twisted alien faces and figures, tormented and tortured spirits, all held together by distressed threads of sinew, bone, and rotting flesh. To me, they looked like plausible depictions of what might be considered as Hell. Then there were the serene compositions — other worldly ’scapes of universal calm, brought to life by her unsurpassed ability to use geometric and organic contours in combinations that absolutely astounded me. Crayons, pencils, or just plain old pen and ink, Polly didn’t care what tool she crafted her art with, and cared less what happened to it once she was done. I had no proper summation as to what medical category she might fall into, however, in my estimation, she fell closest to the label Idiot Savant. I had instructed the nurses and, in fact, everyone on the staff, right down to Mr. Gomez, our head janitor, to keep track of her creations as best they could, placing each one in my ‘in’ box as they happened to come across it. Some of her symphonies had been found scrawled on rolls of toilet paper; others came to me on different sections of broken down cardboard boxes she must have happened upon. Still additional ones might be found, in this corner or that, on the unused side of discarded mimeograph paper. Pouring over the words that often accompanied these outlandish compositions had proved fruitless. The seemingly nonsensical and jumbled sentences were meaningless to all who gave an educated effort at deciphering their true intent, finding neither commonality nor theme on or between any of the pages. After a year or two, I lost hope in ever helping Polly get better, but I kept a watchful eye on her, nonetheless, not wanting, by any means, the least harm to come to this dear patient of mine. ♦ ♦ ♦ One day, in March of ’75, as I was on my way to a psychiatric evaluation of one of my new colleague’s assigned charges, while thumbing through his medical record, not paying much attention to my circuitous route, I carelessly bumped into Polly. “Oh…well excuse me, Polly. I didn’t see you standing there,” I said, as tenderly as I could. “You look ravishing. How are we doing today?” Already late to my appointment, and not expecting the briefest response to come, I had hardly given her a moment’s notice, when she looked at me squarely with her enchanting green eyes and said, “Goodbye, Dr. Gates.” The record tumbled out of my hands and skittered across the linoleum-tiled floor as I stood there staring back at her, my lower jaw somewhere down around my ankles. For however much the moment might have caused me to doubt all of my previous training, with regard to the functioning of the human psyche, I somehow knew, instinctively, that I needn’t wait for any further communiqué to issue forth from Polly’s largely unused mouth. At any rate, she had already turned away, shuffling down the hall in her worn-out slippers, as though nothing of note had just occurred between us. My mind’s eye watched myself watching Polly slowly turn the nearest corner, an unkempt and ragged persona effectively hiding away what was probably once a beautiful, yet highly disturbed soul. And something she had written long ago (...as lives go sliding across the floor) started scratching at the back of my brain. I quickly retrieved the file papers, which had left a haphazard trail across the dingy tiles, then hurried on my way. This was the first time I had been in Doctor Morgenstern’s office, he being the latest addition to the hospital’s staff. I suppose he thought I had gone over the edge, the way I seemed spellbound by the first thing I saw upon entering — a caricature of an eel in a bathrobe too big for its own skin. He caught my gaze: “Yes, I know it’s kind of strange,” he said, smiling. “But, there’s a story behind it, as you might have already surmised.” Without waiting for affirmation or denial, he continued, “You see, when I was a young boy, growing up in the Bronx, my mother, may she rest in peace, used to call me down to breakfast every morning. ‘Murray, Murray’ she’d holler up the stairs. She’s got that heavy accent that goes with the territory, and a few other places tossed into the mix as well. So my poor name comes out sounding like ‘More-ray’ instead. Eventually, I’d come schlepping down the stairs, swimming in my dad’s bathrobe. Somehow, over the years, the story got around and I took on the nickname ‘Moray,’ as in the eel.” He chuckled to himself, standing behind his oversized mahogany desk, with his thumbs tucked in behind his trendy suspenders. “My wife had a guy downtown sketch that up for her…a few years back I guess it was…as a present to me on my birthday.” Smiling again, for his own benefit rather than mine, seemingly lost in a specially contrived world he likely visited often, Dr. Morgenstern all at once noticed me again. Extending his outstretched hand toward the burgundy leather chair he must have brought with him from a more lucrative post elsewhere, he said, “Sit down, sit down, make yourself comfortable.” Pausing briefly, glancing back at the apparently beloved picture, he then asked, somewhat distractedly, “Did you get a chance to look through the record?” Before responding to his question, I found myself lost in thoughtful contemplation over the talents of human consciousness — it’s uncanny ability to form a detailed opinion regarding a new acquaintance, someone being met for the very first time. This opinion is formed in just moments, based on thousands of rapid-fire clues: gestures, clothing, words, facial expressions, tonality, demeanor, etcetera. After a mere minute or two of interaction, I found myself firmly entrenched in the belief that Dr. Morgenstern was an accomplished actor who I found quite easy to detest. Having honed his skills over the years, becoming the smooth operator I beheld before me now, his purpose, at least to me, was sharp and clear, being none other than to establish a false superiority over his peers, even if they were, in all probability, superior to him, both in knowledge and position. If there was anything he might have learned in our field, it was the irrefutable wisdom that slick-willy routines don’t work on psychiatrists — not on this one, at any rate. I envisioned what the practiced reply might be were I to find myself so inclined as to ask him about his pretentious furnishings, totally out of step in a facility such as this one, a place where the Mentally Insane, as they were referred to once upon a time, came to seek their respite from a world with little patience for the bizarre or nonconformist personality. Because of this conjecture of mine, which I never doubted for a second, I took a bit longer to respond to his question than was really necessary, my message, which I hoped he wouldn’t miss, being that he was lower on my ladder, not me on his. “Yeah, for the most part,” I replied, impolitely, rearranging papers for distractive purposes, “until I was interrupted by an earth-shattering event.” “Is that right?” He sat down and leaned back in his chair, feigning interest. “And what was that?” “Uh…nevermind.” I liked the idea of keeping a secret from him and, besides, I didn’t feel like going into it right now, especially not knowing the man all that well yet, and not sure that I liked what I did know. “Listen, are they going to be bringing Donnie in soon, because I…” “Oh, most definitely, yeah, he’s on his way down now, even as we speak.” He drummed his manicured fingertips on his big expensive desk. Pompous bastard, I was thinking, when he interrupted my thought. “Well, did’ja get a gander at that picture he drew?” “No, I didn’t get that far along.” Morgenstern extended his hand again, as a salesman might do when asking his latest sucker to take a look at the new glossy brochures, “At least grab a quick peek before he gets here.” He winked at me. That one annoying and presumptuous gesture pretty much sealed his fate on my likeability list. It was plain to see that being insidious was a way of life for him. I decided then and there that his stay with the institution wouldn’t be lengthy. I indulged a vision of that desk being roughly bumped and scraped through narrow doorways by careless movers in a month or two. Quickly shuffling to the page I would have been on before Polly had knocked me senseless with her three little words, I came upon an exquisite charcoal drawing of a woman with snakes growing out of her head, although they appeared to be transforming into something else, something more akin to prehistoric monsters with teeth. The realness of the woman’s face was spine-chilling. Above each writhing creature there was a letter. Taken as a whole, they spelled out the word “adnocana.” I began sweating as Donnie arrived at the door, speaking in loud tones about the finer points of living on the shadowy planet we know as Earth. As his attending nurse, Ms Didier, tapped on the good doctor’s already opened door, Donnie was finishing up with, “…that we’re forced to uphold, and perfect only because we say it to be,” at which time he stopped and trained his eyes on me in a vacuous manner, as though I wasn’t really sitting there at all. I gave a quick look down at Donnie’s rendering once again and saw, to my horror, that the woman sitting in my lap, with her eyes fixed on my own, was unmistakably none other than Polly herself, captured in a fanged smile that portended danger and lust, maybe even a coming sorrow, all at the same time. Having burst from Dr. Morgenstern’s office under the false pretense that I was having the onset of a migraine headache, I knocked myself roughly down the hall, hustling myself, empty-handed, toward the nearest exit. Having pushed the medical dossier and all its contents onto the floor, my reaction, though seemingly dramatic, had been appropriate for one who has just unexpectedly discovered an unwelcome slimy animal dangerously staring up at him from his own thighs. Rushing through the main entryway, I didn’t slow down until I reached my car, never looking back once at the impossible world I was leaving behind just as quickly as my foot mashing on the gas would allow. Unable to recall any of the brief trip home, but fairly certain that I had committed several traffic violations along the way, I presently found myself slouched in the foyer of my own beloved house, up against the front door, which I had slammed behind me. Finally sensing safety in familiar surroundings, I proceeded to vomit all over our imported ceramic-tiled floor. My young son, who had been watching TV, whirled himself around on the couch, craning his neck over the backside, wondering why in the hell his father was retching his guts up all over the nice vestibule. As I glanced up to reassure him that everything was okay, stumbling forward a few steps, my extended arm signaling that he should just stay put for now, I found my face half-buried in my wife’s mink stole, hanging from the coat rack at the far corner of the entryway. The one eye not being tickled by the delicate hairs of the animal fur saw, to its dismay, that it was staring at a close up shot of Dracula’s face, effectively cut in half from my vantage point, boring into me from some old black and white horror movie my son must have been watching while waiting for his mother to arrive back home. Polly’s words again hit me with full force, squarely in the cortex, at which point I believe I must have fainted dead away. ♦ ♦ ♦ When I awoke, quite some time later, I was situated in a hospital bed, my wife, Sandra, seated by my side. The feeling that someone had stuffed an overabundance of damp cotton deep into my head could not be shaken off, and the migraine I had bluffed about, in order to make my hasty exodus from the hospital grounds, had become a reality just now. Some documentary about World War II was airing on the muted TV, suspended from the ceiling above my gurney. Sandra, being a voracious reader, even now thought it appropriate to keep her nose stuck in some nondescript book while she waited for her husband’s waking state to manifest itself. I turned my head slightly to see what the title might be. The Caged Bird by Polly Gates should have been ample cause for me to hurl myself out the window, but for some reason, I was only impressed, no longer frightened. I began to think of the fame and fortune that might follow me all the rest of my days, if only I could document the fact that one of my patients was able to prognosticate the future (and, apparently, even manipulate it) writing the events of any given day down on a scrap of paper, years before they happened. Sandra extricated her nose from the pages of the novel (I didn’t dare read one word of it for fear it might just be the one thing lacking that would convince me of the wisdom in that death plunge) long enough to notice that I had stirred awake. After muttering some few sentences to one another, she telling me that I gave everyone quite a scare, me telling her that she didn’t know the half of it, the doctor was called in to ascertain my fitness to return home. A General Practitioner, Peter Jenkins chalked the whole mess up to a nasty little flu bug that was making the rounds and which had probably found my own biology of some interest. After a few questions about my state of mind, and having written out a prescription for some pain killers (my head still throbbed mightily), my doctor of fifteen years (I couldn’t bring myself to call him “Petey,” in front of my wife, like I always did when we were alone) sent me home with the coerced promise that I would keep activities to a low level, resting in bed for a few days, as well. He released me, on my own recognizance, back into that shadowy world Donnie had talked about only hours before. Jenkins was a dear old man, readying for retirement, and I was glad to keep him in the fog as to the real reasons behind our having encountered one another today. Some people just aren’t prepared to hear the things I have to tell them. It was 10 p.m. by the time Sandra pulled up under the front breezeway at the patients’ entrance, just as I was being wheeled out in my own requisite vehicle. As we turned out of the county hospital’s parking lot, I glanced over at her as whimsically as I could, mustering up a face that suggested a devil-may-care attitude toward the day’s proceedings. “Hey Hon, could you swing me by the office real quick? There’re some papers I really need to have with me if I’m gonna be home for a few days.” I smiled at her and caressed her hand on the steering wheel, trying to keep my request as off the cuff as possible. She smiled back — one of those numbers that says “I hear what you’re asking, Darling, but no.” She patted my hand, “Whatever it is, Sweetheart, it can wait
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Copyright © 2005 Jay Porter Martin |