When I was 22, I lived rent-free for almost a year in the heart of old-money, poodle-toting Upper East Side Manhattan. I had answered an ad looking for a ‘nighttime caretaker for an elderly lady’ and got the gig.
This was the deal: two of us would live rent-free with a 91-year-old woman in her Park Ave apartment. We each had our own rooms and groceries were provided. In return, at least one of us had to be present in the apartment between 7 pm and 7 am, while Madame, as we fondly called her, was in bed. We were there in case of an emergency.
Nothing more was required of us. Maids and real caretakers were there from 7 am to 7 pm to do the actual heavy lifting. We alternated nights “on duty.” As I was working on my first novel, this imposed, bi-nightly schedule suited me just fine.
It was a fancy, moneyed building. A lower floor apartment hosted the Clintons one evening for a fundraiser. Doormen were always at the ready, swooping in, opening doors, pressing elevator buttons. The lobby was an affable surveillance state.
The apartment reflected Madame’s former high-society status. Framed pictures on the walls displayed her in glamorous youth, posing on cruise liners. An entire closet was dedicated to her luxury purses—Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chanel. The dining room was its own unique conceit: every surface was mirrored, from the walls to the dining table. You were never alone in that room.
But what most stood out were the countless porcelain cats throughout the apartment. Cats in bow ties, cats with blinking eyes, cats housing clocks. It was a weird place, especially in the deep hours of night, and it inspired weird thoughts in me.
What follows is from that unpublished first novel, Hephaestus, which I wrote in that Park Ave apartment. Like all first novels, it’s shamelessly and grotesquely autobiographical. Near the end, the narrative veers off briefly into a phantasmagoric play. This is part of that part—a birth-related piece of mythery that’s never before seen company, offered up for this restyled (reborn if you will) Mythery Loves Company.
The passage is a historic artifact by now so, tempting though it was, I haven’t altered a word.
Dedicated to Madame.
Stanovich flicks the light off and slips outside, carefully shutting the door behind him. He goes to his room and lies down on his bed. Twenty minutes pass. A pounding on the door.
VOICE OUTSIDE DOOR (urgently) Is there a doctor in the house?
STANOVICH (perturbed) Let me be. I’m not a doctor.
VOICE Do you have any medical skills? First Aid? CPR? AAA?
STANOVICH Some. But they've expired.
VOICE (screaming) Nevermind! Come immediately to the kitchen. The lady is in labor!
(voice recedes) Hurry!
Confused, Stanovich rushes to the kitchen. Madame is lying supine on the floor, bloated belly bulging from her emaciated frame, dress hitched up to her pantyline, pallid varicose legs exposed, her squalid eyes staring helplessly upwards. She is surrounded by cats of all sizes. A crouching blinking orange-eyed black cat offers her left hand a supportive paw while a bowtied cat with vacillating jewel-eyes does the same for her right. Much mewing.
STANOVICH (hastens to Madame's side, gingerly avoiding tails) Madame! What’s happened? Why are you down?
MADAME (breathing heavily, grey hairs pasted to her glistening forehead by a film of sweat) I'm having a baby.
STANOVICH (joyous) A baby! (mortified) A baby! (aroused) Oh baby! (his ear on her bulbous belly) Let me hear it.
MADAME (blows a fart, guffawing) Hear that?
STANOVICH (quickly lifts his face off her belly) But I tucked you into bed... How did you end up on your back in the kitchen in childbirth?
MADAME I was sleeping and I had a dream. (her voice echoes majestically, thronging over feline crowds) And in this dream a lion with a mane of fire spoke to me and told me where my incense was. (dropping to a whisper) You see, somebody stole my incence–
STANOVICH (interject) no
MADAME –oh yes they're always stealing from me. I think it was one of these cats, always sneaking behind my back, snatching my belongings. You know I've never stolen from anybody, not even a pin. (motions Stanovich closer, her voice barely audible) Lately they're even conspiring to murder me. I'm keeping an eye on them. (her voice grows louder again) And so I woke up from my dream, went to the drawer the burning lion pointed me to, and there it was, sitting innocently up in the highest drawer, next to all the baby photo albums. You see, the lion was St. Fanourios. He often comes to me in my dreams to help me find things lost or stolen from me. And when he so honors me, as a gift in return, I bake him a cake made of seven ingredients. That’s how I ended up in the kitchen.
STANOVICH It all makes perfect sense now. And the labor pains?
MADAME Parthenogenesis. (her face suddenly distorts in a state of dementia) It’s pushing, it’s pushing!
CATS (mewing, scratching, tearing, chasing tails, sniffing catnip) Somebody somewhere somehow do something!
STANOVICH (whistling) Fiiouwiiit!
A three-legged golden-wheeled table with golden sun disks and an engraving of the island of Cyprus comes rolling in. Madame is lifted onto the table and Maria the cat administers four pills to Madame: Mellaril, Accupril, Pepcid and Erythromycin. Stanovich runs to his room, returning with a stack of photos to further mollify Madame's pain. He shows her a photo of Larry mooning the camera on the Cliffs of Moher.
MADAME Sodomite! (Turns to a photo of himself and his sister, age five and three, together in an outdoor portapool) Sibling incest!
(Stanovich puts the photographs away. Madame is screaming, face clenched) Take me to my living room! (she is rolled to the living room) Take me to my bedroom! (she is rolled to the bedroom) Take me to my hallway! (she is rolled to the hallway) Take me to my kitchen! (she is rolled back to the kitchen) Take me to... Ahhh, it’s coming!
BLINKING-EYED CAT Go on doctor, let’s see you deliver!
STANOVICH (rises to the occasion, drops to his knees, his head between her outspread legs) Don’t see much activity here...
MADAME (crying out) What use are all those eyes?
BLINKING-EYED CAT Perhaps you should remove the panties.
STANOVICH (contemplates suggestion) Yes, perhaps that would be a good idea. (removes panties) Ah yes, very interesting. (briefly looks up at Madame, attempting to bolster her sense of well-being) Impressive for 91.
MADAME (flattered, squirming, waxen face clenched in agony) Hurry... hurry...
STANOVICH (probes delicately) There’s not enough light in here. Flashlight anyone? Matches? (A matchbook is handed to him. He strikes a match with no results. He looks closely at them.) Idiot, these are all used! (Another matchbook is handed. Stanovich lights it on the first try, holding up the flame near the mouth of her urethra.)
MADAME Ow, ow! Not too close.
STANOVICH You're just going to have to bear with me Madame. Please, don’t act like a child. Act your age.
MADAME (southbearded singed, she farts, her belly deflating like an untied balloon) KAA BOOOOOOOOMM! (Stanovich's head is momentarily engulfed in a fireball)
STANOVICH (smoke curling up from his blackcharred Chihuahua head) Madame, I don’t think that was called for at a time like—
MADAME (reaches out, grabbing his remaining tuft of hair and pulls malevolently on it, her lips curled back and teeth bared savagely) Now deliver! (she releases and turns to the blinking-eyed cat, her clenched face suddenly relaxing into a sadistic chuckle)
STANOVICH (rolls his sleeves up) All right, here goes. (thrusts his arm sloppily inside her)
CATS (in unison) Well, what’s in there, what’s in there?
STANOVICH (almost in up to his elbow) Still nothing and no one.
MADAME (moaning) Then go deeper!
CATS (in unison, gasping) YES, DEEPER!
STANOVICH (thrusts upwards with all his might, further into her uterine depths) I still can’t... can’t seem to feel anything... (pulls out his arm, sheathed to the triceps in a mantle of embryonic slimesludge) How does one go further now?
DAYGLO CAT With a Cesarean
CATS (clamoring) A CESAREAN!
MADAME (elated) Cut me open! Cut me open!
CATS (screaming) CUT HER UP!
STANOVICH But with what? No surgical tools here. A serrated spoon is tossed to him.
CATS With a spoon! With a spoon!
MADAME (in throes of delighted anguish) Start scooping!
Also "with a spoon!" made me laugh. Literally out loud. I have no idea why.
Most mythsterious