Still Life with Tornado(66)

“Yes.”

“Is that your name now?”

“Yeah. I think so. Do you like it?”

“It’s got something,” he says.

I want to tell Bruce that I am the layer between him and a sky full of potential bullshit but I don’t think saying that in front of the soap lady would be appropriate.

The soap lady is like a mummy. She’s just lying there in her case with her mouth wide-open like she’s screaming. But she’s not really screaming. She’s just dead and encased in an alkaline substance that gave her the name the Soap Lady. They dug her up in Philly in 1875. Some expert doctor said she’d died from the yellow fever epidemic around the 1790s. That expert doctor died a long time before someone discovered he was wrong (because she was wearing buttons that were not manufactured in America until the mid-1800s). I wonder if we’d have sliced the expert doctor’s brain into twenty-micron-thin pieces and slapped them between slides if we could find out that he was wrong about the soap lady. I bet we couldn’t.

I can’t pull my eyes off the soap lady’s mouth. Her scream is so familiar. I want to touch it the way I’ve wanted to touch great paintings . . . except what would I get from touching a scream? I wanted talent from the paintings; maybe if I touch the soap lady’s scream, I could feel better about everything without having to actually scream. Either way, I wish they’d bury her somewhere so we didn’t have to look at it. She doesn’t look at peace right now, screaming in a glass case being ogled by anyone who can afford an admission fee.

I can’t remember why I used to love this museum.

I used to love all the oddities and the science, but now it just seems like humans showing off shit they know very little about. Like: Here’s a museum of the things that went wrong and the ways we did things that were wrong and the facts we got wrong.

I have grown up around people who can’t talk about what’s wrong, so maybe I’m just stuck in my own hang-ups.

Bruce says, “You look uncomfortable.”

“I am. I don’t know why.”

“We can go.”

“No. You go ahead and look around. I’m going to check out the garden.”

There are benches around the medicinal plants in the garden. Mom used to grow some of these in the little yard behind our house. She used to grow lemon balm and sage and wormwood, only she called them by their Latin names because she’s Mom. Now she doesn’t grow anything anymore. I try to remember when she stopped. I’m pretty sure it was right after Mexico.

Eventually, Bruce comes out and sits on the bench next to mine. We’re the only ones here.

“So, why Umbrella?”

“Why not?”

“Did you just pick a name out of thin air?”

“Sarah is a boring name anyway.”

“It is not,” ten-year-old Sarah says. She’s sitting on a different bench on the other side of the garden.

Bruce looks over to see who said that and I think twice about explaining, but I think he’ll figure it out on his own.

She says, “Sarah is a cool name. It means essence.”

Bruce looks at me. He looks at ten-year-old Sarah.

“I know,” I say. “But what am I the essence of, you know? After last night, I guess I’m the essence of bullshit.”

“I don’t think I understand what’s happening,” Bruce says.

Ten-year-old Sarah says, “You will.” Then she walks back behind the hedgerow and doesn’t come back.

? ? ?

After the Mütter Museum, we go to the famous cheesesteak place on South Street and it’s crowded for no particular reason other than it’s the cheesesteak place on South Street. Bruce and I try to find a quiet table but there is no such thing as a quiet table so we find any old table and we eat. After last night, I don’t have that many questions. I don’t feel like talking.

We walk home slowly because we both ate too much.

“That girl in the garden looked exactly like you,” he says.

“She is me.”

“Does she show up a lot?”

“Only lately. She’s the one who was talking to me when I was on the phone with you.”

“Who is she?”

“I told you. She’s me. When I was ten. About a month after we got home from Mexico.”

“Stop.”

“Mom sees her, too. She took her out to the movies on Sunday night.”

“Mom took—I—”

“It’s cool. You’ll meet her tomorrow. She wasn’t supposed to just show up like that, but I think she just misses you a lot.”

We don’t say a word for a few minutes. I can’t tell if Bruce believes me or not, but he will.

He says, “I’m going into the school tomorrow to talk to the principal about your art project.”

“Waste of time,” I say. “That’s a complete waste of time.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Why?”

“If you can’t face your demons head-on, you’re f*cked.”

“In that case, we have bigger demons to face head-on than some dumb principal.”

Bruce walks me to the corner so he can see that I get in okay, then he waves and goes back to the B&B. Mom is waiting for me in the living room. She looks worried.