The Queen Gene (2 page)

Of course, at the core, Anjoli was the same goddess of her own universe. She still dabbled in every new age healing workshop New York offered. When Jack and I first moved in to our new place, Anjoli offered her “space-clearing” services to us as a housewarming gift. She’d just completed a six-week ghost-busting class and danced around the house burning sage incense and ringing tingsha bells in every corner. For Christmas she gave us a refresher cleansing, using the techniques she recently learned at an advanced space-clearing class in Los Angeles. She chanted and blew high-pitch notes through a thin bamboo flute-like instrument. Jack and I learned long ago to just roll our eyes and thank her. There was no use fighting Anjoli and her magical thinking. She was convinced that all old homes were potential apparition hotels, and insisted she save us from some crotchety dead colonial dude with an ax to grind. Jack and I just shrugged and let her chant away while our neighbors sang “Silent Night” at the doorstep. She is odd for sure, but she’s my mother. Plus, what harm could she do?

Chapter Two

So anyway, I digress just a bit, which I must confess is quite typical. Back to Paz and his phone call to me.

“Just relax and breathe deeply,” I heard an unfamiliar Chinese man’s voice say in the background. I knew my mother must be at one of her alternative healers. Anjoli had a troubling and persistent ailment called perfect health that she was determined to overcome. It’s hard to keep up with all of her recovery programs, but she’s done the gamut. She’s spun her chakras, had her eyeballs and tongue analyzed, and even flown to New Mexico to have protective white light woven around her aura. She always manages to do a little shopping wherever she is as well.

Once when I was in fifth grade, I returned home to find my mother and eight other bare-breasted women chanting, “I am in the center of light, I am here to express delight.” Mother was so filled with spiritual delight that she got laryngitis. A guest got a nasty mosquito bite near her nipple.

One of Anjoli’s tenants called to say that their expression of delight was causing his expression of anger.

“Relax and breathe,” the Chinese man repeated.

“I’m not sure he understands,” I heard my mother’s voice through the phone.

“Mother!” I shouted. “Mother, I’m on the phone!!! Can you hear me? Hang up the phone!” Where was she? And why was the person she was with so zoned out that he couldn’t understand the Chinese man’s simple instruction to relax and breathe?”

Anjoli continued. “Doctor, will the needles hurt him?”

“He won’t feel a thing,” the doctor assured.

Who won’t feel a thing? Needles?
This sounded more serious than eyeball analysis. “Mother!!! It’s Lucy. Your dog’s calling me again. What’s going on?”

“Lucy, is that you, darling?” I heard her voice in the distance.

I shouted, “Pick up the phone.”

“Doctor, do you have any sterilized cotton?” she asked. A few moments passed before I heard her voice again. “Lucy, darling,” she whispered, undoubtedly clutching the phone to her ear. “It’s such a relief to hear from you. I’m in
crisis,”
she said with her usual accent on the word crisis. She meant to sound French, but it actually only sounded like plural crises.

“It sounds like it. What’s going on?” I wondered which of her boyfriends she’d put into such a state of shock that they needed an injection to return him to the world of the living.

“It’s Paz, darling. He’s ill.”

“The dog is sick,” I said, sadly.

“Yes, darling,” she sniffed. “Little Paz is not well, but we’re with Dr. Hwang right now.”

“Dr. Hwang your acupuncturist?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m a bit worried that the needles will hurt him. I know the needles are thin, but Paz is so tiny,” Anjoli sniffed again.

“Back up, Mother. What’s wrong with Paz and why is he at your acupuncturist?”

At that point, Dr. Hwang repeated that Mother’s toy Chihuahua should relax and breathe deeply. “This will not hurt you,
Pars.”

“It’s
Paz,”
Anjoli corrected him.

“Mother, what’s wrong with Paz?”

Anjoli sighed. “Oh darling, Paz has trichotillomania.”

“He has what?” I asked, hearing the dog squeak as the first needle went into his fur. The poor thing sounded like he was dying, and the last thing he did before going under the needle was call me. I was touched. Then again, so was everyone in my family.

Dr. Hwang was as kind as one could be while puncturing a dog. “Relax, Pars. Your chi will flow like a river, and you will feel all better soon. Breathe deeply.”

Again with the “breathe deeply.” It’s a dog, Dr. Hwang. They have one breathing mode and it’s panting. Perhaps this is why puppy yoga never caught on.

“Oh God, this is awful to watch,” Anjoli told me. “He’s looking at me as though I’ve betrayed him, darling.”

“Yes, well, I really feel for you, Mother. What is trichotillomania?”

“It’s a hair-pulling disorder, darling,” Anjoli said as though I were a dolt for being unfamiliar with the obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“The dog pulls his hair?” I queried.

“Poor darling is biting the fur from his paws. You should see him, Lucy. You can see his skin. It’s just awful to look at.”

“And you think acupuncture is going to help?” I asked.

“It has to! I’d do anything to help my little Paz,” Anjoli said. “He’s my baby. I coated his feet with nail polish remover so it would taste bad when he chewed, but nothing would keep him away. It’s like he’s possessed.”

“You should take him to an exorcist, not an acupuncturist,” I joked.

“Hmmm,” Anjoli said, considering it. “Kiki’s pet therapist — the one who diagnosed Paz — said we should consider antidepressants if it doesn’t get better pretty soon, but you know how I feel about western medicine.”

With that, Paz yelped again. Dr. Hwang became frustrated that the little dog was not breathing deeply. Do his other patients cooperate? Has he ever treated a dog before?

“Was he like this when you got him?” I asked.

“Please, darling. Do you really think I would have picked a mentally ill pet?”

“Mother!” I scolded. “He has a problem, that’s all. I’d think you’d be happy to help this puppy on his journey back to health.”

“I suppose you’re right, darling” Anjoli began. “This is pushing my buttons, though. I feel so powerless to help my little Paz. It’s activating my issues. I don’t like feeling useless, Lucy. I have no experience with mental illness.”

I wouldn’t go quite that far,
I didn’t say aloud.

After a few moments of silence, I asked Anjoli if everything was okay. “I don’t hear Paz anymore.”

“Oh, Lucy, I think this is going very well,” she said with a tone of awe at what she was witnessing.

“What’s going on?!” I asked, reminding her that I couldn’t see through the telephone.

Gleefully, Anjoli answered. “Paz is totally relaxed right now. He’s not moving a bit, which is a relief because he was quivering a few seconds ago. He’s standing completely still, staring into the distance. God, I wish I had this kind of focus when I meditated.”

“Is he okay?” I asked, wondering perhaps if he died.

“He’s in another place, darling. Paz is in a completely altered state right now.”

Poor dog was probably melancholy about his days on the euthanasia waiting list.

“Pars,” said Dr. Hwang, “I’m going to take out the needles now.”

Did this man have any concept of what a dog even was? Did he expect Paz to give him a knowing nod then lift a paw to help the doctor gain easier access to the needles?

“Pars should be all better now,” said Dr. Hwang.

“Dr. Hwang, look!” my mother’s voice cried with alarm.

“What?!” I shouted. “What’s going on?”

My mother remembered I was on the phone and replied. “Oh, Lucy, he’s chewing his paws again. His chi is still blocked,” she said with defeat.

“It takes several hours for chi to fully flow again. Pars will be better by dinnertime,” Dr. Hwang assured.

Say evening!
I wanted to shout to Dr. Hwang.
My mother doesn’t eat. She doesn’t understand this dinnertime of which you speak!

After she left the office, Anjoli confided that she thought Paz’s acupuncture was a complete waste of time. “I hate to resort to western medicine, though,” Anjoli said. “I’m going to have to do some more research on canine nervous disorders and see what other options I have.”

At that point, I heard Jack return home with Adam after having spent the afternoon at a birthday party at a kiddie theme-restaurant. I remember when I was thirteen, I spent every Saturday at a different friend’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Adam was in the toddler version of this circuit — the weekly birthday parties. After we both attended three of these parties, we both agreed that they were like Fear Factor personal challenges for us. First, you have to eat a piece of pita bread with ketchup and melted American cheese served by an overgrown rodent character who’s telling you it’s pizza. Then you have to force a smile as you watch your child climb through tunnels of rotavirus-infected plastic tubes only to land in a pile of colored plastic balls glazed with toddler snot. For the final challenge — and the grand prize of getting to leave — parents have to watch a two-year-old attempt to unwrap his presents and “ooh” and “ahhh” convincingly. All the while parents must suppress the urge to blurt, “Just for the record, if any of you ever give my child a toy that makes animal noises like the one little Cayenne has just opened, I will put a Mafia hit on you.” Anyway, after three of these parties, Jack and I agreed to take turns bringing Adam to these festivals of parental torture. Yes, I know I might sound a little like Anjoli with her aversion to zoos. The difference is that Jack and I actually make sure Adam goes to the parties. We hate it, but we take him anyway.

“How was the party?” I asked Jack, giving the “I didn’t have to go” smug smile we each sported when it was the other’s turn.

“Hell on earth,” Jack returned, sporting the “you’re on deck” smile we’d each perfected. He walked across the living room carrying Adam, and leaned over to give me a kiss. “Get a lot of writing done this afternoon?”

“Some,” I said. “Not as much as I’d hoped. Paz called again. Apparently he’s got some sort of nervous disorder and is pulling his fur out of his paws.”

Jack moved toward the kitchen and filled Adam’s bottle with orange juice. As he was screwing the nipple on, our little boy grabbed the bottle and said, “My do it!”

“It’s all yours, little man,” Jack said, forfeiting the bottle. “Luce, want some OJ?”

“Okay, thanks.”

“So tell me about the dog. Come sit,” Jack said, patting the kitchen chair beside him.

We had recently finished remodeling the kitchen to maintain the rustic look of the rest of the house while modernizing it. The cabinets were cherry wood with handles that looked like pewter Rorschach splotches. Every appliance bore a stainless steel face. Brightening things up were oatmeal-colored limestone countertops and floors that were similar except for a few brown glass tiles inserted into the pattern. We had knocked down almost an entire wall in the kitchen to make way for a sliding glass door leading out to a deck that Jack built with the help of our neighbor, Tom. The two were so thrilled with the outdoor-indoor effect of our new kitchen that they later installed a large skylight, then moved on to our family room to do another there. Jack painted twelve ceramic tiles representing each month and hung them around the periphery of our kitchen. He is going through his abstract expressionist phase, so our kitchen has a Jackson Pollack meets Swiss Family Robinson feel.

I sat next to my husband and couldn’t help notice how well his thick gray sweatshirt expanded across his chest. Smoothing his snow-dampened brown hair with his fingers, he urged me to continue. “So the dog’s got a nervous disorder?”

“He pulls out his own hair,” I said, shrugging.

“Trichotillomania?” Jack asked.

“You’ve heard of it?” I was amazed.

“One of my old clients had it. Put the hairs on the canvas, if you can believe it.” Before Jack started — rather, got back into — painting, he was an art dealer and owned a fabulous little gallery in SoHo. He continued reminiscing about the artist. “Sold well, though. Who’d’ve thought people wanted hairy art, but he was one of my best sellers.”

“Well, Paz has got this trick, trick — what do you call it?”

“Trichotillomania,” Jack offered.

“Paz has got this trichotillomania thing and is pulling his paw hairs out. Anjoli took him to her acupuncturist today, and the poor thing went into a taxidermic freeze.”

“You were there?” Jack asked.

“No, Paz called me right before he was taken out of Mother’s purse, I guess.”

Jack sipped his orange juice and went to get Adam the cookie he was pointing at, demanding. “Luce, have you ever considered that Paz is calling you for help?”

“Very funny,” I said, scrunching my mouth to one side. “Seriously, I feel sorry for little Paz. Can you imagine being so wound up that you’d want to pull your hair out?”

Jack pondered that for a moment. “After living with your mother for a couple months? Yes.”

“Jack!” I swatted him but couldn’t help laughing. “It’s a chemical imbalance. Anjoli’s not responsible.”

“I don’t know, Luce. That whole nature versus nurture debate has never been settled. All I know is that a couple months ago your mother adopted a perfectly healthy puppy who is now in need of psychiatric care,” Jack said. “It explains a lot, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she raised you, didn’t she?”

“You are just a riot,” I said, sipping orange juice into my straw then blowing it into his face. When Jack got up, I knew it was time to run. He caught me at the couch and tackled me down onto it and started tickling me, the ultimate torture.

“Stop!” I shrieked, laughing uncontrollably.

From the kitchen, we heard Adam squeal with delight in his high chair. “Mommy, Daddy silly!” he shouted.

“Daddy is bad!” I shouted, still laughing.

“Mommy, crazy!” Jack corrected.