To Mother

Until I hold it, I will not be certain it exists. This is what I am after: a brutal certainty. I am St. Thomas. I will probe her wounds with my fingers. I am an empiricist. I must see and touch. I must know with my own senses. How else will I comprehend her—her stigmata, fasting, and visions? I cannot rationalize these things. I must experience them. How heavy is the head? What does it smell like? How much does it weigh? Will it float in a tub of water? I want to test it. I want to understand it. I love objects because they are reliable. Human beings talk, move, kiss, bite. They are unreliable. But a severed head is reliable. Oscar Wilde loved objects (and for this reason I love Oscar Wilde): an ivory box; jewels and fabrics; peacock feathers; the body of Lord Alfred, like marble in the moonlight—the compliant flesh of Lord Alfred in Oscar’s hands. Wilde reminds me that there are beautiful things in the world: a painting of a boy with blood-red lips, a fan, the head of John the Baptist. Things to hold. I am Salome. I would like to hold a severed head. I want to believe in St. Catherine. I want to kiss her lips and taste love in the moonlight. And say: yes, Salome was right! On dit que l’amour a une âcre saveur! It’s all true! Every word! Without her head, how will I know? This is not an unreasonable request; I am entitled to a few expectations. I want the head of St. Catherine to be the head of St. Catherine. I want to remember her as she is. It’s very simple. Why should this head not be the head of St. Catherine? (You mention sotto voce: even that will slip through your fingers and burst into a filigree of rose petals.) Is it too much to ask the head to stay a head? And love—even if it must have a bitter taste… Why does it change? Let it always be bitter! This I can accept. With this I can work. But that love should turn from bitter to sweet to bitter again, without warning, without logic? These unreliable shifts in human life are unbearable. Even language itself has failed me—slip, slip, slip, I slide along the signifier. I fall down a hole with no bottom. I read Pride and Prejudice repeatedly. Always Elizabeth and Darcy: fighting, scolding, rejecting, saving, loving, marrying. Always, as it should be. Because that is what it is. I return to the book. I open it. I am where I ought to be: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. How nice to read these words, each time, the same thing. What do I care if independent interpretations differ? (Lord Alfred! who could forget his moonlit body). I read the sentence again: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. How comforting. Even if it’s a lie. I look at a painting by Turner. The English countryside. Dawn. Grass. I leave. I return to the painting. Again, the glorious morning light! I study the painting. I discover new things. The painting stays the same. Why can’t you be like that? Like the painting by Turner, the novel by Austen, and the head of St. Catherine? Why do you not stay the same? I promise: you could fascinate me forever. You, as you are—it is enough. I trace your path through the city. I am shocked by your spontaneity, your cruel chaos. You have a predilection for surprises. Days go by. Weeks. You do not return to that place. The place you are expected. (We met once on the corner of West 4th Street and MacDougal. But, when I return to the corner of West 4th Street and MacDougal, you are not there! One moment you are on West 4th Street. The next, you are in Brooklyn. One moment you love me. The next—you tell me you are not so sure…). If I could, I would paint you. And I would wish upon the painting: If only the picture would change, and you could always be what you are now. In consideration of that wish, you accuse me of necrophilia! It’s not that I want you dead. I want you reliable. I want to count on you. Yet, you have decided that the very ontology of life is a form of unreliability. To which, I reply: everyone just has to try harder! You suggest I prepare myself for a lifetime of disappointment. It’s true. Every living thing has surprised me. And yes, I admit it, every living thing has disappointed me. You scold me: you should be grateful. You call me a tired homosexual, an idolator. You claim I have poured my investments into objects. I have spilled my seed—not for the sake of growing new life, furthering justice and goodness, repairing the world. I come not to disrupt, but to keep things the same. Jesus came for division; I come for consummation. You call me the anti-Christ. But here we are, in this ridiculous conversation; you point to the sun, the sea, the stars. Look how they move! Always changing! you cry with a perverse wonder. Fine. Whatever. But why does it have to hurt so much? I could capitulate to some Heraclitan philosophy of the world, if only it didn’t guarantee—at best—a cursory discomfort; and—at worst—a lifetime of agony, change, and contingency. No, that will not do. Bring me the head of St. Catherine. I will carry it. I will move it from room to room. I will speak for it. Like Norman and Mrs. Bates (Poor Norman, with his stuffed birds…). I will invest it with life! Like Victor Frankenstein! Like Salome! Like Oscar Wilde! Like God! I will change my voice. I will make it higher and more pious! The head will scream Patrick! (I will do this because I love the head). It will screech (but you see, it is I am who am screaming. That is the trick! I am St. Catherine! I am the ventriloquist, the puppeteer! I do this because I love the head!)— The head will scream: No! I won’t have you bringing strange young girls in for supper! By candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap neurotic fashion of young men with cheap neurotic minds! To which, I will respond: But St. Catherine, she’s just a friend! A lonely stranger, lost on a lonely night! It is raining! It is cold! St. Catherine (I) will scream: I refuse to speak of disgusting things because they disgust me! Together, forever, the head and I will live in a house on a hill. I will grow up in that house. I will have a happy childhood. I will move my dear St. Catherine’s head from room to room. The object. The proof. She will not change. And I will cling to her; I will preserve her; she will preserve me. Everything around us will change, but she will stay the same.

Listen to the author read “Give Me the Head of St. Catherine of Siena”

Patrick Clement James is an essayist, poet, and critic from Woodstown, NJ. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in journals such as AGNI, Pank, The Mid-American Review, The Cincinnati Review, and American Chordata. He currently teaches writing at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.