It’s been almost four weeks since I lost my shadow and I thought I would adjust to it by now, but no such luck. I am, frankly, surprised. You don’t pay much attention to your shadow, do you? It just sort of follows you around – not to make a joke out of it – and you don’t rely on it to navigate, or keep your balance or anything.

And I can’t even say that people stare at me, or at least not that I notice. Maybe each person’s shadow is personal and not of general concern. Or maybe there are enough people these days who have lost their shadows that it has ceased to be a novelty.

Right off let me tell you: I don’t want to tell you the circumstances. Maybe later but not now. It feels sort of personal, if you know what I mean. Or even if you don’t, I still don’t want to get into it.

But I am going on vacation soon and I find that I do worry. What if I am on the beach on Cape Cod, where shadows are typically more pronounced on a sunny day? What if some kid comes running up to his mother and starts crying, like “Mommy mommy that strange man, he doesn’t have—doesn’t have a—[gasp, cry, scream!] SHADOW!” Not my problem but still….

I live in the City and walk to work. Most of the time I am in the shade anyway so no one can notice. And at night, well it’s night, people really don’t have an awareness, light coming out of a shop window might create a shadow but who is attuned to personal shadows at night? I am thinking of taking a different kind of summer vacation, frankly, to off-load this tension I feel. Cave exploring? I laugh to myself. Hiking only in the woods? A stay-cation where I go to a lot of movies?

My girlfriend, that’s another story. Of course she knew the – circumstances – and had notice of the hearing. She said it would not matter and I believe she believed it. But things have not been the same this past month—not at all. She has become more distant. Actually told me one night she had a headache and couldn’t come out to dinner. I have started to drop by her building to see if I can catch sight of her when we are not together; it is almost like stalking but I have to know if she is seeing someone else. So far so good, but I continue to, well if you can take a joke about this: shadow her some nights.

Mr. P presents as a well-groomed Caucasian male of medium height, sandy brown hair, brown eyes, closely shaven; he is 28 years old. Mr. P is employed at a stock brokerage firm in the City and evidences no anxiety about his position or his finances. He came to the clinic first on April 4 in the company of a young woman he identified as a friend, and has returned on several occasions over the last few weeks evidencing increased distraction and lack of focus. On this most recent occasion, Mr. P had a trace of a five o’clock shadow and his tie was undone and his collar was opened at the throat.

Mr. P was given a battery of psychological and neurological tests on his first visit, all of which were returned within normal ranges. On the occasion of his most recent visit, another battery of psychological tests (Stratton-Beaumont II) disclosed a lack of an ability to focus on questions both written and verbal and a lack of association with reality in only one area; that area, however, was so intense as to be described as obsessive.

Mr. P claims to have lost his shadow. When, after prodding which made staff uneasy, we agreed to shine a light on his profile as he stood a few feet from a wall, his tension seemed only to mount and he thereafter refused further to speak of his “situation.” We prescribed 500 mg. of Zardex taken twice a day, morning and evening, with food and asked him to return next week and to keep a log of his movements and perceptions during that time period to discuss with Dr. Lipper. Mr. P. evidenced a near-panic reaction to learning that Dr. Lipper was on the psychiatric staff here, but we did manage to calm Mr. P. down sufficiently to extract his agreement to come next Thursday to at least explore the situation with Dr. L.

I am not sure Mr. P. will come for his appointment and I have asked reception to remind him both by phone and email on Monday and again on Wednesday.

NB—building maintenance is not sure why no shadow appeared when Mr. P. was in the office but staff suggests that the paint, an off-white with a granular sandy texture on the wall, likely diffused the image; it is noted also that the room was otherwise quite bright under the fluorescents……

Gotta tell ya, I am totally, like, freaking. I mean, I really really liked this guy. Finally, a guy with a real job, a clean shirt, doesn’t smell from the gym, and he’s like so – normal.   And he’s after me but not in a pushy way and he’s got real – potential, ya know. So after a few weeks we’re hanging out and drinking beers and what the hell, we sort of hook up for the night. His apartment it’s even almost neat and nothing weird is growing on the sides of his refrigerator and all.

Then he gets this – obsession thing. Ohmygod, it comes out of nowhere, like one day we’re just talking at the bar at Maxie’s, just talking and he says something like, did you happen to notice my shadow when we walked in here and I says, like, what are you asking, whaddaya mean shadow. And he looks down and real calmly he says to me, well I don’t want you to get upset but I think I have lost my shadow.   He then looks up, serious expression, and gives me a half smile like he’s embarrassed. So I think it’s like a joke and I play around with it, tell him no I didn’t notice but I can go back out and check the sidewalk; and he gets all sorts of upset, ya know, like he’s serious which is bullshit except it turns out he doesn’t let it go. Oh, so then when I think he is going to totally wig out, all of a sudden he just smiles and drops it; but next day is Saturday, we are supposed to go canoeing and all and he then changes it to the movies and I think it’s strange cause it’s some real nice day out, and like he’s all “I want to see this movie” so I say okay but he’s nervous and tells me half way through that he still can’t find his friggin’ shadow. So I tell him to “shhh” it’s a movie and he takes my hand and sorta pulls me out of the movie and I think he’s kidding but he isn’t.

So I tell him maybe he should see a doctor, like he’s getting me scared there, and he says yeah, that’s a really good idea, will you come with me. I don’t know what to say, I say sure when do you want to do that and he says “right now while I still have the nerve to do it” and we go right down to the Hillside clinic, ya know on Third off Hillside Ave, he waits with me and then goes inside and I wait, and after an hour I ask and they are giving him tests they say. So I went out and got a Starbucks and a magazine and a couple of hours later, I ‘m really wigged out, ya know, and he comes out all fine and says “thanks for waiting I am so sorry” and off we go to dinner like nothing happened.

Since then he hasn’t said a thing about this but he’s got some new shit going on, I tell ya. Like he needs a shave, he used to be real close-shaved which is one of the things I liked about the guy. But now he has stubble half the time and his eyes sort of dart sideways when we are walking and I am beginning to think he’s one of those closet nut jobs, ya know what I mean. He’s still sweet and all but it’s like weird. Half the time I’m like blowing him off and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give him the benefits until I figure this all out. And he sort of must like know how I feel, he’s stopped suggesting – ya know?

And when we do go out it’s always night time or, I notice, it’s cloudy out. I think he doesn’t want to go out in the sun. I think that’s like sick. Don’t you think that’s like sick? I sorta want to insist we go to a picnic or something just to break him of this – weird thing he’s got.

But then, like I began to think about what if…. Well, all I can say is, I am TOTALLY friggin freaked out like major league…..

________________________________________

Memorandum: Tribunal Recording Office

From: Recording Secretary

CC: Enforcement; Homeland Security Data Office

Dated: 16-8-55

Re: Mr. P./Case 379493-2055

Subject came before the tribunal 16 February 2055 charged with an 806; found guilty but only in his thoughts, not in actions, so death decree abated. Was sentenced to shadow deprivation for an indefinite period, subject to six month review. Field report follows:

Mr. P. shows signs of stress; psychiatric eval by Lipper (MD—our agent # XF-440) reveals disorientation, nervous twitches, poor job performance resulting in reduced compensation, recent loss of significant sexual partner (F). Lipper estimates punishment factor (PF) achieved at 4.5 out of 10. Sentencing recommendation was minimum 6.5 given seriousness of guilt and nature of offense. Tribunal this date tabled issue of return of shadow; calendar ahead to 16 February 2056; summons to issue with service by electronics.

I do not know why I did not get it back. They told me they did it; I couldn’t believe it, they said it was experimental. I told them that, now that I knew, I could handle the thing, no problemo. Probably a mistake now that I think about it; if they are monitoring PF, how can I get my severity ratio up to whatever they decreed if I am cool about the whole thing so that it doesn’t feel like punishment at all?

SHIT! Why did I think I was doing myself a favor by being so cocky.

I need to tell Alexandra; she will understand. Maybe. It wasn’t really me, acting like that. Will she believe they can do that to a person? I guess I can prove it if I have to; just run a little demonstration. And how do I handle my firm, I really cannot start explaining about shadow suspension, that will lead into a discussion of that other thing and I can’t have that.

I am going to have to rally next time with Lipper, improve a bit so it doesn’t look phony, and then start to deteriorate again in the next meetings. What more suffering can I conjure? Can I get away with lying about Alexandra? They know everything you are doing, how can I hide that? Maybe I cannot try to get together with Alexandra after all….

This is crazy.   Absolutely crazy. If I could only move to Central City and start all over; but you cannot get a new identity any more; Homeland Security declared them a risk to the order of things.

Clipped from the New City Times 22 December, 2055:

SHADOW DEPRIVATION PROTOCOL ESTABLISHED

Citing the increase in suicides by criminals punished to shadow impairment, an experimental sentencing model first silently introduced earlier this year, the Tribunal has temporarily suspended the model and established a protocol by which criminals can retrieve their deprived shadows upon payment of ten thousand credits for each Punishment Factor unit remaining on their sentences, failing which payment the criminal is to be remanded to custody for re-sentencing.

The government has issued no formal explanation for why the deprivation of a shadow should be so traumatic, even to those who were subsequently informed that they had received such a sentence. “You would have expected that the anxiety would have been released,” said Vigor Lipper of Governance Social Services, director of Experimental Psychology. “It just goes to show you that there is so much about the human psyche that we still don’t understand, even at this advanced stage of our society.”

Funeral services for the last group of suicides will be held at Hillside Memorial Chapel on Heathenmass morning, 25 December at 10AM.

 

My mother left a pile of nondescript books when she died and after a quick scan of titles I found no enthusiasm for sorting through in detail. Neither did I feel comfortable in throwing them out, or putting them in cardboard boxes along the curb with a small “help yourself” sign, a certain way of disposing of unwanted goods in our neighborhood without feeling guilty of committing waste. So they sat in the attic along with other boxes and piles of forgotten assets, clothing and magazines and broken sports equipment and dried corn ears that once hung on our front door and were long ago eaten clean by the mice.

There came a fall day when for no reason (vague fear of fire? vague sense of disorder?) I decided to climb the ladder and begin the process of triage: keep, sell, discard. The prospect was not promising; old children’s clothing of indeterminate size and provenance, dried catcher’s mitt, National Geographics stripped of their maps and inserts and displaying yellowed edges from years of heat. The books seemed the most promising, and with the slight hint of possible discovery to inspire the effort.

No sense in trying to build high drama about my discovery, it just happened, the thing simply slipped out of a thin book of poetry by an unknown author. Two pieces of tissue paper, both slightly soiled with dried oily residue, between which was sandwiched a small dried orchid. Its purple had faded to a pale lavender, its bouquet long dissolved into dust, its stem twisted and gone from green to grey.

The book was Love Poems by Catherine Caruso. Never heard of her. Put the flower and the book aside and spent another half hour sorting old books, a few classics, a few books presumably popular in the thirties, a first edition of Gone With the Wind that I promised to take to an antique book dealer in Boston, mostly titles and authors I had never encountered. I began to sneeze, the motes of dust floating in the beams now cutting into the air from the window at the end of the attic; time to descend.

After dinner, sitting down at the computer, I did a search for Catherine Caruso; over 2,000,000 hits. Catherine Caruso poems; the same. Facebook entries; not likely for the writer of a book dated 1922. Catherine Caruso with the name of the publisher; nothing. A few pages into the search, I had millions of hits to go and still not a clue; a middle school student in Connecticut took second place in a poetry contest; decedents without biographies; a self-professed agnostic concerning brussels sprouts (almost tempted to read that one, but resisted); a daughter whose father was linked to Al Capone. Not much to go on, unless dedicated to reading two million or more entries.

The poems were sparse, blank verse, rather pleasant, bland, precious and pretty. Flipping through, riffing the pages, a glimpse of blue led me to carefully turn all of the pages one by one; a blank folio after the title page bore a note: “To Bessie, With Greatest Fondness, Jake 3/1/33.” The kind of handwriting that you don’t see any more; some States do not even teach script handwriting in elementary school, the assumption being that every word will end up as computer bits either typed in or captured in word recognition software by the time students reach a point where their written words have sufficient import to be noted.

Who knows the names of friends of parents when your parents were young? When parents are dead, and uncles and aunts and friends and all that remains is a pile of old books in some attic of a son who himself is a grandfather? All that remains of your parent is the faded memory of more recent times, a stone on the ground somewhere and a bunch of faded pictures which, if you are lucky, are stuck in an album with black crumbling pages and unglued mounting corners.

There’s an idea. Into the den, into the lower cabinet, out comes the old photo albums you cleaned out of your parents’ closet when they were both finally gone. Mostly used to find early pictures of aunts, uncles, grandparents, faces to show your children and grandchildren so that they can feign attention and then go back to whatever it was from which you distracted them, not to care at all until decades later a couple of them want to build a family tree from the shards of evidence still available.

There she is, younger than I knew her, before I was born, before she was married to my dad, before she left for the City to become a dancer in theory, a bookkeeper in practice (and glad indeed for the job, it is 1932 and there aren’t many positions for a high school graduate from a small town somewhere). High School graduation; all alone in white gown and flat hat. Dancing shots, sepia and cracked, publicity pictures perhaps, one or two with another dancer, but female, likely not our Jake.

Two pictures of a bunch of young people in period beachwear, sloppy pyramid of faces, fuzzy 3 inch by 5 inch glossy picture with perforated edges, taken by some Brownie Hawkeye or even some more primitive camera, who knows, an old Agfa with small bellows you extended by hand to move the lens into position. Gently I remove the pictures and look on the back; no names, one says “Old Orchard Beach ’30—The Gang!”

There are no diaries from my mother. There are no letters tied together carefully with a red strip of ribbon. There is no one to ask questions of. That is a shock; I cannot think of a single living person who knew my mother on her twentieth birthday (3-1-33), or who knew her in a time and manner where some hint of Jake could be divined. By the time I tried to get an oral history from my mother, her mind had a tendency to wander and in the wrong directions; and then, she was gone. My own life’s line sharply readjusts at that thought; I will write down everything, I will make my children film my every memory. When my memorabilia slips out of some book fifty years from now, it will be documentable, traceable, fixed in time and space and memory, footnoted for all who care to know.

In my dreams last night I asked my mother, my mother of when I was ten years old, to explain to me about Jake and the orchid. She smiled and told me to do my homework. She glanced at my father and lowered her voice and said that someday she would tell me, when we were alone and had a lot of time.

I woke up and put the orchid back in the book and put the book on a shelf in my bedroom. Some day my children will go through my pile of old books, triaging them (indeed, if at that time there is any use at all for books in hard copy). I will tuck a copy of this story into the front of the book, and date it and sign it. I record now for posterity: this book and this flower were my mother’s, Bessie Ida Tashlitsky, born March 1, 1913, given her by Jake for her twentieth birthday.

And somewhere the children or grandchildren of Jake have found a picture of some girl named Bessie and have been at a loss to know who she was.

Memo to Jake’s heirs: Bessie was my mom.

 

I was attracted to Lois by walking behind her. I did not know her. I was walking down Madison on a day where the wind was off the river, driving thin cold rain before it. So my view was cast down towards the pavement to avoid puddles and to protect my face.

Her lower legs, knees down, stuck out below her tan raincoat. I first noticed her sneakers, colored Nikes over short white sox. In warmer times I might have followed those legs upward to, well, frankly, review the rest of her posterior. But between the rain and the obvious camouflage of outer clothing, I was not about to pick up my head that day just to be disappointed.

In my focus on Lois’ feet, I then noticed that when she stepped forward her left leg snapped out straight ahead of her, but her right leg did not. Her right leg came off the pavement and then, after suspending her foot for an instant, her knee would direct her foot outward away from her body and then, in a tight arc, quickly bring that foot back into the frame of her torso and plant if delicately and directly in front of her.

I slowed my pace, staying a few steps behind, enjoying the rhythmic, inefficient throw of her right foot, followed by its recovery of reason evidenced by that knee intelligently redirecting that foot to the straight and efficient path.

Then I blinked against an upward gust of wet wind, blinked again to clear my eyes, and when I looked up at the next corner realized that, somewhere in the last quarter-block, she was gone. I was looking at a pair of black leather boots over stocky female calves, a pair of muddied brown wing-tips sticking out of the cuffs of grey trousers, a small puddle collected in the modest depression between the level of the sidewalk and the slightly higher lip of the curb-stone.

That was during that Fall, and it started me on my practice of paying attention to how people handle their walking gait. Fascinating, in a low-key sort of way, I concluded. I mean, there are lots more interesting things than the way that random people happen to walk, not to mention the basic unimportance of the collected anecdotal data. Beyond a passing thought that some of these people must be wearing their shoes down pretty unevenly.

Not to be obsessive, but here let me just mention what I have learned. Most people just “walk.” Their feet go out straight in front of them. By walking behind them, you cannot tell if their feet are landing on the level or whether they are wearing down the left or right sides of their heels and soles, but to all appearances their walk is unremarkable.

Many other people, however, walk with personal quirks. I am not talking about the old or the impaired. I am talking about ordinary people, if you looked at them standing near to you your reaction would be, yeah, that’s a contemporary in age, style, earnings. Here are my categories of deviant walkers in that group; you may want to see if you also have noticed these types, at least on some level short of creating a formal taxonomy:

Some people, men and women both, throw out one foot to the side. A few throw out both feet, creating a sideways rocking gain unless the knees pull those feet frontward with alacrity. The throw often is subtle, but sometimes spectacular.

Some people walk straight, but land their feet splayed outward, a duck-like Charlie Chaplin-esque effect. For men, their trousers echo the splay with a flap of fabric.

Some are pigeon-toed, you expect them to end up crossing their legs inward and falling over themselves, face-down on the pavement.

Some women wear skirts with narrow clearance. They mince along, unable to stride out, often twisting a rear kick-pleat to the less vigorous side, disclosing too much of an unfortunate upper thigh. Others wear loose, soft-fabric skirts and take controlled steps, often holding one skirt-edge to guard against a gust lifting the skirt fabric and disclosing more private territory.

Then there are short-skirted women who stride out with flounce, treating the continuous flash of thigh as a fashion statement; these women always wear at least medium-height heels, or platform shoes, and seem to contemplate their total image, I suspect conscious of their walk and keeping it straight ahead and purposeful.

There are fat people whose body parts are rubbing when the walk, causing a slow gait with feet pointed outward to reduce friction, creating sideways list first to one side, then to the other. There are some deeply bow-legged people, I note anecdotally often Asian women bearing some strange genetic disposition, who carefully place each foot down within the frame of their bodies like a person placing a cane or crutch close enough to maintain balance and momentum.

There are those whose walk reveals their familiarity with different modes of locomotion or habitual contact with different surfaces. Dancers prance at irregular intervals. Runners break into jogs to reach crossings before the light changes. Ice skaters slide forward one foot and then the other, extending hands slightly in an echo of a balance, a hint of a crouch evident in their posture. Cross country skiers sweep each leg behind them.

Finally, some folks are just plain uncoordinated. They are the children of Boris Karloff, jerkily lurching down the even cement as if stepping barefoot on a carpet of angry scorpions. One suspects some none-too-subtle neurological complication.

One beautiful day that following May, I was again walking down Madison on my way to work and, although the weather did not compel my looking downward, I had by now gotten in the practice of looking downward anyway, at least some of the time – it’s sort of like my little hobby, I guess.

So—here I am, picture this if you would – strolling down Madison and I see those colored Nikes again, same type of short sox, and that tell-tale outward throw of foot on the right –leg step, snapped promptly back in line. I notice now the legs which are delivering this familiar pattern; they are thin but well-proportioned, they disappear behind a skirt a little above the knee disclosing no hint of cellulite but, rather, exuding a nice pinkish glow, none of that upsetting super-whiteness that looks like a slab of chilled sturgeon, with a sharp indent just over the top of the sox that promises a deep hollow on each side of the now-invisible heel.

We arrive at the corner together. I know this person, she is my – friend. I feel like I have met her before, a feeling which is no doubt unfounded and delusional but true. Reflexively I turn to her, finding a squared profile with severe chin and straight sloping nose set off by blonde bangs and a sweep of hair into which her ears slowly disappear.

“Great to see you again,” I say. “How has your Spring been going.”

Lois turned to me with a half-smile of collegial puzzlement. “Hello. I must say I am not sure I can recall….”

The pause becomes evident and I realize I am in embarrassing difficulty here. A very limited number of possible replies suggest themselves and are dismissed; outright lie (“Wasn’t it at the gallery opening, you know…”) to the absurd truth (“I loved your walk with the thrown out right foot from the moment I first saw you last Fall and when I just got a glimpse of your calves that clinched it for me and I just had to talk with you”).

“I can’t tell you. I’m embarrassed to tell you.”

The light changed but she did not move. I stood there also. Her grin morphed into a wide smile.

“You must be kidding me, right? Is this a – pick up line? That would be – disappointing…”

“Sort of. But I do know you. In a way. It will take some – explanation?”

“I’ll bet,” she said, making a show of looking at her watch.

“I’m not a creep,” I blurted, realizing that in a way I was now in fact lying. “ Here is my business card,” I said as I frantically fished for one in my wallet. “I’m a real person!” (Well, that was sort of stupid; even Stalin and Caligula were real persons but, likely, not the best of personal companions.)   “May I call you?”

A big smile now. “Won’t that be a little hard since I have your card but you do not know who I am?”

Moron. I am sure I am a moron. I am sure she knows I am a moron.

“I will call you. On the phone, you can explain all about this.” Stern tone now: “If you are one of those stalkers I assure you I will have your ass, even in your Zegna suit.”

My spirits soar. She will call me! She noticed my suit, I am so glad I wore a nice suit!

The light changed again and I just stood there as she began to cross. I was about to call after her that I was not a stalker, but caught myself that this was not a great thing to yell out while surrounded by lots of strangers.

Later, much later, Lois told me that she was particularly attracted to my compulsion to describe her body in great detail. It proved to be, for her, a form of flattery, that her feet and legs and arms and fingers and hairline could prove so fascinating to another human being. Of course, she told me with salacious leer, that it was also a little creepy, she could better appreciate my affinity for parts of her body other than feet. Her biggest fear to overcome was that I was so guilelessly candid in my admissions, and so skilled in observation, that she worried my curious little predilection was dangerous to the safety of others.

I have found that Lois likes to come back to this theme primarily when we are naked. That’s okay with me. Our only ground-rule is that we do not mention any of this to the kids.

Oh, yes. Good stories have a moral at the end. Here is the moral of this story: “Honesty is the best policy.”