The Healing Powers of Eucalyptus
[ Kate Sullivan ]

     It was co-ed day in the Russian Baths in the East Village.
     "Maybe I could be happy just being a grandfather to your children."
     Louise was sitting naked on the bench below Mordecai, stadium-style, the way saunas are, so she was able to have her own horrified private reaction.
     She was in over her head.  A fat man was lying in the middle of the dark room, on a big altar, fleshy butt facing up, so his friends could beat his ass with eucalyptus leaves, while Mordecai mused out loud about marrying her.  It was flattering that such a loner could be considering such a thing.  Louise froze. The fat-assed guy had rolled onto his back.
     She was relieved that the darkness and the heat didn't allow for much reaction.  She sat and glanced around at the other faces on other bodies on other benches and let the heat press on and the sweat start to pour.
     Mordecai continued his soliloquy.  
     "You know, maybe I don't really need to have my own child.  Maybe yours would be enough."
     Louise stared straight ahead at the eucalyptus and poured a cup of icy water over her head.  Steam escaped and let off some of the pressure.  She sat there in her own heat, happy to have freed herself from the life she had been living - happy, four beautiful teenage children, but feeling trapped in a script that wasn’t quite right.
     "Louise, hand me the water," Mordecai's voice came through the eucalyptus vapors.
     If only he were a little more affectionate, I might let him be a grandfather, Louise thought.  She had left a nice guy and knew somewhere in her bones that she was just looking to experiment a bit with bad.  She had never been bad.  She thought about how adaptive human beings are.  
     When she and Mordecai first opened the door to the sauna, the heat had hit her head-on. If she'd been alone, she would have turned right around, gone back upstairs, put her clothes on and gone back outside into the New York cold.  But Mordecai had paid a lot of money and had no intention of leaving.  So, she knew she had to adapt. Hadn't she always adapted, really?  She could adapt to anything, anybody, any situation.  That had always been her particular genius.
     The heat pressed on.  She stared straight ahead, wondering if she enjoyed the oppression.  Had she ever felt oppressed before?  Not really.  She had adapted long before oppression ever set in.  She would pivot if her father was in a bad mood, she would wear the outfit her mother preferred, she passed on the invite to Woodstock.
     Another man was now on the minty hot bench.  Who would be next?  Were there designated eucalyptus bearers?
     "I'd make a good grandfather."  Louise could hear Mordecai's voice through the mist.  She answered with another cup of cold water over her head.
     Mordecai was tall, dark, striking and depressed.  He spent a lot of time lamenting how he'd wasted his youth playing tennis.  
     "If only I'd played basketball."
     He would go on and on about the benefits of team sports and how he was a damn good basketball player.  If only he'd been a little taller.  And if only his father had been listening more closely.  Mordecai had really wanted to quit tennis in college, but he had been awarded a full tennis scholarship, so his father paid no attention.  That, and the Russian…Why the hell had he studied Russian?  Why hadn't someone pulled him aside?  Spanish would have been so much more useful.  What good was Russian?
     Louise had spent several months ready with helpful suggestions like, You could coach tennis, or did you know, there's a huge population of Russians in Brookline? You could teach English as a second language!  He always looked a little annoyed at these suggestions.
     Mordecai was closing in on fifty and had never really had a job.  Well, he'd had little jobs, here and there – carpenter, painter, but he couldn't seem to find a real one.  
     "The world is so banal.  What's the use of my doing my little bit?"
     Louise had to look up the word banal. She had lived a straight-ahead pragmatic life. In the beginning, Louise had thought Mordecai was so intriguing.  He was such a big thinker.  He had wonderful ideas.  He was so smart.  He played the jazz flute and made stained glass windows. It was amazing he hadn't gotten the recognition he deserved.
     Louise would make dinner for her kids and clean up the kitchen while she listened to Mordecai tell her about all kinds of things.  What a fascinating man! she thought as she folded the laundry. Mordecai leaned forward onto the kitchen table, to make a point. 
     "I really shouldn't have quit that writing program at Columbia.  I just walked away and nobody stopped me.  I could be a writer by now."
     "You still could write, Mordecai.  Just get started now." 
     Louise motioned for Mordecai to lift his elbows so she could set the table.  Mordecai closed his eyes and continued to talk.
     "I was offered a $70,000 job coaching tennis when I got out of Stanford.  That was a lot of money then.  If I'd taken it, I'd be very wealthy now."
     Louise rinsed the lettuce and shook the salad dressing.
     "And now my shoulders are going and I'm not going to be able to do physical labor anymore."
     Louise excused herself and took the garbage out.
     Mordecai sat in the dark steam and mused, "I don't know how important it is for me to create my own child."
     The eucalyptus seemed to be working.  Louise could feel the vapors enter her nose and mouth, clearing her head.  She got up slowly, dipped the cup in the bucket of ice water, turned, slowly poured it over Mordecai's head, got dressed and walked out, into the brilliant New York sunshine.

Kate Sullivan likes to play around with words, music and pictures.  She has written and illustrated children’s books, sung chansons at NYC Mme Tussaud’s Wax Museum and her fugue-ish ‘Fugitum est’ was performed at Carnegie Hall by The Kremlin Chamber Orchestra.  She has written and illustrated two children’s books, On Linden Square ( Sleeping Bear Press) and What Do You Hear? (Schiffer), Smoke and Mirrors, a collection of prose, poetry and paintings.  Her artwork, poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines and her flash 'Mudlarking at the Beauport' was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Sleet Magazine.