Ma Jolie

Marcie woke up underneath her living room fan that morning, the mumblings of dreams fading from sense and epiphany to iridescent ciphers with no denominator standards in reality. Vaguely the idea, the scene of her sleep, was of a man in a yellow suit walking with his hands in his pockets. He approached her, as she was writing down the oak details of her surroundings at a park in a little notepad. A kindergarten “starter imagination” notepad of sorts. Then it felt unreal because the tree the man crossed couldn’t exist, and as though her bitter glands were adamant that she knew him, he too was unfamiliar. The materiality and truth of it all extinguished like a droplet of water on hot pavement.

Marcie stretched awake, and could not guess the weather outside by the insulation of her home. She turned up the fan to its faster notches. She briefed the living room, and her circadian informed her the time was 10:00 AM. In the curtained dark, she made out a slather of Canadian activewear and Pacifico bottles, now of humid and not cool chrysalis. Marcie lived with a coup of men. They were arm wrestlers and hunters, men like neon action figure toys from the 80s, or off-brand heroes. They were her uncles and grammar school teacher-nannies - her practic fathers. Actually, she didn’t really know another woman in her life. To meet one would be like discovering a cave ruby.

A dish that had held a dozen olive oily fried eggs was in the open kitchen nook. Two remained. Marcie took one with her fingers and slugged its yolk into her mouth. She dialed a wall landline with her other hand, mouth full of essence of jurassic bird. “Berkley, you need to update the weather reports.” Over her shoulder, the fireplace library displayed a slope that originated from the aviation section. Berkeley was the equivalent of her grandfather, or really an old uncle that refused to age like Anderson Cooper, but considerate the unnutritional fact he owned a first generation diner. He was always still fit enough to fly, however, and somehow managed teeth as white as his premature hueing hair.

“Come over,” said the voice opposite the line. Marcie went into her bathroom to change. She hid her pajamas under aquiline leather gear, and washed her face. She was as Colgate cold as the morning’s readiness required. She propped herself onto her bike, and at northern star blue light speed, shuttled over to the weatherstation tower. The TV was live - channel CAN W14. In her boots, she tap danced around the fly buzz of aircrew and reporting charter students, also mostly male and smelling like clinic breakfast sandwiches. She approached Berkley at his desk. Actually, the desk right in front of the camera. The TV desk. The red light camera. “Darling.” he addressed her, along sight an invisible audience. Unbeknownst, her face held a nonchalant smile, unboiling, pupils with aquarium curiosity. That was okay, Marcie had the pass. She corrected the papers on his desk with a red pen, so is the candor of Canadian television. “Would you care to do the honors?” he gestured at the panning d.p..

“Oh!” she jumped back. Psyched, the girl proceeded, “The region is going to be avalanched in.”

“It’s gonna be like Hermey the Misfit Elf.”

“Exactly.”

“CUT.” The d.p. launched into a break. “Thanks Mars!”

Berkeley took his little girl aside, as she brushed her hair over her ear, blushing like an uncalled for maraschino cherry. She’d just woken up twenty minutes ago to be broadcast on local television. Berkeley felt her forehead, checking for the heat of embarrassment. “Yep, a fool’s fever. Gonna have to stay in bed for the rest of the day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m just joshing with you! Now you won’t be as nervous at your internship!” The old guy shook her by the shoulders. Marcie had completely forgotten! Six years of schooling at one of the nation’s best Neurology Institutes for her Psychology Master’s, and she forgot the internship it all lead up to?! Today would be her first time in a penitentiary (as a counselor, not counting her childhood visits). This afternoon would bloom the glimpses she had always fantasized about growing up. She was actually going to get to talk to an inmate today. The local deputy had even stolen her notes of ambition from elementary school to file away in his office. He said he designed her “therapy room” from the old sketches, squaring around set-ups in the final days recent, so this accurately was going to be her dream come true.

“I’ve gotta go change!” Marcie fled out the doors and into the rays of arctic sunlight.

“Looking smart already!”

“Alright!” The local deputy, Barrette, welcomed Marcie with a bear’s pat on the back. She looked up, for she was quite petite, at the panorama inside. An experiment in cathedral architecture, she presumed, as the walls of bathroom tiles echoed with modishly healthy coughs. Older inmates, mostly drug offenders, flocked in the lobby cafeteria, fraternizing with their immediate families. She was as familiar with this picture as the snug, pink polyester jackets on every little girl’s back. The younger men must stay locked in their cells all day, she thought. Three levels of fencing and offices were the barrier to even more stories of cages within. None but cages. 6 faces of steel and bars. The unforgivable cube that birthed little diagnostic mind. “We got my seven year old here,” Barrette began (he’d known her since that age). “And she’s up to help out any one in need!”

People smiled. A chainlink of handcuffed men came down a hallway on the upper level, ready for breakfast.

“Any takers? C’mon, it’s Mars! It’s like winning the lotto. She’s up for anything.” His advertisement bellowed in the building.

“Yep, anything.” she reiterated.

Ten minutes later the mouths of the handcuffed sleepyheads, dried up from English muffins, wetted into conversation. Positive “yep’s” clapped around the bench, so as to see who agreed to be Marcie’s first trial patient. One saltine fellow with curly dark hair and dachshund eyes sat on the edge, listening to his elders like an overgrown schoolboy. A final, affirmative “sure” came from him. A guard escorted the man down the hall.

Marcie was the first in the therapy room, her future office. The room was perfect, just as eleven year old Mars had pictured! Two wide glass windows covered the long sides of the rectangular room for observation and guard. The lighting was blue so as to ease claustrophobia, and admittedly the effect mimicked a tv drama, but one with good writing rest assured. A freshly cut rosewood desk was situated at the top left corner, behind which a library shelf was packed with a colorful allotment of free-thinking books. There was even a foray in the middle with a sofa and table - furniture articles to humanize the patient. The room simply brimmed with prospects of progression, and even, let a doctor’s tongue at ease to say, fun!

Two figures walked in: a dusty blue collar, and his dusty customer. The guard unlocked the young inmate’s cuffs, as the latter eyed Marcie from head to toe. The two sat down at the same time, a bit awkwardly. Something was wrong. They switched positions.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the inmate let breath a laugh. They then looked around the room for a few seconds. Though Marcie was struggling to feel official, she asked him his name: “Reyser.”

Interesting surname. She couldn’t figure out his ethnicity, demographic, or the reason for his arrest at all. That was marked away in a mysterious file that would probably compromise any trustworthy relationship, were one to start. That was the challenge between doctor and patient of becoming personal, which was inevitable. The harsher edges of licesnced parallelepiped emotions, rather than a round infinitum of intimacy, was preferred.

“Are you actually seven?” he asked. Marcie sat stunned, but understanding. She had the cheeks of a clown, her hair was long and airy, and she wasn’t very tall. Her build did seem precisely that age. “Are you doing this for your elementary school?”

“No, I’m a psychology student. At a college.” she corrected.

“Oh! I’m sorry. You look seven.”

She nodded, “I do.”

“So it’s a two week internship?”

“All to get to know you!” Reyser flexed his eyes around, unsure of how to respond. “I’m sorry. You probably hate college students.”

“You probably hate saying stuff like ‘You probably hate college students.’” She was both at lax and unnerved by his honesty.

“I’m trying to be down to earth.”

“One isn’t down to earth by trying, by the way. And you as a psychologist admitted that right by the get-go?”

Her eyes had fallen down to the confetti carpet. “Yeah, guess this dream’s gonna go by quick.” Their voices had elasticized to casual sarcasm. She tried to gather herself. “I don’t want to fix people.”

“I need to be fixed.”

The ice had broken, but not into affability. “In two weeks, I guess I have to teach you something. Um, for the time being today, I suppose I’m to talk to you about some subject, any subject. What sort of music do you like?” Marcie asked.

“Chet Baker.”

“Me too!” she poised her mind for another question. “Do you read?”

“Yes. I like history. Stories where guys like me were the kings and rulers.”

“It’s still much the same.”

“What’s life like out there?”

“Still wars, kids starving, the pandemic.”

“You seem like a ball of stress.” Reyser motioned his hands, referring to the immediate surroundings. “None of this seems to work, does it?”

“No.” Finally, they were getting somewhere.

“So, what am I allowed to do, and what am I not allowed to do?” She asked cheekily.

“Well, I suppose you can’t kill me.”

“One minute.” the guard called, muffled from the other side of the window. Reyser got up. Isn’t even trying to strangle me, she thought.

He stopped right before the door. “In two weeks, I have to teach you something too.”

After Reyser had left, it hit her. This was the man from her dream, the one approaching her at the park. Not only that, but the image became clearer. The man from the dream was the one patient she had always fantasized about helping. And the man was Reyser! Exactly him, exactly the universe’s computation of this individual - the appearance, the demeanor, the forward. His complete package of existence - the patient is real?

Four days later, Marcie was back at the penitentiary. She dressed a little older - no campus get-up like the red tank and black denim she wore last time. Instead, she donned a cardigan and an elegant floral skirt. Her hair too was wet and accentuated the maturity of her makeup-less face. She sat behind her desk, legs crossed, notepad ready. Now she was ready to actually inquire. But first, she would have to tell Reyser her confession.

When he sat down this time, he was still handcuffed. He looked at her starkly, as if he didn’t deserve to look at her like that, altogether with the shame of his own cellblock presence. She silently wished he wouldn't feel this way. Like in her dreams, Marcie thought of this rugged creature with the love one would have for a daughter. An ebbing grace rendered his aura, only to be surpressed in his active manner by the sharp staples of society.

As soon as the guard shut the door, Marcie put her hand on Reyser’s and began talking. “Reyser, I have something to tell you. You’re the man from my dream. Growing up, for the past decade, I’ve always fantasized about starting this career. And as a psychologist, in this said fantasy, you’re always my first patient.”

“Me?” he asked.

“You. Exactly you. You look just like I pictured. I’d even written this down in elementary school.” She passed some papers to him.

“Dark curly hair, eyes are a little beady.” Reyser read. “Wow, that’s quite the premonition!”

“I know!”

What resumed was a week of reading (and joking) from the (questionable) 70s FBI handbook: How to Handle a Criminal, improv play-acting of quack therapeutic games, and random conversations like they were on a trivia show. They even played Chet Baker sometimes. The two were getting quite close.

On her last day, Marcie almost wasn’t allowed in by a suspect female guard, some new trainee. Marcie thought her suspicions were completely inappropriate and an argument broke out in the hallway. Reyser was surprised by his counselor’s feistiness. Barrette broke the fight and Marcie was able to proceed into the therapy room and course the day.

“Now for my lesson, Ms. Psychologist.” Reyser had sat down at Marcie’s side of the desk. He took a breath. “You’re beautiful.”

Marcie was touched, but then looked a tad crest-fallen. “Okay: a dream is a prism. But one face, out of all, is most prominent. Which face is jutting out? That’s the catch. I was selfish growing up, I think I exalted myself more than the person I wanted to help, this patient in my fantasy - you. Alright, ‘I’m beautiful.’” She shook her head. “I guess my dream is achieved.”

“No.” Reyser refused her. “Then, don’t be selfish as that was not your dream.”

The youthful girl looked up at the leaden patient.

“It was mine.”

ABOUT THE ARTWORK:

"Ma Jolie (My pretty girl) was the refrain of a popular song performed at a Parisian music hall Picasso frequented. The artist suggests this musical association by situating a treble clef and music staff near the bold, stenciled letters. Ma Jolie was also Picasso's nickname for his lover Marcelle Humbert, whose figure he loosely built using the signature shifting planes of Analytic Cubism.

This is far from a traditional portrait of an artist's beloved, but there are clues to its representational content. A triangular form in the lower center is strung like a guitar; below the strings can be seen four fingers; an elbow juts to the right; and in the upper half, what may be a floating smile is barely discernible amid the network of flat, semitransparent planes. So although the figure appears to disappear into an abstract network of flat, straight-edged semitransparent planes, together these elements suggest a woman holding a musical instrument. Thus it manages to be both a representative piece of high Analytic Cubism, while at the same time representing a very traditional theme.

In Cubist works of this period, Picasso and Georges Braque employed multiple modes of representation simultaneously: here, Picasso combined language (in the black lettering), symbolic meaning (in the treble clef), and near abstraction (in the depiction of his subject)."

- pablopicasso.org