Ep. 6: Marcus Gets Pulled Every Which Way.
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The Man Who Woke up the Buddha is the story of a guy named Sid who wakes up from a stroke and realizes he's the Buddha, even though he knows almost nothing about Buddhism.
We’ll be following Marcus’s story for a couple of episodes. But, while waiting for Sid to reappear, you can read this background chapter that provides (or undermines) the esoteric/spiritual premise for Sid’s Buddha nature and this whole episodic novel.
Before driving home the next morning, Marcus stopped by to see Sid one more time. But, as he was leaving, the newly-proclaimed Buddha asked him to go out and buy him some incense (“You can’t burn incense in the hospital, Sid”), a small bottle of cognac (“You can’t drink when you’re taking seizure medicine, Sid”), a mandala coloring book for Casper, and—while he was at it—to pick up Casper, too. (“Why, Casper?”) “To color in the mandalas of course.” (“Is he at home?”) “How the hell should I know? I’m here not there.”
NOTE: Casper’s one of Sid & Di’s grandchildren. Jake and Carolyn (mentioned below) are his parents. We’ll meet them all in subsequent episodes. But you can always refer to the Family Tree if you lose track of who’s whom.
While performing these chores, Marcus fielded three calls from Di. They all began: “Since you’re still in town,” and went on to ask him to go to:
the bakery to get pastries for her book group,
the wine shop to get wine for her book group, and
Jake & Carolyn’s house to get some tincture for her book group. And, while he was there, to pick up Casper and take him to the hospital to see Sid.
“I already did that. Sid told me he had an important job for him.”
“Well, did you get the tincture while you were at Jake’s?” Di asked, making it clear what her priorities were.
“No, you hadn’t asked me yet.”
That became the pattern for the rest of the day: a whirlwind of changing plans, unexpected visitors, meals on-the-fly, grandkids coming-and-going, and purchases both over- and under-the-counter, with Sid calling regularly to get updates and make additional demands.
After picking up and eating takeout with Di, Marcus begged off joining her book group:
“I thought it was all women.” “Yes, but you’re family.” “You mean Sid goes?” “No, are you crazy?” “What about Zoey?” “I told you, we’re reading Lolita.” “Good point.”
Marcus’s drive home took a little over two hours and involved strong coffee, sweet scones, loud music, and cruise control. And thinking. Marcus loved thinking. Thinking, overthinking, brooding, perseverating. He’d keep rolling things around in his head—experimenting with increasingly transcendent perspectives until they crashed into irrefutable evidence to the contrary, breaking up into multiple depressing conclusions or landing him in an inexorable existential quagmire.
Now he was thinking about Sid. The thought of his dying was about as depressing a conclusion or existential a quagmire as you could get. To make it worse, he knew he should call his sister to give her an update.
Marcus’s sister Julia got four phone calls every day. One from her brother. The second from her beloved ex-husband Michael who lived with his new husband Phillip.
The third was from Jon (no “h” no “athan,” he insisted), the guy she shoulda woulda coulda married except they’d always been ships passing in the night, usually with other people on board.
Fortunately, there was Treatt, the fourth caller, who’d appeared out of nowhere in a pack of several hundred bike riders on a fundraiser the year before. Treatt knew about all the other three. The others didn’t know about Treatt.
Julia was small, wiry, and intense. When talking, she gesticulated faster than someone doing card tricks on crystal meth. She’d flirt like a teenager looking for a prom date with anyone—male, female, young, old, undecided. She wasn’t manipulative (although more than one guy she met at a bar would argue otherwise). But if you couldn’t think as fast, bike as hard, or have sex with as much abandon as she did, she quickly lost interest.
If you looked at her objectively—which Marcus had the luxury of doing, being her brother and all—she wasn’t particularly beautiful. There were little things—two front teeth fighting for space; a nose that could cast a big shadow; jet-gleaming black hair that now featured an in-your-face-for-a-60-year-old streak of jade; those breasts which turned out not to be as quite as big as they seemed at first. Regardless, she was just, as one of her boyfriends had told her early on, “that kind of girl.”
When little kids—in strollers or toddling—passed Julia on the sidewalk—pushed or pulled along by their parents—they’d crane their necks to watch her until she disappeared from sight, clearly hoping she’d be their mother next time around.
This time around she wasn’t anybody’s.
At one point Julia had assigned different ring tones to her four daily callers but she decided that was cheating. She wouldn’t even look at her caller ID.
“So, how is he?” She said before even hearing Marcus’s voice, equally reluctant to ask the question and hear the answer.
“For starters, he’s enlightened.”
“I bet,” Julia laughed sardonically. Their calls often began with a barely perceptible wariness: Julia prepared to ward off any attempt of Marcus to act like a big brother; Marcus wondering if he could say anything she wouldn’t object to one way or another.
Even though Julia had little patience for Sid (she’d been patient enough when she thought he might be someone worth being patient for) he was still family.
“Well, at least, he was enlightened way back when, I guess. Or maybe he is now. Doesn’t matter. He’s the Buddha.”
“At least he’s not playing the Christ card,” she said with a bite.
“Oh Julia, c’mon. He’s dying.”
There was a long pause, which Marcus assumed meant she was processing the sad fact. Actually, she was trying to get the embarrassing image out of her head of her trying to prove how grown up she was by walking uninvited into his dorm room on her 16th birthday determined to seduce him. When she was undeterred by his insistence that it would be a felony, he was saved by the bell and said he had biology lab which could, he said, could go on for hours if not days.
So, she only caught the end of what Marcus was saying. “…really had the nurse going there for a second. Me too.”
“C’mon Marcus. It’s just another one of his schticks to be the center of attention and you know it. They got him pumped up on all those drugs and you’re worried about whether he’s behaving out of character? He’s always behaving out of character. How many times are you going to…”
He cut her off. “I know. Just wanted to get you caught up. Love ya.”
“Ditto,” she said, hanging up. She meant it. Brotherly love. But she was annoyed. And she couldn’t really figure out why. Or didn’t want to admit to herself.
Next Episode: Marcus returns home in time to have a nightcap with his wife Leila who, in some ways, knows Sid best of all. Together, they reflect on Sid's idiosyncrasies including the times he impersonated Teddy Roosevelt...and later, Al Capone.