“Caleb Fourchette?”
“Are you the dad?”
“Yes.”
“They were looking for you. Right there. Room 411.” She points. I try to read her affect, but I can’t. I see the half-open door and a nurse walks quickly out. I don’t catch her eye, but she is clearly upset. If I don’t go in there will that make it not be so? Can my denial stop time? Will my perception of whatever is behind that door be the link to its reality? If so I should plant myself where I am and not move. I hesitate long enough for True to exit the room, tears dripping down from her cheeks, gasping and heaving in anguish. I don’t know what to do with the book in my hand.
Chapter 24
Nothing in my experience and nothing that I know can inform my reaction and my behavior. I simply don’t know what to do. Should I lie down on the floor and kick and scream? Should I be philosophical or religious? Should I attack someone? Should I attack myself? True will know. She is better grounded than I am. She has a knack for knowing what is appropriate. In the past her guidance has helped me gather feelings when I am unable to collect them myself. Now that her anger at me has subsided she will help. But for this moment she won’t allow her eyes to meet mine. It makes no sense because we both know that we need each other. It isn’t helpful to her or to me.
The hospital has herded True and me into some sort of meeting room. It has a nondescript commercial couch and a large laminate table with six chairs. We have already waved off a solicitous Methodist minister, further evidence of the waning influence of the original Catholic Sisters. A callow young social worker named Jessica offers condolences and an offer of help dealing with the “arrangements.” A hospital middle management guy who has clearly been dragged out of bed tries to assure us that the hospital will absolutely positively live up to its responsibility to determine the cause of what happened and gives a non-legal, non-binding non-apology apology. It is, to use his terms, an “unfortunate and tragic incident.” To him we are a fire to be put out. I can see that True is not reacting well to him, but still holding her counsel. As for me, there is a part of me that would like to see the resident who prescribed, the pharmacist that filled and the nurse who administered the outrageous overdose dragged in chains into an Afghan soccer stadium to kneel before me as I brandish a long scimitar and administer swift and public justice. As it is, however, True and I share an enervation that cannot be touched by finger pointing and rage. We are too sad and too angry with even ourselves.
It appears that Caleb suffered a severe hemorrhagic stroke a few moments after I left the room. He had a full-blown grand mal seizure, peeing and shitting and biting his tongue. True screamed for the nurse who called a code blue as she put a bite stick in his mouth. Doctors and staff flew into the room, moved him to ICU, forcing air into him by squeezing a plastic bag. He went very quickly as a result of massive bleeding in his brain. The complete details won’t be clear for another day or so after there is an autopsy. The hospital guy can’t resist mentioning along with his put-on empathy that Caleb’s blood pressure never peaked past 170, a level that would not normally have a catastrophic effect on someone whose arteries are young and elastic. There had to be an anomaly. The anomaly for me was that we took him to St. Mary’s but that seems of small importance now.
The social worker asks if we need someone to drive us home, wrongly assuming that it would be the same domicile for both. It is a natural mistake. True and I thank her and refuse. We are eager to be free of their alien solicitude although I am tempted to demand a white Rolls-Royce with a uniformed driver just to test the boundaries of their eagerness to please.
As a burgeoning sunless gray dawn creeps acidly over us, we walk side by side out of the hospital toward the parking lot. I don’t think it is lost on either of us that six years ago we entered here as two and left as three, but this time the process has reversed itself. I flash that we should be walking backward, muzzle myself rather than say the unspeakably inappropriate to True.
“Where are you parked?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I jumped out in front and the attendant took it,” she replies. We look around and don’t see an attendant.
“I can drive you home,”
“I’m sure he’s around,” she says, stretching her neck but the place seems empty.
“I think I should.”
“Then I’ll be without a car.”
“You can take a cab later and pick it up.” The mundane quality of the conversation jars both of us. Shouldn’t this be about God and angels and the soul? Shouldn’t this be mournful looks and solemn appraisals? Why are we talking about jockeying cars now? How can we stop being routine? It is a sacrilege and an insult to Caleb’s memory. His memory? Has Caleb become a memory? Yes.
True doesn’t respond, but follows me listlessly toward the Volvo. I open the door for her. I have the Hemingway book in my hand and I toss it sloppily in the back seat. I don’t want its value to sully the moment. Should I have left it at the hospital as proof of my distress? True enters and sits. I walk around to the driver’s side, get in. Suddenly she starts to wail. It is loud, heaving and uncontrolled. It is also how I feel, but she has preempted me. I lean back in my seat, unable to put key to ignition switch as I suffer the sounds of her agony over the silence of mine.
I find the transitions difficult. To do nothing except to passively let the grief wash over me seems most right. To be caught in any other pursuit seems sacrilege. To be as active as to move from one irrelevant activity to another is an outrage. What I want the most is to lie passively underneath a stinging waterfall of remorse, longing and recrimination, uninterrupted by the quotidian exigencies of starting cars and opening doors.
True still makes loud, gasping sounds. I allow myself to move an arm to place a hand on her shoulder. She accepts it, but her gasping and wailing are unabated. I move the other arm and pull her toward me. Again she dolorously accepts and I can feel the paroxysms of her breathing against my chest. I smell her perfume and her tears and the staleness of her breath. I feel the sharp edge of her clavicle against my arm. To my senses she seems a delicate package of skin draped over bone. Nobody is built to last.
I hear a light thumping on the window of the car and look up to see a swarthy middle-aged man dressed in a windbreaker leaning toward me as he taps on the window. When our eyes meet he shouts through the glass, “Are you guys okay?”
I nod, still holding True.
“Do you want me to call someone?” he asks.
“We’re okay. Thanks,” I say trying to dismiss him. He sees the despair, probably not for the first time, waves his hand lightly, moves off.
His intrusion has the effect of quieting True. She pulls away from me, gathers herself together, smoothing her slacks. She reaches into her purse and pulls out some Kleenex, daubs her cheeks. I sit there for a moment, and then turn the key in the ignition. A small circuit is completed and as a result an electric current surges from the battery to the starter motor. In a watershed instant the Volvo stirs to life. Caleb stops. The Volvo starts. It is an odd continuum.
I put the car in gear. True searches for the buckle on her seat belt as I pull out of the parking space and into the aisle. She fidgets and fusses with the belt as I approach the parking shack. I don’t know what I did with my parking ticket. I look around the car. True manages to click her belt into the receptacle as I search for the ticket.
“The ticket,” I say to True. She nods, makes a small effort to look about for it. I pull to a stop in front of the swarthy man who stands patiently. I put the gear lever in Park.
“Maybe I’m sitting on it,” says True. She undoes the buckle that was so hard won, lifts her ass and roots around on the seat but the ticket isn’t there. I reach into my pants but it isn’t in any of my pockets.
“It’s okay. Go ahead,” says the parking man as he opens the gate for me. His expression is compassionate. He is probably a family man and he knows we must have lost a child. I still hesitate.
“It’
s all right. Just go,” he says. I put the car in gear, pull forward through the gate and onto Santa Monica Boulevard. I turn right, deciding to take the longer route that passes along the ocean front. True doesn’t question the route, but sits impassively with her eyes trained forward, conspicuously missing the ocean. But of course the ocean is nothing we have in common. She is from South Dakota, a farm person, a person who finds solace in dark soil. I am the one that feels communion with the ocean and am comforted by its blue-green expanse. Its unacknowledged presence on the right side of the Volvo, her side, serves only as further evidence today for why we doubtless do not belong together.
A red traffic light looms overhead at the foot of Ocean Park Boulevard. Must I stop? Am I not exempted today? If I were to be brought before a judge and told him I had just lost my only son, would he fine me for such a piddling offense? I start to submit to the light and apply the brakes, but I feel in honor of the moment I must transcend this useless mundanity. I will go through the light in tribute to Caleb, or as we now say “Caleb’s memory.” I slow a bit and then keep going.
“What are you doing?” asks True.
“It’s six in the morning. Nobody is on the road.” I prefer not to explain my true thoughts. I look at her reaction and I realize that my small act of defiance in homage to our lost son has only served to remind her of my latent criminality. On this day it is impossible to do anything right. It is only possible to fuck up.
Fortunately there are no more red lights between here and the house on Colonial. I pull into the narrow driveway. The lawn is brown and scraggly where it meets the cement tracks of the driveway. I turn off the engine and wait for True to move, but she just sits there, silent, staring straight ahead. After a few stretched minutes she speaks.
“It’s my fault. I looked at the nurse and I thought that’s an awful lot of stuff in that syringe. I should have known.”
“How could you have known?”
“I could have asked. If I had just asked…”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Why didn’t I say something?”
“It’s not your fault.”
I mean it. How could she know what was the appropriate volume of solution to inject? On the other hand, there is a small part of me that is glad that I wasn’t the one there with an opportunity to stop that nurse and failed to act. I don’t know if True would be so kind to me.
She reaches for the door handle. I realize I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to be alone. We look at each other. Clearly neither does she. I reach for my door handle and we exit together and I follow her up the walk to the front door. I let True reach into her purse and pull out the key, open the door.
“I can make coffee,” she says.
“You probably want to go to bed.”
“I have to find someone to take my two o’clock Urban Ed class and it’s too early to call.”
“You could let them fend for themselves.”
“I can’t do that.”
She goes to the kitchen. I look around the living room. Not much has changed. There is a comforter folded on our old sofa that I don’t recognize and a bookcase has been moved over a few feet and a chair placed in the space. Nonetheless I can’t help but perceive even these small changes as a subtle rejection of our former life together.
“You probably want to go home and sleep,” she calls out from the kitchen.
“I don’t know what I want to do.”
She appears at the doorway to the kitchen.
“I can’t believe this is real. I can’t believe this is happening.” I walk toward her. I know that she wants to be held. “It’s like a dream,” she continues.
I approach her, open my arms and she reaches for me, is about to pull me to her, then says, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
She disengages, quick-steps to the bathroom. I hear her retch into the toilet bowl. I press my back against the wall in the hallway, slide down until I am seated on the floor. I wait there until she reemerges from the bathroom.
“I’m going to go to bed,” she announces.
“I’ll go.”
“You can stay.”
“I’ll go.”
“Stay.”
She turns and walks toward the bedroom.
“What about your class?”
“Fuck them.”
As I sit on the floor she gives me a last look before disappearing through the bedroom door. There is no regimen for what to do next. I hear the springs of the mattress compress as she flops on it. I remain sitting as the events of the past few hours race through my head.
I think of what Caleb might have been. I try to imagine him as a teenager and as an adult. I can imagine the natural deepness of his brow commanding a soulful and masculine visage. There was never a question about his intelligence. Mrs. Samson, his kindergarten teacher, said he was one of the brightest. His boundaries were limitless.
Then I think about Helmet Head. Did not his parents have similar aspirations for him? Certainly he would have been one of the brightest in his kindergarten class as well. I try to imagine him whimsically but carefully dressed in Scandinavian cotton prints for school by his art dealer father and his musicologist mother. He probably had cleaner, softer lighter hair and likely a cute little ponytail.
It is a mistake to make assumptions. That is where I always go wrong. It leaves me vulnerable. It is not that I am unable to deal with adversity. In fact I think I am remarkably flexible and adept at adjusting to the unpleasant surprises that come in life. What I am not good at is anticipating them. I am too often blindsided.
I am not sure how long I sit here. Perhaps a half-hour. I hear a trash truck outside. After it passes, the house is quiet. True is probably asleep. It is probably time to leave. I get up, go to the bedroom door to find True. She lies on the bed, eyes open. She wears her simple blouse and tan cotton slacks. Her shoes, reddish loafers, are still on her feet. I speak from the doorway.
“I think I’ll go.”
I know this creates another transition problem. It places the event further in the past. It embosses the loss with finality and therefore I am not totally surprised by True’s request to postpone.
“Stay.”
I raise my eyebrow in question. She nods. She pats the space on the bed next to her with a single motion. I walk to the side of the bed, and sit. She slithers left, leaving me room. There is a pillow for me. I set down on my back next to her, resting my head on the pillow. Our hands are at our sides as we lie there. I move mine to cover hers. She responds by intertwining her fingers over mine.
I can speak only for me, but I suspect it is mutual that we are electrified by the delicate movement of finger over finger. For simple old friends, the ritual can be deep and comforting. For mere lovers it is full of sexual anticipation. For longtime partners, a former husband and wife for example, it is a unique and elegant expression of both. I don’t mean to make too much of it, but under the circumstances it is probably impossible to make too little.
We maintain this for a while in an odd rhythm, being still and then rubbing and intertwining fingers. I am drifting. I feel a disconnection of the senses, no doubt a dissociative reaction to the stress. The touch of her fingers now seems inordinately large and rough. Her fine index finger feels like a clumsy wide thumb against mine. Or no, perhaps it is just that I haven’t slept since yesterday. I am drifting. I am drifting off to sleep… Thank God. May I never wake up.
I don’t know how long it has been. I feel a pressure against my neck. It is cool and wet. It is a kiss. True is snuggled up against my body, nuzzling my neck and cheek. It feels odd and familiar—a reprise of old feelings. But it is impossible to react simply like I might have done in the past. The sense memory says this is my wife waking me up to initiate lovemaking. The current situation, however, is layered with ironies and complexities that I cannot resolve.
Her touch feels familiar but strange. The extended continuity of our former lovemaking has for better or worse b
een interrupted by new couplings with other people. What we do now has to be informed by that even if we try to ignore it. Angela’s skin is smoother and moister. Her smell is a little duskier. Her hair is finer. I would prefer not to think of Angela. As a total package Angela is really not even in the range of acceptable, but I can’t just release the touch of her from my mind. On the other hand, the comparative roughness of True’s skin has long ago burrowed a niche into my memory and I find it comforting. It is less an “other” and more a part of me. It is a friend. I feel her hand on my chest, then her fingers slide into my shirt. This is not exploration. This is intention.
Is this the next transition? Is this how we next ease ourselves from our current crater where we know we cannot remain? We commence our journey with slow, languorous moves. It would not be correct to describe it as tentative in any way. It is really a retracing of old steps. If you were to reenter you childhood home, you would do it slowly, pausing at the entry, and then stop in each room, in order, as the shock of recognition emerges from deep neural repositories and into your awareness.
A light fingernail touch above the navel, tickling the dark hair on my stomach and tracing downward, pauses a tantalizing instant at my midsection. My pilot light is on, my switch is switched and my mechanism is engaged. I feel the insistent torque of my motor pushing me forward. I draw her toward me and we kiss. Brushing softness of lips, a light touch of tongues, and then my insistence and I press my lips to hers. She eases back and I follow her so that her head is deep in the pillow. I reach down and feel the familiar curve of her hip. It’s not unlike finding an old friend in a crowded room. I follow it with my hand, first up into the small of her back, and then down onto the flank of her ass.
She kicks off her shoes. I hear one of them fall while the other presumably remains somewhere on the bed. I unbutton her slacks at the front and slide down the zipper. She wriggles out of them. She wears cotton bikini panties and I strip them away as she lifts her legs in the air. She tugs at my belt, manages to loosen it and I wriggle out of my pants and boxer shorts. We touch and fondle in familiar ways. We still know each other’s buttons.
Some Books Aren’t for Reading Page 24
