Kissing the Wind

by A. E. Hotchner

  He was a short ambulance chaser; I was looking down on him from six foot two. “Fitzheimer,” I said, “you hear what the lady said?”

  “Yes, but she’s still a little crackers from her fall in that pothole.”

  “She said no, right?”

  “Yes, but listen, I can get you three—”

  “Fitzheimer, no is no, there was no pothole, put your pen and paper in your briefcase and get your skinny ass out of here.”

  “But I—”

  “Now.”

  “But—”

  “Right! Now!”

  I moved close to him. He opened his briefcase, tossed in the paper and pen, and snapped it shut.

  “If she changes her mind—”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  He left.

  I went to the bed. Her face was buried in the covers. She said, “Thank you so much,” her soft voice muffled. “Who are you?”

  “Chet Tremaine. I was walking beside you when you fell on the street.”

  Three people came sweeping into the room, two doctors and a nurse. One doctor was the emergency room MD I had previously spoken to. The doctors went directly to the bed to talk to the woman, while the nurse came over to me and asked me to leave. I wrote my name and phone number on a slip of paper I took from my pocket and asked her to give it to the patient. Below my contact information I had written: “Please call me at your convenience about my sleeve. Thanks.”

  * * *

  —

  I thought about my mystery woman several times that week, disappointed I hadn’t heard from her but nevertheless still curious about her. However, after over a week passed without a phone call, I conceded she’d unfortunately remain a mystery to me.

  But then the call did come. Even after barely having heard her speak, I recognized her voice, her soft British accent. “Hello, is this Mr. Tremaine?”

  “Yes.”

  She told me what I already knew—that she was the woman from the hospital—and introduced herself as Emma Vicky. “Sorry I am delayed getting in touch with you but that bloody fall has certainly slowed me down.”

  “You certainly sound pretty all right for someone who took a spill like that.”

  “They told me I grabbed at you to try to keep from banging down.”

  “The whole bunch of us pedestrians got tangled up…”

  “I have no memory of any of it, but I do have your sleeve. It looks like it might be able to find its way back to your coat. Would you like to come by for a drink and a thank-you to reclaim it? I am pretty much confined for the time being.”

  Despite my worries about venturing out with the syndrome stalking me, I said I would. She gave me her address on Gramercy Square, which happens to be one of my favorite New York neighborhoods, a private locked little park surrounded by distinguished apartments and town houses that own the coveted keys. Her lilting laugh held the promise of someone out of the ordinary.

  * * *

  —

  The Emma Vicky who answered the bell was a distant cry from the begrimed street refugee I had seen in the ambulance. I stood there at her door, transfixed, with a bottle of chilled Tavel rosé in a silver carton under my arm and my good eye assessing her high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, thick blond hair held high in a ponytail, and tender smile.

  “Come in, come in. I thought you’d be older.”

  I handed her the wine. “I think we should drink to your recovery—three days completely out of it seems pretty ominous. You baffled all the specialty doctors.”

  She took the Tavel out of its carton, handed it to me with an opener, and set two wineglasses on a coffee table in front of a patterned couch. The view from her living room was directly over several flowering dogwoods in the secluded park. As far as I could tell, the apartment was a small one-bedroom with a spare room and a full, sunny kitchen. I poured the wine and proffered a toast: “May good health now overtake you.”

  We sipped appreciatively. “So tell me,” I asked, “those days in the hospital when you were unconscious and nobody showed up to claim you…”

  “Did you come by?”

  “Yes, I had to keep an eye on you—you were the keeper of my sleeve, weren’t you?”

  She laughed.

  “No husband, relatives, close friends, nobody?”

  “Nope. In fact, I’m an actress without a stage.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Actually I’m a British actress who came here with a touring group from the London stage to perform in cities and universities in repertory, in The Cherry Orchard, A Streetcar Named Desire, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  “I’ll wager you played Stella.”

  “We had a splendid run. I fell in love with Americans. But just before our farewell performances in Brooklyn, my world came crashing down. A totally destructive tsunami that came with no warning, none whatsoever…” She pulled up with a self-conscious shrug. I freshened our wine. Her eyes were closed as, reminiscing, she took a sip. “I haven’t…” She stopped. “You mind if I go off the subject?”

  “Please don’t. I’d really like to hear…”

  “I rarely mention it to anyone. I have to keep myself from myself.”

  “Might help you deal with it.”

  “Not likely. I have something you’ve probably never heard of…and neither have most other people, including MDs. It’s called Ménière’s disease.”

  “You’re right—sounds like a sauce.”

  She laughed. “You’re right. Filet of sole meunière. No, this Ménière’s is named after the French doctor who discovered it more than a century ago. Quite rare, a constant threat, night and day, incurable but not lethal. How’s that for a tantalizing combination?”

  I nearly choked on my wine hearing this echoing description of my own affliction.

  She stood up. “Let’s skip my miserable miseries. There’s lots livelier things to talk about. Excuse me while I rustle up a few nibbles.” She went into the kitchen.

  I shook my head in disbelief. Two little-known afflictions discovered long ago by a couple of Europeans still afflicting us with no cure in sight. Dr. Ménière, meet Dr. Bonnet.

  Yet I decided to keep my syndrome to myself for the time being. I was intrigued with this appealing sleeve grabber and I didn’t want to intrude with my own peculiar situation.

  She returned with a platter of cheeses—camembert, brie, gorgonzola—crackers, fresh dates, two plates, and a cheese knife. She prepared an assortment on each plate and we resumed our position on the couch. To my consternation, as I placed a sliver of brie on a cracker, everything on my plate became covered with Bonnet’s sprigs of fake greenery. She could not see them, of course; I ate the cheese, sprigs, cracker, and all.

  “You were about to tell me…,” I said.

  “Well, yes, as I said, it was the night before our final performance when it happened without warning, no warning at all, just a violent, abrupt, frightening awakening, alone in a hotel room that was whirling around and around like a ride gone out of control in an amusement park, my ears deafened by a roaring wind, the only telephone on the other side of the room, but how to reach it? Trying to get out of bed, my balance deserted me and I collapsed headfirst onto the carpet. I couldn’t raise my head, my face was buried in the carpet, but using my arms I managed to pull and push my body inch by tortured inch across the carpet to the telephone. I was totally incoherent but I somehow reached someone to call for help. I could barely form words. Luckily I made myself understood. Then days and weeks of all kinds of testing, frustrated doctors unable to isolate what had brought me down. Finally—finally!—they identified that this sudden attack was caused by a well-disguised Ménière’s—in doctor’s talk, epidemic rotational vertigo—you’re probably not interested in all this stuff…”

  “Yes I am. Very intere
sted! Please go on…”

  “Well, it’s your whole head spinning and a roaring, buzzing, ringing sound in the inner ear, but it’s not known what causes it, only that it attacks without warning and can wreck the balance of its victims. In the year that followed that first attack I was not able to take care of myself, had to have a full-time nurse by my side day and night. All the repertory players, the director, the staff, had to return to England and I was on my own, flat on me arse. Luckily I had actors’ insurance that covered me. A woman at the British embassy in New York City befriended me, found me this apartment and the help I needed. And I sure needed it. I was black and blue and yellow and green all over from getting thrown down and around by the damn vertigo.”

  “What about your family? Your mother and father?”

  “Had no father—disappeared, or maybe didn’t appear at all. Never got that straight. Anyway, Mom had to raise me on her own. She and her friend Molly Wicker, also husbandless, started a bridal shop, Here Comes the Bride, in London, and made a great go of it, put me through university and a three-year enrollment in the Royal Academy.”

  “But she didn’t come to help you?”

  Emma was staring at the wall.

  I repeated the question.

  “No. I lost her. Brides’ gowns is a seasonal business and Mom was too busy to have the mastectomy she needed, and in the end it was just too late when she finally tried to take care of it. Molly still runs Bride and I get a share, but when I think what Mom sacrificed so that I could act…and the irony is that she put off her life so I could perform, and now I can’t act at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my vertigo could kick in when I was emoting in the middle of a scene. Mary Queen of Scots drunk as a dancing bear. Specialists ran a gazillion tests.” She opened a drawer, took out a list, which she read from: “Audiometric examination of my ears; an ENG to measure my balance; ECOG measuring the inner ear; ABR brain-stem tests of my hearing, nerves, and brain paths. These tests and others produced no clue, nothing as to what had caused my condition, nor did they suggest any treatment to correct it or even make it less explosive. My life was acutely restricted. Any motion could trigger a severe fall, so I couldn’t travel at all; even a taxi ride could be too much of a risk. Since there is no known cure for Ménière’s, I had to abandon even the hope of ever acting again. My physician said that most victims would not risk a sudden attack, which could be catastrophic, and as a result never traveled anywhere or ventured very far from their homes. This was Van Gogh’s affliction,” she said, “and it was the tinnitus in his ears that drove him to cut off one of them. My physician said he hoped I wouldn’t try to imitate him.”

  I asked her if she wasn’t supposed to go anywhere alone, how come she had been crossing that street by herself when she fell.

  “Well, the first year after that initial fall I was horrified. I was a head-twirling, mind-bending, staggering veggie, but Dorothy Plum, the British embassy woman, was a godsend. She came to see me quite often, and so did a professor from New York University who taught Shakespeare and had seen me in Midsummer. Their lively visits and my own determination began to lift me from the snake pit, and by the end of the second year I had recovered somewhat. Not so whirly, not so wobbly. On my last birthday I got myself by the scruff of my neck (which is quite a contortion), stood myself in front of that mirror over there, and said, ‘Okay, Emma, okay, what’ll it be? Keep yourself in purgatory for the rest of your life or try to pick up and restore some of the pieces?’ So…one thing I did was search for any new hope. I discovered one medicine widely used with some success in Europe, but not approved by the FDA and not available here. My doctor was able to get it for me and it’s cut down a bit on the frequency of the whirlies and the somersaults, but I still need someone to keep an eye on me if I venture out. I have also discovered there is a prescription stick-it-on to plaster behind your ear before flying that can possibly keep you from collapsing in flight. I haven’t tested it, of course, but the point is that’s a little hope.”

  “But when you fell, why were you alone?”

  “Well, it was like this: A new place has opened in the city—I think it’s run by one of the hospitals—with a radical treatment for Ménière’s people like me. You go three times a week and it’s a tough workout—they put me on a machine that shakes me violently side to side, up and down, spins me, stuff like that. Don’t know if it will really help but I’m going to try everything. I sure as sour apples am not going to surrender. Not me! So…I signed up but had to figure out how I could get someone to cover me three times a week, wait thirty minutes, and take me back. Know who I got? A nice young woman who walks a posse of dogs she picks up in this block, and now she accompanies me like I’m a golden retriever.”

  “Do you have a collar and a leash?”

  She barked and we both laughed.

  “But on the day we…met, sort of, she called in sick and I thought I was ready to go on my own. I had been occasionally going alone to a bench in the park right across the street armed with my doorman’s whistle, you see. And until my fall with you, I was doing just fine, but then when we were crossing, someone behind me pushed me a little and that’s what caused my Ménière’s eruption and my head bang, not a pothole.”

  I poured the last of the wine. “You are certainly doing your damnedest to escape your Ménière’s,” I said, “and this prison, nice as it is.”

  “Luckily there are two or three restaurants near here who deliver, and I also have frozen foods that I order online to make in my microwave. I can’t do any real cooking since I’m not allowed to risk the gas flames of the stove when I might have an eruption, but Dorothy Plum of the embassy often comes bringing dinner and good conversation. She’s like a godsend mother. I’ve not yet risked going to a restaurant but there’s a bright spot: Dorothy has induced a man she knows who runs an advertising agency to try my British accent for a voice-over commercial for a London line of beauty products. I’ve got a little recording setup here and so far there’s only been one time I’ve had to delay briefly because of a bit of the whirlies…oh my, I’ve run on much too long, haven’t I? That’s because you’re such a really, really good listener.”

  “That’s because I’m hearing for the first time about your incurable Ménière’s whirly-whirlies and what they’ve done to you, which matches my incurable Bonnet syndrome and what it’s done to me.”

  “What? What! You’re kidding, you’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”

  “You’ve never heard of Charles Bonnet syndrome, have you?”

  “No. Is it contagious?”

  “Not at all. What about Ménière’s?”

  “Nope. Who are you? You feel like someone…I don’t know…someone I’ve known and yet…are you married?”

  “No. You?”

  “No. Divorced?”

  “No. You?”

  “No. Engaged?”

  “No. Was but Bonnet put an end to it. You?”

  “Same here. Said he was afraid I wouldn’t have children.”

  “Pity.”

  “Not really since it made me realize he was a bloody stiff banker and I was well out of it.” The telephone rang. “Do you mind? I get so few, can’t afford to miss any.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Oh, hello, Dorothy. Guess who’s here—the chap who guarded me when I bonkered in the street…yes, the one with the sleeve.”

  Emma had a bubbly exchange from which I gathered Dorothy was apologizing for not being able to come for dinner this evening because of an unexpected crisis at the embassy. Emma, understandably, graciously excused her, and they proceeded to chat about future plans.

  I was sitting there, half listening to her end of the conversation—mostly just the tone and rhythm of her voice—when I realized to my surprise that I was smiling to myself. I resettled my expression: I felt totally unp
repared for this little intrusion in my life, an upset of my determination to accept the domination of Bonnet syndrome.

  “Poor Dorothy,” Emma said as she rejoined me, “has a night call at her embassy. She was supposed to come for dinner.”

  “May I fill in?” I was surprised by these aggressive words coming spontaneously from me.

  “You’re free? Wonderful. There’s a restaurant nearby that has an authentic Sicilian wood-burning oven and delivers a sensational Vesuvian pizza that flows down you like hot lava. Are you game for that? I have a Valpolicella red that’ll fan the fires. What do you say?”

  “I say you’re rescuing me from having a Stouffer’s lasagna out of my microwave.”

  “You know, all this time I haven’t heard a word about you. Just me, me, me.”

  “Well, hearing those incredible things about you, you, you was certainly fascinating.”

  * * *

  —

  And that’s how the evening began. She was intrigued with the literary nature of my law practice, wanting to hear about some of the dramatic cases. We were interrupted by the arrival of the Vesuvian pizza, but then I got around to the effects of my right eye’s being blinded on a tennis court…

  “So, Chet, unhappily we do have something in common—we can’t drive, because I know the danger of spinning out at the wheel and you may get blindsided by traffic on your right.”

  When I got around to telling her about some of the more dramatic ordeals I had undergone in my syndrome episodes, she couldn’t get enough of them. But I finally called it quits. “I will have to pull down the curtain and save more for another time.”

  “Oh, yes, please! What about tomorrow? Can you tolerate me two days in a row?”

  The word yes! stuck in my throat. I wanted to give voice to it so badly; I wanted to promise tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. But she’d only heard about the Bonnet; she hadn’t experienced it. My brain—the regular old organ, sans syndrome—threw up an image of lovely young Emma Vicky chained up in a crate beside me…No. I couldn’t do that to her.