Waiting
I have to hang up. I’m falling asleep.
Okay. Good night, honey.
Good night.
Honey.
It’s four a.m.
Say it.
We’ve been talking five hours. I’m tired.
Say it. Let me hear you.
Good night . . . honey.
Good night. I’ll call you tomorrow.
It was him on the phone, his voice. Late at night, a day or two after I came home. I told you I’d call, didn’t you believe me? Waiting until his parents had gone to bed, and on those nights when the phone rang at eleven I did not beg for Valium.
What did we talk about? Who can recall? Music and school. Friends. His day, not mine. The parties he’d been to, the classes he’d cut. The calls went on for hours. Neither one of us wanted to hang up. I’d fall asleep to his voice: Good night, honey. Say it, call me honey. With the receiver pressed to my ear I listened to him breathing, a companion in the dark.
He told me, that first call, he was coming to see me. Friday, after school let out. He wanted to phone my mother, make certain he’d be welcome, and arrange a ride from the station. I didn’t like this idea, thought it overly formal. I’d tell her myself. But Jimmy insisted, saying it was better for him to speak to my mother directly.
I told him when to call, a time when Tom would be at work. Make sure you talk to my mother, I said. Her husband’s an asshole; he’ll say no.
I knew my mother would be fine with Jimmy visiting, but I wanted to warn her about his call. I thought she might tease me, gently mock his propriety. Instead she seemed pleased, no doubt happy for the distraction. He has good manners, she said.
Friday evening she rolled me into my favorite bed jacket, the white one with sheer, belled sleeves. While she drove to the station, I brushed my hair to a high gloss. Sprayed my wrists with cologne—a hospital gift—Charlie or Bonne Belle. I never wore cologne, didn’t like it, thought this was something I was supposed to do. Smeared on mascara, lip gloss. Someone, a boy, was traveling over an hour to spend the weekend with me—a girl who could barely move. I had to beguile, even—especially—if I didn’t have the slightest idea how.
My mother’s VW crunched into the driveway. I picked up the hand mirror, saw Jimmy, reflected, emerge from the car, saw him and my mother, tiny in the mirror, walking together toward the door. Suddenly I wanted to stop it, stop them, wind the reel backward. This was a mistake. I didn’t know this boy, what he expected. Face to face we’d run out of things to say. He was on the stairs, in the hallway, knocking on my door. I swallowed, said come in. The shock of him, immediately familiar, that face I had conjured, goofy grin and floppy black hair. He’d brought gifts—a box of cheeses, a bottle of André pink champagne. He set them on the desk, hung his leather jacket over my chair. Smiling, easy, as though he did this every day. He looked at me, said my name. We were kissing like that. Then he pulled away.
What is that shit? he said, You stink, wipe it off! He brought me a warm cloth and I scrubbed at my wrists. Your face too, he said. Why are you wearing that?
And, as I washed away make up, cologne, I began to feel at ease. Here was someone who liked me without lipstick or manufactured smells, without ever having seen me from the neck down. It felt ridiculous, too good to be true, and I knew it was. But I felt something happening in that room. A kind of reverse transformation had taken place—the swan turning back into her duckling self—amazed that she should be met with approval.
We put records on the turntable, kissed through song after song. He opened a window, lit a joint, fanned away my exhaled smoke. We watched it dissipate. Ate cheeses from the cheese box—a waxed block of cheddar, a walnut-studded ball of orange cheese in crinkly red cellophane. Jimmy went downstairs for crackers and plastic cups. He didn’t let me ring the bell, said let me do that, let me get things for you. We drank the champagne, fizzy in my nose, a sour candy. Before this I’d only had it on special occasions. This was a special occasion. Jimmy took off his glasses, dark hair falling into his eyes. He slept beside me, fully clothed, and we woke, our breath rancid with cheese, kissed some more, fell back to sleep. The weekend passed like that. We watched Saturday Night Live, Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. Friends stopped by and for once I wished that they would leave, as they’d wanted me to on those summer nights with boys, wishing I would leave so they could be alone, wishing I would linger so they wouldn’t have to go all the way.
We couldn’t go all the way.
We kissed, our lips chafing, shared a tube of cherry ChapStick. He changed in the bathroom. I had a face, arms. We lay together in the hospital bed, smoking weed. Jimmy stubbed the roach on my torso, an affront not against my body but against the barrier between us. He rubbed its mottled surface and I imagined I could feel his hand on my stomach, miles below.
Nothing made sense. Not just Jimmy, but me, in this bed, this cast, unable to move. There was my body, this failure, this wreck. There was this boy. How did they fit together?
Sunday was dismal, from afternoon on. I kept the time in mind, counted down the hours, then the minutes. He would leave, come back—the choice was all his. Jimmy hesitated saying goodbye, said I have to go, didn’t. My mother knocked on the door. I waited for him to call, and he did, that night, and the next, and I understood that this was what it would be like between us—him coming, going, saying when, me waiting.
Tom complained. She’s on the God damned phone all night, I can’t sleep. I could hear him snoring, knew he slept fine. We communicated through my exasperated mother. So she’s on the phone, so what, how the hell would you like it, stuck in your room like that? I knew I would win, but agreed to keep my voice down. I whispered through the night to Jimmy, the lighted phone dial glowing in the dark.
Phineas died; Gene felt guilty. We moved on to Julius Caesar.
Volcanoes cooled to ash, this was igneous.
The woman in the Spanish novel explained how she knew the ghost was her husband.
a2 + b2 equaled c2 and I did not understand any of it.
We were working on triangles. Right, acute, isosceles. All night I’d been talking to Jimmy. My eyes hurt; I couldn’t concentrate. Mrs. Rector droned on. School had been called off for snow, but nothing could stay Mrs. Rector from her appointed rounds. I heard the front door shut—Chipper?—heard a commotion of voices: Mrs. Brattle’s and, improbably, Jimmy’s. I strained to listen. It was him, arguing with Mrs. Brattle, telling her never mind, he was going upstairs anyway. She yelled for him to stop. Mrs. Rector looked up from her book. Who was this boy, flushed with cold, snowflakes in his hair?
I hitchhiked, he said.
Nurse-busy, flustered, Mrs. Brattle burst into my room, demanding that Jimmy leave at once. Mrs. Rector cleared her throat. We had triangles to draw. Jimmy said he was going to shovel the driveway. Mrs. Brattle wrung her hands. When your mother finds out.
While Mrs. Brattle fussed and Mrs. Rector droned, while I seethed over the injustice of math lessons on a snow day, Jimmy shoveled the drive. He kept at it, even after Mrs. Rector left. I watched him in my hand mirror, wishing he would stop, wishing the sun would go down. Chipper came home. My sister’s boyfriend, he told Mrs. Brattle. My mother knows.
Jimmy returned, smelling of snow, the outdoors, changing the air in my room. He shut the door. This was too much for Mrs. Brattle. Back into my room she stormed, followed by Chipper, who said It’s okay, my mother lets her. There we were, three teenagers against a nurse. We’ll see, Mrs. Brattle said. We’ll see about that. Jimmy said, Shut the door on your way out. Chipper gave him a look. We could hear Mrs. Brattle on the phone. A boy! Her voice rose in agitation. No one said anything about a boy! But she left us alone after that.
My mother let him stay for dinner, after which she made him call his parents, who told him to come home. I cried and vowed never to forgive her. In the morning she phoned the nursing agency and said send someone else, I don’t care who.
He brought me Cold D
uck, pink champagne, a ceramic heart on a gold chain, a brooch in the shape of a turtle: Like you. He brought me Frampton Comes Alive and we made out to “Baby, I Love Your Way” and the long song with the wa wa machine.
We went nowhere, did nothing, stayed in bed, fell asleep while the TV turned to snow. He opened windows, letting in the metallic winter air. I clutched at the pink and green afghan and he pushed it aside.
Between visits he carved my initials in his forearm with a Swiss army knife, block letters that left rusty welts, his own scar—visible, self-inflicted, nothing like mine. When we’ve been together longer, he said, I’ll do your whole name.
Late at night he told me all the things we would do. Hitchhike to Florida. Take the train to New York and visit his friends. Go to parties all night long. When that thing comes off and I see what you look like—I bet you’re so beautiful, I bet you’re so fuckin’ thin.
He came and went. I waited. I rarely called because I didn’t want to speak to his parents or brothers, to have to explain who I was, that girl, stuck in bed, all those towns away. Sometimes he would call from a party. I could hear music in the background. And girls, their high, bright, laughing voices. Girls I hated. Quit it, I’m on the phone! he’d say to someone I couldn’t see. Hold on! Listen, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.
I didn’t ask when, though I always wanted to.
The new nurse looked like a child playing at being a nurse. Twenty-five, barely older than the college girls who cared for me, Betsy was pale, freckled, petite, with tiny hands. Even her voice was girlish, helium-tinged.
She wore her auburn hair pulled tightly behind her nurse’s cap. Our first afternoon together Betsy asked about that cap. Did she really have to wear it? It felt so, well, formal. Goofy, even. I was delighted. You don’t have to wear the uniform, I said, no one else around here does. Betsy asked my mother, who said, Call me Maureen. From then on she wore jeans to work.
I told Betsy I had a boyfriend who stayed with me in my room. It was a test.
She said she and her boyfriend, Frank, lived together; they were talking about getting married. When I could walk again she’d have me over for dinner. He was, she said, an excellent cook.
When the tutors left, in the late afternoon, Betsy would sit with me. She gossiped about the other patients she’d cared for—cranky old people who made her wear the uniform, cap and all; a woman who’d wanted her to do housework. Not the routine clean-up-after-yourself stuff my mother expected, but real housework: vacuuming, toilet scrubbing, dusting. She told me about her dates with Frank: dinners, movies, concerts, and I superimposed images of me and Jimmy, holding hands at the movies or sharing a meal at a small round table lit with candles, draped with checkered cloth. I had no knowledge of such a place; my restaurant experience was limited to Howard Johnson’s, Pizza Pan, and Beefsteak Charlie’s. Someone played “Bella Notte.” We were Lady and the Tramp. We toasted, clicking glasses. I wore a low cut dress, dangly earrings, maybe a string of pearls. No one knew what I had been.
I lived vicariously through Jimmy and Betsy. After she saw Paul McCartney and Wings at Madison Square Garden, Betsy described the show. As she talked I thought about wings—not the band but the object: archangel wings, spiky and white; the waxy feathers of Icarus; a dragon fly’s tapered, iridescent sheen, a butterfly’s papery spread. I wanted wings. Betsy went on: the lines of white limos, the scalpers charging hundreds—hundreds!—of dollars for a single pair of tickets. The lasers and dry ice, how Linda McCartney stood robotic at her keyboards, the way the strobes beamed through a haze of pot smoke. So much smoke she’d gotten a contact high. And then that conversation: Do you? Yes, me too.
Don’t tell. Not even Chipper.
She brought me some weed in a film canister, spread its contents onto a double album, using her driver’s license to separate seed from shake, letting the seeds roll into the album’s seam as I had done when I’d been able to sit up.
We were girlfriends. We were patient and nurse. She rolled joints, painted my toenails, rubbed lotion into my feet, made me bend my left leg so it wouldn’t atrophy. She stood on tiptoe to change the sheets, faster than anyone, rolling me from side to side, whisking away the soiled set, tucking in corners.
My scar was healing and had begun to itch. Betsy devised a way for me to scratch with a chopstick, inserting it through the armholes of the cast. We ate the food she brought from McDonald’s, listened to records from her collection, made fun of Tom, the awkward way he flirted with her, his cluelessness, his scuzzy polyester suits.
She got along well with my mother, put up with Tom, watched TV with Chipper while I napped. But she was mine, there for me. Chipper had his sports; my mother and Tom had each other. All of them had responsibilities to the world beyond my bedroom. Betsy did not, at least not during the hours we spent together. As the weeks went by, I began to feel increasingly dependent upon her—dependent and possessive.
The calls became less frequent. Shorter. He couldn’t make it every weekend, no, of course not. There was school. His parents objected.
I tried to think of things to say. Stories to tell, ways to regale. I could move my arms. I could hold him.
I couldn’t hold him.
Weekends became a trial. Friends stopped by, no different, really, from what we’d always done, hanging around, waiting for something, usually nothing. But then there had been at least the hope of distraction. Someone might call, someone’s mother might offer to drop us at Caldor’s or McDonald’s; at worst, we could walk to the Bridgeport Motor Inn, steal change from the vending machines while the desk clerk watched TV in some back room, then spend the money next door at the Green Comet Diner on hamburgers and juke box songs. Something might happen; I could pretend. Now there was no pretending.
Jimmy came, took some Quaaludes, slept nearly the entire weekend. I was angry and the following weekend he didn’t show up. Call someone, he said during another visit, one of those girlfriends of yours.
My body felt heavy, sluggish. I was becoming slow. It took me longer and longer to read a book. I’d reread sentences, lose my train of thought. Maybe it was the drugs. I was convinced I was becoming stupid, my brain atrophying in tandem with all my other muscles. Eventually I would become an oyster or jellyfish.
Through my mirror I watched snow melt, crocuses bloom from mud, brown grass turn green, the world in transformation. Branches grew fat with buds, the air warmed and mellowed. Betsy opened my window and I could smell the ripeness of everything. I hadn’t felt the sun in nearly two months, nor the rain, nor seen beyond the world framed by my window. Neighbor kids shrieked at their games. I examined my face, made it slack. Two eyes, a nose and mouth. That was all. I ended at the neck. Who could love that, even believing it temporary?
We were on school break. The tutors stayed away. Jimmy hitched down, early afternoon. I was excited for Betsy to meet him. He hadn’t visited in a couple of weeks, and I was hoping he could spend the night. But he showed up with a friend—a surly-looking kid, solidly built, a buffer.
Jimmy had weed. Colombian Gold, he said, holding up a baggie of yellow clumps. He rolled a fat one in bright pink paper. Strong, he said, hold it in. I did, keeping the smoke in my lungs for as long as I could. Betsy took a hit, said Good stuff. The familiar floaty feeling washed over me, a narcotic balm. Directly behind it, though, came a new sensation—my first experience with pot-induced paranoia. The music sounded distant, tinny, people’s voices faraway. Jimmy was watching me; so was his friend. What did they see? I was sweating inside my cast, my skin trapped, unable to breathe. I could feel each damaged vertebrae. The cast bore down on me. I would never walk, never leave this room. Slowly I felt myself slipping away from my body, hovering somewhere inches above it, looking down at myself in bed. The room was saturated with color, a shimmer at the edges of things. I don’t remember what I said, but Betsy began talking me down. She sponged cool water on my head, held my hand. It’s okay, she soothed, everything’s all right.
Jimmy and his friend left the room. When they came back I felt a little better, though still frightened. They whispered together in the corner. I knew what he was thinking: Chick smokes some premium weed and flips out. Girl can’t even hold her weed. What the fuck?
Peter Frampton was playing. Jimmy sang, Oooh, baby, I love your way—yesterday. His friend laughed. Someone changed the record. The afternoon was slow, deadly. No one had anything to say. There was a party to get to and Jimmy had to go. No, he could not stay, impossible. His friend grunted goodbye. Wait up! Jimmy said. He kissed me on the cheek, turned back to his friend. See you, he said to me over his shoulder.
I feel the urge to write about the fear, anger, comic moments, and joy we experienced and hope this story may strike some familiar chords . . .
In pondering my mother’s unfinished English paper, I wonder now about this notion of joy. I wonder it especially in relation to Jimmy. What was it that I felt? In retrospect, joy seems too easy, too unalloyed an emotion. Certainly I was happy to see him, ecstatic even. The sound of his voice on the phone could lift me from my gloom. I can remember laughing with him over silly things: leisure suits, TV commercials for air fresheners, the treacly messages of my Hallmark cards. Even now, all these years later, I recall details about him with a precision that borders on the uncanny. His untucked pink oxford shirt. His blue and white knit one. The one-handed way he removed his glasses before we settled in to kiss, the ironic way he tilted his head. Pink champagne, purple Cold Duck, red ceramic heart, yellow cheese; the colors of my world seemed heightened, perhaps because that world was so very small.
All the Difference Page 10
