Telephone

by Percival Everett

  “Do you like television?” the doctor asked.

  “I don’t watch much.”

  “Spend much time on the computer?”

  “I do my schoolwork on the computer.”

  “Do you watch videos and things like that?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Do you like video games?”

  “Not really. I used to play one when I was little. It was called Turn Me Loose.”

  “Was it a fun game?”

  “I guess. I was six.”

  “I remember that game,” Meg said.

  “Does time ever seem to get away from you? You know, you’re watching and then all of sudden it’s time for bed or time to leave. Does that ever happen?”

  “Sometimes. Is that bad?” Sarah asked.

  The doctor shook her head. “Happens to all of us. Have you felt disoriented lately? Are you more forgetful?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ever forget where you are? Feel lost for a second or two?”

  “No.”

  “This is going to sound like a strange question: Can you remember the last thing you forgot?”

  Sarah laughed.

  “I told you it was a weird question.”

  “I forgot I had a flute lesson.”

  “Ever done that before?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  That made me laugh. Meg shot me a glance.

  “Very good,” the doctor said.

  The doctor went through many of the same tests again.

  “Repeat after me: La fa ta.”

  “La fa ta.”

  “La la la fa ta ta.”

  “La la la fa ta ta.”

  “La la fa fa ta ta.”

  The incongruous, ironic part of the exam was that, though I was completely, absolutely invested in watching, though I was bothered by worry, agitated, and perhaps near panic, I actually experienced what might have been the kind of small seizure I was afraid my daughter had suffered through as I became aware that some minutes had passed without my regard. I came to or awoke to find the doctor holding a sheet of paper towel in front of my child’s face. She was attempting to induce a seizure, I could see that, and I wanted to object but of course did not.

  “Okay, Sarah, I’d like you to blow on the paper here and make it move. Do it until I tell you to stop. Big breaths.”

  Sarah followed the instructions. The paper towel moved away and fell back four times, eight, and then Sarah stopped blowing; her head dipped, she seemed to fall asleep, and her head cocked to the right.

  “Sarah? Can you hear me? Red. Blue.”

  “Red?” Sarah asked.

  “So you heard that.”

  “Mom?” Sarah looked to her mother.

  “It’s okay, baby.”

  “Everything’s fine,” Dr. Gurewich said. “I’d like to run an electroencephalogram. And we’ll do the bloodwork. The seizures might be absolutely nothing. They could be environmental and might go away. It could be associated with her diet. I’d like you to chart everything Sarah eats for a week. And let’s get rid of all perfumes, scented soaps, and shampoos. Is that okay, Sarah?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “What kind of science are you doing in school right now?”

  “Biology.”

  “Any lab work? Dissecting anything? Any things that have a strong or disagreeable odor?”

  “No lab at all.”

  “Good. Sarah, why don’t you go out and wait in the other room. I want to schedule that test and talk to your parents about our next appointment.” The doctor called the nurse and let her take Sarah down the hall.

  “Well?” Meg said once the door was closed.

  “Everything I told Sarah is completely true. But there is a possibility we’re dealing with epilepsy.”

  “Oh my God,” Meg said.

  I thought it.

  “It might be,” Dr. Gurewich reiterated. “The good news about that is that even if it is epilepsy, drugs can control it. Epilepsy that shows in childhood does not mean a shortened life. If it is epilepsy, there will be drugs for the rest of her life.” She paused to study our faces. “Let’s do the tests and see what her blood tells us.”

  “What about the vision thing?” I asked.

  “That could be caused by the seizures. They are very mild, and I’m sure she doesn’t realize they’re happening.”

  “That’s why she didn’t see my bishop?”

  “Very likely. But we’ll keep an eye on the vision problem.”

  The only good news you can hear when discussing your child’s welfare is that there is absolutely, positively nothing wrong. Sarah’s fear was palpable. She of course wanted to know what the doctor had said to us in private. I, of course, told her. Meg was unsure about whether to tell her; worse, she was uneasy. But anxiety was hardly her doing.

  “The fact is, the doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong,” I told her.

  “She says you’re fine,” Meg said.

  “The worst could be that you have to take some medicine,” I said, quickly. “But she has to do the tests to figure out what medicine.”

  “Did I have a seizure?” Sarah asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “It was a small one if you did.”

  “What is a seizure?”

  I pulled the car over, parked under the shade of a chinaberry tree. I looked at Meg and she nodded to me.

  “Is it really bad?” Sarah asked.

  “No, slug, it’s not really bad. Especially because we now know they’re happening. It’s as if you’re taking a tiny nap. Like a little short circuit in your brain.” (I was sorry I’d said “brain.” I was sorry I’d said “short circuit.”) “In a way we all have them from time to time. You’re just having a few more.”

  “So, what does the doctor think I have?”

  “She doesn’t think anything yet. It could be your diet, your shampoo, or your deodorant,” her mother said.

  “I don’t use deodorant.”

  “About that,” I said.

  “Zach,” Meg complained.

  But Sarah laughed.

  Zenaida macroura. A left humerus from a pack rat nest and partial femur and proximal end of a tibiotarsus from the 20–25 cm level represents this resident species.

  Without a lot of discussion, none at all, we deemed it best to behave as if there was little or nothing wrong. We were a family of idiots. Sarah went off to school the next day, a trouper, Meg held her office hours, and I went to campus and pretended to teach. Before class I stopped by the athletic center, what I grew up calling the gym, and tried to relieve some stress by knocking around a squash ball. A young Indian man I knew to be a graduate student in another of the sciences asked me if I wanted to play, and I politely told him no. I continued my punishment of the ball, attending to the sweet, startling silences between the bangs against the front wall and my racket.

  “I’m pretty certain that ball is good and dead by now,” someone behind me said, then coughed.

  I turned to find Finley Huckster, that really was his name, standing on the other side of the plexiglass wall, a towel draped around his neck, wet from perspiration and drinking water from an old military canteen.

  “And by dead I mean you killed it,” he said. “What’s got you so mad?”

  “I’m not mad,” I said. “At least, I’m not angry. Just trying to work up a decent sweat.”

  “I see.”

  “What are you doing here? Certainly you don’t exercise.”

  “It’s true that we English professors are not famous for our athletic prowess, but I am an exception.”

  “How is that?”

  “I am exceptional.”

  I opened the door and ducked out to stand with him. We sat on the lowest level of the small bleachers. We stared at the empty court.

  “How are you?” Finley asked.

  “Tired.”

  “So, what do you think of our new dean?”

  “We have a new dean?”

  “Y
es. Yearlong search. A thousand emails asking for our inconsequential input. You don’t recall any of this?”

  “Sounding a little familiar.” I looked at his olive drab rubber canteen. “Why do you drink out of that thing?”

  “It allows me to recall my Marine days. The rubber taste reminds me of how much I hated them.”

  “So, what’s the new dean like?”

  “She’s a political scientist from Stanford. You know the type: Ivy bred, overachieving, no doubt smarter than the rest of us, or at least she thinks she is. You know, a dean.” Finley offered me a pull on his canteen.

  “No, thanks.”

  “And young. Very young. All the deans seem so young these days.”

  “Finley, it’s not that they’re that young. We’re that old.”

  “That’s true, but we ain’t dead yet.”

  “Aye.”

  I taught my class, did a better job than I expected, considering that I essentially stood in front of them like a robot, opened my mouth, and let years of rehearsed lecture spill out without interest or passion. To my surprise, more students than not complimented me as they filed out.

  “Great lecture, prof.”

  “Awesome lecture.”

  “Cool.”

  “Sick.”

  Grunt.

  I then walked across campus. Clouds had gathered, but the sky was again making promises it couldn’t keep. I dodged the bicycles and skateboards and made my way to my office, and there I waited for students that never showed up for my hours. This day one student did. It was Rachel Charles. She sort of sidled into the room.

  “May I help you, Rachel?”

  “I wanted to apologize,” she said.

  I remained in my chair, looked at her.

  “About what happened out in the desert. I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t fret over it. Believe it or not, I was young once.”

  “I feel like such a fool. You must think of me as just a stupid little girl.” Her words held some subtext that was simply not available to me.

  “Okay. It’s over now. Let’s just move forward. Thank you for coming in and saying something.”

  “Is that your daughter?” She pointed a painted green nail at the photograph on the wall above my desk.

  “Yes. Her name is Sarah. And that’s my wife.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  I nodded.

  “Professor Wells, I wasn’t lying about my interest in geology,” she said. “I have been trying to figure out what I’m interested in since I got to college.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You really are inspiring to me.”

  “That’s great. That’s the sort of thing we professors like to hear.” I waited for Rachel to make a move toward the door, but she didn’t. I began to pack up my bag as if to leave. “You’re doing well in the class.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “I guess not.”

  I stood and put the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “Well, all right, then I’ll see you on Thursday.”

  “Thursday.”

  I did not leave my office but sat back down. I was alone there, and so I did not trouble to straighten my shoulders. I felt weak as I realized I was quite obviously resisting going home. I wondered what bad thing that meant about me. However, that level of self-centered consciousness was quickly dislodged, was swept away in the stream of the present that was my daughter’s situation.

  The CBC and chemistry panel showed no anemia, no infections, no diabetes. “However,” Dr. Gurewich said, “there are some vacuolated lymphocytes. That could mean one of several metabolic disorders, something as simple as an acid-base imbalance or some kind of malabsorption problem. The ophthalmologist’s notes say that he saw what could be fluorescent deposits in the back of her eyes.”

  “What’s that suggest?” Meg asked.

  We were sitting in the doctor’s private office at Children’s Hospital. Her window looked out over a courtyard. I watched a woman push a child in a wheelchair. The child said something that made the woman laugh. I couldn’t hear sounds but could see them, watched her sounds while I waited to hear Gurewich’s response.

  “It’s too early to say. I’ve decided to schedule an electroretinogram. I know it seems like a lot, but I want to know everything.”

  Meg and I nodded.

  “And we’ll do a DNA analysis. So, we’ll have to take a little more blood and a couple of tissue samples.”

  “What are you thinking?” I asked. “It sounds like you’ve got an idea of what this might be.”

  “Like I said, nothing yet. The EEG is probably near done now, so I’m going to go see Sarah. You can wait in here.” She left.

  Meg and I sat quietly for a few minutes. I looked at the things on and around Gurewich’s desk. There was a basket with skeins of yarn and knitting needles on the floor.

  “I wouldn’t have taken Dr. Gurewich for a knitter,” I said.

  “What do you imagine she’s thinking?” Meg asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  “I’m terrified,” I said.

  “You don’t seem terrified.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I mean I’m really upset, and you don’t seem disturbed.”

  I shook my head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

  “I’m sorry my reaction isn’t precisely like yours. However, you might just want to pull it together so that you don’t make Sarah any more scared than she already is. What do you think?”

  Meg said nothing.

  I shook my head again. Then I realized I thought that she might have been looking for a fight in order to not think about what was happening. I didn’t like it, but I had to admit that if true, it wasn’t a bad strategy. I put my hand on her shoulder. “I am worried. I don’t want to lose focus arguing over something like this.”

  Meg reached up and touched my hand.

  I could tell she hadn’t changed her mind about my reaction. I wanted to tell her that even in grief there had to be a diversity of form, just like with living organisms, but I didn’t. Thinking about analogous bullshit was my way of dealing with stress, and there was no need for me to make things worse by airing any of it.

  Sayornis nigricans. A completely preserved tarsometatarsus was recovered with ten other bones from the 18–20 cm level. These may have been from an owl pellet. The specimen, 16 mm long, is in the size range of a female. It was compared to Sayornis saya, which is larger, and Contopus and Empidonax spp., which is smaller.

  4

  There was mention of Naught’s Cave in the journals of John Wesley Powell as he navigated the Colorado River. It was described as “but a mere cavity in the wall” that he observed but never explored, it being very likely that when he came upon it, there was no way to rest the boat while he investigated. It was more likely that he simply had no interest in entering it, it being “but a mere” cavity. No one knows why it came to be named Naught’s Cave, there being no record of any member of his party going by that name. I suggested once that he meant the name literally, naught as in nothing. Nothing Cave. And so perhaps evidence of his lack of interest. For me, however, the cave held great interest, became my work, my focus, in some way my world. It was the one place that I knew more about than anyone else. I wondered if everyone needed such a place, if everyone could have such a place, if my daughter would ever have such a place.

  Even when I was at home, Naught’s Cave became a place where I hid from the rest of the world and life, my excuse being that I was working. My obsessive notes covered not only my desk but my person as well. Obsession was a trait that I employed conveniently, without much regard, but when employed it was earnest and complete, perhaps not quite the Platonic emulation of a desired quality, as that must have required an actual decision, but more a commitment born o
f simple weakness.

  My mind was stranded amid a pile of birds’ bones in a pack rat midden in a tight, dank corner when I looked down to find my nineteen-month-old daughter turning blue. Half the paper label was peeled from a plastic water bottle but was nowhere in sight. Sarah was sitting in the shopping cart seat in the grocery market when it happened. I was standing by the cheeses. Meg came out of an aisle carrying a bag of rice when she saw my panic. She dropped the rice, the bag broke open, and rice slid and rolled and sprayed everywhere. My big clumsy fingers were in my daughter’s mouth, and I was finding nothing.

  “What’s happening?” Meg asked.

  “She ate paper.”

  I patted Sarah’s back, then turned her over, held her upside down. She was not crying, and that was the most alarming part of all of it. Then suddenly she was crying. I breathed again. The wad of paper was out of her and between my fingers. Meg took the baby and glared at me.

  “She peeled it off the bottle,” I said.

  “Weren’t you watching her?”

  That was Meg’s way. She was a blamer; every bad thing had to be someone’s fault. I hadn’t saved our child from choking, but instead had only nearly killed her. I hadn’t removed the paper, but had, in fact, put the foreign matter in her throat. I never considered that the child might tear the paper off the bottle and eat it. We had routinely given her plastic bottles just like this one to play with. I felt hollow, weak, guilty, and sick. That night I stood over her for more than an hour while she slept, watching her little back rise and fall with her breaths, making certain that she was still alive. It was my job, my only job in life, to keep this creature alive, to keep this little bird breathing.

  The package was on the dining room table, a large envelope with a post office box return address in New Mexico.

  Meg watched as I pulled out the shirt. “What is that?” she asked.

  “It’s a shirt,” I said.

  “I can see that. Is it used?”

  “Pre-owned. Got it on eBay.”

  “You needed another shirt?”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  She made some kind of noise in her throat. I am sad to say I understood her completely. The shirt was just a shirt, and I was glad she had left the room as I was then alone to search its two flapped breast pockets. I was relieved and, oddly, a bit disappointed, even more strangely, discouraged, to find them empty. So, I had a new used shirt that looked enough like my old used shirts that I would no doubt slip it into the rotation. As I stuffed the garment back into the envelope, I felt a lump in the collar. There was a neatly folded note pinned, hidden, under the flap. I hesitated to unfold it as the hair on my neck stood up. Before I even read it, I knew I would not be telling Meg. I wondered if I would share it with anyone. Unfolded, the note read “Please Help to Us.”