An Invisible Sign of My Own

by Aimee Bender

  She beamed at me. Anything else? she asked.

  My fingertips brushed the strings on my wrist. As long as I’m here, I said, do you think you could you tell me an Ann DiLanno’s room number?

  She checked. DeLanno, she said. D-e?

  D-i, I said.

  Di-Lanno, she said. That’ll be 907.

  I took the thick-cut waterlike elevator to the ninth floor, an underwater dive upward, blue windows rising, stomach falling, floor after floor, sick people in cubicles, a spot of sun in the center of each pane of blue glass.

  The doors opened and I stepped onto the floor, which buzzed with coughing and coffee and low voices and bings, and I walked the hallway, slow. 901, 903. Muttering how sorry I was. 905. The door was white and the number was brass.

  907.

  Heart pounding, knuckles pressed to the door frame, I edged my face forward, peering in, but Ann’s bed was a tight empty ship, and a nurse with a turquoise bow tie strode by and told me Miss DiLanno had checked out late that morning.

  How’s she doing? I asked, but he’d already turned the corner to tend to someone else’s broken something.

  I stepped into Ann’s room, with its boxy metal machines and I.V. standing by itself. There was one flower left on the floor, a limp daisy missing half its teeth. I looked out the window but the glass distorted the ground so I just saw a few dark rectangles that were benches and the messy blobby tops of trees. A person came in with blue window cleaner and squirted it on the blue windows. I held Mr. Jones’s numbers close to my body.

  Back at the elevator, I pressed the Down arrow and a man in a suit waited with me, and when it came we both got in and I pressed L and he pressed 6. We dropped three easy levels and then the doors opened to the sixth floor. A huge sign faced the elevator that said CANCER WARD, in dignified type on a panel of brass.

  The man in the suit walked off, into.

  I stood and looked at that brass panel.

  Elevator doors are polite. They do not rush you. They accomodate last-minute decisions.

  The Cancer Floor didn’t look how I’d imagined. Most people had hair, and the tiles were white in the light, and the magazines in the lobby area were about cars, of all things. I’d wandered only three doors down when I came to the one that said VENUS on the chart.

  I wasn’t prepared to say anything so I walked past, fast, first, and my peripheral vision found a person inside, a splash of red, a TV on.

  I circled the floor.

  I passed the magazine lobby, the nurse station, passed the elevator and the bathrooms. Most of the room doors were open and I walked by a boy making blanket sculptures on his bed and two women in nightgowns standing at the window. I walked by an old bony woman in the middle of a rigorous phone call, and a man playing checkers against himself. I could see the Venus door approaching from a mile away and slowed down the closer I got. One step. Two steps. Three steps.

  I didn’t look in. I walked right by.

  The boy’s bed sculpture was the ocean now, blankets rising and cresting in waves, and one of the women by the window was trying to get the stain out of her nightgown. The bony woman was gesturing wildly with her bony arms to the phone. The man had reached the end of his board and kinged his red checker.

  As a kid, I spent a lot of time looking in my father’s medical books on skin disease. They have pages and pages of color photographs. When I had friends over, this was usually a place we ended up—stuck behind the living room couch, eyes squinted, book open, daring each other: I bet you can’t handle 135; kiss Page 257, and I’ll give you my dessert.

  Mrs. Venus’s door approached again.

  I walked very slowly. Turned my head as I passed the open frame. I saw the wig on her head, so bright it looked like a teenager’s first experiment with hair dye. She was laughing at the TV. Her eye whites were not clear.

  Straight ahead. Keep walking.

  Lobby. Bathrooms. The elevator doors opened but no one came out. The bed sculpture now included a ship of the boy’s pillow. The standing woman had a hand on the stained woman’s shoulder and both were bathed in blue light. The bony old woman lay quietly in her bed, phone inert. She coughed. I stopped and looked in.

  She turned her head. She had thin wisps of white hair like bleached grasses growing off her skull.

  She coughed at me.

  Hello, I said.

  She didn’t say anything. She coughed again. It wasn’t a big dramatic cough like the ones I’d been hearing all month at school. It sounded more like dry paper flapping against a cactus.

  How are you feeling? I asked.

  She rubbed the corner of her eye and flapped the cactus again. There was a pitcher of water on a table near her feet.

  I walked in. She muttered something under her breath.

  Inside the room, I could hear the machines clicking and sighing, busy at work. She coughed a few more times and put a palm protectively over the glittering rings on her left hand.

  I filled a glass from the pitcher, and the water stained as if chlorinated from the light coming off the window.

  She watched me, sniffing a little, but she didn’t reach for the glass. Her fingers trembled, stroking the sheets, hardened filaments of bone. There was a bunch of flowers across from her, a lot of tall yellow ones and fat pink ones, and a balloon in the shape of a bird that said FLY HOME SOON! She was hooked up to an I.V., a heart monitor, and a metal box I didn’t recognize.

  She scraped out another cough. I brought her the glass. She didn’t move her fingers to take it.

  Who the hell are you? she mumbled, coughing.

  I stood there with the water.

  What the hell are you waiting for? she asked.

  Lifting the glass to her lips was hard because her head was so low. The water flowed out, horizontal, dribbling into her mouth and down her neck. She coughed. Sipped again.

  I wiped her neck with my sleeve. Mr. Jones’s numbers grazed her shoulder.

  Stop that, she said.

  After her fourth sip, she cleared her throat and asked me again who I was.

  I’m just the math teacher, I said. Her neck was drenched.

  They’re sending me a math teacher now? she croaked, incredulous.

  No no, I said. I’m Lisa’s math teacher.

  Lisa? she said.

  I’m visiting, I said.

  Thank the Lord, she said. I hate math.

  She took another sip of water. I watched the green line of the monitor make mountain ranges of her heartbeat. When she’d drained the glass and I’d half-soaked the pillow, she said: Scram, and turned on her side in the bed.

  I did the rest of the floor very slowly. The man playing checkers was beating the pants off himself. I finished in the magazine area and just stood and watched the open rectangle that was Mrs. Venus’s door. I sent a hello on the air to her. I could hear the laugh track of the TV from where I stood.

  When I pressed the down arrow for the elevator, it opened right away, and took me back to L.

  Growing up, I knew those skin-disease photographs by heart. I’d dare myself to look at them, even when I was home alone, but every time the page opened to a person covered in warts, arms so swollen they looked like overstuffed furniture, dot-to-dot faces, breasts lost among larger hives, genital catastrophes, each time I looked I felt the same rush. My friends screamed and ran from the room, but I stayed put. Brought my lips to the page.

  25

  Once out of the hospital lobby, I walked into the white sunshine and went straight to a bench. I knocked for a bit, but the wood was weak and mealy, so on the way home, when I passed Mr. Jones’s house, I went back to his front door, and knocked and knocked, pounded that fine heavy oak. I needed it, and I knocked just as I always did, in sets—inhale, knockknockknockknock, exhale. Inhale, knockknockknockknock, exhale. The numbers bounced under my forearm.

  I kept going, still knocking, red wigs, still knocking, but even on this good wood, the knocking wasn’t working very well.

  I co
uldn’t stop hearing Lisa’s imitation, her knocking that door frame with me.

  I do you, she’d said, for Hands-on Health. After cancer. If there’s time.

  I kept knocking, but it almost seemed funny, and I kept going, waiting to see if I could shake the image of her, rapping her knuckles on a table, standing in front of the science class, hands waving in the air. I know! I know! they all yell. Me, in the other room, putting away folders, thinking I could spin myself out privately.

  I was trying to get back the release, still knocking, realizing this meant the science teacher knew too, still knocking, when all of a sudden the door opened.

  My hand fell forward. I’d been so absorbed with the knocking part that I’d completely forgotten this was a door at all.

  Standing in front of me, with slight stubble on his cheeks, eyebrows turned in, wearing a 15, was Mr. Jones. Not bloody at all. Whole and annoyed. My heart ripped up at the sight of him, his lucid stare, his mighty dimensional eyebrows.

  What is going ON? he said. My God, I’ve never met a more persistent knocker in my life. What the goddamn do you want.

  I stared. I wanted to touch him, push him. He wasn’t dead. I felt my mood lift, double, triple, at the sight of him.

  Are you selling something? he asked. I should call the police on you.

  Mr. Jones, I said. Where have you been? Mr. Jones!

  He started to close the door on me. I don’t want anything, he said.

  Wait, I said, it’s Mona Gray. Don’t you remember?

  Remember? he said. Remember what?

  I thrust my hand inside the doorjamb.

  I have your 42, I said. Or one of my math students has it. She was in the hospital. It’s my fault. We brought it but you weren’t there. People are stealing from you. I have your 4, 8, 11, 13, 23, 37, and 7 as well. Except the 7 is broken. What happened? I said.

  I wedged my foot in the door frame and held up my arm. The numbers moved below, wax wind chimes, clinking and thudding beneath my wrist.

  Don’t you want these? I asked.

  He glanced down and his one visible eyebrow lowered.

  Look at that, he said.

  It’s almost your whole year, I said. Where were you? I’ve been so worried! The hardware store has lost a ton of merchandise. Someone stole the clock with the authentic blue glass cover.

  He stuck his eye closer to the open crack of the door frame.

  I was on vacation, he said.

  Vacation?

  Vacation, he said.

  You were on vacation? I asked. You left your store open.

  His eye looked right at me, eyelashes thin and widely spaced.

  I was 42, he said. Who gives a damn when you’re 42.

  I thought of him on the street that day, the light in his step, the rubies in his walk. Glorious notorious uproarious 42. My permission slip into the movie theater, into the science teacher’s mouth. Wait, I said, don’t you remember? I grew up next to you. I bought the ax? I said, stomach balking.

  He blinked the one visible eye.

  I bled on it, I added. Ann’s leg floated up in my mind.

  He shook his head. Ruins the blade, he said.

  The blade is ruined, I said. You were on vacation? Also, I knocked on wood in your math class, I said. Do you remember that?

  No, he said. I remember no Monas never.

  I felt bad. And odd. And suddenly very unimportant. According to my memory, even though he’d ignored me at the hardware store so many times, I’d still figured or hoped he’d once had an altar to me in his living room because I was the best noticer in the land, and I’d imagined that whenever he saw me his heart had risen with pleasure until I spoiled it all for him at age thirteen and then he’d had to rip down the altar and mourn the loss of me for weeks—the only woman who’d understood him.

  Perhaps, he said, you used to sell me cookies?

  I looked at the ground, which read WELCOME.

  Never, I said. Never mind. We used to know each other.

  I was about to turn on my heel and leave when he opened the door a crack wider, and his one eye became two.

  Thanks for collecting my numbers, he said. That was very thoughtful. But I don’t need them, he said. I’m making a new batch today.

  Now that he’d said it, I could smell the wax, the piquant aroma of candle making coagulating behind him.

  He reached down, touching the numbers I’d brought. His current choice, Old Reliable, the very scuffed wax 15, clinked gently against my collection.

  So what do you want? Mr. Jones asked.

  I leaned on his door frame.

  I had no real reason except every reason. I had no real purpose except to tell him everything I noticed, to hear everything he noticed, and from both our noticings make some rules I could live by. Instead, I reached in my back pocket and pulled out the 50. Unfolded its black numbers, sharp and unmistakable, and flattened it out with my hand until it faced him. It in no way resembled any of his numbers. But he was my favorite math teacher. He was the owner of the hardware store.

  I wanted somebody to see, and I picked him.

  This, I said. I found this. Do you recognize this at all? Did you happen to lose a 50?

  He gave a wry smile. From the marathon, he said. He reached out his long slim fingers to it, tracing the curves.

  Do you even go all the way up to 50? I asked.

  He kept his fingertips on the plastic, going around the 0, fingernail on a racetrack, slow. He let out a breath. I have up to 75, he said. Because I am a hopeful man. But I’ve never once worn 75, he said, I think I might die of pleasure. He sighed a bit. Can you see it? You’ve got to be pretty much on top of the world to be wearing 50.

  You were 42 the other day, I said.

  That was a marvelous day, he said. But besides that, the tops I’ve been in the last decade has been mid-30s. 32. Maybe 37, once.

  I think I saw that, I said. 37.

  He looked at me, and his eyes grew tired, and seemed to know a lot about everything then. He smiled slightly. That 42 was a very good day, he said. Now that was a very very good day.

  He fingered 15 around his neck.

  Maybe the 50 fell out of your stack, I said, wanting to drag out the time.

  I have no stack, he said. I use hangers.

  Could you check? I asked. I would really appreciate that.

  He leaned on the door frame himself. Mona Gray, he said, almost wistfully, as if just then remembering me.

  Remember? I asked. I was the only kid who understood the numbers. Today you’re 15. That’s not too good but it’s not miserable. It’s your most common choice. Could you see if your 50 is missing?

  He shrugged. Why don’t you come on in, he said.

  And with that, he opened his front door wide. He turned and went inside, leaving me at the door frame.

  I just stood there for a second, and then, nervous, stepped into the dark wood-floored hallway, into the dark carpeted living room, which smelled strongly of wax and unlit pipes, unsmoked tobacco.

  Most of the living room furniture was commonplace, with a dusty green couch and ivory curtains half-drawn. I could see through the window into his backyard, and on the edge I made out the familiar shapes of my parents’ shrubs.

  But directly in the center of the living room, where most people had a coffee table, was a black pot that looked like a modest cauldron, bubbling up and dribbling over with wax. It stood upon hot coals, trapped in some kind of tray, and a huge silver ladle with a wooden handle hung off its edge. The floor underneath it was covered with newspaper, to catch the drippings as they boiled over. Also on the floor, surrounding the cauldron, were number cutouts, made of tin. Scattered loosely, out of order. It smelled like a crayon factory. A few already-done numbers were hardening on the fireplace: 7. 19.

  Over that fireplace, strung along the walls, were hooks, but instead of holding paintings, they supported the old finished numbers, hanging there on their strings, in chronological order, bordering the house.
There were spaces missing, for the missing numbers, more than even the collection I’d found. The numbers still hanging were all made of wax, with slight variations in color, and from where I was standing, I could see 6–28, winding through the walls of the room, back into the hallway where I lost sight of them. I put down the numbers I’d brought in a careful pile, and gravitated toward my age. Lifting it off the hook, I took it into my hands, and was holding it, my number of years alive, beige wax slightly warm in the afternoon sun, when Mr. Jones returned, holding up a string on which dangled a fresh wax 50.

  Nope, he said. Look here.

  I hung the 20 carefully back on its hook and nodded. His 50 was perfectly shaped, unsullied by wearings, which made me sad. I folded up the marathon square, hiding the number, and held it, fingers by now used to the slip of the material, the toxic slide.

  He shrugged again and returned the 50 to whatever room it inhabited.

  Then he came back and walked over to the cauldron. Using the long metal ladle, he dipped into the wax and poured a spoonful into the stencil mold for a new 15. The wax spilled out, smooth and heavy, rich as chocolate but thicker and drier, and with that particular warm candle smell. It settled in the 15 evenly and began to set. He leaned down, as if with a lit birthday candle, and gently blew.

  Where’d you find the cauldron? I asked.

  His face was focused and clear. Hardware store of course, he said, blowing.

  He rotated the 15 in his hands, letting the liquid, already hardening, slide into the details of the mold, the hat on the 1, the tight angle at the top of the 5. I stood close to the wall, one hand on the nubby wallpaper. I didn’t want to leave. I found the sight of him spilling warm wax into molds amazingly soothing. I felt, by far, the calmest I had all week.

  Why’d you take off those other ones? I asked.

  He picked up the ladle again.

  Oh, he said, I suppose I’d had enough of them then. He smiled. And now I want them back, he said.

  He checked on the 15. The wax was gelling, almost hard by now. Redipping the ladle, he put on a second layer, smooth and even.

  I watched the wax roll around until it cooled and heavied, slowing. I was debating with myself whether or not it was rude for me to still stand there, staring, when Mr. Jones looked up from blowing on his brand-new 15, and did the thing it took him ten years to do.