by Неизвестный
By the time I had composed myself and begun to realize what should have been immediately obvious, that this was a serious accident, Jimmy was crouching next to A.
‘You all right, man?’ I heard him say, with a tenderness that stays with me still. He put his arm under my brother’s elbow and gently helped him to his feet. Wincing, A. pulled the neck of his T-shirt down over his other shoulder. There was a large dark patch where the skin had been scraped off. He touched the wound tentatively and held up his fingers. Despite the gathering gloom we could clearly see the blood.
‘Fuck, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know it’s not funny. We’d better get you to hospital.’
As we left the court I noticed that the two previously stuck balls had returned to earth and lay next to each other by the side of the back fence. I picked them up and returned Jimmy’s to him.
Before its recent closure as a result of the hospital’s bankruptcy, the emergency room at St Vincent’s, just north of Greenwich, was a prominent neighbourhood landmark. Many of the victims of the 9/11 World Trade Center collapse were brought here, and a poignant display of ceramic tiles painted by children to commemorate those dark days still adorns the wire fence around an empty lot facing the hospital. Dylan Thomas, after protracted drinking sessions at the nearby White Horse Tavern, met his end here.
A scene of diverse human suffering greeted A. and me as we arrived. There were perhaps sixty people in the room, in various states of distress. On a bench near the entrance, a young man, with an arm poking out from his shoulder at an ominously odd angle, was being comforted by an elderly woman in a knitted hat, probably his mother. Further back, a man in clothes of Rabelaisian filth was pacing along the wall, holding a blood-soaked pad to his eye and cursing under his breath to no one in particular. Glowering in his direction, a father protectively gathered in his two toddlers. One of the children was screaming at a volume only a little less ear-shattering than the sirens of the ambulances periodically arriving outside.
I assisted A. into a plastic chair near the reception counter, below a wall-mounted statue of a devotional Virgin Mary, and went to seek help. The desk was being manned, with stoical disregard for the chaos that surrounded her, by a heavy black woman with a stern face above a gold crucifix that rested on top of her substantial décolletage like Jesus’s cross on the hill at Calvary. A middle-aged mother with elaborate braids leaned against an adjoining wall with the weariness of someone who had been waiting a long time. She was holding a baby whose sallow face and perspiration-plastered hair suggested something infectious. I resolved to keep a good distance.
I manoeuvred myself directly in front the receptionist but she remained focused on her computer screen. I tried thrumming my fingers on the countertop, and then whistling, which experience has taught rarely fails to attract attention. Eventually she looked up and, as if I was the one who’d been keeping her waiting, snapped impatiently.
‘Coverage?’
‘I’m sorry?’ I said.
‘Coverage. Do you have in-sur-ance?’ She emphasized each syllable of this last word separately, as though she were teaching a halfwit its name.
‘Oh, sure,’ I said eagerly. ‘Blue Cross.’ I handed over A.’s card with a flourish. At that instant I realized that my lifelong commitment to socialized health care had evaporated, replaced by a fervid and ruthlessly selfish hope that my brother’s health scheme would provide a head start in the race for medical attention against the probably uninsured hoi polloi who filled the room.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ she nodded curtly towards A., swiping the card through her computer.
‘A rock hit his shoulder. I think he may have fractured it,’ I said, and then, reflecting that this diagnosis was perhaps too mild to forestall a wait of several hours in this hellhole, added, ‘It’s really quite bad, it’s bleeding. Maybe it’s broken.’
She looked at me sceptically and, pointing to where A. was sitting, barked, ‘Tell him to wait there.’
I returned to A. who was half hidden behind a copy of the New York Post he’d found in a nearby chair and was trying to read without bending his bad arm. His face was ashen but at least the bloodstain on the shoulder of his shirt was no longer spreading.
‘Are you all right?’ I said, suddenly feeling close to tears.
‘Not too bad,’ he replied. ‘Are we going to have to wait long?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I tried to sound as hopeful as the circumstances allowed. ‘She’s already swiped your card.’ I slipped it carefully into his trouser pocket.
‘Can you do me a favour?’ he said, lowering the paper.
‘Anything you want.’ I put a hand on his good shoulder. ‘Just name it.’
‘See that machine over there?’ He nodded in the direction of a vending machine, brightly lit in the corner. ‘See if it has any crisps in it.’
‘I’ll be right back,’ I said. As I picked my way through the sea of fractured bodies that surrounded us I heard my brother’s shout.
‘Salt and vinegar, if they’ve got any.’
It was a while before we were able to play paddleball again. It turned out that A. had not broken his shoulder, nor even fractured it, but it swelled up in a large livid bruise that took several weeks to subside. Even today, months later, he says it still feels stiff sometimes.
But we did eventually get back down to the Y, on a wet late afternoon in early February. A. practised his swing as we walked down 14th Street, testing his shoulder. It seemed to be holding up.
‘Long time no see, gentlemen.’ Our friend on the front desk looked genuinely pleased to see us.
‘He busted up his shoulder,’ I said, nodding at my brother. ‘But it’s good to be back.’
‘Gotta stay fit.’ He winked at me and smiled as he handed my card back in a way that indicated he knew that getting fit was first on the agenda.
A. had already headed down the stairs and was waiting for me on the half landing, still swinging his bat in practice strokes. He pointed with his thumb through the window onto the court below.
‘The other brothers are there again,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m going for a swim.’
POEM | JOHN BURNSIDE
Postscript
I am out in the snowy woods,
trying to find a signal
to phone a friend.
Night’s drawing in; the trees
are slender in the way that things
are almost, though not quite
absent, on the cusp of transformation.
There’s only one path
and that leads back to the road
where I left the car.
When I get there,
I’ll drive home slowly
and brew some tea;
no promises to keep,
only the moment,
passing,
and somebody quiet,
moving about the house,
locking the doors
and switching off
the porch light that I left
burning, while infinities of snow
unfold across each window
like a veil.
GRANTA
* * *
THE LOYALTY PROTOCOL
Ben Marcus
* * *
The phone call said to come alone, but he couldn’t just leave his parents behind. Perhaps they’d been called too and didn’t remember the procedure, which would only figure. His father was not good with instructions. Worse, his father was fatally indifferent to what people said. Other people spoke and the man’s face went blank, as if all voices but his own were in a foreign language. Perhaps his father had not picked up the phone. Or maybe he mistook the message for a prank and hung up.
Later, his helpless parents in tow, Edward could explain the mistake, if necessary. By then it’d be too conspicuous to leave them stranded on the road while everyone else left town.
Owing to the roadblock that would be set up on Morris Avenue, Edward parked at Grove and Wil
liams and trekked through muddy backyards to his parents’ apartment complex. He cursed himself, because he’d have to lead them back the same way, down a wet, grassy slope where his car would be waiting. In all of the configurations they’d rehearsed at the workshop, somehow he had not accounted for this annoying obstacle: moving his parents in the dark down a steep, wet slope.
His father was awake and packed already, wandering through the apartment. When Edward walked in, his father started to put on his coat.
‘Where’s Mom?’
‘Not coming, I guess,’ his father said.
‘Dad.’
‘You try. I tried already. You try if you want to. I’m disgusted. I’m ready to go. Do you know how many times I’ve had to do this?’
‘Did they call you?’ Edward asked.
‘Did who call me?’ His father was on the defensive. Had he slept at all? Had he simply been up all night, waiting?
‘Did your phone ring tonight?’ Edward asked, trying not to sound impatient. There were cautions against this very thing, the petty quarrels associated with travel, which only escalate when evacuation is a factor.
‘I don’t know, Eddie. Our phone doesn’t work. I’m just ready to go. I’m always ready.’
Edward picked up the phone and heard a dial tone, but it was in an odd pitch, high and scratchy. More like an emergency signal than a dial tone.
‘You don’t believe me?’ his father said. ‘I tell you the phone doesn’t work and you don’t trust me?’
‘I trust you. Let’s just get Mom and go.’
His mother was in bed, sheets pulled over her face. It felt wrong to sit on his parents’ bed, to touch his mother while she was lying down. Standing up, he could hug and kiss his mother with only a shred of awkwardness, but once she was prone it seemed inappropriate, like touching a dead person. He shook her anyway.
‘C’mon, Mom, let’s go. Get dressed.’
She answered from under the sheets, in a voice that was fully awake. Awake and bothered.
‘I’m too tired. I’m not going.’
They’d been told that, at times like this, old people dig in their heels. More than any other population, old people refuse to go. They hide in their homes, wait in the dark of their yards while their houses are searched for stray occupants. Often they politely request to die. Some of them do not request it. They take matters into their own hands.
But there were a few little things you could do to persuade them, and Edward had learned some of them in the workshop.
‘Mom, you don’t know what you’re saying. You really don’t want to be here, I promise you.’
‘See,’ said his father from the doorway. ‘See what I told you?’
‘Tell him to shut up,’ said his mother.
‘You shut up,’ his father barked. ‘Don’t ever tell me to shut up.’
‘Shut up,’ she said, still under the sheets, and she laughed.
‘Mom, if you don’t come with us, they’ll be here to get you, and who knows where you’ll sleep tonight. Or you won’t sleep. You’ll be stuck with them and I can guarantee that you won’t like it. It will be horrible. Do you want me to tell you what will happen?’
He could hear his mother breathing under the sheets. She seemed to be listening. He paused a bit longer for suspense.
Something wordless, passing for surrender, sounded. A kind of huff. Edward left the room to give her time and it wasn’t long before she joined him and his father in the front hallway, scowling. She’d thrown a coat over her nightgown and carried a small bag.
‘OK?’ said Edward.
They didn’t answer, just followed him outside, where the streets were empty.
‘Where’s your car?’ his mother grumbled.
He explained what they’d have to do and they looked at him as if he were crazy.
‘Do you see any other cars here?’ he whispered. ‘Do you know why?’
‘Don’t act like you know what’s going on,’ his father scolded as they trekked out. ‘You’re just as much in the dark as we are. You have no idea what’s really happening. None. Fucking hotshot. Tell me one fact. One. I dare you.’
When they reached the hill and had to navigate the decline, his mother kept falling. She’d fall and then cry out so loudly it seemed she’d been gravely wounded, except she was just falling on her rear end in the grass, falling and slipping a little, as if she were on a sled. How much could it hurt? He’d never heard her cry in pain before, and it was horrible. His father was right there holding her arm, but she was considerably bigger than he was and when she slipped he couldn’t hold her up. He lost his temper and kept yelling at her, and finally, softly, she said she was doing her best. She really was.
‘Well, I can’t carry you!’ he yelled.
‘Then don’t,’ she said, and she stood up and tried to walk on her own, but she slipped and fell again, sliding further down the hill.
In the car she wept and Edward felt ashamed. This was the easiest part of the drill, and it had not gone well at all.
There were multiple settlements stationed throughout the gymnasium, organized by neighbourhood, and when Edward brought his parents to theirs he could not get them admitted. A young woman he knew as Hannah had the clipboard. After scanning her pages, she shook her head.
‘They’re not on my list,’ she said.
‘They live in this neighbourhood, at 429 Sheldon. Apartment 4C.’ He looked at the crowd that had already registered, recognizing several of his parents’ neighbours, huddled now against a wall. There were retirees from his parents’ building. Neighbours who knew his parents. This was certainly the right place. He waved, but those who saw him looked away.
Hannah stared at him from behind the clipboard. He could sense the protocol overwhelming her. A street address, recited anecdotally, was no kind of evidence. Anyone could deliver that information. This was only a man talking.
‘Do you want to see their driver’s licences?’ he asked, a bit too curtly. Not that he’d brought them.
‘No. I want to see their names on this list, and since I don’t, I can’t let them in. I have the most straightforward job in the world. If you have a problem you should discuss it with Frederick.’
From under her shawl Edward’s mother said, ‘Eddie, it’s OK, we’ll go with you to yours.’ She sounded relieved. That would solve everything and they could all be together.
Edward looked at Hannah, who simply raised her eyebrows. She and Edward had been on a practice team together at the beginning of the workshop. She had seemed nice. Very smart, too, which explained her promotion to settlement leader. Unfortunately, Hannah was far too gorgeous for his comfort. He had been so desperately compelled by her face that he had instantly resolved never to look at her or show her any kind of attention. Everything would be much easier that way. It was troubling now to discover that Hannah ran his parents’ settlement. It meant he’d have to see a lot of her and regularly be reminded that she would never be his. She would never kiss him or get undressed for him or relieve his needs before work or stop trying to look pretty for him, which was the part he liked best, at least when he played out futures with women he’d never even speak to. When someone like Hannah, not that there’d ever been someone like Hannah, let herself go and showed up on the couch after dinner in sweatpants and a long, chewed-up sweater. It was unbearable.
Edward knew that he shouldn’t do this, but Hannah would have to understand. He broke character and pleaded with her.
‘There’s nowhere else to go. Can you please take them? Please? Is someone really going to come by later and match each person to a name on your list?’
She hardened her face. She wasn’t going to drop the act, and she seemed disgusted with Edward for having done so himself.
‘Did they get a phone call?’ she asked.
He started to answer, figuring he could lie, when from behind him his father blurted out that their phone was broken. How could you get a phone call with a broken phone?
; ‘I assumed they did,’ he confided to Hannah. ‘That’s the truth. Why wouldn’t they get a call? Look, their neighbours are here. People from the same building.’
‘They’re not supposed to be here,’ Hannah said to Edward. ‘You shouldn’t have brought them. You might consider . . .’ She paused. She seemed reluctant to say what she was thinking. ‘At this point you’ve made a serious mistake and you need to decide how to fix it with minimal impact on the community.’
She glanced pitilessly at his parents, then muttered, ‘I know what I would do.’
Edward figured that he knew what she would do, too.
He leaned in so he could speak into her ear. ‘Are you carrying?’ he whispered. ‘Because if you are, and I could borrow it, I could kill them right here, and it would be a lesson for everyone.’
She was stone-faced. She didn’t think that was funny. ‘There are people behind you. I have a protocol to run.’
Don’t we all, Edward thought.
‘OK, well, thanks for your help,’ he said, sneering. ‘Good teamwork. Way to go.’
She kept her cool. ‘So you want me to make a mistake, arguably a bigger one, because you did? Let’s say your mistake was an accident, which possibly it was, although I can’t say. I’m guessing you’re not a complete imbecile. You want me to consciously break the rules. You want your error, a stupid error, if you ask me, to beget other errors so we’re both somehow to blame, even though I do not know you and have no responsibility for you? How does that do you a favour? How does that help you? At this point, sir, you need to fall on your sword. I don’t understand what’s so hard about that.’
