The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead

by Chanelle Benz

  Lorene kept saying we were lost. To the dashboard, the windshield, the birds on the telephone line. We’d only been married a few months and I believed we were in love. But when I finally gave in and pulled over, rolling down the window, an odor filled the car—just like the one Mother said came from the factory. It was how the town made its money before the hospital. Strange that a town known for its cure would smell like poison. But that’s how I knew we were there, that in a mile or so we would get out of the car and smooth our best, sweat-wrinkled clothes as we walked toward the white clapboard church to see my mother’s body for the last time.

  That’s when I heard Izabel speak. “We’re close,” she said, pushing her words into the foul air. And I knew my sister had been awake the whole ride, dreaming of the man in the lavender and white, the doctor who had injected his “cure” into our mother’s cancerous veins.

  IZABEL

  After Mother’s funeral, we drove to our room in the Tourist Court and I yanked off my smart shoes, taking my old pair from the suitcase. “It’s too hot to go into town,” Lorene said from the cot, trying to pull her dull copper bangs over bald eyebrows with fingers so fat she couldn’t get her wedding ring off without soap. Pale old Lorene who had married my brother only six months ago.

  “I’m not hot,” I said, tying on my shoes, the right sole wedged for my short leg.

  “Lord, and I’m tired too.” She yawned.

  “Who cares what you are,” I said and my brother scowled at me from across the room with narrowed eyes. We have dark eyes. Russian eyes Mother said. Black Sunday eyes Robert called them. He pushed up his glasses, then switched on the electric fan.

  “Oh my, that’s better,” said Lorene, posing for him, disheveled on the double cot. Touching her thin bangs over and over.

  Brothers and sisters—the pastor had spoken as if before a crowd, though there was only the three of us there—He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. Not even a headstone saying Clementine Sibley 1894–1938 because it was not ready in time.

  Brother and sisters—the pastor who had only half his damn teeth—We commit this body to the ground. The sermon all wrong for the lovely stranger he had come to talk about. Apple blossoms in the dirt. Pink in the white of them: the flush before good-bye. No crowd. None of the good dancers who used to drive Mother around. Only Robert, me, and old Lorene.

  Brothers and sisters cried the man in lavender and white during his radio show that came on at one in the morning every night—There is no need for radiotherapy or the disfiguring knife of the radical mastectomy. And Mother, whose waist had become hollowed and sour, whose cancerous nipples were wont to bleed, turned up the volume and pushed her aching head to the speakers.

  “You want to go into town for god knows what reason,” said Lorene, pulling a stained Sears and Roebuck catalog off the nightstand. “But look at you, you’re overfatigued.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, my thumb on the scissors in my pocket.

  “I read that too much sleep makes you just as tired as if you hadn’t got any.” She tore a page from the catalog.

  Robert, my twin, held out a bottle of Coke. “Drink this. It’ll wake you up.”

  But I turned away and went to pack my smart shoes. Mother had bought them last year. They rubbed my left heel so hard it bled. In the shoe store, the salesman’s hand had disappeared up Mother’s calf. They went into the back room while I waited at the counter. Ring the bell if my boss comes by, the salesman said. It takes pain to be beautiful, Mother told us.

  “I’m going,” Robert said, hitting the top of the bottle on the dresser. The cap flipped over on the carpet.

  “That’s mine,” I said.

  “I guess you already drank yours.” He took a sip.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He shrugged. “You can have this one.”

  “You already drank half of it.”

  He handed my Coke to Lorene.

  “Thank you, honey,” Lorene said, elbowing her way up to sitting to take it. “Listen,” she said.

  Robert turned to her. I looked out of the window over the grimy, orange kitchenette.

  “We’ve been through just about the hardest thing, laying Mother Clementine in her grave. But she is right with Jesus and that’s what matters.” She set the Coke on the nightstand.

  Robert nodded to please her.

  “Honey,” she continued, arranging her slip to hide her varicose veins, “I’m feeling poorly. You understand why, don’t you? Could you get me a little hooch? Just a little won’t hurt a thing.”

  “I guess.” Robert took off his black fedora. He looked older than me, his forehead all creased, though he was only older by a minute.

  “Don’t forget to keep your hat on if you go out in that sun,” she said.

  I snatched the Coke from the nighstand and rushed out.

  “Robert!” I heard Lorene whine then yell at me: “Wait!”

  But I was gone, Coke spilling over the sleeve of my borrowed black dress as I limped down the gravel path.

  ROBERT

  It was easy to catch up with my sister and trail her through the winding blocks of stone buildings and gingerbread houses. When she stopped outside a bakery, I stopped to clean my glasses. Inside, a woman behind the window’s yellow cursive was holding high a rolling pin.

  “I know what you’re up to,” I said, watching the woman flatten the dough until it was smooth.

  “Oh do you now.”

  “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to worry Lorene.”

  My sister began watching the woman behind the window too.

  “The man in lavender and white,” I said. That was what Mother had called the doctor because those were the only colors he wore.

  Izabel shrugged. “I want to see him for myself.”

  “So he couldn’t stop her from dying. Who but the Lord can do that?” I loosened my collar and tie.

  She started walking, saying over her shoulder, “He’s a quack. Somebody should put a stop to him.”

  I stepped in front of her outside the drugstore. “And it’s going to be you?”

  She said nothing, jamming her hands into the pockets of her dress.

  “C’mon, let’s go back, have a meal. Lorene will be wondering where we got to.”

  “You’re not going to keep me from him.” She went around me.

  I yanked her back by the elbow. “I could if I wanted.”

  She laughed just to get at me. I slapped my hands down on both her shoulders, digging my fingers in. She sighed like the hurt was a relief.

  I let go, glancing in the drugstore to see if anybody saw me. “I didn’t mean to,” I said.

  “You never do.” She stared hard at the sidewalk.

  I was surprised. Usually she got nasty when I hurt her accidentally. “You can holler at him all you like, Iz, but nothing you can say will change a thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s crazy and rich.”

  She rubbed her shoulders. “Rich off of people who sold everything because they thought they’d get well.”

  I began to rub her shoulders too. “There aren’t any cures for pain,” I said. “You get duped if you go looking for them.”

  Lorene was right, she looked tired. Her big beautiful dark eyes scraped out. “A day like today we can do what we want,” she said.

  I tried to distract her. “Look at that.” I pointed. In the drugstore window, a gold-braided felt elephant was hanging from a lilac string. “When we were little, we had one just like that,” I said. She turned to watch the elephant spin and I felt soothed like Mother was standing behind us saying, “We’ll see.”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” I said. I could tell that already my tone made her nervous. “Now’s probably not the best time—finances being what they are—but Lorene’s going to have a baby. She wanted to tell you herself, though I figured it was better if I did.” Then I smiled like I thought I should.

&n
bsp; “What do you want me to say?” she said.

  “Are you happy for me?”

  “You don’t have money for a baby.”

  “We’ll manage.” My collar still felt too tight. I undid another button. “It’s gotta rain in Panhandle someday. I’ll get another job and maybe soon we could buy the house back.”

  “Go in and get the elephant,” she said.

  “I don’t have enough on me. You want a doughnut?”

  She shook her head. “How can you be hungry today of all days?”

  “I’m thirsty too.”

  She got excited. “We could go drink from the creek. They built the whole town over it. It’s supposed to heal. Mother said it was holy to the Indians.”

  “We should get back, Iz. Lorene . . .”

  “I’ll go to the hospital by myself,” she said.

  “You’re crazy if you think you’re going there without me.”

  “Come on then.” She gave me a sly smile. “I’m happy for you.”

  We went past a post office choking on green ivy, past a hotel with a wooden cuckoo clock, and stopped at the top of a road washed green under the arch of the trees.

  “This is the way,” Izabel said, shifting deeper into her right hip. I gave her my arm and she leaned on me as we turned to look behind us down the slope of the street. At its bottom was the car parked in the Tourist Court, Mother in her new grave, and my unborn baby in Lorene.

  IZABEL

  We walked through a maze of white gazebos toward the cancer hospital, which had once been a grand hotel. At the entrance, a starched nurse pushed a wheelchaired lady across the lawn.

  My brother swept off his hat before the women. “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Good afternoon.” They nodded.

  “My name is Robert Sibley and I’d like to speak with the doctor if I could.”

  So polite, cautious even. I knew better and said nothing. I was busy watching the windows for a glimpse of lavender and white. A white tie. A white jacket. A lavender cravat. He thought they were the two most beautiful colors in the world. Or at least they foretold of a long life without debt.

  The nurse smiled, blond and soft in white. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, ma’am,” Robert said. “My mother, Clementine died here and I’m hoping he could speak about her last days.”

  “You poor dear,” said the lady in the wheelchair.

  The nurse stroked the lady’s hair like a little girl plays with her second best doll. “I’m sorry but the doctor is busy on his rounds. I will certainly tell him that you were here.”

  Robert was about to walk away. I put my hand on his arm. “How long will he be?” he asked.

  “Oh I’m afraid the doctor won’t be done until late tonight.” The nurse bent over a white table and poured from a pitcher of water. She handed the woman a full glass. “Water?” she asked us.

  “Did you know my mother?” I asked the nurse. “Clementine Sibley.”

  Under her smile, I could see the nurse getting anxious. She didn’t want me talking about patients dying, that here it was all they ever did, that the only ones to walk out were the ones who had never been sick—only the hypochondriacs with their ulcerated eyes and their clean clean bodies left “cured.”

  “Clementine was a very charming woman. But she was too far along by the time she reached us. I only wish she hadn’t waited so long to come. Though we never turn anybody away.” The nurse smiled down at the woman. “Because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the hardest case leave cancer free.”

  I looked at the woman in the wheelchair, too weak to walk. She called us poor, but she was the fool who had likely sold every last thing to die alone in pain. “What kind of cancer do you have?” I put my hands in my pocket and felt for the scissors. “The truth is,” I said, “you have to get it cut out and they don’t believe in that here.”

  “Poor thing,” the nurse said to the woman almost confidentially. “There’s all kinds of grief.”

  Robert took me by the wrist but I kept talking. “At first you’ll feel better, then you’ll feel worse, and they tell you that’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel so that in the end you’re too sick to leave.”

  The woman tried to wheel herself away, dropping her glass. “You let that be,” the nurse said. “Let me wheel you back into the shade.” She took the handles of the wheelchair, saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Robert dragged me across the lawn until we were behind a statue of stone horses attempting escape. I tried to pull loose but he hugged me tight, our faces so close I could see under his nose where he had cut himself shaving. In the fuss, it had started to bleed.

  “See everybody’s sorry,” he said.

  Why did he give up so easy? My twin, my brother, both of us out of the same body.

  “Just let it be.”

  We could have found the man in lavender and white right then.

  “You’re not breathing—breathe.”

  So I breathed in Robert and the horses and a world that didn’t have my mother in it.

  ROBERT

  We walked off the road and through the woods to the creek. The so-called healing waters. But it couldn’t ever cure us.

  I knew she was mad at me because I was mad at her. It was already a hard day—why’d she have to go and make it harder? We burned under every word, every turn of the head.

  We stopped at the bank overlooking the creek, the water wide and deep enough to reflect the trees, the sound of it a relief. I found a patch of open grass and sat down to roll some tobacco. “Be careful,” I said, “there’s snakes.”

  “I love the water,” she said, ignoring me.

  I pointed at the dragonflies floating between the pines. “See, snake doctors all over the place.” When I’d finished rolling a cigarette, I said, “You think I don’t know about Mother.”

  Izabel picked up a big, mossed stick and sat down with her right leg straight. She looked like a puppet with a couple of snapped strings. “Just small town gossip,” she said.

  But when Mother came home late, you could smell where she’d been. “Lorene says the whole town knows.” A smell like curdled milk but sweet.

  “Lorene’s just jealous,” Izabel said, grinding the stick into the dirt.

  “Of what?”

  “She’s already sagging.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “You married her not me.” She was writing her name in the dirt.

  “They call Mother the town whore.”

  Izabel threw the stick at me. It hit me in the chest, staining my white shirt. I grabbed it off the ground and she scrambled up. “Don’t,” she said.

  It was like a hot tightness wanted out of my skin and the only way was to hit something. I swung the stick. It missed. A practice swing. I only needed to hit her once and then I’d be done. It’d be all out. Then I’d feel empty and clean and sorry. And I’d love her. I’d be flooded with love. It always came rushing right back afterward.

  I whacked her in the hip and she yelped. I wouldn’t have done it again if she hadn’t smiled. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe spite. But she smiled.

  I swung hard and hit her leg. She cried out, stumbling back, looking behind her at the creek, then quickly back up at me.

  “Don’t,” I said, dropping the stick.

  But it hadn’t even hit the ground before she was making for the bank’s edge. I’d never seen her move so fast. I came after her as she went sliding down the bank and into the creek, falling forward, her head going under the thick current, mud on the bottom loosening, clouding the water and swallowing her whole.

  When Mother brought Izabel home from the polio ward, where for weeks she’d been sealed off in a little cell with a window like the porthole of a sunken ship, I was so much bigger than my sister that I could pick her up, and I did, carrying her from the car to the kitchen where Mother opened a jar of cherries and we stuck in our whole hands, and Mother, still a girl herself, didn’t ge
t mad but laughed at the sweet red mess. She scooped Izabel up and ran down to our pond, where she put a hand under my sister’s back while she floated, saying, “Now doesn’t that feel good?” And I knew it did, everything did because we had a beautiful mother we could touch.

  I jumped in and found my feet could feel the bottom. I waded to her as quick as I could, going under so I could lift her up. She coughed into my shoulder as I carried her back up the incline of the muddy bank. “Are you hurt?” I asked, setting her down.

  She sat with her hands covering her face. “I’m fine,” she said but couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Dammit.” I looked away while she tried to compose herself. “I dropped my cigarette. Probably set the woods on fire.” I bent to slap the weeds from her wet dress.

  I found the cigarette still burning and began smoking it, wandering my patch of grass. Izabel came and leaned against a tree, and as she wrung out her skirt, I saw something heavy in her pocket.

  “What’s that?” I pointed.

  “Scissors,” she said.

  “Why are you carrying them?”

  “They were Mother’s. I brought them from home.”

  She stood there, squeezing the water from her dark hair and I knew I should ask something more but didn’t.

  I stamped out my cigarette. “I know she wasn’t a whore, but those men treated her like she was.”

  She rubbed her hip. “Or maybe they liked her but nobody wanted to get married.”

  “That’s Mother talking. Here.” I came over and slipped off her shoes and shook the water out. “Sit down if you’re hurting.”

  “I don’t want to get my dress muddy.”

  “Iz, how would you have liked to go around town, running into men—damn ugly men—having them smile at you because they know and you know that they’ve been all over your mother?”

  “Put my shoes back on,” she said.

  I slid them on her feet. “Let’s go,” I said.

  Izabel rubbed the dirt off her hands. “No, not yet.”