INTERZONE 253 JUL-AUG 2014

by Andy Cox

  “Are you sure?” I’m sure she’ll be here any minute.”

  “Just let her know I’ll reschedule.” Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet. Dire Straits. He held up his hand, and tried not to run out of the waiting room.

  The medical complex was one of many in the Pill Hill area, and on the edge of a hip, young neighborhood in this Seattle, Capitol Hill. After quizzing a few kids that looked no more than Tibbi’s age – but in scrubs and stethoscopes, holding coffees – one pointed Blankenship towards a music store.

  The store clerk’s face was littered with acne and disorganized facial hairs. But it wasn’t unkind. “I’m looking for a song,” Blankenship told him.

  “Which?”

  “‘Rominey and Julius’,” he said. “By Dire Straitspeare.” It didn’t sound right.

  But the clerk nodded. “In Classics,” he said. Then, after Blankenship didn’t move, led him there, rifled through some skinny plastic cases, and handed him one. It had a blank red cover. But Blankenship didn’t question it. He let the kid lead him back to the register, take his paper money, hand him back a few coins, and then thank him.

  Inside the skinny plastic box was a silver disk. In the sunlight, it reflected the light like a prism. It was beautiful. Only then did Blankenship realize he had no idea how to make the disk play the song.

  But the lady at the motel’s front desk clerk offered to send him up a stereo when he showed the disk to her. “I’m sure we have a boom box somewhere,” she said. “With a CD player.”

  It took some experimenting to see how to plug the grey box into the outlet, and where to place the disk and what button to push to make the music play. Blankenship even found a knob hat made the sound louder or softer.

  Blankenship sat on his bed and listened to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ seven or eight times straight through. He listened a little to other songs on the disk, but he kept going back to the one song. He liked the part about kissing though the bars of Orion, even though he had no idea what the bars of Orion were. The next line was about stars, so he figured it had something to do with the sky.

  He’d never looked at the night sky in this universe; he’d never thought to. He’d been looking down, not up.

  Maybe he should. Maybe after dinner tonight, Tibbi would come with him somewhere to look at the stars. Maybe a park. There were so many streetlights, though. They might not see anything.

  So many streetlights. In the song, Romeo steps out from behind a streetlight and sings to Juliet. Blankenship imagines there’s a streetlight in front of Zhorah’s blue house. He steps out from behind it. He sings to her.

  He started the song over again from the beginning. He sat back a little. He tapped his left knee.

  SESSION SIX

  Blankenship saw the blue car in the driveway of the blue house before he saw Zhorah squatting in front of the porch. She was planting or weeding or something, in a soft line of soil bordering the front of the house.

  It was new. Last time Blankenship was here, there had only been slightly unkempt grass.

  Later, Blankenship would try to sort out whether it was surprise, or terror, or a subconscious desire to be discovered that kept him standing there and staring at Zhorah until she looked up and turned around.

  “Seth?” she called.

  The sounds of his name made Blankenship almost crumple at the knees. “Yes,” he said.

  She was in front of him. She called his name again, “Seth,” sounding pleased. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, and she was close enough for Blankenship to see her eyes, her strange, wonderful eyes – just like their daughter’s – blue with a ring of caramel brown. Then she hugged him.

  He felt a layer of unfamiliar fat around her middle. She smelled like dirt and salt and vaguely like cigarettes. He wanted to throw her down onto the grass right that second. Rip off her plaid shirt, kiss her shoulders, push his face in this new chubby belly. Instead, he pushed her gently away.

  You haven’t been at book group and not answering emails. I figured you took off on one of your trips.”

  “Nope,” he said. Ferguson took trips. He could understand that. He was looking for something. Or trying to get away. Either one made sense.

  “What are you doing here?” Zhorah asked. She led him across the lawn towards the porch stairs. “Come inside. Tell me everything.”

  He wanted to. He wanted to tell her everything. But he couldn’t tell her anything. “No,” he said. “I can’t. I felt bad I hadn’t see you, and wound up nearby, so…” He trailed off. Let her fill in the blanks. “But I have an appointment.”

  “OK, Seth,” she said. She sounded genuinely disappointed. “I’m glad you showed your face at least.”

  “I miss your face,” he blurted. Stupid.

  But Zhorah just made a happy sound and poked him playfully. “Thanks.”

  Blankenship backed away.

  “See you soon,” Zhorah said.

  Dr Reed was not happy with him. He’d never rescheduled his appointment, and made him sit through a lecture about how important continuity and commitment were in any treatment. He half listened. He looked past the light stick. He was trying to keep the image of Zhorah’s face steady and clear.

  “I miss my wife’s face,” he said.

  “Tell me about her. Tell me about the last time you saw her.”

  “Her funeral,” he said. It was half a lie, since the Zhorah he saw today had never been his wife. Then, he suddenly put something together. “Your scarf,” he said.

  “The one you didn’t like?” Dr Reed asked.

  “It’s not that I didn’t like it…” he started. It was, he realized, just like Zhorah’s veil.

  In the coffin, her face was covered, as dictated by tradition, with the painted silk veil. Most people had loved ones paint a veil for them after they die, but Zhorah had wanted them to paint their own. She’d painted hers in bright colors, with a pattern like a tadpole, a symbol, in his universe, of life and new beginnings. It was garish.

  “By the time this drapes me,” Zhorah had said, “the colors will have muted down.”

  But they hadn’t. Zhorah’s veil was as distracting at Dr Reed’s scarf.

  “That’s a beautiful tradition,” Dr Reed said. “Are you there, right now? At the funeral?”

  “Yes,” he said. He felt Tibbi next to him. She had just had a growth spurt, but was not tall enough to see into the coffin. Blankenship reached out to his wife – something he hadn’t actually done that day – and pulled off her veil. He looked at her face.

  He couldn’t tell if it was his Zhorah, or the Zhorah he saw today. The ache rose, and almost choked him. His Zhorah died, and now didn’t exist. “My wife is gone from us forever,” he said to the light stick.

  Dr Reed lowered the light. “It’s fine to be sad,” she said. “You should be sad about that.”

  He hadn’t told Tibbi yet that there was a Zhorah in this universe. He never wanted to tell her. “Maybe we just need to forget,” he said. “Start over somewhere else.”

  “You haven’t been able to even look at what happened to you yet,” Dr Reed said. She leaned forward, ready to tap his knee. “Do you need your safe place?”

  “No,” he said. “I think I’m all right.”

  “That’s wonderful, Mr Blankenship,” Dr Reed said. “I think we made some progress today.”

  SESSION SEVEN

  Tibbi stayed home from school, so he stayed home from work. But she wouldn’t let him miss his therapy appointment. “I’ll be OK, Baba,” she said, from her bed.

  “Are you eating junk?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m eating OK. I’m eating what you eat.”

  “It’s stress then,” he said. He sat down next to his daughter and stroked her hair. She laid her head in his lap like she did when she was little. “Maybe staying here isn’t a good idea.” He knew it wasn’t, but he wanted to introduce the idea gently to her. She’d weathered so much already. “We could start over. Anyplace you want.”

/>   Tibbi opened her blue and brown eyes and blinked at him. “None of them are home, though.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Tibbi let him pet her hair a few more times. Then she rolled over onto her stomach and stuck out her long, birdy legs. She had Zhorah’s eyes and Zhorah’s body. “It’s OK, Baba. We’re lucky. We could have ended up in a place with no gravity. Or sunlight. There are an infinite number of multiverses.” She looked up at him. “We could have ended up nowhere at all.”

  “Where did you hear about all that?” he asked. “Multiverses?”

  “I read about them at school,” she said. “I looked it up in the library.” She turned her face into the pillow. Her hair, just like his hair, reddish-brownish like the bark of a tree, spread on the pillow. She was muffled, but Blankenship could still hear. “We’re awful lucky.”

  Blankenship resigned to patting his daughter on the shoulder. “We sure are, precious,” he said. “We sure are. Sip your soda.” He’d brought her a few cans of soda and was letting them go warm and flat. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” He stood up. “Bring me those multiverse books when you get a chance. I’d like to see them.”

  “OK, Baba,” Tibbi said into the pillow.

  A slim box lay on his chair when he got to the appointment. He sat down and turned it over in his hands.

  “It’s for you,” she said.

  He was afraid of it for some reason, and said so.

  “I help people pick open their lives,” she explained. “I have seen how powerful meaningful coincidences are.”

  Inside, wrapped in a sheet of tissue paper, was Dr Reed’s distracting scarf. Zhorah’s death veil. He pulled it out and held it open.

  “You said you and your daughter had nothing from your old life,” Dr Reed said.

  “Thank you,” he said. He didn’t know what else to say, so he didn’t say anything else. He balled the scarf into a hand, and then stuffed the hand in his pocket. He squeezed it. He felt better and worse.

  “Tell me what you’re feeling,” Dr Reed said.

  “I feel happy,” he said. “And sadder than ever. I feel confused. And lost.” The silk of the scarf was cool and slippery. “More lost than ever.”

  “Like you still don’t know your place?”

  He nodded. He longed, suddenly, for the light stick. Something to focus on besides Dr Reed’s face. He was seeing her now as Evelyn Meridian, the psychiatric researcher that lived next door to their little, white cottage. In his universe, her wife’s name was Rita. Rita was a painter. She and Zhorah had been good friends. They’d collaborated on a few illustrated poems before Zhorah’s car accident. Evelyn and Rita had been over the house for dinner so many times. They watched Tibbi so he and Zhorah could have nights out.

  He closed his eyes.

  “What do you think will help you find your place?” Evelyn Meridian/Reed asked.

  SESSION EIGHT

  Dr Reed gave him more homework. Not a worksheet, though, and not to practice going to his safe place in his mind. She wanted him to visit places, real places, which meant something to him.

  No place in this universe really did.

  He didn’t remember which corner he and Tibbi appeared on, and wasn’t sure he wanted to remember. He passed the hospital where they were treated on his way to therapy, and they still lived at the motel. The metalworkers’ union hall where he worked didn’t feel particularly special, except that he spent thirty hours a week there. And Tibbi rarely wanted to eat at the same restaurant twice but instead try everything in this Seattle.

  That left Ferguson’s.

  Ferguson had just come home when Blankenship walked up. His car, a black sporty-looking deal – Blankenship approved – was in the driveway with the trunk open. And Ferguson was ferrying packages back and forth into his kitchen.

  Blankenship watched him for awhile. Like he expected, Ferguson ignored him. Then, Blankenship took the long way to his appointment.

  “I didn’t know what to say to him,” Blankenship told Dr Reed.

  “To yourself,” she said. She still thought this was all a metaphor.

  “To this myself,” he said.

  Dr Reed just started up the light stick when the receptionist with the ombré hair knocked firmly on the office door, then stuck her head all the way in to the neck. “I’m sorry to disturb your session, Dr Reed,” she said, “but there’s a phone call for Mr Blankenship. It’s his daughter’s school.”

  Blankenship’s field of vision narrowed to a tube. The phone at the front desk was warm, the mouthpiece a little damp. He made a hello sound.

  “Mr Blankenship? This is Annie Tompkins. I’m the nurse at Seward Middle School. Your daughter was having severe abdominal pain, so we’ve called an ambulance. Do you have a hospital preference?”

  He said the name of the hospital where they’d been first treated. It was the only one he knew by name, and it was just around the corner. He was surprised he didn’t scream. “I will meet you there,” he said. Then, he hung up.

  Dr Reed took one look at his face. “Mary,” she said to the receptionist. “Cancel my afternoon appointments.” She stepped forward and took Blankenship firmly by the arm. It was something Evelyn Meridian would do. “I’m going with you.”

  The hospital was a blur. Emergency directed them to Pediatrics, and Pediatrics had them sit in the waiting room. The walls were painted with colorful animals, ostensibly to cheer up the children in the ward. But the artist hadn’t paid much attention to the animals’ eyes. Some were wall- or cross-eyed. Others seemed to be starting off into a distance at nothing at all.

  Blankenship didn’t know how long they sat there, until a physician came out, clipboard and white coat and all, and called Blankenship’s name. He took them into a small office. One wall was lined with stuffed animals in improbable colors: raccoons, bears, cats, even an armadillo. They all watched Blankenship with shiny, sharp glass eyes.

  He didn’t know which was worse. The mural animals or these.

  “Tibbi has Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease,” the doctor said. “It’s genetic. Have you or your wife ever been diagnosed?”

  Blankenship shook his head.

  “It only takes one gene. Sometimes, there are no symptoms at all.”

  “Is she OK?” he asked.

  The doctor nodded. “She’ll need treatment. I have forms for you to sign. We’d like to give her dialysis today.”

  “But she’ll be OK?” he asked.

  “She’ll need to eat a special diet. Drink more water than she has. Regular dialysis. And she’ll need to be monitored.” The doctor held out a paper with numbers on it. “Her GFR is high.”

  “GFR?”

  “Measures renal function,” the doctor explained.

  “Is there a cure?” Dr Reed said.

  “No,” the doctor said. “There’s no cure. But we’d like to start testing today to see if either of you are a donor match.” The doctor leaned in. “I know it’s a lot to take in. But we should have everything set up in case she needs a new kidney, and living donors are preferable to cadavers.”

  “I’m her father,” Blankenship said. “Why wouldn’t I be a match?”

  “Some relatives aren’t,” the doctor said. “Tissue, blood type, immune function. Can be tricky. But one of you should be a good candidate.”

  He thought Dr Reed was Zhorah. “She isn’t her mother,” Blankenship said.

  “But I’d like to be tested, anyway,” Dr Reed said. “I’m a friend of the family.”

  “Can I see her?” Blankenship asked. He wanted to see his daughter immediately. He wanted to see her eyes – Zhorah’s eyes – and get away from all these blank animals.

  “Of course,” the doctor said. He led them down a hallway. Dr Reed stood outside as Blankenship went in.

  Tibbi looked so small, lost on the hospital bed. Tubes led from her arms and nose to the wall. Blankenship moved the tubes aside to hold his daughter.

  “Baba,” she sobbed.
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br />   “It’s OK, precious,” he said. “Baba will fix it. Baba will get you everything you need.” He sang into her hair, about streetlights, and talk on the TV, and the bars of Orion.

  They hadn’t noticed Dr Reed had come in and sat down.

  “What are the bars of Orion?” Tibbi asked. She wiped her eyes on a corner of the sheet.

  “Orion’s a constellation,” Dr Reed said.

  Tibbi looked at Dr Reed. “Evelyn?” she asked. Her mouth fell open.

  Dr Reed raised her eyebrows at being called Evelyn. “Hello, Tibbi,” she said. “I have heard a lot about you too.”

  SESSION NINE

  He wasn’t a good match. Neither was Dr Reed. Tibbi would be placed on a transplant list once her GFR hit about twenty five milliliters per minute.

  “We can just sit and talk today,” Dr Reed said.

  “No,” he said. “I need to face this target stuff.” He had to face it so he could face whatever came next. He’d prepared a little. Tibbi’s teacher brought her books to the motel so Tibbi could catch up on homework, and had included the book on Introductory M-Verse Theory.

  “All right,” Dr Reed said. She held out the light stick. “Watch the light. Imagine the target event. Be there. Talk to me about what you feel.”

  It’d been a regular day. Blankenship always imaged that the end of the world – the end of the universe – would have some sort of sign, a warning at least. But the sky was clear and Tibbi was late for school, as usual. He had a deadline that afternoon, for a review on a movie he couldn’t even remember the plot of right after watching, much less now. So, he had the time to walk Tibbi to school, which she wasn’t crazy about but allowed him to do, as long as he peeled off a block from the edge of the ball field.

  They walked, and talked about something, then something else, and he offered to help Tibbi hold her enormous schoolbag at least once. But then, he got a chill, and she must have too, because she didn’t shake off his hand.

  The sky turned black in an instant. Not black like night, but black like wrong. The sidewalk rolled beneath them, like a wave of water. He thought it was an earthquake, or the long dormant volcano they called Mount Bydell had come to life. He jumped on his daughter. He knocked her onto the ground, and he folded himself around her. He covered as much of her as he could. She screamed into his chest, and he held onto the top of her head. Wind whipped dust, then gravel, then straight up debris which bounded and scraped his back. It carried away her school bag.