In the Middle of All This

by Fred G. Leebron

  She ran up in the sopping clothes and got a flashlight and brought it back down to the basement and opened the dark stall that held the furnace and the water heater. Out shot a furry, four-legged thing, and before she could swing something at it, it raced across the floor, over the stairs, past the lazy or tongue-tied cats, and up into the house. She strangled back her outrage.

  “Where is it, exactly,” she muttered to herself, her voice nearly calm, as she waved the flashlight. At the base of the water heater, she found what looked like a good prospect. She turned the tap until she couldn’t turn it any more, then came out from the stall and shut the door. The basement sink was still. Despite all the water the sump pump had yet to kick on. In the kitchen, she dialed the first plumber she could find and made an appointment, searched halfheartedly for the mouse that the cats apparently had no interest in, and got the mop and bucket, took a gulp of wine, and shut herself down in the basement. At least Martin would be home soon. It was nothing, really. She mopped and wrung and emptied, mopped and wrung and emptied. When the upstairs door opened, she was distractedly slaving away.

  “What happened?” he said gloomily, not even kissing her.

  She told him.

  “This fucking basement,” he said. “Did you call the home-warranty guys?”

  “No.” She felt a pang of fury.

  “Well, we have to use their plumber. Otherwise we’ll get charged for this shit. And I have no idea what to do about the fucking mouse.”

  “Do you have to talk like that?”

  He looked at her.

  “I was here with no one to help me, and I did the best I could. For god’s sake, can’t you just shut up and give me some sympathy?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said blankly. He picked up the second mop and started to work. She’d told him to shut up. You were never supposed to tell him to shut up. It was the one thing that hurt him easily. It was how his mother had scolded him growing up. Shut up, she’d said. Just shut up. Over and over and over again. Lauren couldn’t look at him as she mopped. Upstairs, the phone rang and neither of them moved to answer it. The machine clicked on, and she hoped it would be a hang up. In her wet clothes she shivered. It was amazing how he could take any situation when she deserved a little sympathy and understanding and turn it around in an instant to where he deserved it more. He brought any guilt out in you. How the hell did he do that? She shouldn’t give in. She shook her head. Her face was hot.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  All week she attended morning conferences on the Inner Child, and in the afternoons she ground up wheat-grass, carrots, beets, ginger, apple, tomato, banana, any root or herb that had any medicinal value, and juiced and juiced. On Thursday and Friday she took a series of flushes and topped them off with a colonic. She felt terrific.

  When the ayahuasca guy arrived at two on Saturday, she was surprised and disappointed to discover that he was white. He was expensive. Richard had removed the table and the television from the living room and drawn all the shutters, and she and he smiled uncertainly at the man while he slipped off his shoes in the hall and brought his rug and his bag into the empty living room. Richard had lit candles.

  “We light them later,” he said. Richard nodded and went around snuffing them out. The man undid the rug and unrolled it on the living-room floor, took a mug from his bag and poured from a thermos the ayahuasca-soaked water into it.

  “You must concentrate, of course,” he said. “That is virtually everything.”

  They each sat on a side of the rug, one side empty.

  “A few breaths,” he said.

  They breathed. She could hear her and Richard’s empty stomachs whining. Now they passed the mug and swallowed a bitter drink. It could get inside, under the nothing, and it would bring the spirit out and you could see who you were, who you could be, who you would be. The principle was not to define any shape, he said. He chanted. They chanted. The room grew darker, and they breathed. At the window there was a wind. The candles grew brighter. There were so many positions within the position of sitting. There were no limits in any definition of you. There was breathing without sound. There was feeling the hairiness of the rug but not feeling it. There was his white face that might not after all be white. There were weeks in hours. There was counting without numbers. The candles lingered as if time were not an issue, and that could be true, too, that it was now beyond time. You had your own reference and it was not time; it was elemental. There was love. There was peace. There was an emptiness so sorrowful it was filled with joy. Beyond the body and beyond time were only purity, simplicity, truth, and more emptiness, and the emptiness was like the inside of a diamond, a clarity of being nothing but itself and impossible to see, and it was beautiful and it was you. And just like a diamond, you could not be broken down into nothing, because you were always something and the something was the emptiness and the emptiness was you.

  Then, in the night, he pulled everything back into his bag and rolled up the rug and let himself out, and she and Richard still sat in their positions that weren’t positions, in the cleared living room now empty of him.

  She wanted to say so much, and yet she knew that if she did it would ruin it for him, and besides it was clear from the stillness that she was not supposed to.

  Wow, she might have said.

  Wow, he might have said.

  Now what?

  “I love this place,” Ruben said as they took seats at a window table at Rosita’s. “Don’t you just love this place?

  “It’s a great place.” Under the fluorescent lights Martin looked at the laminated menu. He never went out for lunch, but Ruben had insisted it was part of the review process.

  “So how’s it going? How are things?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Annka torturing you?”

  “Of course.”

  “That bitch,” Ruben said. “But you’ve got to know she has absolutely no ultimate influence. I mean, look, we were able to hire you. How’s Lauren holding up?”

  “Good. Good.”

  Rositas brother came and they ordered. Ruben drummed his fingertips on the Formica table. Martin leaned back in the vinyl booth and stretched. They watched the brother drift around in the kitchen.

  “This was where we interviewed you two,” Ruben said.

  “Yup.” On the television perched up in the corner, two overly made-up characters were looking at each other with glistening eyes, talking softly in Spanish. Then the woman’s voice rose and she slapped the man, and he stood there touching his cheek.

  “Julia isn’t doing too well,” Ruben said. “A week out of rehab she was walking around town slugging painkillers, and I had to put her back in. A total fucking free fall.”

  Martin made himself look at Ruben. He’d had no idea. “I’m sorry.”

  “Your lawyer couldn’t take the case. He’s been representing the director of fucking human resources of the company in her divorce.” He shook his head. “Have you seen Lazlo around?”

  “Not since—”

  “That guy is going to go down in a ball of flame. I’ve been sending him e-mails, leaving messages. Nothing.”

  Their iced teas came and they sipped them.

  “I wouldn’t care,” Ruben said, “except for Cindy, of course. I’ve known her as long as I’ve known him. She’s my best friend. Besides David. You haven’t heard from him at all?”

  “Not a word.”

  “That fucker. I tell him that in my e-mails. I say, You fucker, you are fucking up your life, what is the fucking matter with you?” The iced tea splashed from his glass as he angrily set it down. “I write him that I know he is destroying himself out of his own self-love, but that doesn’t mean he can destroy other people. That fucker.”

  “That’s being direct,” Martin said.

  “It’s what all this shit with Julia has taught me. Be direct. You suspect something, be direct. You see something, be direct. You know something, be direct. Fire away.”
/>   “I feel that—”

  “Of course you do.”

  They sat there looking at each other.

  “So what do you want to say?” Ruben said.

  “About what?”

  “Tell me about your sister.”

  “I’d rather—”

  “Come on!”

  “She’s fine.” He saw Ruben staring at him. “Okay, she’s not fine.”

  “Why are you so obsessed with her? Is she your only sister?” Martin shook his head. “Your favorite?” Martin nodded. “You feel guilty? You feel fearful for your own mortality? This thing is tearing you up!”

  “Come on, Ruben.” Martin sipped his iced tea.

  “It’s just like this thing with Julia. I know that’s a stretch, but I know you can see it. Right?”

  “Sure,” Martin said.

  Rosita’s brother set their enchilada plates in front of them. Finally, Martin thought. Ruben picked up his fork.

  “Fuck all this medical crap,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Martin said.

  “And fuck all this legal crap. And fuck all this work crap. And fuck all this betrayal crap. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” Martin said.

  “That’s what I like about you, Martin. You always agree with me.”

  Martin lifted his fork. “You’re my fucking boss, Ruben.”

  “Right,” Ruben said. He started eating. “Once you have tenure, that kind of goes away.”

  “I know,” Martin said. “Thank god.”

  They ate, Ruben chewing his food loudly and swallowing loudly and gulping his iced tea loudly, as if he thought Martin were a deaf person who needed to know that he was indeed eating and drinking.

  “You must have some questions,” Ruben said, wiping his lips and beard with a handkerchief.

  “Yeah,” Martin said, setting down his fork. “How the hell do you get rid of a mouse?”

  At the Y, Lauren peeled Sarah from her clothes and helped her into her swimsuit, then sat at the window in the lobby and watched her and the other Seals dive and swim. Sarah’s braid swung as she hustled along the apron of the pool, and she shivered and clasped her hands tightly under her chin, as if she were praying.

  “She looks pretty good out there,” Cindy Lazlo said, sliding casually in beside her, even though they hadn’t seen each other in months. She pointed with a thin finger. “I bet she’ll make Porpoise by spring.”

  Lauren hunted for something to say. Even How are you was loaded. “As long as she keeps at it,” she tried.

  “That’s right,” Cindy said. “You guys are crazy to be worried about her.”

  The swim teachers threw out two long, thin rafts, and the kids romped on them and swung at one another with yellow foam-core noodles.

  “This is the only part she likes,” Lauren said.

  “I want you to know I’m doing great,” Cindy said. “I know people at the college must be talking, and I just wanted you to know that.” Her face was as pale and gaunt as ever, and her red hair was thin and wild.

  “I’m glad,” Lauren said. “You look great.”

  “I had a party at the house last night, and there was nobody telling me which CD to play and which wine to serve. You know what I mean?”

  “I know.”

  “I bet you do,” Cindy said. “We all do. How’s Martin’s sister?”

  “Oh.” She gazed at the kids lining up to climb from the pool. “It’s unspeakable.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cindy said.

  “Thank you,” Lauren said.

  “Who knows why anything happens to anybody?” Cindy smiled at the window. “Who knows why people do what they do to each other? Maybe it’s all fate.” She turned to look at Lauren. “Health. Love. Whatever happens.”

  “Maybe,” Lauren said, although she hated when people tried to equate anything they were going through with what was going on with Elizabeth.

  “Maybe everything is fragile and arbitrary,” Cindy said. “That’s all I’m saying. But of course I really don’t believe that. I guess I don’t know what to believe. What do you think Martin’s sister believes?”

  “I think she wants to believe in the possibility of anything,” Lauren said. “That’s why she tries everything. I used to think that people who went to Mexico for laetrile or coffee enemas were just deluding themselves.” She bit her lip. “Well, I don’t anymore.” She rose from the chair and nodded toward the dressing room down the hall. “It’s really great to see you again.”

  “You, too.”

  “Will you be here next week?”

  “They switched the aerobic schedule. I’m actually here this one time just to see you.”

  “Oh.” Lauren blushed. “I should have called.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” Cindy stood and scanned the kids filing from the pool. “We’re all going through something.”

  As Lauren hurried down the hall, she saw Sarah still dog-paddling toward the ladder, her braid wriggling in the water, and she felt as if she were dog-paddling right with her.

  In the dressing room Sarah stood shivering by her locker.

  “Okay, sweetie, suit off,” Lauren said. There were other mothers around, herding their daughters in and out of the shower, reorganizing plastic bags of shampoo and combs and clothes. Sarah pulled off her suit and ran on tiptoes into the shower. Lauren got the water the right temperature and handed her the bar of soap. “Wash up and then you can shampoo,” she said. Water sprayed lightly against her jeans. She stood at the wall in the fog of the shower. She had fifteen minutes to get her dressed and out the door, to race over to campus to pick up Martin on the way to picking up Max. Then home, dinner, bath for Max, bedtime snacks, bedtimes. And when the kids slept, Christmas lists. She had to hunt in the catalogs because the town’s stores sold only Civil War souvenirs, and because she bought from the catalogs, they now received twenty or thirty a week, and they sagged in overweight piles on the kitchen shelves, and every time Martin tried to throw them out she had to stop him. She wasn’t done yet. She had twenty-five people to shop for, and she never knew what she was going to get them until she found it.

  “Okay,” Sarah called from the mist. “Shampoo, mommy.”

  Through the spray she handed her the bottle. “All right,” she pleaded. “Please hurry.”

  Then she felt a rush, and she thought, Oh, oh.

  “Honey, I’ll be right back.”

  In the dark, damp stall, she sat on the toilet and felt the blood leave her. Maybe the whole idea was stupid; maybe she was just a stupid idealist. Martin’s family called her Miss Lauren, as if she were a fragile, arrested presence, but they were the ones who were counting up their time and their money, trying to figure out how much Elizabeth could have. “She’s the one who decided to stay in London,” Martha had said. “If it were me, I would have just come home and gone for the chemo blast.” Elizabeth just wanted her life. Couldn’t they see that? Couldn’t anybody see that? Everything was too bad, it was just too bad, but that didn’t mean that you just did nothing. You had to do something. This right now could have been something. And she loved Elizabeth. Elizabeth was her favorite. Even before her disease, she did what she desired: there’d been a lingerie consultant, a personal trainer, trips to Chile and Africa and the Middle East. She pursued. How could you argue with that?

  Sarah stood counting her fingers under the warm shield of water.

  “Okay, honey,” Lauren said. She pulled her from the shower, shut it off. “Get dressed.”

  “Will you do my hair?”

  “We’ll see.”

  But there’d have to be another try; it wasn’t the last word. Maybe there never was a last word. She believed in hope. She believed in luck. She believed in mercy, but she didn’t know whether mercy meant denial or acceptance.

  From the bag she dug out the hair dryer—what a princess, she couldn’t help thinking—and began on Sarah. Over the roar her daughter said something, and she couldn’t hear it. She clicked off the
dryer.

  “What?” Lauren said.

  “I said thank you,” Sarah said.

  “Oh,” she said, startled. She clicked on the dryer again. “You’re welcome.”

  Sarah had what had been her father’s hair, dirty blond, frizzy. Unpredictable. Sarah liked it in pigtails or a braid, to tighten and straighten the wildness. She wanted straight hair. I love your hair, Lauren kept telling her. I don’t, she’d say. Every morning and after every shower or bath, she had to have it “straightened.” Lauren sprayed it now with a detangler and started hurriedly combing it out. Every time the comb caught, Sarah jumped in pain and Lauren apologized. The other mothers and daughters had already gone. It was just the two of them in the dank locker room. Martin would be standing out in the cold parking lot, Max would be the last howler in the toddler room. Night would have gathered. She kept combing it out and combing it out, but still she could not quite get it straight.

  “So how many times are you going to do it?” Martin said, as they slipped into the study and shut the door behind them. He was wearing a set of oven mitts and toting a hockey stick. The room reeked of old cheese.

  Lauren stepped up onto a chair. “A few more times, at least.”