I could imagine the singed smell of mustache hair and cooking lip, the bubbling noise, the shriek, the way it felt as the knife tore away.
I huddled on the floor. The flashing television light shimmered from the walls and licked under the couch, under the table, into every nook and cranny until there was nowhere to hide and I felt as though I was drowning.
* * *
THE HOUSE WAS SEALED and the AC on high. I cooked myself lamb chops for dinner, but when I cut into them and saw the blood, I couldn’t eat. Rip licked at the blood, but wouldn’t touch the meat.
I drank three beers, one after the other, until I felt that fizzing fuzz in my forebrain, but I didn’t relax. I ran myself a bath. Don’t be silly, I told myself as I bobbed in the warm water, Minnesota is twelve hundred miles away. Oh, but, said a little voice inside, but …
* * *
IT’S AIMING TO KILL YOU. Rip smiles, the way cats cannot. I shudder. It’s aiming to kill you. And then Rip’s face changes and it’s the murdered man from Minnesota smiling and saying, “Mara, the senator still isn’t taking our calls,” and his mustache turns into a caterpillar that humps off his lip and onto the microphone he is using to speak, his hair is darkening and his face is changing, getting older, thinner—
I woke and surged upright. The senator. A man in a wheelchair, mustache neatly shaved off and hair its natural gray-stippled brown, pointing out for the camera—for me—who was who at the fund-raiser in Minneapolis, in Richfield, a suburb of Minneapolis. Douglas. Add a few years, put him in a chair, take off his mustache, grow out the dyed hair. Karl D. Brawn.
Oh God.
I pulled on a T-shirt and scrolled back through CAT email. The latest memo from Minnesota was signed D. I went back a few weeks. Doug. And before that: Doug Braun. Braun, not Brawn. In the eerie blue glow of my screen, the skin on my arms looked grayish. Like a corpse.
I searched Facebook and there he was: Karl Douglas Braun. The photo CNN had used was a throwback profile picture. He must have posted it recently. Doug.
His lover had died sixteen years ago from HIV accelerated by leishmaniasis picked up in Texas. Doug thought some miracle had protected him from HIV—and then he was diagnosed with MS. Some miracle, he’d said. There were good treatments for HIV now. For MS, not so much. He had been fighting back, like me, climbing the wall of the bucket, but trying wasn’t enough. It was never enough. To the animals who beat and tortured and killed him it didn’t matter how close he had come to swinging the Minnesota senatorial vote. He was just a cripple. Trying didn’t matter. What was the point? They got you in the end. He had been so proud of his lightweight chair, his specially adapted van, “I’m doing pretty good,” he had said from his driveway, tilting his phone to horizontal to show his van. “I can go buy my own toys now, and meet my Grindr hookups.” And he gave me an ironic grin. He had told me a while ago that he had never used a dating app in his life. “No need,” he’d said. “A thoracic lesion took care of that stuff years ago.” But he did flirt. So alive. So adamant. Refusing to bow his head. Until those idiot children came along and … murdered him. To them, he was just a queer cripple. With a target tattooed on his forehead.
* * *
AROUND DAWN THE NEXT DAY, I looked up a home security company and phoned them at eight. “I want a monitored system.”
Their representative came out that morning. My legs were so stiff I had to use the cane to get to the door. When I opened it the air was already thick with moisture. He had a big neck and sweated heavily. Once in the living room, he put his briefcase down by his feet and looked at the ceiling and walls. “Well, your infrared scanning system is the most secure”—he pronounced it see-cure—“but you got the pet.” He pointed his tablet at Miz Rip, who was looking at him suspiciously from the couch. “It’d set the alarms off ten times a day. Lessen of course you keep it outside at night.”
“She. No.” I leaned on my cane. “She’s got her own door. Comes and goes as she pleases.”
He shook his head. “Then it’ll have to be touch sensors on the doors and windows.” Winn-ders. He shook his head again.
“They aren’t any good?”
“Oh, they’re good, just not as good. Course, they are less expensive. If that’s the kind of thing that worries you.”
I could imagine him in a funeral home, sniffing loudly and sighing when the freshly bereaved wanted something less than the craftsman-made polished mahogany with genuine silk lining and solid brass handles. I knew he was just doing his best to get a fatter commission, but what if Doug had had a system that wasn’t good enough? “Do you have any literature on the subject?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He picked up his briefcase and walked to the dining room table. “Mind if I set?” He didn’t wait for my permission. He splayed three different brochures in front of me. “Now, this here’s your top-of-the-line, no-expense-spared system. The—”
I limped over. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I want to read them at my leisure, think about it a little.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “but we could all save some time if you’d just look at—”
“No. I want to read them for myself.”
He smiled in that salesman way that meant he wasn’t listening to a word I said. “Surely, ma’am. I need to make a phone call, anyhow.” He whipped an enormous phone from his briefcase and hit a number before I could say anything.
“Steve!” he said. “Got those specs from the Dunwoody job this morning. Sure. Right here. No problem.”
He seemed to be settling down for a long conversation. I wanted him to leave. What would I do if he refused? That huge neck. Those big hands. My bad leg and thin stick.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh.” He watched me with his beady eyes while he listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone. It occurred to me that if he wanted to enter a woman’s house in the middle of the night, he had the perfect job.
This was ridiculous. His company knew he was here. He needed my business to make money. And he had been rude. “I want you to leave,” I said.
“Hold on, Steve.” He tucked the phone against his chest. “Ma’am?”
“I would like you to leave.” I bent and picked up his briefcase, held it out until he took it.
“But, ma’am, if you’ll just—”
“You will leave now.” I limped to the front door and held it open.
He stood up. “I’ll call back tomorrow.”
“No. I’ll call your office when and if I’m ready to talk to someone.”
He left, loosening his collar and looking perplexed. If I had had the coordination, I would have kicked him.
I called another company. “And send a woman, assuming you have any working for you.”
The woman who came turned out to be the owner of the local franchise. She was brisk and businesslike, and utterly silent as she looked over the place.
“Will having sensors on the doors and windows be good enough?”
“Unless you think someone wants to try to come through the wall or down the chimney.” She smiled. A joke. Relief broke over me. Of course. They weren’t superhuman.
Maybe her company was generally more efficient, or maybe I got special treatment, but I had the system—double deadbolts on every door, twist keys on the windows, and their app on my phone—installed the next day. I tapped in as the code number 7-8-85 before I realized what I’d done. Rose’s birthday, the number we’d always used as PINs for our debit cards, our garage, our voicemail access number. I hit cancel, and then didn’t know what to punch in instead. The only other date I could think of was 11–17—November 2017, the month all this started.
* * *
EMAIL FROM AIYANA:
I saw the date and realized it was the start of softball season over there. I miss those games. I wish I could be out there with you. I’d be your designated runner. Is someone doing that for you?
I rubbed the muscle under my eye preemptively.
I don’t want anyone to *do* thing
s for me. I’m not looking for almost-sport, where we can all pretend I’m still just the same. I’m not the same. What’s the fucking point of softball if someone runs for you? It’s like eating carob while everyone else is eating chocolate but pretending you think carob’s just as good, when everyone knows it’s fucking vile. Also, it’s too hot out in the sun for someone with MS.
The sun no longer slanted into the living room; I opened the blinds and saw Josh ambling up the driveway with a basket. He knocked. I limped to the door. He stood, basket at his feet, looking perplexed. He had never stopped by before.
“Haven’t seen you about much,” he said. “And Apple said you were looking not exactly.”
Not exactly. One way of saying I had a disease that was trying to kill me and was surrounded by people who did not care one way or the other. “You should come in,” I said. I was too tired to stand.
“Sure.”
We sat in the kitchen. He put the basket on the table. “Got more than we need this year.”
Neat rows of brightly colored squash, tomatoes, and peppers. And in the middle a carefully wrapped box like a double deck of cards.
“That’s, uh. Weed’s good for most things. I thought, y’know…”
I lifted it out. Unfolded the intricately creased paper—Apple’s work, like the precise rows of produce. Inside was a plastic bag of five dried flowers and a small hinged metal box with an odd not-quite-lightning symbol on the lid. I opened it. A battery charger, two batteries, something the size of a big black pillbox labeled “Zeus,” an oblong wooden-and-glass box with the same odd symbol, a tiny brush, and a short glass tube. I had no idea what it was but it seemed a miracle of compact engineering.
“That’s just a loan. To see if vaping works for you. No rush to return it. We have two.”
Of course they did. “Are there … instructions?” Instructions even a paranoid cripple could understand?
“There’s YouTube videos. Or I could show you?”
A genuine choice. How novel. I nodded.
He pinched off a minuscule bit of the flower bud, opened the pillbox, which turned out to be a grinder, zussed the weed, slid open the glass lid on the vaporizer—it opened upward, like a folding razor—tapped in the weed granules, used the brush to center them in the trench, and inserted the glass tube. He did it fast and without thinking, as with any action set deep in muscle memory. He took one of the batteries and moved the black plastic cap from one end to another and slid it into place. “It won’t engage until you press it in.”
Engage what?
“So, here.” He held it out.
I just looked at it, looked at him. “Show me.”
“Sure.” He resettled the box in his hand so the tube was toward him, and his thumb against the battery. “You push here. Wait six seconds.” Lifted the box, and sucked on the tube like it was a breathing straw. Slow and steady. After a bit he waggled his eyebrows at me and let go of the battery, drew for another second or two, then lifted it away and breathed out. No smoke to speak of, but I could definitely smell it. He smiled dreamily. “We went with a heavy indica for you, but next time we can go lighter.” He put the box gently on the table. “Want to try?”
“Later,” I said. “Work to do first.” I hated learning in public.
He could have grinned knowingly but he just said, “Sure,” and stood. He no longer looked hesitant or uncertain. All those times I thought he was stoned he was probably just unnerved by reality. This was his real sphere of competence. “Just try it at the end of your day, y’know?”
I limped with him to the door. Opened it. “Josh? I—thank you. And thank Apple.”
“Sure. Anytime.”
Back at the table I pondered the thought that had gone into the whole basket. Rose and I had made fun of him for years in private, but he wasn’t stupid; we always know how people really feel about us. Yet he had done this.
* * *
THE FIRST TIME I USED THE WEED—or, as I learned from YouTube, took a hit with my Magic Flight Launch Box—I understood Josh’s dreamy look. I sat spread like a starfish on the sofa and felt no urge to do anything but stare at the ceiling for a week. It turned out to be twenty-five minutes. I slept without dreams. I woke up thinking, What would happen if I had an intruder while I was incapacitated? The next night I did not use it; my sleep was disjointed and jumbled. So I began to use a tiny amount at night just before bed. But during the day my anxiety levels kept climbing.
A week after Doug’s murder I went numb from the hips down. I started on the IV prednisolone again. The nurse at the infusion center took four tries to find a vein in my left arm and get the cannula firmly seated. The weed was the only thing that helped me sleep. And being asleep was the only time I wasn’t angry.
I was invited to speak at the Tempe, Arizona, meeting of the National Disability Coalition. Liang told me it was not a good idea. Rose told me I should listen to my doctor. “You’re sick. You need rest. You need to stop and think and listen to what’s really going on inside you instead of running around the country denying there’s anything wrong.”
“I am not in denial!” I shouted, really angry now. “This isn’t about anger or hiding from fear. This conference is important. You think cripples should stay in bed and keep quiet and shut up, but I won’t.” And besides, they were offering five thousand dollars, and my health insurance was running out in six months. Five thousand dollars might just tip the revenue scale. I went, the cannula carefully bandaged for the journey. I left the weed, just in case this time TSA was paying attention.
Even in the terminal the Arizona air was so arid it seemed to lift my skin in its hurry to suck me dry. On the first day of the conference my right leg was useless and my left started to drag. I had to use a power chair for all three days. This time I expected to be ignored, so it hurt less. And this time I saw all those like me on the periphery: people in chairs, people with dogs, people with interpreters. But I was too tired to manage anything but the conference minimum, too tired to sort the new shape of the world or what it might mean. And I wasn’t ready, not yet.
My insurance was good for now; a nurse came to the hotel every evening to give me an infusion. My arm swelled. I felt feverish. My fingers tingled and I couldn’t sleep. My urine turned a strange color.
Important, I told myself. Important. Nothing to do with fear.
On the plane home, I collapsed.
It was like drifting through twilight. Cabin attendants with strong perfume. Being carried into first class. Stretchered off the plane on the runway. Bumpy ride in an ambulance. Voices: questions, questions. A monster reaching for me. An old woman’s laughter like a creaking gibbet. Just give up, lay down, and die. Then nothing.
I woke in the middle of the night. A nurse was wiping my face.
“Hey, there,” she said. She finished wiping my eyes. Deliciously cool. “Are you thirsty?”
I nodded. She helped me with some water. It was too dark to see her face. She adjusted something above my head. A drip into my right arm. “Wrong arm,” I said, or thought I said, because the next thing I knew the room was monochrome with dawn and Rose sat reading her tablet.
“That old woman,” I said.
Her eyes glimmered in the gray uplight like jewels in the face of an ancient god.
When I woke again, the room was hot with afternoon sunshine. My left arm was heavily bandaged. Rose was reading the paper this time. The headline was about the brutal rape and stabbing of a thirteen-year-old girl. They came for that young girl. They came for Doug. They came because they could. Rose wore shorts. Her thighs were close enough to touch. I knew exactly how the skin would feel.
I cleared my throat. “How did you get here? I mean, how did you know I was here?”
She folded the paper carefully, deliberately. Then she looked at me. “I’m still listed as your next of kin.” In the daylight her eyes were as blank as marble.
Now I felt anxious. She might get up and leave me in this place. “Are you angr
y? Is it because you had to take time off work?”
“No. That is, yes. I mean—I just…” She lifted her hands, dropped them, seemed to be searching for something neutral to say. She plumped, in the end, for something practical. “It’s Sunday.”
I didn’t understand that at all.
“The weekend,” she said. “I didn’t have to take time off work.”
“Sunday.” That didn’t make sense. “Sunday?”
“You’ve been here three days,” she said. “We’ve all been worried.” She leaned over and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. Her hand was warm and soft. Unthinkingly, I pushed up against her palm, the way I had done since I was eighteen. She didn’t take her hand away. I felt pathetically grateful. “I emailed Aiyana but didn’t get a response. Maybe she doesn’t use that email anymore?” When I didn’t say anything she left it, and stroked my hair. “I’ve kept Christopher up to date. Josh is watering your herbs—I didn’t know you grew herbs—and Granny Smith next door—”
“Apple.”
“—is feeding Rip. I even called your mother in London.”
The strokes were rhythmic, relaxing.
“You notice she didn’t come rushing to your side.” My mother. She had never liked Rose; the feeling was mutual. “I told her I was looking after you. I didn’t think you’d want her. I promised to call again later today.”
“Thank you.” I meant it. The last thing I needed was my mother, fussing and taking it all personally: God, what has our family done to deserve this? as though it were her that was sick, her that sometimes couldn’t even lift a tablet to read. “What happened to me?”
“Your adrenal glands stopped working. You have some kind of kidney infection. And the vein in your left arm collapsed.”
So that’s why the IV was in the other arm.
“Apparently, whatever they were infusing you with in Arizona wasn’t prednisolone. A miscommunication in the order. It’s the abrupt steroid withdrawal that caused the adrenal failure. And whatever they were giving you—some kind of chemotherapy drug and barbiturate, the ER doctor said—stripped out your veins. The kidney problems were because of that drug, too.” She nodded at my shock. “You could have died.”
So Lucky: A Novel Page 8
