by Lisa Alther
“Fine. Just fine.”
Caroline sat down and picked up her fork. “Pretty day?”
“Not bad for December.”
“What’s new?”
Brian sighed. “Nothing much. Same old grind.”
“As the burlesque queen said to the bishop.”
“What?”
“It’s an old joke.”
“Sorry. I guess I’m pretty out of it today.”
“Please don’t tell your patients,” said Caroline.
“They’re out cold. They don’t know the difference.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I talked to Irene this morning.”
“How’s she?”
“All right, I guess. But I really don’t understand women.” Brian was handling his knife and fork as adroitly as he did a scalpel, with long graceful fingers.
“Don’t look at me,” said Caroline, her mouth full of lettuce. “That makes two of us.”
“I mean, for example,” he said, gesturing with his fork, “Irene loved to buy all this stuff—clothes, furniture, cars, trips. And I had to bust ass to pay for it. But then she complained I was never home. I don’t get it.” He shook his head.
Caroline thought she got it, but she wasn’t sure it would be kind to explain that maybe all those purchases were an attempt to fill the gap where a husband should have been. “Sounds like my marriage.”
“I didn’t realize you’d been married.”
“Many years ago.”
He laughed. “Come on, you can’t be that old.”
“Some days I feel older than King Tut.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Do you, wondered Caroline. If only they had more time, it might be interesting to find out. Besides, she’d just seen Diana glance in their direction.
“I always wondered why an attractive woman like you wasn’t married.” Brian studied her with his sad eyes, resting his chin on his fist.
Oh, give me a break, thought Caroline. She stood up. “Gotta run, Brian. Nice talking with you.”
Caroline sat down behind the ER admissions desk and picked up a pencil from atop a stack of patients’ charts, intending to make the list for Hannah and hoping no one would come rolling through those swinging doors on a stretcher. She used to feel such delight at the People’s Free Clinic when a woman hemorrhaging from a coat hanger abortion or a student on a bad trip staggered into the cluttered storefront office in Somerville. She was needed. She could help. Now she wished they’d leave her out of it. She’d lost her nerve. She was terrified she’d freeze with horror at some crucial moment, as she had that afternoon over the little boy with the gaping head wound. Who was she to think she could help anybody? It was all she could do to keep herself alive.
She wrote the word “kind,” just to prime the pump. But what about the hats of street musicians she hadn’t tossed coins into, the hitchhikers she’d driven past, the Muscular Dystrophy cannisters she hadn’t deposited change in, the phone market surveys she hung up on, the times she pretended not to be home when Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked? She crossed out “kind.”
Brian was being paged over the PA: “Dr. Stone, Dr. Stone, fourth floor, fourth floor…”
Caroline wrote “honest.” But was it honest to pretend that she and Diana were just roommates simply in order not to lose their jobs and cause their children harassment on the playground? Was it honest to sit behind this desk and dread the arrival of patients? She drew a line through “honest” and scribbled “unkind” and “dishonest.” She studied those words. That was the effect of her behavior, but it wasn’t the intention, any more than Jim Jones originally intended to poison his followers.
Marking out “unkind” and “dishonest,” she wrote “well-meaning.” But was she, she wondered as she chewed her pencil eraser. To eat she allowed plants and animals to be slaughtered in her behalf. When she walked, she squashed insects. When she breathed, she butchered bacteria. Her white blood cells were destroying germs every second. Even to live was to be a murderer.
Diana sauntered down the corridor, her head with its scrambled red hair turned toward Suzanne, her bedroom eyes laughing. Suzanne looked as thrilled and expectant as Arnold when he confronted his first dead woodchuck. They wore street clothes—corduroy jeans, parkas, boots. As they headed out the door, Diana called to Caroline, “Don’t worry about me if I’m out late.”
Pencil poised, Caroline considered this remark. If Diana stayed out late tonight, it would be no comfort to know she was doing so with Suzanne. It would be preferable to have her dead on the highway. So Diana wanted to play hardball? Maybe Brian Stone should be encouraged. Too bad he had to be a man.
Inspecting these thoughts, Caroline added “ungenerous” to her list. But damn it, she’d usually done her best. When Maureen, the Irish maid who told horror stories about British rule, sobbed with homesickness, Caroline patted her orange hair and told her everything would be all right. When her father limped home with colitis from fighting court cases for minority groups, Caroline ran his bath and rubbed his temples. As he bathed, she polished his shoes. When her mother returned from the welfare office where she began working after the war, Caroline brought her tea, turned on the opera, and covered her with a blanket in her armchair under the seal from her college that read “Non Ministrari sed Ministrare.” Not to be ministered unto but to minister. Which was what Caroline had always tried to do. While her parents rested, she kept Howard and Tommy quiet by locking them in the playroom and making them play medical missionary.
For Christmas one year their parents gave them each sponsorship of a Save-the-Children child. Caroline’s, from Kentucky, was named Stanley Horton. In his picture he had no shoes and very few sound teeth. He wrote every month and sent a picture of his house, a shack sided with tar paper and roofed with tin Nehi signs. At dinner she, Howard, and Tommy would pass around the pictures and notes, and their parents would explain that because they were so privileged, they had a responsibility to those less fortunate. Caroline began saving her babysitting money to buy Stanley special treats, like Band-Aids in the shape of stars.
Sandra removed the stack of charts from under Caroline’s elbow, saying, “Let me get these out of your way, sweetie.”
Caroline studied her list, most of which was crossed out. She erased “ungenerous” and examined “well-meaning.” But what about when she used to place Howard at the bottom of the stairs and dangle his teddy bear on a noose by its neck just out of his reach, hissing, “I know what you want and you can’t have it”? What about the time she bit Maureen so that she had to have four stitches? She crossed out “well-meaning.” Nothing was left. Fuck it, she wouldn’t do the list. She didn’t see the point anyhow. She tore it up and dropped the pieces in the gray metal waste can.
Brenda leaned on the desk with both fists. “Ready to roll a few strikes, babe?”
Caroline looked up. Brenda reminded her a bit of Arlene, her favorite teacher at nursing school—the same massive build, like a vertical iron lung; the same mindless dedication to her profession. But unlike Arlene, Brenda played as hard as she worked, always organizing sports leagues and excursions to nearby bars.
“Sure thing,” Caroline replied without enthusiasm. She’d forgotten this afternoon was bowling. This was her week to tend the kids. She picked up the phone and called the cabin. Sharon answered. Yes, Jackie and Jason were home. Yes, she was babysitting them. Logistics were simpler now that Sharon was in the eighth grade and required unending supplies of money for her constantly expanding wardrobe. It made a big difference to her set whether the tag on the back of Levi’s was red or orange. But babysitting Jackie was no easy task. A sixth grader himself, he insisted he was too old for a babysitter. He was, but he also was too young to be without one, since he sometimes forgot to turn off stove burners or tried to blow-dry his hair while sitting in a tub full of water.
“Shall I bring you a pizza or Big Macs?” she asked Sharon.
Sha
ron yelled to Jackie and Jason. “Jackie wants a Quarter Pounder, large fries, and a medium Coke. Jason wants Kentucky Fried Chicken, fries, mashed potatoes, and rolls. And I want a pepperoni pizza.”
“Forget it. Take a vote. I’m not driving all over town.” Sounds of loud argument came over the phone. Participatory democracy. Caroline sighed and rested a hand on her hip.
“Be with you in a minute,” she said to Brenda. “The Kentucky Colonel is being routed by Ronald McDonald.” She heard Jason howling with pain and calling Jackie a “motherfucking faggot.” She’d spent her whole life rearing little boys, first her brothers and now her sons, and she still didn’t understand them. Didn’t understand their fascination with constructing elaborate machines for destruction from their Legos and Tinker Toys—tanks, intergalactic warships, fighter planes, aircraft carriers, missile silos. When she gave them dolls, as Ms. magazine recommended, they used them for target practice.
Sharon came back on the phone. “Jackie and I want Big Macs, but Jason says he doesn’t want anything if he can’t have chicken.”
“Okay, but tell him I’m not fixing sandwiches in the middle of the night.” When she’d given birth to Jackie and Jason, she’d had no idea she’d spend her next twelve years scheduling—meals, rides, babysitters, dentist appointments, hockey practices. And juggling her work hours, and enduring the anxiety when everything fell through and the boys ended up alone. Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.
In the staff room she and Brenda changed into orange team shirts that said “Lake Glass Kennels” on the back. The husband of a former team member, who ran the kennels, had sponsored the team last year. Brenda smelled sweaty, and her huge breasts strained her shirt buttons. She was an old-style nurse, referred to any doctor she was working with simply as “doctor”: “Doctor will see you right away.” She approached human suffering with gusto, rubbed her hands at the challenge of stitching the pulpy remains from motorcycle wrecks into human beings again. She lived in a small ranch house in Idyll Acre Estates with Barb from Intensive Care. They bowled all winter and played slow-pitch softball all summer. They had fun. They seemed at ease with their work and their lives. When they asked Caroline to join their bowling league, she accepted, thinking if she spent time with them, she’d acquire that same ease. So far she hadn’t.
Brenda’s green Torino had an “Emergency Medical Technician” license tag above the New Hampshire plate that read “Live Free or Die.” As Caroline climbed in, Brenda was fiddling with her CB radio. She belonged to the town rescue squad. Whenever she picked up word of an accident, she raced to the scene to offer help. Several times a month she was on call as ambulance crew.
Looking out the car window as they passed Maude’s Corner Cafe, Caroline saw Diana and Suzanne at a table, engaged in intense discussion under the light from a low-hanging Tiffany lamp. They had pink drinks in front of them, probably strawberry daiquiris, Diana’s favorite. One afternoon just after they’d become lovers, Caroline spent hours in the neighboring field picking enough wild strawberries to make a pitcher of daiquiris. She and Diana lay in the sun drinking them until they were so drunk they made love in the open meadow. A herd of cows arrived to watch, munching placidly on all sides. Caroline recalled thinking as she lay there surrounded by the sound of cuds being chewed, This is it. This is happiness.
How could Diana prefer Suzanne’s witless hero worship to honest interaction with an old friend? It was incredible. Suzanne wasn’t even attractive. She was gawky. With buck teeth. And slightly crossed eyes. And a hunchback, Caroline added in an unsuccessful attempt to cheer herself up.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” said Brenda as they pulled into the parking lot at Lake Glass Lanes, a low building sided with asbestos shingles that were supposed to look like bricks. It sat on the highway next to the new mall.
“I guess I am.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, I’m fine.” You couldn’t complain about a little insomnia to someone who’d spent the day rigging IVs, pumping stomachs, and jump-starting stalled hearts. A gold medallion at Brenda’s throat glinted in the streetlight. A gift from Barb, who, like Brenda herself, was from a French Canadian family, it read, “Plus que hier, moins que demain.” Caroline and Diana used to mock Barb and Brenda’s devoted coupledom, saw it as a parody of Irene and Brian Stone. Two flagging swimmers in a death grip, dragging each other under. Even at the height of their honeymoon she and Diana had retained separate friendships, separate flirtations, separate apartments, and separate checking accounts. But this afternoon Barb and Brenda’s symbiosis struck Caroline as touching, if the alternative was abandonment. Better to suffocate in sweetness than to drown in despair.
Barb was taking a practice frame on lane four. She slid up to the foul line and stumbled over it, setting off the buzzer. Brenda cheered and applauded. Lucille from Coronary Care, whose rows of finger curls made her head look like the roof of someone’s mouth, was setting up the score sheet. Brenda and Caroline changed from boots into red, white, and blue spangled shoes. As Brenda unzipped her ball from its padded case, Caroline went in search of one of the alley’s balls with finger holes the right size. When she returned, Brenda was splashing rum from a bottle in her pocketbook into her teammates’ Cokes, glancing around to be sure the manager wasn’t watching.
Caroline sat on the smooth red plastic bench, getting up for her turns, making the proper responses to teammates’ chatter, and reflecting that bowlers sometimes turned up in the ER with dislocated shoulders and thumbs, or broken ankles. As the game progressed, she felt she was being packed in a cocoon of sterile cotton wool, like the batts for casts. The voices of her teammates were the cackling of a flock of migrating birds during a rest stop. The balls down the alleys and the clatter of falling pins were the hollow thundering cracks of distant rifles, killing geese in mid-flight on gray fall mornings. Watching the pins scatter, get swept away, then set up again, only to be knocked down again, she felt exhausted. What was the point? It was exactly like her life—she’d set it up, it would fall apart, she’d set it up again…. There was no point.
She watched her teammates critically as they howled at Barb’s story about Dr. Watson at the urinal in the men’s room, being paged for ICU: “Dr. Watson, Dr. Watson, ICU, ICU…” Brenda spewed her rum and Coke all over the score sheet. Caroline smiled weakly when Lucille looked her way.
Caroline continued to study these women, her teammates, her colleagues, as they ate powdered doughnuts, slid to the foul line in spangled shoes and orange shirts, jumped and squealed over strikes. She finally concluded they were simpletons. If not, they’d be as appalled as she over the futility of it all—throwing absurdly heavy balls at distant wooden pins while the world drowned in grief and gore. She fought a longing to lay her head on the ball return, so when one arrived it would split her head wide open, like a pumpkin thrown on a sidewalk. Like the head of that little boy whose father swung him against the stone fireplace. Her brains would spill out on the shiny wooden floor like a Jonestown corpse exploding in the jungle heat….
“Hey, are you okay?” asked Brenda, standing above her and bending down with a look of concern, the gold medallion swaying hypnotically from her throat. More than yesterday, less than tomorrow, bullshit.
“I’m fine,” Caroline replied, wishing she could fight through the wall of cotton wool between them, but knowing it was impossible. They inhabited one world, and she another—a place of deep dark pointlessness. That was why she couldn’t do Hannah’s damn list. How could you describe someone who didn’t even exist?
Leaning forward from the tweed couch, Caroline searched through her National Abortion Rights Action League totebag on the carpet. Driving down the hill from Lloyd Harris without a list, she’d been seized with anxiety. That list was her assignment, and she hadn’t done it. God knows she’d tried. There where a self-image should have been was a great charred crater. But if she didn’t hand over a list, Hannah would be d
ispleased. So in the parking lot she scribbled, “Kind, honest, well-meaning, mean, devious, ungenerous, possessive, wimpy…” Let Hannah figure it out. That was what she was being paid for.
She looked up at Hannah, who sat in her swivel chair watching Caroline’s rummagings with a faint amused smile. Wearing a tan pants suit and a blouse with attached cravat and tigereye stickpin, Hannah looked like a truant from a Tupperware party. Caroline did a double take: Hannah was in stocking feet.
“As yes, the list,” said Hannah, taking it. She glanced at it, then handed it back and lit a brown cigarette with matches from Corinne’s, a new restaurant in the tannery where she and Arthur had eaten rack of lamb last night. If Caroline had done the list to please her, she wanted to convey that Caroline’s compliance or noncompliance was a matter of indifference to her. From the perplexed look on Caroline’s drawn face, she suspected this assessment was correct. Therapy was theater. You tried to restage scenarios from the client’s past so the outcomes were different. She remembered a boy at the state hospital who spent his days plucking invisible bugs out of the air. But the one time she persuaded him to stop, he ended up in a straitjacket.
“For next time why don’t you divide your list into categories?” said Hannah, picking up Nigel’s stone and cradling it in one palm as she flicked her cigarette ash into it.
Caroline frowned. The list had occupied her entire week, only to be dismissed in fifteen seconds. Why bother? “What kind of categories?”
“Whatever ones you see.”
Caroline heaved a sigh. Now she’d have to spend next week figuring out what categories Hannah had seen. As though she didn’t have report cards to sign, laundry to fold, dressings to change. She didn’t have time for these games. Let housewives with nothing better to do play them. Her eyes returned to Hannah’s bare feet.
“What’s wrong?” asked Hannah. These ritual enactments struck her as transparent, but most clients seemed not to see through them. This was where her British heritage came in handy. Nobody was so gifted as the British at pageantry—coronations, corteges, royal marriages, the changing of the guard, masterpieces of fantasy that participants and observers alike believed were real. But at least she was aware of being a fraud.
