Althea and Oliver

by Cristina Moracho

  Two women spill out of the revolving doors, giggling and looking over their shoulders, one of them wheeling an IV stand behind her, a hospital bracelet around her wrist. Her friend places a hand on her elbow, steering her away from the entrance. The patient looks a few years older than her friend, the friend a few years older than Althea. The two are full of mischief, mirth, giddy over their brief escape. The friend has pink hair and a nose ring; the patient sports the kind of slick bob that can only be achieved with various efforts and appliances.

  Pink pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to her friend.

  “You light it,” the patient says. “They always taste better when you light them.”

  Pink obliges, and soon the two are enveloped in their cloud, taking intensely grateful drags.

  “We need to ditch my mother,” the patient says, gesturing with her free hand. “She’s got to be shined on.”

  “She’s scaring the bejesus out of all the doctors,” says Pink. “Yet I find her presence oddly soothing.”

  “Soothing like a car alarm. You’ve got to do something. She’s got to go.”

  “She needs an activity. A way to be useful. Useful somewhere else.”

  “Should we tell her the dogs need to be walked? Give her the keys to my apartment?”

  Pink shivers. “Your mother is wearing a Donna Karan suit and I’m standing here dressed like a street urchin. Which of us is the more likely candidate to pick up dog shit in the East Village?”

  The patient’s eyes widen. “That’s it! We’ll send her back to my apartment to pick up clothes. Get her to go pack a bag for me.”

  Pink nods enthusiastically, pointing at her friend with the lit end of her cigarette. “Yes. But. You need to fixate on an item that she won’t be able to find. To make sure she’s there for a while. Something you absolutely need. Something that’s in my apartment.”

  Althea listens, envious, as the two work out their scheme. They seem unlikely cohorts. She wonders how two such women found each other in this city. Nicky only told the story of meeting Oliver’s dad once—a party, a friend of a friend, it had not been interesting—but Althea loves the tale of her friendship with Sarah, how they lived on the same floor of their apartment building and eyed each other for weeks, first smiling, then saying hello, daily pleasantries at the mailboxes extending into longer conversations, Nicky gathering the nerve to invite Sarah over for dinner. “A shot in the dark,” she called it. They spent a long night on the fire escape with a bottle of wine, listening to cats howl in the courtyard below and their upstairs neighbors singing a pornographic duet of sighs and moans. By the time the sun rose, Nicky said, she knew that was it. She knew she was in it with Sarah for life.

  “Are you sure?” asks Pink. “You’re sure you don’t want your mother here? She really, really wants to be here.”

  Her friend holds up the hand with the IV. “This right here? This trumps your conscience. As long as I’m schlepping one of these things around, you have to do what I want.”

  “And what you want is to trick your mother into going back to your apartment?”

  “For hours. Yes. That is what I want.”

  “Your wish is my etcetera,” Pink says.

  Their strategy fully formed, she wheels her friend’s IV back toward the entrance, the two women firmly leashed together. Althea watches them go.

  “That girl looked so sad, don’t you think?” A gust of wind carries Pink’s whisper back to its subject.

  Her friend shrugs, the plastic bracelet slipping down her wrist. “It’s a hospital. What do you expect?”

  They forge a path through the revolving doors and the lobby Althea has been trying to cross for two hours. Imagining herself drawn along in their wake, she pushes through the doors before they can stop spinning, letting the duo’s momentum tug her forward.

  • • •

  If Oliver had ever fantasized about going to bed with Stella, this would not quite be what he’d imagined. She waits outside while he changes into his pajamas—an old pair of sweats that he’s cut into shorts and his favorite Johnny Cash T-shirt. Everything aches now, his ankles and wrists and even the base of his neck, and his head is warm and heavy. As he gets into bed, he expects to feel grateful, but his exhaustion is unexpectedly mingled with anxiety. For the first time since he arrived, he realizes that the outside world has not ground to a halt simply because he’s quarantined here. Nicky joked that she could have a boyfriend by the time Oliver wakes, but it’s actually possible, isn’t it? And what else could be going on out there?

  Stella knocks on the door. “You ready?”

  “I guess.”

  She enters, standing over his bed. “Don’t look so worried.”

  “I hope this wasn’t a terrible idea.”

  “Shush.”

  “Don’t shush me,” he says automatically, but she doesn’t know the rest of her lines. He tries to cue her. “You’re supposed to say . . .” But the rest comes out an incoherent, sleepy mumble. In his head he can hear it perfectly. You love it when I shush you. “Fuck.”

  “I’m supposed to say ‘fuck’?” asks Stella.

  Abruptly, Oliver sits up, panicked. “This was a bad idea. Why did I come here?”

  “So we could help you. Relax, okay? I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t know why I’m so nervous.” His voice trembles.

  “Here.” Reaching behind him, Stella fluffs his pillows, then punches them to make an indentation for his head. “Lie down.”

  If he says one more word, he’s going to cry. He obeys.

  As his reward, Stella starts to sing. Her voice is cracked and raspy but warm, filled with honey, and it fits the slow, mournful song she’s chosen. He closes his eyes and listens as she presses the sticky electrodes to his temples again and hooks him up to all the equipment, sadness filling his chest until it’s tight against the rubber strap.

  Even half-asleep, Oliver can sense Stella’s graceful movements around the room. But it’s Althea’s image that swims onto the stage of his eyelids, blissed out and covered in cherry Jell-O, then driving her car down the highway, one elbow resting on the open window, the other hand masterfully piloting the wheel. He remembers when that was enough for her, just a ride in the car or a day at the beach, and he wishes he could have given her another ten years of days like that, when all it took to make her happy was him in the shotgun seat and twelve hours when they had nowhere to be.

  Suddenly the idea that Stella might see him in the midst of this coming episode, that he might unwittingly grope her or say something profane or relieve himself on the floor while she watches, seems inexpressibly horrible. He would rather go back to Wilmington right now than risk sacrificing her kindness and ruining one more person’s good opinion of him. When she’s finished her song, he opens his eyes with tremendous effort.

  “Will you look after Kentucky while I’m out?” he says. “Make sure the gorillas aren’t giving him a hard time.”

  “They’re not gorillas,” she says. “They’re just a bunch of boys, all as scared as you.”

  “Still.”

  “Okay.”

  “You won’t be here, right?”

  “Here where?”

  It’s getting harder to string words together in a coherent fashion. “You won’t see . . . me,” he manages.

  She smiles, understanding. “Whatever happens, I won’t see any of it.” Leaning over, she tucks the blanket under his chin and he can smell cigarettes and lip balm and the sharp scent of her scrubs, and his stupid, stupid heart rends one more time with the memory of Althea, and if he weren’t losing consciousness he would burst into an apocalyptic fit of tears, but instead his eyes close and the last thing Stella says finds his brain by way of some small miracle, right before his mind flickers like a candle and is snuffed out.

  “But I will be here when you
wake up.”

  • • •

  Althea steps out of the elevator, fists thrust into the pockets of her jeans, shoulders hunched in her down vest, hood hanging over her face. A long, shiny hallway stretches out before her, then makes a sharp right turn. Somewhere a television is broadcasting sports; an announcer’s voice drones faintly over the cheer of a stadium crowd. Two boys come careening into sight, sliding down the slick floor in socked feet, almost crashing into the wall at the end of the hallway. They run back in the other direction, vanishing behind the corner again. There is an audible thud and the squeak of skin against linoleum as one of them wipes out, then braying laughter.

  Althea tries to parse the ruckus for Oliver’s voice, but she can’t make it out. Still, her breath quickens at the very thought of his nearness, that she might get to bury her face in his neck and smell that familiar Oliver scent. Fabric softener and honey pomade, and apples, faintly, always. Here, will he still smell the same? Her body aches, not just from the long drive and sleeping in her car, but from the memory of Oliver wrapped around her, or idly holding the loop on her carpenter’s pants, Oliver’s lips pressed against her throat, Oliver smoothing out all her nerves and tics.

  But that is not all she misses. The Oliver-faced imposter who fisted his hands in her snarled hair and yanked—she wonders if she’ll ever see him again and is saddened by the thought that she might not. If they fix Oliver here, like he wants, that other Oliver will be gone, the Id will have a lid, and everyone will celebrate the death of the fat mouse; Althea will be the only one to mourn the insatiable boy who had been famished for her.

  Edging forward, she pauses with one hand on the curved reception desk. Emboldened, she keeps going, hugging the wall until she can finally peek around the corner and see the cluster of boys in a common room at the end of the hall, sprawled on broken-down couches and institutional chairs, watching football and doing push-ups. She recognizes one of the boys who was skidding around in his socks; he’s limping back to his seat. Two other boys are having a hushed conversation on a sticky-looking sofa.

  There’s still no sign of Oliver. She thought being here would galvanize her, but instead she’s unexpectedly, unrelentingly weary. The environment is so alien, enough to make her realize how small their home galaxy of Wilmington is. There, they orbited the same swimming hole, the same coffee shop, the same houses of their three same friends. Here, in this hospital, is one infinitesimal chunk of the rest of the universe—these boys, whose own dramas have led them to the study; the dizzying city baying against the windows; the pink girl from downstairs and her more polished friend. Althea is reeling suddenly from the scope of it all, as if an invisible thread tethering her all the way back to Magnolia Street has suddenly snapped, leaving her adrift and violently conscious of the distance between herself and all that she’s known.

  The two boys on the couch fall silent. One remains clearly preoccupied, fastening and unfastening the wristband of his watch. The kid next to him reaches over and slaps his back heartily in an awkward, earnest gesture of comfort. Recognizing Oliver’s pain on another boy’s face makes the desperation in the room suddenly palpable, despite the air of faux indifference—she can recognize it anywhere, feigned apathy, having honed her own brand for years. The thing for which they all came here, this endlessly evasive cure, they all want it so, so badly.

  A door down the hallway opens and Althea leaps back, startled, pressing herself closer to the wall. In the lounge a boy in camouflage pajama pants looks up from his magazine, staring at her from underneath the brim of his baseball cap as a blonde nurse emerges from the room, quickly closing the door and sliding a medical chart into the mounted plastic box. Before Althea even sees the name on the binder she knows that it’s Oliver’s, that he’s behind that door.

  “Who are you?” the nurse asks sharply. She has long fingers and narrow green eyes, and Althea is speechless with jealousy. “What are you doing back here?”

  “I was looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  Althea struggles to form the one word she’s spoken more than any other. “Oliver,” she whispers.

  The anger evaporates from the nurse’s face. “You’re here to see Oliver?” she says softly.

  Biting down hard on her lip, Althea gnaws away chapped, dry skin that stings when she tears it with her teeth, so as her eyes fill she can tell herself that’s why she’s crying. “I’m too late, aren’t I?”

  “For now. I’m sorry. It can wait, right? For a little while?” says the nurse. “It’s not forever, just a couple of weeks. Whatever it is, it’ll keep for that long, won’t it?”

  Althea wipes her face with the cuffs of her sweatshirt and heads for the door. “Yeah. It’ll keep.”

  chapter ten.

  ALTHEA BUYS A FORTY of King Cobra.

  She takes the bottle of malt liquor, neatly tucked inside a paper bag, and walks down to the pier. Staring out at the river, she drinks her King Cobra and smokes. A party boat drives by, blasting dance music over the shrill laughter of its passengers. After it passes, the only sound is water, lapping noisily against the gravel.

  Instinct brought her to the water. Unable to complete her mission, but unwilling to turn around and drive home, she left Manhattan for Brooklyn, keeping Oliver close but putting a river between them. She found a place Nicky never mentioned, a tiny crook on the map called Red Hook, a postindustrial maritime neighborhood full of unobtrusive places where she could sleep in her car, where it smelled like the water and she could see the Statue of Liberty from a small gravel beach near the pier.

  New York is fucking cold. The sun has long since set. Althea’s empty belly piggishly soaks up the contents of the bottle. The pier, the park, the surrounding docks and warehouses are deserted. In Wilmington she’s used to trespassing in the dark, stealing around the riverbanks at night or taking an unlit shortcut home on foot. But the woods are never quiet; there are crickets and foxes, skunks, of course, and the perpetual rustling of the creatures that go unseen. Here there’s nothing, not a car passing with a gentle swish nor a mistaken songbird trilling invisibly from the highest branches of its tree. Just the rhythm of the water, so hypnotic it might carry Althea off to sleep on her bench, if the wind weren’t so damn cold. She feels numb yet oddly sated; for so long Oliver had been her sole preoccupation, and without the prospect of touching him or talking to him, she’s rendered inert, wiped clean of all will and desire. Shivering violently in her vest, she fills herself up with booze and waits for King Cobra to tell her what to do; he doesn’t seem to have a lot to say.

  When she’s finally drunk enough for the shivering to subside, she gathers her cigarettes and car keys and stands, swaying a little. She chugs the last three inches of flat malt liquor and drops the empty bottle into a trash can, woozily saluting Lady Liberty before she turns to go. But those last three inches are three inches too many, and suddenly all forty ounces are backing up on her, and she’s clutching the mouth of the garbage can on either side, doubled over and retching. Her nose fills with the smell of industrial plastic trash bag and rotten banana and acrid bile as sour liquid spills out of her, unprompted, and her gagging drowns out the sound of the river. When it’s finished she stays there, catching her breath; her eyes have filled and her nose is leaking. She spits a few times and stands up, shaking it off, wiping at her face with the cuff of her sweatshirt. Okay, that wasn’t so bad, she thinks. But then she realizes her hands—previously holding her car keys and Marlboros—are empty, and there’s only one place these items could be.

  “Motherfucker,” she whispers, and rolls up her sleeves.

  It’s too dark to actually see into the trash, so she keeps her eyes on the Statue of Liberty while she gingerly delves into the slick refuse and feels around. Her fingers graze the banana peel she smelled, the cold glass of her empty bottle, the soggy pages of a magazine. The smell is ungodly, vomit and vinegar and sour milk, and everything
she touches is soaked with her puke. It’s the cigarettes she finds first, that unmistakable flip-top box; removing the cellophane wrapper, she tucks the pack safely into her pocket. Holding her breath, she makes another foray, digging deeper until she’s up to her shoulder and gagging from the stench, dry-heaving, eyes burning as her fingertips troll the bottom of the plastic bag through the forty ounces of regurgitated malt liquor that’s collected there. Out on the river, a lone duck paddles toward the rocky beach.

  Finally, almost accidentally, the metal loop of her key ring slips around the tip of her index finger. Securing the keys in her fist, she jerks her arm out of the trash so quickly, she barely notices her forearm catch on something sharp and jagged. It only feels like a pinch at first, then a hot sting, then warm and wet.

  Drops of blood form a neat line in a slit up the side of her wrist, slowly at first, then gathering momentum as they run down her arm, sticky and warm. Clamping down on the wound with her other hand, she staggers backward and drops to her knees on the pier. The sting spreads, becoming deeper, searing through the rest of her that is still so cold. She wipes ineffectually at the blood pooling in the crook of her arm, whimpering, face pressed to her knees, the overripe denim rough against her cheek as she smells the iron of her blood, the stale smoke in her hair, and her beery puke.

  Rising unsteadily to her feet, she stumbles off the pier and finds her car. Tearing a T-shirt into small strips, she douses one with water from her bottle and dabs at the wound, then uses another as a makeshift bandage. She digs the beach blankets out of the trunk. Hunkered down on the floor of the backseat, holding her arm above her head, swaddled in her quilt and the sandy relics that still smell like Wilmington, she tries to think of this as camping, imagines herself in a tent with her father, listening to one of his ancient mythological stories, trying to remember a single one that had a happy ending.