Who Is Rich?

by Matthew Klam

  “It’s a clean break?” She nodded. “And you don’t need surgery?” She said no. “Did you want to call anybody?”

  “No.”

  “Did you leave a message at home?”

  She shook her head. “The only one who’d get it would be me.”

  “But what do you do in an emergency?”

  She looked at me as if that had never occurred to her. “I call his assistant, and she contacts him, then relays a message back to me if there is one.”

  “So did you call his assistant?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She had to think. “He’s in Frankfurt.”

  From the second I’d met her I was assigned to hate him, so no surprise there, but still, I wondered, why did she marry him unless she wanted to be ditched?

  “It’s okay. I have people helping me. It’s all pretty seamless.”

  “Cool.”

  “What you don’t understand is, I work for him. And they work for me.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  “I’m just glad to hear your marriage still stinks. It’s not any better?”

  “No.”

  The nurse came in and tapped her arm once, twice. I tried not to look. She did a few things behind us. On the wall beneath the light box, a computer monitor and keyboard were bolted to swinging metal arms. The nurse left.

  Out in the hall I could hear the nurse and the tech waiting for the doctor, complaining that five minutes was up. Amy’s rib cage raised and lowered softly. I could feel it, in waves, coming over her. Every once in a while she tipped her head back and yawned. I yawned, too. I didn’t want to leave. Everything out there was a mess.

  A cop went down the hall, past the crash cart, in sunglasses, telling the nurse at full volume about an arrest he’d made the night before, unpaid bar tab, the drunk daring the cop to cuff him.

  “Hey, guess what,” she said. “I talked to someone.”

  “About what?”

  “I thought I was going nuts.”

  “Oh.”

  “She seemed to think it was fascinating, but I got bored hearing myself complain.”

  “You mean you went once?” She shrugged. “What did you think would happen after one visit to a shrink?”

  “I was trying to figure out what to do with you.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  She said my name, nicely. It seemed to emanate from her, without shame.

  “You remember my name.”

  “I say it all the time. You’re the only person I talk to.”

  “Like in your head?”

  She didn’t look at all embarrassed.

  “What do we talk about?”

  She shrugged as though I wouldn’t understand. I thought she was a fucking lunatic.

  “Aren’t you afraid God will hear?”

  “No.” She looked stoned and windblown, with fuzzy, staring eyes. The nurse strode back in. With this injury came a new honesty—a layer of defense had been breached—and, beneath it, a new vulnerability. Beneath that, though, was another unreadable layer of defense. The tech tapped at the keyboard of her machine. The bright light of this place exposed blue veins in Amy’s temples, they were raised and greenish, but it also lit her eyes, blue gray with gold flecks. I touched her knee. She had soft, smooth legs. “I’m sorry about everything, and I’m sorry you broke your arm.” I opened the velvet bag and took out the bracelet. Giving it to Robin would’ve been worse than throwing it in the gutter.

  “I bought this for you.” I put it on her uninjured wrist and tore off the price tag. There was a way of fitting it to her, pulling the ends through the knot. She looked at it, then back at me.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  She didn’t care about the bracelet at all. “They’re after us, no matter where we go.”

  “We’ll move to New Zealand.”

  “They’ll get us.”

  “We’ll raise sheep and have blond babies.”

  “Can I get a bike with black fenders?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and we’ll make sheep yogurt.”

  “Can I put a bell on the handlebars?”

  I said yes. It was better to pretend. She looked at the bracelet again and thanked me.

  He wore a loud apron, neon blue, to protect him from the X-rays. The nurse went behind Amy, taking hold of her upper arm with both hands, telling her to buy cast bags at Lowell Drug. Umbrella bags worked too, they were cheaper, you could get them at Costco. In this way Amy could keep her arm dry, as she looked ahead to showering, as if the business at hand was almost done. The doctor’s hat and gloves were blue, and he took the stool I’d been using and held her wrist in his lap. I stood behind them, at the edge of the curtain. The doctor pressed with his thumbs, facing the nurse, walking them calmly down her arm toward the deformed place as the nurse held her upper arm steady. He bent her broken arm. The nurse seemed to brace herself as Amy’s eyes opened wide; he bent it farther, as if flexing an ankle, and all the air went out of her. He yanked it toward himself with a sudden snap, and she groaned.

  He pulled it across the drum beside him, a portable X-ray machine with a dark glass surface. The tech kept her white-sneakered foot on the base of the machine, as if pressing down on a gas pedal, watching the monitor on the wall, not lifting her eyes from it. The bones overlapped by half an inch. She told him, “medial,” “proximal,” and cues down to the millimeter. The doctor seemed lost, mushing Amy’s arm, kneading it like bread dough, the blind thumbs looking for the broken ends to mesh. Amy sucked in air, hissing through bared teeth. The lidocaine obviously did work, since her body remained flat and motionless, but something must’ve leaked through, some synapses must’ve blown.

  The nurse braced Amy’s elbow as the doctor stood, lifting from the balls of his feet, grimacing, throwing his weight up to the ceiling, the way you would if you were trying to yank a fence post out of a hole, gloves streaked white against his knuckles, the black hair on his knuckles showing through the latex, blue hat going crooked. Amy made a growling noise that shocked me, then suddenly flung herself against the gurney, ripping off the paper sheet. I thought she’d knocked herself unconscious. She said she was light-headed and thought she might pass out. The nurse said, “BREATHE,” and she did, eyes peeled. I saw her silver fillings, black in bright light, her tongue pressed against the gloss inside her mouth.

  Sweat ran down my armpits. The doctor checked the screen again. Still not right. My arm started to throb. I felt it twisting and tearing as an imaginary ice-cold hypodermic needle went into my forearm and scraped the bones.

  We’d bonded over the shock at how our lives had turned out. One of us had peaked too early and failed to live up to his potential, and the other one was trapped and enslaved and felt prickly hatred upon her skin whenever her husband walked into the room. We filled our emails with every complaint, trying to make our lives sound more tragic, and idealized and taunted and swore to the other, and promised an escape, sometimes hourly, and went ahead causing more pain.

  The doctor stood again. My eyes moved from the eyebrows of the nurse, to the purple eyelids of the tech, to the tip of the doctor’s tongue, to the floor. He’d never get it right. I wanted to rip his filthy hands off her. I didn’t really love her, I wasn’t even sure I liked her, although maybe I liked her. But did I like her because I was lonely and she was hot and rich? Or was it because I didn’t get any sleep and had brain damage from speaking baby language? Or because Robin’s booty had snapped back into shape but touching it was still a no-no?

  I spaced out and saw myself watching the scene. I thought about the events of this afternoon, and with some satisfaction I began to note sensations and the placement of people and things, for later use: the equipment, the doctor’s canted hat, Amy’s hideous moans, stuff I could play with in
the narrative of my forthcoming work. I’d have to massage the dialogue to show vulnerability, humanity, the intensity of the lovers’ bond.

  Then I felt bad because I really loved Robin and my two little zipadees. I could still make it right. If I had to break Amy’s other arm, I’d get the bracelet back. My kids were the whole show. Without them I was lost. Without Robin my life was garbage. In the mornings I dropped Kaya off at preschool and she ran, skipping, waving, jumping in the air, blowing kisses. Beanie bounced up and down in my arms, yelling nonsense. I wanted to squeeze them both and chew on their little craniums. I couldn’t sit here another second. After all this hocus-pocus, I just wanted to go home.

  Then he stopped, and in the strobing grayscale on the screen you could see the ends met. The bones lined up.

  I’d fallen asleep in the waiting room, under a plastic fish, a bluefin tuna, waiting for her paperwork, and woke up with stinging eyes, my head pounding, in a terrible mood. The thing in my pocket buzzed and jangled. It was Robin, asking if I had a moment to speak to my daughter. She sounded oddly at ease. In some bizarre anomaly across the waves of electromagnetic particles, the phone call came through in a clear connection. I could hear Kaya whimpering in the background, and Beanie too, though he sounded more indignant, like a weary traveler upset with his hotel bill.

  Some issue required my immediate intervention. The endlessness of it, the detail work, the centrality of children, the sudden refusals, inexplicable urges, stunning meltdowns, the marital pieces spinning around that core, flung with force in every direction—in one day I’d forgotten it all, and I’d probably forget it again as soon as this problem resolved itself or the connection died, but I remembered it now. The late-night interludes of drunken oneness, the smooth articulations of the umbrella stroller, the tiny bite marks in their hand-cooked leftovers, the fantastic expense of our babysitter, regardless of my father-in-law’s help. So exhausted at dawn that the sight of the neighbor’s softly mown grass brought tears to my eyes for the beauty of this world.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Kaya rode her tricycle into the pit behind Elizabeth’s house.”

  I held the phone sweatily, feeling the floor of the waiting room sway beneath me.

  Our kitchen windows looked out on that scene. Blue tarpaulins hung off the back of their three-story renovation, flapping day and night like a sailboat. Curtis and Elizabeth’s yard had been excavated and was now occupied by their new foundation, but the permit for the dumpster was late, so the rest of the hole had been filled with demolished house, scraps of lumber, metal framing, shredded aluminum siding, and broken glass. In the alley between our two houses, Kaya and a girl named Julia liked to ride down the slight incline with their feet off the pedals, a straight shot into what used to be a patch of grass. During the week, the workmen with their funny nicknames parked their trucks there to block it off. When the girls were in the alley, someone was supposed to stand at the bottom.

  “And while Kaya was bleeding all over the bathroom floor, Beanie sucked the propeller out of that clown whistle and almost choked to death.” Robin sounded more than calm—loose, almost thrilled. “I had to hold him by his feet and smack him to get him to cough it up.” It sounded like she’d been drinking. “He didn’t cry, but I cried, and Kaya cried, although she was already crying.”

  “Please start at the beginning.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Inside getting Beanie.”

  “You had the monitor outside and you heard him wake up?”

  “Yes, idiot, I had the monitor outside.”

  On one level I understood that somehow Robin had orchestrated these events, possibly in their entirety, out of frustration or temporary insanity from lack of sleep, spun them into something shocking and only loosely based on fact, to punish me, that maybe none of it had happened and my real son and daughter were lying on the carpet having Elmo juice, watching Fairytopia, but on another level I wasn’t so sure.

  “Brett said she screamed the whole way down. She was still holding the handlebars when he got there.” I pictured Kaya hanging on to her tricycle like some X Games hot dog. Robin calmly listed the injuries: “A skinned shoulder blade, a deep cut on her hip, a cut on the back of her head, a worse cut on her hand, and two skinned elbows.”

  The nurse emerged from the hallway and beckoned me. I waved her away. Brett had been in his own yard, ten feet over. I imagined him stepping down that narrow plank the workmen used to enter the pit, an old two-by-twelve that never broke but bent and flexed when they rolled wheelbarrows up and down it. Maybe she’d asked him to watch when she went inside. He was probably the last person you’d want out there looking after your kid. He had a sure-handed nonchalance, a passive negligence, a malicious inattention. He made no move to intervene when a kid fell from a tree or left half her face on the sidewalk; he seemed merely curious, vaguely affirmed, as though their injuries verified or satisfied something. He had three boys. The force of so many sons vying for their mother, wishing him dead, had taken its toll.

  “She’s shivering now and won’t stop crying and says she’s hungry but won’t eat.”

  Kaya took the phone, and I heard that familiar modulation of my own voice as it rose and softened, telling her how sorry I was that a bad thing had happened. It was strange to hear myself, that part of me, in the clinic waiting room.

  “Dat’s okay,” she said, showing a maturity and compassion that sometimes shocked me, and then she said something about a boo-boo, I couldn’t understand what, and then the call died. I called back. Again the nurse waved at me to follow her down the hall. I called several times, and pictured myself standing over Brett, bringing down the baseball bat, over and over. I tried Robin’s cell and got her voicemail. Amy walked toward me, unsteadily, with her splinted arm in front of her, the other hand supporting it. The nurse came up from behind her and handed me a plastic bag with some forms and Amy’s wallet and sunglasses and said, “The local wears off in an hour.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Then it’ll hurt.”

  The pedicab took a right off Main Street and turned in at the campus gate. I paid him fifteen bucks to drive half a mile and caught her when she stumbled down from the cab, then led her slowly up the stairs of her dorm and found the room key in her pocket. Threw her clothes on the floor to clear the bed, then barred the door when she tried to pack up and drive home. After she promised not to leave, I made her lie down and helped her with the pillows, and hid her car keys, and went back into town to get her prescription filled. When I got to the room, she was resting. I went out a second time, to buy ice.

  The little store with rainbow flags had run out of ice. I saw the time on the clock tower above town hall. What had the nurse meant by an hour? An hour from when? I ran to the gas station by the highway, and ran back through the crowds on Main Street with the bags of ice swinging. I’d hoped I could get away for a few days and everything would be okay. I’d thought that at the very least, they’d be safe. I pictured Kaya screaming, falling into the pit, holding on tight.

  When I got back, the lidocaine had worn off. I saw Amy arch, her head crowning against the pillow, her mouth open, teeth bared, no sound coming out. She hadn’t been able to open the bottle of pills one-handed. She made a noise, a jagged, improvised yowl. I ripped open the bottle, and pills went all over the floor. I accidentally stepped on one and smashed it, picked up another and handed it to her.

  They’d put me on OxyContin when I had my wisdom teeth out. I gave it my full endorsement, hoping to calm her, or me: “You’re going to be okay.” I thought the pain would level off, but after a while she got into something only a great martyr could access. I held a tissue while she blew her nose.

  “Hang in there, kid.” We really were being punished. Her agony was somehow a relief. One or two of the bedrooms in her suite looked empty and unused, and the others were vacant but had clothing on the floor. Her forehead was smooth and hard
and I touched it and felt that numbness again, witnessing her pain. I couldn’t help her, couldn’t control myself, couldn’t catch Kaya when she fell, couldn’t protect them. When the painkiller didn’t seem to be working, I dug out another from the amber vial and handed it to her. She threw it down with the water I’d brought from the bathroom in a paper cup. There’d been six pills, counting the one I’d crushed into the floor. Now there were three.

  I had to get out of there and call home. I wanted photos of Kaya’s injuries and eyewitness accounts. After I finished off Brett, I’d use the baseball bat on Curtis for renovating his house. They’d talked about tearing it down but had decided instead to blow out the rear, then beat the height restriction by raising their yard. I had to get back down Main Street to terrorize a certain jewelry store clerk, then hurry to the Barn to look through my notes to get ready for class in the morning. I had to manage my students’ egos and frustrations. I had to care. I had to get paid before Robin saw our bank balance, had to get home before she killed my kids. I needed to start on that painting of Chinese factory workers, and call Adam, and then make the Romney drawing in ink and scan it and send it in. Long days waited for me back home, parenting, bandages, differences of opinion, scrambled meals and bedtime sorrows, my sleep carved up by sobs and howling shrieks, and long nights hammering my work into an art director’s half-baked, mystifying demands, micromanaged by an erratic twenty-six-year-old publisher who’d never worked at a magazine before he’d bought one. I felt myself fighting against all that rope as the noose cinched itself down. I had to shower and change and get to that fundraiser. Carl, our boss, didn’t like those things any more than the rest of us, but the least we could do was go and kiss some donor’s ass. If you blew off parties or came late or acted less than thrilled to be there, he made note of it and didn’t hire you back. It was part of the job of the conference, the conference as one of the last remaining perks from the good old days, and I couldn’t bear to lose it.