Kindred

by Stein, Tammar

  For the first time since Raphael’s spring break visit, I realize I have been giving him the benefit of the doubt in assuming that he didn’t mean to be so cruel and overwhelming, that he just couldn’t help it. Now I wonder if Raphael was cruel on purpose. Angels, it’s becoming clear, are no patrons of mankind.

  Tucking my crazy, flyaway hair behind my ears, I wince at the tight muscles in my lower back, the knots in my shoulders, the vague but unhappy gurgle in my stomach. Standing carefully, I scan the area, but as before there’s nothing to show for my vision. No proof, nothing to cling to, except … except that the promise was real. Remembering it, I feel some knots loosen in my neck.

  As I walk back through the woods, hurrying home both spooked and calm, I try to sort through the facts. Possibilities and likelihoods, maybes and shoulds and can’t-possibly-be’s, slip and slide between my fingers, and I can’t hold on to anything.

  My cell phone rings, a jarring anachronism in the quiet woods. It scares me so badly I cry out in fright and trip, twisting my ankle.

  My body shaking in the aftermath of a ridiculous adrenaline surge, I hesitantly flip open the phone. But it’s not God. It’s Alex.

  “I got the name of an internist for you,” he says, pride and achievement loud in his voice. “He’s new in town—my neighbor says he’s the best. His name is Dr. Kreger, and I told the nurse it was an emergency. If you hurry, she said, they could see you this afternoon.”

  “Oh, thanks.” I’m still trying to slow down my racing heart, fighting embarrassment that he said it was an emergency, touched that he cared enough to help out. I can’t think for all the mess clanging around in my brain.

  “You okay?” he asks after an awkward pause.

  “I’m just getting back from the hike you told me about.”

  “You are?” he crows. “Rock on! Did you love it?”

  “It was …”—I search for the word—“intense.”

  “I told you it would be. You didn’t disturb anything, did you?”

  Only myself, but I don’t say that.

  “So where’s this Dr. Kroger’s office?”

  “It’s Kreger,” he corrects me, and then gives me directions. “You really need to hurry; they close at five, but they said if you came right away, they’d squeeze you in. I really laid it on them how sick you are, so they’re doing this as a favor. Normally it takes more than a week to get an appointment. So make sure to look pathetic.”

  I glance at the cell phone and see I have less than thirty minutes to get there. “I’d better run, then,” I say. “I’m not back at Greenbrier Park yet.”

  “Good luck,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”

  I close my phone and begin a slow, semi-urgent lope toward the park. Once again I have completely lost any sense of distance. How far I’ve gone, how long I have left on this hike, are only vague ideas. Sweat blooms between my shoulder blades, under my arms. Stupidly, I worry about feeling disgustingly clammy when the doctor examines me, and about body odor. As a motivation to run faster, those thoughts are not useful. As a ridiculous distraction to keep me from fretting about a dream of angels and possibly (could it possibly be?) God, they work great.

  Dr. Kreger’s office is located in an industrial part of town I haven’t seen much of since I moved here. Car lots, big-box stores and anonymous office buildings line the road like spectators at a parade. As I slow down in Frank’s loaner to read the tiny signs in front of various buildings, early commuters honk at me in irritation—southern charm and hospitality only extend so far. I see the number I’ve been searching for on the other side of the road and veer madly into the turning lane, avoiding a sideswipe accident by a fraction of an inch.

  I race out of my car to the building. It’s a quarter to five and I fully expect the doctor’s office to be locked and the receptionist gone. If they’ve already seen the last patient of the day, they’re not going to bother remaining open for me. But the door is unlocked.

  A terse sign on the frosted-glass receptionist’s partition warns patients not to knock on it or slide it open, so I write my name and arrival time on the pad of paper. The remaining patients in the waiting room are called by a nurse and disappear into the privileged interior of the office. Eventually the glass rattles aside and a woman peers out.

  “You got insurance, sweetie?” she asks.

  I hate it when strangers call me “sweetie.”

  “Sure do, darlin’,” I say, hearing the snarl in my tone. She blinks and her face hardens.

  “I’ll need your card, your driver’s license and your co-payment.”

  After I wait another half hour, a nurse holding a clipboard finally calls my name. I follow her into the examination room, where she curtly tells me to undress and put on a paper dressing gown.

  The folded gown is so oddly designed that I can’t figure out which side is the front. I take a guess, and feeling very exposed and cold, I sit on the crinkly paper of the examination table and wait another twenty minutes before the doctor comes in. It’s surreal to think that an hour ago I lay asleep in the woods, dreaming of angels.

  He sits on a stool with wheels, flips through some papers and, without looking at me, asks several questions about my symptoms. Fever? Chills? Aches? Weight loss? He jots down what I say, and when he finally looks up, I realize he seems vaguely familiar. Great.

  “Lie back, please,” he says.

  The paper on the table crinkles under me, and my gown shifts open. I clutch at the front. He pushes around on my abdomen. The whole time, I’m trying to place him. Where have I seen him? I’ve only been here a few weeks; there aren’t that many places I’ve spent time. The coffee shop? The bookstore? The news office?

  I wince as he pushes on a tender spot.

  “Does this hurt?”

  I nod, then realize he isn’t looking at me. “A little,” I say.

  He taps my belly a few times and it makes a comically woody, hollow sound.

  “You can sit up,” he says.

  His voice isn’t familiar at all, just his face. As I sit up, clutching tightly the front of the gown, the sight of my own bare legs jogs my memory of where I’ve seen him before. He was the guy getting a cross tattoo at Emmett’s. Facial Hair.

  “From your symptoms, there are several possibilities,” he says, looking at his notes as if to refresh his memory. “You probably picked up a parasite, though you might have IBS or IBD or it could be your gallbladder. We can run some stool samples here. But I’m guessing you ate something or drank contaminated fluid. Have you been out of the country lately?”

  I shake my head.

  “Okay, well, it’s still possible that it’s a parasite.”

  I want to ask him about those diagnoses he ran through. I should have brought a pad of paper to take notes. I’ve never heard of those acronyms, and what could be wrong with my gallbladder? Is that serious?

  He swivels on his stool and opens a cabinet door. He hands me a clear plastic cup with a lid. “We’ll need you to collect a fecal sample. Bring this back to the nurse.”

  “I’m supposed to poop in that?” I ask, just to be clear.

  He looks surprised at the question. “Yes, it’s to collect stool.”

  He stands up and gives me his hand to shake. His hand feels warm, while mine is icy.

  “Someone will call you with the results,” he says, and walks out the door, but then pauses, popping his head back in. “After we get the results, come back and see me.” Then he shuts the door behind him.

  “But—” I say to the empty room. I don’t understand. I was waiting for the part when he asks if I have any questions, because I do. I feel like my mother should be here with me.

  After sitting on the examination table for a few moments longer, I hop off and collect my clothing. I remind myself that it doesn’t matter what those other “possibilities” are. They don’t apply to me, since I probably have a parasite. It sounds gross, but on the other hand, it’s likely something easy to take care of. Anybody
could pick up a stomach bug. The fact that mine’s lasted for more than a month is weird, but what do I know about stomach bugs? There are probably all kinds of bizarre parasites that doctors see all the time.

  As I shed the paper gown and hurry into my clothes, I try to figure out why I needed to have stripped in the first place. I can’t come up with any plausible reason.

  IX.

  I TURN IN THE STOOL SAMPLE THE NEXT DAY, humiliated that I’m carrying my own feces in a cup. I put the container inside a little gift bag because, really, what am I supposed to carry my own poop in? Besides, it amuses me to imagine the receptionist going, “Oooh, what’s this?” and then going, “Oh, what the hell is this?”

  Feeling better now that I’m on the cusp of diagnosis and treatment, I decide to pay my favorite tattoo artist a visit during my lunch break.

  It’s a beautiful day, a perfect foreshadowing of summer. The air is soft and warm, and when I see a couple of butterflies fluttering in the wind like paper flowers, I smile and stand still so that they float and hang in front of me. Despite the frustrating doctor’s visit, the expectation of a diagnosis and subsequent cure has me nearly giddy.

  My dream is drifting away and has lost some of its power to make me shudder. I know better than to discount it; I can’t afford to write it off as a complete figment of my imagination. But there was no task given. Nobody asked me to do a thing, and whatever celestial being blessed me at the end was clearly on my side and is looking out for me. I can live with that.

  I arrive at Emmett’s tattoo shop. With something close to anticipation, I push open the heavy, old-fashioned door and step inside. A tinkling bell announces me, and this time a haunting Spanish guitar is playing on the stereo. That and the faint clicking and whirling of the ceiling fans are the only sounds in the darkened room.

  “Hello?” I call out. No one answers. I step in farther, letting my eyes adjust to the relative gloom. None of the overhead lights are on, and the tinted windows don’t let in much light. Figuring Emmett stepped out for a moment, I walk over to a wall and study the sample sketches pinned on it.

  Dragons, birds, thorns, wild beasts, team logos, Celtic knots, Maori designs, pinup girls, devils and various flowers all compete for attention. I try to imagine showing up at my dad’s with ivy leaf tattoos twining around my arm—the look on his face would be priceless. It’s the sort of practical joke Mo would love. He once faked a pierced nose after summer camp. My father got that tight look around his mouth and eyes. It did not go away after the big reveal. As usual, he was more pissed off about the trick than the supposed piercing. So maybe no fake tattoo, let alone a real one.

  “Can I help you?”

  Startled, I gasp and spin around, feeling like I’ve been caught snooping.

  “You scared me.” I press a hand to my hammering heart.

  “Miriam,” Emmett says, almost smiling. “Have you come for a tattoo?”

  “Not today,” I say. “Just checking out the art.” With his shaved head gleaming in the dim light and his eyes so dark in his face, Emmett should look intimidating. Instead, my heart leaps in a silly glad rush at seeing him again.

  “It’s called flash.”

  “Did you draw these—flash?”

  “I did some of them, but mainly they’re standard flash. Most people need to see a design to be inspired and to know what’s considered reasonable.” He’s wearing another tight black shirt that makes his shoulders look ridiculously broad. Again I try to make out his tattoos without staring too obviously, but they’re complicated. I’d need a good overhead light and some uninterrupted time to work them out.

  “I like this music,” I say. The intricate picking and the haunting melody are an unusual selection for a tattoo parlor. At least it seems that way to me, though I don’t spend much time in tat shops. “So, if I were to get a tattoo, what’s a good spot?”

  “Depends what kind of design you want.”

  “Something small, nothing painful.”

  He smiles. “You’ve never been inked before?”

  “I grew up associating tattoos with Holocaust survivors.” I shrug. “I never saw them as anything I’d want on my body.”

  “I redid a concentration camp tattoo once,” he says. He straddles a chair, folding his arms across the backrest. He nods his head at the large black vinyl chair next to him. “Sit down, take a load off.” I sit and fold my legs under me. The chair is cool, but the thought of him holding a needle and marking my skin makes me break out in a light sweat.

  “This guy’s grandson brought him in. We reworked the numbers so that they looked like Jacob’s Ladder.”

  “I had a dream about that,” I say without thinking.

  “A tattoo of Jacob’s Ladder?”

  “No.” A hot blush climbs up my neck and face. “No, about Jacob’s Ladder. It was more like a nightmare, actually.” My body hurts as I remember the angels’ cutting words, the cruel, disgusted look on their perfect, cold faces.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says.

  “So, did those two friends come back for their flowers?”

  He thinks for a moment. “Oh, right, the daisy and ribbon. Yeah, they did.”

  “And?”

  “And what? As far as I know, they’re still friends.” He’s so calm and unflappable I really feel like trying to needle him.

  “No, I meant, did the design look good on them? Once it’s on, it’s on forever.”

  “They were happy with it, which is all that matters.”

  “Do you have a tattoo that you’re not happy with?”

  He tilts his head and studies me. I grin at his expression; I don’t even feel bad for prying. And though he comes across like such a private person, I know he’ll answer me.

  “Let’s just say there are tattoos that I wouldn’t do again. But everything that I’ve had done was the right decision at the time. They’re my map of places I’ve been.” He rubs the side of his neck where part of a tattoo curls up from under his shirt. It seems unconscious, a nervous habit. I wonder if that’s one of the tattoos he wouldn’t get again. “Not a physical map,” he scoffs, misreading my expression. “Not like I got the Coliseum from the time I was in Rome or some shit like that. It’s more like the places in my head, my evolution from stupid kid to stupid adult.”

  His gaze is steady on me, and before long I drop my eyes.

  “It’s your turn now,” he says with a small smile. “What do you regret about your young life so far?”

  Immediately an image of Tabitha comes to mind.

  “That bad?” he asks softly.

  “Pretty much,” I say. The flirty mood is gone, completely killed by the reminder that all is not well. That I’ve failed spectacularly and that quite likely there’s more to do, just on the horizon. I think of my future and Mo’s with something close to despair.

  He considers me for a moment.

  “There’s a great band in town tonight called Blank Pages,” he says. “I’ve heard them play before, and they’re freaking awesome. You want to come?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Anything, anything, to keep from brooding about my personal disasters. “That sounds fun.”

  We agree to meet at nine, and of course I try on everything in my closet and find nothing that’s both cool and casual. Nothing that says I’m awesome but I don’t try too hard. Maybe because such an outfit doesn’t exist in this mortal world.

  I settle for an old pair of jeans and a black velvet-and-satin top. I think it’s a good idea to send mixed messages in an outfit. I’m also under the delusion that the top makes me look older than twelve. I never wear anything with ruffles or bows, or in bright primary colors, because then I really look like an eighth grader.

  I half expect Emmett to show up on a Harley; instead, he drives an old but very clean Honda Accord. The day has been warm, but with nightfall the temperature is dropping quickly. The drive is barely ten minutes long and I can’t think of anything interesting to say. He parks, and I shiver as I get
out of his car.

  Since Hamilton is so close to Nashville, it has more music clubs than one would expect in a town of its size, though they mostly cater to the country music crowd. I can’t picture Emmett getting down to fiddles and harmonicas.

  We step in and I’m deluged by a battery of sensations. The floor is sticky; the air reeks of clove cigarettes and cheap beer. It’s dim after the bright lights of the parking lot, and all I see is the indistinct press of bodies.

  I don’t notice the bouncer at first, and so miss the exchange when he tells Emmett there’s a cover charge. By the time I realize who Emmett’s stopped to talk to, he’s already pulled out some bills from his pocket and paid for both of us.

  “Let me pay you back,” I say, reaching for my purse.

  “My treat,” he says firmly.

  I wonder if we’re on a date.

  “What kind of music did you say they play?” I ask. He has to bend down low to hear me. He smells like soap and aftershave and something else, something spicy I can’t name. The band must be taking a break, since there’s a song I recognize from the radio blasting from the speakers.

  “You’ll love it,” he says. Which doesn’t answer my question, but it’s really hard to talk. Someone bumps into me and I fly forward, crashing into Emmett. Maybe there’s a real upside to going to a crowded club. He steadies me and I put my hands against his chest, pretending to get my bearings.

  “Let’s go up front,” I say, and he nods in agreement.

  We squeeze our way toward the stage, and by the time we get there, the band’s back.

  There’s only three of them: a female lead singer with a guitar, a guy on drums, and another one standing by a small collection of instruments—two guitars, a bass, a trumpet and a few others I can’t make out.

  “Hey, everyone!” the female calls out. She has a smoky, velvety voice. Her face looks young, but her voice is old.

  “We’re from Seattle, Washington,” she says, and someone in the back whoops. She tilts her head in acknowledgment. Someone else shouts out, “I like your shoes!”