Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  Doug’s snifter avails itself. Fits my chin perfectly. I dip and howl because fuck it hurts. Sharon produces Percocet and Advil. First easy choice I’ve had all day. Hannah cuts strips of cheesecloth left over from turkey dinner. She dresses my chin, tapes the cloth to my cheeks and secures the bandage by looping the rest of the cloth up over my head, much like a football player’s chin guard, only I look postsurgery, and those guys look hot.

  “Crisis averted!” Sharon says.

  But Twister is done.

  Rachel slinks off to a corner. A few of us notice her whispering into her cell phone, which has the unfortunate effect of wooing the rest of us to our cell phones for similar calls—friends in California, friends in the know, doctors, therapists, the bank.

  In three seconds, the party’s turned into that scene immediately after the verdict comes down when reporters disperse to call in the lede.

  “What’s going on here?” Sharon says. She’s got a baize table spread in one hand and a bucket of plastic chips in the other. Her tone is accusing, though this has more to do with the success of her party than anything else.

  Phones are returned to pockets. Joe makes a show of turning his off. Others follow suit.

  “Poker?” she says. “Who doesn’t love poker?”

  The suggestion is met with enthusiasm that dies out in shame. After all, Doug is among us. Doug who gambled away his share of ZOG Chicken.

  I wander into a back room, a child’s room, it seems. Hatch marks extend up the wall at intervals, charting a little person’s growth. Between April and September of last year, the kid had a spurt.

  I have marks like this on the inside of my closet door at Izzy’s. Months in which growth was not in the offing are annotated with caveats like: wore bad-luck shoes. The door’s logic arraigns fate with maturing intensity until one April, showing a failure to grow for six months contiguous, the caveat reads: have bad-luck life.

  I stretch out on the bottom of the bunk bed and regard clippings taped to the underside of the top. Rock stars I do not recognize. Teen heartthrob actor I recognize all too well. The name Johnny cut from various headlines. I gather this kid, a girl it seems, loves Johnny. Well, good for her. Good for them both. Love is good. Crushes are good. Mine have never been good, but who am I to cull from my experience a judgment on the aggregate?

  From the other room: Charades? Monopoly?

  I look at my watch. An hour to go. There’s a small TV on the desk, which I turn on to check the progress of mayhem at Times Square. But all I get is Dick Clark musing on the dialectic before our very eyes, the unfettering of joy come the New Year vis-à-vis the unfettering of terror the rest of us are experiencing since his telecast has been interrupted fifty times by news from the plague front where six have now perished alongside the decency of Californians jostling for supplies at Ace hardware.

  Stanley walks in and covers his eyes. “Turn it off! I can’t watch.”

  “What’s happening out there?”

  He shrugs. “Looks like your chin stopped bleeding.”

  I twirl my finger in the air. “Did you hear I’m going to rehab tomorrow?”

  “Yes. That’s good.”

  I sit up, furious. “So you want me to go?”

  “Oh, grow up, Lucy.”

  I slump back into his chest. “Why’s it good again?”

  He sighs. “It’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”

  “Hey, look,” I say, pointing at a board game. “There’s Sorry. Let’s play Sorry.”

  My spirits rally with the thought. I love this game, whose goal is to get all your pieces to the finish line, but whose pleasure is to screw as many of your opponents as possible along the way. It’s a game of alliances and betrayal. You can team up with a player to retard a third, then stab your teammate in the back. And you are encouraged to apologize for it. How many board games actually thrive on sarcasm? And how many players have been known to cut loose with a rapacity that belies good character? I bet this game chips away at ZOG solidarity. I bet the executive board dissolves next week. “Let’s play!” I say, and grab Stanley’s arm.

  “Sorry? That game’s for ten-year-olds.”

  And like that I start to cry.

  “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean it. We can play Sorry.”

  I dump my head in a pillow. I say I hate rehab, that I’m scared of the plague, that this heartache is unsustainable—I miss Eric so much, I have no one to talk to—but the sobs are censoring and Stanley gets none of it.

  “Is it your chin? Does it hurt?”

  He strokes my hair, which makes me cry all the more.

  “I know, baby,” he says. “I know. It’s gonna be okay. Let’s get you some nog.”

  It is nearing midnight. Group talk has devolved into accounts of everyone’s happiest moment. Or top five. But because we are drunk, nostalgia quickly cedes to gloom. Five happy moments. Some of us have to dig deep to produce three. And even then, they are so far in the past as to offer no comfort.

  Rachel lifts her glass. “To the year of living dangerously,” she says.

  The brass hear, hear. The yeomen nod.

  “I saw that movie,” Noah says. “There was some little Asian lady in it, right?”

  “To the year of happy moments!” Sharon says.

  Grunts all around.

  “To the year of sex!” Doug says.

  We glance at his mother, but she’s ten sheets to the wind.

  “To sex on the pool table!” Rachel shouts.

  Kathleen stands and raises her glass. “To sex with yourself,” she says gravely.

  I knew it!

  By now, everyone is laughing. Even Hannah, though she’s still sore about the thread.

  I put up my hands and wait for quiet. I want to toast something I’ve had just once. And I want to honor the inexperience that makes me think it can’t last. I raise my glass and notice I’ve been drinking rum, which is foul. “To sex with the one you love,” I say, and drain the last of it.

  My toast is met with appreciation until Hannah lets out a snort and with it, a wad of gum. Her laughter is picked up by Linda, who, between gasps, says, “I’m sorry, that was very sweet, it’s just that you standing there in that bandage and—” She gets no further.

  Just as well, since here comes the countdown. Sharon is determined to use her watch, despite Kathleen’s thrusting her GPS timepiece in Sharon’s face. With a minute to go, the brass gather around Kathleen while the rest of us stick with Sharon. This is her worst nightmare. Our countdown is symbolic of the class divide that scuttles ambitions like peace on earth. Our countdown is syncopated. The brass hug and kiss a whole five seconds before we do.

  “Well, that settles it,” I say. “My year is ruined.”

  Stanley takes my hand and leads me back to the kid’s room. He staggers. I tuck him into the lower bunk and curl up next to him.

  “Want to hear something?” he says.

  “Yes, anything.”

  “A few months ago I started sneaking into that farm across the road. I’d go with a couple six-packs. First few nights I was just sitting on the fence, watching the cows. But after a while, I got to putting some beer in the trough. Just so I wouldn’t have to drink alone.”

  I put my arm around his waist. He smiles, but the hurt on his face is awful.

  “Look, Stanley, if I have to go away, someone’s gotta look after Hannah. I don’t want her going back to Isifrid’s.” There is a pause. “Okay, forget that. What I’m saying is, you’re a good man and also, can you look after Hannah?”

  “That’s a lot to ask,” he says.

  “See? You already know enough to know it’s a responsibility.”

  “And that’s supposed to be an accomplishment?”

  I don’t know what to say. You try to bolster a man’s self-esteem and all he does is depress your own.

  “I need to sleep,” he says, and rolls on his side.

  I listened to him breathe. I might have stayed with him all night, but Wanda peek
ed in the room and motioned for me to come out. She was holding her cell phone. She looked undone.

  “Lucy, sit,” she said. “Sit next to Hannah,” who I couldn’t believe was still awake. Her eyes stared at Wanda, but who knew to what effect.

  Wanda sighed. “I just got off the phone with your mother. This is rotten timing, I’m so sorry, but your grandmother, she passed away tonight. Isifrid wants you both to come home tomorrow.”

  I said, “But she was fine when we left.”

  Hannah put out her hand, as if for a shake. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for telling us.”

  Wanda and I exchanged a look that meant: Something is very wrong with this child. Only her look had the advantage of passing into something else, as when you rubberneck on the highway. Mine stayed put, as when you’re the one whose car got wrecked.

  Wanda shut the door behind her. After that, the room was still but for the dribble of little fists on my chest.

  Twenty-two

  First thing back, I got my chin replaced. The wound was infected; the skin was flayed. The plastic surgeon tried to sell me new lips and nostrils. End-of-the-year special, I presumed. I asked if he could give me a metal plate to bilk airport security. He said I needed to waive my rights in case I died on the operating table. This was my first surgery and though I did not fear death, I did fear waking up in the middle, unable to open my eyes or communicate, but entirely aware of the pain. I’d heard of this happening. The doc said the chances were slim, and when I protested he said, Look, just be glad you don’t have superplague. And to think only a few months ago, this could have been funny.

  I wanted to wear my dog collar to surgery, but they said no. I had not taken it off in five years. And it showed. The grommets had stained my neck green, the green of bumps and bruises, so that my head looked sewn on, or as if I’d been strangled.

  Stanley was waiting for me in recovery. When I came to, he said I looked like a blowfish, so swollen was my face. At home, Hannah agreed. And the cook, she suggested gumbo. Gumbo could fix anything.

  There’s no joy in convalescence now that TV has turned into the scariest thing on earth. Round-the-clock reports on Superplague: A Nation in Crisis. Unwittingly, soap star Claire Anderson is just about to seduce her brother when, wham, the show gets preempted. Daytime drama has blue balls. As for the nighttime stuff, the networks have yanked any show about doctors, cops, or espionage. CBS has gone the Bambi route. NBC has sponsored focus groups to see if soft-core will allay tension or depress the crap out of us. ABC has hired several trampy-looking women to deliver the bad news as they see fit. As for Fox, they have decided to downplay the outbreak lest anyone turn against the government as a result. The anchors, however, have taken to wearing U.S. flag ties, presumably to rally their viewership against them outsiders, whoever they are. When did wearing the flag start to mean fundamentalism and xenophobia? After 9/11, I wore a flag pin, but I was embarrassed. I wanted it to say: I love my country despite most everything. But what it really said was: Kill the A-rabs, kill ’em all! And while you’re at it, have a beer.

  To my mind, panic is understudied for something so destructive and ubiquitous. I mean, your average fight-or-flight theory polarizes emotion with no regard for the stuff in between. What of the people whose panic results in apathy? I’ll just stay here until I die. Or the panic that stampedes an electronics store when the grocery is just blocks away? The mind scrambling for purchase. Indecision or madness. Flee to the suburbs or flee this life. Stay and help; stay and help no one. I can think of few feelings that disperse in such antimony.

  Me, I’ve been comatose. I think we’re all going to die, yes, but I have been spared the pupal experience of having my thoughts convert into fear and fear into unpredictable bowel movements and clammy skin. Instead, I just sit around watching the footage from out West.

  The quarantine has actually turned Northern California into the world’s largest jail. Unemployment has dropped because of all the work a quarantine requires. To lock down even a single county, you need one hell of a border patrol. Just think how many roads lead out of town. The National Guard can barely manage. And people are enraged. How dare the government confine them to this death trap! The Berkeley underground developed overnight. In the hippie splendor of Santa Cruz, there’s a black market for guns. Everyone wants out. The guys who run Mexicans into Texas are in hot demand. Bounty hunters in Washington State are in hot demand. Number one crime in California: hospital break-ins. The prize? An oxygen tank. Snatch it from a dying guy’s bedside if you have to. With tank and mask, you never have to breathe the air again. No air, no superplague. Across the country, police guard hospitals like Fort Knox.

  The moon men have left the area. They fear for their suits. Anyone might kill them for a suit. And when the National Guard is not chasing border crossers, they are defending their gear.

  Here in New York, we say: But only twelve have died, what’s the big deal? Because surely we’d behave better. Meantime, middle-of-nowhere real estate is experiencing its first boom ever. Thirty miles to the nearest store? We’ll take it. In New York, we feign calm and make our plans in secret. But you can sense the fear. A new crease in the face. That extra bit of energy it takes to perform duties once rote, now cavalier. Taking the subway, eating out, movies, the gym. I think I prefer the mania out West because this repression, it eats away at your sanity, slow and painful.

  Aggie’s memorial is tomorrow; today is the probate lawyer. Rehab’s been postponed indefinitely, which leaves me at the vanguard of coping theory, where most anything’s a go. If it helps you deal, it’s a go.

  Isifrid wants to know what I’m wearing to church. She’s been on the phone for days, inviting friends, buying flowers. I don’t think she’s been hopped up on crack, which means this is just the stamina of grief deferred.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say. “No one will notice anything besides my chin.”

  “Don’t be a pill, Lucy. And if you wear that dog collar, well, I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

  “Like there’s anything worse than rehab.”

  “I can think of something worse.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If I came with you.”

  I break into a smile. My mother, she’s still got sass. I say I’ll wear a black skirt suit, no collar.

  “And Hannah, will you make sure she’s dressed right, too?”

  “I don’t think she’s talking to me.”

  “Is she talking to Loretta?”

  I nod. Everyone talks to the cook, it’s protocol.

  “Then put her in charge. And go on, I have things to do.”

  I find Gumbo in the wine closet. I can’t seem to call her anything but her last meal. She does not appreciate this. I tap her on the shoulder, we have words. She says Hannah’s not talking to her. I say, “What the fuck, Gumbo? You’re like Switzerland around here.”

  “Come again?”

  “Never mind.”

  By the time we have to go to the lawyer’s, Mother is herky-jerky, which happens to a body denied its drug. She does not want to go. I don’t want to go. We have not seen Quinty since Dad died. I imagine doing probate for an entire family is like working a dog pound. You just watch ’em go down and try not to get attached. But Quinty, he’s got sangfroid. On the phone, he said we both had to be there, which means Aggie probably left me something. Maybe she had land in Norway no one knows about.

  Mother has booked Raymond for the day. He is her favorite driver. He comes with limo and service cap. He’s got a brassard and fatigues. When we are in his car, people think we’re diplomats.

  Outside our building, he opens the limo door and stands at attention. Mother returns the salute. I clap him on the shoulder and say, “Howdy, Ray.” He is impossible to break. He’s like those guards in front of Buckingham Palace.

  While Mother sees to our drinks, I tap the partition. Raymond’s eyes appear in the rearview. I lean forward and drape my arms over the lip.
/>   “So what’s the word, Ray? Seen any good movies lately?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “That movie about the girl killers is supposed to be good.”

  “I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”

  “And that rapper movie. That white rapper guy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The window comes up between us.

  “Sherry?” Mother says.

  “Blech.”

  “Only a boob says blech to sherry.”

  “Blech.”

  “Did Loretta talk to Hannah?”

  “No. They’re not talking.”

  Mother sighs and says, “You know your nana was probably her best hope.”

  “Mine, too.”

  She pats my hand. I love how resigned we are to failing Hannah. How drugs have foreclosed on denial so that we can’t even pretend to believe in ourselves. Nana’s been gone only two weeks, but I feel her absence acutely.

  Mother says it’s going to be a long winter. Then she loses an earring. The rear of this limo is so big, it accommodates two women on all fours. The shag is dense and the diamond small. I turn on a reading light. The beam hits Mother from behind and my God: she looks like someone replaced her skin with Saran Wrap, and pulled tight.

  We bump heads. I say, “Oh, forget this. You’ve got eighteen thousand diamond earrings.”

  From the speakers comes Raymond asking if he can be of service. Mother relates our problem. He pulls over. Allow me. Mother and I get out. He holds an umbrella over our heads and escorts us to the warmth of a deli. Then he retrieves something from his trunk, which turns out to be goggles. Like, night-vision goggles.

  I turn to Mother and say, “Okay, this guy is nuts.”

  “He rather is. But your father gave me those earrings.”

  The deli smells of bacon fat. I buy some gum. Raymond returns with goggles on brow, earring in hand.

  Mother makes to kiss him on the cheek, and he flinches. He actually flinches. I hope she didn’t notice. To be the one horror that makes Raymond flinch.

  Outside Quinty’s office we’re both too scared to go in. Once probate’s done, there’s no way to arrest the passing. Isifrid slinks off to a bathroom, hiding behind her bladder the way only a crackhead can. This leaves me with the secretary, who’s even frostier than her boss.