Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  They say we are doomed to reexperience the body death ad infinitum. I will never leave this bench. And my heart, it will rear and stop, and stop anew.

  In winter, the cold lacquers your face and hands. It’s what I remember most from the early days of my marriage. Erlend and I met one year into the occupation of Norway. We had poverty and jazz in common. Jazz could colonize your body like a drug so that nights spent listening to the phonograph were nights that kept the war at bay. Teddy Wilson and Roy Eldridge. We might not have eaten in two days, but get those guys to play and we’d move. We’d move when movement was impossible, fifteen deep in a boiler room with zero clearance if you stood. After the war, you could tell collaborator from rebel by posture alone. The spine will bend as needed, though the change is permanent.

  For myself and Erlend, there was pregnancy and marriage. We were in the resistance, teamwork was key; when the pregnancy failed, the marriage didn’t. Benny Goodman held us tight. We knew, of course, that we’d been left behind. While the Nazis sat tight, jazz had outgrown swing, it was something else now. We said, Soon as the war is over. Our favorite refrain.

  Quisling banned the radio. And the word swing. Jazz clubs shut down. Public dancing was out. By 1943, the jazz scene was so repressed, none thought it could survive.

  When Isifrid came in ’44, I swore she would be the last. The nausea made me crazy. The swell in my joints locked a bangle around my wrist so that it had to be cut off. I was hungry all the time. But then this child. This little creature! Erlend sat by my bed and peered into her face. I looked from him to her and back. We had done this together? I decided to love my husband.

  As a country, Norway emerged from the occupation relatively unharmed. Bloodshed had been minimal, our cities were intact. But the hatred of the postwar period! You’d think the Nazis had killed every woman and child in Bergen. We were a lynch mob waiting to happen. It was not enough to execute Quisling or jail his cabinet. Every other Norwegian had been a traitor. Every other Norwegian. Maybe. Few were spared accusation. If the butcher skimped on a flank, perhaps he’d been seen at a certain club with a certain official. We looked on each other with suspicion and fear. This was no place for jazz—jazz, which is freedom, jazz, which is art. Our musicians went to Sweden. And for the rest of us, it became: If only we lived in Sweden. We read Estrad and Orkesterjournalen, and we yearned. We listened to Charlie Parker on Voice of America, and we yearned. We caught up with the rest of the world. Isolation had failed us terribly, it was time to mingle. The government pooled resources with Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Even Germany got involved. We began to import music. We were Erlend, Isifrid, Berget, Linnea, Petra, Gerd, and myself.

  I laundered clothes for the rectory. Erlend worked on the docks. Money was scarce and we were too many, but the war was over, it wouldn’t do to complain. The girls slept on habits piled knee high. My knuckles were split and chapped. Erlend would come home smelling of brine. If he ever got three days’ leave, it would take as long to rub out the smell. At night we collapsed into each other. By morning we were like marionettes in a box, tangled in sleep, apart onstage. Because that’s what it was, this life we had: a performance at odds with the people we were inside. Erlend was good with his hands, he could whittle a chess set out of planks from our floor. He would have liked to spend his days in a small shop, educing figures from oak or marble. Instead he was up at four to shuttle clams and cod from boat to warehouse to plane to Asia. Our sea is the world’s larder. Redfish, ling, and pout. The Ministry of Fisheries had its work cut out for it. And so did Erlend. The physical labor tried his strength but the mental strain was worse. To begin each day knowing you will make no effort to change the path you’re on, that you will subordinate your dreams to whatever provides for you and yours. Wake up like this enough and you resile, back to when no one knew you, to when you were alone, because to be seen for what you have become is too much.

  I was no better. I wanted to go to school for medicine. The resistance was more about morale than combat, but whenever one of ours got hurt, no matter how cursory the wound, he usually died from lack of professional care. Hospitals were out of the question. Most of our doctors had been conscripted or kidnapped. Think Dr. Zhivago, it was like that. I knew how to disinfect and bandage, but to save a life, it never happened. I’d say: After the war, I will study. And after the war, I’d say: When Isifrid is grown. Then I took sick, my heart was not right. Back then, cardiac surgery was larval at best. I volunteered for the Vineberg operation, in which, I think, you take an artery and reroute it to the heart so that it looks something like a waterslide that feeds a pool. No one took Vineberg seriously and neither did I, but I was dying and cared little for the odds.

  When I recovered, I began to read Zhivago in earnest. Passages from the book circulated among us samizdat-like. We didn’t get the novel until ’57 like everyone else, but excerpts had been floating around for years. So here was this doctor conducting one of the great love stories, and here was I, with suds and vestment. I thought of the heroics that awaited accomplishment in the field. I thought of the liberties that attend any pursuit of science; you can learn as you please and discover by chance. I did not think of my children. Even less about Erlend. We hardly spoke because there was nothing to say. I was suffused with need for a different life.

  Daniel’s ship came to port in Bergen the summer we lost Linnea to bronchial pneumonia run amok. I recall the timing because on his ship were samples of oxytetracycline, which could have saved her life. I remember pacing the dock for hours, petitioning the captain and anyone else who ventured on shore. But it was useless. They either had no idea what I was talking about or shrugged it off because bureaucracy isn’t worth fighting unless the fight is your own.

  Linnea was only two years old. Erlend was crushed. I was crushed, though I also managed to have the frightful thought that one less mouth to feed was one step closer to escape. I began to look on the other children as punishment. Berget and Gerd were four, Isifrid six. Petra was one. Such is the burden of the firstborn; Isifrid cared for the others when I could not, which was often. I paced the docks and feared for my children even as I wished them away. What was happening to me? Every day felt like an experience of loss. As if my head and heart were seeping, and I a husk where once a life. Friends blamed the surgery, and said it would pass. But I knew better.

  How many nights did I sit with Daniel before noticing myself? I had skin and blood, a cut on my thumb. My heartbeat was audible. My cheeks could blush. He was stationed in Bergen for three months. We met his second day in, and it was as if his gaze made things visible to me. Sunset in Bergen, had it happened before? Boathouses reflected in the harbor when the light is just so. The way water moves over cobblestone in runnels. My nails, which were flecked white for lack of calcium. The many shades of blond in my hair.

  I’d come to the wharf every day at five. He was never late. We’d sit on a bench and talk jazz. He’d seen Dizzy Gillespie play. Louis Armstrong. He said in the States it was easy. And that there was nothing better than tapping your feet to the music you love.

  We left in the middle of the night. I kissed my girls and packed my things. It was mad, this furlough, not to mention cruel. But I was crazed. I did not even leave a note.

  Was this what they call true love? I don’t know. Was it rapture? Was I happy? I’m still unsure about the relevance of these questions. I never much cared for what I felt, just that I felt at all. And for those months with Daniel, I felt everything. I missed my children. I missed Erlend. Foreplay roused sensation between my legs. Gooseflesh was my response. I laughed at the movies. I went to night school. When Daniel said I was beautiful, my eyes produced water.

  By the time Erlend tracked me down, I was ready to go home. My children needed their mother. Had he not found me, I might have married Daniel and returned home anyway. Poor Erlend. When I got back to Bergen, he was waiting for me on the couch. He looked wretched. The place was a swamp. The girls were at school, but I
could well imagine the condition they were in. He got on his knees and clasped me about the waist. Later he said it was the first time he’d felt anything in ages. Later still he said he’d treat the new baby as if it were his own. I looked at him and I looked at me, and I decided to love my husband.

  He was true to his word. When my child with Daniel died two years later, Erlend shut down completely. By then, I was due with Karen and could not work. Isifrid had to take up the slack. She was enterprising, thank God. The others would not have survived childhood without her.

  When the new baby came, taking care of her and Erlend was not much different. They’d both stare out into the world with limited understanding. For Karen, this was a source of frustration. For Erlend, it was mercy. They never knew each other.

  Days spent washing clothes, I’d think: Daniel. Mostly I felt nostalgic. Our time together seemed more like an era than an affair. The year after him, the world was different. It was the year of annihilation. I’d come to life and then destroyed, one by one, every thought and feeling that was not germane to my responsibilities at home. I put on blinkers. I soldiered on.

  Isifrid sent us money each month. She paid for Erlend’s care and hired a nurse to live with us. He’d had a stroke, which incapacitated his left side. I read to him and watched television. I was not lonely, per se, but anxious. I was waiting for him to die.

  After, I told Isifrid I wanted to move to Paris. She rented me a flat, no questions asked. I lived in the Marais for five years. I read the phone book. In my purse, a map on which I’d charted the location of Daniel’s boat, wherever it went. Navy vessels were not hard to track. So even as we’d been parted for years and years, I always knew where he was. And when he retired, I knew he was in France.

  What were my intentions, I still don’t know. But after I saw him at the embassy, after the sight of him gusted through my body, I understood I no longer had the fortitude to sustain the experience of him in my life. It would kill me, I was sure. I told Isifrid I wanted to move to New York. She made up my room. I knew little about her business or her life, just that she’d married a man of science, which was good.

  Despite what I know of the afterlife, I don’t think science and spirituality are opposed. Quite the opposite. For instance, while there is no reason to accept intelligent design in lieu of the big bang, there is every reason to embrace reincarnation as the means by which our lives have purpose. Just knowing you’ll be back is reason to prepare. I wanted to see Daniel the moment I realized I was dying. If it hastened the hour, so be it. At the very least, when I came back for another go, I would be armed with knowledge of what it means to pursue love until the end.

  We ate club sandwiches. His hands shook. I think he missed every other word out of my mouth. I looked at him and I looked at me. And it was the first I’d felt anything in a long time.

  Twenty-five

  Every gathering has a core guest who thinks she can’t possibly outstay her welcome. Tonight we have three: Wanda, Eric, Marcus. The talk is about Tabu, which is still in the DVD player. Now that flat-screen TVs double as wall art, a silent movie can turn into ambience real fast. I am decided to watch it again once everyone leaves. I feel like I have new information to unload on my experience of it. Because the thing about love in Bora-Bora—the movie, that is—it mobilizes all this Golden Bough stuff to inveigh against the System, which affects the natives and white folk alike. We’ve got these lovers, primitives, who are denied each other by force of law. She’s gotta preserve her virginity for the gods, he’s gotta buzz off. The couple flee to an island governed by the White Man, who exploits their naïveté. The boy falls into debt. The girl drinks champagne. Inter-island politics regard the pair as chattel. The boy discovers graft. The girl gets mettle. And the movie, it says the hydra of convention will nail you one way or the other. Lop off the first head with a bribe and a second pops up, saying blah blah ritual, blah blah virgin. I imagine the hydra allegorizes a whole bunch of things besides convention. Like: Betray your vows only to confront the specter of your four little girls back home in Norway. Take up in your beloved’s hat company only to discover she’s married someone else. Snatch your beloved from his fiancée only to watch him marry your best friend.

  I sidle up to Eric and Marcus, who are staring at the screen. “This part kills me,” Eric says, just as the boy takes a last look at the ship escaping with his adored.

  “Wait, but he drowns?” Marcus says. “Why can’t he just swim back? Oh, never mind. It’s a metaphor. I’m stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid,” I say. “It is a metaphor, but maybe not the way you think. Not: I can’t live without the love of my life, but: I should die now so that I can reexperience this death by heartbreak and learn from it. That’s what Agneth would say, anyway.”

  Eric looks at me funny. Like my good sense is on the lam and what is this twaddle?

  I raise my glass and toast Aggie. I am not certain when I switched to gin, but I think it was a good move.

  “To Agneth,” Marcus says, though he hardly sounds committed. I’m not even sure why he is still here. Perhaps because we shared our adolescence and there’s a camaraderie there you can’t erase. Alternately, given the way he’s ogling Eric, I’d say camaraderie be damned.

  Mother and Wanda are gathered around the coffee table. We convene. Mother asks Jumbo Prawn to join us because she’s been on her feet for hours. Wanda has her shoes off. Eric starts telling Marcus about an abandoned missile site he saw for sale on eBay for three mill. It’s got an 1,800-gallon septic tank and a two-story silo underground.

  Marcus says it’d make a splendid getaway spa. I suggest a nightclub. Wanda thinks an amusement park could be good. Isifrid says: Sepulcher.

  And with that, we are reminded of the dolor that brought us together. All but Marcus, who just looks lost.

  Often, at the close of a recovery meeting, as we make a circle and join hands, I’ll note the odds of these people finding each other in this group; our sundry pasts and principles; the entropy that collides addicts like so many molecules. It’s nice, that moment. Less nice is when it happens in your own home. Mother, Marcus, Wanda; Stanley, me, Eric, Jumbo Prawn. Not even a rock band would have us grouped together.

  Unexpectedly, Wanda stands up. Puts her hands together and says, “Now Izzy, I know today has been hard—hard on everyone—but it’s no coincidence you find us all here.”

  I have no clue what she’s on about, but Stanley’s shaking his head, saying, “No, Wanda, this is not the time.”

  Sometimes I forget they’ve been working together for twenty-some years, that Wanda has tried to intervene for Stanley at least twice, that she relishes the opportunity and does not take no for an answer. But really, what sort of opportunity is this?

  Isifrid nods, bleakly. She’s wearing a pillbox hat and weeping crepe pulled back over her head. She obviously has no idea to what she’s just consented. But Wanda will take what she can. She continues: “We’re not here to judge you, we just want to help.”

  Oh, this is bad. It is what I think it is, and it is bad.

  Wanda looks at Marcus. “And where do you think you’re off to?” He’s made a run for it. If only he kept going. As is, she brings him up short and he returns to his seat.

  “I, uh, I’m just a friend of Lucy’s. Probably I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Are not!” I say, because for a second the association seems risky.

  He looks at me, like: Huh?

  I’ve heard this kind of drollery can mitigate a bad situation, but I don’t see how. The awkwardness of our group is excruciating.

  Stanley takes Wanda by the elbow and leads her across the room. They have words. Words within earshot. They go like this: I know you mean well, but this is really not the time. Or the place. Don’t embarrass her in front of strangers. And this: Did I ask your opinion?

  Stanley returns to the couch.

  Their exchange reminds me of that Pink Panther movie where Inspector Clouseau’s valet-lunati
c keeps ambushing him at the wrong time. Like the once a century Clouseau gets a woman in bed, here comes that wily tai kwan do butler. It’s heartbreaking, really. Thing is, Clouseau keeps saying: This is not the time, this is not the time, when, in fact, this is never the time. Even when he finally says it’s the time, it’s not the time, as they are at a crowded restaurant, and the butler’s in drag. Probably my favorite line in all of cinema: Beware of Japanese waitress bearing fortune cookie. So maybe Wanda’s got a point. If no time is the right time, then this time is as good as any.

  She resumes like a cassette that’s been rewound too far. She says: “We’re not here to judge you, we just want to help.”

  Jumbo Prawn pleads kitchen duty. Wanda shuts her down.

  I see Eric nod. Nod to what?

  Wanda: “We are here as your loved ones who love you. And out of love, we want you to go get help.”

  Marcus looks ready to raise his hand, like: Um, Ms. Deckman, can I go to the bathroom?

  Wanda: “Are you listening, Izz? This is serious. This could be your last chance.”

  And the thing is, she’s right. My mother might actually be dying.

  Eric, who hasn’t said a word since the missile base, tosses his hands in the air. Gets up. Walks around the room with head tilted back, arms skyward. I think this gesture means: Why, God, why? but I’m not sure. He addresses the ceiling as if we were not here. He says: “What’s wrong with these people? Why am I here with these people? How did I get involved with these people?”

  On the one hand, I’m glad he feels sufficiently at home for theatrics. On the other, I’m beginning to doubt how well he’ll take Aggie’s request to spread her ashes with me.

  On the whole, though, we are glad for a diversion. If you can call it that, since the rhetoricals are getting more specific, less: Why am I on this planet, more: What’s the fucking point of rehab when we’re all going to die?

  Wanda: Oh, not that again. An epidemic is no excuse to go hog wild. You’re just like one of those looters who’ll take advantage of any situation to get new Rollerblades. And besides, we are not all going to die.