Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

  I tried to play along. I knew what was going on here. Belinda wanted me to declare my intent so she could follow me into that field and finally beat me there. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe dermatology or family medicine? I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Bullshit. You have to do something more demanding than that, Lila, and you know it. In order to be really challenged, we both have to be some kind of surgeon. It’s our responsibility.”

  “Responsibility to whom?”

  Belinda dropped the barely smoked cigarette. It fell a few inches from where I sat. “To ourselves, silly. And to the world. We can’t waste our gift. You can’t be nonchalant about something so important.”

  I squinted up at her. Between her blond hair and the sunlight, I nearly went blind. “Enlighten me,” I said. “What is our gift?”

  Belinda answered seriously. “Medicine.”

  I rubbed at my eyes, wishing for dark and coolness. “That’s very interesting. I wasn’t sure. Do you have any other pearls of wisdom to drop in my lap?”

  Belinda’s teeth disappeared. “You know what your problem is?” she said. “You can’t even carry on a simple conversation. You have no idea how to talk to people.”

  She walked toward the swinging door marked Emergency, her blond hair swishing behind her.

  I reached over and picked up the cigarette she had discarded. I held it for a minute between two fingers. Then I brought it to my lips and breathed in. I coughed hard, the taste of hot gravel on my tongue.

  I’d come too close to being truthful with Belinda in that exchange. I’d almost opened up to her. I could feel the words pressing on the back of my throat, creating the same swollen feeling I’d had when I left Weber’s. I wasn’t even sure what I would have said, which was particularly worrying. I couldn’t afford any lapses of judgment.

  The more Belinda knew about me, the more she had to use against me. The next thing I knew I would be telling her that I was in medical school only because of a conversation I’d had with my mother and grandmother when I was a sophomore in college.

  I had come home for Christmas break, and my mother was on me about the fact that I had not yet chosen a major.

  “I can’t decide,” I said.

  Gram had been invited to dinner and had arrived an hour early. Since we were ordering food in, as usual, there was nothing to do but sit around. My mother suggested that we sit in the living room. Once we were settled, Gram in the low armchair, Mom and me in opposite loveseats, Mom decided this was an ideal time to have a discussion that was guaranteed to make me miserable. Even though Mom was annoyed at Gram for coming over early, she was obviously counting on Gram to back her up.

  “What are the choices?” Gram said.

  “Anthropology, literature, biology, or religion.”

  My mother shook her head. “That’s just a list of the classes you’re taking.”

  “No it’s not. I left off water aerobics and philosophy.”

  “Why?” Gram asked.

  “I don’t like to exercise, and I don’t enjoy philosophy.”

  “Why don’t you enjoy philosophy?”

  “Mother, you are veering off point. We’re discussing what major the child should choose and what she wants to do with her life.”

  “Kelly, there’s no need to make everything so deadly serious. We’re just talking about Lila’s major. She already knows what she’s going to do with her life—Lila wants to be a lawyer like her grandfather.”

  “That’s what I wanted when I was ten years old, Gram.”

  “So? You had a calling when you were young, that’s all.”

  I could feel the heavy history behind my mother’s and grandmother’s gazes. My grandfather was a powerful lawyer who threw his weight around in New Jersey politics. He had been respected by nearly everyone, but most of all by his family. For all the bad talk that has come out within the family about Papa since his death, his career and his professional achievements have only been polished and embellished. I knew that one of Gram’s greatest hopes was that one of the grandchildren would become a lawyer, since none of her children had. I also knew that with my top grades and studious habits, I was the best candidate.

  But I wasn’t about to accept that burden. I was the smart, dependable grandchild, while Gracie got to have fun and sex, John got to smoke dope, Mary got to drift in and out of religious fervors, and Dina got to be a general pain in the ass. I wasn’t going to sign on for a career that would demand, by my grandfather’s precedent, that I be perfect for as far into the future as I could see.

  I looked down at my nail-bitten fingers and finally spat out the truth I had been holding in for years. “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

  There was a silence, during which I stole glances at Gram’s face. I was relieved that, unlike in my imagined versions of this moment, she didn’t appear to be having a stroke or a heart attack. She just looked sad.

  My mother gave a sharp intake of breath and then turned her head away in a dramatic show that she was disappointed, too. I suspected that she wished she had become a lawyer, but when she was my age it hadn’t been an option.

  “Well,” Gram said. “If you don’t want to be a lawyer, you should at least choose a career that lets you use your brains. You’re a smart girl, Lila. You have so much promise. Perhaps you should become a doctor. Your grandfather considered studying medicine as a young man, before he settled on the law.”

  “Medicine is a wonderful field,” my mother said. “Very prestigious.”

  And that was that. I registered my college major as premed and I was on my way. I was so glad that Gram had accepted my aversion to a career in law that it never even occurred to me to turn down her second choice. All I wanted was to make something that was my own, and with medicine I could do that. I wasn’t disinclined to the subject, either. I had spent my childhood reading about terrible injuries, and now I would learn how to treat the accident victims whose wounds and contusions and broken limbs I had read about in great detail. And medicine was fascinating, a great match, at least at first. It was a natural fit for my brain. But now the book-learning portion was over, and suddenly medicine felt like a horse I’d borrowed that didn’t like me and was doing its damnedest to buck me off.

  I thought about Gracie, and how her decision to keep the baby had thrown her life off course. She no longer went to the Green Trolley at night. My father no longer looked at her with a shine in his eyes. Gram looked at her with something akin to ownership. Gracie didn’t make getting thrown off course look too good. But maybe she hadn’t been thrown, maybe this change in course was meant to be.

  I wasn’t making sense. I could recognize that. I gave myself a minute to straighten out. I felt the vodka, clear and lethal, move through my system. I wondered if this was the smoldering remains my grandfather tasted most mornings, his brain clouded, hung over on scotch. I leaned against the column Belinda had just occupied. I knew, suddenly, that I was not going inside. I knew that I couldn’t, even if I had wanted to. I was not going to school, to work, to be tested, to be tried and hanged. Not today.

  I CLIMBED into my car and drove away. I didn’t tell myself where to go and I didn’t pay attention to where I was headed. The next time I took notice of my surroundings, I was on Main Street in Ramsey, stuck in traffic. I looked at the long row of cars in front of me. Driver after driver sat behind the steering wheel, placid, waiting, unquestioning. “What the hell is going on here!” I honked my horn. I didn’t want to sit still. I wanted to drive. I wanted motion.

  I looked around for some reason and noticed the curl of smoke. It hung in the air beyond the Green Trolley, above a strip shopping mall that sat perpendicular to Main Street. The curl seemed to hover above the Carvel ice cream store. Without thinking, I pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked. I left my bookbag on the passenger seat, locked the doors, and walked toward the shimmering line of smoke. This whole day seemed to be about doing the opposite of what I was supposed to do. I was
supposed to be at the hospital. I was supposed to stay in the car, in the line, and wait to be allowed to move forward toward home. Instead I was out on the pavement, walking toward a fire.

  I could see, from the sidewalk, that traffic had been stopped by a policeman who stood in front of the docile line of cars, his hand forcefully raised as if he were engaged in an act of great courage. His gesture was actually redundant, since a massive red fire truck was parked behind him. There was no place for the cars to go.

  It was early afternoon on a Monday. These drivers and passengers didn’t mind the holdup. They had no place better to be. They were housewives, elderly men, women and teenagers. They were pleased to be told what to do, to be engaged in some kind of drama. They were already happily thinking of the story they would have to tell at the dinner table that night. They felt alive, dangled between the prospect of the actual fire and their story about it. The very possibility that any kind of danger existed was exciting and tantalizing. They felt involved.

  I slowed my walk in front of Mayor Carrelli’s barbershop. Through the glass I could see the mayor in his neat blue barber coat that snapped up the back. He was cutting a customer’s hair. It was a woman, and something familiar about her drew my eye. She was thin and sat erect in the chair. With her wet hair and the strange smile on her face, it took me a moment to recognize my mother.

  It was such an odd sight, I just stared. My mother was laughing, as if the mayor had just told a great joke. The barbershop, a dim, dusty place, had to count as one of the roughest places my genteel mother had ever set foot in. What the hell was she doing in there? Why would she let the mayor cut her hair? It made no sense.

  I was curious, but not enough to face my mother. I didn’t want her to ask me why I wasn’t at the hospital. I didn’t want to hear her thoughts and feelings about Gracie’s news. I didn’t want to give my mother a chance to put me in the middle. I backed away slowly, a few careful steps until I was out of view of the window. When I turned I saw Joel standing on the curb. He was wearing his fireman’s thick rubber jacket and boots. He had his helmet under his arm.

  “Hey, Lila,” he said. “You looking for your new boyfriend?”

  Joel was someone I had always completely disregarded. He was my age; we had been in the same class at Ramsey High. When Gracie was dating Joel she was forever going on about how gentle he was, as though gentleness were a trait that got a person anywhere in this world. As far as I could see, being gentle didn’t make a person rich, successful, or happy. For Joel, all it had gotten him was drunk. I could smell Budweiser on his breath now from a few steps away. He was one of those quiet drunks who got away with it most of the time because he was so soft-spoken and well mannered. I had no doubt that if I managed to stay on the path I was on and he managed to stay on the path he was on, I would be treating him at Valley Hospital in twenty years’ time for cirrhosis.

  But when he said that, I knew he was right. I had been headed toward the fire hoping to see Weber. I had promised myself that I would never see him again, and I’d held out for a mere three hours.

  “I heard you got laid, Lila. I don’t believe it. In fact, I said that it couldn’t be true because sex is a life-affirming gesture and Lila Leary is not one to affirm life. I told Weber you wore black every day to high school and won the perfect-attendance award.”

  I could feel color climb the ladder of my face. It was a McLaughlin trait, the ease with which we all blushed. “Bastard,” I said. “You’ve been drinking.”

  Joel smiled, his nice-boy smile. “There was a fire at Carvel. But by the time I got there all the ice cream had melted and the fire was out.” He said this with great sorrow.

  “You’re going to be a father,” I said, partly to wound him, partly to shake the truth into him and into myself. This drunken man-child who was saddened by melted ice cream was the father of my sister’s baby. This truth seemed so random, and so unlikely. It was placed here like the cars lined up in traffic, like the hospital where I was supposed to be, like my parents’ long marriage. It was all there, all in existence, but that didn’t make it right. It didn’t make it make sense.

  “Not really,” Joel said. “Margaret took me back. We’re back together. We’re in love.”

  “So what happened between you and Gracie doesn’t mean anything?”

  “Why do you always have to make everything so complicated, Lila? I always disliked that about you.” He patted the pockets of his huge rubber coat, then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “This uniform traps heat,” he said. “I’m burning up in here.” Then he walked away.

  THAT NIGHT on the way to Weber’s apartment, I tried to trace the possible path of the news Weber had told Joel. The task was dizzying and crazy-making. I knew that for the sake of my sanity I should stop, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t done anything gossip-worthy in my entire life; I had managed very well to keep myself to myself. Now I could see all my control, all my highly prized privacy, spinning away from me like a ball of yarn.

  Joel would tell Margaret. Margaret was the assistant to Mayor Carrelli and the best friend of the Bergen Record’s gossip columnist. My mother apparently had her hair cut by the mayor. The mayor could tell my mother and/or my father. Joel or Weber might tell one of the bar-tenders at the Green Trolley, which meant the entire town would know the news of my one stupid, thoughtless misstep.

  I told myself that it was no big deal and that I was overreacting. For God’s sakes, Gracie’s entire life was made up of one-night stands that many people knew about and few people even thought less of her for. She had screwed up her entire life, which was not what I had done. But—I couldn’t help but think—I am not Gracie. I am stronger.

  So in the end my common sense was unable to stop the train barreling along: This person will know, this person will know, this person will, too. In every possible direction I could see the small bomb-shaped truth headed right for the heart of my life. There seemed to be no point in stepping out of the way.

  “Welcome back, Doc,” Weber said when I showed up. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. His bed was made and his apartment was a little neater than it had been the night before.

  “We need a new deal,” I said.

  “I think you should just loosen up and go with the flow, Doc. It’s a lot more fun.”

  I was worn out, shivering, hung over from my hangover. “I’m not interested in having fun. I’m not here to have fun.”

  “You seemed to have fun last night, Doc. Take off your coat, why don’t you. There you go. Sit down. Relax.”

  I sat on the very edge of the bed.

  “I had a really weird day,” I said. “It’s just twenty-four hours of insanity. I can accept that, but after tonight, the craziness will be over. Understood? I will go back to my normal life, and my normal self. We won’t see each other again.”

  “I understand that you have control issues. I can help you with that. Loosening people up is one of my specialties.” Weber was grinning at me again. A big stupid, happy grin.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m not here to argue with you. I’m not here to talk about my issues—”

  He reached out and caught my right arm midair. I had been waving it to make my point. He held on to my wrist, and tiny shivers began to spread out from where his fingers pressed into my skin. “Of course you’re not here to talk,” he said. “You’ve got me for that.”

  And he did talk, and I didn’t try to make him stop. His voice revved up as smoothly as a brand-new car and he was off and running. There was no chance for me to say a word. He talked about his job, about fighting fires, about the blazes he’d seen. I just stared at him while he talked about the heat on his skin, the way it felt running up stairs toward a force that wants to kill you. Weber talked all the way through our getting naked, all the way through our skin becoming slowly reacquainted—intertwined hands, then arms, then torsos pressed against each other, my breasts flattened, our legs spread, my cheek pressed against his. Still he kept talking. I stop
ped following what he was saying. I stopped listening and working and wondering. I just stopped, and it was a great relief. Only at the moment of orgasm, while Weber was deep inside of me, did the monologue cease for one long, shaking moment.

  Then he pulled away and said, “Waka waka.” The phrase sounded vaguely familiar, and when I asked what it was, he told me it was the catchphrase of Fozzy Bear on The Muppet Show. Waka waka.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I dunno, Doc, but I like the way it sounds. It sounds like I feel.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Weber, with all his words, couldn’t give me a good answer. And that drove me crazy. It still drives me crazy. Because that day, that long, weird, hung-over day, has deposited me here. And I don’t like here. I’m still mired in a fog that I can no longer blame on vodka and which I do my best to blame on Weber. I went to the hospital three days that week, and four days the week after that. I can’t explain why, but some mornings I show up at the hospital and I can’t make myself go inside. I stand in the parking lot and argue with myself. I tell myself that I’m ruining everything, throwing away my chance to show Gram that I can be a brilliant doctor. But the internal debate is of no use. I have to turn back and drive to Weber’s apartment. I don’t know how to explain my behavior. I am at a loss.

  At first I told my attending that I was sick. I claimed fatigue, malaise, a general sense of illness. That was not lying, it was true, is true. But now, as the days I can force myself to walk through the hospital doors grow more sporadic, I am forced to come up with a lie. I claim to have been diagnosed with mono. I actually forge a doctor’s note and hand it in to the dean of the medical school. Because mononucleosis is infectious, I am officially excused from school for the next two weeks. I will be able to make up the missed rotation at some later point.

  I have had to give up my new apartment before I even moved into it, as I cannot count on student loans being paid out to someone who is not behaving like a student. I now officially live with my visibly pregnant sister. We are both aimless. I spend my days at the library or driving around in my car. And to my confusion and dismay I continue to spend my nights with a man who says things to me, in the moments of what should be the greatest intimacy, that are meaningless.