Critical Injuries

by Joan Barfoot

  Lyle is sturdier stuff. He sustains craving quite nicely.

  It’s reachable ribs that do the trick. Long thigh bones. Fine feet, an elegant turn of collarbones, shoulders with not only breadth, but discernible bone ridges just under the surface of skin. Her particular taste.

  Taste is salty more than it’s sweet. Taste is blue blocks of salt set out years ago for her dad’s parents’ cattle in summer, great thick rough tongues licking troughs into them, licking them patiently thin. Taste is jazzed-up french fries at fairs, it’s sunshine washed off in a winter tub, a summer lake. Taste is her mother’s sweat over the iron and the tangy perfume she wore going out for an evening, and it’s her father’s sweat as he wrenched pipes into place beneath a new sink, or tossed his discarded uniform in a pile for the laundry. Taste was, now to her horror, James’s tongue on her, and vice versa. Taste is also her tongue on Lyle, and vice versa.

  So the best taste is salty. The story of Lot’s wife never made sense to her, and certainly didn’t frighten her into learning what she took to be its instruction: don’t look back, have no regrets, abandon familiar companions, forget customs and comforts, lose longings. Aim instead stalwartly and — most importantly — obediently forward.

  Her sympathies were with Lot’s wife.

  Anyway, if the pillar of salt Lot’s wife became were finally eroded and worn away by the elements, it’s not as if that was a different fate than she would have endured if she had aimed stalwartly, obediently forward and never looked back. She would have been eroded and worn away by the elements anyway, by her husband Lot, and by her children, and by duties and hardships and chores, and by various joys, and by years.

  If Lot’s wife had kept her eyes forward on that long trek away from her home, what would the view have been but black rock, steep mountain, bleak desert, strange rough men, strange weary women? No wonder she looked back instead.

  Of course she would have regrets, of course she would glance behind her with certain longings. Isla can regret that she ever met James. She regrets hopping into and out of Lyle’s truck, swinging her happy way into Goldie’s. Who would not?

  Was Lot’s wife angry at being transformed into a pillar of salt just for the sin of regret, for being human?

  Isla is furious.

  This is hardly the restful state of mind she’s supposed to be in for encouraging a bullet fragment to release itself from a bone cranny, and gaining strength for surgery that’s likely to be both tricky and critical and which will mean everything. On the other hand, rage feels very salty, not at all sweet. This might be exactly the right moment to be wheeled into surgery, on the theory that furious, she’s as tough as she’s ever likely to be. Except she also knows the roots of rage lie in grief, a weak, collapsing sort of emotion. “Pick your poison,” her dad used to say when her parents had company and he was mixing the drinks. Isla picks anger, every time, over sorrow.

  Isla’s mother Madeleine, despite a general opposition to gloom, now and then lapsed into it: mainly that she had wanted many children, an armful of small bodies to embrace, but something was wrong, or missing, in her or Isla’s father, Isla was never clear which, and as a result, “you,” her mother said, “were a miracle.” This was a large and cherishable thing to be, of course; although it could also be hard, sustaining miraculousness.

  Isla’s father was a trainman, a conductor, often away, a man who came home with a rhythm in his walk, a certain way of planting his feet. His glamour lay in invisible adventures, racketing over the land, meeting strangers, taking care of them, listening to them. Sometimes when he got home he said he was tired not only of being on his feet, but of smiling. Often he brought home stories, which he could tell in different voices and tones and as if they were happening right in front of their eyes. His words seemed large to Isla because he knew things, good and bad, that occurred out in the world. Sometimes it was strange that he knew these things and these people while she and her mother did not, never would, and part of this strangeness was that he came home anyway to her and her mother, as if they might be the interesting ones, the real story.

  There was a nice one about a woman giving birth on the train, and how a whole carful of people cheered, and disembarked laughing and happy about being in on the beginning of a surprising, unscheduled life. She remembers also that her mother was not smiling when he finished that story, and that her father didn’t notice. It wasn’t, Isla saw, that he didn’t care about her mother’s feelings, because he did, but that he just plain didn’t know. How was that possible?

  Awful stories came home with her father as well. Trains were so big, and people so small. They hit people walking alongside the tracks, amputating various limbs, sideswiping their lives. Cars and trucks stalled on tracks. Some people deliberately aimed their cars and trucks at the trains, pressing hard on accelerators for last screaming, hair-raising rides. “The sound,” he said, shaking his head as if that would shake it free of the sound. “It’s something to hear.” Trains were so loud it didn’t seem possible to Isla that much could be heard over their engines and wheels, but he said it was. He said you could hear metal and, if you listened carefully, flesh.

  “Engineers are worst off, they see what’s coming but can’t do a thing about it. They say you don’t get over that, ever, sliding into a crash.” Well, no. She had nightmares sometimes in which large objects rolled slowly but irredeemably into other large objects. Sometimes the sounds of her dreams woke her up.

  When she was very little, her father swung Isla around by her arms until she hardly knew which way was up. He carried her on his shoulders when there were distances to walk. Her mother preferred holding hands, and at crowded places like a fair she held tight because there were so many strangers and Isla was her miracle. They all rode together on the Ferris wheel, but steered separate bump ’em cars, slamming wildly into each other. At beaches they swam and watched sunsets. Sometimes at night she heard her parents argue, but not very often. Often they hugged, or just touched.

  Honest to God, that’s what she thought families were like. No wonder she assumed that kind of happiness, took for granted that if there had to be endings they’d be tragic, wasting-away ones like her father’s when he got lung cancer and died when she was sixteen. No wonder James was a shock. Followed by a series of other shocks, courtesy of her cherubs, her ballasts, her Jamie and Alix.

  Now this.

  The story of Job reflects even worse on God, in her view, than the tale of Lot’s wife. No loving creator there, but a prideful, cruelly playful child. What really pissed her off even as a kid first hearing of Job was that although it was Job’s faith being tested in the stupid wager between Satan and God, everyone around Job suffered too. His children. His wife. As if they meant nothing at all, were only abstract losses in a tug-of-war for Job’s loyalty.

  And that Job saw it more or less that way, too, except he didn’t know about the bet, he didn’t know all his losses were meaningless.

  She had no sympathy for Job.

  Still, she has seen lives go downhill. She certainly knows that that happens: one mistake, one surprise, and other mistakes and surprises start following until it seems nothing good is going to happen to a person again; that no matter what, any decision or shift or change is going to have bad results. She has not felt this happening to her, but it’s possible the past happy eight years have been only a bump in a generally downhill trajectory.

  No, she can’t believe that. This is a hard situation, but not one she won’t bounce out of.

  Well okay, not bounce, exactly.

  “Isla?” Lyle’s face looms over her. Jesus, it’s startling when people do that.

  “The kids are on their way. You ready to see them?” What, he expects her to nod?

  He means her kids, not his. His have no particular requirement to rush to her side; whereas hers do.

  Poor Lyle, who not only has to
deal with this new nightmare, but with her exceedingly trying children, who are not his fault and who should not be his problem. They would be quite different people, Jamie and Alix, if Lyle were their father — or maybe, too, if Sandy had been their mother, who knows? Lyle’s own boys, Bill and Robert, those twins who were still young when their mother died, the same age Isla was when her father died, are now solid citizens. Bill is a physicist at a research institute, and Robert is pursuing a doctorate in the multi-layered relationships between various media and various aspects of politics. Isla can have interesting conversations with Robert. Talking to Bill is a lot like talking to Alix: a deep involvement in a mysterious and unfathomable subject, with its own mysterious and unfathomable language.

  The point is, Lyle’s boys didn’t screw up. They are sturdy, not credulous. They do not expect quick returns, or something for nothing. They do not see something hard in front of them and look for an easy, soft-headed route around it. Their virtues must be difficult for Jamie and Alix to tolerate. They’re a bit hard on Isla, as well.

  “How do I look?” she whispers to Lyle. “Awful? Scary?”

  “You look fine.” She’ll have to speak to him again about lies. Lying is about the worst thing he can do, he knows that, and however kindly intended, this is no time to forget. She must still look like hell, particularly in this pitiless combination of fluorescence and daylight. Also, oh God — what grotesque, nasty system is in place to empty her body? Or for that matter to fill it. She loves food, it’s surely strange not to be hungry. Or, maybe she is hungry. Just one of the multitude of things she can’t feel.

  Much to think about, a good deal to wonder. Did she leave behind enough clean sheets and towels for the kids she didn’t know would be coming? Unfamiliar shoes will be kicked off inside the double-bolted front door, strange creams and shampoos will appear on bathroom shelves. Alix’s thin Serenity Corps dresses will maybe be rinsed out and hung over an impromptu clothesline to dry. Lyle and Isla’s beautiful house will be invaded by anxiety, crisis, confusion. He will mind that, too. He likes his sanctuary.

  “Really,” Lyle says, “I wouldn’t let the kids in if you looked upsetting. Trust me. You know, they’re out in the hall now, they’re waiting.”

  Oh. Well then. That’s a bit more abrupt than she expected, kind of a shock. Also she is sharply reminded that the small gesture she would make with her hand to say, never mind, go ahead, is no longer possible. All that silent, eloquent language is gone.

  So how can she tell her children then that she loves them, and that no matter how she looks, they shouldn’t be frightened? If she can’t put her arms around Jamie, or stroke Alix’s wild and brilliant red hair, so much like Isla’s own at that age, how will they understand that everything is going to be fine, and this is only an interruption, terrible and upsetting and annoying but really only an interruption? No matter what, she has always embraced them, although for sure she has also shouted, argued, pleaded, slammed doors. But always, always she has tried to put her arms around them. Because even people with irregular lives need regularity. They need to know some things for sure.

  She hardly knows what to expect. Her children are full of surprises. Other young people endure catastrophe without falling apart, why not hers? Jamie is twenty-five years old, and as old as the hills. His beautiful little-boy’s face won’t ever unline and uncrease itself back to innocence. The things he has done! The things that have been done to him!

  And Alix — gullible, foolish Alix has pledged herself to serenity. Literally, she has pledged herself to something called the Serenity Corps, and obedience to, reverence for, a tubby middle-aged fellow with excessively blue eyes who calls himself Master Ambrose. Alix now calls herself Starglow, although outside the Serenity Corps no one bothers. Even taking all their upheavals into account, Isla can’t think how she raised someone who would call herself Starglow.

  At any rate Alix cannot make it sound reasonable to Isla. Alix has waved her thin, long-fingered hands vaguely, widened her absorbing eyes under that riveting fall of red hair, and spoken of universal powers and forces, a community of support, purpose, and love. But what is that purpose? What kind of love? For three years now, Isla has half-expected a phone call, a knock on the door, a stranger’s voice announcing that Alix has been discovered, toes pointed to heaven, dead in a hopeful migration to salvation on a far better, kindlier, more golden planet.

  Something like that.

  Alix is twenty-two. She is too old to believe in stupid shit, and she is far too young to die.

  How the hell did this happen to those sweet, clever, most adorable babies, toddlers, children? A family weakness, perhaps. A grave need that may exist in anyone, but in them happened to be precisely located and drilled into, bringing forth gushers of trouble. James happened, he tapped those gushers in his children’s tenderest, wariest, clumsiest years. Oh, Isla could kill him, she really could.

  Why didn’t she, then, when she had the chance? With a little effort she could have tracked him down and killed him any number of times in the past decade or so. Easy to say she could kill him now, when she so clearly can’t. Well, mothers don’t have time for murder, do they? Nor would it have exactly improved the situation.

  Now that she can no longer rise, at least for the time being, to any occasion of theirs, it will be interesting to see if they rise to this occasion of hers, these two young people, her babies, who have sought oblivion, or salvation, in some strange and terrible places.

  Maybe mere escape is what they’ve been after. She wouldn’t mind a touch of that herself. A touch of anything, for that matter.

  Ready or not, here they are. “Mum.” Alix is abruptly leaning over her, huge-eyed with fear, skin translucent with pity. “Oh Mum.”

  Or maybe her skin is translucent with hunger. She has always been thin, but now looks gaunt. That son of a bitch Master Ambrose, is he starving Isla’s daughter? Alix’s fly-about hair sweeps her cheeks and whips the air. Its flamboyance is her own, its shoulder-blade length however, part of the uniform of female corps members, intended to reflect, presumably, serenity. The rest of the uniform is a brown cottony garment, loose and nearly transparent. A strange, lost, yearning soul looks out of those large eyes, Isla thinks. When Alix moves, stepping forward to lean over her mother, stepping back to make way for her brother, the word waft comes to mind.

  Jamie’s eyes are brittle, his features fixed and difficult to read. “Ma! What the hell did you think you were doing, getting yourself shot like that?” Oh, she sees. He has set out to be hearty, jocular; as if an injection of gusto into the room could raise her up, hoist her back onto her feet; like Jesus, if he’d performed his Lazarus miracle using only his own zest and energy.

  Jamie was a little boy who ran everywhere, all the time. As soon as he found his toddler-legs he was off: tearing around furniture, tottering through rooms, climbing stairs, nipping through screen doors, pelting across lawns and down sidewalks. Isla ran and ran after him, catching him up, clutching some movable part of him, hauling him home.

  Was he running towards some desire or away from something that scared him? Asleep, his little legs moved under the sheets like a dreaming puppy’s, his little arms flailed. He had nightmares and woke crying. What images could so distress a boy she could swear had no waking experience of fear? Isla lay beside him, holding him until he grew calm and fell back into sleep. Sometimes she fell asleep herself and in the morning James would be irritable. “You’ll spoil him,” he said. “You’ll make him soft.”

  If only she had.

  “He’s just a little boy. He only wants comfort. There’s no such thing as spoiling a little boy who wants comfort.” In the contest between a husband’s desires and the needs of a child, no question arose in her mind. Although it took some time to realize that it was, as James saw it, or failed to see it, a contest. Who would dream such a thing of a grown man? Not Isla.

&n
bsp; Jamie ran and ran and grew hard rather than soft. His plump cheeks pared themselves to the bone, and his large, long-lashed eyes grew even larger, more like Alix’s, in his narrowing, less and less innocent face. Now he is firm-bodied, and probably good-looking, although that’s a difficult thing for a mother to discern about a son. He still has those lashes, which women must love. Both her children are immensely attractive and appealing from this angle, looking up slant-wise, even though Alix is so thin and Jamie so hard. Neither of them looks entirely like their father, nor entirely like her, nor quite like each other. She’s glad there’s no major resemblance to James, and doesn’t care if that’s because her features and James’s got mixed and combined in new ways so that hers were lost, too.

  Once, briefly, the subject of their father was obsessively interesting. Perhaps it still is, but he doesn’t come up in family conversation; certainly not since Lyle. Do they ever talk to him? Surely not. They must talk about him, though. He is hardly an entirely scrubbable stain. There’s no erasing someone, and anyway, like good dogs kids keep hoping for love.

  “Careless of me, yes,” she says to Jamie, hoping she’s smiling and that her eyes show some reassuring merriment. “But it’s going to be fine. Lyle must have told you.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie nods. “Where’s the peckerhead that did it? Is he busted?”

  He would mean the boy. Jamie bends over her, uneasily gentle, dodging, she supposes, whatever apparatus she’s attached to. But determined to embrace her; that’s nice, that’s brave. His arms go around where her body must be, and his cheek is laid next to hers. Her son, her weak-willed, desiring Jamie who for a time, at least, didn’t know what he desired and chose the wrong things.

  Oh, she has produced a tear! Can feel it rolling down her skin, into the pillow!

  Jamie’s breath, so close, is slightly stale; unantiseptic, which is oddly refreshing. “If the cops haven’t got him, I’m going to. I’ll take the prick out.”