by Lisa Alther
Suddenly I smashed my fist into the wall in frustration and collapsed on the floor sobbing.
As I wiped my tears with my shirtsleeve and sniffed, a snow machine arrived. The door of the shack opened and there was Ira, his nostrils flaring and his sensitive mouth quivering.
‘Look,’ he said hastily, in answer to my obvious lack of enthusiasm, ‘I feel terrible about your friend. I haven’t been able to sleep. I don’t exactly understand what was going on that night, but I feel somehow responsible. Isn’t there anything I can do?’
‘It’s not your fault. But please go away and leave me alone.’
‘Won’t you at least explain what was going on?’
‘No.’ He backed out the door, looking at me pleadingly.
The next few days there was an unpleasant odor around the cabin, and particularly in the kitchen.
‘Death,’ Mona said darkly. ‘It’s the smell of death.’
I shuddered. Then I went into the living room and got sticks of sandalwood incense for us. We lit them and waved them around, and soon the room smelled much better. We repeated this ritual for several nights running.
Then one morning when the three of us were on the hill collecting sap, the cabin below erupted in flames with a great whoosh like a gigantic gas oven lighting.
The cabin had burned to the ground before the volunteer fire department, in their black hats and yellow mackintoshes, could even get up the hill from town. The snow was melted for several hundred yards in every direction.
As Atheliah and Mona and I stood surveying the smoldering and flaring ruin, Ira came over and asked us questions in a very official tone of voice. ‘Gas leak,’ he finally concluded as we described our efforts to expel the odor of death with our incense sticks. He looked at us as though we were aborigines. “You smelled gas and you lit matches?’
Mona glared at him with hatred for his macho ability to cope with plumbing and wiring. She and Atheliah stalked to the truck, announcing that they were going back to their old commune. I said I’d be over later, I wanted to be alone.
The fire engines roared away with the volunteers clinging to them, disappointed to be done out of an opportunity for heroism. Ira walked toward his red fire chief car with its flashing roof light. Partway there, he turned and said delicately, ‘If you need a place to stay, I have a big house with lots of extra rooms.’
Gratefully, I walked to the car and climbed in next to him. I felt the need for some order in my life.
10
Friday, June 30
On the third morning after her transfusion, Mrs. Babcock discovered a tarry black material in her stool.
‘It’s melena. From gastric bleeding,’ Dr Vogel informed her briskly, not looking at her. ‘I’m putting you on a bland diet. And a different medication’ ACTH.’ He prodded at her abdomen. ‘And this afternoon we’ll administer another two units of whole blood.’
‘There’s very little doubt in my mind,’ he added, half-sitting on the end of her bed, ‘that it’s a question of sequestration, presumably in the spleen. We’re about to pin it down. We’re doing platelet antibody tests at the moment. Purpura haemorrhagiea, you have, Mrs. Babcock. Werlhofs syndrome. Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Morbus maculosus werlhofi.’ He recited these names as though invoking Roman deities to her bedside.
Mrs. Babcock nodded gravely, trying not to show irony. Why, this blond man was young enough to be her son! His pleased expression over his mastery of these complex medical terms amused her. She recognized it so well from when the children were young. Karl would offer grandly to show her his Boy Scout knots. She would watch closely, forcing herself to be interested in sheepshanks and half hitches. She would ask him questions about their uses and virtues, and he would give her lengthy dissertations with that exact same look of self-importance over acquired expertise. Then he would pull a knot tight to demonstrate a point, and the rope would unravel and fall limply to the ground. Karl would blush and stammer. Picking it up, he would clandestinely consult his handbook, while explaining that he had done that on purpose in order to illustrate how not to tie a clove hitch.
She wished Dr. Tyler were around. They’d been through so much together’ births, deaths, menopause, strep throats, Pap smears, depressions. At least he would level with her. His age and his experience permitted him to admit it when he didn’t know what he was doing.
‘Young man,’ she asked Dr. Vogel, who was listening to her heart through his stethoscope, ‘how sick am I?’
He straightened up and averted his eyes. ‘Hmmm, yes, hmmm, well, obviously you’re quite ill or you wouldn’t be here, would you?’
As she nodded in agreement, he edged toward the door.
‘Might I die?’ she inquired calmly, hoping to catch him off guard.
He cleared his throat and frowned. ‘I wouldn’t say you could die…but, on the other hand, no one lives forever.’
As she lay there trying to diagnose this answer, he slipped out the door, letting in a burst of words from next door: ‘You run until you drop, and then you pick yourself up and you run some more! Do you understand what I’m saying, men? You…’
Mrs. Babcock reviewed her situation. Wesley had died of a heart attack on his office floor. Two months later she had had a bloody nose lasting for several hours. A tourniquet test and platelet count had sufficed for Dr. Vogel to prescribe prednisone. It had worked, and she was out of the hospital in a week. Three months later an identical episode had occurred. Three weeks ago, a year to the day after Wesley’s death, her nose had begun bleeding again. The drug had not worked this time. The transfusion had worked only briefly. Tests were being done. Other treatments would be tried. But what was really going on? Why was she being treated like an idiot child? Whose body was it?
The door opened and in slouched her daughter, in bib overalls and a dingy T-shirt that read ‘Boone’s Farm Apple Wine.’ Mrs. Babcock closed her eyes and sighed with exasperation. ‘Where did you get that outfit? At the feed store?’
Ginny glanced at her sullenly. ‘I’m sorry if it offends you, Mother. These happen to be the only clothes I own.’
Mrs. Babcock sighed. ‘Poor dear. I know how difficult it must be to make ends meet on only $8,000 in dividend checks a year.’ She forced herself not to study Ginny’s braless breasts. Watching her children develop physically had never ceased to amaze her. True, she and Wesley had set the whole process in motion, but almost immediately it became apparent that genes, and not they themselves, were running the show’ laying down the framework and fleshing it out. If she could have run things, she’d have arrested their development at around age five. She had adored their compact little bodies at that age. No longer did every object in the house represent a potential calamity. No longer did they require her constant vigilance and assistance. When they’d dance to their records, they were so breathtakingly graceful and unself-conscious that tears would come to her eyes. And yet they had still required her in other ways, had scrambled onto her lap for cuddling and tickling and reassurance.
But there was a descent into a pit before them. They grew up overnight upon starting school and shrugged off caresses and insisted on doing everything for themselves and no longer sought the safety of her lap for recharging. Having finally learned to accept responsibility for them gracefully, she was now suddenly expected to unlearn all that and let go of them. And then the physical transformations’ the boys’ voices began cracking, they became as awkward and as timid as two-year-olds, but covered it over with an irritating braggadocio. Ginny had begun menstruating, had developed hips and breasts. It was appalling really’ because it meant that these creatures weren’t a superior species after all. They would lust and hunger and burn, just as their parents had. And out of it all would come children of their own, to whom they would look wistfully, hoping for more original things.
Wesley had taken it especially hard, for well-documented psychological reasons, when Ginny began dating, and coming in late with her make-up smeared all over
her face. He always said it was like having some scuzzy ground hog take a bite out of a prize eggplant you’d been nurturing to perfection in your garden all summer. And when they’d seen Ginny in the emergency room after she fell off the Cloyd boy’s motorcycle’ her back red and skinless like a raw roast beef, and her leg purple with a jagged bone poking through the skin — she and Wesley had fallen weeping into each other’s arms.
All Ginny’s adult life Mrs. Babcock had had to force herself not to think about who was doing what to this young female body that she simultaneously loved and loathed. For the sake of Ginny’s mental health, she had struggled to develop a sublime indifference. Besides, it was ridiculous — her feeling of physical possessiveness. And yet after so many years of tending this body — bathing it, dressing it, feeding it, binding up its wounds — how could she be expected to feel otherwise? Now that Ginny had a child of her own, was she aware of these undercurrents? Probably not. Ginny didn’t seem to be aware of anyone’s feelings except her own — or else she wouldn’t be in her mother’s room in bib overalls and a T-shirt.
Ginny sat down and stared at this shrew who was inhabiting her submissive mother’s body and who kept insisting on making unexpected appearances. ‘I’m sorry you’re not feeling well today,’ she offered, studying the hideous bruises on her mother’s arms and reminding herself that the woman was very ill. In truth, Ginny was resentful at the way the whole thing was dragging on and on, and was guilty at being resentful. But after all, she did have her own life to lead, such as it was.
‘I’m sure,’ her mother said sardonically, adding as though reading her mind, ‘I’m sorry I can’t just die and get it over with, so that you can get on with your life.’
‘Mother, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Ginny, I’ve asked you to spare me your blasphemies. Do you mind?’ Mrs. Babcock herself was a little startled at these appearances of a personality she didn’t recognize as hers. These great bursts of irrational hostility were suddenly surfacing. She had simply been born in the wrong generation: When she had been a child, children were expected to defer to their parents in everything, to wait on them and help around the house and so on; but when she became a parent and was ready to enjoy her turn at being deferred to, the winds of fashion in child rearing had changed, and parents were expected to defer to their children in hopes of not squelching their imagination and creativity. She had missed out all the way around.
But the interesting thing was that since she had begun giving vent to her irritation — in other words, since Ginny had arrived — she hadn’t been depressed. Before, if the children’s behavior had annoyed her, she had blamed herself for the way she had brought them up. She was a failure at her chosen vocation -parenthood — and she had sunk deeper and deeper into the black pit of self-condemnation, had drugged herself into immobility with the pills that Dr. Tyler had given her, and had lain around the house feeling hopeless and worthless. But no more. Not now, when one would most expect her to be depressed, lying in a hospital bed with her hematopoietic system collapsing.
Forcing herself to be amiable, Mrs. Babcock said, ‘Well, dear, tell me about yourself. What have you been doing for the last year?’
Ginny grimaced and searched for an answer. ‘I saw Clem Cloyd the other afternoon.’
‘Please,’ Mrs. Babcock said, closing her eyes. “Don’t talk to me about that boy. I’ve never forgiven him for nearly killing you.’
‘He’s changed.’
‘“Wolf cubs remain wolves, even though they may be reared among the sons of man.”’
‘But he has, Mother. He’s a family man now — a wife and three children.’
‘So I hear. What of it? Attila the Hun had children, too, you know.’
‘Apparently Clem has become very responsible, Mother. And he no longer feels the need for his death-defying stunts. Father used to say he was a brilliant farmer.’
‘So your father said.’
‘Did you know he preaches?’
‘Are we talking about the same Clem Cloyd?’
‘I told you he’s changed.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it. Which will be never.’
‘Well, he asks about you. He’s very concerned about you.’
‘And what do you hear from Ira?’
‘Oh, not much,’ Ginny replied blandly. ‘He’s very busy this time of year selling trail bikes.’ Was there no way to tell her own mother that Ira had kicked her out, that she hadn’t heard from him at all, that she didn’t know how Wendy was? She had spent several days getting up the nerve to phone them last night, but there had been no answer. What she really wanted was to ask her mother what to do. After all, what were mothers for? But she already knew what her mother would say: ‘Extramarital sex is vulgar.’ And ‘Children need their mothers.’ And ‘You must do your duty.’ If the story didn’t just finish her off within seconds.
They sat in silence, Ginny trying to decide whether or not to mention cerebral hemorrhage. Should her mother be told so that she could be preparing for instant death? Was there any preparing for instant death? How would you prepare? No, it was too horrible — knowing that at the next moment your brain might erupt in great geysers of blood, turning the contents of your skull into a gory mush. Panic clutched at her stomach and she grew dizzy. No, it was better for her mother not to know at all.
The two women exchanged strained smiles, the echoing silence starting to turn awkward, symbolic of the years of silence between them.
‘I thought I’d call Karl and Jim,’ Ginny said casually.
‘Why?’
‘Well, just to tell them that you’re sick and in the hospital. I’m sure they’d want to know.’ In fact, she felt they should be placed on alert for a deathbed scene.
‘I don’t really see the need for it. It’s not as though I’m dying or anything! I mean, I didn’t tell you all the other times, did I?’
‘No, you didn’t. That’s what I mean. I wish you had. Why do you have to be such a martyr all the time, suffering in obscurity?’
‘I can’t see any point in getting everyone all upset over nothing, that’s all. Just because I’m indisposed doesn’t mean that you can bully me, Virginia Babcock Bliss. So please don’t call them. I’ll write them about it in my next letter.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes, I promise. But I don’t see that it’s any concern of yours, frankly.’
‘It’s just that you’ve always been so resolutely secretive about everything.’
‘I have been? Mata Hari is calling me secretive?’
‘Well, you’re right. As a family, we just don’t communicate, do we?’
The term ‘communicate’ amused Mrs. Babcock. It was such a cliché, on the lips of every intense TV talk-show guest in the country. ‘Yes, I am aware that we don’t — communicate,’ she replied. ‘But you have to understand that that’s one of my few remaining pleasures.’
Ginny snorted with laughter. She had to admit that her mother could really be very funny. Not often enough, unfortunately. Or rather, not at the right moments. ‘All right. Go ahead, Mother. Turn it into a joke. But it’s the truth.’
Mrs. Babcock nodded tolerantly at her daughter. ‘Yes, dear, but I think you’ll find that really important things eventually get themselves communicated. Not necessarily in so many words.’
‘If you say so,’ Ginny said, thinking of her broken marriage, cerebral hemorrhage, all the various topics she was incapable of broaching.
Finally she stood up, saying lamely, ‘I have to find Dr. Vogel to ask him some stuff about the transfusion this afternoon.’
In fact, she had to grill him on the topic of her mother’s bleeding stomach. She descended to the basement lab in the elevator. In one corner of the metal box was a small puddle of drying blood.
The elevator came to a stop. Ginny didn’t move. She was transfixed by the blood. She felt nauseated, but she couldn’t take her eyes off it. Whose was it? What sort of vessel had it sloshed out o
f? Was it healthy or diseased? What was its clotting time, its platelet lysis time? What type was it? As she stared, the puddle seemed to throb, in obedience to its absent heart. Blood, all the same everywhere — each person’s the ionic composition of dilute sea water, containing cells that performed the same functions, governed by the same enzymes and hormones. And yet, in spite of all this sameness, like snowflakes or fingerprints, samples from no two people were identical. So many things to go haywire…
‘Miss? Miss?’ An orderly in white stood impatiently outside the elevator.
‘Excuse me,’ Ginny said, stepping out in a daze.
She walked into the impersonal green-walled lab office. The secretary’s desk chair was empty. Ginny peeked around the doorway. Dr. Vogel in a white lab coat was peering through a microscope, continuously readjusting the focus. Next to him sat a centrifuge and a rack of test tubes. He was making hurried notations on a record form.
‘Dr. Vogel?’
He looked up. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Babcock. I’m very busy right now. Could you leave a message with my secretary?’
‘She’s not here.’
He averted his eyes as Ginny walked over to him. ‘Would you say the transfusion hasn’t worked?’
‘Well, she’s just had one. And it performed the function we intended: It relieved her anemia and cut down her bleeding temporarily while we worked at isolating the cause. But of course her platelet count is back down now — to 25,000/mm.’
‘Compared to what?’
‘Compared to right after the transfusion, when it was in the vicinity of 100,000/mm.’
‘May I look?’
‘Well, I don’t know…This is highly unconventional, Miss Babcock, your coming in here like this.’
Ginny looked through the microscope and saw clusters of transparent blobs on a grid of etched squares. So these were the culprits — her mother’s languid platelets. They might even be her own, left over from the transfusion.
When she looked up, Dr. Vogel was holding a test tube with some red liquid in it, blood presumably, up to the overhead light. He studied it intently. Flipping on a fluorescent light directly over the counter, he picked up a second test tube and glanced back and forth between the two.
