Turn of Mind

by Alice LaPlante

  Because . . . ?

  Because some things shouldn’t be scrutinized too closely. Some mysteries are only rendered, not solved. We found each other. And never regretted it the way others do their own youthful couplings.

  The young man is picking up his soft leather satchel, leaning over me, brushing my cheek with his lips.

  Bye, Mom. I’ll see you next week. Probably Tuesday, if work allows.

  Yes, definitely a familiar face, one resonating on numerous levels. Later, after dinner, I finally get a name to attach to the face. James! I say, startling the Vietnam vet so that he spills his water into his bread pudding.

  It is somewhat later that I realize my icon is missing. I keep my own counsel, for now.

  They are telling me something, pointing to their heads. Pointing to my head. Tugging at my hair. I push their hands away.

  The hairdresser. The hairdresser is here. It is your turn.

  What is a hairdresser, I say.

  Just come on, you’ll look and feel so much better!

  I allow myself to be pulled to my feet, guided step-by-step down the hall, passing stuffed armchairs positioned strategically in little groups, as if conversing with one another. Tables laden with fresh flowers. What kind of place is this.

  We enter a large room with shiny tile floors. Along one wall, tall cupboards containing plastic bins filled with yarns, colored paper, markers. A long counter along the opposite wall with a sink in the middle. Tables and chairs have been pushed to one side, and a clear plastic tarp has been laid out on the floor, a single molded plastic chair on the middle of it. A woman dressed in white, standing by.

  Would you like to wash your hair before your cut? she asks, then answers herself. Yes, I see that would be a good idea.

  I am turned around, and propelled gently but firmly over to the sink, and bent over. My hair and neck are ignominiously scrubbed, rinsed, then scrubbed and rinsed again. Led back and pushed into the chair, where the woman tugs a comb through my hair.

  And what shall we do today? Another woman’s voice breaks in. Short, I think. Very short. We’re having some problems with grooming.

  The woman in white agrees cheerfully. Very well! Short it is!

  I try to protest. I’ve always been complimented on my hair, its thickness, color. James calls me “Red” when he’s feeling especially affectionate.

  No, I say, but no one responds. I feel the pressure and coldness of steel against my scalp, hear the clip clip clip of the shears. Shorn like a sheep.

  Other people are gathering around, looking. She looks like a man, one woman says loudly and is shushed. I wonder about that. Man. Woman. Man. Woman. The words have no meaning. Which one am I really?

  I look down at my body. It is thin and spare. Androgynous. Sunken chest, chicken legs, I can see the femoral condyles and patellas through the material of my slacks. My malleoli without socks translucent and delicate, ready to snap if I put too much weight on them.

  You look beautiful, says the woman doing the cutting. Like Joan of Arc. She holds up a hand mirror. See. Much better.

  I don’t recognize the face. Gaunt, with too-prominent cheekbones and eyes a little too large, too otherworldly. The pupils dilated. As if used to seeing strange visions. And then, a secret satisfied smile. As if welcoming them.

  Something is worrying at my ankles. A small furry thing. Dog. This is Dog. What is that joke. About the dyslexic atheist insomniac. I have turned into that joke.

  I have managed not to swallow my pills this morning, so I am alert. Alive. Before depositing them under my mattress, I examine them. Two hundred milligrams of Wellbutrin. One hundred fifty milligrams of Seroquel. Hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic. And one I do not recognize, oblong and pale beige. I make a point of crushing that one between my fingers and letting the dust fall onto the rug.

  I do three laps around the great room, deliberately ignoring the brown line. I step over it, around it, never on it. Step on a crack. Around and around. I count the doors. One. Two. Three. Four. Only twenty in total, and four are unoccupied.

  On my third pass I pause at the heavy metal doors at the far end of the long hallway. I can feel hot air wafting in through the crack, see the relentless sunshine beating onto the cement walkway outside through the small, thick windows. I remember those Chicago summers, heavy, oppressive, and stultifying, keeping you a prisoner in your house and your office as much as the bitter winters did.

  James and I talked about escaping when we retired. Fantasized about a Mediterranean climate. Moderate temperatures, somewhere near the sea. Northern California. San Francisco. Or farther down the coast, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo. Lotus land. Or perhaps even the Mediterranean itself. James and I spent a month on the island of Mallorca after Fiona left for college. To forestall the empty nest blues that never came.

  After that, there was idle talk of an eighteenth-century finca with a large garden. Growing our own tomatoes, peppers, beans. Living off the land. Solar panels on the roof, our own well. Out of sight. Our own desert island. Who were we fooling? We were going off the grid in any case, each in our own way.

  A hand touches my elbow.

  Hey, young lady! A man’s voice. He has a pleasant enough smile, but his face is marred by an eggplant-colored hemangioma in his right upper quadrant. Inoperable.

  I am finishing up my lunch when someone pulls out the chair next to mine, sits down heavily. A face I recognize, but I am in a stubborn frame of mind today. I will not ask. I will not. This woman seems to understand that.

  Detective Luton, she says. Just here for a short visit.

  I am not going to make it easy for her. So I take my napkin off my lap, fold it, and place it across my empty plate. Push my chair back to rise.

  No, wait. I won’t be here very long. Just sit with me for a moment. A young man in scrubs approaches, offers her the coffeepot, and she nods. He puts a cup in front of her and pours. She raises it to her lips and gulps it, neat, as if it were water.

  I was on my way somewhere. My annual pilgrimage. And suddenly found myself driving here. One of those urges. I used to have more of them. I used to be more spontaneous. Here she smiles. One of the hazards of growing older.

  I nod. I don’t understand, but my impatience is ebbing. This is someone in pain. A state I can recognize.

  So how are you doing today? the woman asks.

  We seem to have taken a step backward, I say. From words that mattered to socially appropriate but meaningless questions.

  Instead of appearing upset by my rudeness, the woman looks pleased.

  In good form, I see. Glad to see that.

  So why are you here? I ask.

  As I said, I was on a pilgrimage. I guess you could say this is part of it.

  In what way?

  I was on my way to the cemetery.

  Anyone I knew?

  No, not at all. You and I aren’t connected in that way. Our relationship is a . . . professional one. She motions for more coffee. Well, mostly.

  Are you my doctor?

  No, no. A member of the police. An investigator.

  She stares at her hands, pressed tightly against her coffee cup. Seconds tick by. I find I am now curious rather than annoyed or impatient. So I wait.

  She finally speaks, slowly.

  My life partner had Alzheimer’s. Early onset. She was a lot younger than you—only forty-five.

  I am having trouble following her now. But I sense the emotion and nod.

  People think it’s just forgetting your keys, she says. Or the words for things. But there are the personality changes. The mood swings. The hostility and even violence. Even from the gentlest person in the world. You lose the person you love. And you are left with the shell.

  She stops and pauses. Do you know what I’m talking about?

  I nod. My mother.

  The woman nods back. And you are expected to go on loving them even when they are no longer there. You are supposed to be loyal. It’s not that other people expect it. I
t’s that you expect it of yourself. And you long for it to be over soon.

  She reaches over and takes hold of my wrist, gently raises my arm into the air a little. It is a sorry spectacle, no muscle tone, as thin and desiccated as a chicken’s leg. We both gaze at it for a moment, then, just as gently, she lowers it down into my lap again.

  It broke my heart, she says. And, somehow, you’re breaking it again. Another pause.

  Then, as suddenly as she had arrived, she is gone.

  A dark night. Figures emerging and diverging from shadows, moving just out of my range of vision. A very dark night and I need to get up, to move, but I am restrained, my arms and legs tied down tightly to the bed.

  I retreat into myself. I use all my will to get myself away from here to somewhere else. A dial spins in my head and I hold my breath and wait for what might happen. The pleasures and risks of a time traveler.

  And so I find myself walking in the door to my house, greeted by the shrieks of a young infant in pain. I know immediately when and where I am. I am a mother for the second time. I am forty-one, she is one month old. She has been crying for half her life. Every day from 3 pm until midnight. Colic. The unexplainable screaming of a young child. The Chinese call it one hundred days of crying, and I have eighty-five days left.

  A particularly bad case, the pediatrician says. The noise assaults me every night after a long day of surgeries. When I come home, the nanny, Ana, hands me the child and literally runs from the room. James and Mark are already hiding behind closed doors.

  I am marking my calendar, as I did before my first child was born. We’ve tried all the latest drugs and theories of modern medicine. I have cut out dairy and wheat from my diet, filled her bottle with catnip and ginger teas, dissolved Hyland’s colic tablets in milk pumped from my breasts. But nothing has worked, nothing eases her and our pain.

  To save my family, every night I put the baby in the car seat and drive. I stop for gas, for a cup of coffee, and when I enter the convenience store or the café with my wailing bundle, all conversation ceases, and I am hustled to the front of the line.

  Tonight is typical. I pack a thermos of coffee, put the baby in the car, and head out. I prefer the expressways, the long thin ribbons of concrete that stretch out in all directions except east, turning Chicago into a great spider.

  I take the Fullerton ramp onto the Kennedy heading north, past Diversey, past Irving Park, past the Edens split and north to O’Hare. All the while the baby screeches, taking no noticeable breaths.

  The noise. The noise. Sometimes we park at O’Hare and walk among the crowds there, moving in our own little bubble, everyone on their way to parts unknown, rushing a little faster now because of us.

  But this night we continue north of O’Hare, proceed northwest through Arlington Heights and Rolling Meadows and farther until we hit country. The numbing ugly flatness of the Illinois landscape that I’ve never quite adjusted to.

  The baby has not stopped her wailing. It is only 9:30 pm. Two and a half hours to go. All moisture has long ago been expelled from her tear ducts, and she’s now into the dry heaves, her little motor revved to high. It will not stop until the clock strikes midnight. When the world turns right side up again.

  Then, up ahead, flashing lights, a crowd of people. An accident. It looks serious. I stop, put the baby into a pouch that I buckle around my neck and waist, and go to investigate.

  People scatter as I approach, Fiona’s cry as painful as any siren. Above her and the expressway noise, I shout, I am a doctor! How can I help? A motorcyclist is down, a compound fracture of his leg, the bone protruding, his face as white as the bone, his eyes closed against the pain.

  I stoop down, the weight of the baby making me sway a little off balance. Everyone moves away from us, even the paramedics retreat. I examine the young man, who by now is barely conscious. An open femoral shaft fracture, he will need antibiotics, an irrigation and debridement, and an intramedullary rod.

  I probe his other limbs: arms and other leg, all is well, but he is growing paler. His breath is coming quicker, he is clearly distressed, he is going into shock, and so I turn to the paramedics and say, Get him to the nearest trauma center, but first administer ten milligrams of IV morphine sulfate to help control the pain.

  All the while the baby continues to wail, and everyone is moving farther and farther away from us except the prone motorcyclist who manages to sort of gesture with his hands.

  One of the EMS technicians seems to understand this and shouts something to me that I cannot catch because at that moment the baby emits a particularly loud burst of misery. The technician opens his mouth again, shuts it, cups his hands around his lips, and forces out words.

  You’ve been very helpful, he begins. He takes one step toward me, hesitates, and then retreats two. But now could you do us all a favor? Absolutely! I shout back. What do you need? He hesitates a moment. We’re very appreciative! he yells, and takes a deep breath. But would you please please just leave?

  I turn to go but cannot move and suddenly I am back in the softness of my bed, the straps hard around my legs and arms. A small warm body is still next to me, but it is silent and furry and odorous. Dog. The silence is welcome. But I wonder. How long do I have? How long before things come full circle and I descend to that state of inarticulate rage and suffering, the state Fiona started her life in? Not long. Not long now. I open my mouth and begin.

  I like tactile things. A carved wooden candlestick, from a beautiful grain, I guess mahogany. A string of prayer beads with the Turkish evil eye hanging off as a pendant. A porcelain teacup patterned in royal blue curlicues.

  And there is a scarf. A plain cream-colored woolen scarf. But long. Long enough to reach from the head of my bed to the foot. Perfect for wrapping around my head and lower face to protect against the Chicago winter.

  I remember winters. Once we lost heat for a week and the water in the toilet bowl froze. We had to move out. James insisted on the Ambassador East. It was a frivolous choice, as the children were still young and the luxury was wasted on us. We all slept in one bed, the baby crawling among us, her breath tickling our cheeks. That golden time! James let Mark shave, smeared menthol shaving cream all over his six-year-old face, carefully pulled the razor across his fuzzy cheeks. I painted the baby’s toenails a bright magenta. We ate at the Pump Room every night, the kitchen made macaroni and cheese for the kids, and James and I ate lobster risotto and veal chops, and eggs Benedict in the mornings. The tangy half-cooked yolks, the creamy hollandaise, the asparagus that delicately scented our urine for days. Ana would show up as breakfast was ending so James and I could go to work. I’d put on layers of clothing and that woolen Irish scarf, and head off to the hospital.

  All this evoked by a simple article of winter clothing. Something I won’t need again. For winter doesn’t exist here. No seasons at all. No heat. No cold. They’ve even banished darkness. They said, Let there be light, and there is, perpetually. A temperate climate for intemperate people.

  There is a young man interested in me. A teacher crush. How we used to laugh when it happened, we women. For the men, it is no laughing matter, however. They are tempted. They fall. It is a serious thing. But for us, amusement only.

  Yet this one. The way he watches me. And he is beautiful. Does that matter? Yes. He comes to my office after lectures on various pretexts. Once he pretended not to understand the basics of tendon transfer surgery. Another time he asked me about skin grafting, that most basic procedure.

  Once he posed a riddle and I answered it, not realizing he was joking. What do you say when someone tells you, Doctor, it hurts when I do this? I absentmindedly replied,Tell them not to do it. He laughed and I looked at him for the first time.

  It makes you feel young. It makes you feel old. You feel powerful. You are vulnerable.

  It was none of those things. I felt no guilt. I felt no shame. And not because of James’s own behavior. I simply wanted to take it as far as it could go, to run it
into the ground. This was a new experience.

  For the most part you leave doors open. Bridges unburned. You don’t accept hopeless cases. You make sure to have an exit strategy. There was none in this case.

  Hello, old friend.

  A balding man, Asian American, with a strong Bronx accent, is standing by my chair. He is smiling familiarly at me. That is, he is smiling as if he expects to be familiar to me. He is not.

  Do I know you?

  I say this coldly. No more pretense. No more smiles for strangers.

  Carl. Carl Tsien. We were colleagues. At Quicken St. Matthews Medical Center. I was Internal Medicine, you were Orthopedics.

  That sounds plausible, I say.

  Ah, you’re being cautious. Not committing yourself. He smiles as if he has just said something witty.

  So, you say we were colleagues? I ask.

  Yes.

  Why were?

  I am testing him, not just for knowledge but for truthfulness. Trustworthiness. He hesitates for a moment, then speaks.

  You retired.

  A nice euphemism.

  Yes. To his credit, he looks a little chagrined. Well, that’s what you called it at the time. So you’re aware of your disease?

  On good days like this, yes, I am completely aware of how far I’ve sunk.

  Is my face at all familiar?

  No. And I can’t tell you how boring it is to get asked that all the time.

  Then you won’t hear it from me again, old friend.

  Glad to hear that, stranger. So, why are you here?

  He again looks uncomfortable. Shifts a little in his chair.

  As an . . . emissary. From Mark. And as I look enquiringly at him, Your son, he says.

  I have no son.

  I know you’re angry with him. But let me make a case on his behalf.

  You don’t understand. I have no recollection of any son. And I’m not inclined to play along. I used to, you know. Nod and pretend. No more.

  He is silent.

  Well, let’s talk hypothetically. Say you did have a son. And say that he had gotten himself into a bad situation. Made some mistakes. And imposed on you—or tried to.