The Wooden Sea

by Jonathan Carroll

  “Yes.”

  “George, Floon’s fucking Citizen Kane with a gun. He just shot Gee-Gee and before he shot the dog I think he did something bad to it so it became like a killer dog. You’re gonna take this man’s opinion as valid?”

  “I didn’t say that, Frannie. I said we discussed you.”

  Fuming, I began pulling up handfuls of innocent grass and throwing them at innocent Chuck. They were too light to reach the dog, but he woke up and kept an eye on me just in case. “Yeah, well, tell me, what did you two prognosticates decide?”

  Inside his house the phone rang. Suspiciously, George got right up to answer it. That wasn’t like him. I had the feeling he did it only to stall for time. He came hurrying back out with a portable telephone extended in front of him stiff-armed. “Frannie, it’s Pauline. Magda just collapsed. She’s unconscious.”

  In the minutes it took for George to drive me home, the ambulance I’d called from his place was already coming down the other end of our street, siren howling. As both vehicles pulled up to the house, the word “oxymoron” came to mind. Because that is exactly what this situation was—an oxymoron. Knowing what was wrong with my wife before a doctor even felt her pulse was of inestimable advantage. The irony being that I also knew her situation was hopeless. Take your time, Doctor. Because no matter what you do it’s useless—she’ll be dead of a big fat juicy brain tumor within a year. I hadn’t told George about it. I’d only said that as an old man in Vienna I was married to Susan Ginnety. In typical Dalemwood fashion he’d paused, taken another bite of his chocolate bar and said flatly, “That’s interesting.”

  The four of us raced into the house. When we slammed the door, Pauline called out to us from the kitchen. Magda lay on the floor in there next to the table. Pauline had put a pillow from the couch under her head and lined up her arms and legs so that she looked at peace lying there but also too much like a corpse. I immediately looked to see if she had “posturing”– where limbs twist inward as if the muscles have drawn too tight on the bones—which is one of the worst possible signs of brain tumor.

  The paramedics dropped to their knees and began their grim work. I had been a medic in Vietnam and knew what they were doing. That didn’t make it any easier to watch. I kept wanting to say things like “Check the Babinski” and “Is she decerebrated?” but I didn’t because they didn’t need anyone interfering in their very strict by-the-book procedures. Nevertheless I watched what they did very carefully.

  One hand across her mouth, Pauline gestured me over urgently with the other. George saw this and moved over behind the paramedics, as far away from us as possible.

  “What happened, Pauline?”

  “We were talking and her eyes, like, suddenly rolled up in her head? Then she slid out of the chair. Like she was playing some kind of creepy joke? Mom’s been having bad headaches for the last couple of weeks. She didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you to worry.”

  I’m sure she was surprised by my reaction. Probably expecting me to go ballistic because I hadn’t been told about these headaches, I only looked long at my shoes and nodded.

  “I haven’t noticed it, but has she acted strange recently? Like has she been grouchy or irrational suddenly out of the blue?”

  A paramedic pushed up one of Magda’s eyelids and shone a small yellow flashlight into her eye. He said, “She doesn’t have any posturing but there’s some kind of unequal pupil response here.”

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. There was no point to it. “Look for signs of a brain tumor.” Both men looked up at me. “She had blurred vision and bad headaches recently.”

  “She never said anything about blurred vision to me, Frankie.”

  I squeezed Pauline’s arm to be still.

  “Do you know the signs, Chief McCabe?”

  “I was a medic in the service. Do a pinprick test. See her response to pain.”

  One of the guys looked at his partner. “Christ, I never had a brain tumor case before.”

  Pauline stepped in close. I could smell her breath when she spoke. “Frannie, do you really think Mom has a brain tumor?”

  Lie to the girl? Tell her the truth? “I don’t know, sweetheart. But I want them to check that possibility. Let’s wait to hear what these guys say. It’s always better to be safe in things like this. Let them check everything.” I moved Pauline so that she stood in front of me. I wrapped my arms around her and held on for dear life. She stood stiff and trembling. I felt so helpless and goddamned sorry for her. I didn’t want to know what I knew about her mother’s condition.

  She moaned. “Mom. Oh, Mom.”

  For the first time in my life, my heart began beating erratically. It was the damnedest feeling. Suddenly it appeared to climb higher in my chest until it felt like it was at the bottom of throat. Then it began pounding hard and unevenly. My cheeks got hot. I touched one of them and my fingers felt very cold on it. My heart pounded throughout the whole top of my chest. It went fast fast fast, then seemed to stop, go fast a couple more times, stop... The normal rhythm was gone, it was on its own, lurching around inside me like a car being parallel parked at high speed.

  While still holding Pauline, I slid my hand down from my cheek to the left side of my chest. I thought I could feel my heart banging away under there. It was strange, fascinating and terrible.

  “Frannie, are you okay?” George was watching me.

  “Yeah, I’m just having some arrhythmia. It makes sense though with the stress.”

  “What is that, Frannie? What’s wrong with you?” Pauline’s voice was afraid. Was I going to collapse next?

  “It means my heart’s beating fast. No big deal. Don’t worry.”

  “You want me to check you out?” One of the men asked with the blood pressure cuff in his hand. I shook my head.

  They moved Magda onto a stretcher and hooked up an IV. Pauline kept asking what they were doing at each step and she deserved to know. I carefully described the procedures, keeping my voice cool and confident throughout. That tone appeared to work because her shoulders unhunched and after a while she stopped nervously licking her lips every few seconds.

  “We’re all done here. You want to ride with us to the hospital?”

  “Pauline, you want to go with your Mom? George can drive me over in his car.” I thought I needed about ten minutes alone with George to talk about things. Just enough time to ride from our house to the Crane’s View hospital.

  Her body immediately clenched again. “No! I’m not riding in any ambulance. I don’t want to, Frannie. Please let me go with George. Please!”

  Her quick, unexpected hysteria threw us all off. Bypassing the diplomatic, I took her firmly by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Stop! It’s okay, honey, everything is okay. You don’t have to go in the ambulance. Go with George and I’ll ride with Mom to the hospital. Just take it easy, huh? Everything will be okay.”

  While I spoke she looked at the floor, nodding the whole time like her head was mounted on a spring. “Good. Okay. I’ll come right behind you. But, Frannie? Should I ask the doctors about my tattoo when I get there? Do you think I should ask them why my tattoo disappeared?”

  What the hell was she talking about? When it eventually dawned on me I had to squint to focus my mind on what had happened to her earlier that morning. “Uh, no. We’ll do that another time. Right now let’s take care of Magda.”

  “Okay. But Frannie, will Gee-Gee be at the hospital?”

  “I—I don’t know, honey. I don’t really know where Gee-Gee is right now.”

  Magda regained consciousness riding in the ambulance. I had been talking to one of the paramedics who, it turned out, went to the high school the other day to pick up Antonya Corando’s body. I hadn’t recognized him.

  “Frannie?” My wife’s voice sounded very soft and sexy. It sounded perversely like she was inviting me to bed. She might even have said my name more than once but her voice was so faint that it would have been easy to miss.
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  “Magda, how are you? How do you feel? Are you a little foggy?” I touched her temple and stroked it. Her face felt cold in some places, hot in others.

  She blinked a few times, never taking her glassy eyes off me. Once she opened her mouth a long few moments but said nothing. Her tongue looked gray and shriveled. Moving her head slowly from side to side, she looked blankly around, apparently trying to figure out where she was.

  “You fainted, Mag. We’re in an ambulance going to the hospital because I want them to check you out. I’ve called Dr. Zakrides and he’ll be waiting for us there.”

  She gently touched the back of my hand with one of her fingers. Slowly she stroked it once and then her finger fell away. She said something I couldn’t hear. I leaned in closer. From whatever well of small energy she had left, she was able to say it again: “Knock-knock.” I gasped back a short harsh breath. It was our password and secret smile. Whenever one of us felt sexy and wanted to make love, we went to the other and said that, “Knock-knock.” Not so much knocking on their “door” as meaning the silly line kids have used forever to begin a million bad jokes. I don’t know where it came from or remember which of us had been the first to use it in that context. But the only time we said the phrase to each other was for that reason alone.

  Hearing those wonderful words now in this place and circumstance was hideous. But how amazing that that’s what she wanted to say to me now, when fear would own most people. Every couple has an intimate, secret vocabulary only they speak or understand. Until this moment, “knock-knock” had been our great lewd line that meant only one thing to us and was therefore irresistible. My heart galloped up a hill in my chest. My wife was going away.

  One side of Magda’s mouth twitched. Seeing it, I was afraid she was about to have a seizure, a common side effect of brain tumor. But almost worse, that twitch turned into a smile. How did she do it? Everything was gone in her but here she was smiling. When she tried to speak again she had no energy. All she could do was mouth the words but that was enough. She said slowly, “I like you.” Another major phrase from our shared history; the result of an old wound that had healed into a joke, then a joy and a memory neither of us would forget.

  A decade before we married, Magda and I had a very serious affair. But it blew up and rained pieces of pain down on both of us for a long time. It was all my fault. By some miracle years later Magda was able to forgive my great shittiness and give me another chance. Nonetheless both of us had scars up and down our souls from what had happened. So when we started dating again, we moved around each other like two dogs mat have never met before—slow approach, backs stiff, tails up, circling. Even when we knew we were onto something bip here, neither of us dared say any of the magic words or phrases that seal the deal.

  This went on for more than a while. Eventually after one particularly nice time together, I screwed up my courage. Looking her square in the eye I said, “I like you.” Of course I wanted to say the big stuff but was worried she might bolt if she heard “I love you” or “I want you” or “you’re the one for me.” Instead, she smiled like someone who’s come home and said, “I wish we were in a bedroom now.”

  I smiled back. “Why?”

  “Because I could be naked for you there. No, nude. No, naked. Well, both and then you could choose.”

  Naturally both “I like you” and “naked and nude” became honorary members of our relationship. Both were frequently used as assurances, reminders, and surefire alternatives to “I love you.”

  “Don’t talk anymore now, Mag. Save your strength.”

  What strength? Nothing in her expression or the broken lie of her body indicated there was more than a firefly’s light of strength left in her. Whatever owned Magda now had taken full charge and it was definitely not her friend. She closed her eyes and I took her hand. She gave a weak squeeze and stopped.

  I closed my eyes and summoned the image I always did in situations like this: A close-up of a finger going into the white number holes of an old black 1940s style telephone. Finger in a hole—turn the wheel—do it again, dial the number digit by slow digit. It rings on the other end. Two, three times, sometimes four but eventually it is picked up. A nondescript male voice asks calmly, “Yes?” I’ve got him—it’s God. He always picks up and always listens. It does not mean He’ll do what I ask. He only listens and mat’s our deal.

  This time I silently said, please leave Magda out of this. If it’s her fate to go like this, then okay. But if it’s because of something I did, break my skull. Break me—but please leave her alone. That’s all. I dianked him and the hand in my mental image put down the phone. No pleading or elaboration because He knows what I’m talking about. And He’s got a lot of phones to answer.

  “All right.”

  My eyes were closed but I jumped hearing the voice. Magda’s limp hand lay in mine. God had just said all right. I opened my eyes and was looking directly at the paramedic. He smiled and said it again in that unmistakable voice. “All right. Mr. McCabe. We can save your wife.”

  Magda’s eyes were still closed. Her face looked very peaceful. I knew no matter where she “was” she wouldn’t be able to hear us now.

  “We can do what you ask, sir. But you’ll have to do something for us.”

  “Are you God?” I asked timidly.

  His smile grew warmer. “No, but we are more powerful than human beings. We can facilitate making certain things happen that you can’t.” He had a big face—big eyes, wide nose, his teeth were the color of a yellowed meerschaum pipe. Altogether there was nothing special about his face. You wouldn’t notice or remember it. Maybe that was the point.

  “A small group of us, including Astopel, came to Earth—”

  “So you are aliens? Gee-Gee was right?”

  “Yes.” He wouldn’t stop smiling. Now he looked encouraging, like a teacher pleased with a student’s answer to a hard question.

  “There are aliens on Earth that look like people? This is a goddamned 1950s movie! Why aren’t we in black and white? We’ve already got the Pod People here!”

  I was too loud. He put a finger to his lips to shush me. “If you saw what we really looked like you would be alarmed. We didn’t come here to cause a disturbance. That was Astopel’s doing and why all these odd things have been happening to you.”

  He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a blue and white pack of gum. The writing on it was Cyrillic. The black plastic identity tag on that pocket said his name was Barry– Barry the alien.

  “How long have you been here, uh, Barry?”

  “A little over a month. Some of us longer, like the Schiavos. As you know the two of them have been here for years. Would you like a piece of Russian gum? It’s very good.”

  I was dumbstruck. “The Schiavos are—Geraldine Schiavo is an alien! Oh-my-God! That’s why they disappeared like that and their house... Holy Christ! Why are you here?”

  Leaning forward he spoke to the driver. “Nate, stop the car. We need some time before we get to the hospital.”

  “What about my wife?”

  “She’ll be all right until we get there. Don’t worry. This is all within our control, Mr. McCabe. Or rather this part is. Please trust me.”

  What else could I do? More importantly what parts weren’t under their control?

  The ambulance slowed and made a hard right turn. Looking out the window, I saw that we were in the parking lot of the Grand Union market. Ironic because it was where Old Vertue had been found that first day.

  “Are we stopping here on purpose? Is this place some sort of symbolic gesture?”

  Barry Smiles lost the smile and looking bewildered said no; we simply needed a place to talk and this was convenient. I didn’t believe him. Sliding the door open, he gestured for me to climb out. After checking Magda again, I did. The parking lot was mostly empty, but the heat of the day was already beginning to rise from the pocked, cracked pavement. A lone white seagull drifted above us. Seeing something
on the ground, it dropped for a landing. The flattened body of a mouse turned out to be the object of the bird’s affection. It pecked away at what was left of the squashed blob.

  Barry watched this and said, “There are no animals where we come from. They’re extraordinary things. You’re very lucky to have them. That’s what I like most on Earth—the animals.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  The gull rose into the air carrying the flattened carcass in its beak. Landing on top of a streetlamp, it looked around like it didn’t know how it got there.

  Barry chuckled, his head bent way back to watch the bird. “That’s an interesting question. Off the top of my head I would have to say either the dodo bird or the stegosaurus, although you couldn’t really call that an animal, could you?”

  “No, most people would call it a dinosaur. And the dodo is extinct.” I waited for a response but he just kept looking up.

  The seagull lifted lazily off its high perch and flew away with the ugly prize still in its beak.

  “Yes, both creatures are extinct.”

  “But you’ve seen them alive since you’ve been here, right Barry? Or am I wrong?”

  My Favorite Martian shook his head. “No, you’re not wrong. The first thing we did when we got here was review mankind’s history. We visited every era of the earth’s past to familiarize ourselves with where humanity came from.”

  I said, “Hmm.” Standing in the Grand Union parking lot listening to a man from outer space say he’d paid a quick visit to the Jurassic period to see dinosaurs while on a field trip for his class in Mankind 101. What else could I say but Hmm?

  “It must be hard to believe. Would you like some proof, Mr. McCabe?”

  “Barry, once again you read my mind.”

  “Fair enough. What can I show you? What would you like to see? A stegosaurus?”

  “No, it would crack the pavement and then I’d have to arrest both of you for disturbing the peace. But are you serious? Can you call up whatever I want to see?”

  “Yes, so long as it exists now or once existed. Nothing beyond that. As I said, we do have limitations here.”