by Charles Bock
The big questions were too much. But she and Oliver could handle logistics—couldn’t they?
True, she hadn’t yet found a suitable nanny. She had to make calls later about that, yes. But hadn’t she, by herself, negotiated a matter of exponentially larger importance—the transfer of her care to Whitman Memorial (a well-regarded, smallish hospital on the Upper East Side)? Hadn’t she put out feelers to friends, and hadn’t they completed arrangements, scheduled appointments, procured an expert oncologist—an impeccable genius, according to Betsey Johnson’s operations officer, best reputation in the city—now locked in, scheduled to take over Alice’s treatment. All Alice had to do was bring her slides to that first meeting.
And during what she thought would be that routine call, when the nurse in New Hampshire had informed Alice about the hospital policy against sending blood slides to a residential address, hadn’t Alice handled the little complication? Hadn’t she gotten them sent straight to Whitman?
The memory infused her with a rickety confidence, reminding her of the competent professional she’d taken for granted not all that long ago, the woman she hardly still felt herself to be.
Except here it was, nine fifteen on a Friday morning, and Whitman still hadn’t received their slides. Oliver had lost patience and commandeered control of the cordless. He wouldn’t allow shoe wearing inside their loft, and she could hear him pacing in his gray gym socks, coming closer, floorboards creaking. She could hear him confirming that the slides had been sent, asking for the name of the person at Whitman who’d signed for them.
“Thanks a bunch.” Oliver punched a button on the cordless.
His naturally curly hair had already grown back enough to be making that first twist, small tight rings sprouting neatly in every direction. His flannel was unbuttoned and untucked, his chest bare and concave, a slight paunch evident, a faint trail of fuzz running toward his pubes. Corduroy pants were slipping halfway down fleshy hips. On anyone else the look would have meant: late riser, barely awake, struggling to get up to speed. But Oliver seemed at home in his dishevelment, as if he reveled in the chaos, was invigorated by the challenge. A glance toward the crib; he ran his hand over the meat and fuzz of his jaw. He kept pacing the length of their loft. Their fat tabby scurried out of his path, and he punched at the phone. He gave the new oncologist’s secretary at Whitman the name of the guilty party, the one who’d signed that delivery slip. And promptly learned it was her day off. Then a click.
Alice’s skull—pallid and smooth—peeked out above the edge of the comforter.
Oliver pressed the flat pin of the phone antenna against his chin.
From behind her downy shield, she murmured, “You tried.”
The phone went back into the cradle.
She said, “The hospital’s on top of it.”
Oliver stared at the sliver of work space through the partway opened door. Though he couldn’t see the computer stations in the main room, he sensed their internal fans whirring, felt their dormant screens waiting to go bright with his first keystroke.
“It’s Friday morning,” he said. “We get to Friday afternoon, they haven’t found the things, that office is empty all weekend. You get there Monday and they won’t have squat. Doctor doesn’t have anything to read? Why even show up?”
Her face emerged from behind the comforter: she didn’t seem impressed by his logic. Instead, her movements measured, she propped herself onto pillows, let herself be supported by the wall. Alice let herself enjoy the chill of the white bricks against the silk of her pajama blouse. When her lids opened, she checked the corner, locking in on the crib.
Other than the usual three tries it took to get her down, and the de rigueur 4:00 A.M. screaming fit, Doe had had a restful night. Was still asleep.
Watching her breathe, Alice telepathically warned Oliver to keep his voice low. She massaged a dollop of coconut cream into the back of her palm. Skin that used to be soft now felt dry as chalk, and couldn’t absorb moisture quickly enough. Alice straightened her back. She took three deep breaths, each coming up through her diaphragm. With every inhalation, the scent of her coconut cream was overpowering. Everywhere at once. Alice chanted a silent mantra, asking for calm, praying for peace. Her mind returned to the magnetized message she’d placed on the refrigerator door, long-ago-memorized words: Before you speak, ask yourself: Does it improve on the silence?
Alice did not open her eyes but whispered: “If you even possessed the slightest hint how many times I’ve talked to that receptionist in the past three days—”
Her index finger preempted, destroying Oliver’s answer in its larval stage. “Can’t you just believe that dear intrepid Beth will do her job?”
Oliver sat down next to Alice and stroked her hand. He had a flash memory, from not long after they’d started dating, back during a different reality: Alice at her sewing table, cutting the pattern for the pajamas she wore now. Forklifts beeped with faint accusations from the distance below. Alice’s oversize Edwardian cuff wasn’t buttoned. A black roach of a bruise sat along the thumb side of her wrist. Oliver’s eyes followed the faded purple, the sickly green, the eggish yellow. He peered down the sallow length of her arm, recalling the morning when the skin around her port had gotten infected, when an air bubble had inflated, brown and transparent, in the middle of her biceps.
Mister Blister Alice had labeled that balloon. But it had deflated. Her piggish bloat had also receded, her recognizable features returning, so that she looked like herself, thank fucking hell. Oliver stared at the close pattern—small blue-and-silver chevrons and fleur-de-lis—which covered the former blister’s location. For an instant he felt as furious as he’d been when the catheter’s slippage had been discovered. Those nurses should’ve caught the infiltration earlier, should’ve known better than to go into a weak vein.
“That receptionist,” Oliver said. “Figure she checks in how many patients an hour?”
“You’re not—”
“Humor me, Alice.”
“Oliver—”
“Figure a patient’s showing up to see each doctor in the office every fifteen—”
She cut him off, exhausted, barely a whisper: “Then call again.”
“You think sweet Beth isn’t going to be hightailing it out of work on a Friday afternoon? In a goddamn snowstorm?”
“You just called. Look how well that worked.”
“We have to stay on top of them.”
“Oliver.” Her chin quivered. “I’m going to be dealing with this doctor for at least six months.” Her face flushed. “If the receptionist hates me before I’ve even stepped through the door—”
“It’s too much to ask you to make sure your doctors have your GODDAMN LEUKEMIA SLIDES?”
For a fraction of a moment things on the other side of the room were still. But then it began, a shift in molecules, a stirring, a consciousness turning on, confused. The baby gathered, then belted, at the seismic peak of her infant lungs.
“Wonderful.” Alice rushed, struggling to rise, moving as quickly as her body would allow. “My hero.”
—
When they’d gotten engaged and first started looking for their own place, Oliver had assured her that it was a steal—this tiny trapezoidal industrial area, just north of the West Village, by far the best value for their buck. He was, to put it tactfully, insane. The Meatpacking District’s every daylight hour was dominated by dock thugs and frozen slabs; after dark, rotted zombie addicts held court with leather-collar sex club slaves and transvestite streetwalkers—the type of neighborhood that was superb for a night of slummy fun, Alice had no problem admitting that much, ordering the first round of shots, or shaming Oliver into doing the same. If the mood struck her, she’d be the first to hop on a bar and start dancing, and had no problems donating her bra (so long as it wasn’t one of her fancier wire-support ones) to some hole’s wall of fame. But as far as bringing a child into the world, as far as raising their infant, they’d have been bett
er off if the area had been radioactive. Hell, for all Alice knew, it was.
Oliver felt differently. And this was tricky because he was one of those rare specimens: he actually followed up on ideas, possessing a special, almost preternatural talent for blocking out distractions, isolating a problem and breaking it down into smaller, solvable units. On a daily basis this could be annoying, it most definitely had killed more than a few date nights. But how else could he have successfully built a software and technical support start-up out of little more than underarm sweat and gum wrappers? Applying that same bulldog tenacity, Oliver came to her with a flowchart that showed distances to nearby gourmet grocery shopping and restaurants; he researched school districts, pinpointed the excellent zone they’d be in. Oliver went so far as to present her with a spreadsheet detailing possible upgrades to the apartment, options for what could be done with the rent money they’d save by living here. Equally unfortunate for Alice was that Oliver also had spent more than a bit of his childhood assisting his dad in odd jobs around the house. Meaning he was precise and crisp with a slide rule, knew the purpose of a flathead screw, how to find the load-bearing part of a wall for a shelving unit, even the dangers inherent in an industrial-size power sander. It also surely wasn’t a coincidence that he’d scoped out the Upper East Side location where skilled nonunion day laborers hung around mornings, waiting for someone to offer them work. Yes, with his piercing intelligence, his formidable collection of technical skills, and his nonstop hustling attitude, Oliver created his own black magic, a momentum that turned feasible what should have been idle banter—daydreams the two of them mulled over while in bed, lying there satisfied, one of them idly tracing a finger up and down the other’s inner leg.
Naturally, Oliver also happened to cross paths with some guy at a management company who needed quick revenue, and was willing to look the other way about a few pesky residential zoning requirements. Oliver had cajoled Alice, he’d harangued, promising to resand and refinish the wooden floors, install a fully operating kitchen with lots of counter space, erect one of those huge walk-in closets. Any demand she could imagine, he acquiesced, vowing to oversee or take care of it himself. And since the scraps of savings they had were basically his anyway, since Alice was already getting the wedding and going full-speed-ahead with her plans for a baby, if Alice hadn’t exactly given in on this front, neither had she stood in his way. What she’d done, she’d allowed herself to see what would happen.
Editorial assistants at glossy fashion magazines; assistant editors at midtown publishing houses; junior publicists; gallery clerks; massage school graduates; yoginis; gofers; photographers’ personal peons; retail sluts; the same neurotic, cooler-than-thou trailblazers who’d originally made hilarious and cutting remarks about the wisdom of buying a place in this neighborhood; who’d had first-rate original excuses why they hadn’t visited, or who’d conversely finished their last bites of brunch and gotten down to brass tacks, expressing their heartfelt concern about what Alice and Oliver were doing; time and again they’d stepped carefully, decamping from the warehouse’s freight elevator, always holding their breath so they didn’t get a full blast of the dried cow blood stench from downstairs, pulling at the collapsing security gate—and then they’d be hit smack-dab by that first, full gander: the obscene expanse of square footage, the cavernously high ceilings, the exposed bricks at once dilapidated and futuristic. They gasped, gaped, craned their necks for a better look. They were blown away, these friends who still commuted from outer boroughs where they crammed into shithole apartments with roommates they could hardly stand; who’d spent years fighting like savages to establish their professional and personal lives; who made a point of being impressed by absolutely nothing and positively nobody. They held slack the ten-dollar bottles of wine and five-dollar bouquets they’d brought as housewarming gifts. Friends that Alice had originally bonded with during orientation week at fashion school clucked their reserved approval for the thick steel cookware that hung from the rack in the center of the kitchen space. Plucked brows narrowed when they saw Alice’s pool-size designing and sketch table, her vintage sewing table from the nineteen twenties, the female mannequin form next to it. Tilda showed no compunction whatsoever about walking straight into Alice’s personal closet and letting fly with gutter curses. No better were the boyfriends, the husbands, and Oliver’s pals—junior traders from Wall Street, junior partners at midtown law firms, graduate assistants, PhD candidates, bookish band geeks, and/or dudes who were still figuring things out and working by day at bakeries or frame shops. Once they saw Oliver’s row of workstation terminals, once they found out how little Oliver’d stolen this place for, and how comparatively little the renovations had cost—palms smacked against foreheads. There had been more than one real live spit take. As if to rub it in, Oliver would roll up the Chinese screens to show off that wall of windows, the panoramic view, only faintly filmed with soot: the abandoned train track, the dilapidated piers, the shimmering expanse of the Hudson.
Ego was a small thing. Its pleasures were shallow and venal. Alice had bathed in them anyway. If my friends are jealous, she told Oliver, at the end of more than one such soiree, you know we’re onto something.
Still. When she was at her worst, when she needed to blame Oliver for something, for anything, she returned to the promise she couldn’t forget, high on his list of guarantees: they’d be insulated; the smells from the warehouses, frozen beef and lingering death, wouldn’t reach them. But they did.
Just a get-to-know-you visit
AND THEN THEY were on their way. Or something close to it.
The cabbie kept glancing over his shoulder, through the scratched bulletproof divider, getting his fill of the crazy woman in the blue wig and the surgical mask.
Well, let him enjoy himself.
Ignoring the driver, she asked: “Don’t we deserve a treat? After everything we’ve been through?”
“Believe me.” Oliver stared out the side window. “I want a treat just as much as you.”
“And it’s not like Thursday night reservations at the Black Tide are easy to get.” Alice paused. “Honestly. I’m amazed we’re discussing this.”
Oliver checked his watch, the third time in maybe five minutes.
“I’m not just going to give in and play the martyr,” she continued. “Just stay at home and be frail and wear a caftan—”
“No one’s saying—”
“Friends will visit and I’ll flutter my eyes and everyone comes away saying, She’s so noble, it’s so sad. That may be later. But for now—”
He released a breath that Alice knew meant he was trying to hold his temper. “If you could just walk me through it,” Oliver asked. “Reservations or not, it’s still the middle of one of the coldest winters in who knows. If I’m a freshwater crab swimming in the vicinity of the East Coast, I’ve got to be freezing my balls off.”
“Actually,” Alice answered, “I think those are the blue crabs.”
There wasn’t time to enjoy the right corner of Oliver’s mouth rising, his grudging smirk. Perched in her lap, Doe had become fascinated with the string and fabric of Alice’s mask. Her dimpled mitts grabbed. Alice began the delicate task of distracting her before those elastic bands hurtled, with extra momentum, back into her face. “Okay. Very good, sweetie. That’s right.”
Oliver had been up late, she knew, entering Lynx into the UNIX, which could mean entering code, or secretly masturbating, just enjoying some male alone time. Alice didn’t begrudge him. She’d been asleep long before he’d come to bed. It was only when the Blueberry needed formula that Alice had stirred, enough to watch her husband clomp in from his work space. Seeing that she already had a bottle prepared, Oliver had been more than happy to get back to work.
Presently, Alice admired her husband’s perfect nose; she appreciated him having shaven during the night, was impressed by the egg-blue silk scarf he’d chosen, surprised at how well it matched with the deeper blue of his cashmere
topcoat. Usually Oliver displayed a willful disregard for his looks. He often wore the swag she got him through his four-day programming benders, unchanged. Alice suspected he actually enjoyed fine garments—not so much wearing them, but putting them through the wringer. As if he wanted to show they weren’t so special. Not today. Today, he was immaculate. Groomed and ready to make nice.
Still, his eyes were puffy. He didn’t just seem worn out, or preoccupied in his usual way, enmeshed in some logic loop or technical quandary. This was different. Since hitting this stretch of traffic, he’d avoided any sustained eye contact, and instead had sat hunched over his splayed legs, looking out the near window. Alice knew he was itching to tell her they should’ve taken the FDR instead of going up First. She also knew that he knew that, if he opened his mouth, she’d remind him about Beth calling from Whitman, chirpily informing Oliver the slides had been found, all crises averted.
Oliver checked his watch yet again.
“It’s going to be fine,” Alice said.
From her leather shoulder bag she coaxed an oversize plastic key ring, prompting a high squeak from Doe, who bounced in place and quickly occupied herself with the task of devouring the toy. Each landing of compact weight on Alice’s thighs brought white pain. Alice winced, and followed her husband’s line of sight out the window, for a time gazing at the fugue: a bus stop advertisement featuring a muscled white hip-hop star in sexy briefs; small red neon Hebrew letters blinking from a glatt kosher diner.
