Alice & Oliver

by Charles Bock

  Afterward, the nurse transferred that swaddled little crimson bean to him. Oliver collapsed in the cushions of the recliner chair next to Alice’s bed. The infant actually fit inside the length of his forearm, her little smushed face so deeply darkly crimson, her eyes closed like those of an iguana or a weird pod creature, maybe. Holding his daughter for the first time, bringing her onto his chest, feeling her little warmth, her package weight, not ten minutes old, that had been what really did it. Reading a sonogram didn’t count. Placing a hand or ear on Mommy’s giant belly was not the same thing: the baby motionless, lying on him, absorbing his smell and his weight and heat, Doe’s little neurons and cortical paths assimilating, learning and adjusting to and accepting, forming that bond that was deeper than blood. This had been the first true physical profundity between them, and Oliver had been impacted by the magnitude of what he would be to this little helpless bean, what was signified by her little fingers curled, moving just the weeist bit, toward him.

  The next morning, the next lunch, the next evening

  IN THE MAN’S business, among people who did what the man did, there was this story. The man had not read it, but that didn’t matter. The story was well known. The man knew it without having to read it. “A machine is invented,” he told Oliver. “An amazing invention. It can tell a person when he’s going to die—the precise time, the exact date. He can decide whether he should save his money or go bonkers on women and liquor. He can figure out how he wants to live with the time he has left. Who wouldn’t want such information?”

  The man on the other end of the phone paused, but not for long enough to allow an answer.

  “Naturally, insurance agencies buy the patent. The business model doesn’t work if customers know when they’re going to get sick.”

  Phone jammed in the crook of his neck, head tilted to the side, Oliver set his coffee down a decent distance from his keyboard. He zipped down the menu list of file names. “Hold up. Okay, with you.”

  “It’s why they don’t want to let anyone with a partial or small policy—something with a low ceiling and higher deductibles, like you and your wife had—why they don’t let you upgrade to a more expensive policy after getting diagnosed with something serious. Why should they let you cost them huge amounts of money when you haven’t been paying in your fair share? In the biz, we call it apples to oranges.

  “That’s one thing you and your wife have to worry about.”

  Typing, grumbling into the phone, Oliver saying something in the neighborhood of: “Wait, fuck me, go ahead, sorry.”

  “Three hundred is a very low ceiling” came in response. “When the two of you hit your heads on that, one possibility is, switch to another apple. But even that’s a short-term fix. It’s not going to get your wife the transplant she needs. And from the way those Senate hearings are going, Hillarycare is running straight into a ditch. Ain’t no relief coming that way, not anytime soon. How we upgrade your wife to a better policy, this is the question we have to address.”

  Ruggles had reached out and connected Oliver with an ambitious, prematurely balding counsel named Mr. Blauner, who specialized in health insurance law. Pro bono, Mr. Blauner was presently in the process of telling Oliver that absolutely positively not one thing from the financial end had happened. Account holds, flags, supersecret probations; nothing more than institutional language. The only difference between now and the day before that hospital visit, a definitive time frame had been placed on when Oliver needed to have that new policy. “That and the chick handling your account is not on your side.”

  “I’m telling you,” said Oliver. “Lady might as well been the Christmas log channel. For all intents and purposes, I was talking with the Christmas log. I’m listening to her, thinking, This empty little child is going to bring on my family’s ruin.”

  “Boychick, that little girl wasn’t hired to solve your problems,” Blauner answered. “They don’t train her to take care of your questions. Her deal is to get balances paid. No matter how supportive they are or how nice she sounds at first—”

  “We didn’t even get that.”

  “She’s been given a script. She wants to keep the conversation focused on that hospital, her employer, getting paid. That little young lady lives in the Bronx or something. What she cares about is keeping her kid in that Montessori school. She cares about not pissing off her supervisor. So one more deadbeat, no offense intended, is not her problem.”

  Oliver mumbled something unintelligible, followed it up. “Yeah. I know.”

  “My young charge, no matter where you go, everyone thinks they’re the one under assault. Both teams think that way. Get used to it.”

  —

  “Chemo Barbie,” Alice volunteered. “Barbie whose hair falls out. Her boobs are detachable. Her skin turns rashy.”

  “And when she’s asleep, the doll versions of the nursing assistants can steal her clothes.”

  Alice gasped. She let out a guilty laugh. Tilda kept wiping the infant, straight from the front down to the back. “Fine, I’m racist,” she admitted. “Against healthy and beautiful toys. Guilty as charged.”

  “Healthy. Beautiful. That’s certainly not me.”

  Tilda paused from her application of Triple Paste. She looked Alice right in the eyes: they’d been friends for almost a decade; since orientation week of college, skipping out to get pastries at Veniero’s. “Stop it. Do you even know how glamorous you are?”

  “Yes, a regular Holly Golightly. Only with complex blood cell cancer.”

  Something was forced, self-serving, even small in her words. But Tilda didn’t have a chance to respond to them: Alice’s laughter led to coughing, which escalated into hacking, which, once started, she could not stop. Long woolen strings dangled at the ears of her ski cap; Alice’s heaving was heavy enough to leave them swinging. The sounds coming from her throat were brutal. Then mucus, strings followed by a thick green globule. Finally a break. Taking the baby wipe offered by her friend, Alice dabbed. She caught her breath enough to say it was fine. She was fine.

  On the side of the bed, Tilda remained perched and observant. Only after a period of silence, and with much hesitation, did she return to her assigned duty, and connect the Velcro straps, which sealed and signaled a successful diaper change. Blowing a raspberry into the dough of the baby’s tummy, Tilda broke the room’s thickness, was rewarded—Doe turning joyous as pie, squealing; her mom beaming as well.

  Tilda had brought over a plastic high chair, bless her, as well as a bunch of onesies, which the two women had folded, organized, and cooed over. Tilda had mixed the baby’s formula with three parts water from the Poland Spring jug (the Brita didn’t make a dent against the old building’s pipe sludge). Using the pages of Alice’s leather organizer as a guide, she’d even started setting up a tree of friends who’d bring homemade food for Alice, help with babysitting, and call one another to coordinate and schedule. Tilda now folded the stained wipes inside the used diaper; she dropped the stinking package into the canvas sack that hung from the side of the bureau, put away the changing pad, and lifted the cooing baby. All the while, she updated Alice about interviews conducted over the course of three hours of her previous evening, the advantages and disadvantages of the various earnest college kids and actresses in need of cash, the Dominican and Haitian grandmothers who had generations of experience raising entitled Upper East Siders, the Thai teenager who’d spoken English with surprising precision and most likely had answered Tilda’s classified while hidden in a supply closet in the back of some Chinese take-out joint.

  Alice appeared thankful, if half-impressed. “I just don’t comprehend. How hard can it be to find someone I don’t mind spending my days around who understands she’ll be entering a…”

  “—delicate situation.” Tilda picked up the phrase on rhythm, started repeating the words in a singsong. “With a number of unique demands—”

  “—who can be trusted with my child’s care—”

  �
��—ten A.M. to six each afternoon—”

  “—though, sometimes longer—”

  “At a rate that isn’t completely obnoxious,” Tilda finished.

  Alice was a grinning skull. “Precisely. Why is that so difficult?”

  In the background, an album of contemplative Ghanian tribal music had run to completion. Alice extended her hand toward one of their CD towers (each: wavy, six feet tall, burnished steel). She grabbed a jewel case and opened the plastic cover as if it were a book—Oliver had a long-standing gripe about his wife’s lazy habits, in particular her proclivity for putting compact discs in the wrong cases (inside cases showing plaid-shirted screaming guitar misfits, too often he’d find the meditative sea songs of humpback whales).

  Tilda motioned without patience. “Here. Let me.” She was a largish woman, but moved with coordination and an athletic grace, pulling out different jewel cases. Tilda wasn’t about to pretend she didn’t know Oliver referred to her as Matilda, let alone Hungry Hungry Hippo, and “a woman on whom every single piece and color of fabric magically turns to brown.” Inserting a performance art monologue about female friendship during menopause into the prog rock slipcase, Tilda recounted her trip to that sketchy warehouse district under the Brooklyn Bridge.

  It was the regular deal: the windows on the F train carved up to where they were impossible to see through, the station signs, once you got out of Manhattan, splattered with graffiti and unreadable, Tilda waiting for that first stop, paying attention so as not to miss her exit. “But here’s the wrinkle. As soon as I arrived and came up from out that shit-ass station, wild dogs started chasing me. Wild dogs chased me through DUMBO for four blocks.” She laughed and updated Alice on her attempts at networking: “Oh, I dropped something off for the group show I told you about. The assistant said the curator’d get back to me, so, I mean, I know what that means, but who knows, right….” Then moved on to the gloriously sketchy legal proofreading class she’d found in the back classifieds of the NYPress: “It’s taught out of this woman’s apartment, okay? It’s enough to make me ashamed of myself. You take this class and instead of having to go through the official certification rigmarole, this woman gives you a list of phone numbers of other people who’ve taken the class. They’re working at law offices and vouch for you. So long as you pass the official proofreading entry test, you’re in. Then you vouch for other people from the apartment. Naturally, every name on my contact list is disconnected.”

  “There must be a way for me to see Doe during chemo,” Alice said.

  Tilda went quiet. Her puttylike features froze.

  “Whether I need to talk with another hospital,” Alice continued, “the transplant surgeon, whoever, there has to be someone. I mean, we don’t have a choice about this consolidation, okay. But to not see my child?”

  “She won’t remember a thing,” Tilda answered. “It’s going to be harder on you.”

  “I can’t do this and be separated from my baby. I won’t.”

  Tilda took care in placing the debut album from Oliver’s favorite noise band into Doe’s little grip; she let the child slobber on the silver surface; she softly rubbed the length of Alice’s calf. “Enjoy your time in the now. The treasure is right here.”

  “I don’t trust Western medicine,” Alice said. “If I didn’t have Doe to consider, I could easily go up to some ashram, treat myself through meditation.”

  “Western medicine can be part of God, too. You just have to let it be.”

  Alice batted her head, as if swatting away the remarks. “The uncertainty is the hardest thing.” She teared up. “Living with fear.”

  “People who go through something are interesting. They’ve lived. That’s worth something. Believe me: writers, fashion, art, whatever, if it has no point of view, if it’s entertaining but not profound, I always want to say: Why do this? How many guys have I met that are wastes of time like that—”

  Alice leaned back, giving her weight to the headboard’s wrought-iron curls and swirls. She closed her eyes. “In the winter, when a tree hibernates, all of its strength goes down to the roots.” Feeling for Tilda’s hand, Alice clasped. “I have to leave behind my smallness, my pettiness, all the things I don’t like about myself. If I keep on doing things the same way”—a dismissive flick of the wrist—“this is a failure and a waste of time.”

  “You can’t honestly believe there’s some connection? Habits have nothing to do with this.”

  The sound of the noise machine. Then a sniffing.

  “I’m giving it a year,” Alice said. “In a year all will be better.”

  Tilda nodded, then became distracted, an awareness: dawning, taking over. Alice smelled it, too. Always that dry ice.

  “Can we— Let’s get out of here.”

  Tilda did not move.

  “I’m up for it,” Alice said. “Toesie-swear. Come on, honeysuckle. Don’t be such a puss.”

  —

  Legend had it that the owner and his pals used to ride their motorcycles around inside the biker bar. Behind the massive ornate wall mirror, bras hung like toilet paper from tree branches: some were lacy, worn, and supportive, others had underwire, still others were made for business. Each was deeply sexual. From behind the ancient oak bar, young men in expensive suits stood, four thick in the stacks, jostling for position, waiting for their turn to try for the attention of one of the hot little numbers plying drinks. One otherwise indistinguishable white young man waved his money. The brunette passed. Leaning toward his childhood friend, straining to be heard above the music and din, Ruggles screamed: “The science these people have now, fucking nuts. They have more answers, sahib. More knowledge. Telling you, best time in the history of civilization to get sick.”

  Every day was like this for Oliver. Another member of the inner circle getting in touch, another heart-to-heart. The next morning it was Jonathan, his older cousin, a survivor of three consecutive New York City Marathons, asking to meet him at the West Side Pier, where Jon ran in the mornings before heading in to the architecture firm (he was a junior junior something). Having just finished ten miles, Jonathan was bent over, taking deep breaths, his lightweight jogging hoodie open, his shirt soaked. What did the perennial voice of reason want to tell Oliver? “At least you’re not referring to the baby as it anymore.”

  Friends, long out of touch, called as soon as they heard. “Unbelievable” was said, again and again, each pal heartfelt, having the best of intentions, wanting to know: “Can I do anything?”

  Ruggles lifted his PBR, kicked his head back, took yet another swig. He loosened his tie and did not pretend to hide his appreciation of the cowboy-hatted college girl behind the bar. “Sahib, I’m telling you, fucking way more’s being done to make sure Phase One and Two cancer drugs are available to patients these days. Serious, man. Cancer drugs are rainmakers. So much goddamn capital’s invested in them. Don’t let this shit get to you, understand?”

  Going into a stretch of early afternoon. His dad barely waited for Oliver to pick up the phone. “Those insurance agencies,” Dad began. “Buncha dirty whores. I say this ’cause they have sex for money and don’t bathe after.”

  Ruggles slapped away Oliver’s attempt to pay for a round. He smiled at the waitress, watched her withdraw and sashay past. “Jillian made me see Angels in America—you see it? Hell of a play. One of the main characters leaves his infected lover. I couldn’t help think of your situation.” Ruggles took a swig, swallowed. “That’s cocksuckers, though. You’re being a man.

  “Plus no kid involved,” Ruggles added.

  Oliver returned a call from the previous day’s seven in the morning. Blauner told him to hold on. After a few minutes, there was the sound of a door shutting. When he returned, Blauner was apologetic and asked where they were. Trying to keep medical costs from preventing his wife’s lifesaving transplant, Oliver said. That was where they were.

  All the good friends who showed up but were stunned and didn’t know what to say or how to
act, and Oliver had to get the hell away from, ASAP.

  “And that motherfucking Speaker of the House. Bastard serves his wife with divorce papers while she’s in the hospital getting chemo.” Ruggles wiped his mouth with his sleeve, continued. “You tell me how that fat fuck looks at himself in the mirror.”

  “Help with the baby?” A chorus of inquiries. “Help with groceries?”

  “Isn’t a bone marrow transplant the modern equivalent of the iron lung? Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Where can I register to be a donor? Is there anything you need?”

  “One thing you’re going to learn,” Blauner volunteered. “Doctors can be the best people on earth. They can be the worst. Sometimes you get both in the same.”

  Jonathan apologized to the nearby bum who asked for spare change. When the vagrant finished cursing them, Oliver’s cousin motioned toward a bench by the water. Fog was thick but not impossibly so. Jonathan said, “I can’t begin to imagine what you’re going through.”

  Oliver felt the breeze on his face. “Honestly, I’m in it, and I can’t imagine.”

  Ruggles stared into the dregs of beer number whatever. “Serious now, sahib, you’ve been screwed. You have every right to feel sorry for yourself. I mean, your wife’s been royally screwed. And that poor kid. But my God. What’s happening to you isn’t fair. Isn’t right. I know you know this, but fuck it, I’m drunk, you need to hear someone say it.”

  (Dumbfounded, swollen with appreciation, Oliver stared in return.)

  The alarm clock showing six thirteen, the phone echoing, his dad calling from the deepest worst part of the night in Cowtown, California. “Sure you don’t want a second opinion?”