by Charles Bock
“I’d trade with you in a heartbeat,” she said.
Merv gathered the courage and looked at her. Her pert nose sniffed at its bridge. Her nostrils flared.
“Before Buddha was Buddha,” Alice said, sniffing again, “he walked out on his wife and their baby. Being Buddha meant he had to be free, and freedom meant he could not have any commitments.” She spoke through tears, her words blubbery, progressively more difficult to understand. “I’ve always wondered: What about the wife he left? What was she supposed to do?”
Alice’s voice cracked. “It’s disrespectful to challenge a teacher by asking, is what I’ve found. They go mystical and tell you the personal has to be sacrificed for the universal good. But for the good of the wife, they give no answer.”
“There’s no answer,” Merv said.
“The most inclusive peaceful loving religion there’s ever been, understand? So I hear you that you can’t trust medicine. But it’s not like the other choices are any better.”
“Any God you want to pick,” Merv said. “He’s got to be one throbbing asshole.” He seemed to mull this. “Or maybe it’s that whole pay-attention-to-the-words-and-not-the-messenger deal? You know, like my high school gym teacher always said: It ain’t queer if you get paid for it.”
“Horrible.” Alice’s eyes were delighted. Her protective paper mask stretched, extending with her smile.
Some night nurse made her way down the hall, vanished.
“I’ve been telling myself People get sick every day,” Alice said. “But then I think: They aren’t me.” She pantomimed a curtsy, as if to say, See, I can feel sorry for myself, too.
“None of the choices are worth a damn.” His hand, pale, callused, moved atop her thin, gloved one. He asked, “Where does that leave you?”
“Oh.” She waved him off. “What does anyone have? The people you love. The love you feel for others.”
“Passion,” Merv answered. “Living in the moment.”
“I try to tell myself, I am my decency. In any given moment, I can embody my best humanity.” She fingered the edge of her mask near her nose. “Sounds grand, anyway.”
Awaiting a response that she assumed would shred her, half-wincing in anticipation, she was aware now of his eyes, this man examining her with such intensity it was as if he were looking inside of her, searching—but for what she did not know. It seemed there was some wildness dawning inside him. It made her self-conscious. She worried she might blush, that this man was just unhinged enough to lean in and kiss her; she was certain he was about to try.
But no. He was a counselor, accompanied by an imagined acoustic guitar, crooning to campers gathered around a crackling fire:
It’s too late to complain
Bad, bad timing
Ugly saying
FLAT-OUT FUCKED
FLAT-OUT FUCKED
FLAT-OUT FUCKED
—
When Alice arrived back at her room, she still felt out of whack, unnerved by the scratch in his voice as it hit its pained, wailing apex. In the same way that his screaming had revealed the limits of his singing range, their conversation seemed to expose the outer limits of their respective sanities. Alice was sure this man was deranged. A part of her did not particularly mind, and even felt exhilarated by him. But she also felt relieved to be finished with this challenge, like a cat whose hair had stood along its back for too long.
Her room was dark, but she could make out the outline of her bed, propped up at a ninety-degree angle, her grandmother’s quilt turned back, the exposed mess of tangled sheets. Alongside, the rolling tray was agog with plastic pitchers, half-filled cups of water, plastic hospital dish covers, and a cardboard take-out soup container. Scant light filtered in through the windows, while the furthest edges of a more potent source emanated from the high far corner, the flashing colors of the soundless newscast visible above the separating wall. In the room’s stillness, she felt odd, almost contemplative, but also anxious. She wanted to call to see how things went with the child, say good night to Oliver, but knew better than to wake the baby.
It only took a few seconds before she realized something smelled foul. Worse even than the dry ice at home.
Mrs. Woo was moaning, and through her tube, her sounds were garbled, but obvious in their pain. Alice pushed her IV pole as quickly as she could, reaching the nurse bell. “Something’s wrong. The other woman in here—please come. She needs help.” Her hands felt clumsy, her legs heavy, but she managed her IV unit around the bed, toward the partition. Mrs. Woo sensed her presence. Before Alice could say anything, lights were hit; an orderly and a nurse were rushing around her.
“Damn.” The orderly took a whiff, the pair now disappearing behind the partition. Alice heard rustling, the nurse telling Mrs. Woo they were going to take a look, instructing the orderly in turning the old woman on her side, telling Mrs. Woo not to worry, she was going to make sure the breathing tube was clear and remained in place. “We’re going to take a look,” the nurse said. “It’s okay, dearie. You just had an accident. It happens to the best of us.”
—
Two nursing assistants, both massively overweight, would soon arrive to clean and strip the sheets. The taller would say, “Always at night they do this.” The nurse would promise Mrs. Woo that she’d check back with her and would order the assistants to stay with her, make sure that tube stayed clear. The nurse would take Mrs. Woo’s hand for a moment and assure: “You’ll be okay,” and when she left, the assistants would grouse and bump and knock about, making jokes as they cleaned. Alice would wish she had made eye contact with Mrs. Woo, and finally she would not be able to take any more, and with what strength she had, Alice would say, “She’s sick. Can’t you respect that?”
And soon enough the eyes of the medical establishment would turn their attention onto Alice, for now it was her blood levels that needed to be checked, her vital statistics that again had to be measured, her IV bags rehung with new antibiotics, platelets, and steroids, her pills confirmed as having been ingested, and more than one of those catheters coming due for a change. Another urine sample was needed, and the morning nurse would have to rouse her again in six hours for another one after that, every six hours was the rule—although, before that happened, an assistant would come in, measure the exiting urine levels, change the toilet pans.
Throughout this night, Alice tried to be conscious and inhabit her best self. The smaller assistant—showing weak, gray teeth—asked if Alice had had a urine sample yet. The tall one made sure that the pitcher and plastic cup were filled with fresh water. Alice took care in lowering her head to the drinking straw. She asked each woman, separately, to say her name, then made comic guesses as to the origin countries of their accents. They listened to her inquiries about how long they had been on the night shift, her voice so worn that she might have been slurring.
Lon, the late-night nurse, the hard-faced woman with the gray teeth, told Alice she was doing great. All her signs suggested she’d be an early recoverer. She’d be out of here soon.
Her words might have been something all nurses said, something they knew that patients wanted to hear, and that would make the patients more compliant—would make following instructions that much easier. Still Alice thanked her.
It would be a while before she was entirely alone, in that darkened room, listening to the rhythms of that breathing tube, long in, wheeze out. By then Alice was exhausted. She had no strength to make sense of the events of the day. Instead she watched the night thin in the windows across the room, the impenetrable black lightening into slate gray. Thick waves of snow were coming down now, blankets of flakes. On Roosevelt Island, Alice could make out the fossil of an old factory—its three smokestacks sending white cotton plumes into the sky. The first colors of dawn were spreading in the far distance, yawning pink and orange, seeping at the edges, creeping over undefined, shabby warehouses. She watched the miniature trails of headlights from slow-moving freeway traffic, drivers getting
a jump on the morning commute.
As the room lightened, she could pick out the pages and pictures of her wall collage: the superhumanly perfect limbs of Alvin Ailey dancers; Audrey Hepburn standing in front of Tiffany’s, one cheek a little puffy from the donut she was chewing. How much time Alice spent staring at the rest of the wall collage she did not know, but the oncoming morning helped, and the gray shades kept thinning through the room, so that more pages and pictures became identifiable: the elephant head of the Hindu lord of beginnings, remover of obstacles; another goddess standing on a lotus flower, reborn from the swirling milky ocean. Slick magazine pages with gorgeous women in blouses Alice had helped create. Pages on which she’d written song lyrics. Inspiring aphorisms. Her eyeballs throbbed from so much concentration, but she wouldn’t shut her eyes, for of this Alice Culvert was certain: if she fell asleep, she wouldn’t wake up.
The first warm day of winter
ON THE SECOND Tuesday of March, winter finally blinked. Temperatures rose into the mid-fifties, territory that had become as mythical as a Knicks championship. Along the western end of Chelsea, it was as if a universal switch had been flicked, some mammalian, a priori urge activated. People actually wanted to be outside, free from their supremely ugly parachute jackets, the dragging weight of shearling or leather, coats whose linings were suffused with months of body sweat and smelled like cow carcass.
In the shadow of a brick housing project drab enough to be Soviet, along a courtyard of thawing mud, abuelas pushed wire carts packed with groceries and stuffed laundry sacks. Old men, sporty in panama hats and panama shirts, had busted out their lawn chairs and checkerboards and domino sets. For once no one was wearing gloves (so pesky and impossible to keep in pairs for more than a week at a time) or scarves (their annoying ends filthy with sauces and stains). Rather, as an unseen boom box blasted hip-hop jams, the fuzzy curls of hirsute chests were exposed by wifebeaters; teenagers talked shit and acted teenage crazy. One boy dribbled a basketball; his friend tried to steal it away; what they lacked in skill, they more than made up for in enthusiasm.
The town car containing the ragtag little family eased beyond the housing project and turned down a side street, passing a rumored crack house, a verifiable one, then a series of burnt-out cars, and a barren lot where the homeless congregated (for once, it was bereft of trash fires). Now a small triangular plot—one of the neighborhood’s volunteer gardens. Flashes of brilliant yellow showed through its taut link fence. Spring’s early arrivals. Admittedly gorgeous, but also oblivious, unaware of the concept of false spring, the irony that by opening their cups, these daffodils had doomed themselves. Nonetheless, instinct urged them: Onward. Bloom. Live.
Entering the Meatpacking District, the car slowed to a crawl, and pulled up in front of one of the block’s slaughterhouses. When the rear driver’s side door opened, Oliver emerged with a cleanly shaved head. Leaving his door open, he hurried around to the passenger side. He brought Alice out of the car, she was leaning into him—her pink wool winter cap had a puffball on top and long side flaps, and seemed far too large, nearly swallowing her head. Her silhouette was dwarfed inside her clothes. She had been frail, but this was something else—the effect of a second consolidation.
Presently her mother emerged from the passenger side. Holding a bundle close, she made mewling sounds, bounced the baby to her chest. Alice half-turned, thanked her mother, voice weak. A door slammed, the driver removing a series of travel suitcases from the trunk.
Once Alice and her mom and the baby were safely inside the warehouse, Oliver settled with the driver, and was halfway around the car, putting his wallet back in his pants, when he unclipped a small black block from his belt. He walked to a predetermined spot, a few steps off the sidewalk, and punched at that little device thing. Then he stopped. His body went alert, his head cocked. Concentration honed. Beneath the rusted elevated train tracks, he saw a homeless guy wrapped in a sleeping bag. But, beyond him, folded into the shadows, toward the back of the raised wooden platform that acted as a loading dock, something else. Someone. Leaning against the storefront’s metal rolling gate.
—
Peekaboo, I see you. Alice hid her face, popped away the doors of her hands. She could not help but smile, and as she beamed, a prominent Y of veins split down the middle of her forehead. Home again, thank Goddess, still in remission. Yet even a glance showed that her skull had shrunken further, turned flat and boxy, with giant veins on each side of her temples forming squarish parameters, and her cheeks sweeping down into her jawline. All of her accursed extra baby weight had been shed, and then some. Indeed, for the first time since her teen years, hip bones were visible. Which would have been lovely, except her body had been sapped of its elasticity, her arms and legs robbed of their admittedly meager muscle tone.
None of it mattered to Doe, her little mouth open, chirping out birdie peeps of delight. “Are you happy to be with Mommy? What a gorgeous little gumdrop.” Alice tickled the fat corners under Doe’s arms, basked in her daughter’s warmth, felt spent, leaned back—into her favorite chair, a seventies vintage recliner made by Scandinavian artisans.
The glare from the wall fixtures was brighter than she remembered. She kept blinking; in the few seconds it took for the brightness to make her wince, her mother figured out how to work the dimmers.
“Much better,” Alice said. “Thank you.”
She took in the large open space, the Japanese mural she knew so well, its succession of interconnected vertical screens lining a far wall, images hand-painted on long rectangles of rice paper: a lone traveler, waking tigers.
Behind her the front door shutting, creaks and weight, Oliver moving into the apartment’s main room.
Alice called out, she never imagined their apartment could look so immaculate. She told Oliver how much she appreciated him getting it spotless for her.
“And did you see those nice smooth stones in the bathroom sink?” said her mom, coming out of the kitchen. “I love those.”
Mom held a steaming cup of green tea on a small plate. She, too, looked the worse for wear, her face pale and drained, her shoulders slumped. The week of watching her only daughter had taken its toll, obviously, damage that had been exacerbated by an innate discomfort with the city’s pace and noise. Alice accepted the ceramic offering, felt the steam clouds rising onto her chin and mouth and nose. Her mom smiled, touched Alice’s shoulder.
Mom said she’d fix the bedtime bottles. She could never sit still.
Oliver was at the doorjamb to the entranceway, he was irritated, that much was obvious to her. And now she saw the room’s dimness distracting him. Likely he was assuming that the darkness had something to do with Alice, and he’d find out more particulars soon enough.
She remained in that chair, in her robe, holding her daughter, who kept rubbing an impossibly soft cheek against Mommy’s chin.
—
The first four days of her hospital stay had gone according to plan. No complications on the medical front, and when the nurse had wheeled Alice down to the ground floor, Oliver had already commandeered a conference room, and was waiting, with building blocks and stuffed animals spread all over the couch, pacifiers and a diaper-changing pad ready on the conference table. Alice was in a medical mask, lead smock, and protective gloves; her pole of IV medicines accompanied, looming above the festivities. Doe saw her mother and immediately bawled, absence backing up on her. Alice touched her daughter’s tummy, lifted the child’s little pink blouse, gave a big kiss through her mask. “Mommy loves this belly.” She caressed Doe’s knee. “Mommy loves this knee. Deep inside your heart, know I love this knee.” Alice gave her daughter time to be sad, rubbed slow circles on her child’s back. “Mommy loves your chin. Mommy loves your sternum. Mommy loves your thorax. I love every part of you, even when we are apart.” Doe giggled, crawled, clung; though Alice tried to maximize their skin-to-skin contact (as the parenting books said you should do), doctors’ orders made this almost impossib
le. “We will be together again soon—maybe in a few days,” Alice said. “Until then, we will miss each other and be sad, but we will also both be okay.” She and Oliver held hands, talked about logistics, about nothing, everyone enjoying this little created, artificial island of normalcy, right until the nurse arrived, and Oliver followed Alice’s prearranged instructions: packing up and sweeping away the child as quickly as possible.
“You are in Mommy’s heart,” Alice had said, even as Doe, unable to understand, had started to bawl. “Mommy is in your heart.”
The day before her scheduled release, Alice’s fever had spiked and she’d been quarantined. Everything had become that much harder. Alice had been apoplectic, refusing to accept she had to be there any longer, she could not see her child. Her meetings with Eisenstatt became tense, full of impatience, willful misunderstandings. For the first time she was short to nurses. Then she had a blood clot in her arm, furthering her stay, and her cell counts started dropping, a result of the chemo. She remained an inpatient for a full week longer than they’d been expecting. At home Doe was inconsolable, bawling through the night, lashing out, kicking and hitting, even at Grandma.
Now that she was home, Oliver was getting ready to clean her port site—running warm water over washcloths in the bathroom—one red, one blue. He brought both with him, searched through the newly prescribed bottles of medicine, and brought a long tube of cream out to the sewing table, where he began loosening the collar on his wife’s robe. Oliver kissed his wife’s head, kneaded the back of her neck with the knuckles of his fist; Alice moaned approval. Her eyes shut. “That feels nice.” Oliver saw his wife’s jugular: pressing up against the skin beneath her neck, a protruding root. Near Alice’s left clavicle was that giant bandage, the reminder of her latest central line.
“Mother, do we have any green tea?”
“I brought you some already. On the table.”
