by Charles Bock
Her voice is light, underdeveloped, committed. “We can take a plane.”
He allows himself the time to blink, composing himself.
“The sky is so very big,” he answers.
She is undeterred, promising: “I would search every cloud.”
An immediate horizon
BUT THE DAILY grit of responsibilities took back over, their self-contained, hermetic little bubble resealing. Alice made sure she was on the phone first thing to schedule or confirm her follow-ups with Eisenstatt (Friday, the following Tuesday). She called nurses with questions about medicines, pharmacies to ask about dosages. She eventually got off the phone and into her day, usually with simple arm rotations and stretches, a basic tai chi routine if she was up to it. Then vitamin supplements, including one of Sparrow’s warmed liquid packages of special Eastern herbs and blends. (It was supposed to fill Alice with vitality, but tasted like hot barf.) She might attempt a cursory bite of breakfast. She did her best to feed Doe spoonfuls of apple mush, made sure to clean her face with a warm wet cloth, even unhooked the baby from the high chair and brought her to the floor and let Doe use her pajamaed legs—along with the wooden sewing table leg—as leverage, the child still not yet walking, but happily in that place where she was trying to stand and move around. Alice still moved fairly well herself, although she had to be shrewd about just how much back-and-forth she could handle. Hot flashes intruded, six or seven a day, the most ridiculous side effect. She was freezing all the time and then—out of nowhere—felt her body flushing with fire? Alice compensated as best she could, with layers of ice compresses, occupying her mind, typing notes to herself on the cute new gray PowerBook Oliver had bought her, sometimes just running her hand over the trackball, enjoying its smoothness, the arrow cursor corresponding with zips and zags across the screen. She called friends, though conversations had to stay short. And Oliver helped on this front, not so much eavesdropping as checking in, he claimed, sussing out who she was talking with and how things were going. Alice could be overly generous, once even having some kind of counseling session with this weird guy she’d met in the hospital hallway, so Oliver had to keep the reins tight, especially considering how many friends wanted to be in touch with her. If the phone seemed slack to her ear, and Alice wasn’t answering so much, and didn’t seem engaged, Oliver would lean into the cordless and apologize as best he could. He’d explain she needed a break.
Writing thank-you notes also drained her. Even leafing through compact discs was a slog. On the plus side, Alice didn’t mourn being done with changing Morrisey’s litter (a corollary existed between proximity to cat litter and patients coming out of remission). Nor did she spend huge amounts of time bemoaning the loss of the private rituals involved with using a hand razor to shave her legs (the risk of bleeding out was too high; she’d have to make do with an electric razor). Her time went for more important matters, each day, all these wonderful friends, arriving into their hermetic and low-lit bubble: Susannah and Suzie and Sue, Christina, Jana, Julie, Karen, Mary Beth, Jess, Sarah Jay and her husband, Isidro, Marc and Marie, Crystal, Jynne, Fiona, Alison and Cindy, Sean and Daphne (with their little ones, Owen and Mira, in tow), and David, and Matt, Patty and Josh: core loved ones who’d been invited or volunteered, not just signing up for Tilda’s schedule of visitations, but adhering to the crazy thing, never complaining about getting the required flu vaccine shot (single dose only, no clusters, mists, or live vaccines); who clearly understood they couldn’t come up if suffering from the slightest cold, or if they’d recently been ill, or even recently had been hanging around someone sick. Sitting next to Alice at her sewing table; reclining on the couch beside her; knitting a scarf and talking about patterns; distracting and entertaining and charming her; providing opinions when she asked for them; volunteering thoughts when she did not; trying to hide any somber or worried looks, or not at all hiding their concern; getting philosophical and deep with her while joining in and doing those weird arm stretches; rubbing moisturizer into her skin; refilling that water cup; taking her into their confidence; idly gossiping; coming into the realization that she’d been sitting in that chair this long because she did not have the gas to get up and move—all of this while Alice slyly hustled them at pinochle. In this manner her days passed, divided into small portions of pleasant visits, right up until she needed a nap (a happening that, with any luck, coincided with Doe’s sleep schedule), at which point most visitors offered to run errands, take the baby on a little adventure, do laundry, or perhaps didn’t get the hint it was time to go, but instead sat and watched her sleeping body, taking in the enormity, just what was happening to this hollowed woman.
And her more mercurial friends—Golzi, Debb, and Annaka—the lightning bolt wild-childs who were allergic to plans, who weren’t the type to sign up for, let alone adhere to, someone else’s spreadsheet, and besides were busy getting fall lines ready for Fashion Week: calling, out of nowhere, asking if it was okay, zipping up with containers of freshly cooked high-protein food that met all of Alice’s dietary standards, or maybe, since they didn’t have the extra time, these were the ones who paid some Village restaurateur to run over a three-star meal. And the dear friend from her high school days who volunteered to come in from out of state (just for a few days, to hang out, run errands, take Doe to Washington Square, whatever Alice needed). And the guys from Oliver’s grad school years, they tried, too, even though they hadn’t been around that many kids and were basically scared of babies, and also had little idea how to cook, clean, or do anything practical. People came, they did what they could, whatever that may have been: hauling over loads of processed deli food that Alice couldn’t eat, bottles of very good wine she was no longer allowed to ingest, baggies of hydroponic that whips and Rottweilers could not keep from her lips. They shot the breeze about television shows, they talked about nothing, enthusiastic and positive in a manner that did not begin to hide their worry, wanting to convey their goodwill, wanting so hard.
It melted Alice, even as a small seed inside couldn’t help feeling resentful. All these people got to feel a little better about themselves, and feel sorry for her, and then leave and go on with their normal lives.
She’d castigate herself for her thoughts. Joke that her predicament wasn’t so bad. She got to sit around and listen to music. She got to talk with these astonishing people. She got to nap and knit. Gratitude made it easier to forgive the few friends who were too freaked to visit. The ones like Winnie, who flaked and forgot and didn’t show up for their scheduled day, did it once or twice, burned out, vanished.
To say nothing of the ones who walked in and saw Alice and just lost it.
Once, at the end of a catch-up coffee, Jeremy said he and his significant other were praying for Alice. Oliver answered with the same Grinchy statements he used when Blaine, breezing in with magazines, casually asked whether he needed anything. “If you want to actually be helpful, contact the bone marrow donor registry.” Sometimes he launched into a public service lecture: At the very least you’d increase the odds for someone out there.
This day, Alice was unfortunate enough to be around. Placing her hand on Jeremy’s arm, she did her best to short-circuit Oliver’s vitriol.
“Thank you. Any good thoughts have to help.”
—
Alice was still asleep; Oliver picked up the phone on the third ring. “Yo?” The line went dead. Later that afternoon, he was on hold to ask a question to an official at the small business department, and switched over to the call waiting, and promptly became a punch line yet again, hung up on once more.
When he checked their messages, he began noticing those quick clicks, the line going dead as soon as the answering machine started its greeting. Oliver checked the times of the calls—always that low middle of the afternoon, perfect for taking a break from your responsibilities, that dull stretch when you’re just trying to get through.
Why don’t your friends say anything to me? he asked Alice.
> She assured him it wasn’t them. She’d mentioned it. Nobody knew a thing.
“What about your little troubadour? From the hallway—weren’t you counseling him on the phone for a while?”
Did she flinch? No. Her breathing stayed even. “I don’t think so. He’s harmless. It has to be a crank call,” Alice continued. “Teenagers get a number and won’t let up. Believe me, I’m annoyed, too.”
Oliver nodded. He’d given this enough attention. And there were bigger fish already on his plate.
—
“Something I want to run past you, Ruggs, if that’s all right.”
Forgoing small talk, or even a greeting, Oliver started in.
“This lawyer who’s been helping me, well, he pointed me to this city program. It offers small businesses employee health insurance. But get this, spouses are eligible. And in-network costs don’t have a ceiling.” Oliver waited. The silence implied consent. “Thing is, we switch Generii onto this plan, it’s going to cost. Which is kind of why I’m calling. We have some money in reserve, but there’s still a ways before the demo’s up and running. Fucking who knows when we hit market. Meaning, you know, joining this plan? On the one hand, it gets Alice that policy and that’s big. But for the business, purely from that perspective, ah—”
“Who do you need me to kill?” Ruggles answered.
When it was Jonathan’s turn to hear the plea, he said, “It’s nice of you to ask, Oli. But really?”
So the fax machine belched, pages curling out, dropped from off the tray, onto the floor.
Like that. The weight of a planet. The member will be covered fully.
They allowed themselves to breathe. He recounted for her the sequence of fax exchanges, suspense escalating through his progression, Alice clasping his hand in both of hers at the moment of truth. Cackling, she drew him to her, touched the front of her head to his, held her hand on the back of his neck.
He made copies of the fax, as Blauner had said he should for important papers. Put these copies in separate safe places.
Of course there were more fires on the horizon—aside from just figuring out which bills could wait on for another month.
First was basic and unavoidable: the chief goddamn programmer behind this whole Generii thing remained indisposed, distracted, or missing in action for prolonged stretches.
Nobody with a heart would begrudge Oliver, or question his priorities, but it was still an issue, their original touchstone deadline long in the rearview.
Second problem: while Alice was getting her consolidation, the Brow had taken over the workspace, programming round the clock, crashing on the couch. It hadn’t reached the level of young Bill Gates—who, according to legend, used to fall asleep at the terminal when writing the first Windows code, then jolt awake and, without a hiccup, pick back up where he’d left off. But the Brow was basically chained to a desktop. And progress was being made; everyone remained hopeful. At the same time, Alice was home now, and her immune system wasn’t safe around the floating biological circus of unwashed programmer detritus.
Meanwhile, every minute those terminals were vacant meant wasted time, the pissing away of definitively finite resources.
An afternoon’s search uncovered a building around the corner. On the third floor, just above a storied meat locker, a small office was available. According to lore, twice a week for twenty-five years, a navy vet staggered up the death-trap stairwell and unpacked from his leather satchel needles, inks. Rumor had it he’d once beaten a murder rap in military court, which was why he called his three machines kits or rigs, as opposed to guns, growling to those who made the mistake: “Guns kill people. That’s the diff.” Cops, firefighters, and paramedics were foremost among his steady drip of visitors, who treated the city’s ordinance against tattooing with as much regard as its laws against smoking dope on the sidewalk.
The space was cramped, dusty, hot as a furnace, its windows flooding with light from dawn to dusk. It smelled like an assignation spot for hoboes. When Oliver asked, the realtor explained that the tattoo artist had passed away at his desk, and baked in the sunlight until his assistant finally came and discovered the corpse. Workers below had thought that one of their deliveries had been left out of the freezer.
So there was a new monthly rent, fumigation and cleaning costs, and new phone lines for a new Internet connection that would allow their computers to receive streams of information at an updated, previously unheard-of rate of 54,000 bits per second. He’d also need new secondary lines for faxes and calls so their fragile new state-of-the-art Internet connection didn’t get interrupted. Electricity bills would spike. Throw in some new desks and ergonomic chairs because he employed a bunch of entitled, whining bitches. Clothespins for all offended noses.
“My fucking cousin wants to be an installation artist. What the fuck that is, I got no clue,” Ruggles told him. “Kid got into RISD though. He’s struggling but hanging in there. Know why?”
Oliver started to answer; Ruggles held up his finger.
“Kid lives on rice and air. Steals paper from Kinko’s. The whole starving artist thing. Any baby bird, like our fledgling venture here, you need as little overhead as possible, capisce?”
Oliver apologized. “Right.”
His friend’s pupils widened: Do you really?
Ruggles had spent an afternoon during Alice’s consolidation at her bedside, deftly goading her into a conversation about the upcoming Oscars. He had delivered, hands down, the best toast at Oliver’s wedding.
Indeed, Elliot Ruggleschmierr had been key in Oliver’s life since orientation weekend of their freshman year, a pair of mismatched majors joined together by their encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek trivia. But as Oliver waited for his old roomie to render a verdict, he couldn’t tell whether Ruggles might have taken umbrage at the possibility that all he cared about was money.
Maybe Ruggles had been touched by the fiscal concerns that Oliver was showing for the company, even in the middle of this ordeal? Was he simply calculating added costs?
“It’s the worst possible time for this.” Ruggles spoke slowly.
“What?” Oliver said.
As if making a decision, Ruggles seemed to shift into a different gear. “Okay, look. I really don’t want to bring it up. I’m on your team, thick and thin. But this software thing is your baby. You’re the point man. You had me go to bat for you with a lot of people. I’m talking hat in hand to every friend I have on the brokerage floor. That’s a lot of good people, and some not so good people, too, putting hard-earned nickels and dimes into this on your word and name, because you made that presentation. Remember that?”
“I know.”
“ ‘We get this thing in shape, show Microsoft and those other bastards that Generii can go in and out of their program like mice, take whatever we want, they have to pay us to protect their borders. Otherwise, their big Windows 95 rollout is worthless.’ You were the one who stood up there, talked about free access and gatekeepers.”
“I remember, Elliot.” Oliver waited, stared; Ruggles downed a shot of Jameson, winced, pulled at his own tie.
“You fucking do what you got to, okay? Don’t worry. We’re all on board for the insurance. I already talked with everyone. Go with God. But, sahib, you got to make it right for us, too. Time to buckle down and kick shit into gear. Maybe it’ll be a nice distraction, give you something else to focus on. I fucking hope so.”
—
Alice’s mother drew a small but decent pension for the two and a half decades she’d spent teaching New Hampshire farm children to avoid split infinitives. She’d kept herself busy in retirement with her dogs, her garden, art classes, reading group, cutthroat bridge, and three days a week working the receptionist’s desk at a vet’s office. Friends had been taking care of her Weimaraners. But the staff at the vet’s office, for all their pledges of support, still needed someone to take calls and keep schedules. If Alice’s mom was going to keep her dogs out of a kennel,
and maintain her pleasant part-time employment—i.e., checks that weren’t necessary but were far from unneeded—she had to get back to Putney. There wasn’t any easy solution, so Alice’s mother, in her measured and typical fashion, did the most reasonable thing she could come up with at that moment: change diapers. She doted on her grandchild. Replaced the filter in the air purifier, as she did not want that bedroom getting stagnant. She cleaned, dusted, sat bedside, held her daughter’s hand. She rocked the baby and made goo-goo noises and recounted a story: Alice, six years old, falling off a horse and breaking her arm.
Hold your horses, Alice’s mother said, as she padded across the apartment. Hold on. “Yes,” she answered. “Hello?”
“I thought I’d never get you.” The voice low, smooth.
“Do you want to talk with my daughter? Who should I say is calling?”
“Uh, I’m—”
“What number are you trying?” continued Alice’s mother. “We’ve been getting a lot of wrong numbers.”
Instead of an answer, the line clicked. Alice’s mother placed the phone back in its cradle. She went into the kitchen, washed her hands, then headed for her daughter’s bedroom, where she brought up the subject of white sugar.
—
The staff nutritionist in New Hampshire had been the first to mention the stuff. Sparrow, Tilda, Kate, and the rank-and-file of Alice’s more health-conscious pals all had brought up the same worry: that cancer fed on processed sugar.
“Never again,” Alice answered, raising her right hand toward Mom. “Scout’s honor.”
Dark chocolate, tiramisu, key lime pie, red velvet cake, all her favorite guilty pleasures. “Fallen to the wayside,” she swore. “You’ll see. A new regime.”
Then the end of her next exam-room discussion. Alice volunteered her new eating habits to the medical staff, waiting for assent and approval. In fact, Eisenstatt was quick to answer. “With the chemo regimen we just put you through,” he said, “sugar’s not going to reactivate anything.”
