by Charles Bock
“Sorry?” Alice said.
“The disease isn’t metabolically active right now in your case. Cancer cells aren’t dividing in your bone marrow, the way cells divide in the gastrointestinal tract. Cycle tracts are different.”
“You’re saying there’s no connection?”
“I’d say gaining weight is the priority. You want to eat anything. Whatever it might be, we need you eating.”
Nonetheless, per her orders and preference, the fridge remained stocked with unsweetened soy milk, coconut milk, plain whole-milk yogurt and ice cream, agave nectar, really, really good cheeses. Oliver spent part of each day running around—on Alice’s first day home he found a reasonably convenient lab that could turn around her blood counts, so that each night he could inject Alice with her proper Coumadin dosage (first wiping her lower belly with that brown antiseptic gel); he made copies each day for insurance appeals, double-checked things with his lawyers, handled Generii errands to get the new office in shape, juggled bullshit with the bank fools and credit card assholes. And always, before returning home, he’d follow orders, track down Madame’s every stated need: fresh mangoes and limes, tubs of weight-lifter protein powder, raw unpasteurized honey extracted straight from the rears of bees that had to be purchased on the black market because unpasteurized honey was one of the health hazards that had spread black plague and there were still laws against it. Each day brought news of a new special salve. A friend told Alice about it.
“While you are out,” Alice wondered, “could you pick up some dark chocolate for me?”
Oliver stared. “So—”
“I’m giving in to Western medicine like you want.” Alice crossed her arms, responding to his frustration before it had a chance to manifest. When one of his confounded looks followed, Alice snapped, adding, “If it was up to me I’d do it holistically.”
“Candy’s holistic now? I can grab you a Mountain Dew while I’m at it. I hear that’s pretty organic, too.”
“I’ve lost my hair. I get bombarded by radiation every month. I have all of three bites before a lid closes over my stomach anyway.”
“Jesus,” Oliver answered, rising. “I made a joke. Don’t get so defensive. One second you want it this way, the next—”
“He said I could have sugar.”
“So we’re just cherry-picking the guidelines? This is the new regime?”
“I want a bite of key lime pie.”
Implicit was her threat: if he did not get it, someone else would. Others already were.
—
Tilda’s visit the following morning included a jaunt to the bagel place across the street. Presenting Alice with the small package—white butcher paper, a price scribbled in marker across the top—Tilda repeated familiar phrases. “That you even want to try is a good sign. Even a few bites will help.”
Alice unwrapped the paper, stared. “Didn’t I ask for strawberry cream cheese? I don’t mean to be difficult.”
Tilda was careful in her response. “It’s pink, honey.”
Alice squinted. “I can’t see that.”
In short order her support network was chugging on all cylinders, and had dutifully procured a saline solution. Dabbed eyes went teary; Alice blinked a lot. She and Tilda cautioned, making sure neither overreacted; they were rational and sober, and after some more discussion, came to a larger agreement: Alice had to search for new truths. This was the only helpful interpretation. “In the large scheme, what’s pink? What’s white?” Tilda sounded like a motivational speaker. “Who cares about a couple of locations on a spectrum? Use this as a chance to focus on what’s real.”
Alice smiled. Then her façade collapsed.
“A donor will come through,” Tilda assured. She wrapped her arms around Alice’s shoulders. “Oliver got the insurance taken care of, right? That was huge. Now they’ll find this. It will get solved.”
Alice sniffed, looked up at her friend.
“It’s impossible to explain,” said Alice. “How tired I am of being less than myself.”
Both women considered her words. Soon, Oliver would as well, noticing that Alice had absorbed the sentence into her repartee, repeating it, verbatim, to at least four other guests.
Sparrow was the last of them. The healer listened, gave a slight nod, then searched inside her brightly beaded shoulder bag. A bronze figurine about the size of a baseball. The healer placed it into Alice’s palm. Cool to the touch, carrying a surprising weight. “A common misconception is that a bodhisattva is some kind of god,” Sparrow said. “But a bodhisattva is just a mortal who has spiritually advanced into a being of enlightenment.”
Alice examined the figurine, running her fingers along its grooves, into its nooks. A first glance could easily mistake it for a tree. With closer study, Alice realized it was something else: growing out of that stout, crooked trunk was a stout female figure. Her face showed large eyes, three of them. Arm after arm rose from out of her trunk like branches, or perhaps a peacock’s fan.
“Guanyin is one of the four great bodhisattvas,” Sparrow said. “Translated from Sankskrit, the name means: observing the cries of the world. She embodies pure compassion. But there were too many beings she couldn’t save. She watched armies of souls stream into the gates of the underworld. She tried to reach for them, but was so disheartened, her arms shattered into a thousand pieces. Buddha Amitabha aided her, transforming those pieces into a thousand arms, that she might reach out to those in need.”
Sparrow sat up, onto her knees, was directly across from Alice, facing her on the bed. “I have a meditation exercise.”
She ordered Alice to sit up, helped her into a facsimile of a lotus.
“Trust me, this has very good results. I want you to look at the hands on the figure Guanyin. On the palm of each hand is an eye. See that? The plumage of a thousand arms each looks in a direction. Each arm takes in the suffering of others. When you are unhappy, when your lot is too unfair, or too hard for you, I want you to be an arm of Guanyin. Close your eyes and stare in the direction of suffering. Slow down. Back straight if you can. Imagine a young mother in sub-Saharan Africa. She has a family and is starving and is experiencing the same illness as you. Keep breathing now.”
Alice opened her eyes and made contact, wanting to follow orders, but also skeptical.
“When you inhale,” Sparrow continued, “I want you to take in the breadth of that mother’s pain. Take in that family’s pain. Now exhale, release, let all that pain go. Your sitting lotus is very strong. Excellent. And now we become another arm of Guanyin. Ready?”
Whitman Memorial, 1220 York Ave., Hematology/Oncology, Rm. 421A
Nearly eleven pounds, the size of a healthy baby on the plump side. Only this was lodged inside his face, encompassing nearly all of his jawbone. The tumor didn’t respond to a number of treatments, so his final option was taking out the mandible joint and nearly all of his lower jawbone.
He was under the knife for more than sixteen hours and the surgery worked—the removal of the hinge helped the jaw to slide out—but the doctors also had to remove his tongue, and the membrane inside his cheek, and his lower lip. It took months before the wrappings and gauze came off, and more months before the swelling and bruising went down—and then his best friends and loved ones saw him. His sister struggled to keep a neutral expression, but he could tell she was horrified, fighting back tears. He couldn’t say anything in return. That part of his life—the speaking part—was now behind him.
And chewing. No lower jaw meant he was done with chewing, too. A tube, surgically inserted into his esophagus, flowed liquid baby formula nutrition down past his stomach, into something called the jejunum. No more flavors—their savoring, their enjoyment. He wouldn’t ever recoil from a jolt of unexpected bitterness. Not being hungry was about as good as he got. He was learning to make do with that, the pleasure of fullness. It was an adjustment. He was doing better at some parts than others. There were tastes and flavors out there that could not be
satiated. Never again would he kiss his dog, let alone the proverbial cute girl he hadn’t yet met, but who was out there, waiting for just him. Dating in the city had been hard enough with a full face. His life hadn’t even started in a way that felt like it mattered. Young couples were always getting out of the city for a weekend, taking a weekend in Hudson at some quaint bed-and-breakfast. Lazy mornings in bed. Cozy brunch spots with bright yellow eggs, thick, sizzling bacon, all sourced from local farms. It sounded so simple, and it was impossible now.
He still could laugh, though, even if his laughter was different…off. He didn’t make any sound, the way normal people did. Instead his whole body vibrated, and his breathing got clipped, the air coming out in short explosions. It could be kind of painful. His sister lived in the city. Sometimes she’d visit after a day of teaching pre-K, spend the night with him, correcting homework and doing lesson plans. She might tell him about something one of the squirts did, sitting all day learning his letters, jolly in heavy, soiled diaper. He’d start his laughing and shaking. That first time, she freaked out, tensing up, wanting to know what was wrong, if she should get a nurse. Nowadays she was used to it though. Now and then, his shakes even got her giggling. He’d laugh and shake and she’d laugh and her chest and cheeks might get red. She went and imitated him once, shaking on her own in her chair. The two of them laughing and shaking together and he couldn’t even tell you why.
5:00 p.m., tuesday afternoon
THE ORIGINAL IDEA—JUST dump all the text from other word-processing programs into a blank field—had revealed itself as asinine. Dumping text sounded simple, but actually doing it meant incorporating every other programming code—lifting and carrying the words and symbols while still keeping intact all the formatting commands, something akin to transporting a body of water—a lake, say—into a larger body of water, one bucket at a time. Actually, it was worse—transporting the body of water, but then having to reconstruct it, putting every single drop in its prior location. Oliver had to do this inside the Generii field. The water wasn’t going to stay in place. Not a chance.
Glitches and fuckery were perpetual: a minute typo sent the cursor careening, or created a second cursor, which went careening. Merging paragraphs from different programs demolished all margin settings, resulting in impossibly long vertical lines of language. No end was in sight, although it was also true, inside the reams of confusion, pockets of joy were available: solving the solvable, fixing the tedious. Five hours knocking items off your never-ending list of mistakes, that had its own perverse jolt. And there were worse feelings than ending the day with the sense that maybe, if you kept fixing, this thing could actually get done.
Oliver adjusted the angle of the desk light, called up his master file, stared at the green strings of data.
—
For as long as he cared to remember, doing what he had to meant being alone with his work. Being engaged with a project, mentally connected to the task at hand, allowed him to be civil around others. You reached that point where you’d spent yourself and needed to come up for air, and were actually glad to be around friends, willing to listen to their small talk, even banter. By the same token, quality time with Alice, or an easy night laughing with Jon or Ruggles, often unwound him enough to where he could strap in, head back down into the pit, alone, to settle in at his terminal, fully occupy and focus.
Over the radio Doris from Rego Park was coughing, saying the Knicks backcourt was too old, didn’t value the ball.
Oliver saved his changes. Heading into his desk, he pulled out a folder of bills, placed them next to the keyboard. He now opened an older word-processing file. And began a new assault upon the keyboard:
…Calls to nearby New Hampshire and Vermont hospitals confirm that no other area hospitals have hematology/oncology divisions (see enclosed list). In fact, under the circumstances described, DHMC is the ONLY hospital where my wife could have been transported. Additionally, during her stay, billing records show five different attending physicians attended to my wife. The attached registry shows seven physicians on the DHMC hema/oncology department roster. It is therefore statistically impossible for five of seven physicians to charge above the area mean at the only area hospital that could treat my wife.
With this in mind, I formally appeal the Unified billing department claim of denial for the attached charges, and the illogical justification that the billed pricing billed is beyond what is reasonable and customary.
He corrected the typo, checked the clock in the screen’s upper corner.
—
And what if he flinched? Took a little break and slunk off to a Washington Square hustler for a dime bag cut with oregano? Bounced out for a night with the boys, as implicitly suggested by all these people when they asked How are you holding up? Or tactfully nudged, Make sure to take care of yourself. Sentences filled with goodwill and concern, the least painful way to address his baggy red eyes and doughy second chin, his growing stomach pushing his belt and pants until they were halfway down his hips, his stares of distance and incredulity, his quick temper and pissed-off looks, a scowl that threatened to become permanent.
But what if he was indeed good to himself and accepted a joint with a thank you and got so high that air traffic controllers had to direct him to the nearest couch. If he let his friends buy him shots all night. If a call arrived, once he’d done that. If something happened with Alice, something went wrong with the baby.
Like fuck he was going to let that happen.
Oliver’s most responsible means of escape was employed rarely—only at those moments when the planets were in their proper alignments, and he was feeling magnanimous, and had the energy to be a good and upstanding daddy, and someone was around to keep an eye on Alice besides. Lifting that papoose thing over his head, he’d strap himself in, holster the little squiggler inside. He’d take Doe to the school yard on Horatio, lift her carefully from her papoose, fitting each leg into one of the plastic seats of those special baby swings. With the little one getting all excited and rocking in her seat, Oliver would push, not even close to hard, just enough. Once he’d gotten a decent rhythm going, he usually stared out into the basketball courts, watching men younger than him play three-on-three. He’d scan the playground, eyeing the young mothers in their sculpted jeans, the proudly displayed figures that had been worked back into shape.
Today that wasn’t happening. Today was something else.
He’d withdrawn eighteen twenty-dollar bills from the company account. Fifteen sat neatly in an unsealed white mailing envelope, which Oliver now withdrew from a desk drawer and placed in the front left pocket of his corduroy pants. The other three were in his wallet, just in case. At the base of his keyboard lay a creased, lemon-yellow business card. He was supposed to call the number at 5:00 P.M. But he couldn’t call from the office phone, as there could be no record of this call, and the people he needed did not talk to anybody on a cellular—twice Oliver had forgotten, been hung up on.
Just fuck it.
Rising from his desk, he glanced around, quickly checked his reflection in the terminal screen.
—
Heading eastward, passing the sneaker stores and boot stores and the health food place, his steps were making him a bit queasy, though Oliver still moved with speed. He didn’t want to be late. He kept an eye out, cursed to himself because goddamn Giuliani still hadn’t replaced any of the pay phone receivers or gutted wires. Moving to the other side of Broadway, nearing the triangle of busy avenues at Astor Place. And it was here that the old truism presented itself, the idea that you were only part of the city when your history here reached out for you. For Oliver it was a bulky line of bodies, ensnaring him in its meaty arm. Blocking half of the sidewalk and running along the base of the large commercial stone building that had been built back during the previous century. Bodies grouped in twos and threes, bunching up, leaning against, and blocking the large pictures that took up the windows of Astor Wines & Spirits; all these people
killing time, shooting the shit with the neighboring stranger; standing and staring out at whatever. A blow-up doll was being batted like a beach ball.
Oliver hadn’t realized it was Tuesday; but it had to be. Of course.
—
Every Tuesday afternoon, the better part of three years: this line, its untold bodies. That clichéd new arrival from the sticks with the hay straw in his mouth and dreams of making it big. The loser in a breakup who had to find a new place to pick up the pieces. You didn’t have a friend who had a spare room or inside angle? You couldn’t really afford to give fifteen percent of a year’s rent to a real estate agent? Getting work in this city was so much easier than getting a pad; so, on Tuesday afternoon, it was in your best interest to leave work early, right around the time when the gray pages of The Village Voice were still warm from the printing press, and the recognizable royal-blue ink of the paper’s logo was still seeping into its cover. Five thirty or so, the first bundled stacks of the famed leftist weekly came out on a rolling pulley, dragged from the headquarters near Cooper Union, onto the sidewalk of Fourth Avenue. The Astor Place newsstand—just a few hundred yards away—got them around 5:45 P.M. A solid hour earlier than anywhere else.
Even the Statue of Liberty knew that the Voice’s classifieds were the alpha and omega for halfway affordable places, so valuable that even the rag’s most powerful editors, even its famed columnists, couldn’t get advance access. The only early access was the front of that line. Every Tuesday afternoon, to supplement his meager grad school scholarship income, Oliver used to place business cards with the name Hudson Realty, as well as his phone extension, in each pay phone within a half mile of the Astor newsstand. Oliver then would offer a card to every person on line, chatting up those toward the middle and the back, explaining that if you weren’t in the front third of that line, by the time you paid for your Voice, got to a pay phone that worked, and found a few ads that didn’t sound like that much of a compromise, the numbers would already have been bombarded, and the dude who placed the ad would’ve given up on answering the phone, and even if this person’s answering machine wasn’t filled, you’d be like fifty-fifth on the list. No shot.
