Alice & Oliver

by Charles Bock

  From the doorwell, not meant for the world’s ears: “Jesus.”

  Oliver, exhausted and shabby, arms folded across his chest. His eyes were soft and open, his cheeks still ruddy from the cold air. He felt at once stunned, touched, and horrified.

  “You weren’t supposed to see.”

  Her eyes red—more hashish? Crying?

  “Isn’t giving up, isn’t this the opposite of what we should be doing?”

  “I thought this might be the right time.”

  “Believe me, it’s not like I’m in love with that hospital. But lots of smart people are devoting their lives to fighting this horrible shit and helping you get better—”

  “I can’t eat. I can barely see. We don’t have a donor. What should I be doing?”

  The bedroom blinds had been raised, presumably to give them light while filming, but night had taken over, spreading shadows through the room’s edges. Out of the window the elevated railroad tracks were blackened husks.

  A new voice interrupted: “She’s not giving up.”

  Sparrow had uprighted herself, was placing herself between Oliver and his wife. “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she told Alice, “I asked about Siddhartha leaving his wife to become Buddha.”

  “Right, your treatments,” Oliver said. “You have a history of amazing results. That’s what I’ve heard?”

  “Come on already,” Tilda said, off to the side.

  “Why—” Alice complained.

  “I get it,” he cut them off. “I just want to learn. Really.” To Sparrow: “Your treatments have cured cancer?”

  “I’ve had successes.”

  “You’ve put people in remission?”

  “At the ashram we’ve—”

  “And where’s this ashram at?”

  “Western Massachusetts, just north of the Berkshires.”

  “And in that ashram just north of the Berkshires, you cured how many people of cancer?”

  “Oliver, this is not the place or time—”

  “I’m a big girl, Alice.”

  Sparrow remained fixed on him, that weirdly intense gaze of hers, holding him, searching out his vulnerability. For an instant, Oliver felt himself drawn in, buckling, wanting to trust her. And it was in that moment—as he felt himself waver—that Sparrow unleashed her smile. The kindness bloomed in her voice: “With care and help and the proper meditation and chanting, we’ve been blessed with a ninety-five percent success rate. And before you ask, more than half of those who come with us do stay in remission.”

  “Ninety-five percent? Wow. From yoga and herbal packets?”

  “There is science beyond Western science. Coffee enemas purify a bloodstream. Broccoli and other fresh, steamed greens—”

  “Really impressive. Really. But here’s what I’m curious about. If ninety-five percent of the cancer patients you gave broccoli enemas went into remission, why aren’t you on the Today show? Why aren’t you consulting with doctors everywhere?”

  Oliver paused long enough for the point to impact. “This disease is the worst fucking scourge in history,” he continued. “The single worst. At Whitman, they capture cells at the fucking moment they split, so they can learn whether the new cells are potentially cancerous. You’re telling me the medical-industrial complex can’t figure out if something inside broccoli might contain a cure? Come on. Pfizer’d have fucking stormtroopers marching through that ashram. They’d be rushing those packets through clinical trials like shit through a chicken, monetizing like fuck.”

  Oliver’s stare challenged. But rather than meet her eyes this time, he looked slightly higher, to the little gulley, the planted field of gray hairs down the separating groove where her hair parted. She’d probably been the smartest secretary in her department, passed over too many times for promotion, maybe. Or maybe some deep family trauma had caused mental collapse? Whatever it was, she’d risen from the ashes, this grande mystic of the Berkshires, passing her days in careful meditation while bilking sick people desperately grasping for hope.

  “It took years before Buddha returned to the castle.”

  Sparrow’s voice was not loud but placid, a fall breeze.

  “The baby was much older by then, naturally. Buddha’s wife was also older. Though she had not seen her husband for long years filled with hardship, she accepted him into the castle without complaint. And still, another three weeks passed before the Buddha visited her quarters.”

  “Women can’t even be Buddhists.”

  “Oliver—”

  “I read it on the Net. They have to be reincarnated as men. Then they can.”

  Sparrow waited, the etched time lines of her forehead remaining flat. “The first thing Buddha’s wife said to him was ‘Did you have to leave?’ Buddha answered, ‘No. But I could not know this without leaving.’ ”

  The skin of her cheeks was hard and smooth as carved wood. She let her story sink in, then told Oliver, “I’m not taking money for anything.”

  “You fucking shouldn’t.”

  Behind him there was a misstep, a bump—the light source flickered, the room’s balance of light and weird shadows recalibrating.

  “I think Oliver and I need to talk.” Alice’s hand was steady, moving to her heart.

  Sparrow understood, broke from her duel, and hugged Alice. She held both of Alice’s hands even as she backed away, and now their arms improvised a circle. Sparrow whispered; Alice nodded.

  As the healer began gathering her bags and books, Tilda and Alice now shared a look, communicating in their own exclusive language. Alice assured Tilda she’d be fine, told them to leave the equipment, though it would be nice if Tilda could turn off the light, please.

  Alice motioned to Oliver, patting the adjacent space.

  He didn’t sit. He loomed.

  She asked if he could hand her the water.

  During each of her two gulps, her Adam’s apple seemed inordinately large for her neck.

  From the other side of the drywall they could hear the sounds of the women retreating, clumps and whispers, Alice’s mom warning, the baby was asleep.

  “If I die in the next little while,” Alice said, “I’m afraid you’ll let your darkness take over.”

  His eyes were whirlwinds.

  “I’m saying this to help,” she continued, “you shouldn’t take it personally.”

  “Just the kind of qualifier that ensures—”

  Her raised hand halted his sarcasm. Looking up, she tried to focus on his face, but it proved too difficult. Instead her eyelids landed with force, remained closed.

  “I just want you to know. I hope with all my heart that you will fight the darkness and not stay there.”

  “I’m not giving up, Alice—”

  “You can have a wonderful life without me. You can meet someone else who can be a good partner for you, a good mother to Doe. But that will only work if you open yourself to that possibility.”

  “I’m not giving up. If that means someone’s got to be King Dick around here, fine, I’ll take the mantle. But—”

  She bit her lip, placed a hand on his knee, felt his tension, the solidity of his resistance.

  “I know how hard this is on you. I feel the pressure you’re under. But it’s poisoning you, Oliver. You bring me so much joy. I want to spend years with you. I even want to keep going through this hell with you. I want to be a parent with you. But if I don’t get to do that, I don’t want you to do it alone.”

  “Yeah well,” he said, “I can’t worry about that right now.”

  “Be open to love, Oliver.”

  “Christ—”

  “Be open to goodness.”

  She took extra care with each word. “I guess I’m just trying to figure out how I want to live with what I have left.”

  He looked away, felt himself choking up. “And that’s what Joey Keyboard was about?”

  A flinch. Then her mouth rounded, forming the word oh. No sound escaped. Her hand rose, as if she might insert her fi
ngernails and eat them. Her forehead and cheeks reddened, pupils shimmering.

  She forced herself to keep eye contact—thinking, studying.

  “I need to do something for you,” she finally said. “Come here. Sit.”

  She did not wait but reached out, touching the bottom of his jacket, which she lifted, reaching for his belt buckle.

  “What,” said Oliver. “Hey.”

  Clumsy, careful—still fumbling, for she was out of practice—she unlooped his belt, in a workmanlike manner, and ignored his rumpled shirttails. His extra flesh and flab must have registered, for he had never been heavy like this, but she did not acknowledge as much. Oliver remained tense, unnerved, mildly alarmed. But he wasn’t stopping her from handling his jeans’ top button, lowering his zipper, reaching in.

  A musky scent rose into the room. He was warm, sweaty, oddly red, not limp but far from stiff. His jeans and boxers down now to the middle of his pasty thighs. He’d stopped breathing, still was shocked by the happening. When Alice’s hand closed around him, he moaned. Her pace increased and she worked as best she could; he gasped and stared at her hand on him. And now he was looking toward the corner of the bedroom, that spot between the drywall and the weird angle of the roof, where that sliver of space still let in sound and smells. He moaned again, throaty, approving.

  It was not long before he could tell her arm was tired. But she wasn’t deterred, and didn’t hesitate in leaning forward and planting a kiss on his bulbous, crimson head, licking awkwardly, like a hesitant cat, around its ridge. Enveloping him, her mouth was warm, wet. His shoulders hunched and he let out an involuntary, high sound; his head leaned back and he shut his eyes; his right hand went onto the back of her head. Oliver felt the barren desert of her skin. The air in the room warmer, her breaths coming at shorter intervals. She went at him, gallant and resolute, going faster, her eyes shut, cheeks pulsing.

  But he was not close.

  He was careful in lifting her off him, and he brought her to his face, and kissed her with all the tenderness in him, and on her lips tasted his own heat and salt.

  Oliver pulled Alice’s bird-frail body to him. He took her face into his shoulder, caressed the back of her head, and laughed, amazed, holding her to him.

  She was sobbing by now, and her sobs continued for a time, their force increasing, sending her body into racked, great heaves.

  “Favorito,” he said. “Favorito.”

  YOU WORK NOT to gawk at the man with no jaw, the one standing by the plants. That poor man with the back hump and the marble eyes wants you to focus, though, wants you to see him. As you pass some helpless pile of bones on a stretcher, it takes all the discipline you’ve got not to stare at those sarcoma lesions, dark and purple. You sit on some couch, waiting for your appointment. You try not to be disturbed by the row of future corpses hooked up to oxygen tubes, try not to think about the random nature of illness, the absence of reason as to who recovers and why. No, instead you come into contact with these unfortunates for fleeting seconds, and you cannot help but look, and it goes without saying, your heart goes out to them. But also: At least I’m not that bad.

  And then you are the one in the waiting area beyond your usual waiting area, and you feel eyes checking you out, recoiling, afraid.

  I am at a juncture where I must summon my inner warrior goddess to stare at a mirror. It still brings tears. My hair has started growing back from this last consolidation, but it is mossy, fuzzy, almost translucently thin. Gray fills in more of the front than last time. My face is now a skull, dug up after thousands of years, my skin brittle and dry. As a girl I always wanted those large, anime puppy eyes. Now I have them. They’re trapped inside hollow sockets, searching for a way out. Drugs have swollen my cheeks like a botched face-lift. I used to pout about my extra baby weight, now I’m nostalgic for it, for those excesses of meat on my hips and thighs (my whole life I hated my fat thighs). My hip bones jut in jagged peaks that make me think of all those teen models I used to fit, though I look nothing like them.

  I look more like a prisoner in a concentration camp; I hate to say it, but it’s the unavoidable association.

  Included in this diminishing is what is happening with my thin, gorgeous band of simple gold. Six months after my wedding, my ring finger had expanded to the degree that, there was no question, the band was never again coming off. This thought—No way that’s coming off—always ignited a satisfaction inside me. In the middle of some long manual stitching job, I’d look down and see my ring, that quick gleam, and I’d think: I have more than just fashion.

  But now, if I even point down, that band slips off.

  —

  The cusp of autumn. Chill infuses the air, night’s dominion coming earlier and earlier. I try and focus on the task at hand. We’ve received the call. We’ve been promoted. This new waiting area has different artwork—those familiar Impressionist retrospectives replaced by Lichtenstein. Each bank of chairs retains the same dull layout, the same dusty plants and ancient magazines. Still, when I recognize my favorite nurse-practitioner, I feel a charge: something like hope.

  My hands grip, pushing against the cushioned metal armrest. I plant and propel, and manage myself, somewhat, upward, into a squat. Still, the wheelchair is too low. My thighs can’t push my body into the standing position.

  “Usually I can get it,” I tell Requita.

  “I know,” she says.

  “Just not this time.” I smile.

  Watching, Oliver twists in place. I know he’s irritated, why do I insist on expending unnecessary energy? He ducks in, reaches beneath my pits, holds me lightly. “Ready,” he says, “steady, and—”

  We ease upward; he makes sure I’m balanced.

  “One more,” he says. “Ready?”

  Steady never makes it from his mouth. I’m already sliding over, onto the exam table, doing it on my own.

  —

  Easy mannerisms and lanky height, bouncy hair feathered down the middle, the doctor immediately makes me think of some tennis star or surfer from the nineteen seventies. “Sergio Blasco,” he says. His accent is European Spanish—obviously cultivated through decades of boarding school education. “I’ll be taking over your treatment. I’ll still consult with Eisenstatt, naturalmente. But from this point forward, through the transplant and then afterward, consider me your physician.”

  The hint of dismissal when he says Eisenstatt—what might even be disdain—endears him to me that much more.

  I cough approval; he halts, his brow knitting.

  “How long, that cough?”

  Oliver answers: “A few days.”

  Blasco stays focused on me, thin brows crumpling together. “Two days? Five days?”

  “She had it last Friday for her appointment,” says Requita. “It sounds deeper now.”

  “May I?” Blasco approaches with his stethoscope.

  A nurse comes from the side and wraps a warm thin blanket around my shoulders so it hangs like a poncho. She puts a cup of water to my lips. I nod, whisper thanks, and keep the cup. Blasco presses to my chest, listens, does not move. Taking the instrument buds out of his ears, he heads back to his chart. He reads, flips. “Right,” he reads: “History of stomach virus.”

  I can see he’s considering what he’s heard from inside me, what he’s read, cross-referencing…

  “Nose and throat,” he tells Requita. “We need cultures. Make sure to have that today.”

  His small gray eyes dart, back and forth, taking in as much as possible, yet they remain calm. When he fixes on my face, I feel humanity—not just doctor training and generic sympathy. I feel my shoulders and neck going rigid—this also may have to do with the attention of a handsome man on me. Probably that is too simple. Something more is taking place. For all his easygoing athleticism, Blasco is a thinker, delving, measuring. How can his calculations do anything but put me on edge?

  “All notes here point to what an impressive woman you are. This is very good for our purposes.
You have held on through induction and—four?—four consolidations. Quite a gauntlet. And finally a donor has come through. This is tremendous news. You have had very bad breaks and a very hard slog. But to have this donor come through this way—getting marrow withdrawn so soon after discovery—we are fortunate.”

  I nod.

  Without warning, he claps his hands, creating a small dry explosion of sound, a signal for attention. “This procedure we hope to perform. Allogenic bone marrow transplant. Allo, Latin, from the outside. Practical terms. The donor has surgery on the lower back. The marrow is harvested over five days and taken from the spine. We use these stem cells to grow you new bone marrow.”

  He waits, making sure I am following. “A very complex procedure. Many factors are involved. But we have reasons to believe it can be successful.”

  “That’s all we need to know,” says Oliver.

  We need to know quite a bit more than that, I want to say; instead I feel Oliver’s eyes moving to me, searching.

  “You’re not going to draw on a whiteboard, are you?”

  My first words to the doctor; naturally, my voice has the chirp of a baby bird.

  The doctor freezes, doesn’t understand.

  “Private joke. Go ahead.”

  Half-embarrassed, Blasco raises his hands from his lap. He places a large knuckle on the bottom of his chin. Now his eyes go steely. I smell a faint residue, something I cannot place.

  “Your bone marrow, as you know, is producing the leukemic cells. We therefore hope to replace that marrow. We hope to do this using the healthy marrow from your donor. But replacement means something unfortunate. We must first remove, or eliminate, your cancer-producing marrow.”

  My eyes shut. I perform a quick visualization, embrace darkness. “Release me from my suffering,” I say. “And from the cause of my suffering.”