“That’s what I was thinking. I was confused. Had I completed the experiment? Or even better, had it all been a horrible dream? Had I never attempted any experiment? Had no experiment ever existed? I tried to sit up and sleep slid off me.
“I was in my car. I had not finished the experiment. I had stayed out all night. Day was pouring over me like poisoned tar. I had no idea where I was. I felt sick in every possible way. The car wouldn’t start and I was like, Fuck! I had to get out of that daylight.
“I left the car and my hangover hit me like a baseball bat. I staggered around, put my head on the hood.”
“Had you been in a crash?” we said.
“I had run out of gas,” he said, spreading his hands in astonishment. “I was on the emptiest road I’d ever seen. Beyond city, beyond suburbs, beyond what lay beyond suburbs—fields and summer and sky. I must have driven until the car stopped, I must have been on my way out of town—had had it, quit, left, but only gotten this far. And here it was, a perfect day. I hated myself. I began to walk.”
“They had emphasized how important the final week was, how the first month was basically control. The second month showed the shift, but this final week—when the body had fully adjusted (though you never do get used to it)—was what we were all there for, the data (though if they knew what was going to happen, what did they bother with it for?), all for some obscure paper in some obscure journal, one experiment amid so many experiments going on all over the country, all over the world, and not just experiments, but lives, men and women and animals, in a vast experiment that in a thousand years will have been wiped from the earth nearly a thousand years ago. I walked two miles in the blazing sun to a gas station. Out front I stood by a signpost and threw up in the road.
“My daughter, my wife—I’d let them down in so many ways. I’d kept my own wife in the literal dark during the most trying months of her pregnancy, had ignored her, had done no freelance work, and now on top of that might have lost even the fifteen grand and would sink us into debt. I paid for gas and a ride back, drove home, and crawled into bed—my wife was already gone, didn’t answer my texts. I lay in bed, not sleeping.
“Hours later I got out of bed, found my phone. I had a text from her: I’ve gone to stay with my sister. I went over to the sink. I was leaning over it, wanting to vomit, and my head lifted. I found I was looking at the calendar. I’d been x-ing off the days, but I’d stopped these last couple weeks, hadn’t managed even that. The final day of the experiment was circled in red. I looked at the date. I looked at my phone. I had been so distraught that I hadn’t realized: the dates matched. That day, that night, was the end of the experiment. Shaking, starving, still hungover, terrified and tired as hell, I took a shower as it got dark. I drove to the lab.”
Here’s a question: How can you quantify how much a man suffers? How can you measure the amount of pain he has against the amount of other things he has—maybe not happiness but, at least, hope? In order to make a proper calculation, Candide would have had to know the other details of the men’s lives, their weaning and rearing, first loves, last, nutrient intake, and so on. He would have needed a measuring system and ledger. It would have taken more than one night.
“I was waiting for them to come get me at the lab when my wife’s sister sent me a text: She’s gone into labor.
“Two months early? I texted back.
“Seven weeks, she texted. We’re headed for the hospital.
“Take this thermometer out! I yelled down the hallway. We’re having a baby! So at last, after all those weeks, they took it out and my butt relaxed.
“Congratulations, they said.
“Where’s my check?
“We just look at the final numbers, they said. The check should arrive in three days.
“I ran to my car, praying I was on my way from the worst time in my life to the best.”
“In the car my butt began spasming. They’d said it might. They’d said that when a thermometer is removed after having been there for twelve weeks, that one ‘might experience some discomfort in the anal area.’ This was not discomfort. This was horrible pain. Under normal circumstances I would have taken three sleeping pills and gotten into bed and not gotten up for two days. Under normal circumstances I might have gone to the hospital for myself. I was sleep-deprived, too, don’t forget, and hungover. I was dizzy and sick, bursts of black and red in front of my eyes, but my wife was having our baby! I arrived at the hospital and ran in. She’s coming, was all my wife said and she was smiling. I kissed her face with terror and relief.
“Her labor was long. Twenty-six hours, and I was with her, spasming the whole time. We were both exhausted. The doctor was saying we’d go one more hour and then give up and have a caesarean, but then all at once the baby was coming. The baby is coming, the baby is coming, I said. This is it, the nurses said. I held my wife’s hand while she pushed and screamed. The doctor reached and—I was at my wife’s head, I couldn’t see. We were waiting for them to raise our beautiful squalling daughter, put an end to our misery. But the doctor didn’t raise our daughter.
“Holy mother of God, said a nurse, and pulled her hands to her chest. Our Lord Jesus Christ.
“What? we said. What is it?
“I was too scared to let go of my wife’s hand and walk over there. What’s wrong? cried my wife, but they bundled the baby up and raced off with her, turning in the doorway to say something along the lines of We’ll be right back.”
I didn’t know this yet, but by the time of the last Voltaire night, things were beginning to take a slow turn for the better for me. A very low creak was sounding in the wheel, but it was turning. I was managing to publish some stories at last. The horrible man was gone for good. It would be the beginning of a better life for me, though it did not feel better yet and it would take me a couple of years to roll my way out. Still a long road to happiness, but I was seeing tiny points of light in the distance and I was heading toward them. I’d teach one more class after this one at that school, but my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t do a very good job. The following year I got a tenure-track position at a large university, a job I’d really wanted, and then I was gone.
“My wife and I were stunned. I ran into the hallway, but the doctor and nurses were gone. I heard my wife calling and I ran back. A nurse was there, sewing her up. She wouldn’t say a word. Someone will come talk to you, she said. Just stay calm.
“What’s happening? Is she alive? we said.
“Yes, she’s alive, said the nurse, or at least she was.
“Was? we screamed.
“I’m sure she’s still alive. Please wait. Just stay calm.”
Years later this man wrote and asked me to write him a letter of recommendation, and I agreed. In the letter I wrote about Voltaire night, how it came about, how we did it for all those months, and how the night he told his story—I didn’t tell the story itself—was the best Voltaire night ever, how after that we didn’t even mention Voltaire night again. He had clearly won.
Years after that I heard he was dying of stomach cancer. I heard another in the group died of a brain tumor. I don’t know what became of the others, though I can see them in my mind and I can imagine the joy of success rising out of them and gathering around their heads. I hope it for them. Now and then one writes a quick note to me at my university address: Do you remember me? I answer, Yes, yes, I do. They don’t write again, as if they’d just needed that slim reassurance that somebody still knew what had once gone so wrong.
“Neither of us had slept in so long. It had always been night. We were both in outlandish pain. We held each other’s hands and wept.
“The doctor came back. Without the baby. Where is she, we said.
“Now, stay calm, he said, using his hands to demonstrate calm.
“Quit telling us to stay calm, we said.
“Your daughter has an extremely rare muscular condition. Impossible to detect without amniocentesis.
“What? we s
aid. What kind of condition? Will she live? Is she okay?
“She’s alive but she has no muscle. Her muscle has degenerated. She is unable to sustain muscle.
“What does that mean? we said. We don’t know what that means! Where is our baby? We want to see her.
“Her appearance is startling. I don’t want you to be alarmed.
“We won’t be alarmed, we said. Bring her, bring her.
“Okay, I’m going to bring her in for a few minutes but then we have to get her to the ICU. He paused. I need to tell you. She’s going to need a lot of treatment. This condition is associated with severe disabilities, physical and mental.
“Okay, we said.
“And a short life span.
“We won’t be alarmed. We promise. Bring her.
“He went out for a moment and came back. A nurse came in with a bundle and put her in my wife’s arms.”
At this point he pulled out his phone and held it up for us to see. “Seven years old now,” he said proudly. “They said she wouldn’t live three years.” I took it from him. I had never seen anything like it. It was hard to know exactly how to look at her for a moment. Her face didn’t look quite like a face but then I found her eyes and assembled the rest of the face around them. We all looked at the photo and then at him.
“Did you get the money?” one of us said.
But who could win the Voltaire-night prize—which was nothing, just another path over water? Which was to live your life after Voltaire night, to keep going, strike out for more, after the terrible thing had happened to you, more terrible than what had happened to anyone else, and that might turn out to be the best?
“The nurse placed the tiny bundle in my wife’s arms,” he said, “and I pulled back the blanket. I touched the top of her head with my hands. She was so small and her bones were visible all over her face. I could barely breathe. My God, I said, she’s beautiful.
“Isn’t she? said my wife. She’s perfect.”
Mr. Simmons Takes a Prisoner
Mr. Simmons was not a family man.
This, although he had a family. A wife, two daughters. A large apartment to put them in. A dog. He felt attached to them (fuzzy-headed, waving from a distance) as he did to certain household kinks: the sticky lock, weak showerhead. Comfortable inconveniences, he might say. He preferred the empty office on Sundays to the fussy kitchen at home. He didn’t heft a pine up the steps at Christmas, perform science experiments with lightbulbs and tinfoil, romp off to the corner store for snacks. No bike rack on the Toyota, no ski trips, no corn in the City of Chicago community garden. He worked late, told the kids to cut the racket at dinner, read political magazines before bed. He sighed heavily, slammed the refrigerator door when the kids asked for cash or keys. But Mr. Simmons wasn’t cruel. He never beat his family or tossed them down the stairs.
The Simmons’ younger daughter entered college and the apartment grew quiet. He kept to his routine. His wife went out and got a teaching certificate, to his surprise, and within a year had a classroom of ten-year-olds. Each morning she left earlier than he, left him to rinse his cereal bowl alone. In her absence he walked through rooms spread out and white, felt the air around him, poked his head in the abandoned bathroom by the kids’ rooms—folded towels, wrapped soap, clean tiles. He thought irritably, Why do we need such a big apartment?
This was the first thing. Then, new emotions. His wife spoke endlessly on the phone to the girls, left Mr. Simmons to wait his turn to talk, helpless, dying as he stood there. Finger-drumming, wild hand signals to no avail. But when she finally handed him the phone, he found he didn’t have much to say.
Or when his elder daughter announced she was moving to San Francisco with her husband, he was stunned.
“You’re leaving with that truck driver?”
“He’s an environmental lawyer.”
“I’ve never seen him fit a tie around that thick neck,” he said.
Minor outbursts like these increased. The family backed off in bewilderment, then ignored him.
The day after his daughter moved, he woke, put his feet in his slippers, and went looking for the dog. A bit old now, the pooch. “Here boy,” he called, patted his leg, whistled. The dog limped over. “Treat? Treat?” he said. In the kitchen, he fed it a puppy biscuit, tossed it the squeaky toy. He waved from the door as he left for work. “Good boy. Sit.”
That night he carried the dog into the bedroom.
“Thought the old mutt may as well stay with us tonight,” he said.
“Won’t your allergies bother you?” his wife asked, looking over her book.
“Allergies?”
“Your allergies, you know,” she said. “Allergies.”
“Oh yes.” He put the dog down and shooed it into the hall.
Should he have an affair? He knew plenty of women. A proper jacket, one hand pressed to the small of her back, the other lifted to summon a taxi, her dress spinning in a slow circle. But most of the women he knew were his wife’s friends—painted cracked lips, puffed hair. They had stopped talking to him beyond the required niceties years before.
He watched the women at his office. They strolled through the hallways, studied the bulletin board in the lunchroom. He pretended to be busy with the coffeemaker. He couldn’t approach.
His younger daughter arrived for a visit. He followed her from room to room, knocked on her door when she shut it.
“What do they have you reading at school?” he asked, leaning in through the door.
She sat on the floor, held the dog’s face with both hands and cocked it back and forth. “Nothing you’d be interested in,” she said.
“What makes you think I’m not interested?” he said. “I’m not an interesting enough person to be interested? Who’s paying for this education, I’d like to know?” He turned on his heel. “I expect a list by supper time!”
Later, in bed, he explained the matter to his wife in a diplomatic tone. “It doesn’t matter what she reads. She has her life, I have mine. As it should be.”
“Then don’t make such a fuss next time,” his wife said and snapped out the light.
In the lunchroom, a notice tacked to the board read like a personal message: Illinois Prisoner Reform Association. An ink drawing of a man in a studious pose over a book. Mr. Simmons leaned closer. The caption read, Bring Hope, Challenge, Reward. A website below.
Back at his desk, he made a little square out of pens. A prisoner, he thought. I might like that.
The meeting was held in a church basement. Crayon drawings of bulbous heads waving stick hands hung on the wall. Mr. Simmons balanced on a mini-chair and listened to the leader of the reform group tell stories about grateful prisoners getting diplomas, learning Chinese. Mr. Simmons filled out the questionnaire, received his packet, group philosophy, activity suggestions.
And, a week later, number 874569, Sally Baum.
A woman. At a women’s prison. How about that?
Mr. Simmons looked in the mirror, wearing a smart dark suit and a yellow tie. He stood at different angles, pointed at himself, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He stripped down to his boxers, walked back and forth, waved and smiled like a politician. He put on black pants and a tweed jacket. He brought his head up close to the mirror and studied his scalp. He slapped on a cap.
Two guards patted him, swiped at him with a metal detector, made him turn out his pockets. The prisoners were easy to distinguish in their blue uniforms. They bounced kids on their laps, leaned across tables to speak quietly.
A guard touched a woman’s arm and pointed at Mr. Simmons. She walked over, thirty, maybe. Thirty-five. Sat down in front of him. She wasn’t pretty. An amorphous sexual fantasy about a helpless beauty and himself, hatted, faded.
“I’m Mr. Simmons from the Prisoner Reform Association,” he said.
“You got any stamps?” she asked.
“I have some at home,” he said. “I could send some.”
“That’d be great,” she said. “I c
ould use some stamps.”
“I’ll send some.”
She fiddled with her hands in her lap.
“Cigarettes?” she asked.
“I don’t smoke,” he admitted. He cleared his throat.
She stared at him from under ragged bangs. “I’m in for drug possession. I’ve got two more years.”
He was relieved. He believed vaguely in drug legalization. “I’ll send those stamps,” he said.
I wonder if she likes to read, he thought as he watched the steel gate clang behind her.
In the week between the first and second visit, Mr. Simmons compiled a list of books. He consulted his library, strained to remember the college classics. I could help her round out her education, he thought.
He called his elder daughter to ask if she had any ideas about books he should add. He read the list to her over the phone.
“A Latin grammar?” she repeated.
“Once she knows the roots, any romance language—”
She interrupted with a sigh.
He crossed out Latin and wrote Spanish. He called his younger daughter to ask her opinion.
“Why didn’t you ever give me a reading list?” she said.
“I’m sure I did,” he said. “I suggest books all the time.”
“No, Dad,” she said. “You always act like I just spit on the floor.”
Mr. Simmons was deeply offended.
“See? You’re doing it now. I can hear through the phone. I just spit on the floor.”
Mr. Simmons brought cigarettes. He wasn’t allowed to bring in paper, so he memorized the reading list and recited it.
“Which one do you like best?” she asked.
“I didn’t put my favorites on the list,” he admitted. “They’re a bit difficult. Marcel Proust. Thomas Mann.”
“I’ll take those,” Ms. Baum said. She reached for a cigarette.
He went home and found his wife in the kitchen fixing dinner.
“She wants to read Proust,” he said. “I think she’s quite bright.”
His wife stopped chopping onions and stared at him.
“I wonder if she went to college,” he said.
Wait Till You See Me Dance Page 9
