Christopher has pulled a chair to the side of his mother’s bed, and he leans close to her and whispers things I can’t hear. There’s a new donated quilt covering her bed, and Chris straightens it out before placing his paper bags on top of it. He pulls a tomato from one of the bags and holds it under his mother’s nose.
“Smell this, Mom. Tomato. Smell it? I got it at the farmer’s market this morning.”
I rub Wendy’s bony ankle and grab her chart. I’ve gotten pretty good at reading it. Caloric intake, normal. Bilirubin elevated. Bedsore on right lower flank almost healed. Weight as of yesterday: ninety-two pounds. And so on. It’s like a conversation. Through these statistics, my wife manages to speak to me.
“This is rosemary, Mom. The herb. You can smell it better if I rub it between my fingers like this.”
It’s impossible not to miss the similarities between the boy leaning forward and the woman in the bed. They have the same rounded faces, the same fine, dark hair. Chris got his mother’s brown eyes, but not her fair, freckled skin. Instead he carries my almost-olive cast, quick to darken in the sun, and the contrast is evident as he brings his face close to hers.
I peek through the window blinds into the courtyard between Long Term and Palliative. A young man is out there, talking on a cell phone with a hand to his forehead like he’s trying to shield his eyes from the sun.
“This is cheese. I forget what the guy called it. It smells good though, doesn’t it? Here, I’ll try some and tell you how it is….”
And so on.
I step out of the room and walk down the hall. I want to give Chris some time alone with his mom, but also, to be honest, I can’t always handle seeing them together like this. It can be too much, so I decide to take a lap. It’s a pretty busy day in Long Term, Saturday morning and all, and many of the rooms are populated by ambulatory visitors. I recognize some of them and we smile and nod to each other. That’s as close as any of us get; there’s a distance we maintain in this place. Outside one of the rooms, a man stares at me with a stunned expression, like he’s astonished I could be so casually strolling along. Family member of a new resident, obviously. He hasn’t learned the drill yet.
Lesson number one comes from the name of the wing: Long Term. Settle in, buddy.
He’ll figure it out soon enough.
Just beyond the man in shock, one of the new aides, Irina, a tiny bleached-blond woman clad in pink scrubs, is typing something into a computer on a rolling cart in the corridor. I greet her as I walk past.
“Hello, Mr. Kazenzakis,” she says, my last name rolling off the tip of her Eastern European tongue. “Mrs. Kazenzakis is looking very good today, yes?”
I smile and nod. The man in the hall stares at us like he can’t believe this is actually happening to him.
Sometime after Wendy’s accident, when Chris was a freshman and I’d finally gone back to work, I overheard a conversation between two girls by the lockers outside my classroom door. One of them was talking about an electronic diary she was keeping; it was, she explained, nothing more than an email account she’d had her aunt set up with a password she wouldn’t be able to find out until sometime in the future.
“It’s great,” the girl told her friend. “I just send it anything. What I’m feeling, what I’m mad about, whatever, right? I mean, I’ll probably open it up when I’m in college or something and totally cringe at what a dork I was.”
The next time I saw Cory, the district’s overworked computer tech, coming down the hallway, I called him into my room.
“Problem, Mr. K.?” he asked. While many of our past IT guys had been pasty with black tee-shirts and stringy hair, Cory brought a clean-cut sincerity to his job that reminded me of a Mormon missionary.
“No, nothing’s wrong,” I said. “Just a question. If I wanted to set up a personal email account for myself—”
“That’s easy!” he said.
“I know that, I have one already. But if I wanted to set up a second one—”
“Like that forwards to your main account? That’s easy too.”
“No, hold up, let me finish. I don’t want it to forward to me. In fact, I don’t want to be able to open it. Basically I want it to have a password that no one knows. Not even me.”
Cory screwed up his face. “Well sure, you could do that, but what’s the point?”
“You could say it’s like….” I considered my answer for a moment. “A diary. I want to be able to just write to myself. In the moment. It’s not important that I see them later.”
“Ohh,” he said, nodding. “Like a therapeutic thing.”
“I guess so.”
Cory watched over my shoulder as I set up an account with Wendy’s first initial and last name. He didn’t say a word. Either he didn’t know anything about her, or, like the best computer guys, he simply kept a blank face and acted like he didn’t. He instructed me to turn my head while he reached over me to fill in a password and complete the form.
“There,” Cory said. “Now you’ll never be able to get in.”
“But you know the password.”
“You think I’m going to remember what I typed there?” he asked, shouldering his gear bag to leave. “I can’t even remember the passwords I’m supposed to know.”
It was a few days before I could actually bring myself to try it. I was, admittedly, pretty self-conscious about writing messages to the address at first. Was I afraid I’d receive a reply? I started out with “Hi.” Letter H, letter I. Pause, think, backspace backspace. Try again. H followed by I. Hit send. Type some more. Hit send again. I typed and hit send over and over again, and soon enough weeks went by and spilling my guts to an unconscious woman became habit. I miss you. I’m lost. Months passed and I slipped from confessional to quotidian. What did I wear that day. What did I eat? What were my stupid thoughts? Do you really want to know?
Dear Wendy: Do you want to know my stupid thoughts today?
I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you and hit send.
In hitting send, somehow, I felt a little better.
Chris is waiting, looking perplexed, outside his mother’s room when I return.
“You okay?” I ask.
“There’s makeup on Mom’s face,” he says. “Someone put makeup on her.”
I frown and follow him into Wendy’s room, where I turn the control on the wall above her bed to bring up the lights. Sure enough, she’s wearing lip-gloss and eye shadow, and her nails have been painted a subtle glossy cream color. I check her feet and find her toenails have been painted too.
“It creeps me out,” Chris says. “I don’t like it.”
“I don’t either. Hang on.” I head out to the nurses’ desk.
“What’s up, Mr. K?” Shanice asks. She can see it in my expression.
“Someone put makeup on my wife,” I say. “I’m kind of—”
Shanice scowls, an unusual look for her. “Must have been Ukraine,” she says. “I’m going to have a word with Ukraine.” She emphasizes the first syllable, like YOU-kraine. Even in this moment, it strikes me as funny that she refers to her employees from the former Soviet Bloc by their country of origin.
“She was just down the hall,” I say. “I’ll talk to her.”
“You don’t need to, Mr. K. I’m very sorry about this.”
“No, no, it’s nothing, she didn’t know. I’ll talk to her.”
I find Irina farther down the corridor. She’s set up at a new location, typing something into her console again.
“Irina? Did you put that makeup on Mrs. Kazenzakis?”
She looks up at me. “You do not like it?”
“I do not. Please don’t do that again.”
“She does look very pretty, I think. She is very pretty woman.”
“Thank you,” I say, “but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that again. I’d appreciate it too if you’d clean it off of her. She never wore makeup when she was alive.”
Irina’s face goes hard. “She is alive
now, Mr. Kazenzakis.” She turns away and stomps off down the corridor, pushing her computer cart ahead of her.
I suppose I understand her indignation. But I’m beyond the point where I could care.
From: [email protected]
To:[email protected]
Sent: September 8, 12:03 pm
Subject:Sorry.
_____________________________
You know what I meant by that, right?
Right?
CHAPTER SEVEN
On the highway home, running, I’m having a hard time finding any sort of rhythm. Normally when I’m out like this, alone, away from everything, my mind goes blank in a trance of white noise, and my body goes on autopilot. I don’t think about anything, and it makes me feel alive. A lot of my students run with iPods; they ask me why I never do. The simple answer is I just don’t like it. But it’s something more than that, really: any sort of music would barge in and ruin that blank slate feeling I’m chasing after.
There’s no blank slate today. I changed in the nursing home restroom and said goodbye to Chris, and we made plans to catch up before he leaves tonight for his overnight basketball gig. Then I went running. I can’t count the times I’ve followed this route home, but today it’s like the first time I’ve ever been on it; almost thirty minutes out and no rhythm. I’m stumbling over my own feet, bristling at the few cars passing me on the road, critical of my form, critical of my thoughts.
The real reason, I know, is Irina. What I said to Irina. Just what does it mean to be alive, anyway? You’d think, with the past few years to dwell on it, I’d have some sort of answer to this question. I don’t. Am I alive because I can run? I feel alive when I run, sure, I know that. But the best running for me is when I’m not thinking. Does this mean that being alive most means thinking the least? If this is the case, Wendy—the blankest of blank slates—is more alive than any of us, and Irina was right to be angry with me.
It’s confusing, for sure.
Wendy, though, cannot be confused by any of this. I’ve got that on her. After the accident, she stayed in the university hospital in Madison for a few weeks while we waited for the impossible, waiting to see if she’d recover at all. Maybe it was four weeks. Things were a blur then. I slept in a hotel just off campus while her condition was most tenuous; at first it didn’t look like she’d make it past the first few days. Chris was there, Carol was there, my brother Michael was there and gone, there and gone. My older brother, Teddy, responsible Teddy, angling for tenure at the University of Chicago at the time, dropped everything—his family, his job—to come and make all the official things happen. He pointed to the places on the medical paperwork I needed to sign. My sister Kathleen showed up. My parents came from their retirement complex in Florida. All a blur. And Wendy at the center of it all, purple-faced and bloated from the drugs, unrecognizable with tubes like snakes emerging from her nostrils and mouth, with oily hair framing her swollen features, with medical lines taped crisscross to her cheeks and arms.
Days passed in Madison. People came and went. It became obvious over time that Wendy was not leaving us, but she wasn’t coming back either. Stuck somewhere in between, and the doctors—they were such good doctors—explained that as long as we provided her with nourishment she would hang on, she would linger. Like a reflex, like breathing, she would take things in and pass things out, but she would never think again. There was another option, a passing discussion, the denial of nourishment; mentioned once and not discussed again. She would linger, we decided. We decided this by deciding nothing at all. We would need to find a place to facilitate these lingering functions. She would need to be moved.
We found a place not far from home. Kathleen and Carol did most of the groundwork; Teddy handled the paperwork. My state insurance through the school district would cover it all. And Michael, Saint Michael, blasted up on his motorcycle from Chicago week after week to cook for us, to feed us, to keep our home clean, to keep Christopher going to school.
It’s still hard for me to admit that I had fallen apart.
Why should I think about this now? I’ve dwelt on that shame enough. Now is now, I need rhythm and white noise, but it isn’t coming. Another mile, and I might as well be running in clown shoes.
I stop and wait on the shoulder for a car to pass, check both ways two times, and jump up and down, mashing my feet into the gravel of the shoulder. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” I shout with each stomp. Then I put my hands on my hips and double myself over to breathe, pursing my lips to make a whoosh sound at each exhalation. Like I could purge all this from me so simply. It’s worth a try.
I start again, thinking anything, thinking nothing. I manage about fifty yards before coming to a sandy pair of tire ruts headed off through the pines toward the lake. I’m just about at the northern end of Leland’s resort, and there’s a chain strung across with a ‘NO TRESPASSING’ sign hung from it like bait. I veer off the road and jump the barricade.
In the trees, in the flashing blades of light, there’s quickly a sort of rhythm. I push myself, the soft track gives resistance, and it’s not long before my breathing comes harder. Before I know it, I know nothing at all. Irina is gone. I’m through the trees and over a dune, and now I’m running, panting, nearly sprinting along the beach.
I run along the edge of the water, where it’s easy in the firm, damp sand, skipping between scalloped terraces demarcated by pebbles, seaweed and the occasional gull-pecked fish carcass. To my right is Lake Michigan, the mighty inland sea, a deep greenish-blue all the way to the horizon. North Manitou Island is out there too, a verdant hump poking up through the whitecaps in the distant haze. And to my left, rising from behind the dunes as I close in on Leland’s resort, is the red-girdered skeleton of some new building, abandoned by its workers for the weekend, left with only a silent bulldozer and a couple port-a-johns for company. Ahead, there’s a man talking animatedly on a cell phone. He’s maybe ten years older than me, wearing shorts and leather sandals and a watch with a thick stainless band. He’s a little higher up on the bank, and he stares right at me as I approach him.
“Hold on a second,” he says into the phone. “Hold on.” The man holds his phone down at his side, and I notice a cigar in his other hand.
“Hey!” he calls. “Runner guy! I used to be just like you!”
I can’t help but smile as I go by him; I think: really?
“All the time I was like you! Don’t take things so serious, runner guy!”
I raise my hand in a wave as I pass, and he starts to chatter away again on his phone. Do I look so serious? Does it show in my face?
Past the cell phone man, further south on the shore, I’m into the more finished part of the resort. A pair of three-story condo buildings frame what looks like a clubhouse or restaurant; out in front there’s some sort of nautical pennant flapping from a tall pole stayed like a ship’s mast. A gardener is working, but that’s the only other sign of life I can see nearby. It’s a perfect day but all the decks and patios are empty before dark sliding-glass doors; are any people living up in those places?
These thoughts are easy. They’re nothing. They go perfectly with running; they’re just what I need. Further down the beach now, and I’m at the Little Jib River, the muddy waterway marking the boundary between Leland’s development and the northern end of the Olsson property. It’s a minor river, more like a big creek, really, and three more ‘NO TRESPASSING’ signs face over the streambed into the orchard’s parcel as if perhaps Leland thinks I might be assembling a band of marauders to come and raid his little village. I think for a second it would be funny to stop and turn the signs back so they’re facing him, but I don’t. I can’t threaten this hard-won rhythm.
Little Jib is barely flowing this late in the year, and I shuffle down the loose bank and manage to hop across from cobble to cobble without wetting my shoes before bounding up the opposite side and setting off again at an easy pace along the lakeshore. There’s a feeling of wi
ldness at this end, the northern end, of our beach. The brush seems heavier, the shoreline more littered with driftwood. Like it’s been for years. Tiny plovers chirp and scatter over the sand as I approach, resisting flight as long as they possibly can before I’m too close and they’re forced to lift off in a chittering frenzy.
Another half mile and I’m at the beach house. Carol’s brother Arthur has been staying here this summer, as he has for the past few years. He takes care of the cottage, he and his latest wife, and he checks in on Carol. He’s good backup for me. Uncle Art’s car is gone, but I see he’s pulled the shutters out from under the deck to get ready to board the place up for the winter. I’d stop to go in, but there’s rhythm to be lost, and anyway, going inside can make me react in unexpected ways. The beach house is heavy with memories.
I glance at the windows as I pass, and run on.
My family started renting the Olsson cottage when I was twelve years old, the summer after Michael and I finished sixth grade. One of our father’s colleagues from the economics department at Michigan State turned him on to it. It was just about a four-hour drive from our house in Lansing, and we rented it that first summer for two weeks and again for four weeks every July after that until Mike and I graduated from high school.
Our explorations of the dunes those first two summers stayed close to the beach house. Mike and I would swim, shoot cans up in the sandy brush with the pump-action BB gun we found under the deck, or argue over who got the top bunk in the back room where we slept. A couple times a week we’d spend the day with our big brother Teddy heaping driftwood into a massive pile on the beach; if the weather held into the evening our father would spritz the bleached wood with charcoal lighter fluid and set the thing ablaze, creating an inferno we imagined to be visible all the way across the lake in Milwaukee. Sometimes Dick and Carol Olsson would come over and the grownups would chat up on the deck, mixing cocktails while we kids ran circles around the flames.
The Banks of Certain Rivers Page 7
