by Jill Malone
“This is now a conversation about sex rather than language.”
“For me they are often the same thing, Delvo.”
“Yes. No doubt you inhale with both hands like your narrator. I wonder that Monahan did not object to the possible drug implications of that statement. They’ve only just occurred to me.”
She laughed in a great boom, her chest heaving with reverb.
“You’re a cynic,” I accused her.
“As you say.”
“The Irish fostered a devotion to language that already existed in me, but their efforts to save Gaelic from extinction are a proof for my argument. Language evolves: Latin exists today in the root structure of Spanish, Italian and French, but we no longer speak it as the Romans did. The Irish can educate their children in Gaelic, but the language can’t be expected to survive outside Ireland. And will their children’s children speak Gaelic? Despite their best efforts, the French cannot insulate their language from corruption by foreigners, or by natives. Pidgin will exist in Hawaii for all time, but not necessarily as it was spoken in the 1960s—lazy talk transforms in slow motion along with standard English. Language will stretch, it will corrupt, it will die out; dinosaurs exist now as crocodiles.”
“Not nearly as impressive, crocodiles.”
“I’d hate to be in the water with one.”
“You have an admirable argument and if you were a poet, I might concede to your right to exert pressure, but as a teacher of language, isn’t your obligation to protect and enforce the accepted grammatical and etymological rules that govern proper usage?”
“Language as articulate communication? Can’t we strive for more than a text of proper usage? As a teacher, I must challenge them. That’s my role.”
“A role for which you are well suited, Elliot, though I would have had a mutiny on my hands if I had rebutted my student this morning with your arguments. Imagine if I’d told the class that my colleague suggests it is the natural course of language to evolve or die. Survival of the fittest words, is that it? I shall go home and have a bath, and hope that you are wrong.”
Sessions with Dr. Mya: Day 2
Nurse Crumb of the many bellies decides to drop round and bully me.
“Jane, you really are exasperating. I’ve never had such an ungrateful patient. Can you imagine, for one moment, what it must be like to nurse a girl who has not the least interest in recovery? Must you hang from your bed as if awaiting the rest of the chimpanzees?”
“I have to get rid of these pukaki leis. They’re making my head ache.”
Wielding the garbage can, she carefully dumps the pile of leis into the garbage, scrapes the remaining petals from the bedside table, and ties the plastic bag into a tight knot, which she passes to someone in the hall for disposal.
“Swell. Now can we fumigate?”
“Ever the jester,” Crumb replies. “Now, why don’t you use your dynamic mind to conjure up a phone number for anyone who might care that you’re alive in the world?”
“My head aches. How about some morphine?”
“You’re being weaned.”
“A character-building convalescence?”
“Quite. I hope it sticks.”
“Am I seeing Dr. Mya today?”
“You know you are: second session at 10:00 a.m.”
“How about a shower?”
“I don’t shower with patients.”
I laugh in spite of myself.
“Who’s the jester now?”
“I’ll have Lucy give you a sponge bath, if you like.”
“Which one is she?”
“She is the one who will give you a sponge bath.”
“Well, that’s clear enough.”
Crumb looms bedside for a moment to jot something vital in my chart, then disappears without another glance in my direction. Twenty minutes later, the pug-faced nurse rolls a supply cart into the room. Lucy’s identity clarifies; she looks as pleased as I.
“Well, thank god it’s you,” I say.
She shows me her most potent and withering glare, then scuttles into the bathroom to fill her basin. Can I really allow this midget to bathe me?
“No one else available, then?”
“Just me, I’m afraid.”
“I’m afraid as well.”
“Don’t talk, please,” she says. “This will be over quickly.”
“It’s comforting to know thoroughness is a motto here.” Stingy with the tepid water, she dampens my skin the way a gardener might mist flowers in her greenhouse.
“I appreciate your conservationist’s spirit, but I don’t want fifteen of these a day, so would you mind being a bit more liberal with the water?”
She soaks me, then seems to regret it as she hurriedly towels the excess water away from my arm cast. After applying dry shampoo, the pug rubs a towel hard around my head as if trying to grind off my ears.
“Take it easy, I’ve got a fucking head injury!”
She stops instantly, throws the towel back onto the cart, and looks at me anxiously. Probably the nearest thing I’d get to an apology. My gown set right, the basin emptied, Lucy toddles from the room.
In this nearly greaseless condition, I’m delivered to Dr. Mya’s office, where she ushers me in ceremoniously.
“Good morning, Jane. Isn’t it lovely today?”
I glance at the window behind her and note the rain has stopped.
“The view from your window is better than the view from mine.”
“Has your neurologist told you that sarcasm and edginess are typical after a head injury and particularly in the case of a coma?”
“He’s told me a lot of thi—”
I stare at her a moment, refusing to swallow or gape openly. In fact, my neurologist has urged me to be patient with the confusion, headaches, temper tantrums, and lack of motor control, but the patience of others is tested more often. Without appearing to notice my chagrin, she continues:
“Nurse Crumb tells me you’re being ornery about your treatment”
“Did she actually use the word ‘ornery’?”
“Yes.”
“Amazing. Which part of my treatment, specifically?” She dips her gorgeous head to consult her notes. Today she wears a blue pantsuit with the same brown-framed spectacles. Maybe the blue gives the effect of youth, or warmth, because she looks less rigid and exacting, though, of course, our morning session has only just begun.
“She didn’t specify except to state that beyond your resentment about the doctor taking you off the morphine drip, you didn’t much care what happened to you.”
“There’s an astute caregiver entombed inside that body of hers.”
“Is it your impression that Nurse Crumb doesn’t care about your recovery?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Do you daydream, would you say, in your hospital room?”
“Of course.”
“About what?”
“A life entirely apart from this.”
Maybe I daydreamed of the last best moments, the times when I might have chosen differently. If I’d chosen. One night Grey picked me up at the studio for a house party on the North Shore; an ex-girlfriend he’d bumped into recently had called and invited him. Cookout and free drinks, man, he’d told me. How much more perfect could it be? He wore khaki shorts with a coffee-colored Mako Surf Company shirt, T & C slippers, and just a touch of cologne.
“How’zit?” He greeted me with a kiss.
It felt like months since I’d seen him and I started laughing the moment he kissed me. The B52s’ “Love Shack” blasted on the car stereo as we cruised through traffic that balmy summer evening.
“So I wanted to invite your girl to come along, too,” Grey said, “but I figured you’d be weird about it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Would you have been weird about it?”
“Probably.”
“You should relax, Janie, seriously. She’s a nice girl, I’m a nice guy—
we’ll all be fine.”
Dusk draped cobalt blue over the island and I thought of Audrey at home reading The New Yorker in her recliner, a cup of peppermint tea balanced on her thighs. It had never occurred to me to invite her to the party.
“You’re right,” I said. “I should have brought her.”
Grey tossed me his cell phone: “Call her up. Tell her to meet us.”
“She’d planned on a quiet evening at home, you know?”
“Call her.”
I dialed Audrey’s number, waited three rings before she picked up.
“Babe, it’s me. How would you like to meet us at this party?”
“Where is it?”
“Haleiwa. Hold on, Grey’s just handed me directions to the house. Will you come?”
“Sure.”
I gave her the directions—Grey’s nearly illegible scrawl requiring extra time to decipher. She said she’d shower and leave the house in twenty minutes. We’d already passed the narrow bridge leading toward Waimea Bay and were driving through the intricate, fern-shrouded neighborhoods looking for Number 588.
Long before we saw the house number, we heard rave music pouring into the street, and the loud, haphazard voices of revelers. From the alley where Grey parked the car, we watched a girl pitch high into the air from the backyard nearest us, her mouth opened in surprise or delirium as the beer in her hand splashed over her head in a self-baptism. The hibiscus shrubs hid the trampoline from sight until we walked through the gate and saw the girl on her third bounce, a slick of beer rolling along the surface of the trampoline, and dripping from the deflated blond frizz of her hair.
“Jesus, Grey, what time did this party start?”
“Hours ago, apparently.”
Plastic runners circumnavigated the house, guarding every walkway from the throng of partiers. A girl with a squirt bottle doused a couple who’d wandered into the banana trees to make out. “Stay off the grass, you fucks! Walk on the plastic! Yes, that’s right, w-a-l-k on the p-l-a-s-t-i-c. Jesus Christ.”
“She’s one of Jenelle’s roommates,” Grey whispered as we walked toward the house on the plastic runner. “She’s extremely anal.”
“Yeah, this and other late-breaking news.”
“You’ll dig Jenelle, though. She short boards North Shore—hard-core chick.”
Inside the house the white carpets, white furniture, white paint, and white curtains nearly counteracted the myriad luau shirts these drunken white boys wore like flags—reds, blues, parrot-green, and yellow. Obviously the party had been going for hours. On the dining room table a co-ed group of ten played quarters, sloshing Jagermeister onto the table and carpet in their hysteria. In the living room a guy wearing headphones had propped his turntables on cement blocks, a loop of dance funk roaring from his speakers.
“It’s like we’ve wandered into a frat party,” I said.
“No shit. Where the fuck’s Jenelle?”
We toured the house, stopped in the kitchen where six guys were shooting tequila at the sink to grab a couple of beers, then ventured onto the front deck. On the far side of the deck, a tanned chick with orange-tinted hair lounged in an Adirondack chair, smoking a joint, oblivious to the chaos on the other side of the door.
“Jenelle?”
“Ryan, you came! I’m so glad. Sit, sit. You must be Jane. Yeah, just pull that chair over. Jesus, is this a nightmare? I don’t even know any of these assholes.”
“Isn’t this your party?” Grey asked.
“No, Kara, our roommate invited these people. Just a little cookout, she said, a few people. These fuckers have been drinking since 10:00 a.m. I wanted to leave but figured they’d try to torch the house.”
“Kara’s not the chick with the water bottle?” I asked.
“No, that’s Hannah, and my god is she pissed. It’s just a matter of time before she calls the cops. Last time I saw Kara, she was headed for the trampoline.”
“Oh. We saw her on our way in.”
In the front yard, spider lilies swayed sociably in the only section of the yard devoid of sculpted bonsai trees. I sensed the house belonged to water bottle-toting Hannah—she of the white furniture and the desperately manicured lawn. No doubt, cops were imminent.
“I’ve smuggled a cooler of beer out here,” Jenelle said. “And of course I’ve got pot, so it’s not like we have to mingle with those fucking whack jobs. I hope you guys ate dinner.”
Neither Grey nor I had, but we’d chomped dried cuttlefish and iso peanuts during the ride out, so it wasn’t like we were famished. I worried, suddenly, that I’d invited Audrey to this travesty, making it impossible for us to vanish for at least an hour. Apparently, Grey had been sharing my thought.
“I’d say we should ditch this party,” he said, “but we called Jane’s girlfriend from the road and invited her. It’d probably be callous to leave without her—unless you think she’d be into the trampoline, Janie.”
I felt my face redden as Jenelle took in the girlfriend angle. As lightly as possible I said, “You never know what might happen if she meets those tequila guys on her way in.”
Jenelle passed the joint around, and opened herself another beer. We talked about surfing big swells while the house vibrated behind us. Jenelle routinely attacked fifteen-foot swells—ten feet was the most I’d ever managed successfully. I thought most big wave surfers were demented; particularly the ones that used jet-ski tows instead of paddling out themselves—like the rich bastards who bragged about climbing Everest when underpaid Sherpas had lugged their gear, set up their camp, cooked the meals, and guided—the jet-ski phenomenon seemed like cheating to me. Still, I’d come out many times during the winter to watch surfers in wetsuits grapple with the monster Waimea swells—no tricks, no cushions—just those wild, fearless bastards determined not to be swallowed in the break. Jenelle’s knees and shoulder were scarred from a smash into coral reef two summers previously—an incident which had cost her a board. She hang-glided as well; obviously, this chick junked on adrenaline.
Over the front wooden fence peeked a few sleepy houses, a sagging volleyball net, and the pointed nose of a surfboard. Aside from the revelers, it seemed like a quiet neighborhood. Mostly surfers and fishermen settled in Haleiwa, willing to bear the commute for a chance to live near some of the most fantastic surf and fishing on the planet. Held together with duct tape, many of the North Shore station wagons, trucks, and vans—pocked with rust-holes and cardboard patch jobs—illustrated the commitment of North Shore residents.
“So what kind of work do you do?” I asked Jenelle.
“I’m a paramedic.”
Shocking.
“Actually there was an insane accident a couple weeks ago. One of the meat wagons—sirens gunning, lights lighting up the sky—shoots through a red at an intersection downtown and this fucking ancient, this old fucking man poking along, completely deaf, slams into the ambulance, flips the fucking thing over, kills the paramedic in back with the patient—who also dies—and the paramedic driving is in fucking traction right now. Word is, he won’t walk again.”
“Jesus,” Grey said in a shocked voice that may have been a response to the awestruck way she’d told the story as much as to the story itself.
What was this chick like when she hadn’t been smoking pot? Beyond the deck, the wooden gate knocked closed and Audrey in white knee socks and a short sage dress smiled at us. Frazzled from the drive, her curls made her look vaguely hyper, or maybe it was the way her approach seemed timed to the throbbing ache of the music spun by the scrawny punk inside. She moved like a dancer or a cop: cocksure, dangerous. I realized then how much I’d looked forward to her arrival.
Grey stood and introduced her to Jenelle, who passed Audrey the pot and broke open a beer for her. I made space on my recliner, and Audrey leaned against my legs, reaching her hand back to mine instinctively.
“The party’s inside?” she asked.
“We’ve exiled ourselves,” Grey said. “Those people ar
e seriously unwell.”
He explained about the house’s inhabitants, and the agent with the water bottle guarding the perimeter. Audrey took a long swig of beer, her hand sliding along my forearm as she adjusted on the chair.
“I need a light,” she said, gesturing with the burned-out joint in her right hand.
Jenelle tossed her lighter to Grey, who lit Audrey, leaning into her to shield the flame—both of their curled heads glowing suddenly in the darkness. Above us, the cold stars arced. Audrey blew smoke into the air, and announced that she had news.
“The commissioner approved my proposal.”
Grey and Jenelle looked at me. I looked at Audrey. What fucking commissioner?
“What proposal?” Grey asked.
“Our graffiti-art project.”
“OK, but from the beginning—pretend Jenelle and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I teach art-project classes to third graders in Aliamanu, and we’ve been talking about doing a community project. The kids wanted something meaningful—you know, something more challenging than decorating for a bank promotional. Anyway, we brainstormed and formulated a plan to whitewash all the graffiti around the freeway on-ramp by Moanalua Gardens, and the kids drew a proposal for the artwork they would paint there instead. We submitted the proposal and I got a call this afternoon that the commissioner approved. We’ll have our permit and funding within the month.”
“Funding?” I said. “You mean the commission’s going to pay for the supplies as well?”
Audrey nodded, a grin swallowing her sprite’s face. “And the proposal is really exciting. The kids are going to paint a mural of native birds and plants that have become endangered by introduced species; they’ve just learned about evolution.”
Grey and Jenelle clinked beer bottles with Audrey, obviously pleased for cause to celebrate anything.
“That’s very cool,” Grey said. “We should drink to the project … maybe something sexier than beer?”
He looked at Jenelle, his eyes suggesting a daring venture. Luckily, he’d found a girl game for anything.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Let’s raid the house.”
