You're Not You

by Michelle Wildgen

  “Breakfast,” he said.

  He took a white plastic funnel and a long clear tube from where they were sitting by the sink and held them up for me to see. “I’m going to do this today, but tomorrow I’ll let you do it.” He and Kate exchanged a look. “Unless you want to do it now.”

  “You’d let me do this before makeup?” I asked, eyeing the tube. Where exactly was that supposed to go?

  Kate said something and Evan translated: “ ‘Well, the makeup. That’s important. This is just sticking a tube into my digestive tract.’ ”

  I laughed, but I had no intention of getting ahead of myself on the first day of training. If they offered me the option, I was watching.

  Evan showed me how to attach the tube and funnel to each other.

  “If you lift her shirt on the right side, you’ll see a little valve.” He did this, gesturing with the funnel for me to come closer. I went to the other side of her chair and bent at the waist, bracing myself on her wheelchair. I saw Kate give my hand on her armrest the briefest of glances. I took my hand off of it, bracing myself against my knees.

  But I didn’t see anything, just her pale skin, the faint marks from her waistband, and a freckle on her rib.

  “You may have to lower her waistband a little,” Evan said. He pushed her waistband down.

  “Is that it?” I asked her, glancing up. I was so close to her I could smell the faint powdered fragrance of the makeup on her cheeks. When she nodded and said yes I smelled the toothpaste in her mouth, a mix of mint and something like clove. Next to me Evan was warm and very close. I could smell the clean, laundry scent of his clothes.

  He pointed at a round white plastic ring inside her skin, with a plug in the center, attached at one side by a tiny plastic arm. Evan glanced at me and said, “That’s the valve. We call it the button a lot, I don’t know why. So now I go ahead and open it.”

  Kate said something and I leaned back a little to watch her lips move. Her bottom teeth overlapped slightly. “Don’t be nervous because of the valve,” she said. “It freaks out everyone.”

  This was a relief—I could hardly take my eyes off it. The valve was embedded in Kate’s flesh, a few inches above her navel, and the plug that closed it was the kind that holds air inside water wings. Evan took the plug by the little nubby tab and opened it gently.

  “It’s—she’s—lined with plastic. It doesn’t hurt. Now I need to insert the tube into the valve.” He steadied one hand against Kate’s belly and eased the tube in with the other. She sat silent and composed, and I tried to be as still as she was. Evan stopped inserting the tube. “You’ll feel a little click when it’s in right,” he said.

  “Now you give the can a good shake and then just pour it into the funnel.” He did both and then straightened up.

  This posture was hurting my back, so I stood up too, accidentally brushing against him. Evan moved a step away without saying anything, holding the full funnel in the air like a cocktail glass.

  “The first few days are the hard part,” Kate, and then he, said. “Once you actually start the hands-on stuff. But after a few days you get familiar.”

  “It doesn’t seem so terrible,” I said. Even to myself I sounded relieved. “It seems kind of straightforward, actually.”

  They exchanged a glance, and Evan went on, in the faster, more relaxed tone that I now realized meant he was speaking for himself and not Kate: “You can always give me a call at work if you need anything.” He glanced at Kate. I wondered if they said this to everyone, or if they sensed that I would really need it. I didn’t think I would. So far it seemed easy enough: You put makeup on; you fit a simple if weirdly intimate apparatus together. Really, except for the feeding tube, I wouldn’t do much for her that I couldn’t do for myself.

  “Or you can call Hillary, who’s the other caregiver, or one of Kate’s other friends. A lot of them are old caregivers.” He smiled at no one in particular. “No one wants to lose touch with her.”

  Kate grinned at me and said something, glancing at Evan and then back at me. I smiled uncertainly. Evan laughed and said, “ ‘They come to worship me.’ ”

  “Something about the wound in my side,” added Kate. For a moment I gazed, smiling uncomprehendingly, at her lips even after they had stopped moving. Then Evan repeated it, and I laughed. I laughed more loudly than it warranted, because I caught Kate’s pleased expression when she saw the joke was still funny secondhand, and because I knew she was making an effort for me.

  It was really very difficult getting to know someone like this. The more Evan translated, the more he spoke to me about what he was doing, the more I felt as though he and I were in conversation and Kate was off in the background. I made the effort to make eye contact with her and keep my attention on her, but really I wanted to focus on Evan. It was so much easier. And though I wouldn’t have thought a woman who could do so little for herself would need humanizing, I realized I had been reading her relative silence as aloofness. I turned slightly away from Evan now, focusing my attention on her.

  AFTER THAT THE DAY continued a lot like any other first day on the job: them showing me things and me nodding and realizing I should have brought something to write on. But I figured it would come back to me as I needed it.

  I’d been wondering how Kate spent her days. It turned out the pile of books I’d seen by the table was hers, and on her computer there was a list of folders on ALS research and fund-raising. Evan had his own computer in another room, and this one was set up for Kate, with a small round silver sensor we could stick to her forehead. She moved her head and the sensor somehow clicked what she wanted on the screen the same way a mouse would.

  “Do you do a lot of fund-raising?” I asked. She nodded and left it at that. I didn’t need to ask how she’d become interested and I guessed I would be making a lot of phone calls on her behalf. I hated that sort of thing.

  “A lot of times we have people over, and if Evan can’t get home I might ask you to help me get ready,” she said, pausing to let Evan repeat. “Do you have any interest in cooking? There’s caterers and Evan too, if you don’t, of course.”

  Why not? If someone was teaching me it might be fun. Maybe someday I’d even give a dinner party, for which I’d be flawlessly made-up. This job was going to be great for me. “I’ll definitely give it a shot if we start very slowly,” I said. There was a pause. “Like, salad-slow,” I added. She was probably the sort who thought fresh pasta was simple too.

  They were showing me around the office, which was largely devoted to filing cabinets filled with medical insurance and records, when Kate said, “I’d like to use the bathroom.”

  “Okay,” Evan said. He nodded at me to let me know I should follow, and the three of us made our way in a single-file line.

  Back in the bathroom I perched voyeuristically on the edge of the counter, as Kate stopped the wheelchair next to the toilet. Evan took her by the arms and drew her to her feet. “If you work quickly,” he said, “she can stand. Not for very long, but long enough.” Her head fell forward but she was upright, her arms still draped over Evan’s shoulders, her knees locked and legs trembling slightly. My hand reached out involuntarily toward her.

  Evan was fast—he lifted her skirt to her waist and pulled her pink bikinis to her knees in practically one motion, then gripped her beneath her arms and lowered her slowly to the toilet seat. I looked all over the place as he did this, not sure where it was best to be staring: Her face, as though I were waiting for her to show embarrassment? Her pelvis, where all of Evan’s motion was, motions that I guessed I should be learning? I had a glimpse of a light brown triangle of pubic hair, the little mouth of the valve above a sharp hip bone. I’d seen a few photos around the house of her when she was healthier, and she’d been average-thin before, but now her pelvis was an empty bowl, her thighs almost straight lines from hip to knee.

  The three of us, Evan and me standing with our hands in our pockets, Kate sitting, had a moment of awkward silen
ce. I could hear the sound of urine trickling beneath her.

  “You have to be ready to grab her if she can’t stand,” Evan said, breaking the stillness. I nodded. “She’ll tell you, and if that’s the case, then forget about what you’re doing, her pants or whatever, and just grab her and help her sit and then you can go from there.”

  “Okay,” I said. The bathroom floor was cold black-and-white tile.

  “Be very careful never to drop her,” Evan said.

  “I won’t.” I thought I would be okay. You pulled her up, held her, set her down. It was doable.

  Kate nodded at Evan as the sound of trickling stopped. As he lifted her, grabbing a tuft of toilet paper first, she told me, “Just hold on to me with one hand the whole time I’m standing. Under my arm.” Evan repeated what she said as he wiped between her legs and dropped the tissue into the toilet. He pulled her underwear back up and tugged down her skirt so he could pivot her back to the chair again. Then he flushed the toilet and I stepped out of his way so he could wash his hands.

  When he was done, I turned on the tap and wet my hands, squirting some soap into my palm and lathering up. I was scrubbing away unthinkingly at my wrists when I glanced up and realized Evan was toweling his hands a little more slowly than one normally does, and I glanced down at my wet hands and then at my face, now beet-red, in the mirror.

  “I don’t know why I just did that,” I said. Kate had moved to just outside the door, in the hall. She said something. I watched her mouth and caught the word “weird.”

  Evan hung up the towel and repeated, “This is weird, but mostly for you. I’m accustomed to it.”

  I wiped my hands on my jeans, my cheeks still hot. “I was feeling pretty relaxed till now. Probably makes you wish you had some old hand of a caregiver from an agency.”

  Kate shrugged. She was very eloquent with her shrugs. This one consisted of one shoulder lifted toward her ear, her head tilting just a little, an eyebrow raised. She had a mischievous grin. “You learn to make your own fun,” she said.

  AT THREE THE OTHER caregiver, Hillary, arrived. She was a tall, sturdy, blond nursing student with tiny octagonal glasses and a Teutonic briskness next to which I felt the urge to be rather frantic and talkative, my jokes sounding as though they ought to be punctuated with a clown horn. Nurses didn’t wear those little folded white hats anymore, but Hillary carried herself as though one sat upon her head at all times, crisp as a starched linen napkin.

  “How was your first day?” she asked me seriously. She wore her hair in a short, feathery cut, her downy earlobes unpierced and her body covered in a shapeless dun-colored T-shirt. We were all in the living room. Evan was seated on the arm of the couch. Kate was pulled up next to him, his hand on her shoulder.

  “It was great,” I said. I looked at Kate and Evan, who nodded briefly and in unison, their expressions unchanged. Were those diplomatic nods? “I watched today,” I went on. “But Evan did a fine job.”

  Evan and Hillary laughed, but Kate just smiled briefly. She said something, her expression serious. Evan asked her to repeat it, then nodded and turned to me.

  “Tomorrow you’ll get hands-on experience,” Evan said. “We try to make the first day kind of easy, but the second day we start to throw you in.” He looked apologetic.

  Hillary nodded. “They tried going really slow for one girl.” She glanced at Kate for approval. Kate nodded. “But after a month she still didn’t get some pretty basic stuff. So I got the boot camp, and so do you.”

  I laughed. “Oh, I doubt it’s really boot camp. I’m ready to get started.”

  Hillary smiled skeptically. “Great,” she said. She hung her bag over a chair and then looked to Kate. “Well.”

  It was my cue to go. I said good-bye and jogged out to my car.

  two

  AT HOME I SURVEYED the magazines on the coffee table, the turned-off television. There were no messages on the machine, which was odd. Liam almost always called on Thursdays. I picked up the phone to check the dial tone. Of course it was fine.

  I may as well call someone. I dialed my parents’ house.

  “Bec,” my mother said. “How’s your semester finishing up?” My parents lived in the same house in Oconomowoc where I’d grown up, an hour away from Madison. My mother was off from the doctor’s office on Thursdays in order to make up for the Saturday hours she worked instead. She would be at the kitchen table, sipping the decaf she switched to after nine A.M., and going over the bills, her long graying hair gathered neatly into a ponytail, her sweater sleeves—always too short, my mother was five ten—pushed up to her elbows.

  “All right,” I said. I put my bare feet up on the table. My heel stuck in something. Dried coffee was my guess, sticky with sugar and milk.

  I changed the subject and told her about my new job instead.

  “Well, it would just be a summer job,” my mother said. “You might not want to stay forever, but for the time being it might turn out you have a knack. Remember when you were eight and Kelly Jervis had that operation? You went over to see her every day after school while she recovered.” A note of satisfaction sounded in her voice. She had always been rather proud of me for that, because she hadn’t had to prompt me. My mother loved to see initiative.

  It was true that I had trooped through the yards each afternoon for a month while Kelly was in a body cast, her legs encased in plaster from hip to toe, a metal bar holding the knees apart, but in fact we spent much of those visits bickering. I could still picture the cast—and the red swell of scars that laddered up the outsides of her legs when it came off—but I couldn’t remember Kelly herself very well. The visits weren’t really on par with Jill’s visits to the nursing home. I think I always knew how nice it looked that I was watching over my friend. And truth be told, she had gotten a lot of new toys to keep her occupied as she recuperated.

  “I don’t think it’s very similar,” I said. I licked my hand and rubbed at the sticky spot on my heel, grimacing. Jill and I had been locked in an unspoken battle over whose turn it was to clean. I was the one who drank sweet milky coffee, so I may as well concede her victory and straighten up this afternoon.

  “Maybe not,” my mother agreed. “But that’s a point in its favor, if you ask me. Branch out. I wanted you to join Jill at some of her volunteer stuff but you always balk.”

  “This isn’t charity,” I retorted. “It’s an actual job.”

  “Oh, Bec. Don’t be so snappish,” my mother said calmly. I heard papers rustling.

  After we hung up I went into Jill’s room and took her guitar from its case. It was just an inexpensive acoustic from a store we loved because the owners’ golden retrievers greeted all the customers. Jill had gotten it with her Christmas money, and after a few months’ painful strumming had let it sit. But I liked to play it, though I had no apparent talent or training. I just liked the posture of it, one foot braced on the bed frame, hunched rather bohemianly over the curved wood and strumming tunelessly while I sang the lyrics to an old Pretenders song. Liam had tried to teach me a few of the chords, but I could never remember them. I remembered sitting with him well enough, though, his hands positioning my fingers and the soft tap of his palm at the small of my back. Sit up straight. I pulled my shoulders back and kept playing. Jill wouldn’t have minded, but for some reason I never asked her. Part of the reason we lived together fairly harmoniously was that we let each other’s eccentricities go unremarked. Who wanted to explain every silly thing you felt like doing? I had a carved mahogany box on my dresser filled with keepsakes from a great-uncle who had died years ago, the contents of which—chunks of uncut amethyst, a few odd seashells, some Russian coins, a Swiss army knife—Jill loved looking at for no better reason than I liked holding her guitar. I had caught glimpses of her hefting the stones in her hand and flicking open the knife to test each tool, but I never said anything about that, either.

  I strummed for a few minutes, idly singing under my breath, but I was too restless to enjoy it
. What was Liam up to, anyway? I kept thinking of Evan’s hand on Kate’s cheekbone, those careful strokes of the brush. I’d never just dropped in to Liam’s office, though I knew where it was. We’d agreed it was wiser not to.

  I put the guitar away and left the apartment again. I took a few textbooks with me, thinking I might sell them back today, and drove to campus. Wisely or not.

  A FEW OF THE food carts were still open on library mall, selling North African chicken stew or plastic clamshell boxes of pad thai or curry and rice to the stragglers who’d missed lunch. I was headed past the fountain toward the English building. Finals were almost over, and people were still lolling on the lawn with their books open and eyes closed, or hitching their bags over their shoulders and heading to the Union for a beer. The University of Wisconsin was a great school for studying by the lake while drinking a pitcher of beer. Deep down we all thought an excess of both balanced out.

  I crammed myself into an elevator with a group who all seemed to know one another. They were mostly very pale girls with rings in their noses and tattoos looped around their skinny biceps.

  On the top floor there was a communal office near the bathrooms. I peered in before knocking to be sure he was alone, and he was. He was at his desk, glasses on, reading papers. His head was propped on one fist. As I watched he reached out blindly for the coffee cup near the edge of his desk. I waited to see if he’d knock it over, but his hand closed around it and he took a sip.

  He glanced up when I knocked, looked happy and then almost instantly shocked to see me there. I hadn’t thought it was so daring to drop by without calling first. I could always say, quite truthfully, that I was a student. Not his student. But I was enrolled.

  As he came to meet me at the door he glanced out into the hallway. When he saw it was empty he drew me in and to the side, where you couldn’t see through the window, and kissed me. He pushed me back against the wall, his fingertips on my neck, glancing over my jawline, my earlobes, my collarbone. I have a weakness for men who use their hands when they kiss, and he had figured this out pretty fast. His beard was coming in, and it rasped against my chin. He smelled of soap, and, I realized, skeptically, something sweet. I stopped kissing him and pressed my nose behind his ear.