A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

  This is it:

  It is midnight. Toph is in bed. Carla calls me from L.A.—she and Mark have moved to L.A. Shalini’s mother has called her, and Carla has called me. I leave. Shalini could be gone.

  As I walk down the stairs, I know that someone will take this opportunity to do something to Toph. I know it every time I leave Toph home alone, which I do often now, no more baby-sitters because he is thirteen and can be left, as long as the door to the apartment is locked, and the door to the building is locked, and the back door, that which leads down to the laundry room, is locked, then he’s fine, although that lock is weak and worthless, and so of course that’s the way through which the bad man will come. He will come through the back, because he has been watching, has been waiting for me to leave, knows I will be gone for a while because he has been listening to my phone conversation, and watching me through binoculars or a telescope. And when I leave he will come in, with his rope and wax—he is friends with Stephen, the Scot, of course]—and will take Toph and do things to him, because he knows I am out to look at Shalini, who is in a coma, who fell from a building.

  I pick up Marny. Moodie meets us at the hospital.

  Shalini’s family is there, the parents, her sister, a dozen cousins, uncles, aunts, some in saris, some not, other friends. The halls, shabbily shiny, are filled with people in small clumps, sitting on the floor, walking in and out of the waiting room, which has been entirely commandeered. One of the girls there had been at the party. We learn more details. It had been in Pacific Heights. Shalini had gone with a friend. They had walked around, ended up on the back deck, outside. There were maybe twenty people on it when it went, the supports giving way, and all the young people floating down. The friend Shalini had come with was dead. A dozen others were hospitalized, or had been and were released. Shal the worst among them. By all accounts she was lucky to be alive. Her head had broken her fall.

  We wait in the hall, sitting on the floor. Then standing, walking, whispering. They are operating. Or maybe they have already operated. They have done many operations maybe—twenty, thirty, a hundred. At some point—maybe it is the next day—we are told we can go inside the closed ward where Shalini is being kept. At the entrance to the ward we pick up a receiver, and a nurse answers and another comes to open the door. We walk past other rooms and then there she is—

  Her face is broken, her eyes closed, inflamed, huge, red and purple, blue and red and purple and yellow and green and brown, her eye sockets black. She’s on a ventilator. They had told us about the knit cap, and there it is, covering her head because they shaved her head and removed part of her skull to alleviate the brain’s swelling. Her legs stick straight out, as if in splints, and are wrapped with fluid-filled leggings, blue and soft, like the masks worn during sleep—

  Christ, they haven’t even cleaned the blood off her, at least not all that shit over her eye, I mean that’s—

  But her arms are perfect. Her arms are smooth and brown, without a mark or bruise or blemish.

  There is no one else in the room. Marny and Moodie and I don’t know what to do—if we are allowed to touch her, whether to touch her or whether to talk or just stand nearby, or just say hello, or pray, or walk by and leave— Don’t you talk to the comatose? They hear, correct? Like an unborn child they hear.

  We stand on the other side of the room with our hands over our mouths, whispering sideways, unblinking, until an Indian woman, a cousin or friend, comes in and, without acknowledging us, walks straight to the sink, washes her hands, dries them, walks straight to Shalini and picks up her hand, holds it in both of hers and talks to her.

  “Hello, Shalini. Hello, darling...”

  There are already flowers.

  Shal’s mother comes in. She tells us that we have to wash our hands. We do, and then walk to the bed and touch Shalini’s perfect arms. They are warm.

  After a few minutes we are ushered out. Zev is in the hallway.

  We tell him what we know. He’s bouncing from one foot to the other, bug-eyed, nodding a lot.

  We wait.

  Days pass. Her chances are bad, then good, then iffy, then better, and soon the doctors become confident that she will at least be stable, though still comatose. No one is sure if she will pull out. The fall was so bad. She was standing on the platform and she— We did not know the girl who died, but we all seem to have a feeling that we’ve been at that house, have been on that deck— More people fly in. Carla and Mark come up from L.A. Shalini’s relatives, dozens of them, appear. The waiting room overflows at all hours. We meet Shalini’s friends, her aunts, uncles, men in suits and gray-haired women in saris. We eat the food in the cafeteria. We leave the hospital and it is bright outside, it’s always sea blue and sunny, and we go back to work, and then come back, and then eat and sleep and Shalini sleeps. We bring bagels sometimes, and sometimes we feel welcome among the relatives, and other times we do not feel as welcome. Usually Shalini’s mother’s eyes are watery; other times she is pacing, arms crossed, stiff-backed, demanding things of the doctors. She is a doctor herself, and has assembled an elite team to care for Shalini. We meet Shalini’s college friends, high school friends, cousins. We’re going to the store, do you want anything? You can’t go in today. The doctors are in there. Come back tomorrow. No, we’ll stay. Why will you stay? We must stay. I have done the waiting and the vigils, and have negotiated with doctors, and have held hands and known visiting hours. I know the rules: We are to stay. And we are not to ask questions of the parents. If we want to know something, we are to ask a cousin or a friend. We are not to smile, not to laugh, at anything, unless the family smiles or laughs first. We are to dress neatly. We are to be punctual if we are expected. We are not to miss visiting hours, and not take up too much time once inside, keeping waiting the college roommate or uncle from India. Most important, we too must suffer. Everyone around the ill must do what they can, in terms of sacrifice and struggle, or malnourishment or sleep deprivation, to suffer too, and to stay close while suffering; to leave the bedside, to leave the hospital, is to weaken the curing forces, to enfeeble the efforts toward recovery. While the ill are ill, if you can be there you should be there. I know these things. Bizarre, self-sacrificing gestures are important. On days that you cannot possibly come visit, you must visit. When you get home one night, and Toph says, “So, are you going to pretend to be a parent tonight, or what?”—which he means as a kind of joke, because you two have been eating fast food for weeks, and you’ve been napping on the couch every night after dinner—you should take a breath and know that this is okay, that this sort of thing, this struggle and sacrifice, is essential, that he does not understand but someday will. And even after you have gone in to see Shalini, and have seen her cuts healing and have held her perfect small hot hand, you must stay in the hallway, talking to anyone who might want to talk—it is unclear whether Shalini’s mother wants to talk to us, or feels obligated to talk to us, but we assume that it’s the former and so we stay for hours. One day I bring a teddy bear for Shalini. I bring the tiny mohair bear that I have kept in the door compartment of my car for years, since my mother passed, because I think that there is something of her in this bear— I look into the two black pinhead eyes of this tiny, ancient orange bear, with tiny jointed legs and arms, his fur worn and scratchy, and there is something of my mother there, it being the only object that evokes her so, in an inexplicably strong way that makes me unable to look into the tiny black pinhead eyes of this bear, because when I do I think of that funny little voice my mother used when she would make this little bear talk, when I was four, five, six, when we would be playing with the bears in the little house she had built and decorated with tiny furniture for them, when she would get one of these little bears out, put him in front of her mouth, and, in a high gravelly voice, say “Hello,” and then “Let me tell you a secret,” she would say, bringing the bear close to my ear, allowing me to imagine what secrets he was uttering—I would feel the tickle of the coarse fur on m
y ear and would giggle crazily— it would drive me mad with astonishment, rapture. I would absolutely lose my mind. And so one day I take this bear from the car, move him for the first time in maybe three years, and I bring him into the hospital, his prickly fur like a burr in my hand, and I will go in to see Shalini, who is sleeping, with the wool cap on, on the walls pictures of her standing and happy with her mother, her sister, her eyes now less swollen, bandages off, skin collapsing around the wounds, regenerating, and I will be in there alone and I will nestle the bear in between her arm and torso, and I will back up and see the bear sitting there, no more than four inches tall, its tiny black pinhead eyes staring back at me, and will feel pious and proud and will let myself believe that it means something that I have done that. That the bear will be magic and I will save the day and bring Shalini back.

  Another day John, who does not know Shalini, calls to offer his condolences.

  “I read about it in the paper,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re going to nail that landlord. He’s got about a hundred other violations on his record.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asks.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Pause.

  “So I was spitting up blood again today...”

  Adam Rich doesn’t want his death to be a suicide. Doesn’t jibe with his persona. He wants to be murdered.

  We settle on his being killed by an unemployed dinner theater stagehand in the parking lot of the Asp Club, a fabulous Los Angeles nightspot. He likes that, a violent death, and better yet, at a location that makes clear that even hours before a sudden and bloody death, the guy knew how to party. We will, in recounting his life, get around his long-ago substance abuse problems, while nodding vaguely to them. Instead of drugs, we decide he’ll be addicted to vitamin C, because, while starring on “Code Red” with Lome Greene, he become hyperaware of the importance of fire safety, and believed the supplements would make his skin flame-retardant. We will talk about his interest in motocross and painting, and reveal to the world that Nicholas from “Eight Is Enough” was more than an actor, that he was indeed one of the burgeoning auteurs of Hollywood—that at the time of his death, he was working on “a genre-bending blockbuster, incorporating multimedia and interactive elements”—a mysterious, much-anticipated project known around Hollywood as “The Squatter Project.” He is liking all of this, this idea of the untimely death of a genius.

  The story begins:

  It is said that to fly too close to the sun will cause you to fall. Adam Rich—actor, idol, iconoclast—flew too fast and flew far, but on March 22 he flew too close to the sun. His peers, his loved ones, and a nation mourn....

  Toph is on the couch, hunched over his history book. I am walking up and down the hall, snapping my fingers.

  “Please stop,” he says.

  “No.”

  I am wired. Big night. Sari in town. Toph going to bar mitz-vah thing, then Sari. Okay. Okay. Okay okay.

  We cook dinner quickly and then he has to change—

  “Why do I have to change?”

  “Because it’s a religious event, right. Where is it again?”

  “I don’t know/’

  “Well, did you get an invitation or anything?”

  “Yeah but—“

  “Well where is it?”

  “Don’t you have it?”

  “Me? Why would I have the thing?”

  “I never saw it.”

  “C’mon. Jesus Christ.”

  He calls a classmate and gets the details and of course we are late and he comes out of his room wearing the pants I was afraid he was going to be wearing, the ones with the ink stains on the pocket.

  “Don’t you have clean pants?”

  “I would if someone did laundry every once in a while.”

  “What? What? These were never in the wash, smart-ass. You have to put the clothes in the wash first, you little.

  “Why would I put them in the wash if I never wear them?”

  “Goddamn it, for occasions like these, duh!”

  I drive him to Union Square, to that hotel where Fatty Arbuckle did whatever he did, and when he gets out of the car I am happy to see him get out of the car, the little dickhead. I go back to the office, where Moodie and Paul and Zev are working on Adam Rich’s final interview, which we are purporting to have obtained, exclusively:

  q: Who do you admire most?

  adam rich: Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Babe Ruth—especially the Babe. Here’s this guy who everyone—players, women, alcohol—tried to keep down, but he just kept pointing to the fence. That’s kind of what I try to live up to. Every morning I get up and I point to that fence.

  q: So every morning you play baseball? a: No.

  q: Huh. Well, that’s a pretty good attitude to take. You seem to be very accepting of the peaks and valleys of the typical Hollywood career.

  a: It’s about having a vision. It’s been frustrating for me lately as an actor. The most important thing I’ve learned is that the past can be a block to the future. Q: Surely opportunities exist?

  a: Yes, but I’m not gonna throw emphasis on my past to make a buck. We have only a week left to finish the issue, not to mention the Chronicle work, a whole campaign for the paper’s columnists, due the next day:

  HERB’S BLURBS: READ HERB CAEN JON CARROLL: LET’S GO CARROLLING

  As usual, we make it look easy. I drive back to the hotel, so I can get Toph, then bring Toph home, then go back to Union Square, to Sari’s hotel. I slow down in front of the Fatty Arbuckle hotel, hoping to catch Toph on the steps, waiting for me outside. He’s not there.

  I drive around the block and when I come down Polk again and pause in front of the hotel he’s again not there, and there’s a motherfucking cable car behind me, full of idiot people hanging off—wheel—so I drive around again, and when I come to Union Square, tourist clusterfuck, I—

  Fuck it, I’ll just park underground and so I do, and then run to the hotel, into the lobby, in my shorts. I am already almost late for Sari. She will be waiting. She has to fly out tonight, she had a convention today and is flying out tonight, but by the time I get Toph and drop him off, she’ll be gone—

  Fuck. There are some kids walking out with their parents, but he is nowhere. He is not in the lobby, as other kids awaiting their parents are, and he is not on the steps, as a normal child might be, and not in the doorway, and not by the elevators or front desk. When I ask, a willowy girl in his class says that no, she hasn’t seen him for a while, but that some kids are still upstairs, maybe he’s up—

  I ride the chrome and mirrored elevator up, assaulted by the garish red carpeting, then the view, it’s an outdoor elevator, view of the whole city how nice, and upstairs the room is all glass, there are balloons sadly resting on the floor, a DJ packing up his equipment. Two kids are left, dressed up, one in suspenders. Toph is not among them. I ride the elevator down with one of them, ask him but he doesn’t know where Toph is.

  Out the front door, the steps, into Union Square, another ridiculous cable car, tourists everywhere, no Toph.

  Sari will be gone. My one chance with the sexologist, squandered by this inconsiderate little—

  I go to a phone and see if he’s called. He has not called. Back to the hotel, scan the lobby, back up the elevator, look at the view so nice, inspect the party room again, which is almost empty now, only a few parents, who look at me quizzically while I look at them desperately—but cannot talk to them because I am not them and do not know what to say—if I explain it will only confirm their low expectations of me, strengthen their fear and pity for little Toph. I ride down again, and in the mirrored elevator I look like a madman and maybe he’s dead. He was taken, of course, he was taken like Polly Klaas was taken, and is right now being molested and dismembered. Or first driven to another state. Not possible. Of course possible. It’s probable, all probable!

  Sari will not wait. Oh
to be able to just fucking once do something, be able to do something simple and normal like shacking with the author of sex manuals, just that one little thing—goddamn can I just have this one thing—

  Oh wait. That’s it. He’s gotten a ride from a friend, yes, a ride—the little dickweed, without telling me, he got a ride irom someone else. If I find him at home—

  No, no, he’s still here. Fm sure of it. I look in the hotel’s phone room, the restaurant, the bar— Why the bar? Why the bar, dumbass? Think, think! Then up the elevator again, oh ha ha what a nice view, and such a leisurely pace, this elevator, then off and in the party room, no one left. Then down, then outside. Then into the park across the street. Then around the block, and he’s definitely gone now, he’s as good as dead, been taken, of course, the same age as Polly Klaas, right? Oh God. I will become Marc Klaas. I’ll initiate legislation—Toph’s Law—I’ll start a foundation—

  Then back into the lobby, where he is standing by the door, his shirt untucked, his hair matted, looking outside, through the hotel’s thick gold glass doors, on his tiptoes.

  I grab him and say nothing until we get to the car, and inside the car with the windows rolled up—after he gives me his excuse, involving his thinking that I would be picking him up at the other door, a door other than the door at which I dropped him off, after I patiently listen, interesting...interesting...without swearing, trying not to yell— I do not want to do these things, these things are not what we’re about, no yelling, no swearing, that’s verboten, no anger, no outbursts, no threats of doing this or that, hitting him here or there—instead I calmly, slowly, softly, as if reading Chaucer to senior citizens, avail him of my way of seeing things—

  “Goddamn it, Toph! That makes no goddamn sense! The other door? Why the other door? Are you kidding me? Goddamn it! Goddamn it! Goddamn it! This shit cannot happen. Sorry pal. This cannot happen. I mean, please, Toph, please, this kind of thing is just ridiculous {raising voice, to his and my surprise] fucking ridiculous! I mean, this shit just cannot happen, there is no room for this kind of shit. [Pounding steering wheel] Goddamn it! Goddamn it! Goddamn it! I cannot be driving endlessly around the city looking for you, wondering when I’ll have to call the police, wondering what Dumpster they’ll find you in, molested and torn apart and— Goddamn it! Jesus fucking Christ, Toph, I had just about written you off, I went through that hotel ten fucking times, I was picturing you in a million pieces, that Polly Klaas killer guy giving me the finger at the trial, everything. Fuck this, man! There simply is [pounding steering wheel} no margin for error, here, my man. There is no margin for error! [Pounding steering wheel with each syllable} No! Mar-gin! For! Err-or! Listen, you know this, we know this, we’ve always known this, that the only way we can do this is with a certain amount of efficiency. We have to be thinking, we have to be on our toes! We have to be on the same page, have to be anticipating, thinking, we have to have presence of mind! Things are pulled taut, Toph, pulled taut! There is no give! No give! Everything is too tight, brother, everything is just right there, like that {clenching fists}, see that? Tight, taut [jerking fists apart, miming the testing of a knot in a short piece of rope}! Everything is pulled taut!”