by Julia Glass
1 year old: rolled off the changing table while my mother answered the phone, landed on my chin, and bit through my tongue. The scar’s still there: a tiny crescent, like the nail shard clipped off a pinkie.
2 years: while visiting my father’s cousin, an antiquities dealer in Charleston who thought she put everything I could destroy out of reach, meandered into an empty room and found, on a low table, a primitive stone head as big as a melon. Carried it all the way to the kitchen, to show the grown-ups, before dropping it on my right foot. Stone head unharmed, middle metatarsal cracked.
4: bitten in our barn by a rat I was determined to befriend. I wasn’t angry; I understood his fear. He was cornered in the grain bin and I’d been too pushy. Winced through the ministrations of the cardiologist who lived next door, but couldn’t comprehend my mother’s hysteria or the grim aggression with which my father trapped the rat in a shoe box and marched him to the car. A scalding July afternoon of beach traffic; it took us (all four of us—Louisa hissing in my ear, over and over, “Boy are you gonna get it”) three sticky hours to reach a sterile, stingy-windowed building up in Boston. Dad said we were taking the rat for a checkup but emerged from the building without the shoe box. The ride back mostly silent, my questions dodged. That night, overheard Dad describing to Mom how beheading was the only test for rabies (still true; when I worked one summer for a wildlife refuge, I hated that part of my job—raccoons and foxes, loitering like drunks on somebody’s lawn, that I had to corral and deliver for decapitation). Mourned my lost friend all night in secret. Next day, made a shrine under our privet hedge: a cross of twigs beneath which I buried a matchbox holding two cashews, a morsel of cinnamon Pop-Tart, a zebra shoelace, a snip of my hair. That same week, Mom came home from the animal shelter with four scrawny cats and moved them into the barn.
7: a violent allergic reaction to blue cheese dip, which made my throat swell up so tight the doctors threatened tracheotomy; I still remember the terror in that one alien word. Having never liked blue cheese, can’t imagine why I’d touch it. Forced by Louisa, I bet. For a year or so there, she’d trick me into eating disgusting foods by promising favors that she rarely fulfilled. A sandwich of dill pickles, Marshmallow Fluff, and paprika stands out in my mind.
10: on a Girl Scout camping trip, heading off to find firewood, trampled a nest of yellow jackets. Luckily, this is one allergy I don’t have. Stung twice on one arm, once each on lower lip, left eyelid, left ear. The ear hurt most, throbbing to the core of my brain. Eye swelled shut for two days. The perfect excuse to drop out of Scouts. I was tone-deaf to that kind of fellowship anyway.
15: to impress the boys with whom I’d broken into a public pool at one in the morning, dove off the high board completely stoned. Landed on the water like a johnnycake flipped on a griddle and was sure I had broken my nose. Mostly, I’d pulverized a slew of capillaries and bruised my left cornea. For the next week, I looked like a raccoon wearing a tea strainer over one eye.
22: on a bike in Michigan, racing with my old boyfriend Luke (we still talk on the phone: lots of silences, mostly his anger, which I often deserve), roared across what I thought was a one-way street—let the record show I was winning—and sideswiped a station wagon, plowing a foot-long gash in my thigh. Now a magnificent scar, a conversational icebreaker when I’m in shorts.
22 again: an ectopic pregnancy that threatened to rupture while I had a plum internship on a project to record whale songs on a sailboat off Newfoundland. Completely unexpected, since I hadn’t seen Luke in two months (though there was this flyboy, one sweet fly-by-night in Montreal on my way north). If I were ever to change my mind about children, I might be a little tense …
23: … though somehow, a year later—stupid, stupid, stupid—I was careless enough to get pregnant again.
Then a period of grace until now, seven years later, this. Again, at sea; so I’m told. Head trauma, fractured collarbone, assorted nicks and bruises. Two cracked ribs, three days in and out of a coma, five weeks of memory erased.
Louisa’s smart, smarter than me in the report-card sense, but whenever she’s nervous, she babbles. Today, day two of my renewed consciousness, she’s worse than ever, as if she’s burning off extra fuel. I guess she’s just glad I’m alive, and if I weren’t so drugged up, I hope I’d be touched. “So I get home,” she’s saying, “Hugh’s already asleep, I’ve had too much wine, and what do I find on the machine but one of Mom’s classic soliloquies. Something like ‘Clem’s been in a serious accident, honey, I’m not at home because I’m here with her and your father’s back and forth because there’s a hurricane off Bermuda—Ethan or Efram, I think; your father says it’s a bad sign that here we are not even August and already up to E. C and D passed us by, but B was a very close call. Great for the roses, though. You can’t speak to her, I’m afraid, but call this number, I’m giving you this number, just a second, hang on, it’s here in my purse. Is it as hot down there as it is up here? Yes, here it is, right, so call and say you love her. Will you do that, please? She can’t talk, but have them leave her a message, I’ll call you later.’ “
Louisa stops pacing. “So of course I have no idea where ‘here’ is or who ‘they’ are, but I call the number, I’m frantic, and this woman answers, ‘I see you?’ as if I’m expected to answer, ‘Aha, but I see you, too!’ Like a game of some kind. All I can say is ‘You see me? How?’ and she laughs. ‘That’s a new one,’ she says. ‘This is intensive care,’ and I freak out. I can’t believe she’s laughing.”
“That’s cute,” I say. “Like, ICU in my dreams. ICU on the Johnny Carson show. ICU everywhere.”
“More like, ICU every time all hell breaks loose. For both of us.”
“Yeah, well, life is never dull.” I’m too slow to pick up on the second half of what she said, but later, when I’m alone, it comes back and I tell myself, Remember to ask her. This is like trying to leave a footprint in sludge.
“Sometimes I wish you’d let it be. Dull. Just for a change.” She puts a hand on my leg. “Are you in a lot of pain? Can I get you anything from the outside world? Mom’s buying books, since they say you’ll be in here awhile.”
“I have a concussion. You can’t read with a concussion. And no, the pain is just sort of predictably there, not too much, not too little. I know what drugs to ask for. But thanks.” What I want from the outside world, of course, is Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. Why isn’t he here?
Because no one told him. Who would tell him? I’ve kept him to myself for months. Not because he’s not important to me. Because there’s so much at stake. That’s when I clam up.
I interrupt my sister’s running commentary. She’s acting weirdly jumpy. “Louisa? Can you make a call for me? I can’t have a phone till I’m in a regular room.” Miraculously, I recite his number.
“Who’s Jerry?”
“A guy I met who … Can you please just call him and tell him where I am?”
For once, I don’t get her patent-pending look of disapproval. “Anything you need. Today, I’m your slave.” She smiles and lowers her voice. “Your go-between.”
I feel sorry for her, but it passes. Louisa’s married, and before that, her love life was never too complex. When I see her these days, I keep waiting for her to tell me she’s having a baby. It’s way beyond time.
I don’t think Eric Slocum’s superiors would like how familiar he is, the casual way he sits on my bed, twiddling his stethoscope. He’s just told me that I was in an accident during a sailboat race off Westport, Massachusetts, on July 25. “You do sail,” he says coyly in response to my shock.
“Yes, I sail,” I say, perhaps rudely. “But I have never been in a race. I grew up around boats, but I’m not the yachting type. I’ve sailed to do research.”
“Research?” His eyebrows, raised, sprout tiny projectile tufts. Other than this hint of vampire, he is Ken-doll handsome, down to his patent-leather hair.
“Whales and seals. Until the money for my last job dried up. I was i
n California. The last place you want a state-funded job right now.”
“Ah.” He looks impressed, though I doubt he is. He writes something down. If doctors are impressed—a rare event—it’s by artists, acrobats, athletes. Any science other than medicine has the cachet of hand-me-down clothing with perspiration stains.
I want to ask again about the race but stop myself. Best not to invite more concern than I want from this guy. Now he is telling me that I was unconscious when I came off the chopper, but talking nonstop.
“What was I saying?”
“According to the EMT who took your vitals, it was mostly nonsense but weirdly intelligible.” He looks at his notes. “When I arrived, you were asking for Band-Aids and coleslaw—and there was something about ‘Krishna sloughing.’ “ He leans closer. “Are you fond of coleslaw? Are you a Hindu?”
“What I am is tired.” Is he actually flirting?
He knocks on one of my shins, as if to see who’s home.
“I can feel that. In case you’ve reserved a wheelchair.”
He laughs nervously. “Dr. A. will be through in an hour. One more night without further complications and we are copacetic. Upstairs you go.” Dr. Slocum nods at the hills and valleys of my cardiograph, sound as a Sousa march. Earlier today, I flipped through the printouts on the clipboard tied to the head of my bed. They looked more like the Tetons my first day in; a solo by Max Roach.
“Gwendolyn taking good care of you? Everything to your satisfaction?”
“Just swell. I’d turn down Mar-a-Lago to be here.”
“Attagirl.” He knocks on my shin again and, finally, leaves.
Coleslaw is the name of Jerry’s old tomcat who is missing so many teeth that he emits, when he sleeps between us, a snore as loud and jagged as a woodchipper mauling a dead Christmas tree. Krishna is the mainsail of the Gannet, orange like the robes of the bald guys who chant and beat tambourines. (Krishna’s luffing, I must have said.) The Gannet is the sailboat on which I helped record whale songs eight years ago, the summer my uterus lost access to an ovary, the summer I fled Luke and his first proposal of marriage (two reunions, two breakups, lay ahead of us yet). Not that I wasn’t working my tail off. The crew had names for everything: The galley stove was Pelée because of its volatile nature, the keel Great Whitey because the captain said it was sure as a shark. The head, my favorite, was Tricky Dick, Nix for short, because it liked to spit back at opportune moments.
I eat my entire inedible breakfast. What I am ravenous for is visiting hours. Louisa, I hope, will have spoken with Jerry. If she caught him at home last night, he should be here soon. I asked Gwen to open my curtain and turn my bed around; that way, I can see the window to the waiting room and the clock above the door. Assorted loved ones, visible from the waist up, begin to gather and mill about, like a captive school of fish. Gwen is strict, unless someone is dying. From ten to noon means just that: she unlocks the door exactly when the second hand sweeps the twelve.
At fourteen to, three short, round, Italian-looking women arrive. They try to get Gwen’s attention by tapping the glass (soundlessly, from this side). At thirteen to, a stooped elderly man shuffles straight to what must be a chair and sinks out of sight. At seven to, the elevator releases a tall blond man in a crisp suit, worthy of a magazine. He wields an enormous bouquet, a shrub, of roses. As if it were a torch, everyone else in the waiting room steps back. The color of those roses, a chaste milky pink, is so foreign to the spectrum in here (various hues of puke) that the sight of them sends a seismic tremor across my EKG. I have to smile, wondering who the roses are for, knowing—as this drama king does not—that flowers are forbidden in the ICU. No spores, no ants or earwigs, no pollen—which means no summery pungence, no visual joy. My father’s roses are the old-fashioned kind that resemble cabbages, infinitely petaled, earthy and elegant as the mistresses of kings. These pink ones, I suspect, are more like Vegas bimbos—callow, chilled beyond fragrance—but all the same, seeing them makes me long for grass and sky, for sun on my skin.
The drama king comes straight to the window and cups his free hand to block the reflections and search for someone—mother? grandmother? fiancée?… Right Side of Beacon Hill fiancée. I look around at my neighbors. Of the patients I can see—those without masks or tents—no one appears even potentially glamorous enough to merit this botanical fanfare.
Now he beams and waves. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was waving at me. Just then, my sister shows up. She looks around and then actually goes up to the guy and taps him on the shoulder. They shake hands, smiling like old friends. Side by side, they wave in unison. I wave back.
In the cattle business, they call Jerry the Fertility Wizard. In a single liaison, he can coax more eggs from your prize cow than there are loan sharks in Providence. I wouldn’t take Mel Gibson’s income to put my arm where he routinely puts his, but he does it with such concentration and dignity that, to look at his face, you’d think he was a pastry chef at the White House.
In March I flew with him to Milwaukee and watched him harvest eggs from a Holstein cow who milks the world record. One of her test-tube calves costs more than a brand-new sports car.
We checked into the best hotel overlooking Lake Michigan. We had lunch with a handful of dairy hotshots, big sweaty guys who love their bourbon and steak followed by ice cream in flavors out of a time warp (black raspberry, butter pecan, peppermint stick). I would have been happy to play Miss Ornamental, but Jerry wanted me there as Ms. Accomplished. A woman doing what I do would be, in that circle, a captivating eccentric. Maybe he figured a little extra brainy hauteur would scare these guys off from questioning his fees. From the way their eyes traveled, though, I think they took me for a Sea World Suzy Cream Cheese, the girl in a wet bikini who tosses the Frisbees.
We went back to our room after lunch and kept ourselves naked and busy. We drank two bottles of champagne, then lay back and watched the six o’clock news, Jerry’s head on my ribs, his rough hair pricking my belly. When they flashed the picture of a missing schoolgirl, he said, “The worst thing that could possibly happen to you. To a parent.”
“And if you’re not, what’s the worst thing then?” I said.
“That you’d be conscious of? AIDS. Watching helplessly while your body’s colonized by a kamikaze virus. Or genocide. Watching your family get slaughtered by your neighbors.”
“What a nice imagination you have. But what do you mean, ‘conscious of’? What’s the biggest tragedy you wouldn’t be conscious of?”
“Letting life pass you by. Living like a starfish, clinging to your one unchanging colorless rock.”
“Don’t scare me.”
“But you wouldn’t. We wouldn’t.” With his neck pulled up short on my belly, his laugh came out a contemptuous snort.
“Well, aren’t we superior. Living our lives like the glorious vertebrates we are.” On TV, another borrowed snapshot: a fireman, younger than I am, killed in the line of duty.
“But some people,” said Jerry, “say life passes you by if you don’t have children. Having children is life. Being a parent.”
“Is that what you want?”
He tilted his head back to see my upside-down face. “A few years from now. Sure.” Unspoken was a clear And you?
Was this a potential invitation? An early appraisal, like the first vetting on a thoroughbred? I looked at the TV. I didn’t say, Not on your life or Scares the bejesus out of me. I said, “Guess I’ve yet to meet a gene pool worthy of mine.”
He laughed. “Or you’re afraid of your animal self. That’s the danger of living too close to the beasts. When the idea seems repulsive to me, the idea of kids, that’s what I suspect. Like, all this education, all this cerebral honing, and I’m going to what? Fritter away my time sniffing small butts? Aiming spoonfuls of mush at drooling mouths? But even more, I think, will I let myself knuckle under to my instincts, with no more control than my ancestors down in Olduvai Gorge?”
“Victim of y
our own biology,” I said, relieved. I frisked his hair.
“But, but.” He twisted around and sat cross-legged, looking at me. “I’ll always be a Catholic, at root.”
My turn to laugh. “Doesn’t mean you have to reproduce like one.”
“I want a wild and freewheeling life, a life of pick up and go,” he said. “I believe anything can happen; there’s no individual ration of good and bad. But I can’t lose sight of God’s purpose—it’s sort of there all the time, just outside my peripheral vision. Embracing us everywhere, a grand invisible womb.” I listened to his voice slide away. I let that be the end of it, and so did he. He straddled my thighs and began to massage them, smiling.
I wanted him too much to laugh at the notion of a grand womb (why did I see a circus tent?). Before we let go again, I made him promise we’d drive to Chicago for dinner and dancing. Then I said, “Prove you want it wild.” Four hours later, we stood at the top of the Sears Tower, the image of my sequined dress, bought just for this trip, confounding the lights of the city. We talked about Africa, and I remember not saying Take me with you but teasing him instead, singing “Born Free” to the lasso of shoreline below us. Even his ambitions made me jealous when I saw how tightly they held him.
The drama king is the first to reach my bed. “Honeybee, they confiscated your flowers!” He saves me the difficulty of a reply when he kisses me, long and tender, on my mouth. I gasp, not just at the shock of being kissed like that by a stranger but because I’ve grown so used to Jerry’s beard, its prickle and rasp against my mouth. I feel like I’ve just been kissed by a Victoria’s Secret model.
Behind the guy who kissed me, Louisa gloats like a yenta, and behind her, Dr. Athanassiou makes his typically fragrant entrance. Dr. A. (which is what the other doctors and nurses call him) smells like what I imagine backyards must smell like in Greece, like plants that are green but frugal and thorny, thirst-proof succulents. Ordinarily, I find perfumed men repulsive, just as, ordinarily, I find doctors tedious. To both rules, this man is an exception. Yesterday he came to see me three times. Whenever he arrives, he stands very still for a moment at the edge of my curtain, an unspoken request for permission to enter. He never barges in or bustles around. He’s no Dr. Slocum. He asks me strange and amusing questions, like “Can you name for me the capital of France?” “The vice president of your country?” “Your favorite fruit?” “Do you habitually wear pyjamas?” “How many first cousins have you, maternal and paternal respective?” My favorite so far: “What is chivalry?” He has a regal posture, a thicket of a black mustache, slightly salted, and an accent that I like to imagine comes from Athens by way of upper-crust Nairobi or somewhere equally dashing. He makes me feel like the winning guest on a game show. I don’t think I’ve flubbed an answer yet—but he’s still being cautious. Otherwise, he’d have released me to the upstairs world of flowers and phones. And there’s the gash under the bandage on the back of my head. When I asked him how much they shaved, he frowned at me and said, “Would not a touch of baldness be but a trivial price for your life?”
