ZOË
Fuck! I am enormous. More than six months along. This so-called “miracle” stinks. All my clothes have stretched way out. I can’t turn over in bed so I’m stuck lying
on my side all night, like a beached beluga.
I have piles. I didn’t even know what they were until I got pregnant. I’ve changed my mind. I want to take it back. Return to sender. I don’t want to be a mother, or even a
“co-mother” like Cass says. “Cow-mother”
is more like it, at my size. I have big
tits for the first time in my life, but they’re sloppy, like udders. You bet this is bringing up a lot of
“issues”, such as: if it’s this bad now,
how is it going to be when the little bugger is actually born?
And the dreams. They’re disgusting. Birth defects, cleft palates, extra fingers,
horrible accidents, the baby sliding out of me and landing head-first on the
floor. Falling down the stairs with the
little blighter and being charged with manslaughter. Cassie’s into books on prenatal influences
now and says every single thought and feeling I have will influence the baby’s
development and psychic wellbeing. At
this rate it’ll be born with two heads.
Speaking of. Nobody knows where David is. We’ve been collecting his mail for him while
he goes on this mysterious “trip”, and not long ago he got a letter from his
sister Leslie, the crazy one. Cass
absolutely would not allow me to open it. “It’s private stuff,” she said.
Yeah, I have a sister too, and she had a
baby at fifteen and gave it up for adoption.
I think she popped a mainspring mentally over that episode, although I
know it’s the “noble” thing to do. What
gets me is that even though this is a wanted pregnancy, or at least a planned
one, I still have all these lousy negative feelings – “ambivalence”, Cass calls
it. We still can’t agree on a name. I don’t want to call him something that will
be an embarrassment to him later on in life.
Cass came up with a real ring-a-ding-dinger the other day – “Cassidy”,
which she called “a variation on my own name” (like hell it is! Cassie’s real name is Sandra. As a matter of fact, I saw her high school
yearbook and she used to sign her name “Sandee”.) I said, “Yeah, and he’ll be called Hopalong,
you wait and see.” “No she won’t.”
And that’s another thing. The sex
of this baby changes like lightning. We
could find out the sex any time we wanted to but Cass thinks it would create
“gender expectations”. So how is it when
Cass refers to the baby, it’s always a “she”?
If it is, we should consider Susan Sandra,
a combination of our old rejected names.
At least it’s honest, and less pretentious than the Gaias, Indigos,
Quades, Netonias, Velvas and Willows that Cass keeps on coughing up.
Who’d want to name their kid after a tree?
First
I got a terrible letter. Even the handwriting didn’t look right (though at the
best of times David’s hand looks like a long line of frazzled wire). It was almost like a satire of someone who
was mentally ill, so at first I actually felt some hope. Then I realized with a sick feeling in the
pit of my stomach that he was running true to form – turning into every other
crazy person I had ever met, though expressed in somewhat more articulate
terms.
“God couldn’t be everywhere,” he opened
cheerily, “so He created Satan.” And I
thought to myself: Jesus God, he’s even
doing the Satan bit. That line is so old
and tired, right up there with space aliens controlling your thoughts. Next he’ll be wrapping his head in aluminum
foil to keep out the negative vibrations.
It was a long rambling thing about Leslie
and life and bitterness and music, maybe based partly on Beethoven’s
Heiligenstadt Testament (David can be
dramatic), but with real raw anguish peeping through. And there were clues as to where he was. A hospital.
A psych ward. I was a little
relieved. Not living under some bridge,
or jumping off one (there are too many bridges in this town). Even in his letter the place exhaled the same
grey atmosphere of every psych ward I’ve ever been incarcerated in, and seemed
to be full of the same Nazi doctors, not that David’s current perception of
people is very accurate. In our illness,
we are all the same, even surrounded by the same henchmen, prison guards with
their own sick need to
It didn’t take much to figure out which
hospital. There were these cryptic
references to Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of
the Animals, a mention of an August birth-date (and he always claims that astrology is bunk
– so how does he know which sign is which?), and howlingly, a statement: "I’m telling the truth” – in other
words, “not lyin’”. So he did want me to
come see him in the Lion’s
I had to hold my breath to keep out the
stink of grey broccoli served on dull green, scratched plastic trays, hold a
shield against my eyes to blot out the sight of shuffling bathrobed inmates,
name and number dangling from their wrists like newborn babies. The same East Indian woman on the pay phone,
howling in a universal language of grief that she wants to go home. The same smug, rotund European doctor striding
the halls, Dr. Pavlov (Mengele?), heavily accented, hair full of oil, out of
touch with the decade, if not the century.
Still touting Freud. Still
dirtily referring to penis envy and getting a hard-on behind the desk with
young female patients while plying them with questions about “ze orgasm”. Oh, I
shouldn’t be bitter, but sameness infuriates me. The lack of change. How long has it been since I’ve been in –
seven years? All the cells of my body
have changed since then, so supposedly I am a new person. But the memories are old as bedlam. Craziness is craziness, a sort of psychic
bailing out. And people act that way, in
part, because they are expected to. It’s
part of the etiquette of the deranged.
I went through the usual heart-thudding
process of getting lost in the place,blundering into rooms blue with forbidden
smoke billowed out by coughing dowagers in for the fifteenth time, missing
their Yorkies. All wearing the same
straining mauve polyester I remember from other places, other times. But when I found him my heart didn’t
sink. He was even wearing clothes and
looked clear-eyed. Shockingly – no,
horrifyingly – I felt a sudden, massive rush of sexual desire, unstoppable, and
for the thousandth time thanked God that women don’t get erections. “Hello, David.”
“How are the cats?” (He’s going to be okay.)
“Fat and happy and unconditionally loved.”
“Clara eating?”
“Like a veritable fiend.”
“How’s Stanzi?” (Oh my God.)
“David. . . “
Then he wept. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let her out of the
house. She died in my arms. I always do this. I have a demon. My mother always told me – “
“Your mother was insane.”
“Bad choice of words, Lucy!”
“David, you’re not nuts. You’re just having an el foldo.”
“Is that the technical term?”
“Yes.
This is all about Leslie and the past.”
“Leslie.
I crushed her too. I pushed her
under the wheels as surely as I killed my Stanzi.”
“Get me some air freshener. I think I smell bullshit.”
For just the flickering of a second, I
thought I saw a suppressed smile in the corner of one eyebrow. The old, ironic David. Then the curtain closed again.
“You don’t know the whole story, Lucy.”
“Isn’t it time you told someone?”
“They don’t believe me. The memories just came flooding back when I
landed here.”
“So they’re calling it ‘false memory
syndrome’?”
“Sort of like that. Maybe they’re afraid of lawsuits. God, I wish I smoked.”
“You’ll get used to it,” I said, waving a
stray bedroom slipper at the creeping blue haze from the next curtained-off
bed. We heard the hollow boom of a
juicy, phlegm-rattling cough, the sound of suicide on the installment-plan.
“I used to sit with her on the front-porch
swing,” he began dreamily, and then I knew it would all come out in one piece,
so I waited. “It felt as if we were the
only two people in the whole world. She
understood Rachmaninoff, and Liszt. God,
you should have heard her at the piano.
Her Scriabin was like a dream. My
thug of a father wanted her to play show tunes for his stinking gin
buddies. Did I tell you she was a
composer? Just like Clara
Schumann.” He covered his face with his
hands. A nurse barged her fat head in
the door and twanged, “Yes or no?”
“Yes,” David replied miserably.
The head popped back out.
“My God, they still do that?”
“They’ve brought it back. Too many constipated patients. You know, from all the meds. I haven’t gone in three days.”
“Everybody lies.”
“It’s just easier to say yes.”
“I know.”
“We’d sit with our thighs pressed together
and - . My God, it was like a desert island.
An escape from all the lunacy of the world. You know what I looked like then?”
“Gilligan?”
“Worse.
Gollum from ‘Lord of the Rings’.
Just disgusting, skinny with bad skin and a stutter. Leslie didn’t mind. She was my haven.”
“So now you’re going to tell me that things
got out of hand and you’ve been destroyed with guilt ever since?”
“Lucy, try to understand. We never talked about sex in our house – I
mean never. My mother probably bathed
with her clothes on.”
“That’s the kind of house where it
happens.”
“It was as if we had discovered this
transporting miracle of sensation.”
“Orgasm?”
“We didn’t even know what to call it,” he
said dreamily, probably turned-on. I
felt an uncomfortable tightening between my legs and wondered once again why
the sexual urge is so arrogant. No
wonder it leads us into temptation, not to mention abuse.
“You didn’t rape her.”
“Of course not. We kept our clothes on. But it’s amazing how much – “
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“We know what kind of damage incest
does. And I know it happened, no matter
what kind of theories are floating around in psychiatric circles these
days. Look what happened to her,
Lucy! One psych ward after another. They say she has a ‘chemical imbalance’ and
that it’s probably ‘genetic’. Well,
that’s just the flavor of the month.”
“I know.”
“Maybe the whole family is crazy, I don’t
know. Dr. Karlov keeps on talking about
‘confused boundary issues’, as if the whole thing boils down to geography.”
“Maybe it does. Proximity, hormones, a wretched adolescence.
. . Did you smoke up?”
His eyes flew open. “How did you know?”
I shrugged. “Me and Andrew. . . “
“My parents would have had me killed, or
at least incarcerated. But it was only a
couple of joints. We pretended we were
Berlioz and Harriet Smithson.”
“Was it ‘fantastique’?”
“Lucy!”
But then he smiled, an awful, subversive, lifeward, resurrecting smile,
and then I really did know that he would recover.
“I know, I’m terrible. But the truth is, I’ve been there. You learn to laugh or die.”
“Well, the meds are finally kicking in.”
“What are you on?”
“Lithium.”
“Prepare to get fat.”
“It’s just a trial. God, you should see the size of the pill,
like an elongated golf ball – “
“And the blood tests!”
“And the shaky hands.”
“And that funny taste in your mouth, like bug
spray – “
“It’s only a salt,” he said defensively.
“Yeah, and booze is just rotten
grain. Lithium changes you.”
“But it doesn’t take away the pain,” he
murmured.
“Nothing does. “ I brushed back a stray
lock of his hair, which looked surprisingly clean. “Well, time does. Determination does. This is just a way-station, David. All part of life’s rich pageant. You don’t live here Remember that. Hey, you don’t even own a Yorkie.”
Then – miracle of miracles – a clap of
thunder, a carillon of life – he laughed!
“But the cats miss you, David. Come home soon. Maybe you and Leslie can talk.”
“She’s beyond hope.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Maybe she’s like you – a tough little
customer. She has her music and her
intelligence. Those are both powerful
saving graces. Look at Beethoven. Deaf, ugly, unlucky in love – “
“Today we’d call him socially challenged.”
“And he made art. No matter what. He wrote about joy, the crazy bastard.
What did he have to be joyful about?”
“His Immortal Beloved.”
‘Phah.
She didn’t exist in fleshly form.
He was in love with art, so passionately that art incarnated into all
that incredible music.”
“You should make a movie out of it.”
“Someone already has.” A beat.
“Get better, David.”
“I’ve missed half the season.”
“They’ll understand. Even Beethoven needed time off.”
“I’ll be so out of practice, I’ll – “
“You’re better already.” I kissed him, and left.
So Jesus and cats aren’t the only creatures that resurrect. Some of us are doomed to life. To stick our hearts back in, even upside-down if we have to, and carry on.
I have a new theory about life – not
original, really, but taken from anthropology – “punctuated equilibrium”,
meaning that things go along, and go along, pretty much the same, in a state of
boring stasis, and then – boom! Change,
change, change. Everybody changes
chairs, so to speak.
When I finally did get together with Lucy
she seemed kind of tapped out, even a bit fed up with her violin, and totally
drained by David who is now on the mend, thank God. He apparently received some sort of crucial
letter from somebody and it let him out of the trap, so to speak. But I know Lucy. She gave him a transfusion and it worked, but
at what cost? Lucy has a way of
receiving other people’s pain, but in so doing she becomes a sort of receptacle
for their psychic poison.
Meanwhile, I’m the one who’s up on the
see-saw now, with my new venture in midwifery (at last! Something lifeward, creative in the most
primal sense). Let’s face it, I need the
extra income, and the thought of assisting at births absolutely fascinates
me. The training will be relatively long
and I’ll have to sit in on a lot of births, but I can’t think of anything more
enthralling and renewing.
But it’s the other big development that
really has me humming. And the hard
thing is, I really can’t tell Lucy about it, not yet anyway. It was just one of those things but it has me
foaming like hot cappuccino (can you believe what this has done to my
brain?). We ran into each other
completely by accident, but I knew him from when Lucy introduced him to me
several months ago.
Rafe Williams.
My God, Lucy was right. Perhaps this guy is only good for one thing,
but what a genius he is. Why shouldn’t
there be sexual savants? Talent shows up
in every other field of human endeavor.
Why not this one? He plays me
like a cello. I am humming with hormones
and maybe now I understand Lucy’s ripe, bursting state a few months ago. I only resented it then. Oh, of course Lucy picked up in a flash that
I was seeing someone; frequent orgasm affects the skin, not to mention the
aura, and she saw the glow before I even opened my mouth. But I played it canny and didn’t reveal a lot
of details “because I’m not sure it’ll work out long-term”.
“Who cares?” Lucy replied. “I’m just glad one of us is getting
some. Too bad it always seems to be one
at a time.”
“Your time’ll come.”
“I hope not. I have enough to do taking care of David.”
“You’re not – you know – “
“With David? Are you kidding? That’d be incest.”
“But haven’t you – “
“Oh, shut up. I hate psychics. They’re always in-seeing into stuff that’s
none of their beeswax.”
“Fair enough. Urges don’t count anyway.”
“Good thing too, or we’d both be
arrested.” We guffawed in the old,
belly-rocking way. Like old times,
except that life keeps on rocketing us forward, events unfolding like
labor-contractions that squeeze the course of
life ahead and ahead. No one
warned me that birth would keep on happening, perhaps unto my death.
There are times when seeing everything is
an anguish. We have no way of stopping time, the speeding flow of events. It frankly sickens me to know what lies ahead
for Lucy, even though I’m supposed to be more evolved than that. I should be able to see that it is all for
the best, that everything happens for the sake of gaining wisdom and strength. But at such a cost! I look at God and wonder, “What can she be
thinking of?” She is to me as water to a
fish, my ground of being, but I cannot understand her mind. All things seem settled, then – change,
change, change, and not always for the better.
Lucy will be grateful for all her strength
in the coming weeks, but events will still stretch her moral fabric as far as
it can go, and farther. “Stretch marks!”
she’ll cry, never quite losing her grim survivor’s sense of humor. Comfort will come from an unexpected source,
and as always in these cases, grace will flood in. Lucy will stand in church with tears
streaming down her face, singing, “She comes sailing on the wind, her wings
flashing in the sun/On a journey just begun, she flies on.” And for the first time she will know in her
core what those words mean. Having
developed a strength, she will now be called upon to use it as never
before. And yes, I see the beauty of
it! And yes – how I wish I could spare
her completely from what is about to happen!
You could have gagged me with a
feather. At rehearsal the other day,
there he was, the prodigal son, David, sauntering in as cool as can be,
blithely ignoring the palpable wash of concern swirling all around him. He came in and stood there by his chair for a
moment while everyone held their breath and tried very hard not to look at
him. Then – horror of horrors – he began
to slowly unbutton his shirt.
One button.
Two buttons. No, no – three.
Then: “Nah,” he said, “I’ve changed my
mind,” quickly buttoning himself back up again.
The room burst into spontaneous applause and David, grinning like a
fiend, took a bow. So things are back to
normal, as we like to call it.
I don’t notice any difference in his
playing, but then that’s not surprising, since he’d rather practice than
sleep. He does look good. Something must have happened when he read
that letter from Leslie, though God knows what was in it. He just sort of went back to his natural
color again. Obviously he doesn’t want
anyone to make a fuss. People expect
oboeists to be a little weird anyway – it’s from forcing air into that tiny
little reed. A chronic lack of
oxygen. We’ll call his absence an
“oxygen leave” and let it go at that.
And to think we almost lived together
once. We tried it out for a few days,
but I couldn’t stand the way he counted out his Spoon-sized Shredded Wheat into
the bowl every morning (there had to be exactly twenty-four biscuits to match
the caloric count on the side of the box.
I know Beethoven used to count coffee beans, but this was too
much.) He said I had “breath odors” in
the morning. Well, his feet smell. I don’t care if he’s a musician, he sweats
and farts like anybody. No wonder he
lives alone.
I think Zoë’s pretty okay,
considering. We have mere weeks left and
I try not to think too much about the actual event. We’re trying to arrange a home birth because
hospitals are so awful, I don’t care if they’ve improved, it’s all that
technology, fetal monitors, unnecessary episiotomies, etc. Enough to scare the hell out of you at a time
when you’re supposed to be calm. She’s
down to a pack a day which for her is a miracle. But it could affect the size of the baby,
whom at the moment is named Calista (though Zoë calls her “Calista-my-ass”).
Zoë’s tongue could open letters. My suggestion of Cassidy, a variation on my
own name, was shot down immediately.
“Why not call it Cassette?” she
snarled.
I didn’t appreciate it.
Bad dreams last night. Way bad. Dr. Pavlov won’t leave my head. I was “assigned” to him (or he to me) every
time I landed in Silverbrooke nut farm.
Which was often. The two of us
together were a bad match; he’d talk to Michael about me while I was in the
room, as if I were a bad dog at the vet’s.
“What is your first memory?” he asked in the manner of an interrogator,
fingering a pencil in a way that seemed vaguely obscene.
There was no hesitation. “My father sodomizing me when I was three.”
His lips tightened. I had a gauze bandage with salve under it
around my neck, to ease the burn from my bathrobe cord.
“Memory doesn’t go back that far,” he
stated. “It begins at age five.”
Thus, the price of visiting David in the
psych ward. Dredged murk from a seething,
stinking past. I’ve been jumpy lately,
the “no-skin-on” feeling. During my
session with Zoltán I was attempting to play Grieg’s lovely Ich Liebe Dich, and even with my raw
tone and jittery bow the sheer greatness of the music started to get to me and I
felt my face swell with incipient tears.
I felt the need to explain myself to
Zoltán, who was leaning his eyeballs on me questioningly.
“It’s just an anniversary reaction. Sorry.
All those years ago. I lost a
brother, a musician.”
“So did I.” The tiny soft hairs on my face stood at
attention. It was the last thing I
expected to hear.
“His name was András,” he said. “A great flutist.”
“But this is impossible. So was Andrew.” I gulped. “I mean, he played the flute.”
“Yes.
András, he. . . took his own life nearly twenty years ago. “ Zoltán’s
voice was unusually flat. “I found him
on the floor. It was on my uncle Gábor’s
farm. He raised foxes.”
Something crept along my neck as the
memory flashed through my head – Monika, the coffee shop, the pen, the
psychometry. A blue carpet with a diamond pattern.
“He had a gun. He was. . .” He waved his bowing-hand as if
trying to banish a cold, bad power.
“Then two years later, I lose Anika.”
I looked at him questioningly.
“My first wife. Dead from cancer. She was going to have a child.”
“Zoltán, I don’t know what to say. That’s so – “
“I was very sick for a long time.”
“Of course.”
“Then I start over. Here, in
“She’s a lovely woman, Zoltán.”
“And you.”
“Thank you. But you’re only as good as the company you
keep.”
We smiled at each other, a little
tearily. As he lifted his violin, time
stopped. Freeze-frame: on his left
forearm, a blurry smudge that once might have been a number. A long piece of memory, or something more
mysterious than memory, pulled itself out of my brain like a knotted hank of
yarn:
Anyone dark was in trouble then. Selling a horse, or, worse, playing a fiddle
was suspicious. Any interest in the
psychic arts had the smell of suspicion too.
It almost didn’t matter whether his family was Romany or not. Their eyes were the wrong color, they were
musicians, they were full of charm and a defiant joy in being alive, so off to
the camps they went, guilty by association.
He brought me out of my dream. “And now we play.”
“Yes, we play.” The two stringed voices, one raw as green
wood, the other dark honey, twined in a soft remembrance.
REV. MARIAN CARSON
The phone rang
at
“Mrs. Sandner has been kind of, well, I
hate to use the term hysterical, but I don’t know what else to call it,” the
voice said, sounding appallingly unconcerned.
“She was down on her knees just – I don’t know, making this sound, it
was kind of freaky.”
“What happened? How did she get there?”
“Oh.
I’m afraid there’s been an accident.
Her daughter Kate has been injured.”
“How badly?”
“She’s in the ICU right now and is resting
comfortably.”
“But how – “
“It’s Mrs. Sandner I’m concerned
about. We wouldn’t normally call you at
this hour, Reverend Carson, but she’s been calling for you. This is a bit of an emergency. We wouldn’t want to have to put her in the
psychiatric ward, but she just keeps on making that weird sound. She won’t stop.”
“Is she screaming?”
“Oh, no.
Nothing like that.”
“Is she hurting anyone?”
“No.
But it’s just so odd, and it’s disturbing the people around her. She won’t even let us sedate her.”
“No, don’t sedate her. And do not, I repeat, do not put her in the psych ward. It’s the worst possible thing you
could do. Try to put her in a quiet room
somewhere and I’ll be over as soon as I possibly can.”
Keening.
That must have been what they were trying to describe, and I heard it as
I raced down the hall to the emergency waiting room. The only sound I can compare it to is the
prolonged shriek of a dog that has been hit by a car. But this was worse; it was human. Lucy sat clutching her chest as if in
physical pain. A nurse stood rigidly
over her and several onlookers gawked in open fascination.
“Can we go somewhere alone?” I asked the
fat stolid nurse.
“Sorry.
No space.”
“Leave me alone with her, then.”
“She refused the thioridazine.”
“Just leave us alone. Please.”
I sat beside her and began gently rubbing her back as the keening
subsided into deep shuddering sighs. I
wondered if she were even capable of speaking.
“Lucy, Kate is alive. They told me she’s in intensive care and
they’re looking after her. She’s alive. Can you tell me what happened?”
“It’s her head.”
“Oh, no.
Lucy.”
“She and Brian went to a party
tonight. I don’t even know exactly what
happened. But the police said it was the
other guy’s fault. Drunk driver. A
head-on collision.”
“Is Brian – “
“He didn’t make it.” She doubled over. Then sat up, trying very hard to compose her
shivering breath. “His parents just
left. It’s her head, Marian. It looks like there’s going to be brain
damage. That is, if she makes it at all. Oh Jesus, Jesus.”
I grabbed her hands and repeated with
her: Jesus; Jesus. There was nothing else to do. Her keening, quieter now, sounded almost like
singing. I knew the hospital would
disapprove, though she was hurting absolutely no one. Then I began to pray out loud, almost as an
automatic response:
“Dear God, there are times when we don’t
understand why we must endure suffering such as this. We ask that you sustain Lucy in this time of
terrible trial. Be with the doctors as
they. . . “
“Save Kate,” Lucy broke in fiercely.
“Dear God, we ask that you guide. . . “
“Save Kate!”
“Save Kate,” I sighed. “God, just save that girl. I don’t care how you do it. Just bring her back.”
After a moment, Lucy said in a shaky
voice, “That was the most politically incorrect prayer I’ve ever heard.”
“Good.
Maybe the big lug will hear us.”
“It’s worth a try. A minute ago I said, ‘Look, take me. Take me instead.’”
“Understandable, if illogical.”
“Too bad it doesn’t work that way.” At that moment a distraught-looking
dark-haired man burst into the room.
Lucy jumped up as if jolted with a current, then rushed into his arms.
“How did you get here? I thought you were
in
“I was already here on business. Remember?
Every three months. I just
happened to check my messages from home.”
“Thank God.”
“Is she alive?”
“It’s her head.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, no.”
“But she’s alive, Michael.”
“Dear God. God-damn it.”
I have noticed in the long course of my
ministry that even atheists become religious in their blackest moments, salting
the air with curses indistinguishable from prayer. God, Jesus, damn you, help us. The two of them were one body, the moment
almost unbearably private.
“I want to see her,” the man said.
“We can’t. Not yet. They’re going to operate.”
“Fucking Christ.” Michael suddenly unclasped Lucy and turned to
me. “I’m sorry. You’re the minister,
aren’t you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks for being here,” he said, meaning
it.
“I wish I could do something,” I replied,
feeling that too-familiar sense of utter powerlessness in the face of raw
fact.
“We’ll be here for hours. You don’t have
to stay, Marian, you’ve done enough,” Lucy said, looking much calmer. All she needed was for someone to hear her.
“I don’t mind staying a while.” We smiled at each other. Smiling, in the midst of all this. But that’s what we did.
And we sat for an interminable, timeless
time in that dull institutional room until a doctor came to tell Lucy and
Michael that it looked like Kate would live.
Lucy’s legs gave way and Michael lifted her up off the floor and the two
embraced, sobbing helplessly. Then I was
able to leave them, praying from my depths that love and health would win, that
Kate would somehow be all right. “Save
Kate,” I said aloud again, and it was the only possible prayer.
Sometimes I have a lot of trouble with this God Lucy claims to believe in so fervently. When obscene and perhaps irreversible damage is done to a complete innocent, how are we to continue to have faith that something good is guiding our lives? But it was Marian Carson Lucy called first, not me. Not that this is any time for jealousy.
She needed me to lay hands on her
daughter, her Kate, as she lay in a coma, her soul still puzzling over whether
to leave or stay. I wanted to convey to
her, through touch, through love, through whatever healing power I possess,
that she is needed here more than she realizes.
That this is not a decision to be made lightly.
Kate’s delicate young face is battered and
purpled almost beyond recognition, her fractured head swathed. A respirator breathes for her. Lucy has barely left her side and even spent
a night dozing in a chair by her bed, which she was not supposed to do. The nursing staff looked the other way –
“they don’t want me acting weird again,” Lucy said sardonically by way of
explanation. I think she’s remarkably
calm and composed for someone who has just had her heart ripped out by the
roots.
Michael hovered around the room exuding a
palpable air of anxiety while I attempted to reach Kate. I sensed her far out of her body and it made
my skin prickle. Does she know how much
these two people love her, need her to continue? (Enough to accept her back even in impaired
form?) Will she re-enter a damaged vessel
and live out the soul-changing consequences, or flee into some kinder, if
less-known dimension? It comes down to
courage. Kate is awfully young. I just
don’t know. I want her back for Lucy’s
sake, but she may never be the full Kate, the whole Kate, ever again. Is this a worse calamity than death?
But Lucy – Lucy’s no quitter. Michael won’t leave her during this; I can
sort of smell it. They’re in this
together. Both are gut-stubborn, beyond
all reason, and I am beginning to think stubbornness is a prerequisite for
getting through life intact. It’s a
stark refusal to let the dark side win, and it wants to. Believe me, it wants to badly. Brian has already crossed over, and he’s
confused, disoriented, feeling lost.
I’ve asked Lucy to pray for his soul, but she’s sort of busy right now,
busy drawing her next breath. It’s
taking everything she’s got to face the fact of this, the bald immoveable
fact. She will wake up in the morning
and at first she won’t remember, then will slam up against the fact once again,
and will steel herself. She’ll get mad
later. She’ll fall apart later. She’ll hate God, or not, depending on the
outcome. She’ll live through this,
changed badly, forced out of shape, but generally whole. Stubbornly, angrily whole.
It’s
not that bad. Really. I think I could get used to this. It’s such a light, loose feeling, and you can
go practically anywhere just with a thought.
You can even contact people, but only certain people. An old, old woman who lives six houses down
from us suddenly sat up in bed last night and said out loud, “Kate.” I told her it’s okay, I’m not a ghost or
anything, just on a very loose thread, and she understood right away, being a
veteran of such impressions.
Then I met Andrew, Mums’s brother, even
though I never really knew him in life.
He’s nice and not at all weird like he was on earth and seemed glad to
see me, but really worried about Mums. I
can sense them in that place down in the old solid fleshly dimension where I
used to be, and they’re dithering around in a panic. I wish they wouldn't. Even after this short
time I already think I know what “heaven” means. There’s such a sense of love here, of love
abounding, love absolutely unlimited, and I’m seriously tempted to stay. The doctors down there are talking about a
“brain-stem injury” and I have a feeling that means I’d be substantially
handicapped if I went back. But how can
I leave Mums and Dad? Mums in particular
has been through enough already. This
episode has pulled the two of them back together in a way that’s nothing short
of miraculous. Andrew asked me if I was
up to the challenge and said that if I turned it down this time, another
opportunity would come up in my next life.
I am only a violin. To some minds, a mere piece of wood.
Yet to Lucy I am a presence.
Would it surprise you to learn that she is still playing me, needs to
play me, to keep up her sessions with Zoltán every week and to practice her
etudes while the world crashes down around her ears? The surgery was a partial success in that the
pressure inside Kate’s skull was at least temporarily relieved. But no one can say when she will wake
up. (At her worst times, Lucy
substitutes “if”.) She keeps vigil at
the hospital, murmuring quietly to Michael who gives her the only thing he can,
his presence. She goes to her job in the
afternoons, needing the sanity and structure of routine. She talks to friends, she eats and sleeps,
she prays. A terrible calm has come over
her, the calm of absolute crisis, but she knows it can be ruptured at any
moment by the crashing-in of the knowledge of what might be. A daughter dead – or, perhaps worse,
permanently changed.
Grace comes in the back door. Her friend Manny from AA drops around the
hospital from time to time just to sit with Kate. Twenty-two years ago he suffered a brain-stem
injury in a car crash and his life has never been the same. Manny does not say much, does not have to say
much, but is simply there. He does not
expect thanks.
Her friends all give her that careful,
concerned look. Mostly they are
surprised at her calm. I am surprised at
her musical focus, her resoluteness in the face of an impossible
situation. Where is all this grace
coming from? Last lesson she began to
play Grieg, Solveig’s Song from Peer Gynt, with more intensity and depth
of soul than she has ever shown before.
It was obvious that Zoltán wanted her to stop playing, to bend over and
just sob for a few minutes, get it out of her system, like being sick. Instead she did something else with the
energy, and it opened my throat to music, real music, perhaps for the first
time.
Then she couldn’t play any more. She took deep breaths and thought of
Jesus. The moment past bearing had
almost passed. She saw Christ’s face,
ate his bread and drank his wine.
Zoltán, the depth of his respect palpable, leaned subtly towards her.
“If there is something I can do.”
“There is something.”
The grave look on his face said, “Name
it.”
“Pray for her? For all of us.”
Zoltán stood enfolded by one of his
profound, respectful silences. How is it
that silence can be so malignant in some circumstances, and so perfect in
others? Lucy grew up with a cancerous,
throttled silence which came close to choking off her very life. But Zoltán’s silences are as right as the
deep pauses in Beethoven’s symphonies.
They are rests, in which one rests.
As delicately as if he were wielding a
bow, he reached out with the tip of his right index finger and touched a fresh
tear at the corner of her eye. Then he
brought the finger to his lips. His eyes
shone blackly silver, like hematite.
Zoltán knew, and Lucy knew, and even I knew in that moment that there
are many different ways of praying.
Of course! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I’d be smacking myself on the forehead, if I had a forehead. It’s the perfect way for me to be near the situation, but not terribly intrusive. In fact no one will ever know, except maybe Lucy’s friend Monika who picks up on the strangest things.
It’s been a while, after all, coming close
to 20 years, since I left the material world.
I know there are still things to experience, though I took on a lot in
the last life, being a schizophrenic.
And infancy, even normal infancy, is way more traumatic than most adults
can ever remember. Can I go through it
all again?
How can I not? It’s all so perfect. Lucy needs me close. I know somehow she’ll take some kind of a
role in my upbringing – and Lord knows the two birth custodians will need all
the help they can get.
Eternity is such a strange place, full of
unlikely thunderclaps like this one, ideas which at first seem ridiculous (and
how God does love the ridiculous), but which work out beautifully in the
execution. Soon – ah, soon I will
breathe again, feel pleasure and pain, and live through all the stages. It is yet another chance to love imperfectly,
which is the way of human beings. Why do
I yearn for it so? when this dimension is infinitely more perfect?
Because God loves broken vessels.
Because earthly life, the whole glorious
muddle, is absolutely irresistable.
Because.
MICHAEL SANDNER
God – and I’m not even sure there’s such a
being in the first place, but – God, because I don’t know what else to call you
– God, if you exist, if you are there at all, if you are the healing force
which Lucy seems to believe in so completely, please hear me. I need help with my girl. My Kate.
God, she is young. If you have
the power to do anything at all, can you heal her brain? Can you bring her spirit back?
Can you show me what to do here? Suddenly after all those years of practice I
have no idea how to be a father, a husband, a man. Everything I was once certain of has been
taken away in the breaking of my Kate. I
don’t know why you didn’t break me instead.
Kate has never sinned or screwed up or hurt a single soul. All her life she has been my joy. Why didn’t you do this to me? Do you consider this to be a more refined
form of torture, watching me squirm while my daughter’s life hangs in the
balance?
I don’t know what I’ve done to make this
happen, or what I have to do to change it.
The shock of being close to Lucy again is amazing, almost like a
miracle, but a bizarre one, forced like a hothouse plant. I never thought that it would take something
as horrible as this to make our family whole again.
So I thank you for that. Don’t leave me, because I have no idea what
to do next. I don’t know you and I only
half-believe in you but if I didn’t at least try to reach you now, I would
die. So I’ll throw it all open to you,
whoever and whatever you are. Only
because I have no idea what else I can do.
For quite a long time I really didn’t have
a clue where I was. It was like I’d been
picked up and hurled halfway around the world, coming down hard in a completely
foreign country. I didn’t feel alone
exactly – in fact I swear at a certain point I thought I saw my Katie, or at
least felt like she was around. Then
things started to settle down a little bit.
Someone was trying to get a message across to me, that what I was
experiencing is just what people would normally call “death”. It was a woman with dark hair, the same woman
who has been laying her hands on Katie.
She was telling me not to be so afraid of crossing over. But it wasn’t my choice. It all happened so fast. I don’t know why I was cut loose when Kate
wasn’t. But this woman with the dark
hair kept telling me I’ll soon have a sense of freedom, even power. Then I had the strangest sort of talk with my
grandfather, but without any words. He said he wanted to be the one to take
care of me, look out for me and help me get used to the new place – if you can
even call this a place. I don’t really
remember much about him when he was alive and I was sort of bored and fidgety
at his funeral, but I guess there are no hard feelings.
I could get used to this. There’s no pain
or struggle or worry or anything like that.
I’d really like to be able to tell my parents that I’m okay but they
don’t think anything happens to you after you die. Their minds are closed. So it’s going to take them a long time to get
over this and that bothers me. I don’t
know why people have to learn so hard but they do ask for it, that much is
clear. They want the lessons. It’s the way they’re delivered that throws people
off. I saw what they did at the funeral
and the way they handled it was to say that so long as people remembered me,
then I wasn’t really dead. They’re
getting warm. If the truth came out and
people realized that death doesn’t even exist, it’d set back the funeral
industry for sure. And people wouldn’t
waste so much energy on too much grief.
People are so grabby, wanting to own and possess, to hold on to the
people they love, when the truth is we’re all just there on loan,
temporary. At the same time, the
opposite is true in that nobody ever really dies, so we’re all eternal. It’s pretty far out and I have to admit I’m
starting to like it. I think Katie was
the best thing I ever had when I was alive, and it’s sort of too bad that she’s
the one person who won’t remember me.
But this sense of freedom and being awake is even better, because I know
it never has to end.
I have never been so exhausted in my entire life. I don’t know why it is that things can go along relatively placidly for so long, to the point of near-boredom, and then suddenly everything reverses and it’s one disaster after another. I shouldn’t say disaster, I suppose, because somehow or other everything worked out okay last night, but it was only by luck, or the grace of God, or something.
I’ve been pretty drained lately by all the
hospital visits, with no real sign of improvement in Kate. I do sense a slightly stronger connection to
her body, a sort of will to continue, but at the same time I understand her
reluctance to come back. Lucy is relying
on me a lot now to just be there as a sort of steadying influence. Last night I fell into bed at
By the time I got to the address, which
was on the bottom floor of an old house, I sensed something was wrong before I
even rang the doorbell. I couldn’t see
another car parked anywhere, for one thing.
And I could hear this faint but very strange noise, definitely a voice,
but not like anything human. More like
something out of a horror-movie, in fact.
When I opened the door a thin, white-faced young woman with long red
hair was standing there in a lather of panic:
“Please help us! It’s
coming!” Then I figured out the source
of the noise. There was this creature
rolled up in a ball on the floor in the middle of the room, a dark-haired,
nearly-nude, huge-bellied, squatting female emitting the most primitive sound I
have ever heard. The large dark gob of
blood on the blanket under her crotch told me that things were well underway.
“Where’s the midwife? You know, Dorothy Sanders,” I asked the
long-haired one. “She’s supposed to be –
“
“Not here yet. Car trouble.
She called on the cell phone fifteen minutes ago. I told her we were fine, the contractions
were still 20 minutes apart. No
rush. No rush, I told her! Then this happened. God help us!”
My first job was to get everyone calmed
down, a nearly-impossible task since I was in a barely-controlled state of
panic myself. The young woman who was
giving birth seemed barely capable of human speech except for obscenities. She kept yelling out the strangest things,
like, “Goddamn you, Calista!” and “Fuck
you, Quade, you little bastard, you’re going to kill me!” At one point she asked for a cigarette and
the long-haired woman looked at me anxiously, as if for approval. “If it’ll help her calm down,” I said,
wondering if Dorothy would fire me instantly for even saying it. I tried to put a cool cloth on the woman’s
forehead and she threw it across the room, starting up that unearthly grinding
roar that signalled the onset of another contraction.
“How dilated is she?” long-hair asked me
(in my panic I had forgotten even to ask their names). Dilated?
Am I supposed to know? I’ve read
text books. That’s it. Is there a way to tell? Yes, but – would I have to –
“It’s coming!” dark-hair roared, and she bore down fiercely,
her flesh tearing as the top of a head appeared between her legs. Good God!
Birth! Give me a catcher’s mitt
because it is happening, and I don’t have the first idea what to do. Long-hair knelt behind her partner supporting
her shoulders while she pushed and squeezed and heaved, and I tried very hard
to look like this was the way it was supposed to happen.
Lord! but birth is messy, hot fluid and
clotted blood and slime sluicing out everywhere, along with other bodily
products too fierce to mention. But when
I saw a crumpled little face emerge, all compressed in that tightly-packed
newborn way, my heart leapt with joy.
“Push, push,” I yelled as dark-hair roared and screamed. Then – it happened so quickly, a spasmodic,
twisting slithering-out of an entire whole, healthy, newborn-infant body. The birth-scream came instantly, and he –
yes, a he – pinkened up reassuringly, his tiny balled fists jerking
spasmodically as he howled.
“It’s a boy!” I cried. A small arc spewed from his tiny penis. Piss landed in my eye and both women laughed
as I tried to see his beautiful little face through a haze of pee mixed with
tears.
And then the doorbell rang, and it was
Dorothy Sanders. “Goodness,” she said,
upon seeing the strange tableau.
He really is a little beauty, so dark like
his mother, with something else about him, something almost exotic. I’d say “familiar”, but maybe that’s going a
little too far. Of course you never ask
about the father, these days. He could
even be one of those turkey-baster babies I’ve read so much about. Anyway, it all ended well, I was
congratulated, and there were deeply-felt hugs all around. Even black-hair hugged me and said,
unexpectedly, “Thank you, sister,” as if she really meant it. Then I went home, threw myself down on the
bed and howled from relief and exhaustion, elated and knocked completely flat
at the same time.
Accident, death, disruption, howls of
atrocious pain, blood, birth – what is it Carl Sandburg said? “A baby is God’s way of insisting that the
world continue.” It happens even without
us “experts” to help it along. Humbling,
I suppose, and awe-inspiring. And I am
sure this miracle will renew my soul completely, after 24 hours or so of sleep.
I took Harriet out of her case this
morning and practiced for an hour and a half.
Unable to spare the time because I knew I had to be over at the hospital
by
No doubt everyone around me thinks I am
out of my mind to even be thinking of violin at a time like this. But that’s just the point. Violin is an insistent flowering in the midst
of death, or the even more mysterious phenomenon of irrevocable change.
In other news, there has been a birth. Nothing surprises me any more now that my life is turned completely upside-down, so I wasn’t even particularly shocked when Monika phoned to tell me about her first midwifery experience. At a certain point in the story the pieces all fell into place. “Good God!” I exclaimed in disbelief. “That’s David’s baby!”
We both howled with dismayed
laughter. When she described this
beautiful dark-haired infant to me, I got the strangest feeling at the back of
my neck. I called David right away and he
was acting very strangely, not at all like the proud, puffed-up Papa I thought
he’d be.
Here’s the story. He got a call from Cassie saying everything
had gone smoothly and mother and child were doing just fine, but would David
mind waiting just a little while to see him?
Like, maybe a month?
A month? Immediately all his alarm-systems went off. Was his son deformed? Below
average intelligence? What?
“So what was it? A birth defect, or – “
“Worse than that.”
“What could be worse?”
“I’ll tell you. I came around to their place and pounded on
the door and just demanded to be let in.
Finally Cass let me through the door.
So there was Zoë looking like the virgin mother herself, giving off a
sort of soft glow of maternal care, swaddling in her arms the most beautiful
Asian baby I have ever seen.”
“Oh!
So he’s – “
“Not mine.”
“But how – “
“It seems Zoë neglected to tell the whole
truth. Or maybe she forgot. The guy’s apparently back in
“David, are you okay?”
“I’m – “ Then his voice cracked and he
began to laugh. “Well, what choice do I
have?”
“And what did they name him?”
“Martin David Zwierzchowski. At least I got second billing, even though I
wasn’t even genetically involved.”
“So what happens now?”
“Oh, you know. I’ve been asked to stand godfather. Play oboe at the christening. It’ll all work out. A hoot, isn’t it? My ‘son’.
Life is full of such delightful surprises.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“This way it’s easier. If he turns out to be a mess, it won’t be
from my DNA.”
“Oh David.”
“And at least the father’s a musician. His name’s Bill. Bill Chow.
A jazz player, but still. Tenor
sax. Wind instrument, at least, so it’s
in the ballpark.”
“You can teach him emboucher.”
“Yes, and breath control. Along with walks
in the park, deer-hunting trips and the like.
It’ll be simply grand.”
I’ve always felt that a person’s finest comes out under the steamroller, and in David I am not disappointed. He asked respectfully about Kate and listened, but didn’t reassure me or try to make the situation any better, and I appreciated that. When things are bad, they’re bad, and David is enough of a veteran of bad to know this and just let things be.
Sometimes prayers get squeezed out of you
– “no atheists in a foxhole”, as they say.
Then things happen and you wonder if God had anything to do with
it. Kate woke up today. Opened her eyes. Those big clear heartbreakingly-blue eyes. I wasn’t there, but Lucy and Monika
were. Lucy just fell down on the floor –
her knees gave way. All those cliche
things really do happen in moments of epiphany.
“Mumma,” Kate said. Her old name for her. So she could still speak.
She could sit up. She could use her hands, feed herself. She knew her Mum right away. It was enough. I rushed over to the hospital and Lucy and I crashed into each other’s arms and bawled like babies. And for just a little, blessed while, everything was perfect.
Then came the conferences with the
doctors, the vague answers to our endless questions. The truth is, no one really knows what’s
going to happen with Kate. She seems miraculously intact and we were ecstatic
to hear her speak. But it’s the speech
of a very intelligent eight-year-old girl.
“Can I go home now, Mumma?” she asked, her face crushingly innocent.
“Never mind, she’s alive, she’s okay, she’ll
get everything back,” we kept telling each other, knowing we had no idea what
we were talking about. A brain injury
can do just about anything. Sometimes
they get better, sometimes worse. The
prognosis is maddeningly vague. I look
at that friend of Lucy’s who often comes around – that Manny – and I think,
God, don’t let it happen to my child.
But from everything I’ve heard, Manny’s recovery has been nothing short
of a miracle.
The truth is I don’t want that
“differentness” in my child. That
shadow, that handicap. I want her
perfect, the way she was before, and realizing it makes me feel deeply ashamed
of myself. What kind of love is this
that can’t stretch to include imperfection?
Is that why I broke up with Lucy?
Is all this a sort of lesson?
(Don’t tell me all those New Age types are right.) Neither of us knows. We’ve fallen back into living together almost
like we were never apart, except there’s a difference. For the first time I feel truly married, in
soul as well as in body, and it is this atrocity that has brought it
about. A horrible, obscene way to a
blessed gift. Lucy is adjusting better
than I am, being no stranger to disaster.
She’s calmly making arrangements for physiotherapy and home tutoring
while I’m still trying to get my mind around the fact that Kate, my
Katie-cakes, is mentally disabled and may never be completely whole again.
KATIE
I liked it when I got to go home. We have a cat. Mumma says I just don’t remember from before. He’s a nice cat. His name is Max and he has no tail. Some cats don’t. Mumma said I could play the piano so I played it with two fingers and it was neat.
I don’t remember Daddy very
much. Something happened to my head and
it still hurts. I told Mumma about
something I found out in school. She
said said it happened nine years ago. I
don’t remember that either. I have a new teacher coming to my house now and
it’s nice. I also get to be with some
other kids who had something happen to their head, except some of them aren’t
kids. Oh I love Mumma so much. I want to hug her. Sometimes she cries and I don’t know
why. Daddy is nice too but he looks
worried all the time. I can’t ride my
bike yet but I can walk okay. This man
named Manny comes over and he’s okay but he talks sort of funny. I don’t talk like that. Mumma showed me a picture of me but it didn’t
look like me. But my face is still all
purple from the accident. Mumma says I’m
really pretty. I’m glad to be out of the
hospital so quick but they needed my bed.
I guess I’m not really sick any more, just getting better. Some friends from my old school came over but
I didn’t know what they were talking about.
Then they started crying and I asked them to leave. But I can make new friends.
Mumma plays the violin now and she lets me
listen to her practice. I even know some
of the songs by heart. Mumma was so glad
I remembered them. She said when I’m
better she can take me for piano lessons again.
She says she knows a really nice teacher, the one who teaches her the
violin.
I like that.
In the midst of all, there is music. In the deaths and in the births and in all
the chaos in between. Today Lucy played
what Zoltán refers to as her “first gig” at
She has won. I have become an instrument in her
hands. Opportunities to play will slowly
spread out in all directions. Within one
year, she will be playing in an amateur orchestra. As she copes with a daughter who has suddenly
been rocketed backwards in time, as she adjusts to unexpectedly being married
again after resigning herself to a life alone, she will have me, her amber
companion, for always.
When the pressures of teaching Kate to
read again become too great, she will quietly withdraw to her practice room and
close the door. She will pray for a
moment, gathering herself. Then she will
take out her book of Kreutzer etudes, open it to page one, and begin.
DAVID’S JOURNAL
Rose at
But the really big news came later that
same day. Out of the blue, a friend from
my university days called to say, “I hear you’re in the market for a new cat.” Somehow or other Tom had found out about the
death of Stanzi. For the longest time I
couldn’t bear to even think of replacing her.
But when I got the call, I thought to myself, “Why not?” Fanny and Clara have been good company for
each other, but I could tell they were lonely for a third, to complete the
circle. On impulse I went over to Tom’s
and fell instantly in love with this wee, sleekit, tortoise-shell pussy with
white gloves, a white bib and golden eyes.
She’d fit into a teacup, that’s how dainty she is. I named her
And then there were three. It seems the surprises never end.
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