by Cat Oars
“When he was twelve. His father and mother died in an accident at sea. I’ve heard the story a million times.”
“Well, it’s time we both think about helping grandma take care of him.”
* * *
The phone rings once. Jane is running ten minutes late to a rendezvous in the Village. She plans tonight to enjoy some dinner at Baptiste’s, then afterwards wine at the Cloister Café. Any other late night developments will occur at her new East Side apartment on Third Avenue. The phone rings twice. She knows it is not Juan calling to cancel. He only has her cell number. She looks for a very specific pair of Kenneth Cole’s at the bottom of a closet in the second bedroom that Matteo will eventually inhabit after all Jane’s planning is done. The phone rings three times.
Finding the sandals, she is released to other tasks of the night.
“Hello?”
“Jane? How’s it going?”
Jane takes a call once a day on average from her father. On bad days, he may call two or three times, any memory of previous phone exchanges having been erased from his mind by the dying of nerve cells. This was a bad day again.
“Dad? I can’t talk right now. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour and I’m running late.”
“You’ll never guess.”
“What dad?” Jane could guess.
“They found Mallory on Everest! His body looks like a Greek statue! You should see it! His name was written inside his shirt collar. They found him on the Tibet side of the mountain half frozen in the snow!”
Of course she knew that Mallory had been discovered on Everest – had known since 1999 when the find was reported in National Geographic. She imagined that her father, in a state of boredom, had been scraping around the attic and looking through old piles of magazines. Each magazine delivered fresh news regardless of publication date. In Edward Ferrari’s fouled mind a crew of diligent mountain climbers, much like him in another day when he attempted the same peak, had just solved the greatest mystery in Himalayan death zone climbing.
“Yes dad – that’s good that they found Mallory. Did they find Irvine?”
“No, but they’re looking.”
“Dad, any other news? Anything I just have to know?”
“They found Mallory!”
“Thanks dad. Love you.”
The line goes dead as Jane rushes out the front door leaving the cordless atop the credenza. Edward Ferrari, retired alpine climber and insurance broker, looks out upon the beach, out upon his grandson sitting on a dune watching off-islanders fly kites, drive all-terrain vehicles and get drunk on wine sold in boxes. In his trembling hand he covets evidence that life is just to die, a photo in a dog-eared glossy magazine.
After the Storm
Sandshovel
Open Doors
MY FAVORITE PICTURE OF MY MOTHER is one of her holding me in her arms at the kitchen table. The table is cluttered with dirty dishes, and behind us every cupboard door is open. This was such a contrast to her life, which was a myriad of closed doors. Whenever I asked for more information about her life as a teenager, she closed me down with, “I don’t have to tell you all my stories.”
You would immediately notice her hands upon meeting her. Her fingers were red, stubby and bent; her nails flat and never seemed to grow. Arthritic, yes, but they were also disfigured by severe frostbite. She grew up on a farm during the depression and one bitterly cold winter night a fire broke out. Her older sister, Signa, saved her life by rescuing her from her crib and they had no choice but to wait outside in the 25-below weather until the fire was doused. Her hands were a reminder of the hardships that she and her family endured.
Tunnels
My mother was German and my father, French. My dad’s two older brothers fought proudly in the Second World War. John, the eldest, was a gunner in the Air Force and was shot down in Germany. He was captured and held prisoner-of-war for eighteen months. He attempted escape by digging tunnels under the prison camp; the third time he was successful. He fled into France, where a woman living on a farm hid him in her barn until he was rescued. Back home he was declared missing in action; a memorial was held for him. Not only was John alive, but came home a hero.
My father, however, was marked a traitor, having married the enemy. The enemy was my mother, a beautiful woman with unfashionable full lips, thick auburn hair, and freckles sprinkled generously across her face and arms. She had dancer’s legs, which were rumoured to stop traffic. I found out from a great aunt that my father’s family went to great lengths to ostracize her. At family dinners they would speak only French and treat her like she were invisible.
Shampoo Girl
At nine years of age I learned about the Holocaust at school. I walked home that day ashamed that I was part German and wanted answers from my mother. I slammed my books on the kitchen table and demanded: “How could the Germans do that to the Jews, Mom?”
She had her back to me, washing dishes.
“What are you asking me?” she grabbed a red and white plaid dish towel and wiped her hands vigorously.
“How could the Germans kill all those Jews?” I asked again. “Why did they do that?”
She turned to face me and put her hands on her hips.
“They just walked right into those trains, didn’t they?” she asked. “They didn’t even put up a fight!”
She stared down at me, her blue eyes angry and frightening. I turned from her and went to my room, closing the door quietly. I lay on my bed and thought about the words my mother spoke. I avoided her for days, which wasn’t difficult to do in a family of six children. Saturday was hair-washing day. She sensed my emotional distancing and with those rough hands of hers, scrubbed my scalp with more than her usual gusto.
“Hey! Take it easy!” I finally protested. “What were you, shampoo girl at the concentration camps?” She stopped momentarily; my heart pounded and I braced myself. She turned the water on, rinsed and didn’t speak a word.
Innocence
I was sexually assaulted when I was four years old. I never spoke a word about it for years. Finally at age eleven, at the urging of my friends, I approached my mother. I stood at her bedroom doorway and she turned at the sound of my voice. I told her that something awful happened to me when I was little. I will never know why, but she turned from me and walked over to her dresser on the other side of the room and with her back to me, rummaged through her jewelry box. I went to my room, closed the door quietly, and lay on my bed. I thought about all the words I wanted her to say. I planned my escape that day. I informed her and reminded her throughout the coming years that I would be leaving the day after I graduated. When that day grew near I sensed her words of protest and before they were spoken told her that she couldn't stop me because I would soon turn 18 and could do whatever I pleased. She retaliated by hiring renovators to knock a wall down in my room; she had plans to transform it into a den. I packed the remainder of my belongings, took one last look at my childhood bedroom and told myself I didn’t care.
Mr. Fix-It
A feeling that she owed me something prevailed throughout the years that passed. I wasn’t sure what the debt was, but the anger of it not being paid would emerge often and without warning. Holding my newborn for the first time was a trigger. I rejected my mother’s offer to help. I chose my mother-in-law instead.
When my mother turned 70 she became very ill with an auto-immune disease and she depended on me and my sisters to support her emotionally. Although I called often, and booked numerous flights home to spend time with her, I resented her growing neediness.
My brother, Garrett, is a doctor and likes to fix things.
“I think you're going to be angry with me,” he told me on the phone.
“Why? What did you do?”
“I told mom that you were assaulted.”
“You didn’t do that.”
“Yes, I did. Someone had to. She's very upset that she didn’t know. Someone had to intercede. Be mad if
you like, Lisa; I'm not sorry I told her. She's going to call you in half an hour.”
“Garrett, you don’t know all that’s happened between us. She knows what happened to me and chose to turn her back. She consistently tries to defend the indefensible. I can forgive her for being German, but I can't forgive her for being ignorant.”
“I don’t know all that went on between you two and I don’t want to know. I think there was a time when ignorance made our innocence strong, but we’re not children anymore and we’re certainly not innocent. She's 70 years old, Lisa; make your peace before it’s too late.”
Payment
There is a collection of photos on top my antique desk. I walked over and picked up the one of her holding me at her kitchen table. I realized for the first time that if you look closely you can see inside those cupboards.
The phone rang and we said our hellos.
“Garrett called me.”
Her voice faltered and for the first time I sensed her fear.
“He told me that he called you.”
I waited.
“Is it true, Lisa? Someone hurt you?”
I could hear the fear in her voice. I didn't answer immediately. I’d waited a long time for those words to be spoken.
“Yes, someone did hurt me. It was a long time ago, Mom; it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Banana
Litteratzi
THE RESISTANCE AGAINST MY LEFT HAND decreased as I was squeezing the ambu-bag. I frowned. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Jonathan Connor, barely recognizable as the son of the president of the United States of America, was beginning to breathe for himself. I checked the monitors again. There’d be hell to pay if this one died. Sixty minutes ago he was lunching with his fiancée in the sumptuous hall of La Boillevie restaurant when the unthinkable happened.
First a gag, then a sucking choke, culminating in a loud shriek as the EpiPen containing lifesaving epinephrine failed and he slumped, blue, to the floor. A military helicopter materialized instantly in the restaurant parking lot, almost as if it were hovering outside waiting for the catastrophe.
Then I was crouched on the vibrating helicopter floor, seat belt abandoned, looking at him from up close. His face had become a swollen pulpy mass of maroon Michelin mush, topped with fashionable Fifth Avenue styled blond hair. The endotracheal tube, hooked up to the ambu-bag, stuck out of his mouth like a straw impaled on a maraschino cherry. I was squeezing the bag frantically delivering air to his lungs, trying to keep his oxygen saturations above the minimum requirement for life.
I scratched my balding head. I was certain that I had given him enough midazolam so that he would sleep during the trip to the military hospital. I was wrong. He was waking up from the anesthetic.
Fast.
We should have flown in the Marine One helicopter, used by the president on official missions, with its distinctive markings, wide spacious interior and black and blue leather seats, but the president was away in Iraq, on another visit.
Nurse Denver, chief medical aide to the presidential family and the only other occupant of the helicopter cabin, turned to me and mouthed concern. She was an elegant black woman in a white nurse’s uniform, accentuated with sexy stilettos. From the moment I encountered her soft manicured hands via a seductive handshake that felt more like a moist caress, I knew that she was a tease. I could see it in the way she walked, with her slender sumptuous legs. I could hear it in the way she talked, with her American accent, hiding a hint of Nigerian ancestry. And her laugh! Her laugh was like music for swans. And yet, there was something unsettling about her, something dangerous, a deadly disquieting undercurrent. So much so that even though I was drawn to her, I felt as if she could snap my heart in two with just a look from her gold-colored eyes.
Nurse Denver had initiated resuscitation on La Boillevie’s restaurant floor, giving mouth to mouth to Jonathan Conner before I arrived. Now she was shouting, and I could barely hear her over the roar of the helicopter propellers.
Jonathan’s purple swollen eyelids flickered. The corner of his mouth twitched around the endotracheal tube. Then he began to thrash wildly. He was gagging, hands flailing, then tugging at the tube. The pulse oximeter fell to the floor. The blood pressure cuff’s tubing ripped from the helicopter wall. Cables attached to the defibrillator flew in the air. The monitor alarms panicked; their screeching rose to football match intensity. Nurse Denver unhitched her seat belt and flung herself on the patient, struggling to keep his hands away from the tube. She knew that if the endotracheal tube came out, the swollen tissues around his throat would suffocate him fast. He’d be dead in three minutes, if he were lucky.
“Where the hell is the midazolam?”
She was closer now and I could smell the heady scent of her Channel No. 19. Even in the most extreme circumstances, her sensuality was overpowering.
“The syringes fell. They’re over there, in the corner.”
I turned in the direction of her gaze. The five syringes that I had prepared for the trip were just out of reach. I couldn’t read the print on each tube, but I knew exactly what each would do. Midazolam would put him to sleep, atropine would dry up his secretions, adrenaline would speed up his heart rate, and potassium chloride would kill him. The only problem was that all of these were clear colorless liquids, and indistinguishable.
Straining, I reached for the fifth syringe, the milky white propofol and shoved it in through his IV line. The body slackened and then relaxed as the “milk of amnesia” took effect. We looked at each other and sighed simultaneously.
Nurse Denver reattached the pulse oximeter, blood pressure cuff, and defibrillator cables as I continued squeezing the ambu-bag, forcing oxygen into the patient’s lungs. Gradually, the monitors chirping attenuated to the steady beep, beep, beep, of a regular heartbeat.
“Fuck! That was close!”
“You’re telling me. I could almost see my medical career swirling down the toilet. Could you imagine the CNN coverage if he’d died? They’d probably call me Dr. Death. Thank God we got rid of his fiancée before this happened. I could just see her going nuclear in those little Prada shoes.”
“Let’s not even think about that. Let’s just get him to the hospital. I’ve had enough scares for today, and I really need to get out of this uniform.” Nurse Denver settled back into her seat, reattached the seat belt, took out her pocket makeup mirror and pouted. With her hair now riotously out of place she looked bedroom sexy.
“Do you think they’ve guessed how it happened?” I asked.
“What?” She closed the pocket mirror and raised an eyebrow.
“The allergic reaction.”
“I doubt it, even though they probably have several theories by now.” She smoothed her white uniform down and turned to look at me. “It’s no secret the president’s son is allergic to bananas. Time magazine did an article on it last year, and the restaurant was specifically warned when reservations were made.”
“I’m sure that they think that it was a terrorist attack. What the – ?” The monitor alarms screamed again. “His oxygen saturations are dropping. We’re losing him.”
I increased the oxygen and doubled the rate of squeezing the ambu-bag and shouted through the intercom connecting us to the pilot.
“Hey Captain Langley, what’s our ETA?”
“We’re coming up on the hospital now.”
The helicopter hovered over the building as the lead insulated roof slowly opened, like the petals of a flower. The craft was able to land inside the hospital so that it was impenetrable to radar, and more importantly over anxious news reporters. The chopper hovered for a second, and landed with the grace of a feather on the concrete floor. The overhead roof closed and the propellers slowed, then stopped.
The door to the hospital helipad burst open as white-coated doctors spilled out like ants after a glazed doughnut. Rough hands grabbed the patient-transport spinal board, and another person took over squeezing the ambu-bag. Soon, the
patient had vanished through cavernous doors, and all was silent.
I made the sign of the cross and turned to look at Nurse Denver. We had made it.
There was a sharp tap on my shoulder. I turned around. The face staring back at me was Nordic handsome with clear blue eyes and topped with fashionable Fifth Avenue styled blond hair. I squinted. Then suddenly an alarm flashed in my head.
“Benjamin?” I asked tentatively, as if not wanting to believe the truth.
“Yup! Not even Jonathan Connor’s mother could tell the difference! That’s really perceptive of you.”
“Are you crazy? What the hell are you thinking? What happened to our original plan? You’ll never get away with it!”
Benjamin smiled a wry grin. He’d examined hours of television footage and had begun flawlessly imitating Jonathan Connor’s mannerisms.
“It’s amazing what they can do with a little plastic surgery, isn’t it! Look, they even duplicated that little scar below the eye that Jonathan – I mean I – got playing baseball when I was seven.”
“I think that you need help. Right now there’s probably a manhunt on for the real Jonathan Connor.”
Benjamin shook his head, and punched in the twelve-digit code and opened a side door. The league of doctors had done their work. Jonathan Connor, paralyzed, was now hooked up to a ventilator and his vital signs were stabilizing.
“Are we ready doctor?” Benjamin spoke to one of the men in white coats.
“Yes. Jonathan Connor is hooked up to the cardiac bypass machine, and we are ready to proceed.”
“Cardiac bypass? Benjamin, you’re not going to do what I think you are,” I said. “You’re taking this too far. I didn’t agree to this.”
I walked over to the machine with its wildly spinning dials.
“You’re going to do a whole body blood transfusion, aren’t you? Benjamin, even if you replace your entire blood volume with Jonathan Connor’s blood, you can only fake his DNA for at most, one month, and that’s only if they take a blood sample.”