As Whistler’s lap belt pushes his damp shirt against his stomach, the lines of movie detective Frank Serpico sound in his mind: “The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry—it just gets dirtier.”
Death Is No Picnic
Calvert drifts in a still pool of absolute black. It’s peaceful until it’s shot through with a beam of shocking bright light. This is it. He’s sure he’s finally completely dead. He believes it only for an instant. He gradually understands that he is flat on his back in the lobby of his old building. Rubber gloves hold one of his eyes wide. A penlight sweeps his pupil and blasts his optic nerve. The eye is let loose. He closes it tight, can still see a massive white spot. His other eye is given the same rough treatment. He blinks his eyes to clear them. It doesn’t help.
“Ah. You’re back among the living,” a glowing orb says. “Do you know your name?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good start. Mind telling me what it is?”
“Calvert.”
“Good, Calvert. Do you know what day it is?”
“Is it Friday?”
“Ding ding ding. Correct. Friday it is. I’m going to touch your shoulder. You tell me if it hurts.”
“It hurts!”
“Sorry about that. Give me a minute and I’ll get you taken care of. Stay still, okay?”
Calvert nods ever so slightly. He has no idea if the man behind the orb sees the gesture. He lets his eyes close.
“You fainted.” It’s Agatha. She speaks quietly. “The one cop radioed for an ambulance when you fell over. The one that had your arms looked plenty scared. It didn’t help that I got the whole thing on my phone.” She’s gone. Her vacancy is filled with a slow and steady, wet clapping sound.
He opens his eyes. He can mostly see now. A man with a stethoscope kneels beside him, chewing gum loudly. “Ready to get your shoulder in working order?”
“Yes.”
“It’s going to hurt.” The man puts both his hands on Calvert, one on his shoulder and one around his wrist. He moves the arm. Calvert tries to help and winces with the effort.
“You let me do it. Pretend it’s not even your arm.”
That makes sense to Calvert. The arm that isn’t his is rotated through a series of positions. Each time the pressure becomes nearly unbearable, it is eased to a less stressed orientation. Overhead Calvert sees the vintage fixture in the center of the ceiling. I never noticed that. It’s fuzzy with dust and has a bulb out. The arm is forced up. Pain rushes in. He sucks air to scream. The pain recedes. He holds his breath. The man carefully lays the arm at Calvert’s side. “There,” the man says. He packs his supplies and goes.
Agatha is back. “Let’s get you on your feet.” She helps him stand. “You dizzy?”
“No.”
She watches that he can stand on his own before she says, “The police asked what I was doing here and what business it is of mine. I said I was your big sister. Play along.”
“Okay.”
“That EMT was worried because of that scar on your head. Your pupils were even and dilated like they oughta. That means you didn’t whack your noggin. I told the lady cop that maybe I didn’t need to show anyone my video. She said maybe there is no need to press charges. Pretty good, huh?”
“Yes.” Calvert looks around. Doorman Justus and Officer Becker are watching him with identical sullen expressions.
“You ready to get out of here?” Agatha asks. “That Abbey person said something about an appointment. Better make sure you keep it.” She gathers his duffel and suitcase. “Oh,” she says. “The EMT guy said you should take some Tylenol and wear this.” She hands over a plastic bag with a sling in it. Agatha marches out the door and Calvert follows.
When the Vue is on the road, Agatha says, “We’re getting into the morning rush. Might as well take Lake Shore to get south.” Calvert doesn’t reply. “That scar of yours is recent. I told the EMT you’d been at that Horizons place.” Her eyes look at him from the mirror. “You still alive back there?”
The best answer to her question is complicated. He says, “Somewhat,” which he thinks is accurate. Truth is, death is different than he’d imagined. He’d always assumed a dichotomous relationship between life and death. Either one was alive or one ceased living and entered a state of nonlife commonly termed death. Like a light switch: either on or off. Binary. His recent experience tells him life and death happen on a sliding scale. For reasons he doesn’t understand—though he suspects it has something to do with penance—months ago he slipped into nonlife without quite reaching definitive death. He’s stuck like this for as long as it lasts. It’s all very confusing.
He’d been assured by numerous sober doctors of psychiatry at New Horizons that he was not, in fact, dead. Officially, a head injury from a violent collision and related emotional trauma led to a rare condition known as Cotard’s syndrome, sometimes labeled less charitably as Cotard’s delusion. It’s basically a wrinkle of human reasoning in which one believes they are dead, a piece of them has died, or that they are rotting away as they go about their business. Calvert knows all this.
While still under medical care, with his body recovering and his neck in a puffy brace, he was subjected to extensive blood work, a CT scan, an MRI, and some kind of photon gun called a SPECT test. A large lesion to the frontal and temporal regions of the right hemisphere of his busted brain confirmed his primary physician’s giddy suspicions: Calvert may be a rare freak, one that could lead to research grants and publications in multiple prestigious journals.
Calvert does not feel that slipping between the laws of existence makes him special. It wasn’t his doing. All he knows is he once lived a charmed life with an esteemed career and a beautiful wife. He was in a crash and woke in this half-dead state, a piece of his skull missing, shaved bald and with an ugly scar hidden under a gauze turban. He’d lost the knowledge he’d spent a lifetime accumulating. It seems clear now: Mere is dead. Which he guesses would be devastating if his emotions were functioning normally. His health is failing fast. He’s no longer qualified for the job that defined him. While in treatment, he overheard that a student of his died in the accident. He can’t fathom a way to reconcile that. Although his memories are returning in larger chunks each day, firsthand details of the crash remain hidden from him.
All he can say for certain is he’s no longer alive in the ways he once was, despite his brain still rippling with memories that once belonged to a man known as Professor Greene. The body that moves him around is a loaner, and when the stubborn electrical current in his system is expended, he will mercifully drop like a sack of gooey compost. Until then, Abbey has explained he needs a job to pay for the maintenance of his shriveling allotment of conscious agency.
Agatha keeps glancing in the mirror, concern making her crow’s feet even deeper. “You sure you’re okay? If you’re going to be sick, let me know. I can pull over.”
“I’m not going to be sick.”
“If you say so. But if it sneaks up on you, hold it. Don’t you dare vomit in my car.” She sounds like her old self.
Out the window, the sun shines off bent metal forms floating on a grid of crisscrossed poles. He knows he and Mere once spread a blanket in the grass under those shapes. That place has a name he can’t recall. A word is attached to that scrap of memory. He says, “Frank Gehry.”
“What?”
“Is Frank Gehry anything?”
“Not to me,” Agatha says.
That disappoints Calvert.
They stop at the next two traffic lights along a long stretch of green space. Agatha turns the car west. “Not far now,” she says.
“Thanks for taking me home earlier. It was a bad idea. But thank you.”
“All’s well that ends well.”
That assumes that things end well.
A few minutes later, Agatha pulls into a parking place reserved for the Best Friends Veterinary Clinic. Calvert shifts his haunches to get at his wallet. He passes he
r a number of bills.
“It’s okay,” Agatha tells him. She pushes his hand away. “I don’t want to take more of your money. You’ve been through enough for one morning. Besides, that Abbey paid me and tipped me already.”
Calvert puts his money back. “Good. Bye.” He works the seat belt by himself and steps onto the sidewalk with his bags. He has to wait for a small man with a huge mastiff to take his dog in the veterinary clinic. Agatha toots her horn as she drives away. When the path is clear, Calvert crosses to the unobtrusive entrance to his second-floor apartment. His shoulder throbs. His grip fails. He drops the suitcase. I left my sling in the car. He lifts the suitcase with his good hand. A USA Today is on the ground. He takes it and tucks it under his damaged arm before trudging up a very long flight of stairs.
The place is as he remembers when Abbey first brought him here: a small room with a twin bed, dresser, kitchen table, two wooden chairs, and a little kitchenette along one wall. A closet and bathroom are opposite the entrance. Calvert hadn’t thought the place was bleak when he first saw it. But knowing how he used to live, this place is a letdown. Or would be if I were living. He drops his bags and searches until he finds his wristwatch. I have lots of time.
He takes a seat and thumbs through the newspaper. He reads several articles from the Chicago section. The first is about how most crime occurs in only a few neighborhoods. Then he learns about the crowd size and route of a march to protest the shooting of an unarmed black man by police. Next is about the shocking break-up of Hollywood sweethearts, complete with full-color relationship time-line photos. He closes the paper and looks around.
He hasn’t eaten, but he has no appetite. Abbey stocked the kitchen with a few basics. He decides to make coffee. He uses four heaping tablespoons in the one-cup coffee maker. The coffee comes out black and thick. When he drinks, it makes no taste in his mouth. He tips two pills commonly prescribed for schizophrenia into his palm. They are intended to trick him into believing he is a living person. They will have no effect. Still, he gulps them with the remainder of the coffee and leaves the mug on the table.
He does certain things, like reading the paper, because it will make it easier to be among the living if he shares their schedule and habits. Plus his caregivers at New Horizons were comforted when he behaved in not-dead ways. With Abbey’s help, he’d practiced phrases such as “I know I am actually alive,” “Thank you for helping me conquer my delusional thinking,” and “Gosh, I am famished; may I have a sandwich of meat?”
He’s aware the timing of his departure from the facility was not about his getting the best treatment. His insurance would only pay for a certain amount of care. After failing to procure grant money, it became important for Dr. Shaw to declare Calvert a success simultaneous with the last of the insurance payments. That is the impression Calvert has based on overheard conversations.
With the help of an occupational therapist, a man who spoke in breathy whispers because of a throat condition, Calvert learned to keep his body clean, to feed it and water it and rest it. It was never explained to him explicitly, but he believes his flesh must be rotting, and so he is extra conscientious about cleanliness.
In the bathroom, he runs water in the chipped sink. He swishes his newly retrieved razor under the stream. Fingernails and whiskers continue to grow after death. He looks at the face in the mirror. They lock eyes. He doesn’t like what he sees. He logically knows his other self is not a separate entity with hidden motivations. But he can’t quite commit to the belief that his likeness is not a malicious doppelgänger come to witness his slow-speed demise and report back to an omnipotent judge. But being dead, he feels little cause for concern. He ignores his own gaze and drags the razor over his face until smooth. The scraping sound reverberates in the loosening folds of his cerebral cortex like the lingering thrum from a slapped chord on a stand-up bass.
He has no towels. I should have remembered towels. He dries his face with toilet paper. Layers of tissue pull apart and leave wet bits on his chin and cheeks. He balls most of the damp pulp into a lump and throws it in the toilet. He pinches the remaining pieces from his face. His skin is pale, perhaps turning green. He imagines it’s cold, though his sense of touch becomes less sensitive with every passing day.
He showers with a bar of Irish Spring supplied by Abbey. He holds the bar to his nose and takes a whiff. Something fires in his brain. He knows scents can trigger memories, but none come. He uses the soap to scour his hair, careful over the uneven scar. Not because it’s painful, but because he worries it might be. He’s careful with his shoulder, though it seems to operate normally.
He lets his body drip before using his New Horizon’s robe to scrub away the remaining water. He liberally applies deodorant. He brushes his teeth gently, afraid too much pressure will make his gums let loose.
Thinking of loose teeth reminds Calvert of an essay he’d written in graduate school about War and Peace. A French soldier named Johann had trudged across Europe behind Napoleon after his defeat in Russia in 1812. One winter night, after freezing and starving for months, Johann lost a tooth while trying to whistle at a stray dog he hoped to coax into his coat to help him keep warm. As a graduate student, Calvert posited Johann had hoped to eat the dog but was too ashamed to be honest about it in his diary. He used the story to buttress the notion that Tolstoy’s description of postwar Russia was a well-researched historical document in the guise of fiction; that it was more historical record than literature. He’d received a ninety-six percent on the assignment.
Since then, Calvert has harbored a worry that he’ll swallow a loose tooth in his sleep, feel it grinding against his ribs every waking moment, like something sinister gnawing its way out. He ignores his reflection’s silent observation and swishes with antiseptic mouthwash, spits, and leaves the bathroom.
He dresses in clothes from his gym bag. He pulls on a T-shirt with writing across the chest. He buttons a dress shirt over it. He reads through the pale fabric: “Czech Me Out.” He doesn’t remember having owned the T-shirt.
The suit is serviceable: chocolate brown with matching shoes. Probably dated. He wraps a tie around the back of his neck and flips up his collar. He takes the fabric in his hands but can’t tie it. His dead fingers don’t remember how. He attempts to twist it like a bread tie. It unwinds. The same procedure yields the same result each time he tries. He leaves the tie on the bed and turns down his collar as he exits. He doesn’t bother locking up. It is a thing he finds unimportant.
He turns his wrist to check the time. He forgot the watch. Staying on schedule is valued by the living, so he will need to be certain to wear the watch next time. Living is harder than I remember. He’s glad to have put it behind him.
Calvert only has to walk a block. A week ago he’d gone to a job service appointment Abbey arranged. They had been sitting side by side in two of eight folding chairs arranged in a circle for group counseling. He leaned his body away so his mouth wouldn’t blow bad breath on her. “I have no reason to work. I don’t need to make purchases.”
She ignored him. “Haven’t you worked hard in rehab and therapy? Of course you have. Your recovery has been, like, so steady. No one would know you’d suffered a head trauma since your hair has grown out.” He touched the horseshoe-shaped weal of flesh under his hairline. The texture of the new skin was smooth and soft. “You’ve done, like, so well you’re being discharged.” She tried to hold his gaze, but her eyes on his made him self-conscious. He looked over at the clock on the wall. The orange second hand was frozen at thirty-one seconds.
She placed her hand on his knee to regain his attention. “You’ll continue to get, like, financial help from the state and from the arrangements made with your credit union.”
“Didn’t I have a home? Don’t I have savings?”
“We’ve talked about this. Because of the nature of the accident, it’s gotten complicated. Legal issues need to be resolved.” She stopped there, looked around, and added quietly, “Lega
l issues regarding the cause of your collision and other details. Your wife’s family has your assets tied up until it’s settled.” She took a breath, her tone lightening. “You’re still young, aren’t you? You are. The routine of work will be good. You’re capable of being a contributing member of society. Aren’t you, like, looking forward to that?”
He shrugged. The old Calvert was moved by abstract concepts like collective society and civic duty. Current Calvert is less impressed by those ideas.
“Good news though: the U of C has said you will be, like, welcome to return if your memory improves,” Abbey continued in a soothing voice. “But there were lingering unanswered ethical questions that may need to be addressed. For now, no need to worry. You’ve been here long enough. It’s time to go.”
Calvert didn’t respond. He’d forgotten the rules of conversational ebb and flow. He sat quietly, considering why her hair was honey at the roots and white at the tips.
Abbey cleared her throat. He didn’t recognize it as an attempt to prompt a reply. “Do you understand?” she finally asked.
“No,” he said. He’d forgotten what they’d been discussing.
Abbey gently persisted. Taking his cold fingers in her warm hands, she said, “Meet Bill. Look at what opportunities might be available. I will drive you.”
He enjoyed the heat that came from her body: it felt like an emotion he once knew. Her eyes were shiny and sincere. Most significantly, they were the greenest green, similar to Meredith’s eyes. “I will meet with Bill,” he said. For no reason at all his eyes had started to leak.
Days later, in Bill’s waiting room, he had looked over a series of job postings written on three-by-five cards and pinned to a corkboard. One card read: “Want to be a real hero? Work to rid Chicago of the scourge of pestilence.” There was a name, Kaz Gladsky, and a cell number. There was also a promise of “good pay, full-time hours, and transportation provided.” Ten minutes later, Bill made the call and arranged an interview in the neighborhood where Abbey had found Calvert’s Section 8 housing.
Half Dead Page 3