What Happened to Lani Garver

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  But I told Lani, "He's trying to get me to believe in that TV show Touched by an Angel."

  "That's not about any floating angel," Marcus said, reaching for the scissors. "I don't know what that is. Actors, or something. For one thing, there's two angels with catowees. Explain to me what angels are doing with catowees?" He laid down the scissors, spread his fingers like he was holding two invisible melons out from his chest. "What're they supposed to use them for? Angels don't make babies. They like babies, they just don't care about making them. If angels don't nurse babies, what're they doing with catowees? Dig?"

  "They're like boys and girls." I sighed, thinking about my blood work.

  "And I'm telling you ... there's a few out there in the waiting room any time, day or night. You ought to go find you one. Take the edge off you, missus. You're a sourpuss."

  "Yeah, I know." I sighed again as Lani unwrapped his arms from my neck and started massaging my shoulders. It felt good. Not only was I worried about stuff way over my head, I was worried about little stuff, like Marcus covering the stitches with a small enough Band-Aid that I could make up something believable, in case my mother saw it. I knew I could pick the sutures out myself, later.

  I eyed Marcus as he pressed a normal-sized Band-Aid to my forehead. He was wearing a surgical cap, but his hair swung out of it easily. He had hair like Michael Jackson. But he was muscular, reminding me of some of the earlier Motown singers. Between that hair and that kind of more-sensitive musician look, this nicely stacked Marcus resembled the creature he was talking about.

  "Are you a floating angel?" I asked, to get his goat.

  He picked up the clipboard with my papers and started writing on them. He didn't even look at me. "Now, if you were listening to even the first thing I told you, you would know that couldn't be the case."

  "Why not?"

  "What're you staring at right now?"

  "Uh, your hands." I was watching him write on the clipboard.

  "What do you see on them?"

  I realized he was wearing a wedding ring. "Are you married?"

  He looked at me like I was a loony tune, and Lani cracked up. "Don't try to argue with him, Claire. He truly believes this thing, and a lot of other people around here do, too."

  "You're kidding."

  "No."

  "How come I've never heard of a floating angel before?"

  Lani bit his lip, like, digging for his thought. "People generally have to be in a lot of trouble before their orderly little versions of reality crack open. People around here? They're in a lot of trouble. So, they can believe in lots of stuff."

  I swung around to look at him as he stopped rubbing my shoulders. "Well, I'm in a lot of trouble. I just can't believe in stuff like angels that get in the shower."

  I thought he would laugh, but his grin was kind of peaceful. "You are not in trouble, girlfriend. You just think you are."

  To argue the point would sound like a pity party. I just let go of a sigh.

  "There's actually a book on the subject," he said. "And I own it, somewhere in my stuff. There probably aren't many copies floating around. It's a very, very old book."

  "About floating angels?"

  "About all different sorts of angels. But they're in there. It's not some concept dreamed up by an AIDS patient, like, yesterday. The book I have is a translation of a translation of a translation originally written by some philosopher who lived in the first century A.D., Andovenes. I'll let you see it. It's very cool."

  I groaned, thinking of The Essential Jung, another of his favorites. "I'll read it if you let me copy your Jung homework that's due Monday."

  His laugh sounded affectionate and yet sarcastic. "You're just ... an intellectual giant in the making, Claire."

  "Thanks a lot. But you've got room. You believe in Einstein, and you believe in angels."

  As Marcus cleaned up, Lani tried to pass off on me some story about it being a myth that intelligent people don't believe in God. "Brilliant people seem generally repelled from any box, like Catholic or Protestant."

  "Whatever." I looked him up and down. He resembled one of these creatures even more than Marcus had. And he was laughing at me in a way that was all too condescending.

  "Are you a floating angel? You sure look like one."

  Marcus had stepped out, but I could see him standing by a cart in the hallway, filling out more papers. "Marcus, is Lani a floating angel?"

  I kind of regretted the joke as soon as I said it. He looked at Lani in a serious way that made me realize he probably did believe this stuff, and even if you don't agree with someone, you should be polite about what they believe. Fortunately, Marcus could hold his own in a match of sarcasm.

  "Ahhhh ... I don't know. Looks like a gay kid to me. Lani, you a gay kid?"

  I flinched at the ease in which he spouted the question. I had dwelled on it all day yesterday before deciding not to go there.

  Lani hadn't stopped laughing at me yet and responded easily between chuckles. "Gay is a box."

  "Don't get him started," I begged, but Marcus came through the doorway, eyeing Lani dangerously. "He wiggles out of every label you try to put on him."

  He took Lani's face in his hand, turning it side to side, squeezing his cheeks. And he jumped gracefully into this game of asking "action" questions that had stumped me last night.

  "You like boys?"

  Lani's face was all scrunched in Marcus's hand, but he laughed. "Yes. I love boys."

  "Girls?"

  "I love girls."

  "You bi?"

  "Bisexual is a pretty sizable box."

  Marcus let go and nodded at me. "He's a flamer. Take my word on that one."

  I wiped a tear from my eye, but my grin kept spreading like I had a hanger in my cheeks. "But how can you tell?"

  He turned and his massive size took up most of the entranceway. He draped the curtain over his shoulder so he looked like a black Paul Bunyan, and I fell into the drama, leaning up to hear his big secret.

  "One thing I didn't tell you about floating angels that makes them different from most of the other angels." He cast a glance over his shoulder, both ways, and then pierced my eyes again. "They got a streak of mean that seeps way low. They're like Johnny Good-Deed-Doer; just don't push them. God informs them, you know, 'Look, there's some evil person at work down there,' and then God turns his back, cuz he can't take the violence, you know? Floaters come down, do the dirty work. You ever hear of some wicked parent, all drunk and whipping on their kids, who meets a violent ending?"

  I thought of Mr. Clementi and shuddered, even though I was laughing.

  "You can be sure there was a floater behind that. This boy here?" He dropped the drape, came back over to a grinning Lani. "Doesn't have that streak of mean in him. He's a fussy-wussy. You know? Ol' run-of-the-mill, whisker-suckin' faggot."

  He slapped Lani's cheek playfully and turned on his heel. I had stopped laughing, though my eyes still bulged and my mouth formed the O shape. That list of adjectives was way over the top. At least I thought it was. Lani was chuckling, same as he chuckled at his mother the night before, like it didn't matter.

  "God, you're so ... sure of yourself." It was the only phrase I could conjure up.

  "Around here? It's a term of affection. You hear the word faggot as often as you hear penicillin, in case you didn't notice."

  "I'm not deaf."

  His grin faded as he took my hand.

  "Hey. I didn't come in here to get accosted by your boxes. I came to tell you the doctor wants to see you, across the street. Her office is over there." My heart lit up like a blowtorch. Her office. Why not here, where she'd seen me?

  "Did they tell you anything?" I asked. "They're not allowed to tell you anything."

  "She did not tell me anything."

  He knew something. I could tell by how he had trouble looking at me after he implied that there was news. I had come to recognize that expression on nurses who were not very experienced yet, and fro
m my parents when they had news for me that wasn't great. It was a casual voice that was out of place under the circumstances. People shouldn't try to be casual in situations like this. It's all wrong, and it always gives them away. All the jollies were forgotten, and I didn't want to move.

  He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, one of his older-guy gestures of comfort, I guessed, and then he put his other hand on my back and started pushing me toward the door. It was like being pushed over a cliff. I wondered what in hell kind of troubled friends he had, that he would be so rock steady in a situation like this.

  10

  This Dr. Lowenstein stood rooting through papers on her desk, looking only slightly less busy and distracted than she had across the street. She beckoned us in, because her mouth was full. She was gripping half an egg salad sandwich.

  She swallowed, then said, "Sorry to make you walk over here. But a body has to eat. I eat in my office every day, and if a patient is up and walking, I see them here."

  I thought, Yeah, sure. Snickering orderlies over at Children's used to refer to Dr. Haverford's office as the drop-dead zone, a place for getting only bad news. Good news you got in the examining room. I dropped into a chair on the other side of Dr. Lowenstein's desk, and Lani just leaned against the door frame.

  The doctor cast Lani a glance, and he raised his eyebrows up and down quickly before finding something on the floor to gaze at. It made me more sure they had been talking.

  When I tore my eyes from him, the doctor was holding out the other half of her sandwich to me.

  "Here, eat this. It's past lunchtime. You must be starved."

  "Thanks, I'm not hungry."

  She laid a napkin on the desk in front of me and dropped the half sandwich on top. "Come on. It's great stuff. From the Jewish deli across the street. I can't eat in front of kids."

  I wanted that sandwich about as much as I wanted five more stitches. "Thanks, I don't do mayonnaise."

  "Oh really? Why not?"

  She sounded annoyingly casual, and I wanted to scream, Just get it over with.

  "Because it's fattening. I'm a cheerleader, and I'm already, you know, a gargantuan."

  She took another bite, studying me. "You think you're fat?"

  I shook my head, then nodded, then shook my head. "I don't think I'm fat. I just think ... I'm a cow." My nervous laugh rang out as I watched Lani sniff and glare at the floor.

  "'A cow,'" the doctor repeated, like that was way interesting. "Been on a diet recently?"

  "About ... three months ago, I lost ten pounds. But I did it really healthy. I would never skip meals, do anything to jeopardize my health ... What is up?"

  She had a chart in front of her, which I assumed was mine, and she started shaking her head slowly as she chewed a mouthful of sandwich. I thought five years passed before she swallowed. I figured at that point, she'd get on with it.

  But she said, "What do you think would happen to you if you ate mayonnaise? Do you think it would make you sick to your stomach?"

  "I ... no." My impatience created short, blasting sentences. "I ate mayonnaise accidentally last week. It didn't make me sick. What is up?"

  "Nothing is up. No bad cell counts. You've got the red cells, white cells of your average human being, so you should be happy about that. Some things are down, which disturbs me. I had them looked into after you weighed in this morning at a hundred and twenty."

  "What does my weight have to do with it?"

  "You're five foot ten."

  "So?" I was trying to figure out if she was saying I'd had a relapse or not, but she seemed more interested in staring.

  She leaned over the desk at me. "You're five foot ten and weigh a hundred and twenty pounds," she repeated, like I was missing something. "Sure, some people are naturally that thin. But certain people who care about you say that you've got a list of things you won't eat. And that list is as long as your arm."

  Lani's eyes came slowly off the floor and gazed into mine, like he had nothing to be ashamed of. So, he actually had come over here to spew this at her. That's how they talked. It wasn't exactly like ratting somebody out, but it felt strange, like I was being ganged up on, and I still couldn't figure out what all this had to do with a relapse.

  "Am I sick, or not?"

  "You are still in remission."

  It was so not what I expected to hear that I sat there in dumbfounded silence. I was too shocked to jump up and down. Even if I'd found my legs, what she said next would have wiped away a big part of my glee.

  "Your eating habits are dangerous. They might jeopardize your remission in roundabout ways. Which isn't to say you completely surprise me. I've seen people a lot sicker than you who decide an eating disorder is going to solve the problems of the universe."

  I let my jaw drop down, so I could hurl out, You're crazy, but it just kind of hung there until I laughed.

  "That list of symptoms you gave us this morning, they're not just indicative of a relapse. Did you know dizziness could come from your body substituting adrenaline for nutrition? I see things like this every day in kids your age. You're getting older; you're independent—at least independent enough to get yourself to a place like this. And yet, you can't control Mom. You can't control Dad. Can't control the things your friends do ... but you sure can control how big around your thighs are—"

  "Lady, I've had cancer! Will you hear yourself? I eat more healthy than anybody I know!" I flopped back in the chair in frustration. "Not only that, my parents are just your average people ... perfectly average divorced people, but they don't fight much. Except when I'm sick—"

  I shifted around, because her eyebrows shot up like she was making a big deal out of nothing.

  "I know Dr. Haverford very well," she said to my amazement. My doctor over at Children's.

  "Oh, great! So are you going to tell my mom that I was here?"

  I didn't like how she grinned at Lani and he grinned back, like they understood something I was missing.

  "Dr. Haverford said to tell you he will not tell your mom. He said he got a little tired of prescribing Valium to her last time you were sick." She watched me, like we shared some big bad secret.

  "He said he would have been more happy about prescribing sleeping pills if she had done as he asked and took you to a support group, too."

  "But that was me. I didn't want to go to a support group."

  "Why not?"

  I sighed, my head reeling as I tried to remember. "My dad was getting married. The support group was up here. I didn't want to stay with him longer—"

  "There are cancer support groups all over the place. There are also Web sites and chat rooms and—"

  "My mom didn't push it, and I ... It was my choice," I said again.

  "Lot of weight on your shoulders."

  "Whatever."

  Lani's eyebrows were all cocked up, all I told you so, and his superior attitude about so many things finally boiled over the top. The doctor was trying to shove some flyer in my hand, and I balled it up and hurled it at Lani. I flopped back down and slid low in the chair, completely embarrassed.

  But he just cracked up as it whizzed past him into the corridor, and said, "Nice."

  "That is ... was ... a list of therapists, support groups, and Web sites—"

  "Look." I put my hand up, like stop. "Sorry if ... I'm uptight right now. But I don't see what all good it's going to do me to talk to a bunch of people who are down on their luck. Like my mom said, what if their luck runs out? Do I need friends who could die?"

  "That's not the point," she said. "We're all going to have our ticket punched. That's a fact of life. The point is to have people in your life who can relate to you, listen to you. If you had that, you wouldn't be sneaking around at a charity clinic. And I highly doubt you'd be eating like you were trying to disappear."

  I shook my head, standing my ground. "I eat three meals a day, every day!"

  "Consisting of?"

  I might have believed her a little
better about needing counseling if she wasn't bringing my eating into it. I recited my diet of fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch.

  "But I eat plenty of dinner—anything I want! Noodles, gravy, potatoes..."

  Lani had retrieved the flyer and tossed it back at me. I caught it as he said, "She eats a salad at eleven o'clock and then goes to cheerleading after school—"

  I hurled it back, and this time his ducking mechanism worked, but he kept talking. "And she doesn't get done until six o'clock."

  "And I suppose you use no-fat dressing," the doctor added.

  "You guys, you don't understand," I heard myself saying. "Do you know how hard it is for a girl who's five ten to get on cheerleading? I had to do everything twice as good ... Stop!" I held my hands up defensively before they could start in on Did I have to be a cheerleader? Did I have some sort of starlet complex? Fortunately, they kept their huge mouths shut while I dropped my head onto my hands on the desk, trying to find words for this very important thought making my gut explode.

  "I know ... who I am. I am Myra's friend. Eli's and Geneva's friend. I am Macy Matlock's best friend. They are not perfect people, but nothing in my life has made me feel so good as ... knowing who loves me. I want my life to stay as much like it is as possible. I don't want it cluttered with a bunch of talk about bad memories or family problems I can't help. Especially if I'm healthy, I don't want to make changes. Except ... okay. I'll eat more. I'll gain ten pounds back, okay?"

  Dr. Lowenstein rubbed her eyes, like she was tired. I wondered how many people she'd seen that day.

  "No, Claire, don't 'gain ten pounds back.' Just eat more. Eat some junk food. Eat French fries with your salad. Forget about what you eat, and just eat it. Stay off the scales, okay? If your pants don't fit, just go out and buy a bigger pair. Think you can do that? Because I'm doubtful."

  "Why?"

  She started to say something and stopped, glancing at Lani, who raised his eyebrows again.

  "I trust this kid," she said to me, jerking her thumb. "He reminds me of one of our floating angels."