Sylvia: A Novel

by Leonard Michaels

  About an hour passed with me locked in my old psychological prison, wondering if I’d ever feel good again. She’d given me plenty of reason to bring up divorce, to say simply that I wanted a divorce, but she was doing all the talking, sipping her bourbon, gaily confessing her infidelities. I might have said that I was seeing somebody, too, but it was only one person and she seemed irrelevant. I had nothing very dramatic, or interesting, to say about her. She didn’t even smoke, let alone take drugs. The moment belonged to Sylvia. I could say nothing at all. Then she asked, “Would you like to try once more?” She meant resume our life in Michigan, while I completed work for the Ph.D. The question was stupefying. I hadn’t expected anything like that, but maybe I should have known it was coming.

  At the moment, I didn’t try to figure things out. I could repeat every word she said, but I understood little, maybe nothing. She seemed a different person, no longer the shy, pathologically sensitive, explosive Sylvia, the one who was attractive to men yet felt she was repulsive. This was a glamorous Sylvia, an intellectual’s whore, sipping bourbon and flaunting her adventures in love, then asking if I’d like to have her back, as if she’d proved herself ravishingly depraved, brilliant in destructive spirit, perversely irresistible. I sat bloated by misery, heavy, stupid, burning. She’d said enough. She waited for my answer.

  “Wait till I finish my exams,” I said. “Then come to Ann Arbor.”

  She heard me. I said it clearly. I never felt worse. Sylvia lay still for a while, weighing my words. Then she sat up and walked into the bedroom. I continued to sit on the couch, unable to talk, a dummy. She reappeared, stood at the end of the couch, and said, “I just swallowed forty-seven Seconals.” In her eyes, I saw a flat look of that’s that, and there you have it.

  I said, “You’re kidding.”

  She walked off to the bathroom. I stayed where I was, on the couch, not believing her, not disbelieving, and then I heard her groan. Her body fell to the floor, which is how it sounds. It does not sound like anything else. I hurried to the bathroom. She was sprawled on the tile, underpants still hooked to one ankle. Apparently she’d fallen off the bowl while sitting on it. I dragged her to the couch, shouting at her, slapping her face, shaking her. Then I tried to walk her around the living room. I stopped only to phone the police, and open the apartment door wide, and then I went back to the bathroom, picked up her underpants, and pulled them up her legs. I tried again to make her walk, hooking her left arm around my shoulder, my right arm around her waist. It was no use. I was dragging her, not walking her. I dropped her back on the couch, straddled her, and pleaded and shouted while shaking her and furiously rubbing her wrists. I thought to make her vomit, but she was unconscious and I was afraid she would choke. Minutes later, two policemen entered the apartment. They did the same thing with Sylvia that I’d been doing, one on either side of her, walking her about. Then there was an ambulance, lights flashing in the street. We carried Sylvia downstairs. I got into the ambulance with her. We shot across town to Knickerbocker Hospital, in Spanish Harlem.

  A medical team was waiting to receive Sylvia. They went to work in an efficient, military way. I saw them cup her mouth with a respirator mask, then somebody asked me and the two policemen not to stand so close. We retreated to the doorway. As if I weren’t there, one policeman said to the other, “She won’t make it.”

  It had been less than half an hour since she fell. She was healthy; only twenty-four years old. It was impossible that she could just die, regardless of the liquor and the pills; but there she was, unconscious and responding to nothing. I was scared. I thought only in the most primitive manner. She’d always been right about everything. I’d always been wrong. I loved her. I couldn’t live without her. She’d proved it. I was convinced. No more proof was necessary, only that she open her eyes and live. I’d be what she liked. I’d do what she wanted and that would also be what I wanted. She would know that I loved her and always had. My mind went round and round with the same little prayer. I had only to keep saying it, not let any other thought interfere. It was important not to be distracted. In this trancelike state, I could see other people all about and I could converse, and yet I was isolated, I was pure, dedicated to my prayer, as if it were keeping Sylvia alive. I loved her, I had always loved her, we were going to Michigan . . .

  One of the medical staff asked me if I knew what Sylvia had swallowed. I told him what she said. He then said they must do a tracheotomy. Sylvia wasn’t breathing. But no one present had authority to perform a surgical procedure. I noticed that all of them had foreign accents, Spanish and German. Perhaps they weren’t fully licensed to practice medicine in America. They were standing around, suddenly doing nothing. I didn’t understand how there could be nothing to do. I urged the one who spoke to me to do the tracheotomy. I said, “Please do it.” I begged with my face and body and voice. He wanted to do it, but was frightened. Another doctor appeared, wearing street clothes, coming down the hall, walking briskly to the exit. He was a tall, strong-boned man with a Nordic face, sallow complexion, thin lips, icy eyes. He looked authoritative, like a hero or a god, one who could perform surgery, climb a mountain, kill people, anything. I saw in his eyes that he was thinking only of leaving the emergency room, going away from this hospital, going to a place far away. The one who’d spoken to me, a short dark Spanish doctor—if he was a doctor—stopped the one who was leaving. He explained the situation to him in a deferential tone; a slight bend appeared in his spine and his elbows pressed his ribs, as if he were making the shape of apology, begging forgiveness. With a gesture of disgust, the tall one brushed him aside and went out the door.

  I’d known instantly that the Spanish doctor had used the wrong tone. He should have been assertive and demanding. He should have said in a loud voice for everyone to hear, “Do it. She isn’t breathing. She’ll die.” Instead, he was a whispering, servile man. I’d been afraid the doctor with icy eyes would react just as he did, brushing the Spanish doctor aside. I could do nothing except watch the two men, as if I were dreaming their entire exchange.

  The Spanish doctor then returned to Sylvia. The others stood about the table, grimly watching as he performed the tracheotomy. I watched from the doorway, forbidden to step closer. The Spanish doctor was taking a chance with his career and his life. At least that’s what I thought. With everything to lose, he did the job.

  Moments later he turned to me and said Sylvia would be all right. She was breathing normally. He was pleased, exultant, reassuring; his successful performance had left us nothing to worry about. They wheeled her away to a room upstairs. I followed and sat beside her bed. When we were alone, I told her we would go to Michigan, and that I wished she would open her eyes. She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t move.

  I left the room to phone family and friends. Some arrived in the middle of the night, others early the next morning. Two of Sylvia’s aunts and an uncle were among those who came. They spoke to one another, not to me. I overheard a few things they said while they stood talking outside Sylvia’s room.

  “I feel terrible. I never visited her. She would call me sometimes.” It was a woman’s voice, matronly, with a faintly foreign intonation.

  “She was always neurotic. I don’t know why he married her.” A second woman.

  “Is she getting the best possible attention? I want to call in another doctor.” The first woman again, agitation building in her voice. She continued: “Get the key to her apartment. We should investigate, find out what she took. We’ll need her medical insurance papers. I believe she had a cat. Has somebody fed the cat?”

  Sylvia didn’t wake, but she continued to breathe normally. Her face turned once in my direction, following me as I crossed to the other side of the bed. It seemed her mind was alert and she knew I was in the room, and yet she was taking in my presence through a void, as if from another planet. I watched her for hours. I held her hand, smoothed her hair. Mainly, I just sat beside her bed. I believed she could hear me, feel my to
uch, sense movement, and that she was perfectly conscious and alert, but simply couldn’t respond. She was suspended, floating in a strange sleep. When she awoke, she would remember everything. Now and then I left the room and dozed in the hall, on a wooden bench.

  For two nights and days, I sat with Sylvia or tried to sleep on the bench, afraid to leave the hospital before she woke up. I thought it was dangerous to leave her; too unlucky, too risky. I’d be out in the city, far away, doing nothing to sustain her. My presence was necessary; touch, voice, thoughts.

  The Spanish doctor drew me into an office on the second morning. He said again that Sylvia would recover, but he was more sober, more judicious. He said it was a medical miracle that she was alive, but I mustn’t expect too much. She’d been unconscious for a long time. No telling if she had suffered brain damage. “She might no longer be the person you remember.”

  I noticed, for the first time, that he was very young and had a round face and thick, curly black hair. He made an impression of physical compactness, energy, and warmth. I began to sense the qualities of his personality, his desire to be kind, and something about his idea of himself as a doctor. He was probably younger than me, but speaking in a fatherly manner, doing what he believed he should, trying to prepare me for the worst that could happen. I didn’t believe Sylvia had suffered brain damage.

  During the third night, as I slept on the wooden bench outside her room, I was awakened by terrible shouts in a German accent—“Seel-vya”—and the sound of hard slaps. I rose and looked into the room. The doctor who had refused to do the tracheotomy was bent over Sylvia, shouting her name and slapping her face, as if she were a very disobedient child who refused to wake up. I pitied him, but I hated him, too, and wished him ill. Sylvia didn’t open her eyes.

  The next morning I went downstairs and sat in the reception area. A black man and two women, perhaps his wife and his sister, stood waiting there. They were nicely dressed, as if to show respect for the hospital. The Spanish doctor appeared. As he walked toward them, his round face opened with expectation, like their faces. For an instant it seemed he was about to receive news from them. But it was he who spoke.

  “Your daughter died. I am so sorry.”

  I then understood his expression. He’d imitated what he saw in their faces, their expectation, to show that he felt as they did. It was instinctive, a reflex of imitation, he wasn’t deliberately showing anything; he was simply feeling as they did. The black gentleman said, “She only fell down the stairs.” The women embraced each other and cried, and then the man cried. I felt sorry for all of them and for me.

  I restrained my own tears. The thought came to me that there had been a sacrifice. A woman had died. Therefore, Sylvia would now wake up. Too bad it had to be this way, but in God’s scheme of things, there is terrible justice. Sylvia and I would soon be leaving the hospital.

  I thought, If I were rich, I’d give a fortune to this hospital for the many who would receive its care, and the many who would cry. I was adrift on dreams of myself as a seer and immensely generous benefactor, and though I was sure I could run a fast mile or lift great weights if necessary, I was very tired. Somebody found me wandering about the halls. I was told to go home, Sylvia would be all right. I could go home, take a shower, change my clothes. I left the hospital. It was okay to shower.

  While I had wandered in the hospital and sat beside Sylvia’s bed, I’d hardly noticed the days passing. Mornings were a vague brightness. Electric lights went on and it was night. I stood now in plain, cold sunlight and was surprised to see that the city hadn’t ceased for a minute. Streets flourished. There was noisy traffic. People were everywhere. A taxi pulled up. I got inside. For an instant, I didn’t know what to say. Where was I going? I gave the driver the address on 104th Street. We sped west. As the meter clicked off the seconds, I studied the driver’s license, his name and photo, clipped to the dashboard. It shivered with jolts sent up from cobbles and holes in the frozen asphalt. Through the taxi windows, I saw steam lifting from vents in the street and the exhaust pipes of automobiles. I looked at people on the sidewalks, each of them extravagantly particular. A mustache, like a black horizontal slash, crossed out a man’s mouth, forbade attention to his weak chin. A woman wearing sunglasses, furs, and heels held a little terrier on a leash. It trembled and sniffed the concrete, seeking a place to squat.

  It felt good to see familiar things, but all of it was faintly colored by fear. I’d been told Sylvia would be all right. Nevertheless, I remained vigilant. I remembered the unchanging stillness of Sylvia’s face, how she didn’t look back at me. Then I remembered a doctor who had arrived late the second night. His name was Warsaw. He made an impression of great competence and, as if challenged personally, he showed concern to understand Sylvia’s condition. He asked, “What exactly did she take?”

  “She said ‘Seconal.’”

  “Can you find out for sure?”

  From a phone booth in the lobby, I dialed Roger Lvov. I didn’t want to talk to him, but I had no choice. He’d know what Sylvia took. Sylvia told me they had taken drugs together, and I remembered that he’d given her drugs in the past. His phone rang for a long time. I hung up, dialed again, let it ring for a while, then hung up and dialed once more. At last someone picked up the phone. A man said, “It’s after 3 a.m., Hamilton. You’re so fucking needy, so fucking tedious.”

  In the background, Roger said, “Give it to me.” Then, speaking into the phone, in his choked, gasping voice, he said, “If you call me names, Hamilton, I won’t talk to you. What do you want?”

  “Sylvia overdosed. She’s in the hospital.”

  Silence.

  Then Roger said, “Yes.”

  “The doctor wants to know exactly what she took.”

  Silence.

  I heard a match being struck. Roger inhaled, exhaled. “What did she tell you?”

  “Seconal.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Forty-seven Seconals.”

  “That’s right.”

  I hung up and went to find the doctor. Then I sat beside Sylvia’s bed. The conversation with Roger only confirmed what Sylvia had said, but I kept repeating the words to myself, like an obsessed detective, as if a solution to the whole mystery of my life might suddenly occur to me. Seconals. That’s right. Forty-seven Seconals. That’s right.

  When the taxi crossed West End Avenue, I saw the building we’d left three nights ago, the ambulance waiting in the street with its hysteria of flashing lights. I remembered the rush across town to the hospital.

  Feeling about in my pants pocket for money to give the taxi driver, I realized I had no keys. I rang the manager’s bell. She let me in and then gave me an extra set of keys. “Your wife is coming home soon, too?” I nodded, thanked her for the keys, walked upstairs.

  The cat with the broken tail was gone. Someone had probably released it in the street. For a few minutes, I stood at a window and watched the street, as if I might spot the cat. I remembered standing at this window one night and hearing a sound in the sky. I’d looked up and seen geese, high above the city, in a V formation, heading north.

  I went to the bedroom. When I opened a closet door to look for a bath towel, I noticed a stack of letters on a shelf and I recognized my handwriting on the face of the envelopes. They were letters I’d written to Sylvia from Michigan. Affectionate, funny letters, but I could see from the way I’d written her name and address—too big, too exuberantly scrawled—that I’d been childlike in spirit, much too happy living away from her.

  In the heat and steam of the shower, eyes shut, breathing slowly, I stood like a post, and tried not to see my handwriting on those letters, tried not to think or feel. When I got out of the shower, the phone rang. It was the hospital. They told me to come back. I dressed quickly, ran out, found a taxi.