Pat Boone Fan Club

by Sue William Silverman

  EPILOGUE: [“The gathering gloom,” Crow predicts.] I carry my dinner plate into the living room. I insert one of the prerecorded MST3K movies into the VCR and sit on the couch. “In the not too distant future . . .” the theme song begins as I place a forkful of food in my mouth. I don’t want to eat alone, so this is my nightly ritual. I want to believe I’ll eat dinner for the rest of my life with Joel and the ’bots on the SOL. [“Something unspeakably horrible!” Crow warns.] When I can’t fall asleep and am awake at three in the morning, I watch one of the tapes. Instant comfort. Instant family. This family is always here—just inside the TV—fighting the evil of bad movies that tries to destroy civilization. [“Oh, the humanity,” Crow cries.]

  One evening I tape a new movie, Mitchell. It becomes increasingly clear that this is Joel’s last episode. I later learn that “creative differences” force Joel to leave the show, even though MST3K was his idea. But now, during each skit between breaks in the film, an escape route is planned for Joel’s return to Minnesota.

  Toward the end of the movie, Crow has a meltdown over Joel’s departure. I rush from the room. I continue to tape the episode to watch at a later date, but I can’t bear to witness it now. [“Oh, Lord, let it be quick,” Crow pleads.]

  What’ll I do without MST3K as I know it, without Joel? Does this mean Crow and the show might soon go off the air as well? I’ve been lulled into thinking we’ll all grow old together. So what’ll I do? [“Please remain seated until the movie grinds to a complete halt,” Crow advises.]

  Sure, I could return to Georgia, return to Atlanta Braves logos, southern drawls, loblolly pines. Or, maybe there is robot life in outer space! [“Yeah, and there could be dogs and light-rail and tofu. What’s your point?” Crow asks, characteristically.] But if I were a character in It Conquered the World, I would say, unironically, “It doesn’t matter where you live—outer space, Georgia, Michigan. ‘Man is a feeling creature.’ So home, after all, is where the heart is. Isn’t it?” [“Is the pope Catholic?” Crow queries.]

  Months later I finally watch the end of Mitchell. I have to. I must. If I don’t face the reality of Joel’s departure, as well as feel the loss suffered by the ’bots, won’t I be living with my own denial—that all is fine when it’s not? [“You can’t handle the truth,” Crow challenges.] Wanting to grow old with Joel and the ’bots won’t make it happen.

  “Hey, what about us?” Crow calls out, as he and Tom Servo watch Joel floating away from the SOL in a launch pod. “What’re we supposed to do without you? Who’s going to teach us about what it is to be human and stuff?”

  “Listen, you guys,” Joel says, his voice growing faint. “At this point, you guys know as much about it as I do.” The ’bots watch the pod fading from view. “Be strong,” Joel adds. “Be true. I love you!”

  I love you, too, I think.

  I turn off the television. I stare at the blank screen. No, I stare at the image, the afterimage, of my husband driving away from me. [You can’t walk out on me, I’m Charles Foster Kane,” Crow asserts.] After all, as much as I have to watch the truth of the final episode with Joel, I must also watch the final episode starring M. . . .

  I’m relaxing on the couch after dinner when my husband comes to sit beside me. With no preliminaries, this husband of eighteen years announces he wants a divorce. He’s seen an attorney, found an apartment, is moving out. Tomorrow—on the Fourth of July.

  He met Cheryl from Akron in an Internet chat room. She understands me, he says. [“I know how much you love your turtle, but there are other things in the world just as important,” Crow says, categorically.]

  I lie awake all night imagining him in his downstairs study, night after night, face lit by the glow from his computer screen.

  The following morning, before he moves out, as previously planned, we arrive in Allendale, about twenty minutes from home. We’re in his 1963 Ford Galaxie convertible to participate in the Fourth of July parade. A friend, running for re-election to the Michigan House of Representatives, asked if he could sit on the rear boot of the car, wave to the crowd, toss candy. [“Oh, and who died and made you president of the capsule?” Crow challenges.]

  My husband slowly cruises the main drag, amid high school marching bands, Ronald McDonald clowns, Masons in fezzes, homecoming queens, and cheerleaders. [“It’s so painful being a crappy special effect,” Crow grumbles.] I sit beside him. The state rep smiles to the sparse crowd strung along the sidewalk. A warm breeze gusts small American flags held on sticks. [“Rampant jingoism,” Crow smirks.]

  After the parade, back at the house, my husband throws a suitcase of clothes in the backseat. He says he’ll return for his other things later.

  I wonder if Cheryl from Akron is visiting him in his new apartment for the holiday weekend. I don’t ask.

  I stand in the driveway watching him leave. My first thought is that I must drive to Home Depot to buy a fire extinguisher. I am now solely responsible for this wood-frame Victorian house with questionable wiring. [“You close the hatch, I’m bitter,” Crow says, a grin on his metal beak.]

  But I can survive alone, even with questionable wiring, can’t I? [I want to decide who gets to live and who dies,” Crow proclaims.]

  But now, staring at the blank television screen, I realize that I miss him, miss them. Joel floating off into the galaxy . . . M. floating away in his Galaxie. I miss something. Maybe I miss the idea of Home, a home I’ve never found, or found only long enough for it to qualify as one of those temp jobs. [“Maybe you should have brought this up in group,” Crow says, helpfully.]

  I must also watch the truth about myself: I was a bad wife. I was an invisible wife. Too many selves, or none.

  Joel seeks his new identity back on planet Earth. Crow will seek his with a new human on the SOL. M. seeks his with Cheryl from Akron . . . or with someone, anyone, who will be a better wife than I. [“There’s more action in the wallpaper,” Crow points out.]

  And what about me? Isn’t this what Joel and Crow have really taught me: how best to survive—and triumph over—the losses, the bitterness of it all?

  Joel speaks to me as well as to the ’bots when he says he’s taught us all he can about being human. Human and spiritual, without hypocrisy. [“Heavy!” Crow exaggerates.] But more than this, I now finally realize that Crow no longer lives inside a television. As sappy as it sounds, he lives here with me, inside my heart, me, behind the wheel of my own galaxy, celestial and bright. [“In real life, of course, your roommate is a stinky high school dropout who fills your life with head lice, crusty laundry, and furry cans of SpaghettiOs,” Crow snorts.]

  Good-bye Joel. Good-bye M.

  [“Goodnight, sweet crustacean,” Crow bows, “wherever you are.”]

  See the Difference

  Clostridium difficile (klo-STRID-ee-um dif-uh-SEEL) is a bacterium that causes diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis.

  Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

  After the death of my therapist in May, followed by that of my cat in August, I wait. Not that I’m overly superstitious—but don’t bad things happen in threes? So when amorphous, ghostly pains whisper through my lower abdomen, I fear I’m entering my own deadly portal. I schedule an appointment with my doctor for October 19, her practice only ten minutes from my house in Grand Haven. Dr. Sharon Fields pokes my stomach. She shakes her head: no grapefruit-sized tumor. She performs a Pap smear since I’m due for one anyway. “Here’s the problem,” she says, diagnosing a vaginal infection on the spot, without awaiting lab results. She prescribes an antibiotic, clindamycin, 300 mg capsules to be taken twice daily for a week. I leave her office, vaguely satisfied I’ll survive this relatively mild diagnosis, that I won’t be the third in a fateful series. I stop at the pharmacy to fill the prescription at 10:30 in the morning.

  I swallow the first turquoise pill, the color of a chlorinated, antiseptic pool of water. I’m convinced a pill wearing such a delectable, albeit chemically colored, jacket w
ill cure me. I don’t read the warning label. I rarely do, since pharmaceutical companies tend to list every conceivable side effect from hangnail to death. How can you tell? I simply trust my physician. I don’t notice, therefore, that clindamycin “should be used only for serious infections because infrequently there are severe, rarely fatal, intestinal problems (pseudomembranous colitis) that can occur.”

  And then I get sick.

  Ten days after starting the antibiotic regimen, on October 29, I awake to a warm west Michigan morning. I also awake to mild intestinal distress. But since the evening before my partner, Marc, and I celebrated his birthday by dining out, perhaps I have a touch of food poisoning. Or maybe a spice disagreed with me. Since I don’t feel too poorly, Marc and I go for a walk, enjoying one of the final days of sunshine before the veil of a midwestern winter descends. We stroll the quiet streets of Grand Haven before heading to the library. But here, amid the stacks, I weaken. I rest on a chair while Marc carries our books to the checkout desk. As I walk home, the muscles in my legs soften. They feel unmanageable, wayward, drunk. My black clogs, which usually clomp on pavement, now listlessly drag. I’m too tired to lift my feet. Exhaustion flares behind my eyes. I want to be in bed. Asleep.

  Community Hospital, October 30

  Clostridium difficile . . . infections [can result in] Colitis, more serious intestinal conditions, sepsis, and rarely death.

  CDC

  “What’re your symptoms?” Dr. Larson asks, after I’m admitted to the emergency room.

  I consider mentioning Randy, my therapist, who died of heart failure in his early fifties, and Quizzle, my cat, dead at eighteen of lung cancer. I consider mentioning fate—that I’m ill simply because bad luck occurs in groups of three—whether the catastrophes are plane crashes or mysterious illnesses.

  In fact, I wasn’t the least surprised to find myself bundled into the car at 6:00 a.m. Marc drove us the five blocks to the emergency room along deserted Sunday streets. Last evening, collapsed in bed, wearing a sweatshirt and kneesocks to protect my diminishing body, I made trip after trip to the bathroom. I counted nineteen strides from bed to toilet. One way. I was afraid to sleep, convinced I’d die if I let down my guard. At any rate, I couldn’t sleep, egesting what seemed at least a month’s worth of food. At times I drifted in an opaque haze, gazing at—if not actively watching—the Turner Classic Movie cable channel all night, beginning with South Pacific. After that, I time-traveled through a midnight film noir stupor, movies reeling one into the next, indistinguishable.

  Between movies, I self-diagnosed various ailments with which I might be afflicted. The litany began when I (belatedly) read the warning label on the phial of clindamycin: “pseudomembranous colitis.” The list expanded when I Googled “diarrhea” on my laptop, an instant link to a World Wide Web of infection, disease, plague, and disorders.

  “I took this antibiotic,” I now say to Dr. Larson. I hand him the clindamycin warning label.

  He nods. “I’ve seen this before.” He explains that a pseudomembranous colitis infection is caused by C. diff. bacteria, short for Clostridium difficile. “It’s nasty stuff,” he adds. “We’ll run some tests. Start an IV. You’re probably dehydrated.”

  I lie on the hospital bed in the emergency room, watching transparent yellow fluid drip into my vein. Still early, it’s relatively quiet. Small bleeps in the distance, perhaps a machine breathing life into a body. . . . Randy suffered a heart attack in his office, but I don’t know if he died immediately or if an ambulance rushed him to the hospital. With Quizzle, I asked the vet to come to my house to put her to sleep. She was already thin with cancer. I thought she’d be more comfortable fading away on her kitty condo beside her favorite window. Now I want to doze, but the emergency room’s searchlight-voltage fluorescent lights preclude rest. Also, I must roll the IV pole back and forth across the corridor to the bathroom. My body has a will of its own. It desires to be lighter, more deficient.

  “The test is negative for C. diff.,” Dr. Larson says about an hour later. “But that doesn’t mean a whole lot. This is one of those tests that frequently shows a false negative.”

  He prescribes fourteen antibiotic metronidazole pills, 500 mg each, plus dicyclomine for cramping. “Stay on the BRAT diet—bananas, rice, applesauce, toast—for a week. Come back if you have additional symptoms.”

  Community Hospital, November 2

  C. difficile symptoms include: Watery diarrhea (at least three bowel movements per day for two or more days), fever, loss of appetite, nausea, abdominal pain/tenderness.

  CDC

  “What’re your symptoms?” Dr. Harkness, another ER doctor, asks, peering at me.

  I explain that for the past three days I have nibbled only bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. Small sips of Gatorade. But my body feels threatened even by bland food, impolitely rejecting it. “I’m exhausted,” I add.

  “We’ll hook up an IV and run more lab tests,” he says, glancing at my chart.

  “What if it’s not a C. diff. infection?” I ask.

  “That’ll be good.”

  “But what’re the other options?” I ask.

  “Maybe Crohn’s disease,” he says.

  “But isn’t that bad? Worse?” He disappears before the question is fully asked, much less answered. From the little I know, Crohn’s disease is chronic, possibly life threatening, whereas a C. diff. infection can be cured . . . I think. But now I’m distracted by a man in the next bed, a curtain separating us. He moans every fifteen seconds as if on schedule. A nurse is telling him he probably has diverticulitis.

  “What’s that?” he asks her.

  “Usually a bit of nut or seed gets trapped in the intestine,” she answers. “We need to run a CAT scan.”

  I try to remember the last time I ate a nut or a seed. Yes! I did eat canned nuts about a week or so ago. I want to make sure I don’t have diverticulitis. I want the doctor to order a CAT scan for me—a full-body x-ray. But then I remember the x-ray of Quizzle’s lungs, pinpoints of white, multiplying spots. The vet carefully reviewed all her symptoms. At the time, I told the vet that I wished she were my doctor. She spent more time with Quizzle than any doctor ever spent with me and was gentle, patient, smart.

  “The tests are negative for C. diff.,” Dr. Harkness says. He adds that I should continue taking that second antibiotic to counteract the effects of the first antibiotic, clindamycin, just in case. That’s all he can do. “There’s no way to know for sure without a colonoscopy,” he says.

  “Then why can’t I have one?” I ask.

  “The gastroenterologist wouldn’t order one yet. You have to wait and see if the metronidazole takes effect.”

  “You can’t order it?” I ask.

  “There’s a procedure to be followed.”

  Community Hospital, November 3

  People in good health usually don’t get C. difficile disease. People who have other illnesses or conditions requiring prolonged use of antibiotics and the elderly are at greater risk of acquiring this disease. The bacteria are found in the feces. People can become infected if they touch items or surfaces that are contaminated with feces and then touch their mouths or mucous membranes. Healthcare workers can spread the bacteria to other patients or contaminate surfaces through hand contact.

  CDC

  I awake with blurred vision. I stare at a line of text on my computer. Each letter possesses a shadow. I try another pair of reading glasses. The shadowed letters remain. I am going blind. Frightened, I return to the hospital, to learn that I’m only severely dehydrated.

  “Please, can’t you order a colonoscopy?” I plead from the bed where I’m again hooked up to an IV. Dr. Harkness is once again on ER duty. “Can’t you do it?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not a gastroenterologist.”

  “Then could I call the doctor, schedule an appointment myself?”

  “He wouldn’t see you. The order has to come from me or Dr. Fields. It’s still too soon. You have
to wait.”

  Wait. For what? What he must mean, I think, is that I’m not sick enough, not frail enough, not emaciated enough. Why can’t he see I need help now?

  County Hospital, November 23

  If you are infected you can spread the disease to others. However, only people that are hospitalized or on antibiotics are likely to become ill. For safety precautions you may do the following to reduce the chance of spread to others: wash hands with soap and water, especially after using the restroom and before eating; clean surfaces in bathrooms, kitchens and other areas on a regular basis with household detergent or disinfectants.

  CDC

  Marc drops me off at what we think is the emergency room as he drives off to park the car. It’s not the right entrance, however. Through slushy snow and bitter wind, I wander down the street, around the corner. After feeling better for close to ten days, able to eat small doses of food—convinced the C. diff. infection, or whatever it was, is cured—I awoke this morning with a temperature and severe bouts of diarrhea. Of course, I’m unable to schedule an appointment with Dr. Fields, this day before Thanksgiving. When I spoke by phone with her earlier, she suggested I go to County Hospital in Muskegon, about twenty minutes away, a hospital with better diagnostic services than Community Hospital. She returned the emergency page from her home, pots and pans clanking in the background. Small pellets of anger pinged behind my eyes, although I’d never let her know. Sick, I have lost control of my body. I am entirely dependent upon her.

  Who is she?

  I know nothing about her, not even where she attended medical school. After my previous doctor retired, I sought out Dr. Fields simply because she was a woman practicing at an all-women’s clinic. I was sure that a woman doctor would be more nurturing, empathetic, understanding of my concerns. Is this lack of research on my part as irresponsible as not reading the warning labels on medication?