by Thea Goodman
In the Corolla, it occurred to him: That very dance of light on breathing limbs must have been what Art had been talking about lately, what happiness studies was all about. Those mornings had been so great. He’d been happy. After their long waking chats, John would to rush back to his official room to shower, because David Edelson had called breakfast for eight-thirty sharp, and attendance was mandatory.
It was Veronica who had introduced him to, then steeped him in, pleasure. Even before Barbados, during their first winter together she’d returned from her family trip with a bottle of coconut oil from the island. When she’d cracked it open in her uptown studio, John saw that a thick layer of white cream topped the bottle. She’d massaged his shoulders, his hips, with it, and he hers. The same scent now permeated Derek’s car.
Clara woke up and cried when they arrived in Speightstown. The air was full of shouts and the acrid odor of fish. John kept his eyes closed, as if he could live in a reminiscence of sex and coconut oil.
Once John was inside the clinic and lying on an examining table, Dr. Bunbury addressed him. Shoes squeaked on the linoleum in the clean pink room. The doctor pulled a white curtain around them.
“Tell me everything—John, is it?” Bunbury had an English accent. Pale-blue eyes stared wryly, and he pursed his lips as if he was containing something incredibly funny. He covered his mouth while the American spoke.
“If you could examine Clara first, I’d be grateful. She’s had really bad diarrhea.”
“Sure. Bettine, our nurse, will examine her, and you tell me your story. Tell me everything you remember.”
The papered table crackled beneath him as he propped himself up on his elbows to speak. “I was sitting on the windowsill, looking at Lafayette. My wife was pretending to sleep.”
“Lafayette? Is that your wife’s name?”
“No, the street. In New York. It was snowing a little bit and I didn’t think. I just got dressed.” Dr. Bunbury jotted a note, then glanced toward Bettine through an opening in the white curtain; she raised one eyebrow as she adjusted Clara on her shoulder. “Please examine her right here, okay? Don’t take her away.”
“I’m taking her to her own table that is fresh,” Bettine said authoritatively, placing Clara on an examining table to his right. Looking down, John saw that his own table was smeared with something dark: soil or manure or blood from his head.
“Mr. Reed, let’s try again,” Dr. Tisbury said. “I will ask you a few questions and you answer me as directly as possible.” Tisbury asked John the year, the name of the American president, the month. John could tell he’d answered correctly by the lack of alarm or note in his questioner’s gaze, but the words themselves—2005, Bush, January—were surreal. His words described a reality that still felt new, even fictional: The fact that Bush had snagged another election after stealing the first one, the reality of an unjust war. It struck him freshly: This was the context in which they lived. Large and small problems amplified one another, then settled stealthily around him, like gas enveloping his face.
Tisbury looked pleased. “In sum, you’ve not sustained a head injury of a certain type that causes lapses. That’s good. Nonetheless, you seem a bit confused.” Tisbury, fiftyish but young looking, had a playful air about him as if he truly liked John. It was a small but distinct comfort to be liked by a stranger. “Start with the injury and describe the pain you’re experiencing, from the beginning. Start with today at Laura Simpson’s.”
And so, even though John felt as if he was getting way ahead of himself, beginning in the middle of the story instead of at the more logical beginning—his insomnia Thursday night, or the taxi ride on Canal Street, or the moment Veronica started reading aloud to him about obesity, or even when she was given the epidural and he’d had to leave the room—instead of beginning with the hysterectomy, or the first night home from the hospital, instead of beginning with pickup basketball with Arthur one night, when he’d insisted afterward that they go meet some girls he knew at the Corner Bistro, or instead of the bottle of coconut oil, which led to that massage. Instead of any of that, John told the story from the moment he’d arrived at Laura Simpson’s, as arbitrary a beginning as that was. But once he began, like the reporter he’d been, he left out no detail, even recalling that he was leaning down to get a zwieback toast from the diaper bag when the ball hit his temple.
As he spoke, Tisbury smiled, amusement flickering in his steely English eyes. “This is all a very good sign. You’re cogent.” Next to him, to his great relief, Clara giggled with Bettine as a healthy-looking string of drool dangled from her lips. He watched as they gave her some sugary clear liquid for hydration. She licked the dropper greedily. “Clara’s doing fine,” Tisbury assured John when he asked. “The father is of more concern,” he said. “You’re severely dehydrated.” Tisbury attached an IV to John’s arm.
“The first IV is probably the beginning of the story, if you really want to know the truth,” John said to Tisbury, as the doctor connected the plastic tubes to a bag of fluid. “Not this one but Veronica’s.”
* * *
Eventually Veronica had been put under completely. But at three centimeters she was still awake and John was essential to her. “Let’s walk,” she’d said. “It’s supposed to make it easier to bear.”
“Whatever you say,” he said, kissing her forehead and helping her stand up.
“Can you say that more often?”
They paced the hospital hallways, and she did this weird, adorable thing where she leaned on him when she had a contraction, putting both hands on his shoulders and doing a plié. It was ten at night and a whole day had passed since they’d checked in to the hospital. She rolled her trolley of tubes. Her doctor had forbidden drinking anything at all during labor, so her lips had turned beige with thirst. John kissed her anyway. Those moments when she leaned on him and gave way a little at the knees made him feel useful.
Between contractions, life was normal; they strolled the hallways of the hospital, chatting. “Look at that!” she’d said, stopping. On the wall was a framed photo of an eagle soaring over snowcapped mountains. The caption read, ACHIEVEMENT, in bold letters.
“Wow,” John said. “I always wondered where to get one of those—oh my God, look.” They passed another one. A muscular greyhound was running in a field of lavender. EXCELLENCE, the caption read.
DETERMINATION, read a third, below an image of a boy reeling in a large fish over a sun-streaked lake. “You know, Dr. Berlin must have put these up herself,” Veronica said.
John laughed. “No, hers says, ‘power,’ and she has it all over her entire apartment, everywhere you look.”
“Right, but what kind of animal is in hers?” Veronica asked.
“A vulture,” he said.
“Some sort of power elk,” Veronica countered, and then they were in it together again, in that uncanny closeness. Was it odd to remember that institutional hospital corridor as a kind of heaven? They had been joking there together.
* * *
Across the room, Bettine sat with Clara, feeding her a bottle, and he wanted to object—it was probably store-bought formula. But Clara sipped with alacrity, cozying herself in the nurse’s dark arms. Someone else was holding her and she was content. He wanted the three of them together again in the same room. He had to go home. But the head injury made his immediate departure impossible. Tisbury would return to observe him in two hours. He lay back on the papered table and focused on Bettine’s singing, as he waited:
But I’m sad to say,
I’m on my way,
won’t be back for many a day.
My heart is down,
my head is turning around,
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.
10
Saturday
Veronica
On the subway, Veronica and Art sat next to each other. Veronica’s leg was longer than Art’s by several inches. “Ines wouldn’t begrudge me one drink at the Oyster Bar,” h
e said.
“You mean three.” They’d just left the diamond district. At the first stop, the train screeched to a halt and the doors hissed open to reveal a throng of coltish girls too long for their skirts. She had been one of them once, giggling in a pack. Now she was solitary. “Are you drunk?” Veronica asked.
“Tipsy, I’d say.” But Art’s voice didn’t waver.
“You’d never know it. How is it you can overdo it and then pop out, unscathed, and present a lecture the next morning?”
“That’s just what I did at the Happiness Conference.”
“I love that there is such a thing.”
“I gave a lecture on the statistics of reported marital happiness,” he offered. “Men report greater happiness levels after marriage, while women report a marked dip in happiness levels.”
“A marked dip? How marked?” she asked, but the train became too loud again. Art was gesticulating, explaining something that she could hear only bits of, about reported happiness levels versus actual levels, about a margin for error, while the shocking data gnawed at her. It was distressing that happiness wasn’t, by nature, reciprocal.
“It’s not that they’re unhappy, just that women always think they could do better,” Art said as they reached the street. She buttoned her wool coat all the way up, but the wind went right through it. “Women don’t accept things as they are,” he said. “They want to change them.”
“I don’t think I’ve been unequivocally happy since I was first pregnant,” she said.
“Are you sure about that? I remember you were pretty freaked out.”
Veronica held on to his elbow as they approached an icy patch. “You know how anticipation is. I was happier thinking about the future.” The future had arrived, and here she was, oddly enough, sliding along a patch of black ice with Arthur, her family gone.
“And you’re happier with hindsight as well,” he said.
“There was the mere expectation, the pregnancy itself, the huge mystery of it. Having no idea what would happen, what she would look like. I loved that.”
“You were relatively quiet on the subject. Ines you can’t get to shut up about it.” He smiled and then stopped. “Well, until the test yesterday; now she fears the worst.”
They’d arrived at the white-brick building, and Art led them past the ineffectual doorman, who looked as if he’d been installed in uniform in 1961. An older couple in very long parkas and galoshes joined them for a silent elevator ride. Arthur rang his own doorbell, his way of warning Ines he was not alone.
“You two were on a date, I see,” Ines said as she opened the door and stood in the passage, rubbing a towel to her shampooed head. A damp floral smell billowed into the hallway. She smiled at Art and Veronica and then stuck out her tongue.
“We ran into each other,” Veronica said, “and decided to get a drink.”
“Hi,” Art said, embracing Ines from behind as she tried to free herself.
“I can smell the alcohol—wow.” Ines said, holding her nose. She looked at Veronica as she shoved Art away playfully. “You need to distract me,” she added. “I’ve been going through the same bad test-result scenarios over and over again.” Art kissed her cheek and she said, “Don’t take off your shoes. I’m starving.” She started lacing up her boots. “Is John back yet?” she asked, looking at Veronica.
“Nope. I assume Muriel has him wrapped up in some intense Evan worship and is plying Clara with oodles of educational wooden toys and they’re fine.”
“I thought he’d be back by now and booked us for four at Isabella’s,” Ines said.
“What?” Veronica blurted.
“What’s wrong? You’re tired of it?”
“No. Nothing.” She hadn’t even responded to Damon’s messages. He probably wouldn’t show up at Isabella’s. And if he did, seeing him might finally provide closure.
* * *
On the way to the restaurant, Veronica closed her eyes for a few minutes in the back of a cab. (It had been six hours since they’d started drinking, and she was tired.) To her surprise, a Rothko bloomed there, behind her lids, red and potent. She hadn’t seen one in a long time. When she was seven, her father had taken her to the Rothko Chapel in Houston, David Edelson’s hometown. They’d been staying with Veronica’s grandparents for a few days during winter break, and Veronica could tell, as young as she was, that her father was uncomfortable with his parents, who smelled dusty, drank Sanka instead of real coffee, and stayed indoors with the air conditioner on, despite Annalena’s repeated protestations: “It’s a lovely day out and not actually too hot at all!” He didn’t like their taupe ranch house, their small, self-consciously clean rooms with plastic seat covers, their bland roasts and crocheted doily toilet-seat covers. He didn’t like their sterile modesty.
Every day he had to flee and do something extravagant, bring home fresh steaks from the expensive butcher or nice wine—his parents had one dusty bottle of Manischewitz—that he and Annalena could sip while they sunbathed behind giant aluminum reflectors. One morning he put Veronica and Annalena in the car and told them, “There is some culture here.” They drove awhile to get to the surprise spot. When they arrived, Veronica noticed that her father did not get out of the car. He wanted to show his wife something refined, something interesting. He himself didn’t need to see it; impatient, fidgety, he was happier in the car toying with the radio dial. Veronica heard him settle on “Best of my Love,” as she and her mother slammed their doors and made their way across the lot to the chapel.
Inside the octagonal building were rows of benches like those in the real chapels she’d been to with her mother’s family. On all sides were not pulpits but paintings. Huge canvases from floor to ceiling, covered with somber grays. The paintings were boring. Her mother was always talking about “exposing her to beauty.” She took her to antiques auctions, rare flea markets, and museums, missions that—because she was really too young for them—always made her feel alone. At first, the Rothko Chapel was the same; Veronica had to watch her mother’s absorption though she did not share it. Annalena sat on a bench nearby and exhaled with the passionate breath she reserved for colonial folk art. But then, almost from the corner of Veronica’s eye, something in the canvas moved. She looked up, alert. The painting in front of her had jumped. She stared at it. The paint undulated faintly, moving away from her and toward her in waves. It was as monumental and frightening as the ocean. It was as mesmerizing and unknowable. Annalena rose and took a seat on a different bench, sighing heavily as if relieved of some great pressure. Veronica called to her, “Mom, can we go now?” She was scared of the silence that surrounded them, the air now tense and kinetic.
Annalena, full of reverie since graduating from Winterthur, turned and raised a finger to silence her. “Be patient,” she whispered. “And you’ll see. You may not ever come back here.” And so she studied Annalena’s rapturous face. Giving up, she looked back to the mammoth gray in front of her—there was nowhere else to look—and fell into it. Her fear petered out like it did right before she fell asleep. The hard bench beneath her fell away. She was not in Texas, she was not a daughter, she was not a girl, she was not herself; there was only this world of the painting and its tides, a subtle connection that she rode. She fell into time and space. She was removed—for that was how it seemed when her mother finally summoned her out and back to the car—and she was sure she had found something, an experience, a way of seeing, that was all hers.
Her grandparents died soon after, and David Edelson became fully a New Yorker, who never needed or wanted to go back to Texas. Her mother had been right: Veronica never returned to the chapel. But she often dreamed of the paintings and the feelings they’d produced, the disembodiment and that unnameable higher connection.
In the beginning of labor it was those colors, that undulation, that she felt along with the pain. Vision was transcendence, a gift. She had lived by this idea from the time she was six and all through her adult life. She had confided
to John that seeing was the thing that made life good for her. If you could see deeply, if seeing could alter you, you were lucky.
After Clara, she could no longer see the same way. Their new world was comprised of bodily needs: Veronica was grounded in pain. Clara’s hunger was continuous. And Veronica no longer had time to stare at a painting for very long. Instead, she stared at the baby’s mysterious face. That face, whose every gesture and movement she strained to interpret, had become her chapel.
After, Veronica sometimes had dreams of color—zooming reds, electric blues—but when she woke up there wasn’t time to see, only time to respond. She’d worried that, if you stayed in that dream, you might never emerge and reach another person.
Wasn’t Annalena evidence of this encapsulation? But Annalena was not beyond convention; she did appear in the recovery room when Clara was born, bearing a large purple hyacinth.
“Sniff,” she’d said, holding the plant close to Veronica’s face.
“Hi, Mom,” Veronica had said, overwhelmed by the cool earth scent of the flower.
“It’s as if you can see purple when you close your eyes. How are you feeling?”
“Tired. The baby should be here in a minute. They’re bringing her back from the nursery.”
“I was worried about you,” Annalena said, as she made room on the bedside table for the plant. A nurse shuffled in, holding the bundled baby, and Annalena watched as Veronica took Clara back into her arms.
“Do you want to hold her?” Veronica asked her mother after a few moments. She, too, wasn’t beyond convention.
“I do. I definitely do,” Annalena had said. “Look at her!” Yet she didn’t make any motion to take Clara. “She’s a stunner.”