Turtle Boy

by M. Evan Wolkenstein

  My heart has been pounding for most of the morning, but once I changed into my gown and settled into my room, a nurse brought me a pill and a cup of water. She said it would help me feel calm and relaxed. Now she says she’s going to put in the IV.

  She has me lay my arm out, wrist up.

  “Little pinch,” she says.

  It hurts. A lot. But then it’s over.

  She leaves.

  “You okay?” asks Mom.

  I nod.

  We sit for a long time.

  There’s a knock on the door, and in comes Dr. Haffetz.

  “Will Levine,” he says brightly. “Any questions before we bring you in?”

  I’m drowsy. I can’t think of anything.

  “Will, I know you’re worried about your jaw being wired shut,” Mom prompts. “Did you want to ask Dr. Haffetz about that?”

  “Just to be clear,” Dr. Haffetz interjects, “we’re not wiring anything. We’re going to use rubber bands, like the kind that are on your braces. They’ll keep your teeth together, but there are not going to be any wires.”

  “But you told me—” I say.

  “I said it was possible,” says Dr. Haffetz. “Life is full of possibilities. Most of them never happen. I’m quite certain the worst of the swelling and soreness will be over in a week, and for a month, you’ll eat lots of soup. No biggie. It’s the only thing that’s good to eat when it’s twenty below out, anyhow.”

  There is one other thing. The sleep apnea that might have made Dad die. I’ve never forgotten that. “I have one other question,” I say. He looks at his clipboard, then at me, and takes his glasses off. He’s listening.

  “Remember last summer you said that my dad might have died during his surgery because of heart damage from sleep apnea?”

  Dr. Haffetz and my mom look at each other.

  “We don’t know that Dad had sleep apnea,” Mom corrects me.

  “Well, he might have, right?” I press.

  “Again, it’s possible,” says Dr. Haffetz, raising both eyebrows. “You said he was a heroic snorer. It’s possible he had the type of occlusion we’re seeing in you.”

  “Well, the thing is…,” I say. “I snore. So could I have sleep apnea? Could I have heart damage? What if the same thing that happened to my dad…”

  Mom puts her hand on my arm. She can see I’ve asked a really important question.

  Dr. Haffetz comes over to me, pulls a penlight out of his jacket pocket, and looks in one ear, then the other.

  “Mmm,” he says. “Mm-hm.”

  “What?” I demand. “What do you see?”

  “I see that your heart is fine,” he says.

  “You can see it in my ear?” I ask.

  “No, that was for dramatic effect,” he says. “The truth is, even if you had very bad sleep apnea, you’ve only had it for a year or two. Nothing to worry about.”

  I look at Mom and let loose a long sigh; almost a laugh of relief.

  Dr. Haffetz comes round in front of me. “Open,” he says. He runs his thumb along the inside of my lip, top and bottom.

  “Good,” he says. “The braces really got you lined up. You’re ready.”

  He pats me on the shoulder and says that the orderlies will come by with a gurney in about fifteen minutes.

  The door closes, and it’s very, very still.

  The medicine is kicking in. I feel light-headed. My cheeks feel hot. Rather than being myself, I’m seeing myself.

  I see that I’m about to go into surgery, the same way Dad did, the last day I saw him.

  Dad, I say, inside my head. If you’re there, I miss you.

  The instant I say it, there’s a knock on the door. Two men in white uniforms come in, pushing a gurney. They roll it next to my bed and help me shift myself onto it.

  “Can you remove your hat, please?” asks one of the men. I take it off and hand it to Mom.

  “I’ll be waiting for you in the recovery room,” Mom says, holding the hat, her voice almost fierce. She kisses me.

  I feel the gurney start to move, and for a moment, despite the medicine to help me feel calm, a surge of hot adrenaline shoots through my body. The gurney is braced with two sudden but gentle jerks of the platform and then, total stillness. It’s very bright in here. The masked face of Dr. Haffetz appears, along with the masks and glasses of other doctors. One says hello and tells me his name, but I don’t catch it. He tells me to count down. I start at ten. I say nine. I forget what’s next.

  * * *

  • • •

  Someone is calling my name sternly, like I’m late for school. I can’t talk, and it’s hard to breathe because my throat is bone-dry, and the muscles around my lips are numb. Like my face has fallen asleep.

  I don’t want to open my eyes, but the voice keeps telling me to keep my eyes open. Lights are sliding over me again.

  Then I see Mom.

  “Hi, honey,” she says. “You did it. It’s done.”

  What’s done? I wonder. What did I do?

  I’ve been in the hospital for three days. I really hope I get out tomorrow.

  It’s the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. It’s also the second day of Chanukah. I know this because last night, Mom and I lit birthday candles stuck to a piece of foil on my dinner tray.

  After we lit the candles, Mom gave me my present for the first night. It was a little envelope like you’d attach to a bunch of flowers. I opened it, and inside was a little card with cartoon balloons and flowers. Mom decorated the inside like a homemade coupon.

  Good for FREE drum lessons.

  User must practice drums between lessons or coupon is null and VOID.

  “It’s amazing that they sell those coupons in a hospital gift shop,” she said.

  “Ah dote have eddy drubs,” I say.

  “I know,” she says. “We’ll find you some drums.”

  I can’t smile. I can’t find my lips. And it’s hard to talk. Partially because my teeth are banded together, but also because I have crusty, bloody bandages all over my face, stuffed under my lips, and up my nose. It’s hard to breathe. I only talk when I have to. On top of that, my tongue hurts. If I move it the wrong way, an agonizing pain stabs all the way down my throat.

  “If we end up having to spend another night of Chanukah here,” Mom says, “I wonder what else they have down there in the gift shop. Maybe some other coupons?”

  “A’duduh dight?” I say, showing my displeasure. “Ah wah go hobe….”

  “I know,” she says. “But we can’t rush it. It’s not up to us.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. My face looks like a purple jack-o’-lantern. My eyes are narrow slits; my cheeks look like I have an apple stored in each side; and the red-stained bandages look like something out of a horror movie. The bandages are starting to smell.

  I stumble back to the bed.

  “I wish I didn’t do dis,” I say to Mom.

  “Do what?” says Mom.

  I point to my face, irritated.

  “You don’t mean that,” she says.

  I turn as much as my stiff neck will allow. She’s looking at me from where she sits on her cake-chair. It’s just like the one in RJ’s room. Maybe all the hospitals in Wisconsin buy their folding cake-chair/beds from the same store.

  I lay my head back on my pillow. I don’t want to watch TV. My eyes still strain to read. Outside, it’s gray. I can’t see the road or the little cars or the church spires from my bed. Just gray, and snowflakes banging against the glass.

  Maybe I’ll sleep more.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Will.”

  Go away.

  “Will, you should wake up, hone
y.”

  I open my eyes.

  “Why’d you wake be up?” I say, annoyed.

  I wish I could sleep for two or three more days and find myself magically at home, with my own face back.

  It hurts. So. Much.

  “Will, I just got a call,” she says. “From Rabbi Harris.”

  Why would Rabbi Harris call Mom now? He knows I’m recovering from surgery. I’m going to see him for my Torah lessons in a week.

  I turn to look at Mom, and she’s not moving. Not talking. Her lips part, like she’s got the words ready but can’t release them.

  “What!” I demand. “Why’d he call?”

  “Honey,” she says. “Your friend RJ…he died a few hours ago.”

  My face and tongue hurt too much to say anything. Instead, my eyes fill up fast and overflow.

  Max is on my left. Shirah is on my right. We walk down the cemetery path toward a crowd of people standing at a grave. Next to it is a mound of brown dirt, dusted with snow, and a pair of machines—jackhammers, I guess—leaning against a crate. A bit farther back are about eight rows of folding chairs, snow banked knee-high around them like a little frozen amphitheater.

  We sit in the back row. Near the grave, I can see Rabbi Harris. He’s wearing a long black coat. Instead of his usual knit kippah, he’s wearing a white satin one like he wears on Yom Kippur. He’s wearing sunglasses. Most of the adults are wearing sunglasses, even though there’s no sun today.

  More people fill in the seats. Two of them I recognize, though they look different without their blue scrubs: Roxanne and Denise. Roxanne has one arm around Denise, and both of them look like they’ve been crying a lot.

  I look around at the faces of the people who stand off to the side of the chairs. I see a few men in dark suits with flat expressions. Some older women are there too. Everyone is very quiet. Very still. A black car with a long back crawls down the road, followed by a black limo. The two cars pull up near the grave. People get out, dressed in black. I see the occasional puff of tissue, held to eyes, pushed under lifted sunglasses.

  Some of the men from the limo go to the rear of the long car and open the back. Inside is a casket. The men roll it out, gripping a set of metal poles that run its length. The front of the coffin is supported by two big men. One is tall, built like a lumberjack. His eyebrows, his nose, the square of his jaw—in his face, I can see RJ.

  It’s RJ’s dad.

  He drove the truck that paid the bills, coming to visit RJ late at night, sleeping over and leaving early in the morning.

  I want to meet him and talk to him. But I’m a little afraid. Afraid of his grief. Afraid I won’t know what to say.

  My eyes move to other faces and lock on someone I never expected to see. Certainly not at RJ’s funeral.

  Jake.

  WHAT IS HE DOING HERE?

  “Jake,” Shirah calls to him, and points across me to a chair, two down on my right side. “You want to sit with us?”

  I start to stand up in objection and realize that Shirah’s arm isn’t pointing. It’s blocking. She won’t let me escape.

  Jake doesn’t notice this, though. He crosses in front of me, wiping his nose with the back of his sleeve, and plops down next to me. His cheeks are wet with tears.

  “My brother was really good friends with RJ back in fifth grade,” he explains to Shirah. A few rows up on the other side of the aisle, I see a taller-looking version of Jake; obviously, his brother. “He used to hang out at our house a lot, before he moved away. We didn’t know he was back. Or that he was so sick. How did you know him?”

  Shirah points her thumb at me. She’s telling me it’s time to talk.

  “We were friends,” I say. My teeth are banded together, so when I talk, my lips draw back to reveal a pained smile, a sore sneer.

  Jake nods and wipes his eyes. He starts to turn away and then whips back around to look at me: a classic double take.

  “What happened to your face?”

  I know he isn’t talking about any improvement to my chin. It’s too soon for that. My face is still swollen and puffy, and I have bruises under my eyes from the surgery.

  “He had an operation,” interjects Shirah. “Leave him alone.”

  “I was just curious,” Jake says defensively.

  “Drop it,” says Shirah.

  Jake turns back to the front. Shirah didn’t need to come to my defense so aggressively, but still, I appreciate it. I’m not in the mood for Jake’s interrogation. On the other hand, seeing him so devastated by RJ’s death has caused some of my negative feelings about him to evaporate.

  I see Gwen. She’s standing off to the side, wearing a green coat and a knit hat with earflaps. She’s standing by herself. Her face is blank. Frozen. I know how she feels. I carry my sadness inside me, too, a shell around my heart. I’ve always dealt with my sadness alone. But I know RJ wouldn’t want her to be by herself. I rise out of my chair and wave to her. She sees me.

  I motion for her to come over.

  There’s a seat in front of Shirah and Max and Jake and me. She walks over stiffly, half dead, and sits down. Shirah puts her hand on Gwen’s shoulder.

  The service starts. This is only the second funeral I’ve ever been to. The first was my dad’s, but I was only four. I don’t remember it. Except maybe I do.

  Flakes of memory flutter around me. A mound of dirt. Shovels. The adults taking turns shoveling dirt onto Dad’s casket, a Jewish tradition. Mom takes the shovel, her lip quivering, loosens some dirt, and shovels it into the grave. Then she hands the shovel to someone else, and she grabs my hand. The coffin is going in the ground.

  Here, in the cemetery, with the ground broken open for RJ, it feels like the line separating me from Dad is dissolved.

  “Dad?” I whisper. “I’m okay,” I tell him. “I’m really okay.”

  “You say something?” Shirah asks, leaning closer to me.

  I shake my head. But I can feel it—my mouth is almost ready to tell Dad what my heart always needed to. But first, I remember the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, which my mom always says for Dad when we go to temple, the prayer I will begin to say once I’ve had my Bar Mitzvah. Right now, I’m still too young to say the Mourner’s Kaddish.

  But I can say the Drummer’s Kaddish.

  My mind says: yitgadal v’yitkadash, shmei rabbah.

  My hands pray: bappa dum, b’dada-bum, boom. Amen.

  B’dada-bum, b’dada-bum, b’dada-bum, b’dada-bum…

  I imagine sending the rhythm from my hands straight to RJ, wherever he is, then straight to Dad. Maybe they’re in the same place, so I play this rhythm, over and over and over until it’s done. And then, like Mom does as she completes the Kaddish, I bow: just the tiniest, most imperceptible nod—once to the left. Once to the right. Once to the middle.

  And then my lips move.

  “Dad, I love you.”

  Rabbi Harris greets me at the office door with a big hug. I follow him into his office and sit down across from him.

  “It looks like your physical healing is coming along,” he says. “You seem much less swollen. And I think the change is remarkable.”

  He’s trying to be nice, but my cheeks and eye sockets look and feel like they’ve been bludgeoned.

  “Are you happy with the results?” he asks.

  The truth is, I’ve avoided looking in the mirror. I’m afraid of what I’ll see. I’m not supposed to brush my teeth until the sutures dissolve in another week or so. Instead, I rinse with this intense green mouthwash at the kitchen sink: no mirror.

  “I haven’t been out much,” I explain, talking through my banded teeth. “No one’s told me how I look.”

  “Are you always going to let other people decide how you look, Will?” he asks.

  I glance up at Rabbi Harr
is. He’s looking at me kindly, but with one eyebrow raised a bit, as if he’s proposed a riddle for me to solve.

  “How’s your heart?” he asks, changing the subject. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Feels like a punch right here.”

  He points to the center of his broad chest.

  I nod.

  “You up for practicing your portion?” he asks.

  I nod again.

  I’ve been sitting at home with nothing to do for the past two weeks, so I’ve made lots of progress on my trope. On top of that, since the funeral, I haven’t wanted to leave the house or see anyone. I basically sit in my room, going over my trope. I sleep a lot. I keep the blinds down.

  Rabbi Harris and I work on my Torah portion, and when we’re done, he closes my folder and slides it toward me, across the table.

  “It feels weird,” he says, “not to be heading to the hospital together.”

  It does.

  “Anyway, before you go,” he says. “I have something for you. It’s from RJ.”

  I lean forward as he opens his desk drawer and pulls out an envelope.

  “I helped him with the handwriting,” he explains.

  I open the envelope. Inside, there’s a folded piece of notebook paper, the little spiral frills still attached.

  Last Will and Testament of Ralph Jerome Olsen

  Being of sound mind, I do hereby declare that this document is my last will and testament.

  I nominate Rabbi Harris Goldberg, Executor of this Will, to serve without bond.

  Hi, Will. This is my will for Will. Get it?

  Will, you’ve been the best friend a guy could have. I wish I could give you way more than this, but I don’t own much, so it’ll have to do.

  I leave you my three prized possessions:

  (1) My turtle. I know it was originally yours, but now it’s technically mine, so I’m giving it to you. Gwen will keep it for you until you’re better from your operation.