by Robin Greene
According to my mother, when I was about a week old, I started vomiting and couldn’t keep my formula down. A big baby, over eight pounds at birth, by my second week of life, I had lost a pound. By three weeks, I had lost two pounds. My mother was frantic. The pediatrician suggested changing my formula, and when that didn’t work, it was changed again. But my mom suspected that the problem was more serious.
My Uncle Ralph, who lived in another building in the same apartment complex, was a general practitioner, or GP as they were called, and he was consulted. It was Uncle Ralph who diagnosed me and saved my life.
I had surgery at three weeks old, with Uncle Ralph attending. My chest was painted with an iodine-based antiseptic that turned my entire middle section yellow-orange, like the sun at daybreak. My mom said the hospital nurses called me “Ray of Sunshine” or just “Sunshine” for short because I was such a happy baby, even after this major surgery.
My pyloromyotomy was made with a vertical rather than a horizontal incision. The surgeon divided the muscle of the pylorus to open up the gastric outlet. It is a mechanical fix associated with few complications or later problems.
If my surgery were to be done today, I might not have any scar, but this was the 1950s. I was lucky back then to have been diagnosed, even luckier to have been born weighing over eight pounds. After my surgery, I weighed less than four.
The ritual kissing of my scar and my mother’s words, “It’s beautiful,” allowed me to think of my scar as lovely, to wear bikinis as a teenager, to feel comfortable when changing in gym class. My scar marked me as different. But I loved it and love it even now.
I think of my scar as I dress. I remind myself: today is my second full day without Nick. I’m not yet lonely, but the house feels empty. My plan is to go to school, walk Jake, then in the afternoon, relax on the couch in the hot sunroom with Anna Karenina beneath the whirring ceiling fan. Then, when it gets dark, I’ll make myself a salad and a grilled cheese sandwich, retreat to the living room couch, watch Hit or Miss on Netflix, and knit slippers for Christmas gifts. Another day will pass.
k
Nick calls at dinnertime. He’d been camping with Will, and when they were ready to leave, the breaks somehow got hung up on Will’s old Tacoma. Will called AAA, but because the Blue Ridge Parkway doesn’t allow commercial traffic, the AAA agent couldn’t find a tow truck company to come out. The agent, Will later told me, was located in a New Jersey office and didn’t have a map with the Parkway on it. She thought Will was inventing it.
“I don’t see no Blue Ridge Parkway, sir…” she’d told him. Will imitated her accent for me.
“This is a major highway throughout the Appalachian Mountains. You must have heard of it.”
“No sir, if it ain’t on my maps, I ain’t heard of it. You’ll have to find a tow truck company on your own.”
So, Will had to find a local service station willing to help—which he did, though it was almost 4:00 by the time the tow truck arrived; they’d been waiting since 10:00 in the morning. Also, he had to pay $150 out-of-pocket, and neither Nick nor he had cash with them. The tow truck driver had to stop at a gas station ATM machine so that Will could withdraw money.
Now Nick was getting a really late start. I tried to talk him into staying the night at Will’s and getting an early start the next morning. But he was ready to hit the road.
“Drive carefully,” I told him. I was particularly worried because Nick has cataracts in both eyes and can’t see clearly at night.
six
Tuesday, my third day alone. I make coffee, feed Jake, and head upstairs to my computer. The sun is already out, promising a brutally hot day ahead.
In New York, we’d have hot, very hot summer days, but the humidity was never this bad. Early morning would start out cool, in the low 60s, then reach the 80s by afternoon. Days in the 90s were rare.
I sit at my laptop, turn it on. As the blank, white screen comes up, I start typing. No judgment, just memory.
I’m outside my Queens apartment; the Good Humor truck is parked on Francis Lewis Boulevard alongside the concrete playground that is part of the cooperative complex.
My mother throws a nickel and dime, bundled in a paper napkin and a rubber-band, down from our fourth-floor apartment window.
I see my mother now as she leans out the window, pulls her right arm back, aims the small bundle, throws. I pick it up, in a hurry not to miss the Good Humor truck. But there are ten or so children in front of me, all wanting Fudgsicles, Creamsicles, Italian Ices, which I often get because I like the way the brightly colored ice dyes my lips. Also, I like it that the ice takes a long time to eat.
So, when my turn comes, I order the Italian Ices, my favorite flavor, red-cherry. I lift the lid with the tab, unwrap the wooden spoon, throwing the lid and wrapper away in a nearby metal garbage bin. Once on the playground, I scrape the loose ice off the top, and when the ice has melted a little, turn over the ice mound to eat the gooey syrup on the bottom. I take a seat on the slatted wooden bench by the playground’s perimeter. It’s been newly painted green; the surface is cool and smooth.
I wear my sun-suit. It’s a one-piece jumper, with elastic around the leg openings. The top ties with thin straps at the shoulders. Today, my sun-suit is yellow, with black stripes.
“Bumble bee,” Teddy Harris taunts as he sits by me on the bench. He’s eating an orange Creamsicle.
“Buzz…” I say, feeling the urge to slap the Creamsicle from his hand. He’s wearing dark blue cotton shorts and a plaid shirt tucked into them.
Barbara Goldstein, my best friend, I now see is running up the block to catch the ice-cream man, who is serving the last child.
Barbara has long brown hair that cascades down her back. She also wears thick glasses. Today, she has on a one-piece bathing suit and pedal-pushers.
“I want a Sunday Bar,” I hear her say, looking up at the man in white who bends from the window.
In a moment, I realize our gang is all here. Four of us. All with our treats, now sitting on two benches along the chain link fence. A massive oak tree from a small green area outside the playground provides shade. The chain link fence is about four feet high, creating a boundary between the lovely treed, vacant lot where we have our fort and this, the apartment complex’s large concrete playground.
Sticky juice runs from Glenn’s mouth; he’s eating a double Popsicle, the messiest choice because the sticks come apart as it melts.
“Gross,” I say.
“Gross,” Barbara says.
“Let’s play cops and robbers,” Glenn suggests. His legs rhythmically pump the air—back and forth, making me crazy.
“Stop!” I yell. But Glenn continues pumping and sucking his Popsicle.
A butterfly dances above us, and Teddy, done with his Creamsicle, puts the wooden stick in his pocket and tries to catch the flying insect with his hands.
In the distance, on the adjoining concrete pad, some older boys play basketball. Their ball thumps the pavement. I look up to see a woman in a plaid housedress open a window, the mechanical kind, and as she cranks the handle, the black steel-framed window opens out.
“Let’s find rocks and make-believe we live in a cave,” I say.
“And we’re married,” Barbara adds. She’s wiping her sticky fingers on her pedal pushers.
“Okay,” Teddy says, beginning to climb the chain link fence behind our bench. Glenn has forgotten about cops and robbers and joins us.
k
Who was that girl? I ask myself, pulling back from the memory. Do we shed the skins of early childhood? Or grow into them?
Hearing the voices of my childhood friends, I’m feeling my identity slip. Glenn has a speech impediment, a slight lisp, and Barbara’s voice slurs and is often high-pitched. Can I hear myself? I lean toward memory again and read aloud the page I’ve written. But it’s my current voice I hear.
Sitting now with my few pages, I think about identity loss or the splitting of self. Then I thi
nk about schizophrenia. I had a schizophrenic student once in my advanced poetry class. When Dave was on his meds, his symptoms were controlled, and he was a bright young man. But when Dave decided not to take his meds, thinking that with enough willpower he could control his symptoms, he’d quickly become out of control. Never violent, just inappropriate.
Once, Dave came late to class, put his head down on the large seminar table around which we all sat, and fell asleep. He was one of only two men in the class. One nontraditional student, Greta, who was almost seventy and who had taught high school English for over thirty years but always wanted to write poetry, was in the class that semester. When Dave woke up, we were workshopping Greta’s poem about picking vegetables as a child in rural Virginia.
“Wanna dance, Greta?” Dave asked, lifting his head from the table and speaking out of turn.
“We’re discussing Greta’s poem, Dave,” I said, trying to redirect him.
“But Greta likes to dance, and so do her vegetables,” Dave said, getting up, beginning to twirl around the room.
I stood and escorted Dave from the classroom. “Back in a minute,” I told the class. After that, I didn’t let Dave attend class but allowed him to finish the course with me as an independent study. Sometimes his poetic connections were strange, even wonderful. He once wrote a poem about walking across the Arctic Circle and becoming ice.
k
Now pulling into the present, I realize how disconnected my own thoughts are. Glancing outside the window, I see a woman in running shorts and a sports bra jog by with two German Shepherds. She reminds me of Mary Jo, my novel’s would-be protagonist. Is she dead?
Yes, just as I suspected yesterday, I fear that I can’t write this book I’ve so meticulously planned. I find the file with my novel notes, gaze at the plot points, scroll down to a character description of Mary Jo. I don’t like what I read. I don’t like her. The novel seems trivial. I reread my writing today. I don’t like it. I don’t like myself.
I remember the line “hating the ways of me….” I close the novel file, remembering that all last semester I’d envisioned writing a simple story, an easy read, light-hearted, perhaps even funny.
I lean back in my study chair, hearing my next-door neighbor’s white Ford Explorer pull slowly into the driveway. I hear children’s voices, doors slamming.
It’s an autobiographical novel I’ll write. And even if it’s a bad book and makes me feel insane, I must try. Why? Because my brother is dying and my father is dead. Because I’m losing myself and am afraid of that loss.
seven
I’m in the kitchen, an hour later, with a notepad, remembering 2005, a counseling session with Nick and our therapist Dr. Bob Bormann.
We were discussing the ways in which Nick’s and my childhoods intruded on our relationship. Nick came from a poor family, Italian Catholic, with parents who were emotionally and physically abusive or, at times, simply inattentive. He had a tendency in our marriage back then to space-out, and when this occurred, I felt insignificant, unworthy—of his or anyone’s attention. That was, and still is, my psychological response.
Seeing me upset, Bob turned the conversation to me.
“Remember, if you can, Rachel,” Bob began, “a time in your childhood when you felt small, marginalized.”
I scanned my mental files for something. I thought about the Queens apartment, about South Shelburne, until I found myself walking along the sidewalk to the neighborhood A & P. But my file didn’t have a destination: I just kept walking, walking, walking. The sidewalk was divided into squares—each square, a pace-and-a-half.
Bob and Nick looked at me. But I was still walking, yet had nowhere to go. Taking too much time, I thought. Answer. Say something.
“We’re losing you again,” Nick remarked, leaning back in the upholstered chair.
I realized that it was I, not he, who was the cause of my feelings. I was about to make a connection, perhaps an important one, but then I was back on the sidewalk and couldn’t think.
“Dissociation,” Bob explained, “is linked to more severe disorders, like schizophrenia. But that’s not what we’re seeing here.” Bob crossed his legs, dangling his right shoe. I noticed his New Balance sneakers with the logo on the sides in bright neon blue.
I looked at Bob and at Nick, now leaning toward me again, who had also crossed his legs. Intentional? Were they colluding against me? I couldn’t tell because I can’t get off the sidewalk. I couldn’t go forward and couldn’t turn back. Instead, I took baby-steps to avoid stepping on the lines that divided the pavement.
I’m a piece on a board game, I thought. A Monopoly piece—a top hat, a shoe, a terrier, an iron.
k
Struggling to write, I’m now at my desk. Afternoon. The sun has moved to the back of the house so that my study is bathed in soft, filtered light. I minimize the pages I’ve just written, open the novel file—seven pages of notes—and read them once more. No. It’s just junk—words that have nothing to do with my life. I take a deep breath and delete the file. Then I take the few pages I’d handwritten earlier and crumple each page into a separate, small, tight paper ball, a satisfying knot of wasted words. I aim, tossing them one by one into the wicker basket by my desk. I sink them all, one shot each. “Score,” I say.
I feel alone, wish Nick were here so that I could process this feeling. Dissociated? I ask myself. Yes. Unhooked from the trajectory of my life? Yes.
My head is a balloon filled with helium, lighter than air. It’s floating away, lifting into wind, drifting. Then I’m on the sidewalk, like in therapy, not wanting to step on the cracks.
“Careful,” I whisper, as my cell phone rings.
“Hi, Rae, it’s Mom,” the voice calls out, pitched high, tentative. Something else is wrong.
“What’s going on?” I ask. My mind is back inside my body. I’m at the computer; the South Shelburne sidewalk has disappeared.
“You have a minute?”
“Yeah, of course. What’s up?” I press.
“It’s Dennis,” she begins. “He’s had his surgery. Early. An emergency.” My heart quickens. “He’s in ICU. I can’t talk much. I’m at the hospital. It didn’t go well. They got some of the smaller masses, but the cancer is more widespread than they thought. There are other complications, too. I don’t even know, don’t want to know. They’ll have to go in again. But his heart failed during surgery—twice. So, they revived him, finally closed him up. Not good. No.” My mother chokes back tears.
“How long will he be in ICU?” I’ve turned away from the computer screen and am looking out the window onto a perfect day.
“The oncologist wants to run more tests. He doesn’t know when—or if—he can do the other surgery. I don’t know how long he’ll be in intensive care. We’re hoping he’ll be out tomorrow, the next day, latest. But he’ll stay in the hospital. How long, I don’t know.”
“Is Dennis conscious? Have you spoken to him?” I’m now drawing concentric circles and geomantic shapes in the margins of a blank legal pad.
“He was awake; then they put him out. He needs to stabilize. He was in lots of pain. I don’t have to tell you. Awful. Just awful.” My mom’s voice wavers, goes up an octave. Then, she sobs. “It’s not right that he’s suffering.”
I let her cry, sweeping the pen across the yellow page so that large circles and a face appear. An animal face? I draw small pointed ears until the face looks like a cat. I draw whiskers.
“Rae, I need a couple of hundred dollars. Please. You have to help me. I need $200 to see us through the week, to pay for groceries, gas.”
I should have seen it coming. I take my pencil, turn the cat’s mouth into a frown. “Sure, Mom. I’ll help. I’ll wire the $200 today. But please, no more. I can’t do this.” The cat has a sitting body. I put it on a zafu; now it’s a meditation kitty. “To Tamarac?” I ask.
“Yes, that would be great. I can’t thank you enough, Rae. Really.” My mom is no longer crying; her voice is
pitched normally.
“You have no idea how hard it is for me to ask. No idea.”
“Let me go now, Mom. I’ll make the transaction. Call me if you don’t get the money in an hour or so. Okay?”
“Yes, of course. Thanks again, Rae. This will help tremendously.”
“Love you, Mom. Let me know how Dennis is doing.”
“Yes, I will. Love you, too, Rae. We all appreciate your help.” Click.
I hit the red end-call button on my cell phone, label my cat: Meditating Concentric Kitty.
When I hang up, the house feels particularly silent, and I feel particularly alone. I’m not dressed yet for the day, but I’m very thirsty. I go downstairs to get water, turn on the filtered water valve, fill the red hand-blown glass cup that Will made for me last year. Will, my baby. My second born. My artist. I love this cup.
Soon, I’m upstairs again, ready to get dressed and wire the money—my errand of mercy. But now, with my jeans on, I go to the bathroom closet to pull out a tank top and see myself in the large, framed mirror above the sink vanity. Can I write about my life? I ask. A kind of reality show on paper. Is there truth or only the desire for truth? I take a long sip of water, the glass fitting so well in my hand.
k
Returning home from wiring my mother the money, I climb the stairs to my study, sit down at my desk. Jake joins me and lies down on the rug as I write about my mom—perhaps for my book, I think, and start typing her backstory—the part of it I know:
My mother never felt loved. The fifth child of Solomon and Leah Rosenfeld, immigrants from Bessarabia—a country squeezed between Romania and Russia, that became present-day Moldova—she was born in 1929: six months before the stock market crashed, two months after the infamous Valentine’s Day Massacre, two months before the Vatican separated from Italy, and the year of the world’s most deadly influenza epidemic.
Married as teenagers, they left with three young children—Lena, Doris, and Bernice. Lena, age five, Bernice, age three, and Doris, an infant.
In America, two children followed: my Uncle Leo, and the youngest, Edna, my mother.