by A M Homes
By mid-October Claire had started house hunting. At first she didn’t even admit it to herself. But with a few hours to spare, she’d find herself at the garage, and before she knew it she’d be in Westchester, lower Connecticut, sometimes New Jersey, slowing down whenever she saw a For Sale sign, feeling her pulse quicken if it looked good from the outside. It became an addiction. She shifted her schedule around and started taking Thursday mornings off. Within weeks she was out with agents, going in and out of other people’s houses, trying them on, walking through the rooms, flushing the toilets.
In some of the houses, the kitchens looked like they belonged in restaurants. In one, twenty-five Cuisinart attachments were mounted on the wall above an industrial-sized Kitchen Aid mixer and a full row of assorted slicing and dicing machines. “Does Julia Child live here?” Claire asked.
“Very funny,” the realtor said. “Actually, the woman is a food critic for the New York Times.”
Claire started worrying that in the suburbs the expectation was that you cooked long, hard, and well. Slaved, was more like it. She wasn’t sure her family could survive without having Chinese food available on ten minutes’ notice twenty-four hours a day.
“Do places around here deliver?” Claire asked.
The real estate agent looked at her blankly. “I really wouldn’t know.”
She started to notice that all the fridges and freezers were gigantic, the size of walk-in closets. The scale of life was too big, too overwhelming. They would need a second car — one for her, one for Sam, and maybe a truck for the groceries. Sam would never get home before eight, or seven if he was lucky, and they wouldn’t be able to have their little lunches anymore.
The more Claire thought about it, the more convinced she was that in the future, when her clients discussed getting divorced, she’d suggest moving to the suburbs. “You won’t see each other at all,” she’d say. “Very autonomous lives.” She envisioned the happy couple coming back to thank her. “It’s perfect,” they’d say. “We go out on Saturday nights. It’s like dating. We love it. Weekends only. The kids love it too. We never see them, they never see us. We leave each other notes on the kitchen table. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“What are we doing about Thanksgiving?” Sam asked one morning as he was getting ready for work, filling in dates on his calendar.
“It would be nice to stay out at the beach,” Claire said. “Maybe we could work it into four or five days.”
“It’s the only holiday we can have my family here.”
“Does it matter if for one year we don’t have your sister over for Thanksgiving?” Claire asked. “We can tell her we’re going away. She’d probably rather eat out anyway.”
“What about the parade? I wanted to take the boys to see the floats the night before.”
“We can drive out on Thanksgiving morning.”
“Too tiring,” Sam said. “All that driving, then cooking.”
“Since when do you cook?” Claire asked. “I can do most of it in advance.”
“It’ll be cold and lonely. No one will be out there.”
In Claire’s fantasy, cold and lonely was more like fantastic and romantic: Claire, Sam, and the boys bundled up in sweaters, walking on an empty beach, cozy by a roaring fire, sated with fresh turkey, pumpkin pie, and wine, the house dim except for the reflection of the fire on the children’s faces. A nice long game of Monopoly, then sleep. The quiet life.
A car alarm cut into her fantasy.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Claire said.
“This is your home. Amagansett is not your home. Our life is here.”
“Then let’s move,” Claire said, surprising herself.
Sam didn’t answer.
“Fine. So you expect me to stay home all day cooking dinner in a kitchen that’s too fucking small just to feed your family on the one fucking day of the year when they’ll stoop to eat in my house, even though none of them ever touch the stuffing for fear I’ll give them some goyishe food poisoning.”
“If you don’t want to cook, we can order the food, for chrissake,” Sam said, throwing his date book into his briefcase and slamming it closed. “For every other holiday—”
“Jewish holiday,” Claire said, cutting him off.
“For every Jewish holiday my sister makes a nice dinner and invites us over. What’s the big deal about returning the favor once a year?”
“And every time your sister and her family nearly kill each other — just like this. Look at us. Is this what you want? You’re making us act exactly like they do.”
“I’m not making us do anything. All I said was that I wanted to have Thanksgiving at home.”
Claire stood silent, arms crossed in front of her chest. Sam didn’t say anything else.
“I’ve got things to do,” Claire finally said, picking up her purse and walking out of the apartment.
23
Jody sat on the couch, looking through the sliding glass door. In the distance were palm trees and the Hollywood Hills. Her arms and legs ached as though something long and thin like a knitting needle had been inserted and was slowly being turned — torture. Earlier in the afternoon, she’d called her mother at the office. “I’m dying,” she blurted, immediately destroying the possibility of being believed.
“I’ll have to call you back,” her mother said.
For weeks, Jody had been feeling strangely and nonspecifically ill. And it was getting worse. Two weeks ago she’d gone to Health Services.
“Parasites,” the nice young doctor said. “You have parasites. Could you give us a stool specimen?”
“Right now?”
The doctor had nodded. “If you can’t give us one, we can get one.”
How? Jody thought. “I don’t have parasites,” she told him, and went home. Three days later she went back and asked to see a different doctor.
“Hepatitis,” this doctor said. “Wash your hands a lot, you don’t want to give it to anyone.”
She called her mother. “You don’t have hepatitis,” her mother said. Jody agreed, but still washed her hands more often than usual.
She’d gone to see one of her professors, who said something about the first semester being notoriously difficult and how every year a few people — mostly young women — dropped out and were never heard from again.
“It’s not like that,” Jody tried to say.
“Have you ever been in therapy?” he asked.
Now she sat motionless on the sofa, wondering how long she’d been sitting there, hoping that when the phone finally rang she’d know enough to answer it.
“There’s something really wrong,” she said when her mother finally called back.
“You’re overexcited. Rest. Put a cool washcloth on your face.”
“Fm sick,” Jody said. “How often do I tell you I’m sick? Would I say I felt like I was dying if I didn’t?”
“Well, I can’t come out there.”
“No one’s asking you to.”
Jody called the airlines. To fly home with no warning would cost an enormous amount of money. If she could wait three days, it would be cheaper; even less if she could wait seven. Better yet, if she could wait until Christmas it would be free, since her parents had bought the ticket three months ago.
She went to class with a headache and stiff neck. After half an hour, she started shivering uncontrollably and had to be helped out of the room.
“Do you want to go to the hospital?” someone asked.
“No,” Jody said. “No. If someone could just drive me home, that’d be great. I really want to go home.”
When they dropped her off, Jody asked one of the guys to come in for a minute. “Do me a favor and dial my friend’s phone number — I’m still shaking.”
It was the first time she’d called Claire like that, at home, out of the blue. She was afraid to do it herself, afraid Claire’s husband or one of her children would answer, afraid she’d find out something she didn’t want
to know. Jody wasn’t about to tell the guy she wanted him to call her shrink; she just said “my friend” and left it at that.
He dialed, asked for Claire, and handed Jody the phone. “Hope you feel better soon,” he said, and walked out of the apartment.
Jody wanted Claire, not her mother; she wanted a reality-based response, not anxiety.
“Hello,” Claire said. “Hello?”
“I went to class, started shaking all over, and had to be carried home. I feel horrible. I’m freaking out, scared.” Only after she’d said all that did she realize she still hadn’t said who she was. “It’s Jody.”
“I know,” Claire said softly. “It sounds like you have the flu. Do you have a fever?”
“I don’t think it’s the flu. I’ve had the flu before and it was never like this.”
“There are new strains every year.”
Jody didn’t respond. She was searching for the thermometer.
“What do you think it is?” Claire asked.
Jody heard young voices in the background. “Sorry I called.”
“It’s fine,” Claire said. “Take some aspirin, have some juice, get into bed, turn on the TV, and just lie there. You’ll fall asleep soon, and tomorrow things will be different. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Thanks.”
“Sleep well,” Claire said.
The next morning was one of those cold, rainy November days they don’t advertise. Jody’s throat was incredibly sore and covered with bumps that looked like blisters. Whenever she stood up, the room whirled. A lumpy pink rash was breaking out on her legs and stomach, and there was a dull, steady pain in her chest. Her temperature was a hundred and three and something.
She called Gary Marc’s office and said she wouldn’t be coming in. The receptionist refused to take the message and transferred Jody’s call to Gary’s car phone. While she was explaining her symptoms, Gary got stuck in traffic under an overpass and the call was disconnected. “Suck herbs,” was the last thing she heard him say.
She called Health Services and updated the doctor, who said it was probably mono and there was nothing she could do about it. Stunned, sometimes shaking, sometimes sweating, she lay in bed, noticing that she’d lost fifteen pounds in two days.
Claire called. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing,” she said.
“Wanna hear something weird?” Jody asked, her voice a raspy whisper.
“Sure.”
“I’ve always had this yellow dot, like this child inside me. I never told anyone about it. But I protect it. My job is to make sure no one ever hurts the yellow dot. Anyway, today it’s outside. It’s here in the apartment, in the living room, running around by itself. Do I sound crazy?”
“No,” Claire said. “People have inner selves. Everyone describes them in their own way. Your fever is up, which might make you experience yourself differently. That’s all. I do want you to make a doctor’s appointment — maybe they’ll be able to see you this afternoon.”
“I love my dot,” Jody said to Claire. Claire’s buzzer went off; Jody heard it long-distance. “You better go,” Jody said.
“I’ll call you later if I get a chance.”
At one in the morning, Jody called home. “Mom,” she croaked.
“You frightened me,” her mother said, groggy and breathless. “What time is it?”
Jody didn’t say anything. The pain in her chest was worse; she felt unable to breathe, much less talk. The last time she’d taken her temperature, it was a hundred and four.
“It’s the middle of the night,” her mother said.
“I’m really not feeling well,” Jody said. “You better hurry.”
“You mean that someone, namely me, should come out there?”
Jody didn’t respond.
“I’ll call you back.”
“Hurry,” Jody whispered.
Half an hour later the phone rang. Even though the phone was right next to Jody, it took her four rings to answer. She tried to say hello, but nothing came out.
“Are you there?” her mother asked.
“Umm-humm.”
“I’ve made reservations. It’s a six a.m. flight. I’ll be at your house by three. I want you to take some aspirin and have something hot to drink. At nine, call the doctor and make an appointment. I’ll see you in a little while.”
She lay in bed, waiting, dreaming, dozing, watching the sun rise, watching morning television, feeling oddly calm, as if it might be all right if she died.
“How long have you been like this?” her mother asked when she finally arrived and saw Jody face-to-face.
“I tried to tell you.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” She pressed her cold hand to Jody’s cheek.
The room seemed to be shrinking, getting darker. “I have to put my head down,” Jody said, turning away from her mother and starting toward the bedroom.
“When did you go on a diet?” her mother asked.
Jody didn’t tell her she wasn’t on a diet. She wished she were, but she wasn’t. On the way back to bed, she fainted, crashed into a wall, and knocked a lamp over, and her mother had to come running.
Later that afternoon they went to the hospital. The fever, the rash, the sore throat. How long? How high? Jody could hardly talk, hardly hold her head up, and now they wanted details. They pointed her to a room down a long hall; it took forever to get there, and she kept seeing people she thought looked familiar — her dead aunt Sally, a neighbor from her childhood, everyone was someone. She sat on an examining table while four doctors stood talking in the corner. The nurse was trying to take her blood pressure. There was a problem. The nurse wrapped the cuff tighter, squeezed the ball harder, and then finally asked, “Is there some reason I can’t get your blood pressure?”
“I really don’t feel well,” Jody said. All the doctors whirled around and in a minute she was lying upside down, her feet higher than her head.
Stand up. Deep breath. Hold it. The hum of the x-ray machine. Relax. Sit down. Arm out, alcohol swab, Betadine wash. A long, thin line of blood drawn through a narrow plastic line into a syringe.
“Something’s happening,” Jody said.
“Nothing’s happening,” the doctor mumbled, staring at Jody’s vein.
“Something is definitely happening,” Jody said, and then fainted onto the floor.
“Get my mother,” Jody said when she woke up, but they wouldn’t.
They got her a pillow and made her lie there on the cold tile floor. They wouldn’t get her mother because it didn’t look good for Jody to be sprawled there while all the big shots just stood around, waiting for her to recover. They bought her a soda, stuck a straw in, and eventually got a wheelchair and put her in a room. A plastic bracelet was slipped around her wrist, an IV started.
Guys came into the room with masks over their faces and a thousand questions. They asked her mother to wait outside. “Have you ever used intravenous drugs?” they asked.
“Give me a break,” Jody said.
While her mother was out of the room, Jody pulled the cutest intern close and told him about Peter Sears and a few others. “Who knew what the hell they were doing — or should I say whom,” Jody whispered. He snapped an extra pair of gloves on and stuck her vein again. They both watched her blood spring into the tube — wishing you could just tell by looking — and then the intern pulled the needle out, wiped a drop of blood off the tip with gauze, dropped the needle into a bucket marked HAZARDOUS WASTE, and silently slipped the test tube into his breast pocket. “Soon,” he said, patting the pocket. “We’ll know something soon.”
24
“Is something wrong?” Sam asked.
Claire shuffled out of the bathroom, phone in hand, her eyes pink and puffy, her slippers scraping the bare floor like sandpaper.
“Should I be worried?” he asked. Twenty minutes earlier, when the phone rang, Claire had tucked the receiver under her chin, pulled the full length of the cord into the bathroom, a
nd closed the door.
Claire sniffled. “One of my patients is very sick.”
“With what?”
“Don’t know.” Claire looked at the Post-it stuck to the palm of her hand, on which she’d written the name of Jody’s doctor. “I have to make a call.”
“I’ll go into the living room,” Sam said, gathering newspapers off the bed.
Claire dialed the number in Los Angeles. “Dr. Brandt?”
“Hold, please.”
The ticking of long-distance wires, the consciousness of hearing time pass: silence was expensive, and time was running out. She tried to take a deep breath.
“I can reach his beeper and have him call you,” the operator said.
Claire left her number and hung up thinking it was time to make a move. If something happened to Jody, if Jody died and never knew who Claire was, what she was, it would be Claire’s fault. She dug into the closet and dragged out an old suitcase. She’d pack her bag first, go in to tell Sam she was leaving, then hurry downstairs to the cash machine and out to La Guardia.
Sam knocked on the bedroom door. “Are you all right?”
“I’m waiting for the doctor to call back,” Claire said through the door.
“Doesn’t this girl have a family?”
The phone rang and Claire jumped to answer it. She explained that she was Jody’s therapist.
“I can’t discuss a patient’s condition. I don’t know who you are.”
“I told you who I am.”
“You should know better,” Dr. Brandt said, as though he’d just finished reading a memo on patient privacy.