“You know, sometimes you really scare me.”
“It’s nothing special. Anyone could learn. It feels like you’re doing better. Have you felt any different?”
“Yes, I must admit.”
“Admit?”
“God, did I really say that? I hate to think what that might mean. Could I be adhering to it the way you adhere in Tai Chi?”
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s adhering to you. In any case, that’s altogether the wrong image in this case.”
“Yes, let’s forget it before I get interested. The other day I walked six blocks without stopping. I’m not as tired as I used to be. Or not in the same way. It’s not the kind of tiredness where I feel I’ll topple over before I make it to the bed.”
Or where I sink into the bed like a sack of sand. Not the kind of tiredness that feels beyond death.
“On the other hand, I’m dropping things more, the way I did at the beginning. Last Sunday I dropped the entire New York Times right on the street. It caused quite a scene. A few people came rushing to help before it blew away, including one very attractive man who I think owns a new Greek restaurant at the corner of. . . Well, anyway, that’s not a good example, the Sunday Times is absurdly heavy, but other things, too. I’ve been helping out in a friend’s bookstore and I drop the rare books. Also pencils, envelopes, keys.”
“That’s not surprising,” she said, placing a needle in my bare stomach. When has she ever been surprised? “The way these viruses work is, they often go out the way they came in. As you get stronger, they can’t find as many vulnerable areas to lodge in, so they look around desperately, so to speak, and try the old familiar paths they used when they first started in on you.”
“Have you ever thought of writing poetry?” I asked.
“I used to as a teenager, it so happens. But I don’t have a musical ear. I am writing a novel, though.”
“About love.”
“How did you know that?”
Ah, for once she’s surprised. “Look at those needles,” I said. “They’re standing up straighter, aren’t they? Remember you said that would happen when I was a little better?”
“Yes, they definitely are. There’s a lot more chi there.” She inserted another, and another. “But how did you know?”
“About writing,” I told her, “I’m the witch. So bring me up to date on the rabbi. Have the spells been working?”
She hesitated. Her radiant face dimmed as she leaned down to twirl the needles. “I was having grave doubts, and now .. . He came over last Sunday. It wasn’t a romantic date—I think he understood I wasn’t getting into that unless he cleared up his situation. But we were having a nice time, talking about one thing and another, mildly flirting, you know how it is. Until he said something that disturbed me very much. I have a new kitten, she’s so lovely, a white Siamese, and she was climbing all over us on the couch, so I very gently brushed her away to teach her not to climb on the furniture, and accidentally knocked her to the floor.
When he saw that, he said, Cats are like women, a little abuse goes a long way.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Uh-oh.”
“Yes,” the witch agreed, her mouth grim. “When I heard that, something turned over inside me. I withdrew, sort of curled up in a corner of myself, and he left pretty soon after. Do you know, the next day I was so sick—I haven’t felt that sick in years. It was the realization that this is no good. He’s really no good for me.”
“I didn’t think you ever got sick.”
Again she looked surprised. “Me? I’m susceptible like everyone else. The only difference is, I stay in good shape, and when I feel something coming on I can usually head it off. I’ve got every kind of herb out there on the shelves. Actually I’m always trying them out to feel the effects, so I’ll know what I’m letting people in for when I prescribe them. It’s true, everyone responds differently, but I need to have some idea. It’s only fair. Sometimes I’m not happy with what I find out and I have to look for other remedies.”
She used her own organs as a medium, then, the way some artists paint their skins. Or the way actors like Q. use their bodies as instruments. In her kind of witchcraft, the viscera were the experimental field, through which nature’s green bounty worked its charms.
“I can’t imagine regular doctors doing what you do. It would never occur to them.”
“You can hardly blame them, can you? Their techniques are so invasive, from surgery on down. .. . I wouldn’t subject myself to any of that either, if I were a doctor.”
“So what did you do as an antidote to the rabbi?”
“Well, Monday was my night for the AIDS clinic and I didn’t know how I was going to get myself over here, I felt so rotten, but I knew I had to. Anyhow, it’s always better, with that kind of misery, to get outside yourself. The first patient I saw was so scarred, his body looked so . . . mauled, that I sat here studying him, wondering where I could find an opening. And as I concentrated on how to approach him I suddenly felt better, so glad I had useful work to do in the world, and glad I hadn’t gotten too involved with this rabbi, so that all I had from it was a day’s sickness and a little misery but not years of anguish, which was what I had the last time I knew a man like that, when I was very young. After that relationship I married someone else, the French biologist I told you about—a quiet marriage, we were good companions, but it was hardly a wild passion. I think it took me the eight years of my marriage to .. . to kind of recover my balance after that man.”
It was then that I told her all about Q. Everything I’ve set down earlier, pages and pages ago, about how I met him in the theatre and he urged me to write the first novel, and how he wouldn’t leave Susan until it was too late and I couldn’t trust him ever again, and how I lost the baby and blamed him but that wasn’t his fault, and how he played Lear’s faithful Kent and took good care of his own father and came to me after Ev was killed but the timing was wrong—all the years and years of him in my head and in my body. While I talked she removed the red-tipped needles and dropped them delicately, one by one, into the little plastic garbage can, then sat cross-legged on the mat with her hands folded, listening.
“However,” I wound up. “However, about this rabbi. That’s another story altogether. You could still have a fling with him if you really want to. You say you’re very drawn to him. What’s the harm, as long as you know exactly what you’re doing and do it for fun without expecting anything, then end it when you’ve had enough. What I’m saying is, try using him for a change. A little exploitation goes a long way.”
“You can’t do that if you do my kind of work. It’s not even a matter of principle. Just in practical terms . . . no.”
“Why not?”
“Because the kind of energy I need, which is physical and flows through the body and into the hands, gets depleted very fast if you engage in a meaningless affair that gives you nothing except sex, which this would be. It’s different with something that gives you real sustenance, like what you told me about, but the other, no. I can’t afford the expenditure of energy. I need it for my work.”
“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame, eh?”
“Exactly,” said she.
A very literate witch indeed, and a translator as well, besides which, she’s working on a novel, God help her.
“Carol,” I said as I hugged her good-bye in the waiting room, “you’re an inspiring witch and I love you.”
“I love you, too, Laura. But I must tell you, you’re really not a very good candidate for acupuncture.”
I let go. “Why do you say that?”
“You don’t have the patience for the symptoms.”
I looked at the wall chart of the five vital organs and their corresponding elements, emotions, colors and weather, so I would not have to see her transform before my eyes into a nasty old crone.
“You’re a pretty young witch, Carol. You have a lot to learn about patience.”
“Well. . . See yo
u next week, then?” Hesitantly.
“Yes.”
Seven blocks without stopping. I walked them with Luke, who caught up with me on the Drive one breezy Saturday afternoon. The air was clear, the leaves crisp; before long they would start to turn.
Luke’s hand was all healed. He showed me the scar, two tiny specks, dark against the skin, like a fragment of a Morse code message. He was on his way to get fluid for the power-steering mechanism of the Cadillac, he said. All the fluid had leaked out overnight.
“These cars. If it ain’t one thing it’s another. You got to mind them like babies. Turn your back one minute and they get themselves in trouble. Lord, I remember those times. . . . You never had none of your own, did you, Laura?”
“No, just my husband’s.”
“Well, you got a real fine little girl there. Your boyfriend gone, eh? Gave him his walking papers?”
I paused. On a bench sat the old couple I’d seen two weeks ago, still absorbed in talk, their bodies listing toward each other as before, legs crossed and feet nearly touching. They were more warmly dressed today, in sweaters and sneakers.
“He wasn’t right for me,” I said as we moved on.
“I could’ve told you that from the start, if you asked me. Your husband neither, not meaning no disrespect to the dead.”
“That’s possible.”
“So here’s a good-looking woman like you all by yourself.”
I gave him back his own teasing grin. “There’s nothing unusual about that. It happens all the time.”
“Nah, you can’t fool me. You ain’t been the same these two years. You’re waitin’ for that other one to come back again.”
“God Almighty, you notice everything, don’t you? You’re worse than the CIA.”
“I got to notice. That’s my job.”
“Mine, too.” A small girl on a bicycle wobbled past, her gray-haired father puffing as he ran along behind, clutching the back of the seat. “But it happens you’re wrong. That’s not what I’m waiting for. Anyway, he’s been back.”
“So what are you waiting for, then?” asked Luke.
“I haven’t been feeling right for months. See, there’s something you didn’t notice. I hardly think about that stuff lately.”
“I can’t believe that, I mean that you don’t think about it. What’s troubling you? You look fine to me.”
I told him. We had reached the playground with the tree stump. Crowds of children and parents were out seizing the bright day—the sand-throwers in the sandbox, the incipient ballplayers, small girls jumping rope. “I’d better stop now. I can’t walk too far. I have to sit every few blocks like an old lady.”
He walked me to the nearest bench. “Take care of yourself. And you let me know when you’re feeling up to a nice Chinese dinner. How’s that? My treat.”
“Oh, the last time I had Chinese food they sent the wrong order. Can you believe it? It’s those computers.”
“I meant out, Laura, not in. I’ll take you to that new place on Broadway. Cheer you up. Listen, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to treat a lady.”
“I’ll bet.”
I watched until he disappeared in the parade of walkers, the mourners going about the streets, though in fact they all looked quite lively. Then I turned to the stump. I could have studied it forever without wearying, tracing the gnarls of bark curving up its sides. Centuries old, maybe. It was hard to tell. The last time I went up close, its rings appeared to be worn away, as the striations of seashells are worn away by the battering of the waves. Surely it had learned all it needed to know, mutilated and exposed, sitting at the river’s edge enduring endless cycles of the sun’s toil and slide, watching the generations amble by, the children timid, violent, and brave.
Soon the old couple passed holding hands, the woman gesturing as she told what seemed an elaborate story. At one point the man threw back his head and laughed, and his white hair shook in the sunlight. They moved slowly through the clutter of toy cars, strollers, and bikes, then stopped to sit on a bench half a block south. They were like me, resting every few blocks, only they’d had time to ease into it.
On bright weekends like this one lots of fathers are out in the playground, a number of them fiftyish men. They have grown children, too, by the wives of their youth, some already raising families of their own, but the little ones hurling sand are from younger wives, women drawn to them by their money or power or mellowed sexuality. The men have more time now. They’re established in some business or profession and don’t need to hustle quite as much as twenty years ago, when the wives of their youth sat at the sandbox. Or else the new wives insist that they make the time. Besides, it’s a different era. It’s acceptable, more than acceptable, desirable, for fathers to show a tender interest in the sweet details and paraphernalia of childhood—the crenellated pails, the ritual removal of the training wheels. They hover about the playground idly chatting, settling disputes, chasing balls. Exactly like women. At this late date, they want to be women. What kind of mirage are they living in? These children, emblems of their pride, teetering on the bikes, so coddled they don’t even need to carve their own crenellations, will face much harder tasks. They’ll struggle for balance, concentrating with all their might, missing the steadying hand that let go too soon. And the young wives, those innocent twenty-eight-year-olds? What’s in store for them?
Sour grapes? I can imagine Q.’s voice. Get down off your high horse, cara. Then he’d give a sad smile: You see, at least I saved you from that fate.
CROSSING THE DRIVE AN HOUR LATER, again I hear a voice, quite real this time. “Laura, how’re you doing?”
I pass Tim’s building so often on my walks that I hardly register it lately. He’s standing at his wide-open, first-floor window with the requisite iron bars, holding a brush and dustpan in his right hand. He doesn’t look angry anymore. He looks boyish and appealing in his college sweatshirt and cutoffs, his fair hair slightly mussed.
“Pretty good. Not bad at all. How about you, Tim?”
“Good. Fine.” He rests his free hand on the ledge, palm down, half in and half out.
The silence, for a few seconds amiably familiar, quickly turns awkward. There is nothing to say. “So what are you doing?” I ask.
He waves the brush; it’s obvious. “Cleaning the window sill. It’s all sooty. The wind here on the river.”
We need just five minutes of small talk to get us through, a civil tribute to our connection, but we’re both at a loss. “By the way,” Tim says, “there was something I meant to tell you.”
I brace myself for recriminations. Tim broods over things, preparing his briefs point by point. “What?”
All at once, as if misguidedly coming to our aid, the open window falls with a crash onto his wrist. Behind the glass, behind the bars, he grimaces in pain. He tries to pull his hand out but can’t. I push at the stuck window from outside, but before I can loosen it, he manages with his other hand to force it up two inches. With a deft, athlete’s motion—the reward of countless hours of tennis—he flips his trapped left hand over and tugs it back. Before the hand is completely free, the window drops again, and only by a swift yank does he get his fingers out in time. Now the window is closed tight, and behind it Tim holds his wrist, his face stunned with pain. Buzz me in and I’ll help you, I mime, pointing to the door. He shakes his head, no, and feebly signaling good-bye, turns away to vanish within.
His stunned face behind the glass haunts me all the way home. I think it was the most intimate glimpse I’ve ever had of him, and I find it uncomfortably, perversely interesting. I should have gone in even though he didn’t seem to want my help. A neighbor could have buzzed me in. As soon as I’m home I call to see if he’s all right.
“Sure, fine,” he says. Not broken, only bruised. He’s got it in a bowl of ice. “But what a shock. The chain snapped. I’ll have to get it fixed. Oh, what I was starting to say . . . You’ll get a kick out of this. Hal called the other night. He
discovered that the reason it took so long to fill the pool was that the pump was broken. It was pumping only a fraction of what it should.”
It’s a relief to laugh. “That would never happen with the moon and the tides, I bet. So your calculations might have been correct after all.”
“Yes. I had a feeling something was wrong. But it was too cool to swim anyway.”
“Yes,” I agree.
“Well, thanks for calling, Laura.” He knows how intimate that glimpse of his pain was, perhaps even how interesting I’d find it, and hastens to restore formal relations. Smart. He always was very smart.
I can feel the bed longing for me, and I go like a complaisant wife. Not as tired as before, when I went like a famished lover. I know why I was reluctant to tell the witch I was feeling better. Superstition, nothing more. If tempted, the virus could rouse itself in spite, for a fresh assault. I’ll always be afraid at the slightest symptoms—these viruses stay in the system forever. Impossible to dislodge. Like a lover who forever disappears and returns, waning and waxing, an inner moon pulling the tides of emotion.
I haven’t tried any new-agey visualizing in some time, have almost forgotten those blue and red warrior cells rampaging down my bloodstream. It’s not the eye that will see me through but the ear, which holds everything curled in embryo. Even so, as I lie on the bed waiting for strength to return, a kind of vision comes unbidden.
It is a dozen years into the future. Q. is aging. Passing him on the street, small children like the ones I watch in the playground would see an old man. Big children like Jilly might, too. In truth he’s not exactly old, not old-old, but still . . . Let’s say that now he’s ready to do Lear, with the proper makeup. He’s crossed a subtle border, on the far side of which his former way of life is no longer, let’s say, feasible or expedient. To put it bluntly, he might just look a bit of a fool trying to get away with it. Even more bluntly, he wants me. For his old age. He himself isn’t clear why, after everything. . . . Maybe he’s just practical. Maybe, as he said in the Mexican restaurant, he realizes he’s been errant all along, seeking me elsewhere in vain. Or perhaps it’s what he’s been saving me for, a final haven, the way a selfish Victorian paterfamilias might make sure one daughter remains at home to look after him. In any case, at this point it’s pleasant, easy, it makes sense to him. He comes to claim me. He importunes as never before. So what do I do? Spit in his face? Ask how much money he’s got? Test him to see if it’s still working, all systems go? Or simply acquiesce.
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