At Marymount, I have a number of excellent graduate students. Several members of the faculty are auditing my seminar. At the same time, I am writing a paper for a linguistics conference later in the spring.
For this semester I am living apart from my husband. Carefully we’ve explained that being “apart” doesn’t mean “separated.”
Sometimes I am overwhelmed with a dizzy sort of elation at this living-alone, this strange “freedom” in the midst of a marriage of almost twenty years. But sometimes I am so very lonely, it feels as if the marrow of my bones has turned to ice.
I am determined to live an independent life. I think this is why I have come back to Detroit, to try again in this place in which I was so often desperate, now with more strength and conviction.
Those of us who married young can never know how we might have fared without marriage. How reckless we might have been, how fortunate, or unfortunate. My husband has seemed to understand—I think you need to make these explorations. I think this will be your best time.
He hasn’t discouraged me. But he hasn’t encouraged me. His love for me is such that he wants for me whatever it is I believe that I want even when (as he has said) he believes that whatever it is I believe I want will turn out to be mistaken. Yet, he wants me to make this discovery for myself.
Such love makes me feel humble, unworthy. I am not sure that I am capable of such selfless love, in return.
Such thoughts distract me from the hyperactivity in the blood-drawing room. I think I must have come at the wrong time, in late morning—so many frightened children!
Though this is Edsel Park, one of the older, working-class and “integrated” suburbs of Detroit, most of the medical staff seems to be black including the supervising nurse, and most of those who’ve come to have blood drawn are black.
I haven’t told my husband about being prescribed for blood work, for I don’t want to worry him needlessly. Whatever might be wrong with me is probably quite minor—anemia, possibly. I’ve been anemic intermittently since adolescence.
I don’t want to think that illness at this time might force me to return to my husband prematurely, nor do I want to think that illness might force my husband back to me . . . My husband is a person of integrity and generosity and would never abandon me if I were seriously ill. But I don’t want to think, either, that good health would free him.
Much of the time, I don’t want to think at all about what you would call personal, not professional, matters.
“Ma’am? Comin with me, OK?”
The nurse to whom I have been assigned is a husky dark-skinned woman in her early thirties. She is brisk, matter-of-fact, friendly-seeming as I stumble in her wake staring in amazement: is this Larissa Wikawaaya?
Her hair isn’t braided in cornrows, her manner isn’t so petulant and irritable. She is actually smiling at me, just slightly impatiently.
Does she recognize me? Mz. Rane?
“Ma’am? Somethin wrong?”
Hesitantly I say, feeling blood rush into my face, “I—I think we know each other—‘Larissa’?”
The nurse smiles harder. Indentations in her dark, sturdy cheeks.
Cups her hand to her ear as if she hasn’t heard clearly.
“Your name—it’s ‘Larissa’?”
“Nah, ma’am. No name like that, see. ‘Bettina.’” With a roll of her eyes the nurse indicates a laminated ID around her neck, identifying her as BETTINA SMITH.
I am sure, this is Larissa Wikawaaya. She’s eleven years older, not so heavy as she’d been; her features are less boldly defined, and she is no longer seemingly hostile. And she is exactly the right height.
I tell her that I’m sure she was once a student of mine—at Wayne State? In 1974.
“No, ma’am.”
Bettina laughs. She is determined not to be annoyed by me, for she has become a nurse; or possibly, she is a nurse’s aide, trained to draw blood expertly. She is a professional medical worker in a white nylon uniform, white smock, white slacks, white crepe-soled shoes. Her hair is not flamboyantly cornrowed but flattened against her head. The striking fingernails have been replaced by ordinary-sized nails polished a dark plum color.
I’m not sure of Larissa’s last name, how to pronounce it—“‘Wikawaaya’?”
“What yo’ sayin, ma’am? ‘Wikki’—what?”
Bettina laughs as if she has never heard this exotic name before and might reasonably wonder: is it a familiar name? show-business name? Motown? Some sort of joke?
Or is it indeed her name, or was once her name, which she no longer wishes to acknowledge?
Carefully I pronounce the name: “‘Larissa Wikawaaya.’”
“Nah, ma’am. Never heard ‘Wikkiwatta’ before, f’sure.”
Medical workers at Quest are accustomed to exchanges with patients. No doubt, many of their patients are eccentric, elderly or infirm, and some are likely to be mentally unbalanced—you would expect such, at Quest Laboratories in Edsel Park just across Eight Mile Road from Detroit, Michigan.
I am determined to make it clear to smiling Bettina that I am not one of these individuals. She can see that I am an intelligent woman, presumably educated; possibly, a teacher. I am serious, and I am not mistaken or deluded. With a courteous smile, I persist: “Are you sure? You aren’t—a former student? You look so very much like Larissa—she was about twenty at the time, in 1974. Are you sure that you never took a composition course with me, in the night school, at Wayne State . . . My name is Helen Raine.”
“Ma’am, I am sure. For sure, see, I’d remember you.”
Bettina is amused. Bettina is unhesitant in her denial. Bettina is very busy, she indicates; as I can see, the waiting room is crammed.
“It’s just that you look so—so much like her . . . Do you have a sister? A cousin . . .”
Briskly Bettina has led me to a cubicle. I feel a sensation of dread, not wanting to enter, and to sit in the chair. Not wanting to have Larissa Wikawaaya draw my blood.
Bettina asks if I am feeling faint? If I am anxious about having my blood drawn? Though I assure Bettina that I am fine, Bettina isn’t so sure. For Bettina sees something in my face, and sees that I am shaky, and have been walking unsteadily. My lips feel cold, as if bloodless.
I assure Bettina, or Larissa, that I am fine, maybe a little tired, just slightly sleep-deprived, worrying the night before about having my blood drawn, but fine—“Not faint. I don’t faint.”
Is this meant as a joke? It has come out wrong.
Close by, terribly loud—the child continues to scream. I want to press the palms of my hands over my ears. I am indeed feeling faint, feeling sick. I want to rush out of Quest Laboratories and never return.
“Ma’am, you sit, OK?”
Bettina is poking my left arm with deft fingers. If this is indeed Larissa, she gives not the slightest sign; as a practiced medical worker she is both kindly and just slightly vexed. “Eh, ma’am, look like you sweatin. But you cold. Yo’ veins so small, you forgot to drink water this mornin, did you? Nobody told you, you got to drink water, make your veins get bigger?”
I am feeling devastated: no one told me! I’ve had blood drawn in the past, and no one had ever suggested drinking water beforehand.
“Ma’am, better you come over here with me.”
Frowning Bettina leads me away from the screaming child to a quieter cubicle in a farther corner. Here there is a chair that is a kind of recliner with a crossbar, like a baby’s high chair, presumably to prevent the subject from toppling over in a faint. Weakly I’m protesting that I don’t need this—I am not, truly, going to faint! Yet, Bettina seems to know better. I would not have imagined that I could be made so anxious by mere nerves—having to hear those screaming children—and yet, it seems to be so. I am feeling the floor shift beneath me, and I am feeling distinctly light-headed. This is a common symptom of anemia, the doctor has told me.
Bettina settles me into the recliner-chair, and fastens the bar across
my midriff. She tightens a blood-pressure cuff around my upper arm, and frowns at the result—“Ma’am, you just eighty-nine over sixty. That low.”
The supervisor is consulted. It’s decided that I should wait for a few minutes, then Bettina will take my blood pressure again. This time, it isn’t so low—“One hundred over eighty-seven.”
How passive I am feeling, like one who has been hypnotized! A strange lassitude has come over me. As if I am already in the hospital, and Larissa Wikawaaya is my nurse.
But does she recognize me? Does she know me?
Frequently in the intervening years I’ve thought of Larissa Wikawaaya, always with a tinge of emotion—wondering what became of her, if she returned to school, if she managed to get into nursing school after all. It was something of a shock to me, she’d never returned to my class after our conference that had seemed so constructive. But she hadn’t failed the course since she’d officially withdrawn with a grade of I—“Incomplete”—which meant that she could take the course again, with another instructor.
I’ve never told anyone about Larissa Wikawaaya, except in the most general terms. A difficult Wayne State student, dyslexic, whom I wanted to think I’d helped . . .
In the recliner with the crossbar securing me in place, I am urged by Bettina to try to “relax.” At the same time, as Bettina ties a rubber band tightly around my upper left arm, I am told to make a fist—“hard.” Bettina pokes at my veins with her forefinger, frowning. Several times she tries to sink her needle into a vein, and secure the vein, but each time she fails. “Them itty-bitty veins just slide away . . .” I am trying not to flinch with pain and discomfort.
I am thinking Of course this is Larissa Wikawaaya. This is her revenge, of which she has no conscious knowledge.
Bettina tries higher on the inside of my arm, and again fails. The needle hurts! Now I have become taut with dread. Trembling with anxiety. Bettina sighs in exasperation—(that is Larissa Wikawaaya’s sigh, I would recognize anywhere)—gives up on my left arm, and tries my right. Again—“Ma’am, c’n you make a real tight fist? Try’n relax, ma’am.”
She isn’t scolding me. You could say that she is scolding my narrow veins, or one of her medical worker colleagues who failed to advise me to drink water before coming here.
I am thinking that I can’t bear this. Like the stricken children, I will be screaming in another minute. Scream and scream for Larissa Wikawaaya to stop this torment so that I can flee from this terrible place.
I feel a wave of faintness rise from the base of my skull, a sensation of utter desolation, despair.
“Ma’am? You OK?”
Mutely I nod yes.
“You doin real well, ma’am. I’m gon find a vein right now.”
Not right now, but in a few minutes, at last on the tender inside of my left wrist, Bettina manages to secure an elusive vein.
By this time I am breathing quickly, shallowly. My vision is splotched and wavering. On Bettina’s short upper lip I see a film of oily moisture. Such strange intimacy between us—I think For the second time in our lives.
Now, the ordeal is just to keep conscious. As the needle draws little vials of blood. Three vials!
I shut my eyes, and with the fingers of my free hand I grip the edge of the chair arm, tight. I am thinking—how lonely I am! How badly I want my husband, and not this aloneness.
Gently Bettina encourages me to relax. Almost over now, ma’am, she says.
At last, the ordeal is finished. Bettina seems proud of me, that I have been such a “good brave” patient. “Nobody like bein stuck, that’s f’sure.” Bettina presses a gauze square against the tiny puncture wound and instructs me to apply pressure to it.
“Just sit here till you feelin stronger, ma’am. You OK, see?”
I am immensely grateful to Bettina, now that the needle has been removed. Now that the ordeal is over. Almost, I could cry—I am so grateful.
I fumble to remove the crossbar, pushing at it with the need to get away.
“Ma’am, you gon hurt yourself, you doin that . . .”
It’s too soon for me to stand. My knees are weak, my head is swimming. Bettina urges me to wait. She grips my hand in hers. She is comforting me—squeezing my hand. She is inches shorter than I am, and some years younger. She helps me to my feet.
Bettina’s strong fingers, gripping both my arms at the elbow.
Faintly scolding Bettina says: “Now you ain’t gon faint on me, ma’am, are you? Now it’s all over?”
I tell her no.
“You got anybody here with you, waitin for you?”
Now I see: the eyes that are thick-lashed, very dark, kindly and yet evasive. She knows me. Something in my face, she knows. And quickly I assure her yes, there is someone waiting for me, in our car in the parking lot, my husband who will drive me home. For I don’t want to distress this woman any more than I already have.
Before I leave, I use the restroom at Quest. I run cold water to splash onto my face that looks splotched, oddly flushed. I am forty-one years old, I feel as if I am at the midpoint of my life. At such times, the midpoint of vast and impersonal and unchartable life itself.
Recalling how after that session in my office in Starret Hall, I never again received another hate-note shoved beneath my door.
The Quiet Car
Nowhere are we so exposed, so vulnerable, as on an elevated platform at a suburban train depot.
In balmy weather, choosing to stand outside to await the 11:17 A.M. to New York City instead of huddling in the depot with its stained floor and malodorous restrooms and incongruously pew-like benches.
Even if “known”—that is, even if an individual of considerable accomplishments, not famous but (certainly) admired in some quarters.
Seeing then, by the purest chance, for he rarely looks around in such circumstances, a person staring at him—unmistakably.
And this person, a woman, amid a gathering of passengers oblivious of him as they are oblivious of each other.
Quickly he looks away. Is the woman someone he knows, or has known? Someone who seems to know him?
A startled expression in the woman’s face. A long horsey face, doughy-pale skin, an impression of long teeth bared in a half-smile, or half-grimace, of something like disbelief, yet recognition; clearly the woman (middle-aged, stolid and nondescript, with gray-stippled hair) is surprised to see him, but isn’t brazen enough to call out to him, in the moment before, casually, without acknowledging that he has seen her, he turns away.
It’s a risk of being “known”—if only to a very small subset of literate Americans.
Rarely does R___ lose his poise, in such circumstances. For sometimes it does happen, more often in a museum, that a stranger will stare at him as if trying to place him, and if the stranger is reasonably attractive, whether female or male, of some possible interest to R___, he may smile, and acknowledge the recognition; might even, depending upon his mood, shake hands, exchange a few words. I’m an admirer of your writing—these words he has heard a gratifying number of times in public places, deflected with a murmur of thanks and a modest smile.
This morning on the train platform, in a bright blaze of unsparing autumn sunshine, the horse-faced woman isn’t attractive enough to merit a second glance.
And the train is arriving at the depot, exactly on time.
SO ACCUSTOMED HAS R___ BECOME to the New York City train arriving at Track 1, he has half-consciously memorized the exact place on the platform where the door to the Quiet Car, which happens to be the first car, will line up.
Briskly he steps inside, and takes his usual seat near the front of the car, left side of the train; lays his raincoat beside him, to discourage another passenger from sitting there. (Though, in the Quiet Car, it isn’t likely that anyone would sit with a lone passenger unless there were no other empty seats.)
In the Quiet Car, a tense sort of quiet prevails. For where there is a generic prescribed quiet, even subdued murmurs and whispers
are jarring; of course, cell phones are forbidden, and fellow passengers are vigilant to uphold the rules.
From time to time an unwitting passenger will blunder into the Quiet Car talking to a companion, or on a cell phone—the occupants of the Quiet Car will glare at him but (usually) will not say anything in the hope that the conductor will come by quickly, and restore order.
In all things, order is maintained by authority, which is a kind of force. Disorder is the default.
It is not an exaggeration to say that R___, who loves few things about his life, loves the New Jersey Transit Quiet Car. He loves the isolation, the solitude, the “invisibility” of quiet; the understanding that no one will speak to him, and that he need not speak to anyone. If a friend or acquaintance comes into the Quiet Car it is protocol for them to sit alone, with no more than a nod or smile of acknowledgment. Here, eyes shift away. Most people have brought work. Even the conductor will murmur politely, if speech is required.
R___ had not willingly moved to this suburban place. He had not willingly left the city. Financial constraint determined the move which (as it has turned out) was a very good idea though it is (still, after years) not an idea that brings pleasure and so he rarely thinks of it and if he does, if he is obliged to think of it, it is the Quiet Car in which his abraded soul takes sanctuary.
As the train pulls out of the depot he resists the impulse to glance around, to see if the horse-faced woman has followed him into the Quiet Car. He does not think she would dare sit with him—surely not—but it would be as annoying to him if she were to sit across from him, or behind him. If she’d taken a seat in the Quiet Car a few rows back, to study him from afar.
At last, steeling himself he glances around—and doesn’t see her.
Relief! Yet (he has to concede) mild disappointment.
For now he will never know why the woman, seemingly a stranger, had looked at him so strangely. As if she hadn’t just recognized R___ but had been startled to see him.
On the trip to New York City he usually reads that day’s New York Times. If he reads slowly enough, with the obsessive care of one with a surplus of time on his hands, the entire seventy-minute trip will be taken up by the paper, which he (more or less) forgets as he reads, and which he can then jettison at Penn Station.
Beautiful Days: Stories Page 13