Corpus Christi

by Bret Anthony Johnston

  I See Something You Don’t See

  MINNIE MARSHALL NEEDED HER SON TO DRIVE her to the emergency room. Three in the morning, a Sunday in June; she had another migraine, a real monster that wasn’t going to ease off without a Demerol injection. She hated to disturb Lee. In two weeks he would leave South Texas and return to St. Louis, return to the life she and the tumor in her lung had denied him for a year, and she wanted to let him rest. He’d already taken her three times in as many weeks, so to ask again also meant asking for his reticence or his lectures. She made herself wait. She tried sleeping and then reading, but when her vision began to blur and narrow, she crept into his dark room. She sat on his bed, touched his shoulder. When she whispered his name, her voice banged around in her head like a huge, frantic bird.

  “I need a shot,” she said. “It won’t take long.”

  He lay on his stomach, offering no response. Her head throbbed, the chaotic pain replaced momentarily by a dull and familiar chiseling behind her eyes. She was fifty-three but had suffered migraines since childhood. After having Lee, she’d had a hysterectomy because a neurologist promised the procedure would snuff out the headaches. It didn’t. During chemo and radiation, migraines had assailed her so frequently that the oncologist feared metastasis, but MRIs and CAT scans assured her otherwise. Just unlucky, the doctors had said.

  Lee rolled onto his back. “They’ll admit you.”

  “I just need a shot.”

  “They’ll keep you overnight, maybe longer.”

  “Please,” she said. The last thing she wanted was to cry, but her eyes pooled and her throat clenched. Then suddenly she feared she would vomit, too, and maybe pass out. She said, “Please, baby, I’m sick.”

  The ER was overcrowded. She almost asked Lee to go back to the car and take her to another hospital, but at least here the staff would recognize her. They would smile when she entered, lead her to the first available room and let her lie in darkness while Lee registered; the doctors would consult her file, ask if this one differed from the others, then send a nurse with an injection. The nurses called her “honey,” asked about new Avon products, asked about Lee. If the nurse was pretty or especially gentle, Minnie would muster the energy to brag about Lee’s teaching job in Missouri, his master’s degree, everything he’d forfeited to come home and care for her; she would manage to leak that he was single, too. Tonight a heavy-jowled woman behind the registration desk noticed Minnie and made an exaggerated frown—Again? the frown asked—to which Minnie shrugged. Only one chair was available, so she sat while Lee waited to sign in. Beside her, a father cradled his sleeping son. There was a man with his hand wrapped in a wet towel; a hunched, wheezing woman who had fallen; a young woman having contractions. Other people were just waiting, their faces wrinkled with worry. She felt sorry for all of them.

  An hour passed before a room opened, then another before a doctor arrived. He was new, with bloodshot eyes and a Pakistani or Indian name, Rama. He spoke quickly and without humor while his cold hands examined her too thoroughly. “A little fresh,” she almost said, but refrained because neither Lee nor the doctor would have laughed. His manner was endearingly stiff; she’d always believed Lee would make a good doctor. When Rama left, she said, “I bet he’s nervous, but excited.”

  She felt less generous when he ordered bloodwork and X-rays. Another half hour had slogged by. The migraine had its full claws on her now, and although the pain had put her on the verge of tears, news of the tests, which translated to more waiting, swept her over the edge. Lee tried negotiating with the nurse. He raised his voice, then pleaded and cited previous visits with successful dosages, but she wouldn’t budge. It was only Rama’s second night, she said, so he was overcautious. No one liked him—“Sheesh, we barely understand him,” she said—but they had no choice. Wheeling the bed into the clattering, garishly lit hallway, the nurse whispered, “I’m sorry, honey.”

  When Minnie was finally returned to the room, Lee brought over a stool and stroked her hair. He rubbed her scalp, her closed eyes. His touch soothed her, as his father’s had. There was no one time when she missed Richard the most—a misconception of those who’d never lost a spouse— but on nights when their son assumed a husband’s role, Richard’s absence seemed especially unjust, nothing more than a wanton punishment. She wasn’t angry at him for dying—a misconception of therapists; she was angry that she’d survived. If she’d died instead, Lee would be sleeping in St. Louis, maybe in his own house with a wife and children, and not in an antiseptic-smelling emergency room, kneading her temples at the crack of dawn.

  “You’ll be glad when this ends,” she said. Probably he fretted over what would happen when a migraine seized her after he’d left Corpus Christi. She fretted over it, too. “You’ll make a good father.”

  “The apple from the tree, right?”

  Yes, she thought, yes. She wanted to keep talking, but a leaden drowsiness draped over her like a blanket. She lay in the blue-black haze between sleep and waking, and waited for one or the other to claim her. She concentrated on staying still and not aggravating the pain; she forgot where she was, lost track of time. A gauzy memory of a motel pool, Richard belly flopping to amuse Lee. They are in Corpus, on Ocean Drive; no money for vacation that year. Richard bounces on the diving board, beating his chest like an ape. She could almost hear his voice, almost see his reddened stomach. Then, brightness: a harsh, piercing light flooded the room and a nurse charged in with the syringe. The woman hurried, as if administering the Demerol on the sly, and said an ambulance had arrived and two more were following; a fire at the refineries. Minnie realized she’d heard the sirens, but had believed them a dream, the nightmare sirens that spirited Richard away every night. The hospital needed the room, the nurse said, so the dosage had been okayed without the test results.

  “Great,” Minnie said, stepping to the floor. “Perfect.”

  She smiled at Lee—the thrill that they’d scored a secret victory bloomed in her breast—then she lowered her pants and leaned over the bed. After the last year, he no longer needed to leave the room, and they all knew it. The injection pinched and burned, the Demerol felt thick as glue. Soon, though, her veins tingled pleasantly, her pain dissolving into velvet while the world’s hard edges softened. She felt buoyant, as if floating in the motel pool, and while Lee signed release forms, the migraine faded, or her body did, and she became the turquoise water around her family. When Lee helped her to the car, the sun warmed her arms, and even with her eyes closed, she bathed in a golden, benevolent light.

  HIS MOTHER’S ABSENCE WOKE HIM LIKE A BLOW to the chest. Lee was thirty-three but suddenly as frightened as a child. He checked each room, bracing himself to find her on the floor, fallen or hemorrhaging or catatonic from pills she’d swallowed to end the sorrow of living with cancer instead of a husband. Wednesday morning, she had no obligations. She’d slept most of yesterday, still sapped by the Demerol. Lately she spent mornings packing Avon orders, sorting mascara and powders on the backyard deck, but today it was abandoned. The house was empty.

  He heard her trowel scraping on the bricks outside. His first impulse was to scold her for working in the sun when her skin could burn so easily. In truth, he wanted to punish her for worrying him, and he knew it. The year before, he’d walked away from his first teaching job and a volatile, makeshift relationship with the school’s librarian to care for his mother as she underwent treatment; now he felt like a prisoner awaiting parole. Watching her through the window, he tried to take her gardening for what it was, evidence that she would live, evidence that in two weeks his life would resume.

  “Someone was tired,” she said as he stepped outside. Before he could reply, she added, “I’m wearing sunblock. SPF thirty.”

  A bolt of shame. The smell of coconut lotion and damp, fresh-turned soil recalled for him how often he’d found her here throughout his youth. He said, “Do you want breakfast?”

  “I already ate. Yours is in the oven.” Then, wipin
g her brow, she said, “I’m planting cannabis. If Avon peters out, I’ll start dealing.” Recently this was one of her favorite jokes, though he hadn’t mustered a laugh even the first time she said it.

  Her arms, blotched and bruised because her platelet count remained low, were glazed with sweat. Just ten o’clock, but the oily humidity had already swamped the morning. No wind blew, a ribbon of smoke spiraled up from an ashtray in the grass. She wore one of his old baseball caps, and a loose, plaid blouse with a denim collar. He said, “What’s on your plate today?”

  “I’ll drop off more catalogs for the nurses. They’re getting antsy.”

  Each week she left Avon books at the cancer center, and on weekends nurses and doctors’ wives, patients and staff members phoned the house. They asked for her with as much reverence as Lee had once asked for the oncologist. Who would have pegged Minnie Marshall for such a sly hawker? Her customers ordered cosmetics and jewelry, toys and handbags, and hearing her pitch jasmine-scented creams pleased Lee in ways he couldn’t remember feeling. The thought of her immersed in the work helped diffuse the guilt that haunted him for wanting to leave. He encouraged her, inquired about new promotions, and doted on the products she stockpiled on his behalf; he would never again want for roll-on deodorant. If he circled a cologne in a catalog, three bottles came with the shipment. Usually the aftershave arrived, too. “I thought maybe you’d missed it,” she’d say.

  Judging from the flower bed he guessed that she’d worked most of the morning. Probably she’d toiled for his sake, offering her efforts as further proof that she would be able to function without him. The garden was flourishing. He was admiring the marigolds and crape myrtle when the phone rang and she started pushing herself up from the ground. His heart flattened. Her balance hadn’t yet recovered; she struggled slowly and awkwardly to stand, like a newborn colt. Her hair and energy had returned with her remission, but she still teetered after closing the refrigerator and had to fight to free herself from sofas with deep cushions. She was an old woman who wasn’t old.

  “Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

  And although answering the phone seemed right, he was dismayed in the kitchen for not telling her to get out of the sun. Why, he wondered later, hadn’t he? And why, when the man asked for Linda Marshall—not Minnie—did Lee say she wasn’t home? Maybe he half recognized the accent, or maybe he couldn’t face watching her stagger again.

  “You are her son, correct?”

  Lee said yes.

  “I am Dr. Rama. I treated Mrs. Marshall for a migraine in the emergency room.”

  Lee said yes, okay.

  “She must see her physician. Test results show . . .” Rama paused.

  Lee felt himself breathing, heard the blood pulsing in his ears. He wanted to speak but was suddenly certain his voice would ruin something. He coiled and uncoiled the phone cord around his hand; he noticed the smells of bacon and toast that had lingered for hours, and his eyes locked on the refrigerator where banana magnets pinned down his mother’s grocery list: detergent, flour, butter, olive oil, chicken breasts, wine. His mouth tasted sour, like copper.

  Rama said, “The tests are not good. There is aggressive metastasis to the brain.”

  Outside, his mother clapped soil from her gloves and picked an insect from a leaf. She inspected it, then lowered it to the yard. A cigarette dangled from her lips, the baseball cap swallowed her forehead and ears. She looked as he must have looked as an adolescent, bony and pale and vulnerable. He turned his back to her.

  “I’ll send results to her doctor,” said Rama. “He will advise.”

  “Thank you,” Lee said, though saying it struck him as strange.

  He unwrapped his hand from the cord and hung up. He concentrated on the yellow magnets and his mother’s grocery list—probably ingredients for Chicken Marsala, a dish she believed he liked more than he did—then he leaned his forehead against the refrigerator. He tried deciding what to do, for the first real decision of his life seemed upon him, but his mind blanked. He tried focusing himself with a question: What should I do now? Nothing came. The pressure to act bore down, as it would on a surgeon or soldier, a paramedic or murderer. Still, nothing. Until, finally, he steeled himself and aimed only to step outside and praise the work she had done this morning. If nothing else, he could grant her a last day in the sun.

  THE DEMEROL HAD KNOCKED OUT THE MIGRAINE, AND Minnie had spent the last two days gardening and shopping and filling the goodie package she wanted to have waiting for Lee in Missouri. She’d neglected her Avon duties but looked forward to getting back on track. The work contented her as nothing had since losing Richard. Before the diagnosis, she’d worked as an accountant, a dull job that came easily, but such unfulfilling labor seemed fitting then. For six years, she’d thought enjoying herself would contradict how she missed her husband’s body, his voice; joy felt like infidelity. But her remission seemed to have changed everything. She relished this new life, realizing that all along Richard would have been pleased by her happiness and that she’d been disappointing him. He deserved a widow who did more than fall to pieces when the sink clogged; Lee deserved a mother who managed more than withering in front of late-night infomercials; she herself deserved refuge from her grief. Sometimes when she visited with customers or cooked dinners for Lee, she thought, So this is what I’ve missed. She felt like someone back from war, awed by the changed country and how eagerly the crowds embraced her.

  Undoubtedly, Lee worried that she would unravel without him. She had put him through so much, taking too many or too few pills when he wasn’t home to supervise, not eating or sleeping, walking when she knew she would fall. Now she devoted herself to allaying his fears, to proving to him that her world would not crumble when he left. The goal was to send him back to St. Louis—she imagined it a bustling, sophisticated city in the shadow of the great Arch—and to get him back to his classroom and his half-finished dissertation on— what? Eighteenth-century labor codes? His imminent departure had ennobled her. She smiled and worked and pretended she was not terrified of being alone.

  “You weren’t very hungry,” she said at the kitchen table. At most, he’d eaten half of his Chicken Marsala. “Do you want something else? I can order out.”

  “It’s delicious. I’m just not feeling well tonight.”

  “Good news, then,” she said. “I’ve got something to raise your spirits.”

  She sipped her iced tea, dabbed her napkin to her mouth. The parcel had arrived yesterday, but she’d kept it a surprise because he’d gone out last night. Withholding the news had been difficult but electrifying; all day she’d tried to imagine his reaction. She said, “I’m the district’s top seller for this campaign.”

  “Well, gosh,” he said, like a boy. He refilled her glass.

  “Isn’t that something? They sent me a plaque and a bonus check, and my name goes into a drawing for a Hawaiian vacation.”

  Lee looked shocked, uncomprehending. He said, “When did they send—”

  “It’s inspired me. I’ll pass out more catalogs, more samples. Next year, we’ll have an Avon empire!”

  He cut another piece of chicken, then another, started eating again. “I’d say you’ve earned a rest. Why mess with the formula?”

  “You’re sweet,” she said. “I feel just grand lately.”

  He finished his helpings, then spooned seconds onto his plate and polished those off. She knew he was proud of her, but still she could feel his dreariness and resolved to fix him a solid breakfast in the morning. She’d done as much when he was young, if he had a test or a soccer game. He’d preferred strawberry jam to syrup on his pancakes. Did he still?

  She said, “The Hawaii trip isn’t until next summer. I doubt I’ll win, but who knows? Our luck seems to be turning.”

  “I don’t think luck has much to do with it,” he said, and dolloped mashed potatoes onto his plate.

  She felt herself glowing. So this is what I’ve missed.

&nb
sp; THE TEST RESULTS HADN’T REACHED THE ONCOLOGIST by Thursday. When Lee explained the situation to Dr. Wood, she reacted with such skepticism that he briefly let himself think he’d misunderstood everything. He’d been waiting for the dementia to expose itself, but his mother split ferns and distributed catalogs and hung the Star Seller plaque over the television. Almost hourly he decided to tell her the bad news, then quickly reversed his decision.

  On Friday afternoon, he called Dr. Wood again and felt ambushed, then contritely validated, when she said the results did indeed indicate a rapid spread to his mother’s brain. Her tone was solemn and regretful, and stricken, as if by the cancer’s audacity. She ordered more tests for the coming week, then outlined further treatments. Lee knew his mother would refuse them—“When pigs fly,” she’d said when Dr. Wood previously suggested prophylactic radiation—so he asked the doctor, who suddenly seemed in his debt, what would happen without treatment. Her answer came quickly. His mother might live a few months, perhaps six or eight, though her motor skills and her ability to care for herself would begin to shut down. Her sight and hearing would diminish, muscles would atrophy. She would become incontinent, bedridden. She would forget the most fundamental information: her name and his, how to chew, swallow, and speak.

  Lee asked, “Will she know what’s happening?”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Wood said.