by Andrew Roe
Anabelle was probably sniffling. It seemed like she was always sick, always sniffling. She was probably also hungry, since they hadn’t eaten anything (the beginnings of lunch abandoned on the kitchen counter) before coming to the mall, which was musty with the smell of burnt pizza cheese and expired chow mein, but she would have to wait, they both would, because they were on a budget, and that budget did not include extravagant trips to the Food Court. Karen, intuiting that dizziness was looming, here we go again, beelined to the first bench she saw, while Anabelle took the opportunity to go over and inspect the hazardous-looking play structure in the middle of the mall, an area that became Santa’s Village or Villa or something during the holidays, starting around like Labor Day. Although the mall served its purpose, barely, it was a shitty mall, utilized only by those who lived nearby and conspicuously missing a multiplex and a Radio Shack.
Seated around her were mostly young mothers, slouched like the teenagers the majority of them were, but also two or three old men sitting and waiting for their old wives. You had the bookend evidence of the young and the old. Where you’ve been and where you’re going. One man clutched a walker, his left hand trembling uncontrollably, a possessed appendage, a restless, wasted thing. Mouth open, apparently for good. He looked completely ravaged and used up. An oxygen tank next to the walker. Everything a betrayal at this point, even, thought Karen, the continuing absence of his wife, if he did in fact have one and was not alone. Passing the Tots O’ Fun play area was a lone teenage boy, a practiced menace in his walk, his pants slung low enough that they would seem to impede motion but did not, with a black T-shirt that said ACTS OF AGRESSION. That’s all. No band or sports-company affiliation. Just this plain, unadorned message, which baffled her. What kind of aggression? What kind of acts?
Karen watched Anabelle approach another little girl and then run away. What was that all about? Her daughter the enigma. Tinkerbell in her own magical land. Which worried John more than her, but still, she worried, too. Several kids were crying, though at different pitches and levels of alarm. It was all building toward something. The longer she sat there, the greater the force of her heart lashing against her chest. The dizziness had not subsided but actually intensified. Breathing becoming problematic. Bad idea, going to the mall. Should have known better, given recent history. Because now standing up was not an option and wouldn’t be for some time. Another bad decision in a lifetime of many. More and more on the rare occurrences when she voyaged outside the house, she found herself on this precipice: of black freefall, of dark plunge, of your body no longer you.
The volume dial clicked higher, louder. And not just the overly melancholic violins of the cheesified Lennon-McCartney. But the babble of shoppers, the primal anguish of children. Too, from somewhere, the static-y murmur that was her life. Everything outside her—the mall, the shoppers, the Muzak—and inside her—the phone, the bills, John, the parental fuckups—was vivid and amplified, pretty much equally. No longer was there a shield, a membrane to protect, to insulate the inside from the outside. It was all the same. All one rising pool of panic. Yes, overload. It was official.
She heard one of the mothers yelling for her child to get over here, to quit screwing around, and she felt a shifting, a give, and it was then quite possible that she was the one yelling, except that now, right now, a couple of seconds after the yelling had ceased, her mouth seemed to be clamped shut and incapable of speech and she was maybe biting her tongue but her tongue had been numb for the longest time and so she couldn’t be sure, the clamping then spreading from her mouth to her chest to her arms to basically everywhere, circulating like a chill. She could not move. This was now official as well. Although apparently she was shivering. Shaking like the old man’s hand, except her whole body.
It had happened before, this seizing terror, this compulsion to be somewhere else, to disappear, poof, like magic. The setting for the previous incident: a market. The cereal aisle specifically, amid a splash of colors and cartoon mascots and endless bounty. However, she had been able to pull herself together and snap out of it in time by reciting the familiar and soothing names and brands stacked all around her—Nabisco, Post, General Mills, Raisin Bran, Kix, Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms. Well, that wasn’t going to happen here. No cereal boxes and multinational companies to anchor her to the receding world. And the people around her, the throng of strangers—they knew what was coming as much as she did. They knew everything—her embarrassingly shallow thoughts, her eroding marriage, her peculiar daughter, her suspect mothering skills, her fear of leaving the house, the tiny wound in her heart that she could not name and that could not properly heal. She tried to stand but there were no legs with which to stand. She tried to breathe but there were no lungs with which to breathe. A line had been crossed, a scary, scary fucking line, one that had not been crossed before. This was all new territory. Her exile to this alternate, unreachable frequency never this remote, never this extreme. Why here? Why the mall? The nausea was causing a rank fluid to assemble in the back of her throat.
At some point she slumped from the bench to the ground, not sure if this was a conscious choice or a chemical or biological command her body could not ignore. She didn’t know how long it took before someone noticed her, but finally someone did. People approached her like an injured animal (she was fetal by then, was what she was told later). Somebody said “seizure.” Somebody said “9-1-1.” Somebody said, “Does anybody know her, who she is?” The old man with the walker and oxygen tank leaned down, heroically, as best as he could, and placed the mask over her mouth, so gently, so carefully, it was as if the act were some kind of religious rite. Breathe, he said. And she did. She inhaled the rush of oxygen along with the old man’s stale, mortal stench, which lingered on the plastic device. He didn’t remove the mask for the longest time. She breathed.
And then they were touching her and she did not want to be touched. Polite, respectful touching, the kind you’d expect in such a situation (testing her forehead for fever, unbuttoning a top button to assist the passage of air), but touching nonetheless. Stop, please, she wanted to tell them. Please don’t touch me. But because she could not move or speak, she could do nothing, just lay there and be touched. They lifted her into a wheelchair once a security guard arrived with it, and this was perhaps the greatest cruelty of all, the hoisting of her body, the dead, useless weight, the burden of her physical being in the arms of complete strangers.
The security guard wheeled her through the mall, Anabelle following and trying to keep up. The whole time she had remained in the play area, gawking with the rest of the children and onlookers. The guard took them down a corridor, then down an elevator, and into a large room, the mall security room. When Karen recovered the power of language, she managed to convince the security guard not to call for an ambulance, which would cost money and which she assumed she’d have to pay for, not the mall. But he did insist on having someone pick her up. She dialed home but John, predictably, was not there.
The security guard said to just wait, relax some, try again in a few.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“Water maybe.”
The security guard shuffled over to the kitchen area and washed out a coffee mug. He was newly emancipated from his teens, bad skin, worse teeth. It said SECURITY all over him: his cap, his shirt, his jacket, as if repetition of the word would help foster intimidation. It did not.
“You sure you gonna be all right?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
He handed her the water: warmish, metallic, residued with Palmolive. But she was grateful for any liquid so long as it made it down her throat. She sipped, swallowed, looked around. TVs all over the place, like a sports bar gone mad. Except the screens were in black and white, and showed people shopping in stores, sifting through merchandise, staring off into space, holding uncooperative children, and yes, looking guilty. Simply because they were being filmed. The black and white adding another laye
r to their shame.
“You one of those epileptics?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“I have a cousin who’s one. But you’d never know, as long as he takes his meds.”
All this time Anabelle watching her. Watching like only a child can watch a parent. That mixture of wonder and disappointment and hurt, in the eyes, the face. Absorbing the particulars of yet another scar on her delicate psyche. Her daughter who so easily bruised—seize her too hard on the arm and the darkness appears almost immediately, but more than that, too. You could bruise her with words, a look, a gesture. And now this, the trauma of seeing her mother helpless, sprawled on the mall floor like a passed-out drunk. Anabelle was a witness to it all, and that couldn’t be healthy. Who knows how harmful and how permanent the memory would be?
On one of the screens a pregnant-looking shopper held a blouse aloft for inspection. The security guard nodded like a solemn keeper of societal secrets, of hidden knowledge not available to the average civilian.
“Most people don’t get to see this,” he said, a little wistful, or at least as wistful as a twenty-year-old mall security guard can get.
“I’m sorry?” Karen still thinking of her daughter, the girl’s marked future.
“You know, the pulse. Behind the scenes. This is where it all happens. You’d be surprised at what goes down at your typical average everyday mall.”
She kept calling and still there was no answer. Eventually, though, after about an hour, the security guard let her go. She gathered her purse and her daughter and drove home, the time in transit passing like a jump cut in a movie: suddenly you were someplace else, time and space obliterated. She sent Anabelle to her room and then crashed on the sofa. The cushions contoured to her regularly reclining figure. She slept way too much, she knew. But really: is twelve hours too much? Whatever the body requires, right? The mall ordeal had completely exhausted her. Tired in the bones, behind the eyes. But just as she settled in, covered herself with a blanket, closed her eyes . . . the phone was ringing. The phone was ringing and John wasn’t there. Of course.
She thought she’d better answer it, since she’d given the security guard her phone number and maybe he was calling to check up on her or something.
“Hello. John there?” a would-be felonious voice inquired.
“John?” she said. The name was becoming more and more unfamiliar. Elusive. A word and not a person. A concept and not a husband. Her husband.
“There’s no John here,” she informed the voice.
It was, technically, the truth.
THE FIRST THING she sees after returning from Costco is the fire truck in the street. The second thing she sees is the ambulance in the driveway. And the third thing she sees is Bryce running toward her, waving his hands, panic painted on his face, as she parks her car across the street, in front of the black couple’s house, the one with the blinds always closed. Then she’s out of the car and running herself, Bryce keeping pace next to her, explaining, “After the earthquake the power went out. Briefly, but it went out. Everything was still shaking and we had some trouble getting the backup generators going, and there was some scary few seconds there, and so we called 911, but right then, pretty much right after, the power came back on and everything kicked back in. And so the ambulance came even though it probably didn’t need to. She’s fine. Anabelle’s fine. They’re checking her vitals. And I called Dr. Patel, just to be sure. He’s on his way, too. I’m so sorry, Karen. I would’ve called. You should really get a cell phone. I didn’t know where you were. I would’ve called.”
People are scattered about the front yard, visitors and neighbors, fifteen or twenty or so, milling around in the continuing chaos, not knowing what to do, if they should stay or go.
Inside Karen rushes past the gauntlet of firefighters and paramedics lining the hallway. They make way for her and she enters Anabelle’s room, Bryce right behind her. The air in there is oppressive from all the bodies and activity, and Karen can’t remember the last time she ran like that—like death itself was trying to light a fire under her ass.
Anabelle has an oxygen mask on her face. There are more IVs and tubes and blinking gadgets than usual. Did she look different? Did it seem like she’s in pain? Had her body moved some, the smallest of increments, noticeable to no one but her because she was the only one who could possibly notice such unnoticeable things? Why had she been so foolish and left? Did the earthquake mean anything? Was it a sign? Yes and no, Karen thinks. Yes and no to everything.
One of the paramedics bends over Anabelle, readies an injection. His hair is slicked back, like a talk-show host’s. A large dragon tattoo snarls across one of his forearms.
“I shouldn’t have left,” Karen says. “How is she?”
“She’s breathing and stable,” answers the paramedic, who looks right out of high school, barely an adult, and here he is with her daughter’s life in his hands. “We’re monitoring. This will help with any potential blood clots, just in case.”
He gives Anabelle the shot. And Karen swears, swears, something changes in her daughter’s eyes, the slightest, subtlest micromovement to indicate pain, to simply say a little-girl ouch and Mommy, where were you?
“She’s going to be fine, Karen,” says Bryce. “She’s going to be fine. It was just a little scare.”
Once the paramedic has moved back, Karen steps up and reaches out and rubs her daughter’s arm. God. Goddamn. She picks up Anabelle’s hand, places it to her lips. The skin smells like sweat, feels like Silly Putty. And if Karen wasn’t crying before, she sure is now.
“I should have learned by now,” she says. “I shouldn’t have left her. I can’t ever leave her.”
6
| John |
THE IDEA, THEN, was to become a monk, and if not that, then at least be able to classify himself as monklike. John often pictured men with robes and beards who went without sex or alcohol or cable TV. That’s what he aspired to. Living bare. Living without. And so: as he sleep-stumbles out of bed and squeezes into his apartment’s tiny kitchen to officially start his day, he thinks that, other than his night at the Well last week, he’s done pretty OK monk-wise, ever since he left home. He’s even lost about fifteen pounds, so there’s less of him. But didn’t monks chant? He didn’t think he could go that far, chanting, though his empty cabinets and refrigerator certainly attest to his regimen of restriction. Breakfast consists of plain oatmeal, sans brown sugar or maple syrup, and reheated coffee, black. No sexy, excessive extras, just the essentials. He’s about to turn on the TV but then he remembers the monks again, and so he doesn’t. One more deprivation. A good way to inaugurate the day—his last at Dazzle Productions.
Yes, he’s not where he wants to be, but he’s getting closer, it’s a work in progress, and as he swabs deodorant and dresses, he thinks how he’s out there, really out there, floating, unconnected, uninsured, unknown. And now there is only time. There are no calls to make, no letters to write. Friends, his mother, the little family he has—they don’t know how to reach him or where he is. He’s honed himself down to the simplest existence possible, the most minimal interactions with the world. Of the money he makes, he keeps the bare minimum for rent and food and socks, sends Karen the rest. It is his penance and also his choice. People on milk cartons aren’t the only ones who can disappear.
Sometimes he speaks his name aloud (in the shower, while driving to work, when standing in line at the market making his meager purchases) to remind himself of who he is and what he has lost.
NO ONE AT work mentions that it’s his last day, not even the chatty, pastry-loving ladies in the break room. He powers through the morning, filling orders and loading trucks with freshly minted porn, his Alphonso shirt thoroughly soaked with sweat by nine-thirty. It wasn’t long after he started his stint at Dazzle Productions that he realized there was probably one person (a guy of course) who came up with all the titles for porn flicks. And the guy was in a rut. Too much r
eliance on puns and alliteration and take-offs on regular movies—When Harry Fucked Sally, Romancing the Bone, and so on. One of the “perks” of working here was that you could bring home all the DVDs you wanted. But monks did not watch porn. Besides, he didn’t have a DVD player.
At lunch time the break room is brimming with people and conversations and so he escapes outside to the parking lot, staying only briefly because of the heat, the blacktop baking and the sky rimmed with thinnish clouds; Nevada heat was not the same as California heat. He hears a buzzing—power lines, insects, something. The invisible, unknown humming of the world. Almost one o’clock. Halfway there. He uses the sleeve of his shirt to temporarily wipe away the sweat on his forehead and then he returns to the warehouse for the afternoon crawl. There’s a lull, during which Devon, one of the warehouse guys, delivers yet another rambling monologue on his favorite topic (“Y2K, it’s coming, Flip. Are you ready? You best be. We’re talking no ATMs, no cash, people freaking, power failures, food and water shortages, airplanes crashing, the whole grid holding everything together going down, looting, cars turned over, fires, all of it. And it’s coming. Like those billboards say: ‘If you hear a trumpet, grab the wheel.’ That’s what I’ll be doing. If I’m driving, I mean. Otherwise, I’ll be hunkered down at my house with the door locked, with my gun and batteries and canned goods . . .”), and then for an hour or so it gets busy, the orders accelerate, time accelerates, and John settles into that thought-erasing rhythm, that nameless zone where there is only work and nothing else and your mind is clear and alive and purposeful. The temperature outside is 103 degrees. They have giant fans inside the warehouse running all day long but they do little good. When things slow down, he starts to think again. And he thinks: it’s not good to think. Devon brings another order to fill and tells him, “Aren’t you having fun yet, Flip? You’re looking glum, chum. You should be smiling ear to ear. You’re working in the entertainment industry, son. You’re looking at titties and ass all day long, pro-fes-shun-nal titties and ass, mind you, and getting paid for it and you’re not smiling. Look at me. I’m smiling. Happy as a clam. I tell my wife: ‘I look at women all day long but I still come home to you, honey.’ She likes that. That makes her smile.”