Emma Who Saved My Life

by Wilton Barnhardt

  “And we went to Brooklyn General and they told her it was some kind of panic attack, nervous breakdown stuff, and she wasn’t having a heart attack.”

  Well thank goodness.

  Lisa flopped down in a chair. “And while we were there I talked to a doctor and told her she was all strung out because of her imaginary brain tumor and he made us an appointment with a neurologist, for a CAT scan.”

  Neither of us said anything.

  Then Lisa looked up with a half-smile. “So. How was your night?”

  The hospital called confirming the appointment at an East Side clinic, a week from the next Friday. We braced ourselves.

  “I’m getting a CAT scan tomorrow,” Emma announced the day before, cheerily. “No big deal. I’m not nervous. They just put your head in a vice and inject things and … and the thought of it makes me want to die beforehand. Why am I doing this? To hear the wonderful news that I’m going to die of a brain tumor, lose my mind. You guys, wanna go for a pizza? We can get mushroom and onion in anticipation of the vegetable I’m going to become…”

  Black Friday, the day of Emma’s CAT scan, was rainy and we couldn’t get a cab to show up and Emma paced around the apartment nervously, not speaking to us except to say something disparaging and defeatist. The cab arrived and Lisa and I waited in a sterile white modern hospital waiting room at Lenox Hill for the whole thing to be done with.

  “What if there’s something?” Lisa said, tossing a year-old Time magazine back on the coffee table.

  There won’t be, I said. Her symptoms are six weeks old and most of them are self-induced and hysterical and she read a book about brain tumors and she told them all the right things to get them to give her a CAT scan.

  Emma emerged, white as a corpse, clutching a handbag with an unsure hand. We went out for coffee, heard about it, assured her nothing was wrong, that everything would be all right, while Emma just looked into her coffee and said, “No, no. I know in my heart I have a brain tumor—from the moment I thought of it I knew that’s what it was.” And this went on for a week, then a phone call came for her to come back and talk to a Dr. Shears at Lenox Hill. She asked if her friends could come with her and Dr. Shears said yes.

  No one got any sleep the night before the appointment. Lisa took a day off work—she told her boss the story and no one is so heartless not to let someone accompany a friend to the brain-tumor doctor—and I called in sick. We waited and I prepared myself internally for the worst. How would I deal with this? Would we stay with her, care for her? Send her back to her parents she couldn’t abide with the suburban Catholicism and her Aunt Leonie’s miracle-working priests? But what a burden it would be … and yet we had a duty toward her. Somewhere in this gray inner discussion was a sense of unfulfilled love to make it all the more poignant. When I play Romeo, I told myself, trying to compensate, at least I can associate the experience of losing Emma, the one I loved, the one—it came to me right there—who was the Love of My Life, whatever that would be worth to anybody—

  “Would you please come this way? Dr. Shears will see you now.” The receptionist, cold from years of ushering people in to hear the worst, took us into another office mechanically. Emma sat in a big chair between us; Lisa held her hand. Dr. Shears came in with a folder marked Gennaro. Dr. Shears was a light-skinned black woman, cigarette pinched in her lips, a look of permanent harassment on her face. She coughed, put the cigarette out, only to fish through her white robe for the pack and bring out another cigarette, and then she took her chair, looking through Emma’s folder, a look of annoyance on her face.

  “Gennaro?” she said. Emma cleared her throat to identify herself. “Yes, well,” said Dr. Shears, “you’re perfectly fine except for being a selfish little girl who’s wasting my time and somebody’s money.”

  Emma blanched, beginning to say something—

  “No, now girl, I get about thirty-five patients a week for CAT scans, right?” Dr. Shears talked through the cigarette. “And I’d say a good half of ’em are some other illness or stress problem, and one or two have some possibility of a tumor, but I get at least 40% people like you, people convinced they have a brain tumor so much you might think they actually want one. Now I’ve seen your type, several times a week so don’t you lay one on me—you told me you had a half-year history of headaches and fainting and dizziness and insomnia and all kinds of stuff and I am inclined to believe, looking at this report, that you are one more New York girl who needed an analyst and not a CAT scan. This city’s full of sick people who need time on my CAT scanner and you took up some of it. Which I don’t appreciate.”

  Emma couldn’t speak, she started to say something, when Dr. Shears got up.

  “Come on with me, girl. We’re gonna go down the hall and take you on a little tour.”

  Wordlessly we followed.

  Dr. Shears put an arm around Emma, changing tone, softening. “Now baby I’m not trying to hurt you, but you can’t go and do this kind of thing every week now, hm? I just want to show you some’n and you can go on home with your friends, okay sugah?”

  We walked down the white ammonia-scented hallways, everything terrifyingly sterile, ultra-hospital, fluorescent and sanitary. Dr. Shears stopped before a room, the door next to a big glass observation window, the curtains pulled shut. She opened the door and we went in. It was dark, the curtains were closed to the outside window too.

  “Light hurts Mrs. Gonzalez’s eyes,” she whispered to us, “that is, the days she can see.”

  Mrs. Gonzalez lay in a bed before us, a not yet middle-aged woman, staring into the void, briefly stirring as Dr. Shears approached her side; then she stared about strangely, some other-than-human energy seeming to motivate her, make her head dart about.

  “Hello Sẽnora Gonzalez,” said Dr. Shears sweetly, taking the woman’s hand. The woman seemed panicked. “No,” Dr. Shears went on, “no, honey, there there, it’s me. It’s all right, it’s all right.” Then Dr. Shears looked up at us. “She can’t hear us because last week she went deaf, but I believe people have a sense of what’s going on around them, so positive thoughts now, don’t say anything you wouldn’t want her to hear.” Mrs. Gonzalez began to say something incomprehensible, words, sort of, and a name over and over.

  “Mrs. Gonzalez has two lovely children who come to see their Mommy every other day, Miss Gennaro. Mrs. Gonzalez came to us a month and a half ago.” Dr. Shears motioned for Emma to come over by Mrs. Gonzalez’s side. “Come on…” I noticed the straps holding Mrs. Gonzalez to the bed. “Miss Gennaro you come on and hold Mrs. Gonzalez’s hand. Touchin’ is important.”

  Emma, in utter misery, did as she was told.

  Then we went back to the office.

  “About eight weeks ago Mrs. Gonzalez came to us and she sat in the chair you’re sittin’ in Miss Gennaro,” said Dr. Shears, lighting another cigarette, “and I had to tell her her thirty-eight-year-old life was at an end because she had a tumor a mere half-inch into inoperable territory, and that meant slowly losing her mind, her vision, her identity and having her children and husband watch it all, and there ain’t a damn thing I can do about it.” Dr. Shears looked seriously at Emma. “But I sure as hell can get your folder off my desk. Now don’t you go down to Columbia or Sloane-Kettering and pull this routine again—you go home with your friends and get yourself an analyst or a boyfriend or whatever and get your life straightened out and get your healthy life on track, and be damn happy you ain’t gonna be Mrs. Gonzalez this year.” Emma looked at her folded hands in her lap. “Now there are some forms you gotta put your name on and Miss Driscol will bring ’em to you.” Dr. Shears said it was nice to meet us both (Lisa and me), shook our hands, ushered us out and gave us a card of an East Side analyst, saying, “I got a hefty supply line going from the brain-tumor clinic to the psychiatrist’s couch; I oughta get a commission.” Then she laughed this light musical laugh and went back somehow to her uneneviable work.

  Lisa and I stood there a moment. Lisa said
slowly, “I feel so sorry for Mrs. Gonzalez. I feel we degraded her being in there and I feel … degraded myself somehow. My life should not have had this episode.”

  I’m sure Emma feels like shit now, I said, and we shouldn’t add anything to that.

  “There is no humor in this,” Lisa said. “I can’t redeem this in any way.”

  And we took a silent ride home in a cab, through the drizzle. Emma got out of the cab first, and stammered that she was going to set up an appointment with the analyst and fill the Valium prescription the hospital had given her on the heart-attack night and she might go to a movie and just be by herself for a while and we said sure.

  “God I hate hospitals,” Lisa said as we entered our apartment, all gray and cool for a change. “First time since this June that I’ve been to a…” She checked herself. “I’ll make some tea.”

  Been to a what? A hospital? Was Lisa sick too? Lisa gave me a look that inquired whether I picked up on what she almost said, and I gave her a quizzical look back saying, yes, what is it you want to tell me? “I’ll make the tea,” she said again.

  Were you in a hospital, Lisa? I asked.

  Silence.

  You don’t have to tell me, I added. No one goes for any good reason to a hospital and I wasn’t in a mood to hear anything bad anymore.

  I heard her fill the kettle in the kitchen with water, turn on the stove; she came in and set down two teacups:

  “I had an abortion, Gil. Remember when I told you I cried on the subway and told the lady I had an abortion? Well I had had an abortion.”

  This was shaping up to be a HAPPY HAPPY DAY.

  “Bob’s fault,” she added, then shaking her head: “I mean, both our faults really. But it was Bob.”

  This hasn’t made it into the etiquette books yet, has it? Upon Hearing of One’s Close Friend’s Abortion. I said I was sorry.

  “Well I wasn’t sorry to have it,” she said matter-of-factly.

  The kettle whistled. Time out.

  “Don’t tell Emma, not that you would. I’ve never told anyone, especially Bob.”

  I won’t tell a soul, I said.

  “I’m telling you because seeing Mrs. Gonzalez—I mean, that, that is tragedy, not my little abortion, you know? I’d been down about it, depressed and all—not that being depressed around this apartment would stand out.”

  Tension-releasing laughter.

  “I’m glad I’m talking about it,” she went on, pouring our tea, sitting in the chair (her overcoat still not off, mine neither), cupping her hands around the warm mug. “I knew from the second Bob and I took a chance that it was risky and I should have … I don’t know. Anyway, I missed a period, went to a female clinic, the one I went to for endometriosis down in the Village a few years back, great supportive lesbian nurses, female doctors. And I said I might get hysterical, which wasn’t true—I just wanted it over with and I didn’t want to feel anything because I’m a coward and I wanted plenty of drugs, so I told them I might get hysterical and they … and they gave me plenty of drugs. I was like punchy through the whole thing—like at the dentist, I made jokes and stuff. I saw them come at me with the, you know, hose-thing and, ha, I thought, shit Lisa, you coulda done this at home yourself with the Hoover and saved $250, you know?”

  I said I was glad it wasn’t too horrible.

  “No there was just one moment, uh, like right when I think it came out. I mean I wanted this out. If I feel even a tinge of guilt, even a passing thought of what this fetus might have been, it instantly comes to me: did you want to have this kid, out of wedlock, ruin your life? Its life? I mean there was no doubt.”

  No none at all, I said.

  “No doubt at all. I was just there going come on, get this out, get this thing over with, before I start thinking about this thing as a … as a child or something, before I start thinking about being a mother, before I know whether it’s a boy or a girl, while it’s a thing.”

  Yes.

  “So there I was, in the stirrups and all”—here Lisa’s voice turned thick, having kept up the patter long as she could— “… I thought I want this thing out, out, out, and then it came out, and all I could think then was … my god. It’s out. That was the end of that.”

  I didn’t know, had no idea, she was very brave—

  “Oh it’s not that big a deal—or rather, it’s as big a deal as you want to make it. And these days, it … I couldn’t afford one more big deal, you know? And—well, yes, there was one hysterical side effect, that whole business about marrying Bob. I mean, most women get married when they’re pregnant, right? Not after they’re not pregnant anymore. I was thinking in reverse, trying to erase it or something. You can marry Bob, I told myself, but that won’t make it a miscarriage—well, just, forget I ever said that. Marry Bob,” she said smiling, between sips of tea. “He is SO bad in bed. Who’da thought that clown coulda pulled back the bow and let one rip like that?” And she laughed, shaking her head, amazed at her own life in her own words, and I laughed too. Then after the laughter died down: “Oh mercy. Mercy mercy. I’m gonna go it alone for a while. Single woman on her own. I’m looking forward to that.”

  We were never as close, Lisa and I, as that moment. I miss being that close to her. In a way I am still close to her, I am close in memory, and you would think being close and enjoying being close would prevent two people from drifting apart, but you’d be wrong.

  And that was it for the Apartment, a phase of life come to a fairly dismal end, like all happiness, beaten down into the ground, squeezed like a dishrag (appropriate image for that year) till every drop is wrung out and there’s nothing left. Good riddance to that year. A lot of nights, I seem to recall, where it seemed I had been lonely all my life.

  But prosperity was just around the corner. Sort of.

  1978

  SO let’s join Gil the next spring. Put that apartment behind him—let’s watch him cut a swath through that wild singles New York groovin’ social scene, let’s see him take that New York Theater World by storm!

  Hey Dew, I call out to Dewey Dennis. Can we have a talk?

  “Sure Gil, I’ve been meaning to talk to you…” And up we go to his office, his office with the poster of the cat hanging from a trapeze, the poster of him in Midsummer Night’s Dream as Lysander in a toga, from a production back in his college days 150 years ago. He obviously kept the poster to remind people that he once took off his shirt in front of an audience and they didn’t laugh. One was tempted to picture him in his potbelly now wearing that toga—

  “So you understand where I’m coming from, don’t you, Gil?”

  (Dewey is talking at me, so I tune in.) Yessir, I say. I was curious about the Shaw festival this coming summer. It seems to me I should be part of the repertory company. There are a lot of young male roles, and frankly sir, I’ve done an awful lot of spear-carrying around here this year.

  Dewey clears his throat. Uh-oh, something tells me. Now you’ve done it, boy …

  “You know, Gil,” said Dewey, leaning back in his chair, putting his arms behind his head, “I’m not the kind of guy who pulls his punches. I like to tell it straight.”

  Yessir. Keep those cliches a comin’. (I didn’t say that out loud.)

  “… but I think it’s best to put it straight out, lay it on the line, you know? I don’t think you have a future with the Venice Theater.” A pause. Was I supposed to say something?

  “… And I think you know that we like you, respect you as a professional—and you’re a professional, Gil, no one thinks other than that, Schmeen, Sr., Schmeen, Jr.—you’re top of the line, make no mistake about that.”

  Nixon always said “make no mistake about that.”

  “… But face it, be a realist here. We don’t need that many young teen, young adult roles. You look a little young for us here. We got boys coming out our ears here. Don’t take this wrong, Gil, you are good, real good, damn good, and no one’s saying you’re not. You’ve got a future somewhere, I know it.�
��

  Somewhere, but not the Venice, he was telling me.

  “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but you did ask what your prospects were here and I thought it was fair to tell you, not hand you some line of bull.”

  That was rough. But you know … not that rough.

  I had been restless for some time—I knew I should be moving on. You see, I didn’t respect Dewey Dennis or the Venice Theater enough to get upset. I wanted to say fine, Dewey, just fine, I’ll leave and go on to better things than here and in some small way you must envy me for leaving this BACKWATER, this nothing place—and admit it, Dew, you know this is nowhere, and even if I go do regional theater in Illinois I’m not here which is nowhere and in a way you’re doing me a Big Favor. I’d say that mental response is about 60% how I felt, and 40% how I wish I’d felt, but more true than not true.

  So I get home and tell Daniel, my new roommate (he also works at the Venice).

  “Oh gee man, that’s tough,” said Daniel, about to open a box of some instant dinner.

  I don’t need the place, I said.

  “Yeah, you oughta go … you oughta go, like, someplace else.”

  Good idea, Daniel.

  I’d always rather callously ignored Daniel—and the next thing I know he comes over and gives me a heartfelt hug: “Hope like you’re not too upset.”

  What a SWEET guy. How does he survive in this town? Why hasn’t the theater world eaten him alive? I’ll tell you about Daniel. He had this cockroach-infested flat in Hell’s Kitchen. Hell’s Kitchen used to be dangerous and full of ethnic flavor, now it’s just dangerous. Life was getting normal again though, living with a guy, a bland guy, a guy whose idea of a good time was planning lighting-board designs for famous plays. I liked him, a techie devoted to his craft, a life small and contained and lived in such a way that it would not spill over into mine.

  “Oh god, macaroni and cheese again,” he’d say from the hot plate near the sink which was the extent of our kitchen. “I’m so sick of macaroni and cheese.”