Dr. Levine put chunks of my tumor in a flat dish. The staff around him eyed the moist contents of the dish nervously from behind their surgical masks. Someone made a joke about the cafeteria. Dr. Levine looked at the heart monitor, at the flutter of timid waves. Then he gave it one last scrape.
I would view the recording several months later. I would learn what my brain looks like from the inside. Logic dictates that it is impossible for the brain to contemplate itself, physically. So when I viewed the film, it violated some nameless law of nature that in turn produced strange consequences later on. Once I saw it, I had access to more crib memory. That’s my theory anyway, and I never asked Dr. Levine to explain it because I know very well that he would be speculating—they just don’t know everything. But it’s obvious that the scalpel’s intrusion exposed neuro-data which I retrieved months later. As Dr. Levine prodded at my brain tissue, it was as if he altered the status of a neuro-data file from “inaccessible” to “accessible.” The memory would sit, albeit inactive, until my brain came back online.
When the anesthesia began to wear off, I would smell the rain coming in through a broken window, feel the agitation of the wind on my skin, and see the thick clusters of coconut palms. The palms were storm-blasted and bowing down before a darkened sky, cowering, reverent, submissive. A woman’s long skirt filled with air and flapped around like a bird, and I watched her struggle to close a window. There was broken glass all over the surface of a twin-sized bed. I looked down at the floor and saw a small coconut—just a big seed, really. I picked it up. There was a blonde woman, blue-eyed. She took my hand and spoke to me in Spanish.
While the camera recorded the image of me being wheeled off to the ICU, the blue-eyed woman strummed at a guitar. Now we were in a room that was quiet and safe. She looked at me and said, “En Inglés . . .” then she began to sing, “How many roads must a man walk down . . . before you call him a man?” She patted me on the knee. “C’mon, Javier.” She continued, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
My brother always materialized where there was music. Sure enough, a few seconds later, I heard his bones clatter against the tile floor next to me. His eyes were big and round and shiny and he pointed at the guitar and then at himself. She took him onto her lap and began to show him the strings. She continued singing, looking at me, “How many years . . .” She nodded, prompting me. I was shy, so I signed, like she taught me, I am afraid. Outside, the wind was bending the branches and the rain was pelting against the window. She put her arm around my shoulder and I was instantly comforted. “When you can’t talk,” she said, “you can always sing.” She looked back down at the guitar. “What’s the matter with you guys? You want to sing en Español?” She made a face. “Aren’t you sick of ‘de colores’?” She was floating, fading, dispersing like smoke. A new screen opened up in my consciousness.
“Can you tell me your name?” someone was asking. I was confused. Was I a boy or a man? I was both, for a moment, and I slid back to singing with Adrian and the woman. Yeah, come to think of it—I am sick of “de colores.” I opened my eyes. “What’s your name?” Two voices now, more insistent. What is my other name? My adult-name? My mouth was dry, my lips stuck together. All that came out was a croak at first, so I cleared my throat. The blue-eyed woman poked my rib and said, “Sing your name.” She prompted me: “Fe fei fo . . . Banana fana fo . . .”
I clear my throat again. “Fana-fo . . . favid.” The vibration in my throat felt good. “David. David bo-bavid. Banana-fana-fo favid. Fe-fei-mo-mavid. David.”
The clipboard fell out of Dr. Levine’s hands onto the bed. “Well aren’t you the show off!” I didn’t need to read any magazine article about him to know that he was experiencing a colossal sense of relief. He had this huge grin on his face as he turned to my father. “Twenty years of neurosurgery and this is a first. I’ve never had a patient come out of brain surgery singing ‘The Name Game,’ ” he said in an oddly high-pitched voice.
“You’re good,” a nurse said.
“You’re the best, Dr. Levine,” said another.
“Thank you,” said my mother, her hands pressed together.
Dr. Levine’s face flushed and he struck a brooding, serious look. “Thank you for your confidence,” he said with a little bow and busied himself with a monitor, but it was obvious that he was damn pleased with himself.
My head felt enormously puffed, as if it had recently contained a series of small but hot and spastic explosions, like a bag of popcorn. Julia was standing next to my parents, at the foot of my bed. I felt a sharp empathy for her as I imagined what I must look like all bandaged up. Was it my nausea or hers that clenched at our stomachs as our thoughts merged into one and we both thought, Dear God, who is this poor bastard? My eyes found hers and she smiled weakly. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” Julia replied.
“Sorry to give you all such a fright,” I said, meaning it figuratively. But then her eyes rolled up and I watched her slowly slump forward. She slammed her chin on the footboard of my hospital bed and hit the ground with a loud thud.
Chapter 13
For the most part, his answers were perfect: “I’m at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. I just had brain surgery. I live at ten-fifteen Orange Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut. I work for the State Department of Forestry Services.” He looked at his parents. “My mother is Marcia, my father is Paul.” He even answered the trick question correctly, “I don’t currently own a pet but I would like to have a dog.”
Julia couldn’t get past the foot of the bed. Although David’s head was bandaged, she could see some of the black stitching poking through, like barbed wire. A rivulet of blood had dripped down and dried on his forehead and they had failed to wipe it. It reminded her of the crucified Christ. She realized that up until that moment, it had all been theoretical. David had dismissed the surgery as “just a mechanical problem” and she had believed him, apparently, and had been in complete denial, all along, of the physical reality. She had believed, down deep, that Dr. Levine’s occupation was similar to that of the cable guy, a technician with a master key who opened a neat little box where he might cut a few fried wires, tie it all up, and leave a bill on the table. No, she had not envisioned the horror of what had actually taken place.
The thought of getting any closer to the bed made her stomach do a quick flip. Her head rushed with dazzling lights and she heard a loud ringing noise. She felt sick and afraid. Then, there was blackness. Pain. Her chin.
She woke up on a vinyl couch. On her right was a nurse jamming smelling salts under her nose and pressing a bag of ice against her chin, which made it hurt even more. Another nurse reached over her to wrap and pump up a black pressure sleeve. The room was full of people in scrubs, but now three nurses were attending to Julia.
“I’m sorry,” Julia whispered when Marcia passed a hand over her forehead. “I’m so embarrassed.” Marcia squeezed her hand and called her “darling girl.” But all Julia saw was the disappointment in Marcia’s face. Julia had failed. If she was a coward, so be it. She had no choice in the matter of tolerance. Sue Lorens, the ten-year survivor’s wife, had failed to mention the possibility of passing out cold as part of the “challenge.” Julia just wanted to go home.
The staff kicked them out of the ICU long before Julia felt better, so Paul and Marcia followed her to a small sitting area nearby. Marcia sat across from Julia, while Julia lay prone on a couch. Paul waited near the door, arms folded, as if standing guard.
“Where’s Adrian?” Julia asked suddenly. “And Taina?”
“Taina’s on her way,” Marcia said. “And Adrian will get here in the morning. He had a contract to play at ten o’clock tonight at a big hotel in Miami Beach. He has a red-eye out of Miami into JFK.”
“Marcia, do you trust him?” Julia asked. “With your son’s life?”
Marcia raised her chin a little. “I understand that David doesn’t want us to ever have to
make the decision to take him off life support.” Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away. “But,” she paused to dab at her eyes with a tissue, “I trust David to make the best decisions for himself at this point. That will change, of course, as the disease progresses. But if he trusts Adrian,” she made a fist, “then I’m going to trust Adrian.”
Julia nodded. “I’ve only met him a half-dozen times before, but he seems like a solid person. I can’t relax until he gets here, since he’s the, you know, the decision-maker.”
Marcia put her hands out in a gesture of uncertainty. “David was sent into our keeping, Julia—you, me, Paul. Don’t worry that you’re no Florence Nightingale, honey, there are other people who can handle the medical stuff. You, you have another role. You and I both know that David was attracted to your family roots, to the presence and stability of your life, but that he really wasn’t investing himself into the relationship. He never thought beyond the here and now and he was always trying to wiggle his way out of emotion, commitment, and vulnerability, especially with women. A few days ago he talked to me about how much he loves and admires you.” She put her hand over her heart. “I was stunned. He never talks like that, Julia. You have opened him up.”
Taina arrived at the hospital about an hour later, but they weren’t welcome in the ICU, so they went down to the cafeteria and had dinner. After they ate, the conversation turned to heredity, and Paul told Taina that none of the others had to worry about brain cancer because according to the research, the disease wasn’t genetically linked. When Paul got up to get some dessert, Taina leaned in and said, “When we were girls, Holly and I scoured our bodies for genetic similarities. We literally stripped naked and went inch by inch. We compared every last mole, bump, and freckle. We compared our earlobes, our fingernails, and the shapes of our toes, we measured the circumference of our knee caps, the length of our eyelashes, grimaced into mirrors to compare our teeth. We were desperate to find a similarity.” Marcia and Julia looked at each other. They didn’t bother to ask if she had found any. “Not a thing.” Taina bumped the top of the table with one finger, as if she were delivering some startling news. “Which is fine with me,” she lowered her head. “Don’t tell her I said this, but my sister has the most hideous feet I’ve seen in my life. The little toes kind of cross over the big toe like this.” She demonstrated with her fingers. “I don’t know why she insists on wearing sandals,” she said, and plumped her shiny lips.
Marcia’s haunted-looking eyes brightened for a moment. “Are they that bad? I’ll have to notice Holly’s feet next time,” she said, looking at Julia.
“I tell ya,” Taina continued. “She should cover up those suckers. Hide them in orthopedic boots till they decide to behave. You know the kind that lace up to the knee? I’d lock ’em up in those kind of boots and throw away the key.” She tossed imaginary keys over her shoulder.
Julia chuckled. “Your children will have ugly feet, you know that, right?”
“If Holly and I are biologically related . . .” Taina shook her head. “I just pray to God that those feet genes don’t follow me.”
“I’d say you’re definitely mean enough to be real sisters,” Marcia said.
“I don’t know what to think,” Taina said. “I know we look nothing alike, but we keep thinking that our children will hold the answer, you know? If my child has ugly feet then, there you have it, we’re blood. And if Holly could produce a daughter that wasn’t flat-chested, it would only be because I’m their aunt.” She looked left, then right, then passed a hand over her ample bosom.
Julia raised an eyebrow. “Holly’s boys don’t even look like Holly, much less you.”
Taina pretended to look shocked. “Really?” she said. “Ha! Is that unfair or what? Here Holly has kids because she wants to clone herself and the three of them look exactly like Erick. Red hair, pale skin. Freckles. All of them look like Ron Howard. Ahhh. God has a sense of humor.”
Marcia chuckled this time. “Heavens, that is rather unfair.”
Julia glanced at Taina and gave her a secret thumbs-up and a subtle nod for succeeding in making Marcia smile. If it registered as such, she didn’t know, but Taina kept up her chatter, and her presence that day was a like breath of fresh air.
“Don’t tell her I told you this either,” Taina continued, tapping her nails on the table. “Holly wants a fourth kid. She’s hoping that if it’s a girl, maybe the Latino influence will come through.” Taina held up her hand and pointed at her starfish. “In the meantime, this is all we’ve got. I’ve been trying to convince her to get one, but she held out.” She sighed. “But when David got sick she wanted one all of a sudden.” Her smile faded a bit and she looked away.
“What’s happening to David can rock anyone’s foundation,” Marcia said, shaking her head, slowly sinking back into her worried state. “I admit that I am just now starting to appreciate the significance of the bond that you kids have with each other.” She wrinkled up her nose. “But I still don’t approve of tattoos.”
“I’m not a fan of tattoos either, Marcia,” Julia said. “For the most part, they’re faddish and silly, something people do to prove they’re cool. But these tattoos are different.” She took Taina’s hand and held it up to Marcia, as if it were something independent of Taina’s body. “Taina said it herself. In biological terms, this tattoo is a stand-in for DNA. She put Taina’s hand down. “It’s deeply intuitive. Socially, it’s the equivalent of a shared last name, which they’ve never had. Anthropologists would call it a tribal marking. Historians would equate it to a family crest or a coat of arms. As Catholics, Marcia, we know that symbols of belonging are very important and extremely powerful.”
Marcia nodded, and pulled out a gold cross on a chain from inside her shirt. She looked at it; then she held it up for them to see. Julia pulled a similar one out from inside her shirt. She leaned forward and tapped it with Marcia’s.
“Let’s hope there’s some magic in that,” Taina said softly. “Because we need a miracle.”
Chapter 14
The day after the surgery, Julia went to work then drove back to New York when school got out in the early afternoon. By then, Adrian had been watching over David for sixteen hours straight. He seemed like an entirely different person from the last time she had seen him, eight months before. His edgy-coolness was gone. He was wearing baggy Levis and a long-sleeve cotton t-shirt with a pizza house logo on it. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was sticking up on one side and he had razor stubble. David was asleep. They stepped out into the hall to drink the coffee she had brought for both of them, peeking into the room now and then. Adrian told Julia about the “sad, pathetic” way he learned about David’s illness from Veronica, the ex-girlfriend reporter, whom Julia remembered.
Something about Adrian had always rattled Julia a little. He was cosmopolitan, confident, self-possessed, and handsome, especially when he smiled. But his allure was something darker, a mysterious and unsettling quality she found hard to define. Julia always got the feeling that he knew something she didn’t, and so she was never entirely comfortable around him. Faced with the prospect of hours of idle time with him, she honed in on the one thing about him that she liked the most: the fact that he adored his dad.
They chatted easily for close to an hour, first about his father, Reinaldo, who still lived in Puerto Rico. Julia had heard the other siblings rave about what a great man he was. “I grew up surrounded by deadbeats, but it has provided me with heaps of material for my songs,” Adrian explained. “I think people relate to them because they’re gritty and real. But I wish my dad wasn’t so . . . generous,” Adrian confessed. “He gives away every last shred of time and money he has. Whatever people need, he gives. That always left very little for us, and I think that some of those people don’t deserve it. People use him.” Next, he talked about his mother, whom even David knew little about, and who had divorced Reinaldo when Adrian was twelve. He told Julia that she lived in Spain now, and that he had se
en her briefly during his last trip. Julia inquired about his life in Miami and the progress of his music career, and told him that she loved his music, that she had studied enough Spanish in school to understand and appreciate his lyrics. He smiled, turned his face to one side and asked her to name one song. Without hesitating, she said, “ ‘Tenemos Que Hablar.’ ”
He raised his eyebrows. “So you really do listen to my music.”
“You’re testing me?”
He shrugged, smiled out of one side of his mouth. “I like to know who’s blowing smoke up my ass.” When he saw the look on her face he smiled broadly and winked at her. He steered the conversation to her life and she told him about her own father, who had died four years earlier, after a massive stroke. “He was a good man,” Julia said, “but he was closer to my two brothers. I apparently ruined my relationship with him by becoming a teenager.” Adrian leaned closer. “He was headmaster at a private school for girls,” she continued. “We were inseparable until I was about twelve. After that, he always spoke to me with a turned head, hands always engaged in fixing something in the house, watering plants or making a sandwich. I think he lost interest in me, or perhaps became distrustful of who I might become—presumably a woman, like so many of the girls at his school. I think he thought that young women were unpredictable, beastly messes, and he couldn’t stand to think that I was one of them.”
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