The Use of Fame

by Cornelia Nixon

  Fifteen

  Sunday morning they let him out, though he felt as frail as a snail without its shell. The bandage had been removed, and now he could see the thing they’d put in him, just as huge and ugly as he’d expected, sticking out from his thin chest, under the skin above his pecs. So now he couldn’t even kill himself, because the fucking thing would shock him back to life.

  He had to ride a wheelchair to the parking lot, but as soon as they got there he stood up and climbed into the car. Abby drove him home and helped set him up on the couch, with a book and his small TV on the coffee table, everything within easy reach.

  “Can I do anything for you?” she asked from time to time.

  “You can take this thing out of my chest.”

  “Oh, sweetie, don’t say that. Give it a chance. You’re still postoperative, but it’s going to be all right in a few days. You’re going to feel better.”

  Easy for her to say—it wasn’t in her chest.

  And what the hell was she doing? She kept going back to her laptop, on the bar, two rooms away, across the expanse of dining room and the big kitchen. She faced him but kept her nose in the computer, sometimes printing something, reading it, going back online, using the wireless service Tory had installed against his wishes the year before.

  “Can’t you at least come sit with me?” he asked, next time she came in.

  “In a bit. I’ve got to get this student thesis pulled together. She has to file it tomorrow, and it’s still a mess.”

  She never did come in to sit with him. But at least she paused long enough to make chicken soup from scratch for dinner, because the stuff had seemed to have healing powers in the past. They ate it with crusty bread, sitting on the red vinyl stools—he had moved his small TV to the bar, so there was basketball in the background. Cautiously Ray sipped a beer, though Abby wasn’t drinking anything.

  “There’s white wine if you want,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I’ve cut way back. I might have a nightcap later on.”

  “And no more pills?”

  “Oh, no. I kicked those, what, a year and a half ago? After that fiasco in the hall, with Joel, and the night in the ER. That was your basic wake-up call. If I’d kept going like that, I’d be dead now, or at least in rehab. Better to suck it up myself.”

  His chest felt spangled suddenly, as he looked at her—for a moment she seemed to be her fine young self again, that tall pretty girl in the pencil skirt, with the dazzling credentials, the book on James Joyce. She was so brave and strong, ready to gallop off a cliff, it seemed like she could do anything. In Berkeley she still had a surfboard in the basement and a horse to ride flying over jumps. She had never dived out of a plane, but she certainly could have, maybe even now—at sixty-two. She didn’t look it, not a bit. And she had flown across the country just to be with him for a few days, while he was grouchy on the couch. He felt a rush of warmth.

  “Do you need money?” he asked.

  She looked startled. “Well, yes, I always do now. Just paid the wretched property taxes.”

  Oh, yeah—he remembered those Berkeley taxes. They were really steep, to support outstanding schools, shelters and free clinics, bicycle boulevards and pedestrian walkways. The socialist city council had to contend with a high-crime city that had an upscale population in the hills, gangs in the flats, a massive, flammable park on the backside of the ridge, thousands of homeless people sleeping in parks, and even more college students wandering around oblivious on their smartphones, asking to be mugged. It was a bit of a nightmare, but just the thought of it made him ache to be back there, to be part of the place.

  He wrote her a check for a thousand bucks.

  “Early Christmas present,” he said, tearing it out.

  “Wow, thanks, sweetie.” She kissed him, before she went back to her laptop.

  He returned to the couch.

  He was supposed to rest for a few more days, and he had scheduled his Monday seminar to come to the house, seven fine young men who wanted to write experimental poetry. Abby whipped up a batch of oatmeal cookies for them, but said she would go to his office to give them space and continue to help her student from there, with hours yet till the filing deadline in Berkeley.

  When the guys showed up, she was still there, probably deciding which of the six pairs of shoes she’d brought to wear—she had altogether too many moving parts. He was sure she’d brought at least three pairs of glasses, too (reading, distance, sun).

  He was standing in the kitchen with his students when she came in to say good-bye. It was warm out, and she had on a pink linen shirt, skinny white jeans, and wedge-heeled espadrilles. She gazed around at them expectantly, her smile too bright.

  “Hey, you off?” Ray said. He turned to the guys. “Um, this is Abby.”

  “Hi,” they all said shyly.

  Abby seemed to freeze, a stricken look crossing her face.

  “Have a good class,” she said quietly, and rushed out the door.

  Of course, of course, he should have said my wife, Abby—Abby, my wife. It was a last-minute failure of nerve—most of these guys had seen him with Tory all the year before.

  “Here, let’s sit at the dining table,” he said, and gestured to it. “My wife and I found it on Cape Cod. It’s a harvest table. Oh, and my wife made cookies,” he said, and passed them around.

  He found a couple more opportunities to mention her as the class went on, and every time he called her my wife. If only he had said it with her there, he could have headed off what was probably coming.

  It was going to be Abby’s last night there, but she stayed away till late afternoon. When she did show up, she brought home groceries and a bottle of wine, which she immediately opened, poured some in a glass, and drank while she cooked. She still seemed upset and unusually quiet. He knew why, but he wasn’t going to bring it up. Maybe it would just blow over, and in a few weeks he could go home to Berkeley for Christmas break, everything fine.

  She had gone to the best fish market in Miami, and for dinner she made his favorite fish soup. They ate it at the bar, again with basketball in the background. The air was tense, and he found it easy to toss back several light beers, while she seemed ready to ignore her new rules, pouring herself more wine.

  Finally, after they ate, they were still sitting on the bar stools when she started to cry quietly. “Why didn’t you tell your students that I’m your wife?”

  “I know, I know,” he said quickly. “You should have heard me in that class. I said ‘my wife’ this, ‘my wife’ that. ‘My wife always says,’ stuff like that. I couldn’t stop saying it. I just didn’t say it when you were there. I clammed up, because my private life is none of their business. Then I tried to make up for it, but you weren’t there to hear.”

  That was the best he could do right now.

  She seemed to be taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. “I think it’s time for you to stop paying Tory’s rent.”

  Yeah, yeah. He knew that’s what she thought. He sighed.

  “She can’t support herself yet. But she’s applied to go back to grad school at Harvard, and I wrote a letter for her and talked to Walt, so she has a good chance. And when she moves there, she’ll be on her own. That’ll be the end of it.”

  It was what needed to happen for her, to help her career, and if she got into Harvard, Ray would be the first to cheer for her. It would be tough for him in Miami without her, but it was the right thing, and somehow he’d get by.

  And he was going to be close to Tory forever—they had a bond. If Abby wanted to be around, she needed to understand that, too. It had to be a condition of any reconciliation between them. He should make that clear.

  With terrier-like persistence, she went on. “But that’s what, nine months from now? That means she’ll stick around here and let you support her and take care of her dog and God knows what else, while I’m thousands of miles away? The only way I’ll be able to take that is if we put our wedding rings ba
ck on and recommit. I mean, we’re back together, aren’t we?”

  So, she wanted to push it to the brink. She couldn’t just let events resolve themselves in a natural way. He felt his face get warm, a true sign of better heart health, he supposed—he hadn’t flushed for a long time.

  His jaw was tight. “I thought we were just thinking about getting back together.”

  Abby stared at him, eyes wide, face pale. “After all the flying back and forth to see each other? After making love, and sleeping together whenever we can? You don’t call that back together? You gave me a check last night.”

  His face got hotter. “Yeah, and you’ve done nothing except stare at your email the whole time you’ve been here, and now you’re taking off again. You showed up just long enough to get a thousand bucks out of me.”

  Abby sprang off her stool. “You said that was my Christmas present. Now you want it back? As for the email, I have a job to do, and it was urgent. This poor kid Kathryn has been doing slave labor at Stanford, teaching comp for almost nothing, but if she managed to file her thesis today, she’ll get promoted to lecturer. I couldn’t approve it the way it was, and I had to work all weekend to get it into shape.”

  So her students were more important to her than he was—check. He stopped looking at her and stared at the game on TV.

  But she went on haranguing him. “And all this time, you let me think we were back together, when you were, what—are you stringing Tory along, too? After I had the decency to forgive you and take you back, give you another chance, you’re keeping the girl in play? After twenty-six years, I’m still auditioning to be your wife?”

  He wasn’t going to answer that. She was so entitled, so above him, like her Porsche, and the pricey condo in Berkeley, and her horse, and her belief that all the money was hers. He was finally earning something, and she wouldn’t let him keep it.

  He had a vision of her suddenly, from those three days when she left the house with an air of martyrdom, leaving him to pack, exactly how, when he had no car? As for where she went, he didn’t want to know. Christ. He couldn’t trust her anymore. What had ever made him think he could?

  Her voice was tight, insistent by his ear. “I can’t take it anymore, Ray. It’s too much. If you won’t even say we’re back together, that’s the end.”

  Hah! Now she thought she could decide, that all the things were hers and all the money and the decisions, too. She thought she could tell him what to do. Well, that was at an end, for sure, whatever else happened. He was no longer taking orders from her.

  She went to pack her suitcase for an early flight, and after a while he realized she had gone to bed. Fine. Let her throw stuff in his face and walk away, feeling no doubt self-righteous and wounded—as if everything was always about her! Had she even noticed that he was postsurgical? There she was, flying in like Florence Nightingale, and what exactly did she do for him while she was here, except take his money and put the screws to him?

  He waited till the game was over and he was pretty sure she was asleep or faking it. He went in and lay next to her, not touching. So another frozen night like this, another woman unhappy next to him. Why did this keep happening? Desire was the problem—the Buddhists understood that. It got you into trouble, and it didn’t last. With Abby it had lasted quite a while, but not as long as the results, which were starting to look eternal. At least with Tory he had headed off the eternal part. Hell, he was too sick now to want anyone.

  At least the pain pills knocked him out. He slept.

  It was still dark when Abby’s alarm went off, but he got up, too, and flipped on the ceiling light. He walked into the kitchen to make tea and came back with her mug, just as she was pulling on her jeans, her breasts still bare, exposing the slight softening of six decades, even on her thin frame.

  Standing still, he took her in, not saying anything. Could he give up those lovely breasts? So familiar, worshipped so many times, but now fuller than they used to be, and aimed more toward the floor. Maybe if he concentrated on breasts exclusively, he could get through this horror show. Tory’s breasts still young, the breasts of his girl grad students exposed in tank tops even in winter, here in Florida.

  Abby stared at him accusingly.

  “What?” she gasped, snatched up a bra, and quickly put it on.

  He left the room without saying anything.

  When he drove her to the airport, she said, “If you let me leave like this, you’re taking a chance you might never see me again. You know that, don’t you?”

  Another demand—the hell with that. He wasn’t going to cave. Silently, he stared out the windshield of the Subaru. Soon she got out and walked away, dragging her six pairs of shoes in an expensive floral wheelie bag.

  * * *

  So now he was alone, with a robot in his chest, ready to electrocute him back to life. He felt like Frankenstein or a pathetic inverse Terminator, enacting no deaths but his own. And that didn’t seem far off. What happened then? If he saw a bird, a dog, a cat, he wondered if they thought the same. Did they know they were going to die? Did they think they had eternal life, or that death was all there was?

  He went through the motions, pretending to live. He didn’t talk to anyone. Some days the chest pain crippled him. But the fucking box did give him a bit more energy. He could park his own car now and walk to the office. He could swim more than one lap in a row, though seldom more than two or three.

  He had no plans to think of anything except his work. Maybe he’d write another book before he went, one more attempt to show the world that poetry was more than rhyme and jiggety-jog meter. Fuck Pete, who thought what he and Johnny wrote wasn’t poetry because it was not enslaved to the metronome. Johnny saw things in the world that no one else could see. He had brilliant, precise perceptions that were unforgettable. He, Ray, could only hope for that, and try for a few laughs, then light the whole thing on fire.

  For Christmas, Johnny drove the couple hundred miles down from Gainesville, Sarah off in Africa on a volunteer mission with a French medical group. He stayed a week, and the two of them banished Christmas entirely, joked about the Festival of the Baby Cheeses, the mysterious star over the dairy counter, and a grudge match between the Easter Bunny and Rudolph the Reindeer. They saw monster movies, played pool in bars, ate Cajun barbecue. They argued about poetry, and whether words could or should try to represent reality, and if personality was fixed or every bit in flux. In Johnny’s view, divorce was a good thing, and Ray should do it fast.

  “Move on to the next thing. Think of the possibilities, the beautiful unknown. You’ll be a different person in a year.”

  “I’ll be dead in a year,” Ray said.

  “Aw, cut it out. Look at you, you’re fine. Just get those divorce papers in.”

  Ray didn’t have them anymore—he threw them away the day they showed up, over a year ago. Fucking nosy lawyers wanted to know every detail of his finances, and it was none of their business. If Abby wanted a divorce, let her figure it out. He wasn’t going to help. And Johnny could go fuck himself for not believing him about his impending death.

  After he left, Ray gradually sank back into the misery of serious chest pain, with new shortness of breath and declining strength, as if the hockey puck was already giving up. What next, let them rip his heart out and patch in a stranger’s, so his body could reject it forever? They’d have to shoot him up with the kind of drugs they used to give Abby and crush his immune system. He’d have to live like the Boy in a Bubble, or risk getting pneumonia again.

  And he had never reacted as expected to any treatment. He had done better than predicted for the last ten years on nothing but blood-pressure drugs, and now he had submitted to the surgery that was supposed to make him feel so goddamn much better, and he sure as hell did not. He wanted to take a kitchen knife and dig the thing right out.

  One sultry January evening, he was feeling low when his phone went ping, Abby checking in with an update on his awfulness.

  “I
just feel so rejected by you,” she wrote. “How can you not care about me at all now? The way you looked at me that last morning, like I was a piece of meat. It was so cold.”

  Rage shot out of his fingertips.

  “Don’t play the victim with me,” they tapped out. “Did you ever once think about what the last few years were like for me? I’ve been dying right in front of you, and you never noticed. You were too busy riding your horse.”

  Ping went his phone again, Abby writing back. Couldn’t she just shut up?

  At least Tory was still friendly, when she checked in to see how he was. Sometimes she flirted with him, sometimes she was a bit distant, reserved. Once he saw her leaving a café, in a yellow sundress, slender pale legs gleaming, small feet bare in sandals, and he thought, Damn, that’s an attractive girl, before he noticed who it was. Well, she was an attractive girl. But it had not worked with her, and he had messed with her enough—he would be expiating that for years.

  He was the Monk of Miami, tormented by demons in his chest, on the way to martyrdom.

  In February, his heart started swooning every now and then. Sometimes he thought it was about to stop pumping, but it jerked back to life, wriggling like a handful of tadpoles. Every time it happened, he felt like a ghost, a shade, watcher from shadows.

  Miami Dr. Death ordered an echocardiogram. His ejection fraction was twelve percent.

  “Won’t be long now,” the green-eyed doc said cheerfully, and put him on the transplant list. “We’ll get you on there now, so by the time you need it, you’ll have some seniority. You’ll be getting close to the top.”

  Nothing had ever depressed Ray as much as that. He had no idea what he would do, if they tried to crack open his ribcage and remove his heart. Would he let them mess with him that much? Even if the transplant worked—a long shot, he was sure—what would that recovery be like? Six months in the hospital, by himself, alone, and would he ever be the same again? Surely better just to die quietly, especially if he was unconscious and didn’t see it coming.