North of Nowhere, South of Loss

by Janette Turner Hospital

  “Yessuh.”

  Stacey groans. “Don’t get him started, Stag. He’s about to spout Latin.”

  Stag is studying her, seeing her differently. “QP know about this?”

  “QP know about what?”

  “That your folks is whitefolks?”

  “Naturally he knows,” Stacey says, indignant. “What do you think I am?”

  “He never let on. He never give me one little clue. I don’t get it, Stace.”

  “Place your bets, Stag. Genetic miracle or adoption?”

  “No, I mean, I don’t get it with QP.”

  “Maybe he’s not crazy about it,” Stacey says tartly.

  Jonathan says, “Would you object to my calling you Virgil?”

  “Object?” Stag scratches his head. “No suh, I guess I got no objection, ’cept only time anyone ever call me Virgil is my momma when she is mad at me.”

  Stacey says, embarrassed, “He gets a big kick out of the name, Stag.”

  “That so?” Stag asks. “It was my daddy’s name, and my grand-daddy’s name, and his daddy’s before that.”

  “Drop it,” Stacey says. “So what’s happening, anyway? Rap with me, man. It’s awful boring in here.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s happening,” Stag sighs. “I just gone and done the most dumb-ass thing of my whole life.”

  Stacey laughs. “I meant, what new stuff is happening?”

  “No, I got to tell you this, girl. I got to tell you this. I got to get me some sympathy, because something is pressing heavy on my mind. Man, I got myself lost, big time, coming all the way up here from Decatur.”

  “Oh, right,” Stacey says. “Major voyage.”

  “Girl, this far north off of 285, you not in Atlanta anymore, you not even in Georgia, you into foreign territory. I miss my exit and next thing I am all the way into Buckhead and I am going around in circles cursing you, girl.”

  Stacey laughs. “You were driving that souped-up scrap heap around Buckhead? You’re lucky you weren’t arrested, Stag.”

  “Well, ended up I had me a good time, not getting myself found by the cops. I saw some mighty pretty houses in Buckhead while I was lost.”

  “Whitney Houston’s got a house in Buckhead,” Stacey says.

  “Maybe I see it,” Stag says. “I don’t know. All I know is, I saw me some mighty pretty houses, and I said to myself, Man, I would surely like to get me a house like that. I would surely like to give my woman a house like that for Christmas.”

  “Which woman would that be, Stag?”

  “The love of my life at this present time,” Stag says with dignity. “And here’s the thing, Stace, that is pressing so heavy on my mind. I could’ve got me a house like that, this very day, if it wasn’t for what I went and didn’t do last week.”

  “What you didn’t do last week.”

  “Don’t mock me, girl. You listen to this, and you’ll know not to mock the small inner voice when it speaks, like Callisto says. That snake-handler, she is one powerful woman. And Callisto always tell me: Boy, any time you ignore that small inner voice, you will regret it.” He closes his left fist around a bunch of keys. The keys hang on a flat woven ribbon around his neck and he runs the key ring up and down the cord. “Callisto give me this to remind me,” he says. “And I am here to tell you that Callisto is right, because last month I got me the idea to play my street number and my apartment number, end to end, in the lottery, and what do you know?”

  “What do I know?” Stacey asks.

  “I am just two digits off the winning number, I swear to God. So I say to myself: Stag, there is a message here. The inner voice is talking to you, boy. And the inner voice tell me, you’re on to something here, Stag. And then it comes to me like Moses striking the rock. Next time, it says to me, you got to play your mobile number”

  “Let me guess,” Stacey says. “And now you are just one digit away from a million.”

  “Girl,” Stag says. “You do not even begin to understand the scope of this tragedy. I did not play the lottery this month because I was too damn busy with this and that, and because I am dumb-ass stupid, and rejecting of the spiritual life. ”

  “I can’t wait for the moral,” Stacey says.

  “The moral is this. What do you think is the winning one-million-dollar lottery number this week?”

  “Who do I think is the biggest bullshitter south of the Mason-Dixon line?”

  “I swear to God, Stace, it is my mobile number. And that is what happen when you do not listen to the inner voice. If I had listen, I could be moving in next door to Whitney Houston.” He turns to Jonathan. “Is that a tragedy, suh? Is that a tragedy?”

  Jonathan can feel a gust of wild and dreadful laughter, Dionysian, but he swallows it. “That is a tragedy in the classic Aristotelian sense,” he says, solemnly. “The most painful kind.” He dare not meet Stacey’s eyes. He focuses on the bunch of keys and on the woven ribbon around Stag’s neck. WWJD, the ribbon says every two inches. He touches the cord with his index finger. “Whose initials?” he asks.

  “Callisto give it me,” Stag says. “Stands for What Would Jesus Do? And we know what he would’ve done. He would’ve listened to his inner voice.”

  “And played his mobile number!” Stacey is breathless. “Oh Stag, oh Stag, you’re going to start my contractions again.”

  “Woe unto them that laugh at me, girl.” Stag pats Stacey on the belly. “I just come by to lay the hand of grace on QP’s boy.” He splays his ten fingers across her flesh. His span is enormous. “I come for the laying on of hands”

  “Get outta here,” Stacey says.

  “You had better believe I am out and gone before the women’s business starts. But first I got to deliver my benediction.”

  “Idiot.”

  He lifts Stacey’s graceless hospital smock and lays his ear against the great taut globe of her skin. He listens. Then he puts his lips against her belly and murmurs something. He straightens and salutes. “Message from QP to his son. Message delivered.”

  “Get outta here, you clown.”

  “I’m gone, girl. Got me a little deal that I got to see to down south in Decatur.” He leaves, singing. He’s got the whole wo-orld in his hands …

  “Virgil!” Jonathan says, bemused. “But Virgil could never have thought him up.”

  “Only Aristophanes or Plautus, huh?”

  “Oh Stace,” he says sadly.

  “Don’t say it,” she warns. “Don’t even get started.”

  “Can I ask what you’re doing now?”

  “I’m having a baby,” she says.

  “Okay,” he sighs. “Can I ask who QP is? Can I ask what QP stands for?”

  “QP is the father. His name is Quintavius Paul.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “It’s weird. All these classical names.”

  “Think about it, Dad,” she says tartly. “Think about it.”

  And he thinks about it. He thinks about all the younger sons sent out to the colonies, about the slaveholders sent down from Oxford with Euripides, Homer, Virgil and Terence in their sea chests.

  He asks, subdued, “When do I get to meet QP?”

  “I’m tired,” she says, her lids turning heavy.

  A nurse comes to take readings. Dr Steiner comes. He is short and stocky, and his accent is purely New York. He shakes Jonathan’s hand.

  “What brings you to Atlanta?” Jonathan asks.

  “I could ask you the same, I suppose. I live here. I’ve lived here for ten years. Life is a surprise to us. How’s Boston?”

  Jonathan raises his eyebrows.

  “Your accent. Plus your daughter told me,” Steiner says.

  “My daughter talked to you about me?”

  “About Boston. About Cambridge. You know how it is with us Harvard Square junkies, anything for a chance to reminisce. We go on and on.” Steiner shrugs. “Harvard Med. School, I should explain.” He looks sideways at Jona
than and says in a low voice, “Give her time. It’s my impression she misses her Latin as much as she misses Harvard Square.”

  Zeno’s paradox, Jonathan thinks. I will never get beyond the halfway point of knowing how much I do not know. Nevertheless, he notes a thinning of the fog that fills the room. He feels an easing of his congestion. “Can you tell me what this pre-eclampsia thing means?”

  “Most of the time,” Steiner says, “it’s not threatening. We have to monitor, that’s all, to make sure it doesn’t turn into eclampsia. That’s serious.”

  “Serious how?”

  “Toxic for both of them. Have to get the baby out before that happens. I’ve given her something to soften the cervix. She’s still not fully dilated. If that doesn’t happen in the next couple of hours, I’ll probably have to do a C-section”

  “No,” Stacey says, coming alive. “No. I’m going to have my baby the real way.”

  She makes an effort to sit up, and sinks back.

  Dr Steiner pats her hand. “You won’t find a gynecologist in Atlanta less inclined to do a C-section than me. That’s why we’re waiting this out. But if we have to do one, we have to do one. And you have to trust me.”

  “I trust you,” Stacey says.

  He pats her hand again. “I’m expecting things to start moving quite soon. Rest up. You’re going to need every ounce of energy once that kid decides to move house.”

  Nurses come and go. Stacey sleeps. Jonathan sits in the dark. It occurs to him, suddenly, that Cathy is avoiding coming back from wherever she went. Could that be possible? Is it possible, for example, that she is as nervous as he is? He levers up the footrest, tilts the armchair back, stretches out. His eyelids droop. He is extraordinarily, exquisitely tired.

  Something cold slithers across his ankles. He is aware of it, but cannot open his eyes. He knows what it is. He recognises its stealthy advance, at his calves, at his thighs, at his groin. Anguish. Suppose she really does wait until he leaves? Not that he wants to see her. The room and the engineered twilight are suffocating. He has to have air.

  Stacey seems to be sleeping again.

  He staggers into the corridor, trying not to make noise.

  “Is there somewhere,” he asks the receptionist, “where I can get some air? Somewhere I can smoke my pipe?”

  “There’s a terrace,” she says, pointing. “End of that hallway. Go one flight down. Push the exit door.”

  “Thanks.”

  When he pushes through the exit door, he sees he is not alone.

  “Hi,” Cathy says.

  He has to lean against the wall. His voice will not come to him. It bobs about like a mylar balloon, out of reach.

  “You look tired,” she says.

  You look good, he would say if his voice should drift within reach. Thinner, but still good. Gaunt suits you.

  “I’ve been here a while,” she says. “Working up the courage to go back in.”

  She sips coffee from a styrofoam cup. It smells burned and bitter. She grimaces.

  What are you afraid of, exactly? he thinks of asking.

  “It’s both of you,” she says. “It’s everything.” She sips and shudders, then sips again. “I’m afraid of having Stacey pissed off with me for looking as though I might, you know … ”

  “Go weepy on her.”

  “Yes”

  “Unforgivable sin,” he agrees.

  She begins tearing little slivers of styrofoam from the rim of the cup.

  “How’s the west coast?” he asks.

  “Warmer. Smoggier. It’s okay.”

  “And how are you? Really.”

  “I’m fine. And you?”

  “I seem to manage.”

  She turns away and stares out over the city. She sips some more coffee, shudders, and tosses the liquid in a brackish arc toward the skyline. “Too much sadness,” she says. “I had to get away from it.”

  “And now she’s made contact. She’s okay.”

  “I think you can die of grief. Literally. I think you can. I’ve felt as though I’m dying of it.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “It’s like a killing frost. It destroys everything.”

  “I don’t know” Jonathan says. “It seems more like Crazy Glue to me.” He wants to touch her. “It’s like Vietnam vets. They can only talk to each other.” He goes to her, holds her, and she does not yield, does not resist.

  “I think I’ve turned into permafrost,” she says. “I won’t forgive you if you make me cry.”

  “Did you know that Callisto handles snakes?”

  “What?”

  “And QP Do you know what that stands for?”

  “I ask nothing,” she says. “I ask no questions at all. I know what Stacey chooses to tell, which is never much.”

  “It stands for Quintavius Paul. Paul, I strongly suspect, as in Saint Paul, who is credited with starting snake-handling cults. Something in the Pauline Epistles about the faithful being able to handle any deadly thing and it shall not harm them. I’m getting eager to meet QP.”

  “We won’t be meeting him,” Cathy says.

  “How do you know?”

  “Callisto told me. He’s doing time, she says.”

  “Oh sweet Jesus.” He leans against the wall. He closes his eyes. We could just float away like balloons, he thinks. At last he says: “She wanted us here. She called. She asked for us.”

  “We should go back in,” Cathy says.

  They take turns at the bedside and in the armchair.

  Jonathan sleeps and dreams. Rocks grate him, surf harries him, a riptide tears Cathy and Ben and Stacey from his side. The undertow rushes them into the dark. Stacey cries out and Jonathan’s heart bursts with effort.

  “I’m here,” he cries. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

  “Dad!” Stacey’s voice is shrill. “Shit, Dad! For God’s sake, you’re hurting me.”

  “It’s okay,” Dr Steiner says. “It’s okay. Calm down, everyone. Everything’s going like clockwork. Now I’d like the two grandmothers to help. One on each side. Take her leg, one each, and hold it like this. Crook your elbow under her knee, hold her ankle with both hands. You’re the stirrups.”

  And Jonathan, dazed, sees that Cathy is there, and Callisto is there, and the big adventure is underway.

  “She’s going to brace herself against the two of you,” Steiner says. “Now Stacey, you push when I say, and everyone count out loud with me, Push-two-three-four, push-six-seven-eight, push-nine-and-ten. Three times, and then rest for ten, and then push again. Count, everyone! Nurse, can you attend to Professor Wilson there? I think he’s going to black out.”

  “Dad!” Stacey calls, reaching for him.

  “I’m here,” he says. “I’m fine. I won’t let you go.”

  He stands by the head of her bed and holds her hand. Stacey clenches and pushes. Cathy, sweating with exertion, catches his eye. “You okay?” she mouths. He nods. His fingers are crushed. He cannot remember such fraught happiness since the day they all clung to each other in a salt-soaked huddle below the lighthouse.

  “– eight, nine, ten, and rest,” Dr Steiner says. “– and ten, and push … ”

  “Here’s the head,” Callisto cries. “I can see the top of the head.”

  Cathy’s eyes are bright. “You want to see?” she asks Jonathan.

  He doesn’t. He feels queasy. He prefers to keep placing damp washcloths on Stacey’s brow, dipping them in tepid water, wringing them out, applying them again like balm. Cathy puts her hand on his arm. “Sit down for a while,” she says.

  “I’m fine, I’ll be fine.” And now he is. He touches Cathy’s wet cheek.

  “Isn’t this something?” she whispers. “Isn’t this amazing?”

  “And push, two three four,” Dr Steiner says.

  “I can’t,” Stacey sobs. “I can’t anymore. I’m too tired.”

  “Almost done,” Steiner says. “You’re wonderful, you’re terrific, you’re
the world’s champion number-one gold-medal pusher. Just the shoulders now, and we’re done.”

  It is quite impossible, Jonathan thinks, terrified. This time he has looked, a quick stricken glance. It is quite impossible for the shoulders to fit through.

  And then Stacey gives a final great roar and his grandchild slithers out like a fish.

  “It’s a girl,” Steiner says.

  “Where is she?” Stacey calls. “Where’s my baby?”

  Jonathan sobs like an infant and Cathy holds him, Callisto is hugging them both, they are all laughing and crying and hugging Stacey and the baby. Jonathan kisses everyone. He kisses Cathy on the mouth. Merry September, he says. He is babbling, he knows it. He has no idea what he is babbling about. Somewhere in the melee, he sees that Steiner is rubbing at his eyes with the back of a latex-gloved hand. Et tu, Jonathan thinks, staring.

  “So?” Steiner says, caught out. “It doesn’t matter how many times I do it, it gets to me every time.” He is defiant. His tone is aggressive. “It’s a great fucking miracle. It’s one of the two great mysteries, and I expect it will go on getting to my tear ducts until I slam into the other one.”

  Cathy says: “We have to call Ben. Ben asked me to call as soon as the baby came.”

  “What?” Stacey says. “My perfect brother wants to know when my baby arrives?”

  “He does, Stace,” Cathy says. “He’s hoping to talk to you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? That’s so damn typical, that you didn’t tell me.”

  “I try,” Cathy says. “I try never to tell you one damn thing.”

  “Get outta here,” Stacey laughs. “Hand me the phone.” She runs a finger over the dark peachfuzz on her daughter’s head and says dreamily, “Isn’t she beautiful, Mom?”

  “She’s beautiful,” Cathy says. “She’s perfect.”

  “Ab ovo usque ad mala” Jonathan tells Steiner. “Which means, translating loosely, from the egg to the balloons. I have to go buy a bunch of those ridiculous helium things and some cigars.”

  CREDIT REPAIR

  The sirens start dropping out of the pines like a mess of crows, but Tirana has already smelled smoke.

  “Fire!” she cries, jumping up. When she opens my living room window and leans out, something hot sucks at us and a stack of filing papers rises to meet it. The screen fell out months ago and the pages flutter over the parking lot, their little sign here flags a whir of colour.