“We could move him home,” I said. “Couldn’t we?”
“I suppose,” said Dr. Bernstein.
“It may be premature,” said Len Feasley. “How do you get your husband and all the necessary technology there without drawing attention or suspicion from your neighbors? That’s very difficult to pull off, if you don’t mind my saying so. And to look even further ahead, there’s the matter of privacy. One of things we’ll need to decide is when to reveal the patient’s name. I’m talking about Howard,” he said, looking straight at me with a seriousness I hadn’t expected from him. Suddenly, he was completely sincere. “When the name Lavery is divulged, you can expect an onslaught. I don’t think your home is the best place for him yet.”
“You’ve thought this through very well,” I said, impressed.
“Indeed you have,” said Dr. Bernstein. “What do you suggest?”
Len Feasley withdrew another paper from his briefcase. “I hope we don’t need it, please understand. But I think it’s best to be prepared. I found this listing late yesterday. It’s a 1,500-square-foot industrial office suite in the warehouse district. It’s available immediately. No one would be suspicious of large deliveries. No one takes notice of anything around there. Now like I said, I hope we won’t need it. But it’s something to fall back on, and I’ve already obtained a ten-day first right of refusal should someone try to lease it before we’re ready.”
“How long then in the warehouse?” I asked.
“Good question,” said Feasley. “And it’s one I can’t really estimate at this point. A lot of it depends on how long this takes to become old news. We live in a fast-paced society with an incredible appetite for things that are new. This will headline for a good week, I’m sure. Be a top story for another week or so after that. Then we’ll have to contend with public reaction and any potential fallout.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Feasley. “Something like this calls for a classic crisis communication and issues management strategy. How do entities respond to major challenges? The Exxon Valdez. The Pentium chip error. Spiked Tylenol capsules. Firestone tires. Large companies have SWAT teams ready to handle these things. We need to be open and honest, above all. But we need to do it in a dignified, professional manner that balances you and your husband’s right to privacy with the public’s desire to know. With something this big, if we try to limit the media’s access it’ll turn nasty. No, this needs to be handled quickly and precisely.”
I found myself agreeing with Feasley, even liking him a little.
“We also need to be prepared for the unexpected,” said Feasley. “We can sit here and plan a perfect world, but it’ll never happen. Something’s bound to leak sooner or later. It might be through a relative. Someone might have a sick friend and be walking through the hospital. People work around every corner. Coincidence and meddling are givens. That’s what we need to plan for. When we go public with this, there will be media folks everywhere. With you, doctor, it’ll be bad. Every time you come out of a door there will be people shoving microphones in your face. They’ll follow you and try to discover this place. Some will stop at nothing to find out.”
“Find out what?” I asked, already knowing the answer, but for some reason wanting to hear him say it out loud.
“Your name, for one thing. And your husband’s name. And everything about him. And the organ donor’s name. And his family. And how it happened. Every scrap of pathology and progress. If I were you, I’d plan for some newspaper, somewhere, leading with a headline with the word Frankenstein in it.”
“That’s why I’ve hired you,” said Dr. Bernstein. “To minimize those kind of repulsive possibilities. We want a dignified face on this thing.”
“I’ll do everything I can to help you achieve that. But public relations only goes so far. Don’t expect a miracle if you want to keep some secrets. And even if you gave it all up, that wouldn’t make a difference. Not with this.”
“Where do we start?” asked Dr. Bernstein.
They started talking about a news conference. I stood up and said, “Excuse me for a few minutes.” I walked away from them and into the main patient hallway, then down to the end and into Howard’s room.
“How are you, sweetheart?” I whispered to him, but he didn’t answer. He was sleeping.
I parted the window blinds and looked out upon a small side street. There was a tiny, weather-beaten home directly across from the window. An old woman stepped outside her door just at that moment. She moved tentatively, placing one foot outside the door and looked around. I think she was checking to see if anyone might threaten her or make her feel unsafe. Sure that no one was nearby, she came all the way outside. Yes, she was very old, probably in her late eighties. She wore a light blue dress and a white afghan shawl over her shoulders. Then she came down from her porch and to her mailbox at the street. She reached in but didn’t find anything. Had the mail not yet arrived or had she not received anything? I hoped it was the former, because I could sense this was her only connection with society.
I got to wondering about her. First I pictured myself as her in another twenty-five years or so. Alone, I imagined. How would I feel if I were her? What would I do with my days? She turned and walked slowly back to her house. I didn’t know anything about her, but here she was, living out her final days in an old house, probably by herself. I wondered about her childhood and her lovers, her children and difficulties. The good times in her life. The trials that came her way. No matter. Those were all gone. This was all that remained—a short walk to the mailbox to see if anyone wanted to communicate with her.
I leaned my hip into the wall but turned my shoulder to look back at Howard. What would it feel like to really be alone, I wondered?
I looked at him lying so still there and remembered my fiftieth birthday. I’d been out shopping. I came home that afternoon to find Howard at the door. He took my bags and led me through the house and into the living room where a chair had been set up in a corner. Howard had arranged to have my portrait painted that day. A large, spectacular arrangement of roses had been set up behind the chair. They smelled wonderful. Howard sat me down and kissed me tenderly. Then he whispered in my ear, “Sit still, darling. This is Brendon Baxter. He’ll take care of you.”
The artist, whom I had never met before, took my hand and laid it on my lap. “Put your other hand here,” he said. Then he had me move my legs to the side a little. “Are you comfortable?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, then disappeared behind the canvas.
Howard lit a scented candle somewhere. Or was it incense? Some tranquil music came through the house. I sat there for a long time. I think I was in a trance. Thinking about it now, I know I have romanticized the memory a little. But it was a perfect moment. I sat there and tried not to move, but that wasn’t difficult because I felt so relaxed. The music. The candle. The moist aroma of roses surrounding me. The arms of the artist moving about and him remaining mostly quiet except for an occasional, “That’s nice” or “Lift your chin a little bit. That’s good.”
Every once in a while Howard walked through the room and brought me things. A glass of wine. A cracker with a slice of cheese on it. I sat there all afternoon and it was, I think, one of the nicest times I’ve ever had.
I wish I could get that back. It seemed so close to me now, and also so far away.
I sat down in a chair next to Howard’s bed and felt, at least for a second, untroubled. I was glad he was sleeping, because I knew that in his dreams he was walking somewhere and doing something. Maybe he was kissing me.
I looked at Howard and understood just how little I really knew about the man before me. He was a stranger, really. I wondered how I could learn to understand him and who could help me.
14: Janelle Orlen
I’m doing much better now. For a while, though, I had descended into a terrible fog. Thank goodness my parents were there to catch me
.
I suppose it had been coming since Frank’s death. I can see that now. But I’d been successful at pushing it out of the way and focusing on my children and my attempt to see Frank.
I’d been feeling very tired. I had little interest in things. Sometimes I’d experience an unusual heaviness in my body and something I can only describe as a cloudiness inside my head, making it hard to hear things or keep my balance.
Everyone was worried about me. My parents, sister, friends, even friends of friends. After a while I didn’t even see them, they were like furniture.
My mental state deteriorated after I saw Frank in the hospital. It was the most bizarre moment of my life, but it wasn’t the horror that I expected it to be. It was altogether worse. At first, he seemed to be just Frank lying in that bed. He looked the same, except I knew it wasn’t him. I sat with him and mostly didn’t say anything. It was eerie. I wanted to talk with Frank. To reconnect and reconcile with him. I know it was crazy and that another man had taken over his body. I didn’t try to talk all that much. But I wish it had been different. Wasn’t there anything inside him that remembered me or felt anything? Does a person’s consciousness totally and exclusively emanate from inside his brain? Isn’t anything of a person’s essence contained in the heart?
When I saw him, all I could think about was him kissing that man again. The windowpanes in the French door framed the image. Damn him for complicating my grief. What had he been thinking? Is there anything I did to drive him away? Why wasn’t our sex life enough for him? If I’d only known he was curious, I think I would have tried almost anything to satisfy him. But he never said anything to me. I hadn’t a clue that he was unsatisfied, had other sexual urges, or anything like that. I believed that our relationship was solid and loving. We had great sex, but we never got the chance to hash it out or talk it over. I did not have the opportunity to deny him experimentation. I never found out why he chose to make love to a man, and that was what nagged at me the most. I was denied the time to talk with him. Everything was unresolved with us. That’s why, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I prayed. I prayed for everything to be the way it was before. Prayed for him to come alive, but all he did was lie there. The man inside him tried to communicate with an eerie, mechanized voice, but I couldn’t concentrate.
The next day I started losing myself as my hazy moments began to accelerate. I went into long, inexplicable bouts of desperation. First for a few minutes, then longer. I’d sit in a chair or lie on the bed and just fade away. I had an episode while driving one afternoon that took me forty miles out of town for no reason. I just kept driving and didn’t stop until I ran out of gas. Another time I forgot to pick up the kids from school.
My descent into another world was swift. My parents took up the slack with the children. My mother moved in at some point, though I don’t remember when. She was just suddenly there and making breakfast one morning, smiling and preparing the children’s school lunches. But I barely acknowledged her existence. I could hardly nod my head. I sat on the couch and laid my head back, staring at the ceiling.
My mother would sit by me and hold my hand and talk in gentle, soothing tones. I don’t remember what she said. Experts were consulted. I was paraded before people who were supposed to help me. All were sincere and very polite, though I couldn’t really hear what they were saying. My body was so heavy. I’d hear their voices and questions only in the background of louder sounds such as traffic outside the window or someone walking down a hallway or a door closing somewhere. I don’t know what I said to them. I was encouraged to rest.
That’s when I started spending a few hours each morning at a small downtown outpatient psychiatric facility. At the time, I knew little about what was really happening. I gave barely a thought to my children; that’s how far gone I was. I was a zombie. I was a sheep being led from here to there, all along trapped inside myself and unable to really communicate much or care about what was going on.
My mother would drop me off at 9 A.M., and I’d spend the first hour in a physical rehabilitation session where I was asked lots of questions, played games and did some exercises.
After a light snack I would meet with Dr. Helen Jarvis. She regulated my medications, seemed to genuinely care about me and had an easy, pleasant manner that put me at ease from the first. She was African-American.
Helen’s office was always immaculate. One wall held shelves stacked high with books. The top of her desk, which was set against the far wall, was always clean. The room had a friendly, smoky smell because she always had a fat candle burning on a small table by the door. Three wooden rocking chairs were in the middle of the room—we sat on them as we had our little discussions. I had never spent much time in a rocking chair before. Now I think I’ll buy one for myself. There’s something special, something serene and fluid, about sitting in one of those moving chairs. With hardly any effort, maybe just a lift of your heel, you can set the chair in motion and it’s just plain soothing. After a time I couldn’t wait to see Helen, if only to enjoy the motion of our discussions.
My talks with Helen would usually start with her asking me a friendly, innocuous question, such as, “How are you today, Janelle?”
I usually said, “I think I feel better today,” even if I didn’t.
“What did you do last night?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you watch television?”
“I might have, but I don’t know,” I said, being honest.
“Did you look at any of your pictures?” she asked, referring to the small framed pictures of my parents and children that I had always kept on my night table. I had removed Frank’s picture.
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you know what pictures I’m referring to?” Helen asked.
“The pictures in my room.”
“The ones by your bed.”
“Yes,” I said.
“What do you think of them?”
“I like them.”
“Which one do you like the most?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I like them all.”
“How about the ones of your children. What do you think about those pictures?”
“I like them,” I answered honestly, but wasn’t capable of giving her what she really wanted, which was to confess my guilt over not being able to be a mother to them just now. It wasn’t exactly guilt I felt. It was that something clicked inside me that severed some emotional connection with them. They were my children, but I wasn’t crying over them. I wasn’t wondering what was happening to them while I wasn’t there, wasn’t worrying if they were okay or about what they were thinking about me or about how my illness, having come so fast after their father’s death, was affecting them. Selfish of me? I suppose. But my mind didn’t work that way anymore.
“What do you think your children are doing this morning, Janelle?”
“I don’t know. My mother’s looking after them.”
“Do you think they’re at school?”
“I hope so. They all get good grades.”
“Who gets the best grades?” Helen probed, latching on.
“They’re all smart. I don’t push them. They just do well.”
“Were you like that when you were a child?”
“No,” I said. “I hated school. I had to work hard.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Helen said. “Me too.”
“I can’t tell you anything I learned when I was in school,” I said.
“You can read, can’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Well, that’s one thing. And you learned how to interact with people. How to talk with people. How to share. How to solve problems. Yes, you learned how to add and subtract, too. But those don’t count.”
“You’re right,” I said, giving my rocking chair a good push back.
I’m not certain how much Helen knew about Frank. She probably knew the basics. That he had been shot and that we’d donated his body.
Maybe she knew that he was still alive somewhere. She never questioned me about the details. Instead, she chose to ask me about my feelings.
“Did you think about Frank today?”
“Yes,” I said.
“When?”
“All the time.”
“Does it make you upset?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said and felt sad. I looked away from her because I felt that if I didn’t I’d start to cry.
“What are you feeling, Janelle?” Helen asked.
“Alone,” I said.
“Can I ask you something, Janelle?”
“I suppose.”
“Do you feel guilty about Frank’s death?”
“What?”
“Just a hunch,” she said. “I think I might feel guilty if I caught my husband like you did, kicked him out and the next day he was dead. I mean, I’d start to question myself and wonder if I could have done anything different, or that if I had only just banished him to the guest room he wouldn’t be driving somewhere where a kid would shoot him. I’m just supposing. Because I’m telling you, sweetheart, I would have done more than just kick him out. I’d have put land mines outside to blow him up. That’s how angry I’d be if my man did what yours did. But guilty? I don’t think so. It wouldn’t be my fault. Wasn’t even Frank’s fault. Just some stupid gang kid shooting at the first car that came close enough.”
“I don’t think guilt is what I feel,” I said.
“Then what?”
“I’m not sure. I just feel ... empty.”
Helen said, “I understand.”
For a while we just sat there and looked at each other and the walls, rocking back and forth, smiling, enjoying each other’s company.
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