Why We Came to the City

by Kristopher Jansma

  Irene, at least, seemed to be glad about the sudden need for extra layers, as loose sweaters were gratefully in that fall—at least this was what she’d told George when he’d taken her to Anthropologie after her appointment last Saturday—and perfectly suited to covering the nub of the PEG tube that was taped flat against her stomach. She’d managed to keep her weight steady, and Dr. Zarrani had seen “positive signs” from the latest scans. The tumors seemed to be responding to these new experimental drugs. No one knew what tipped the scales for one person and not for the next. A PET scan could only see so much.

  So there was cause for hope. George wasn’t too proud to beg God for help. Better men than him had done it, and plenty worse had seen mercy.

  “How was the session?” he asked Irene.

  “Good,” she said, “I really think it’s making a difference. I know you think it’s stupid.”

  “I don’t at all!” George protested.

  Irene winked at Mrs. Cho, who shook her head as if to say there was nothing to be done about cynics like him.

  George jogged a bit on the step, trying not to be annoyed. Why did everyone think he was so skeptical?

  And yet he still couldn’t stop himself from twinging, just a little, when Mrs. Cho took Irene’s head firmly between her two hands and rubbed her temples in tight, concentric circles. She murmured in Korean and began to sweep her hands down Irene’s neck.

  “Good work today. Remember, feel the mysterious essence. The transcendental spirit. Everything has a vital life force: your body, your tumors, the ants on the pavement, the trees that the ants climb toward the light from the sun, which is alive, just like the moon.”

  George took a deep breath. Once a week, for three weeks now, Irene had been coming here, to a storage room full of bronze jars of GiGi bikini wax and crimson bottles of OPI Nail Lacquer, so that Mrs. Cho could perform this laying-on-hands ritual, lighting rosehip candles and stretching Irene out on a folding table so that Mrs. Cho could throw powders in the air and mutter Korean incantations. Mrs. Cho had invited him to sit in on the first session, provided he could do something about all his negative energy. But as it turned out, his negative energy was persistent—and so George had begun excusing himself to the bar across the street. A nice place with a good atmosphere and—never mind. The nearby bookstore wasn’t so bad.

  Mrs. Cho moved her hands about a half an inch above Irene’s body, not actually touching her. Her voice shook as she said, “Everything which is living radiates this essential force which animates all life throughout the universe. It is the electricity flowing in your nerve endings. It is the magnetism of your blood, which encircles your organs, and gushes throughout your veins and pumps inside of your heart.”

  George grimaced. True, the human body contained weak magnetic fields created by iron-bearing nanoparticles and the rotational states of protein molecules and free radical reactions. But it was on the order of one tenth of one millitesla—perhaps enough to help homing pigeons and bats and sea turtles get around, but not enough to kill cancer cells. Mrs. Cho claimed this energy could be harnessed through chanting to create a healing warmth and realign the walls of Irene’s cells. Well, who knows? Maybe it could.

  “We can measure this great and powerful energy with the life within ourselves, within our hands and our breath. Your body holds everything of the earth and everything of the universe within it. This air that you are breathing contains the dust of distant stars collapsing. Remember. Doubt is only the denial of happiness.” Was George imagining it, or was she staring at him? “Happiness must be invited. You must allow happiness to enter into you, for happiness is the cure for all disease.”

  George felt that happiness was kind of a tall order when the disease involved the total humiliation of the diseased. Unbearable headaches and constant nausea and aching joints and loss of bowel control and thinning hair and fingernails so soft that Irene had lost two of them just trying to sharpen a pencil. Still, maybe Mrs. Cho had a point, because fingernails or no, Irene still sketched happily for hours on end—beautiful, intricate designs that he studied when Irene inevitably conked out at some point. Were these finished pieces? It knotted George’s throat to think of these pages and pages of plans that might never be executed.

  Mrs. Cho was glaring at him again, so he faked a huge sunflower of a smile, lest his doubt emanate from his chi or something and deny Irene any curative happiness. He had to admit that, as Irene gave Mrs. Cho a parting hug, she did seem a lot happier.

  “Remember,” Mrs. Cho advised as she let go of Irene, “just for today, you will not be upset. You will not be afraid. You will be thankful and attentive. Kindness to all those around you, and whether you open your eyes or close them, clasp your fingers in prayer and contemplate with your whole heart. Say it out loud, and believe it, inside. Just for today.”

  George tried so hard not to laugh. They said goodbye to Mrs. Cho and went on their way, back toward the E train.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Really good,” Irene said. She spoke softly, as usual these days. George strained to hear her over the sporadic honking of the backed-up cars. What sounded like a stadium’s worth of voices echoed off the twin-level brick mall that lined the block. Ahead, at the corner, he could see a long stream of people crossing the road and heading toward the train.

  George supposed it might be a store’s grand opening, or perhaps they were protesting something. Maybe some celebrity was, inexplicably, dining at the Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant on the corner. With a jolt he realized that Irene was still speaking.

  “. . . get incredibly hot all over whichever part of me she puts her hands over. Most of the time it’s like a warm, soothing heat, like a bath or sunshine. I swear, it’s weird, but when she moves over my eye or my elbow, it gets very intense. Almost to the point that I feel like I am actually burning up—like I have a fever or something.”

  Fifty years ago we’d have just given you sugar pills, George thought to himself as they followed the pack of people down into the subway station—where was everyone going? Irene went on, quietly, about the shaman ritual stuff, and how she was sleeping better and feeling more alert and less nauseous.

  Down at the bottom of the stairs at last, he saw the problem. MTA workers were cross-honoring people’s Long Island Rail Road tickets because LIRR service to Manhattan was apparently disrupted—and so there was general bedlam and endless echoing down around the turnstiles, as people who had lost their tickets argued with transit employees. But still, why would so many people be coming into the city from Long Island on a Saturday afternoon in October? Ordinarily if there was a service disruption, passengers would be impatient, hurried, angry. But most of these people seemed downright exuberant. Giddy. Drunk, even. Had a Yankees or Mets game just let out? No, neither of the stadiums was on this line, and besides, practically everyone here was under thirty, and most looked under twenty. And not a foam finger in sight!

  As they got through the turnstile onto the jam-packed subway platform, George noticed that many of the horde were wearing rock concert T-shirts. George had never heard of a single one of the bands.

  He was worried that Irene was already looking completely exhausted when the E train finally arrived. They squeezed inside, but it was filled wall to wall with rock fans. A rather confused-looking older man in a gray suit and glasses offered his seat to Irene. George thanked him and hung somewhat oddly off the bar over her.

  “Let me take your bag,” she insisted.

  “No, no,” he urged. “It’s really heavy.”

  She said something else, but very softly again, and George, distracted by the jostling of several loud concert fans behind him, didn’t hear her at all. “What?”

  “I said, what on earth did you buy?” Irene rubbed at her throat, which clearly was sore.

  “Just some books for work,” George lied. He was a bad liar, and what’s more, he
knew Irene knew it.

  She arched a thin eyebrow at him, but he turned away to glare at the concert-shirted people behind him, who were shouting much, much louder now. The train was crawling through the tunnel. George watched the dark wall sliding past behind Irene’s head, the spray-paint rising and falling like an antic heartbeat. They could have walked to Manhattan faster!

  Looking over his shoulder, George was soon able to size up the people making the most noise. Three high-school-age girls were hanging on the same pole as a humongous boy who was drinking directly from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Each time he took a huge gulp from the bottle—God, George could smell it—he would release a roar like Simba at the end of The Lion King, and the pack of girls would collapse into hysterical giggling. George glared at them, but they were oblivious to everyone else in the train car. He could see immediately that the boy was very drunk—past a point that George knew, but only really by inference. Past the point where he wouldn’t remember whatever things occurred between that point and the next morning.

  Simba was wearing Birkenstocks, trendy skater shorts, and a North Face fleece. His hair was longer and more feathered than the hair of the girls surrounding him. These girls were rail thin and tanned, still, in mid-October. Instead of concert T-shirts, they were wearing tight dark jeans and the sort of wide-necked sweaters designed to show off carefully selected bra straps, which were, from left to right: fuschia, neon green, and black velvet.

  George sniffed. Irene, with her white sweater and her golden scarf, looked like something out of another world. He tried smiling at her, but her eyes were shut tight against the sight of Simba, belching to the applause of the girls.

  “What do these assholes think they’re doing?” George whispered.

  “Oh, they’re probably going to that Envoy concert at Madison Square Garden,” Irene said. “Don’t you remember Sara was saying she wanted to go?”

  George couldn’t believe it. “An Envoy concert? Come on. Seriously? They’re like a stoner pacifist love-in granola peace-sign band! This jerk’s acting like he’s going to Megadeth!”

  Irene spoke out of the left half of her mouth. “We were young once too.”

  Jesus, what was he doing now? Swinging the bottle of Jack around and nearly clocking a scared-looking old lady in the head! George looked around furiously at all the other people on the subway—was no one going to do something? No, of course not. Everyone was just standing around rolling their eyes at one another. George gritted his teeth.

  “Hey! Just ignore him, okay? We’ll be at Fifty-ninth soon, and we’ll transfer to the six anyway.”

  George watched Irene, sitting there choking down green sludge. He knew she was right.

  “Just put your head back,” George said softly. “I’ll wake you when we get to the stop.”

  She shook her head, flinching as Mr. Jack Daniel’s released yet another roar.

  “HEY!” George found himself saying. “Come on. Keep it down!”

  The boy staggered into the pole and bounced off again. This sent the three girls into fits of laughter, one of them backing up right into George.

  “Hey, seriously, watch it!” he said, louder. The girl sneered at him, then looked away.

  “Cut it out!” Irene kicked him gently with her foot. “You’re just going to piss them off.”

  George was clenching his fists already but felt them go even tighter at Irene’s soft-spoken implication that this guy would surely clobber mild-mannered George into next week.

  “It’s just you’re here, trying to rest, and these assholes are—”

  “George!”

  Irene had a look on her face that he knew well. It was a get-your-shit-together face. He looked around for someone else who might intervene—where the hell was Jacob when you needed him? By this point, Jacob would be cramming the bottle of Jack down Simba’s throat, and what’s more, Irene would be clapping him on the back for it! Why did he get to rant and rave and fly off the handle all the time, but whenever George raised his voice even a little, Sara or Irene clucked at him?

  The train made a sudden sideways move, and George watched the boy lurch forward and unwittingly spill his Jack. The splash hit George’s arm, and then a fine constellation of brown dots appeared all over Irene’s white sweater.

  That’s when George heard himself screaming.

  “WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?”

  Just like that there was silence in car. Outside, just the slow grinding on the tracks.

  “IS YOUR BRAIN SO FUCKING SMALL THAT YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON ON THE GODDAMN PLANET?”

  The hulking kid stared, but it was impossible to tell if he really understood the words coming out of George’s mouth.

  “Hey, hey,” one girl was saying, “don’t freak out, okay? We’re just having a good time.”

  George couldn’t stand the offended expression on her face, as if she’d simply been behaving as anyone would. He felt cold all over.

  “What about that old lady standing over there, who your friend almost hit with his whiskey bottle? That’s somebody’s grandmother. How would you like it if some clown like this guy walked up to your grandmother and hit her in the head? But you’re having a good time, so who cares, right? My friend’s got cancer, and this asshole gets to just spill booze all over her. But that’s fair, right? That’s totally fucking fair.”

  “Look, we’re sorry, okay?” the third girl said. “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not!” George shouted, though he knew he was. He knew it was over, and he knew that Irene was crying too, and not because of them. The girls went back to ignoring George, and now so did Irene. When they finally got off at 59th Street and transferred to the 6, Irene wouldn’t say a word to him. Finally, stepping out into the chilly air of Madison Square together, she walked, with George following, to a quiet corner of the park, and there she stopped.

  “Sorry,” George said. “I’m sorry.” And he was. Sorry and sweating from all his pores. Sorry and wishing he could lock himself in a bathroom. Sorry and shaking like a leaf. “Don’t tell Sara, okay?”

  Irene put her hand on his and waited for him to calm down. It took a long time, and when he finally had himself together, they were both too cold and embarrassed to keep fighting.

  “It’s kind of nice to know you can’t always keep it together.”

  Then before George quite realized what Irene was doing, she was tugging the overloaded bag of books from his throbbing hand.

  “That’s really heavy—” he tried to say, but it was too late. Irene tried to dead-lift the bag to her shoulder for more support but stumbled backward, and the bag fell to the pavement.

  “FUCK!” George bellowed, so loudly that a second later he heard it echo back to him from across the park.

  Irene was turned around on the ground and trying to say something, but he couldn’t hear it until he bent down to help her up. “I fell down, George. It’s not the end of the world. What is all this anyway?”

  The Barnes & Noble bag had split open, and books had scattered across the walkway.

  Irene read off the titles, one after the other. “The Dorling Kindersley Complete & Illustrated Guide to Herbal Medicine . . . Healing the Soul: Optimize Your Mind with This Proven System! . . . Kicking Cancer’s Ass: A Memoir.”

  “That’s an authorized account by WWE champion Barbarous Bobby Blake.”

  “Oh, is it?” Irene laughed. “Acids and Alkalines: A Chemical Guide to Cancer Curing. And seriously, Yoga, Yoghurt, and Yurts?” She read from the back. “‘One woman’s triumph over breast cancer while traveling the Serengeti in search of love, inner peace, and bifidobacteria.’ George, there’s got to be thirty books here! Did you buy out the whole Crackpot Cures section?”

  He shrugged. It had been called Alternative Medicine, but yes, he had. He’d gone there looking for a juicing cookbook that
Sara had mentioned—as a sign of his goodwill and his determination to support the whole wheatgrass-algae-pomegranate idiocy—and once he’d found it, he’d started looking at one book, and then another and another. What if the secret to curing Irene was there, inside one of them? What if he bought twenty of them, and the answer was in the twenty-first? Buying every single title seemed the only reasonable option. The girl at the register had looked at him in abject confusion.

  He’d wanted to say, Look, if you were in my shoes, you’d try anything too. What’s $239.57 in exchange for Irene’s life? What’s a hundred or a thousand times as much? Is there any amount I shouldn’t spend? What he’d actually said was, “It’s for a paper I’m writing.”

  Irene bent over and helped George pick the books up. She could grab only one at a time, using both hands. “You’re so funny asking me not to tell Sara about your little flip-out. Like you won’t tell her yourself the second she gets you alone.”

  George knew she was right.

  When the books were all gathered, they slowly made their way to William’s apartment.

  “I’m going to haunt your wedding, you know that,” Irene said.

  “Come on, don’t joke about that,” George said.

  “I’m not joking!” she said. “You can count on it, buster. I’m going to be up there hurling rice in the air whether you like it or not.”

  “I think Sara wants rose petals.”

  “She would.”

  “Rice is bad for the pigeons!”

  “They have this pigeon-safe kind now.”

  “Pigeon-safe rice.” George hummed to himself. “So glad someone spent time on that.”

  They kept talking as they rode the elevator up together, heavy stacks of useless books crooked under each arm, a half-empty bottle of green sludge sticking up above the mother-of-pearl handle of Irene’s purse.

  Sara must have heard them from all the way down the hall, because she flung the door to William’s apartment open before they could even knock at it. “Where have you been?”

  “We were waylaid by violent criminals!” Irene announced as she tottered in, transferring the armful of books into Sara’s hands. She made a beeline for William’s wide, white couch—where he and Jacob were drinking cocktails. “George had to beat them off with his fists!”