by Fiona Maazel
Tonight she is saying she does not want to talk but that she has to talk. Her fist makes a thwack against the table. Someone’s coffee is upset. A flurry of napkins and then she, too, is crying. Also, she is grateful to be clean today.
To my right is Odette. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and arthritis, and is incarcerated in a welfare facility in the Bronx. It is not going well. Sometimes Odette finds her without underwear. She’s been a Jehovah’s Witness for thirty years, has been celibate for thirty years; only now, in her dementia, she is promiscuous. An eighty-year-old woman. She has intercourse with this doctor, that nurse, and likes to talk about it afterward. This is, possibly, the most horrible thing I have ever heard.
To my left is Phil, who wears an ascot. He’s got two fangs tattooed on either side of his forehead, but it’s the ascot that shocks me. He’s not even gay, just twenty-two with a wife and kid. He’s been doing coke since he was twelve. Now he’s got a little over four months clean, which means apathy is on deck. First apathy, then complacency. Is that all there is? He has relapsed seven times. He does not want to use. He knows using is not the answer. But the alternative? There has to be more to recovery than just abstinence. He wants to be rewired from the bottom up. I sympathize with this wholeheartedly.
Drew, Christine, Glenn, and Dave have their say. Then it’s Mark. He’s got diabetes and hep C and hypertension and a cold. He’s got thin white hair and a comb-over. Seasonal rosacea. When he was drinking, he used to replace the antifreeze in his car with vodka so that when he had to take a drive with his wife, he could pull over periodically to check under the hood. She thought he was paranoid, and left him anyway.
Miles says his relationship with God is like two fat people in a boat. They keep bumping into each other and laughing.
Miles can’t hear a thing, which means everyone within twenty blocks of this place can hear him.
There is talk of practicing these principles in all our affairs. There is talk of needing each other to stay clean. People around here tend to deploy the same phrases, which seems fascist after a while. Fascist in the way an orthodoxy will ply the language with bromides the rest of us are expected to use in lieu of original thought. Probably it’s not as evil as that, but I do wonder at the numbing effect of using a prefab expression instead of coming up with your own.
From the back comes Allan, who runs a chop shop. Since I’ve known him, he’s had nine kids, then seven, then four, and now it’s down to one. Not that they died but that his lying tends to improve in degrees. Today his son has stage-four colon cancer, which means he probably had a biopsy that hasn’t come back from the lab. Allan is saying that Let go, let God is the best thing he’s ever been taught. Let God take my will. I am always wondering how people know the difference between their will and God’s, but I keep this sort of inquiry to myself lest it sound contemptuous. It certainly smacks of the logic we are encouraged to dispatch when it comes to recovery. Allan is from Trinidad. I keep meaning to ask how a guy from Trinidad gets a name like Allan, but this, too, might sound contemptuous. In the rooms, I try to keep my mouth shut. Especially since people who’ve gotten high in the last twenty-four hours are asked to refrain from sharing. Even so, up goes my hand. Protocol suggests I respond to something in the Blade’s share. Like I identified with it. And I guess I did, so I acknowledge kinship with the desire to blow your brains out. He nods, which means I’m free to say what’s really on my mind. Something like how I just saw an exhibit at the museum about butterflies who are born without mouths and die within three days, and where is the humanity in that. Also that I don’t know how to function without drugs. I just don’t see the point.
The meeting goes on. No one mentions superplague, but then no one would. We are entirely too self-centered to let such matters upstage miseries of our own devising.
After, there is more chest-to-chest contact. I am thanked for sharing. My honesty is appreciated. I’m told to hang in there.
Dirty Ben follows me out. I am delighted to see he still smokes.
“Thanks for coming,” he says.
“Sure.”
“How are you? And don’t say fine.”
“Fine.”
“That shit in Minnesota is crazy.”
I nodded. News of the man’s death leaked hours after Alfred left our apartment. The papers are calling it the First Strike, which is noticeably prognostic of a second. Since then, the skies have issued an Indian summer whose disposal of the forecast has given half the city a cold, of which 90 percent think a cold is the plague. I’ve already seen a commercial on TV sponsored by the CDC that features a guy in lab coat who basically calls a sneeze a sneeze before tussling with a bunch of kids with runny noses. The Minnesota Man’s family is irate, suggesting that if the CDC were even a quarter as competent as they are insensitive, we would not be in this crisis, to which the CDC (a) balked at the word crisis and (b) pulled the ad.
I take a long breath of air, which is so thick I actually feel fatter for having taken it. I lean against the church, which does not help.
“It gets better,” Ben says. “I know you don’t believe me—I didn’t believe it when I first came into the program—but it’s true. Stick around long enough and it’ll happen.”
I sigh. You’d think that Ben, Ben of the daisy flip-flops and rainbow pubic hair, would produce something novel to say to me. But no. It’s just the same advice, the same stories, and a promise that if you just keep coming back, it’ll get better.
I don’t feel sad, but my eyes are watering and the drops are falling and next I know, Ben’s got his arms around me and is walking me home.
This is what happens when you start to mess with the hurt inside you. It starts talking back.
“You gonna be okay?” he says. We are at my building.
“I’m fine. G’night,” I say, and kiss him on the cheek.
He grabs for my hand. “It’s not the end of the world, you know.”
“Actually, it is.” I stand up straight because this is familiar territory. “You’ve seen the news. Superplague? It’s like we’re living in one of those blockbuster movies minus the part where I get laid in my shrink-wrap coverall. Bring in the pod people.”
“It’s just one guy,” he says.
“For now. But it’s Malthusian. We are growing beyond the world’s ability to handle us.”
“Maybe. I’ve been thinking about you guys especially, though.”
“You and the rest of the world.”
“How’s Hannah dealing?”
“Poorly. I’ve got to find a way to help her.”
“Coming to meetings is a start.”
“She watches a sick amount of television. She’s getting urbane. Says things like, Dyspepsia is the new Coke.”
“She does not.”
“She does. I don’t know what to do. She’s reptilian!”
“Oh, come on. She’ll be okay. You’ll see. Kids are tough.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Listen, I know it’s not my business but for what it’s worth I don’t think your dad’s to blame for what’s happening.”
“Yeah, well, someone is, which means we’re all gonna die.”
“That was gonna happen anyway.”
“True enough.” And what else is there to say? Nonspecific anxiety is just something you live with these days.
Ten
The interplay between principles of recovery and reincarnation is not lost on me. Both presume we can make different decisions based on lessons learned. Reincarnation, in particular, is a theory of progress that takes progress for granted. Not that you necessarily grow with every life, but that you can grow. It says: Even as you are reinstated with the essentials of character that screwed you up in your last life—after all, what is the soul if not the mainspring of our life’s tragedies?—you can still make new choices this time around. The model is Pavlovian: Hand in the fire, it hurts; next time, recoil. But consider an alternative. What if the compulsion to thrust my hand in the fir
e is so great, it undoes the Pavlovian response? Either I think this time will be different, or I don’t care about the outcome until it is upon me. Point is, if I could resist the fire, I wouldn’t be me. Pursue this logic far enough and you get a stump speech for the death penalty. At the very least, life without parole. And this is where I get flummoxed. Because I believe people can change, can be redeemed. I just don’t believe it can happen to me, at which point, if I were in rehab, someone would mention that I am not unique, not special, and that what’s good for the goose, etc. They would talk about self-centered fear. That thinking you are irredeemable is the worst kind of egotism. I might ask, Well, how do I believe I can change? And they might say: Fake it till you make it. Or, my favorite: Pray. At which point, in rehab, I might bash my head against the wall. Because I always end up like a pretzel, and the only way to undo the mess is to knock myself out.
Eleven
Next week: we’re two hours from Good-Time Living, and it’s hot as fuck. The bus’s AC doesn’t work. A Milk Dud has just landed in my hair. I think it’s been prechewed. This kid to my right, he’s got a frosted Pop Tart stuck to his forehead. He’s saying, Lookit, no hands! Someone from the back says, Shut up, Tart, which is what this kid will be called all the way through high school. The driver is about eighteen. He’s wearing gold wire glasses with lenses big and square as a coaster, and a polo shirt. His collar is turned up. I bet he’s got a stent in his neck for a congenital blood-in-the-brain disease. I bet he dies from it. I turn to Stanley and ask if he wants to play. He says, “Isn’t there enough of that going around?” The game’s about looking at strangers and predicting cause of death. This is fun at Dunkin’ Donuts and museums, less so with a troop of fundamentalist Christian kids. I give Pop Tart deviated-septum surgery gone awry, and then fall into despair. So, apparently, does Stanley. He slumps low in his seat. The way he acts, you forget he’s over fifty, though I don’t know what conduct fifty mandates that the pressure of looming superplague can’t retard.
The guy from Minnesota’s wife has died. The paramedics who answered the call are in a lockdown unit of the hospital. Oddly, the nurses are fine.
Online: video that was never meant to be seen, but which everyone in the country has downloaded. Men in biohazard gear retreating to an armored van with the wife’s body on a stretcher draped in vinyl sheeting. One of her arms escapes the tarp and hangs free. It is piebald from the elbow down and japanned in tar from the elbow up. Only it’s not tar. It is simply what happens when your skin dies before you do.
Hannah has been refusing to go to school. “It’s already October,” she says. “We won’t learn anything between now and June.” The kids are ruining her life. They’ve been told to stay away because our dad let loose the plague. How’s that for a schoolyard taunt? When I was a kid, the worst I got was a bra-snapping in the janitor’s closet. Makes me want to beat the crap out of everyone she knows.
According to the news, there’s been a run on gas masks, which has forced Aggie to acknowledge that her ICU bib is deficient.
The mayor has been asking for calm. The president has been asking for calm. We’re looking at three incidents in a country of 300 million. Some people find it reassuring that the Minnesota Man juiced fruit for a living—that he wasn’t a high-profile figure. Others that his everyman status is the worst part of it all. It’s the difference between thinking that if you avoid monuments and tourist traps, you won’t be on-site for the bomb, and knowing that the bomb could just as easily be in the slushy machine at your local Chuck E. Cheese.
On the bright side, we now know there’s a guy in St. Paul who uncorked the superplague at a hippie juice bar, and what are the odds he doesn’t get caught? There is rumor of a sister who wants to talk. Every outcast in Minnesota has been hauled to jail. Illegal searches have upturned seven pederasts, a steroids lab, and unsanitary conditions at the local dog pound.
In New York, it is starting to look different. I’ve seen a homeless guy try to seal his box with duct tape. Like he’s just gonna sit tight while plague takes every third person on the street. SUVs packed with bottled water crowd the highways out of town. Diapers are in short supply. Mass transit, already a pesthole, is losing customers.
The Feds have finally admitted that the virus found in the Minnesota Man is the same strain that was taken from the lab. Officially, then, the superplague is out. On the other hand, the Feds are denying reports of a spread. I don’t know why they bother. Absolutely no one believes them. Which is, for the most part, what this Family Day wants to address. Trust in government is at a nadir, so we’ll just have to trust each other. Trust licks calamity—that’s what today is all about.
At least this is what the girl behind us is saying to her seatmate, who could not care less. He’s scratching his name into the window with one of those ice-pick math compasses. He’s probably about ten, which means those buckteeth are for life. The girl turns her attention to us. She says her thermos cost three hundred dollars. It’s a thermos and a boiler, she says. She’s got a pear in her cooler. Also figs and prosciutto. I ask whatever happened to gorp. She gives me a toffee bonbon.
Stanley and I face forward. I take his hand and say, “You think Hannah’s getting something from hanging out with these kids? I feel like she doesn’t have enough friends, but these people?”
“Don’t worry. I bet her crowd takes a different bus.”
I look at the girl across the aisle and have to assume he’s right. She’s got a Blow Pop snug in her cheek. Her sneakers have neon lights built into the soles. I take an interest. She doesn’t.
“My parents are coming in a cab,” she says.
“That’s nice.”
“My parents say not to worry because only the poor people are going to get sick from superplague.”
“That’s awful.”
“Are you poor?”
“No.”
She smiles like there’s been a victory here.
Hannah is glaring at me. Apparently, Blow Pop is a no-no. She’s not liked by the other campers. I indicate confusion because what’s not to like? Hannah rolls her eyes and marches down the aisle. Her breath is hot against my ear. “She’s a one-seedliner,” she says.
I see. Christian Identity is a fractured religion. They all hate each other, though together they hate the Jews. Half of Identity thinks the Jews are born of an actual union between Eve and Satan. The rest think it’s just a metaphor.
First thing when we arrive is breakfast in the mess hall. It looks like a circus tent minus the fun. I notice the parents are congregated across the aisle. Hannah pokes me in the back, so I grab Stanley and head on over. We are served poached eggs on English muffins. Several parents have brought their own utensils. Stanley pops the entire muffin in his mouth. When asked which is his kid, he says: Geongowerwhere.
Consensus at the table is that we’re not here to scare the kids about plague, but to start a dialogue about what to do if disaster strikes.
One guy produces an Excel spreadsheet and a laminated, wallet-sized card of phone numbers on one side and information about how to don a gas mask on the other. He says he made the cards for his kids, but brought extras for the table. I notice one of the phone numbers is for an airstrip, which means his master plan is to hit the family jet and bail. A woman across the table who’s got her hair pinned up with knitting sticks says dryly, “I hardly think your jet plane can accommodate us all.” The guy to her right says, “And anyway, how do you think you’re going to get to the airfield? If there’s an outbreak in the city, no one is going anywhere.” “And further,” someone adds, “those phone numbers are pointless. All the lines will go dead from overuse.”
The man who distributed the cards retrieves them from the table without a word. You get the feeling he won’t be participant for the rest of the day.
I notice several parents have come dressed in the finest outdoor gear, with fluorescent orange vests and khaki havelocks. One guy has a glow-in-the-dark GPS watch. His wife might b
e wearing a Navy Seal jumpsuit. By contrast, Stanley’s in overalls and a baseball jersey. I can see a sperm strip jutting from his pocket. Just in case the mood strikes on the Appalachian Trail? You can fit about three of him in those overalls, they are so huge. Three of him and me, which he’s already suggested twice since this morning.
I try to ease the tension and say, “Look, I think we can all agree that there are no practical measures we can take to save our lives and that instead—”
“Excuse me?” says navy wife. “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. If you get within twenty feet of my son today—” She turns to her husband and to the others. “There’s plenty we can do and plenty to teach our children. That’s why we’re here, right?”
Nodding, grunting, yes.
Her nostrils are so dilated, she could snort quarters.
A couple parents suggest I study the literature at the end of the table, pamphlets that say Be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing.
A counselor plays a few notes on a trumpet. The kids stand up like an army corps. I gather we are meant to do the same. The schedule is announced: two intergenerational activities and a lecture/performance. We are to play a trust game, rappel down a dam, and listen to the kids talk religion. I do not like heights and wonder if I can get special dispensation for being only half bound to Hannah by blood.
“Nice,” Stanley says and shakes his head.
We are herded into a group and told to fall in line. I am instructed to hold on to the woman in front of me, who’s wearing cream pumps and a skirt suit. As we march through the woods, her heels strafe the mud. I think this might be useful if we get lost. Stanley is wheezing and exhorting me to slow down. Like I have control of the line. The Navy Seal is on his ass.
We come out into a clearing and a couple hundred feet later, we’re at the dam. I do not like the look of it. The kids are peering over the edge. I’d say we’re about twenty floors up. At the bottom is a river and a landing. I can see two counselors sitting on the concrete, drinking bottled water.