Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  Then she made for the food. It always amazes me, the way people can serve up their guts and five seconds later eat a donut. It makes the inner life seem sort of banal and proletarian, which has the painful effect of minimizing your problems, even as it helps you to manage them.

  After, I asked how she got to praying without belief. She said, “I just did.” I asked for more. She said, “Just drop a pencil on the floor and while you’re on your knees picking it up, stay there.” I said I’d heard that before. She said: “So?”

  I walked away. The truth was, I’d heard every single sentence in her share before. She had not said one original thing. Not one. And then I thought, So? And I had no answer. And I felt confused. And maybe a little happy.

  A few hours later, I was in bed considering all the things I wanted to do when I got home, assuming I could get home. First on my list: Hannah. I’d spend more time with her. When I’m not high, I’m actually sort of fun. Our relations would be strained at first but kid rage is assailable. Next I’d see about volunteering for a special-ed school. Not sure whence my growing interest in retarded children, but there it was. So long as I am clean, I’m actually good with kids. As for Eric, I’d start to nurture the healthy parts of the love between us because, after all, he was my closest friend.

  I turned on my side. And here’s what I saw: me among the peonies, all optimism and light, and, tiding over the nearest peak, an army of drooling sadists come to brain my idyll and beat me to death. In this scenario, I have nothing but a parasol to fend them off. It is absurd. I smile because it’s so absurd. Even so, I parry a swine or two before going down. But once I’m going, I go down hard. And it looks like this: I can’t work with retarded kids. I’m retarded. Or whatever they call it, challenged. My sister despises me with unflagging singleness of mind. If I attempt to make things right, she’ll probably forgive me seconds before I let her down anew. And Eric. What’s to nurture? He doesn’t love me. I am hateful. I am hideous.

  The sadists have an answer for everything. Why am I so unhappy? Because you suck. Why can’t I crawl out of this pit? You don’t deserve to. If I did crawl out, would that be okay? Question is moot. Why am I scared to find out? Question is moot. Why am I so scared of my life? Because it’s about to kill you. Are other people as scared of their lives? No. What if my life continues in this fashion? You’ll die. Can I deal with that? Asked and answered. Why does hoping for anything seem appalling? Because it’s futile. Is it because I am so childish that I think hoping and not getting is worse than not hoping at all? Question impenetrable, move on. How come re Travis, instead of feeling sad, I feel jealous? Because if you were dead, you would suffer no more.

  I palm my ears to shut these people out. It does not work.

  I think: So? So what? and land on the floor, on my knees.

  Hands steepled, throat cleared. But now what? Do I look at the ceiling or the carpet? Do I talk out loud or say it in my head? Is it okay to slouch like this? I start to whisper the Lord’s Prayer because it’s the one I know. But I don’t get far, the hypocrisy is excruciating. The last thing I want is to mock prayer. And what else can you call my efforts but mockery? But then I think about the other addicts who swear it’s okay to pray from a condition of doubt, and hope they are right. I try again. I say: God, if you’re out there, you know I don’t believe in you but that I’m trying to pray anyhow because people here say it will help me and I need help really bad. It seems hideous to be asking for help, like I’m one of these bad-weather friends, and I can’t even begin to describe how incredibly stupid I feel, but I’ve run out of other options and I’m trying to save my life. I don’t want to die, but I also can’t live like this. Still, I’m not all that committed. I don’t have faith that faking faith in you is gonna help anything. I mean, I believe in forces greater than me. Stuff like physics and love. But what do these forces have to do with my life? I not only have to believe in you, or something like you, but I have to believe that you, as you, actually want to bother with me. Impossible. Look, maybe this is selfish—I know it’s selftsh—but can’t you just show me something? Can’t you just suffuse me with conviction? A lot of people here say we are born with you inside, and that if we can’t find you later on, we’re just not looking in the right place. Other people say we can evict you from our hearts without meaning to. I don’t know if either is true, but I’m doing my part; I’m looking. And if you’ve been here before, I’m asking you to come back. Just come back, okay?

  I ask again, a few times, until maybe the Lord’s Prayer makes just a little more sense to me than it did ten minutes ago. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

  Thirty-four

  “Izzy, you have to eat.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  “If I call you Mother, will you eat?”

  She looked away. I’d been coming to be with her in the infirmary for two weeks, and every visit was the same. I think she was trying to starve herself to death. Bluebonnet had medical supplies, including IV nutritional bags, but Mother was not exactly begging for a line in. And what were they supposed to do, tie her down and find a vein? As it turns out: yes. In a more salubrious atmosphere, Bluebonnet would have palmed her off on a mental facility whose charter included the right to restrain and force-feed. But since no one would leave the compound, and since no one was permitted in, they revised their mandate daily. I wonder what would have happened had someone taken ill, not with plague but cancer. What then? I know what then. I don’t want to know, but I know.

  “Mom,” I said. “Why are you doing this? The worst part’s over. You’ve been clean for almost two months.”

  “We’ve been in this shithole for two months?”

  I nodded. “Six weeks.”

  “When can we go home?”

  “Soon as Stanley gives us the okay.”

  “Since when is Stanley the arbiter of our plans? And what’s he still doing in my house?”

  “Taking care of your daughter?”

  “Go away.”

  “Listen, Izzy—Mom—I was thinking that even if I go home, you should probably stay here.”

  She wiggled her hands, which was about as much movement as the restraints allowed. I glanced at the IV bag, near empty. “It’s not punishment, you know. And you did come here voluntarily.”

  “I do not know what I was thinking.”

  “Yeah, but I do. You wanted help. Now you are getting it.”

  “You can’t leave me here. I’m not senile or insane. You have no power of attorney. I don’t even know why these people listen to you. I can’t believe I’m in restraints!”

  I did not want her to start screaming like last time so I said, “Mom, I’m sorry. But I can’t just let you die. And the only reason you can’t put up a decent fight is that you’re too weak because you don’t eat. Just eat and be normal and we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Be normal,” she said, despondent.

  “Mom, honestly, why did you come down here? No one forced you.”

  “Maybe I wanted to spend time with you.”

  “Okay, that’s just low.”

  We watched the IV bag dimple and collapse for lack of fluid.

  She said, “So what’s happening in the world? Do I even want to know?”

  “The space shuttle blew up. And in brighter news, no reports of plague in twelve days.”

  “What happened to the shuttle?”

  “Not sure. It exploded on reentry.”

  “How awful.”

  “Yeah. But isn’t it weird how when seven people die in the shuttle it’s a national tragedy, but when seven die in a pileup on the freeway, no one gives a shit?”

  “That’s because when you go out to space, you’re representing the country. You’re like a diplomat.”

  “Yeah, but only if you meet someone.”

  “How odd about the plague. I wonder what that lunatic is doing. And why he still hasn’t been caught.”

  “No one wants to get a false se
nse of security about it, but then I think people are ready to jump at any chance to get rid of this anxiety. At least in this place, we don’t have to worry about the bubo.”

  “The bubo is ridiculous. No modern disease should give you a bubo. Certainly not a gurgling bubo. But I thought pneumonic plague skips the bubo.”

  “Oh, right. I guess that’s true.”

  “Can you believe Aggie chose this place for you? I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t realize what it was like.”

  “I miss her, you know.”

  “Me, too.”

  “We didn’t have much of a relationship. But she was my mother.” I understood she was trying to tell me something and stayed quiet. “Lucy, can I ask you a question?”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Is everything okay with you?”

  My mouth sorta fell open. “Tell me you’re kidding. You did not just ask me that!”

  “What? Why are you laughing?”

  Just then cook-nurse came in to replace the bag. She was tough. And big. You could probably conceal a small otter between her breasts.

  It was my cue to leave. I stood and pecked my mother on the forehead. “You’re amazing,” I said. “They broke the mold and all that.”

  She sat up. “Not according to your nana!”

  I smiled. “Okay, Knut. I’ll see you later.”

  “Lucy, wait. I’ll eat, okay? Just get us out of here. I’ll eat.”

  “Roger that.”

  I checked my watch. I still had ten minutes before I was supposed to pray—I’d put myself on a schedule, thinking I do better with a schedule—when I heard a car pull up, a Taser blast, and a whole lotta cursing thereafter.

  Thirty-five

  The sight of these two men—one fetal with voltage charging through his body, the other blind and searching him out—and of the squad car bedecked with lights on top, bottom, end to end, it was as a juggernaut headed straight for our way of life at Bluebonnet.

  Since I was the first to get there, I had the unfortunate experience of seeing the blind man—Travis’s uncle, I presumed—grope for Penelope and, in so doing, molest her trach tube with fingers immured in cow patty. Penelope, whose history I still didn’t know, was frisking herself in a panic. She was wearing a vest with all manner of pocket—mesh, recondite—in which, somewhere, an extra cartridge. She’d already shot up the state trooper—he was just regaining command of his body—and now she was gunning for the uncle.

  I intervened. Said, “What are you doing?”

  She gave me a wild look. I thought she might even zap me, which, from the gist of things, was exceedingly unpleasant.

  The uncle had withdrawn to the backseat of the car and covered his head for protection. I didn’t get a good look at him except to note his height, maybe five feet tops. Also worth noting: he was not dead of superplague.

  I helped the trooper up. This was private property and the Taser, though savage, is not considered a firearm, nor is it illegal to carry and deploy. So what we had here was not so much a legal situation as a bereaved uncle looking for his nephew who had died and whose body had vanished and whose passing was not reported, so, okay, we were dealing with a legal situation and it was bad. On the other hand, I was relieved to see someone take an interest in Travis. Maybe he was divorced, maybe his wife had left him, but the uncle, he was alive and well and looking.

  The trooper was unseasoned, though I don’t know that any number of years on the force can prepare you for the Taser.

  “What in holy hell was that?” he said. He was wearing one of those ranger hats with a wide brim so that eyes and nose were occluded in shade. He had also drawn his gun. Not that he was pointing it anywhere, just scratching his thigh with the barrel. If he’d been a girl, this could be hot. As is, it was embarrassing, like he had a rash that just couldn’t wait.

  “It’s like a stun gun,” I said. “Penelope here probably thought you were aiming to burglarize the place.”

  I grinned. Like a jackass. Like I imagine a Southern girl grins just before she gets knocked up. This habit of getting local—of trying to talk local—it had to go. Especially since it always came off obnoxious, like I was razzing the trooper, when if I was going to razz him, it’d be for the fruit in his crotch because no way could a guy look so huge, even in trooper pants, which, to be fair, hug the body like riding tights.

  He shook his body like a dog out of water and retrieved a notebook from his back pocket. He was all business now. Said he was looking for Travis, who’d disappeared on such and such, had we seen him and so on.

  I took the manner in which he comported himself and the fact that he had come at all as a sign that things were returning to normal out there—that if you had the wherewithal to police a rehab, you were no longer consumed with the imminent extinction of the race. The old laws were pertinent again. And what we had done here, under duress, was going to seem unconscionable. If only the uncle had showed up last week. All’s fair in love and plague—people would have understood that. Instead, J.C. and whoever helped him were going to be pilloried. Theirs would be made to stand in for monstrosities committed all over the country; and when they went down, it would be so that the rest of us could go on.

  Penelope had recovered herself and begun to flutter about the trooper, apologizing. I suddenly felt terrible for her. Because of the trach, she could not infect. I’m so sorry, I want a bagel—everything she said came out uniform. How do the animatronic make love? The trooper waved her off.

  Meantime, the uncle sat still in the rear of the car, face turned to us. He wore boots and plaid, but no sunglasses, which gave him a voodoo look I did not like. His lids were drawn halfway; his eyes were overcast, and they seemed to dawdle in their sockets, from one side to the other. I was staring at him with the idea that if I stared hard enough, he’d regain his sight.

  “So you haven’t seen him?” said the trooper to Penelope. She had not. And in fact, it was true.

  The trooper seemed satisfied. I guess he figured Penelope was answering for us both. Clearly he did not want to broach the rehab. But the uncle goaded him on. It was the first I’d heard his voice. Feeble and sad. “Please,” he said. “He’s the only family I have.”

  We drew back as the car headed up the driveway. The dust eddied behind them, adding to the genie effect of their having appeared to threaten whatever self-esteem I’d managed to acquire in the last two months.

  “Well, that was horrible,” Penelope said.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “You know they’ll find out what happened.”

  “Of course. I should have said something, though. That poor old man. I can’t believe I didn’t say anything. Or call anyone.”

  “His nephew sounds like a jerk. Just leaving him there, thinking he had plague.”

  “That’s what J.C. said, but can we really know anything about other people’s motives?”

  “No. But you can know your own. And that’s a start.”

  “I guess I didn’t say anything because I don’t like to get implicated in other people’s business.”

  “That’s just fancy talk for being afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of showing up for your life, which for most people means loving and being loved. And all the hard stuff in between.”

  We’d been traveling in the car’s wake and could see it parked by the front door. I turned to look at Penelope’s face, streaked from forehead to chin with rivulets and hairline seams, and found the drone of her voice stirred me to grief.

  “I bet you’ve heard that before,” she said.

  I nodded and wiped eyes.

  “I guess that’s how it goes,” she added. “You know: my story got me here but yours keeps me here. We rehash what we know and what we’ve been taught, hoping to get it right.”

  I nodded again.

  “It can happen,” she said. “With all the craziness of the last couple months, I think anything can happen.
”

  We hurried up. By the time I made it back to my room, the clank of spade to rock to earth was the loudest sound in the desert. They had found Travis.

  Thirty-six

  It’s one thing to get clean, quite another to stay that way. Sort of like how anyone can float in outer space, but return him to earth and good luck. In my case, reentry seemed like a particularly bad idea. There were matters to be handled. People to be handled. Stanley and Hannah. Wanda. Eric and the inconvenience of wanting to blow my brains out whenever I thought of him. Agneth and her ashes. I derived zero pleasure from thinking ahead, so naturally I thought ahead. My life seemed to require of me a fortitude I did not have, only now I’d get to experience the deficit awake. Yay. Yay, I’d say to Margaret and Sandra, who’d just frown and go: Fine, get high, that’ll fix everything. And so another day. We could not recluse forever.

  Stanley had begun to lobby for our return. New York was safe enough, could he book our flights? Mother had grown three pounds, and I was still on the wean. What could I say? I gave him the go. Meantime, Bluebonnet had lost half its keep. The business with Travis undid what confidence a lot of people had in the place, and the news spread fast. It was grim being there; we left pretty fast ourselves. We left like hoboes. Didn’t say goodbye, didn’t take our stuff, just walked out and hitched. Two rides: man-with-a-van Dan and John Shirley, cook. I hated goodbyes—fanfare in general—and used the relief of having escaped it to tame the anxiety of going home. It worked for about an hour. By the time we were on the plane, I was a mess. The travel industry had nearly gone under for lack of business, and yet there we were, among a hundred passengers in a confined space. A little over a month had passed since the last report of plague. One month and people revive their old habits? The fear that plundered Old Navy could evaporate so quickly? I didn’t believe it. This was fear on hiatus. Fear that would return, indignant at having been displaced and more intense as a result.