Little Stalker

by Jennifer Belle

  “So it’s official?”

  “Yes, the tests were positive. I have the pictures here. But it’s fairly unimpressive.”

  My brain was on his desk, spread out like a centerfold. “Unimpressive?” I asked, the insult hitting me. “My brain?”

  “No, the tumor.” Even my tumor was unimpressive. An hors d’oeuvre. “It’s micro not macro. That’s a good thing.” That was the looking-glass world of doctor talk. Unimpressive was good. Negative was good. Positive was bad. “You have to take a medication called Parlodel, which is a brand name for bromocriptine mesylate. Two point five milligrams, twice a day. With food. I filled the prescription for you because frankly I didn’t trust you to fill it yourself.”

  He handed me the amber bottle and I studied it. I always thought it was funny that the international symbol for “Take with food or milk” was a picture of a hamburger.

  “You will experience severe nausea in the beginning, but that should subside in a matter of weeks.”

  He stood up, left the room for a moment, and brought back a little paper cup of tap water from the bathroom sink. He handed me a tiny white pill. “Swallow this.”

  "I don’t drink tap water,” I said. "My homeopath says it’s filled with wigworms. And before I take the pill I should probably go to her and build up my system with Arnica or something first.”

  “Why don’t I go out and buy you some aloe vera juice to take it with,” my father said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Apparently he was just kidding. “Swallow the pill, Rebekah.” As weak and pathetic as Dr. Kettle thought sick people were, he thought sick people who didn’t take their medicine were the lowest of the low. I swallowed the pill dramatically, needing several sips of the wigworm water to get it down. The days of children’s cherry Triaminic served to me in a special spoon with a gentle, steady hand were over. St. Joseph’s was a thing of the past. “Did you eat breakfast?”

  I nodded. Mrs. Williams and I had eaten another pound of salami during Little House.

  “Maybe you should eat some crackers. There are some over the stove. I’m proud of you for taking it so well.”

  Not showing emotion was the only thing that impressed my father.

  “So what happens now? I just take this medication for the rest of my life?”

  “Yes,” my father said.

  “I don’t understand, does it shrink the tumor?”

  “No, it has nothing to do with the tumor, there’s nothing we can do about the tumor. The medication helps regulate your pituitary gland, which isn’t functioning properly because of the position of the tumor.”

  “Am I going to have brain surgery?” I looked terrible with short hair, let alone no hair. I became instantly terrified. This was really serious. “Why did I get this! Is it from Sweet ’N Low?”

  “Honey, no. Tumors aren’t caused by anything, or, I should say, no one knows what causes them. And you’re not having surgery. Surgeons stopped operating on pituitary tumors years ago because the vast majority of the tumors were benign, and because the pituitary gland is located in the center of the brain, behind the eyes, it is an enormously difficult operation. A large number of patients couldn’t be closed up properly.”

  “So what happened?”

  “They had to wear a helmet for the rest of their lives.”

  “A helmet!” If I ever married, how would I attach a veil to my helmet? I’d have to have one of those terrible theme weddings, outside on a bicycle. I had to think about something else.

  “I saw the most incredible thing last night,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “I saw the elephants leaving the circus. They were walking right up Thirty-fourth Street.”

  “You’ve seen that before,” he said.

  “No I haven’t.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I have never seen elephants roaming around New York before. ”

  “Sure you have. You and I saw them together. I took you to see them when you were ten. It was in the newspaper. . . .” He stopped and looked at me.

  I searched the savanna of my brain, standing in the center of it like a hunter with binoculars held up to his eyes, one foot hiked up on my tumor, but I couldn’t see any elephants.

  “Oh, right, right, right, right, right,” my father said. “I was going to take you but I never did.” His phone rang and he answered it correctly. “Dr. Kettle. Did you try an antihistamine? Alright, monitor it closely and call me if . . . Well, you should come in. I happen to be an excellent diagnostician, but I can’t do it based on your description. Unless you come in, I’m afraid all I can prescribe is chicken soup. . . .” I stood there for a moment longer and then went back to Irmabelle’s desk.

  I sat for a while eating saltines and trying to figure out why my father had thought that I had seen the elephants. I was the one who had a tumor and yet it was my father, I thought, who might be dying. Alzheimer’s. It was the only explanation. Maybe that was why Irmabelle had left. She couldn’t stand to see him unraveling. Maybe she believed it was my job as his only daughter to help him make the transition to dementia. In his mind he had taken me to see the elephants and it was in the newspaper. There were elephants on his desk. He had given me bad news. His wires had gotten crossed.

  Mrs. Williams was dozing in her wheelchair in the corner. My father’s twelve o’clock was late. I thought of the letter I had sent to Arthur Weeman. Maybe Thalia could write letters to my father too, and he would think they were from me when I was younger. With fog in his brain, and a tumor in mine, we could start again. Get off on the right foot. Dear Dad, My name is Thalia. I am your daughter and I am almost thirteen.

  The doorbell rang and I answered it. It was the enormous black woman who delivered my father’s mail. I took the little pile from her and thanked her, sifting through the envelopes for something from the bank.

  I wondered if my letter to Arthur was in her pouch. I wondered if he would get the letter and read it. But of course I would never know. Even if Arthur Weeman happened to read the letter, he wouldn’t write back, and I hadn’t included a return address in any event. My throat chakra was tighter than ever, and I wrote the words Dear Awful Writer on top of one of Irmabelle’s big index cards because it was the only paper I could find, besides my father’s letterhead stationery or prescription pads.

  November 14

  Dear Awful Writer,

  The reason I am writing to you on index cards is because I’m in science and we’re supposed to be making flashcards for a test we’re having on the endocrine system. If you see the word “pituitary gland” written on top of this card, its because my teacher Mr. Melzer has walked over to my desk.

  I just wanted to tell you that my friend L.E. apologized for acting so imature at our sleepover and I forgave her because her mother died and she’s anorexic and cuts herself. I myself have a very healthy appetit but I’m naturally thin. By the way I don’t have any wierd piercings or tattoos, accept of course piecred ears.

  I am so bored! For me there is no difference between a doctor’s waiting room and this class room. All I do is wait to get out of here. If you saw my notebook you would think I was crazy because I count down all the minutes of each class from 40 to 1 in the margins like a lunatic.

  Last night, after I wrote to you, I had a dream about elephants. I was in an airplane and I could see them from the window walking thousands of miles below me across the earth. It had a very biblical feeling to it now that I think about it.

  This might sound strange, but I dream about you quite a lot actually. I’ve had at least 7 Arthur Weeman dreams. I also have reccuring movie theater dreams in which I am always sitting in a strange movie theater and the screen is at a strange angle. I think it’s because I feel like a spectator in life, waiting here in this ugly green classroom when I long to be a part of things, not just sitting in the audience. Anyway I don’t even know why I’m telling you this because I hate it when people bore you with there dreams.

>   I wonder if you happened to notice that I didn’t give you a return address on my letter to you. I have decided to give you my grandmother’s address because my parents are unbelievably controlling and if you ever wrote me a letter which I know you never would they would probably ask a lot of nozy questions. Plus I think my father is going senile. He is a physician but he has been very strange and confused lately and when I told my school’s occupational therapist she said she thinks he might be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease which I think is true. (This might be the beginning of an interesting plot.)

  The reason I am giving you my grandmother’s address is I go to her house almost every day after school and she always asks me to bring up her mail because she is so old and short that she actually can’t reach her mailbox! For some reason I think that is hilarious. She has to stand on the hotel cart and sometimes it rolls around while she’s still on it and she gets hurt. Luckily I’m pretty tall. The bell just rang. Thank God.

  I hope you aren’t laughing at me.

  Your devoted,

  Thalia

  PS (written later at home) I have decided to enclose an x-ray of my brain because I thought you might be interested in just what kind of a brain a girl who would write you letters might have. I had to have an MRI because my father is a doctor and I get a lot of headaches but it just turned out I need to wear my glasses more often, however that won’t be a problem since I plan on being given contact lenses for my birthday. My father is really quite overly protective. When he found out my headaches weren’t anything serious like a brain tumor or something he actually cried. Some fans probably send you pictures of their naked bodies but I thought I would go one step further and send you a picture of my naked mind.

  I leaned back in Irmabelle’s chair feeling excited by what I had just done. I had given Arthur Weeman an address!

  The letter had taken up eight index cards and I numbered and paperclipped them. I waited awhile for my father to go into the bathroom and then I went into his office, grabbed my chart, and held my brain up in front of me. It was too cumbersome to send so I took a pair of Toradol oral 10 mg tablets (ketorolac tromethamine) scissors from a cup on Irmabelle’s desk and cut the films into a heart shape. I slid it into a manila envelope, along with the index cards, stamped and addressed it, wrote Mrs. Williams’ return address, and drew another rainbow. I dashed out to the lobby to mail it and when I got back to Irmabelle’s desk a wave of nausea hit me, a tornado sending cars and houses and cows flying around my stomach.

  “I’ve been poisoned,” I told my father. I sat in the chair facing his desk and then suddenly felt too high up and curled up on the floor. I needed him to rub my back.

  “You’re experiencing nausea from the Parlodel.”

  “I’m so nauseous,” I said.

  “No. You’re so nauseated. Nauseous is incorrect.”

  "I’m so nauseous,” I said. "How can you correct my grammar when I’m laying here dying.”

  “You’re lying here dying,” my father said. “Give it a couple of weeks. You’ve always had a weak stomach. The nausea will subside. ”

  “Don’t say subside,” I said. The word subside made me even sicker. It sounded like submarine and submerge and made me think of surf and seas. “I’m not going to take the medicine.”

  “Oh yes you are,” my father said. “We’ll keep you on two pills for a while and if your body doesn’t adjust, we’ll bring you down to one.”

  One if by land, two if by sea.

  “I have to go home,” I moaned.

  After I lay on the Persian carpet in his office for a while, I wheeled Mrs. Williams home and lay on what she liked to call the sectional.

  “I don’t know what to do. Should I get a girl?” she said.

  “Just bring me some tea,” I said. She brought me peppermint tea and unwound the long white cord from a heating pad, plugged it in, and placed it on my stomach. I was too sick to even walk into the kitchen to see if Arthur Weeman was home.

  “Think about something pleasant,” Mrs. Williams said.

  I tried to grasp on to last night’s elephants, as if I were walking with them, holding on to the tail in front of me. Elephants were tough. They didn’t have weak stomachs. They could survive the circus, whips and electroshock and tranquilizers. I tried to think about my letter being dutifully carried to Arthur Weeman.

  I imagined I wasn’t myself at all, but Thalia, sitting in the schoolyard downstairs. As Thalia, I felt lighter, longer, my thighs and knees cold beneath my skirt and above my navy socks. “What do you want for dinner?” Mrs. Williams asked.

  I moaned at the mention of food.

  “You have to eat something so you can take your second pill. Why don’t you order us a pizza pie?”

  “I can’t.”

  I heard her in the kitchen ordering a pizza in some sort of accent from the golden age of Hollywood. “Yes, I would like to have a pizza pie sent here directly via courier,” she said. When she hung up she said, “Now that’s something I’ve never done and I’m going to do it again.”

  She brought me a slice and we ate and took our medications together. The nausea increased and the sectional spun. She took my hand and helped me into the maid’s room, lent me a nightgown with roses on it and a B ALTMAN label, and tucked me into bed.

  Her warm hand on my forehead comforted me. “You’re going to feel better soon.” She stroked the bridge of my nose until my eyes closed.

  “My pa was here this morning,” she said.

  “Your pa?” I whispered. The youngest he could be was ninety-five.

  “My darling, handsome pa.”

  She then went on to tell me that early that morning her pa had taken her to town in his covered wagon and the nice man at the mercantile had allowed her to select a peppermint stick from a tall glass canister.

  The next day I managed to make it to my father’s office, despite the nausea. Mrs. Williams sat in her chair, parked in front of the fireplace like a ceramic Chinese dog.

  My father came into the reception area. “Hello, Toots.” He noticed Mrs. Williams in the waiting room. “Can I speak to you for a moment?” he asked.

  I followed him into his office, steadying myself on his desk.

  “Does Mrs. Williams have an appointment today?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “What is she doing here?”

  “She’s waiting for someone,” I said.

  “Her home healthcare worker?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Someone’s taking care of her.”

  “You don’t look too good.”

  “Is that your professional diagnosis?” I asked. I was using his desk as a sort of a lifeboat, bravely riding the waves.

  “It’s good you’re here. It’ll help you keep your mind on something. I promise you’ll adjust to the medication in a day or so. Why don’t you sit on the couch and read or try to relax. I have to use the toilet and then I have to leave the office. I have a funeral.”

  I went out into the waiting room and picked up a New Yorker, and flipped through it to the only part of the magazine I liked, the ads in the back. I loved the odd assortment of offerings, a lilliputian sterling silver swan, a customized ketubah, teak Adirondack chairs.

  One ad was for an international adoption agency. A very blond Connecticut-type woman who looks like she has never eaten an egg roll let alone known any people with black hair, is ecstatically holding a little Chinese baby. I suddenly got very excited about the idea. I could go to China and bring home a little Chinese girl, go off my medication so I could continue lactating, and breast-feed her. The baby would actually look a lot like me because I considered myself to be very Chinese-looking.

  If I could handle taking care of Mrs. Williams, I could handle a little baby.

  I rushed over to Irmabelle’s desk and called the number. I left a message that I was extremely interested in adopting a Chinese baby and to send me the application and information as soon as possible.

  But as I
was giving my name and address I noticed another ad under it, for a guided tour of the Galápagos Islands with a picture of a baby bird, open-beaked, head upturned. Again I got very excited and I tried to decide which I would rather do, adopt a Chinese baby or go to the Galápagos Islands with an experienced tour guide. A guided tour was a very tacky and unadventurous thing to do but I secretly liked the idea. When I went to new cities, I always broke away from whomever I was with and secretly took a bus tour. Both the Chinese baby and the Galápagos Islands seemed equally good. I couldn’t just sit in my father’s waiting room forever like a patient. Life was short. I was thirty-three without a husband or a baby. I had to make some kind of move, and both the Chinese adoption and the Galápagos Islands would get the ball rolling—give me a baby or at least kick-start fertility. I was pretty sure the Galápagos Islands was the place where Darwin came up with the theory of evolution, for whatever that was worth.

  I called the Galápagos Islands number and left a message that I was extremely interested and to send me the application and information as soon as possible.

  “Okay, bye,” my father said. “Just stay until five to answer the phones and then you can go. And I need you to order one box of fourteen-by-seventeen films from DNA, and one box of electrode alligator clips.”

  I wasn’t sure if he said stay until five or stay for five minutes. I waited five minutes and then took Mrs. Williams to her apartment.

  When we got there, Mrs. Williams wanted to watch the Home Shopping Network and I went to the window seat in the kitchen to wait for Arthur Weeman. I willed him to enter into view, as if my brain tumor was a TiVo and could start playing an Arthur Weeman movie on demand.

  I reached into the back pocket of my jeans to see how much cash I had to buy yet more food for Mrs. Williams and pulled out the piece of paper Anita Stefano, the psychic kinesthesiologist, had given me with the number for the psychic priest. Father Louis O’Mally.

  I dialed the Florida number on my cell phone and a nice-sounding man with a Southern accent answered.

  "Hello, Father O’Mally? My name is Rebekah Kettle. Anita Stefano told me to call you?” I sort of asked. I didn’t know how this worked. I wondered if I should give him my credit-card number.