At the Stony Creek entrance ramp, as they accelerated onto the highway, Todd apologized all over again for his inability to drive stick shift, and promised he would learn. Duncan narrated the mechanics as he pedaled the clutch and shifted up, and then changed lanes and clutched and shifted up again to reach fifth gear, as they matched the cruising speed of the surrounding late afternoon traffic headed toward New Haven and points south. Duncan had a fleeting hallucinatory sense of the hot steering wheel softening and bending in his hands like a licorice candy rope.
The last thing Duncan could remember of this day, according to the Connecticut State Police accident report, was this moment—this non-moment—of driving through East Haven in a middle southbound lane of Interstate 95 and crossing over the Pearl Harbor Bridge. The police report did not contain any description of the conversation between Duncan and Todd as they headed back to the Corrigan & Wheeler offices on River Street. As they passed through the ugly commercial strip of big box stores and franchises and car dealers that cluttered both sides of the highway, Todd had resumed telling Duncan about his trip to India.
On the ferry ride out to Biscuit Island that morning, Todd had started to describe his trip the previous summer, the typical architecture student pilgrimage to Chandigarh, Le Corbusier’s capital city of Punjab. Duncan had been distracted by his mental review of the punch list of issues they needed to resolve on this site visit and had not listened closely as Todd talked about his excitement in the dilapidated yet still magnificent Palace of Assembly building, though his attention had certainly been caught when Todd’s voice rose with emotion as he described the celestial light flooding down onto the sequence of columns that had made him feel, he said, as if he were in a sun-drenched grove of trees.
Now, as they headed back, Todd was telling him the rest of his Chandigarh story, about meeting a group of likeable Scottish architecture students at a hostel who invited him to travel with them. This had led to his crashing (as he called it, a term that made Duncan feel old every time he heard it) for several weeks with rich English people (vaguely related cousins of one of the students) in their beach house in Goa, a region Todd had every intention of exploring thoroughly, armed with his sketchbook and his architect’s sensibility and desire to see whatever temples and mosques he could see. Instead, he had found himself just living on the beach from one day to the next, passing the hours with a group of amazing people from every corner of the world. This, this profound experience above all else, was what Todd had found in India.
Duncan wasn’t sure what it was that Todd was really telling him when he talked about his days in Goa, though he was aware that there had been multiple references to this interlude ever since Todd had returned to New Haven from the trip at the end of the previous summer looking slightly malnourished, with not much more to show for his adventure than a bad sunburn, a collection of not entirely pleasant spices in tin boxes, and a method for cooking seafood stew in a pot over a fire with coconut milk and kokum. Todd said he still made this Goa delicacy all the time, and offered to make this dish for Duncan and Laura one day soon, with tamarind, the closest approximation to kokum likely to be found in a New Haven grocery store. Duncan wasn’t remotely tempted, but agreed that they should make a plan for this dinner one day soon.
“So . . . feeling awed by Le Corbusier in Chandigarh and communing with some interesting people in Goa . . . oh, and a recipe for fish stew . . . these were your biggest takeaways from those lost weeks in India?” Duncan asked, hearing his own patronizing tone and instantly regretting it.
“Not lost weeks, found weeks.”
Found weeks, oh no, oh dear. Duncan waited for some further revelation about a mystical encounter with a guru, or perhaps a romantic encounter, but Todd lapsed into pensive silence. A massive car carrier they had passed a moment earlier now slowly slid by them in the fast lane as the brake lights flashed and then stayed lit on the car in front of them. The late afternoon traffic on the Pearl Harbor Bridge that crossed over the mouth of the Quinnipiac River at the edge of New Haven Harbor had slowed to a bottlenecked crawl as they rolled in second gear through New Haven’s tank farm. These eight acres of enormous fuel storage cylinders at the harbor edge always reminded Duncan uneasily of a Greenpeace meeting he attended during college at which he was given a photocopied map of nuclear bomb targets, with New Haven’s tank farm as a priority bulls-eye.
“The northbound flyover from 95 is bold, but they could have done more with this element,” Duncan said, breaking the long silence, gesturing at the rising harp of bridge cables as traffic picked up again. “It could have had a lot more pizazz, this being the first cable-stayed extradosed bridge in the country. There’s not much to show for it.”
“Seriously, Duncan. You should go to India. Maybe you know somebody who can introduce you, so you can get inside the Villa Sarabhai. I wish I had gone to Ahmadabad when I was there. You should go. See all the major Corbu buildings and then just see India. And then go to Goa. I could introduce you to my friends there. You would love it.”
Duncan shook his head without taking his eyes off the road. He could feel Todd watching him. His answer came out hesitantly as he searched for words and felt the old stammer lurking; it was always there, ready to surface when he was very tired or upset.
“You know … I don’t think I would love it. All architects are supposed to go to India … and commune with Corbu … and have that transformative experience … but I don’t really want to go off and do something like that … certainly not now … I’m not like you … I never was. Not even when I was … your age.”
“It’s not too late.”
“It is … my heart … that’s late,” said Duncan slowly and carefully, conscious that he was borrowing these words from the lovely poem he had heard read aloud just that morning on public radio by its renowned poet laureate author, who had enunciated with force and verve every word of his poem, “Touch Me,” in his elderly yet still robust poet’s voice, while Duncan had made coffee in his nice kitchen in his nice house where he lived with his nice wife who might be pregnant. Did Todd listen to public radio in the morning? Perhaps he listened on a vacuum tube radio of his own devising while preparing victuals made from provisions, over a beggar’s tin can stove he had brought back from Goa. Duncan signaled and shifted lanes. Trucks walled them in unpleasantly. He felt dizzy again. Traffic started to speed up.
“India changed my life. Duncan? How are you feeling? You okay?” With a careful fingertip Todd lightly traced the swelling of the hornet sting down the front of Duncan’s neck.
When you touch me, you remind me who I am.
“I’m okay. Not great.”
“India changes people.”
“So you keep saying. Is change always … desirable?”
“We could go to India together.”
Those were Todd Walker’s last words.
The accident report described how the 2003 Volvo station wagon with Connecticut markers slammed head-on into the orange, plastic, water-filled Jersey barriers at Exit 46, the Long Wharf exit, while traveling at approximately forty miles per hour in the southbound lanes. It then spun into traffic, where it was hit broadside by an eighteen-wheeler from Portland, Maine, that was traveling at approximately sixty miles per hour, hauling a load of turbine engines. The eighteen-wheeler jackknifed as it crushed the Volvo against the concrete median strip. The Volvo was torn almost in two, the report said. The driver, Duncan Wheeler, 37, of New Haven, who sustained life-threatening injuries, was unconscious at the scene and required extrication with hydraulic rescue tools before being transported to Yale-New Haven Hospital. The front-seat passenger, Todd Walker, 26, of New Haven, was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the tractor-trailer, Cecil Pullman, 43, of Biddeford, Maine, was treated at the scene for minor injuries. Seven other passenger vehicles were involved in the collision, but there were no other significant injuries. The highway was closed to southbound traffic until 9:12 p.m.
Duncan couldn’t
remember or explain why they had not taken the downtown exit off 95 before reaching the Long Wharf exit, or for that matter why they hadn’t taken the shortcut to River Street through East Haven. He did recall that they had agreed, on the drive out, to stop at a particular corn stand on the return trip, a plan they had both evidently forgotten. The accident report said witnesses reported seeing the car weave just before it struck the Jersey barriers. The shape of Jersey barriers reminded Duncan of Toblerone chocolate bars. The accident report stated that subsequent medical examination of the driver suggested the probability that a bee or wasp had apparently entered the car and stung him on the neck and was the most likely cause of his loss of control of his vehicle.
Duncan had whispered I don’t remember in answer to most of the State Police accident investigator’s questions, including the one about whether he had any recollection of a bee or wasp in his car just before the crash. Bees in cars were thought to be the number one cause of single car loss of control fatal accidents in daylight on dry roads, the investigator told him. The tender hornet sting just above his Adam’s apple, protected by a bandage from rubbing against his cervical collar brace, marked the only part of his body Duncan was certain he could still feel.
His one memory of the accident itself was an unreportable fleeting moment of consciousness, after the slam and roar and slam of the collision, when the torn and smashed Volvo had come to its stopped stillness, and he was crushed and suspended in this brief instant of ticking quiet, before relentless actuality swarmed back in and filled up everything around him. In that brief deafening instant of silence he heard only the faint whirring sound of the engine’s cooling fan. He couldn’t turn his head, but what he could see at the edge of his range of vision, parts of Todd, he would never be able to un-see. An arm not connected to anything. The sharp, white stick of bone stabbed through Todd’s white shirt. The enormous incurve chrysanthemums, blooming deep red and spreading across Todd’s white shirt, out of season, a harbinger of autumn, in China symbolic of death but surely not here, not yet, expanding and blooming too soon, too soon, too soon, their bitter odor filling the car. And Duncan heard again the elderly poet’s reedy voice speaking to him from the radio on his kitchen counter that morning as he lifted his own coffee cup to his own mouth with his own right hand for the last time.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
THREE
Primate Institute of New England
New Placement Report
Placement Date: 10.22.14
Name: NORMA JEAN, A.K.A. OTTOLINE
Tufted capuchin # PI06131028
D.O.B.: unknown
Gender: F
Spayed/neutered: YES (date unknown)
Age: unknown, approximately 24–26 y.o.
Prior Placement: YES
Placement Trainer: Martha Peterson
Recipient: Duncan Wheeler, age 37, C6 spinal cord injury, complete
127 Lawrence Street, New Haven, CT 06511
Wheelchair dependent since: three months (injury sustained July 1 this year)
Relevant History Summary (see also Leland Morris file)
Tufted female capuchin NORMA JEAN came to the Primate Institute as a donation from Animal Control Division/Connecticut Department of Agriculture in March of 1996. Animal Control took custody of her when notified that she had been abandoned on the doorstep of the Connecticut Humane Society facility in Bethany before opening hours. Records show that she was delivered to the Institute as she was found, in a small parrot cage, wearing a rhinestone cat collar and a Cabbage Patch Doll dress.
On examination she was identified as a probably spayed (later confirmed) female with some socialization, approximately seven years of age. She had no microchip. Her intake weight was 3.4 kilograms and she was in somewhat malnourished but otherwise satisfactory health, though she had a runny nose and a skin infection on her neck caused by the too-small collar, her fur was dirty and matted, and her toenails and fingernails were overgrown. All of her nails were coated in several layers of pink nail polish. There was no indication that she had been vaccinated.
There was an unsigned handwritten letter in an envelope attached to her cage (see medical records file for original), presumably from the owner who abandoned her, stating the following unverifiable information:
This tufted capuchin monkey was obtained as an infant from a breeder (unidentified) in Florida, and had been living as a pet with a Connecticut family in their home. The letter stated that her name was Norma Jean and she had been “like a member of the family,” and had always been very friendly and affectionate “until she changed.”
The recent addition to the household of a pair of baby marmosets “who are very cute and take a lot of our attention” had apparently upset her, causing her to become aggressive and uncooperative.
Norma Jean had attacked one of the marmosets and had also bitten two members of the family.
Although there had been no prior problems and she had always cooperated with being bathed and diapered, she was no longer cooperative enough for baths, and she had recently begun to remove her diaper and engage in what was clearly urine-washing behavior. The family did not understand her behavior and did not like her increasingly unpleasant odor.
The children in the family were now afraid of her. Nobody in the family felt safe cuddling her or playing with her. Consequently, she had not been let out of her cage for nearly two months.
They could no longer handle Norma Jean and had decided to give her up. (“Please find our little baby girl a good home where she will be loved and nobody will do experiments on her.”)
Norma Jean was immediately willing to accept care and social interaction. Her canine and incisor teeth were removed under total anesthesia per the Primate Institute protocols. When she had regained full health, after six weeks, trainers began to work with her, and she responded very positively to the training program. She rapidly developed attachments to several trainers, showing a strong preference for women. She acclimated quickly and thrived on the daily routines of learning tasks. She spent 18 months in Classrooms A and B, demonstrating a superior intelligence and ability to learn vocabulary, tasks, and cooperation. She went on to spend two years learning the more sophisticated and specialized tasks and commands in the Household Classroom, where she excelled. In November, 1999, Norma Jean was considered a successful graduate of the Primate Institute Helper Monkey Training Program and was ready for recipient placement. She was the seventh graduate of our Helper Monkey training program, having outpaced three white-faced capuchins (Lizzie, Marco, and Frankie) who began their training six months ahead of her. Norma Jean was placed successfully with a recipient in January, 2000.
First Placement Summary
Norma Jean was placed with recipient Leland Morris, 54, a former English professor at Wesleyan University living in Hamden, whose progressive Multiple Sclerosis symptoms had forced him into early retirement from teaching. He had recently become dependent on a manual wheelchair, and his house had been adapted so he could continue living there. His live-in assistant, Dennis McGrath, became Norma Jean’s primary caretaker.
Norma Jean bonded well with Professor Morris, whom she readily accepted as her alpha, and with Dennis McGrath, whom she accepted as her caretaker. It was a very successful placement. As Professor Morris’s condition advanced, he moved to a motorized wheelchair, and Norma Jean’s helping hands became more crucial for his autonomy with his daily living needs, allowing him to maintain a measure of independence. Regular contact with and support from our Institute trainers gave Professor Morris, Dennis, and Norma Jean the opportunity to work together developing an expanded repertoire of commands and tasks for Professor Morris’s increasing needs of daily living.
Trainer notes indicate that Professor Morris had by 2005 changed Norma Jean’s name to Ottoline (though doing so was a violation of the Institute’s Recipient Agreement). It was unclear when this change had been made, and by the time it was observed during a home visit sh
e had habituated and become responsive to this name. (Subsequently, Mr. McGrath explained to a P.I. staffer that Professor Morris had named her for a friend of the British writer Virginia Woolf, whose books had been the subject of his classes and scholarship.) Trainer notes indicate that Professor Morris, far more of a behavior challenge to our staff than Ottoline, had become quite difficult and impatient with home visits. By the middle of 2006 our file notes indicate that his M.S. symptoms had become more advanced and he was evidently no longer able to do any of his scholarly work. Mr. McGrath reported to staff that Professor Morris was depressed, refused physical therapy, and had dropped most of his social relationships. He rarely left the house, no longer enjoyed using the telephone, and had infrequent visitors. At this time Professor Morris continued to depend on Ottoline every day, though he had stopped cooperating with Mr. McGrath.
In 2008, Professor Morris became bedridden, and Ottoline’s daily tasks were reduced. Dennis McGrath either resigned or was dismissed by Professor Morris’s attorney. Shifts of PCAs were employed to care for Professor Morris, and a veterinary assistant was employed to come in twice daily to provide basic care for Ottoline, who spent most of her days with Professor Morris on his bed, simply keeping him company and watching television with him. (There are numerous home visit check-in notes after 2007 about her preference for Animal Planet and her habit of changing the channel on the television remote whenever Professor Morris was inattentive or had dozed off. With nobody to correct her behavior, Ottoline apparently began to make independent choices that are not within the usual repertoire of learned, command and response activities.) In this time period, Ottoline’s diet deteriorated and despite repeated attempts at intervention was significantly out of compliance (in violation of the Recipient Agreement), as Professor Morris shared his food with her and her intake was not monitored. (Home visit notes from 2009 and 2010 indicate that the PCAs were also disregarding our written instruction sheets, despite several interventions by our staff, and were also feeding Ottoline “treats.”)
Still Life with Monkey Page 6