The next morning, the stone that I was sure I had left in my pocket was sitting on top of the TV. I picked it up, held it, felt its smooth, round surface.
PART THREE
The Salmon and the Eel
Every time you pray …
you will understand
that prayer is an education.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
FIFTEEN
I
After yogurt, muffin, orange juice, and coffee the next morning, I left the Hampton Inn, got onto 70, and headed east out of Dayton, away from the city where Orville and Wilbur gave birth to the idea for flight, took it to Kitty Hawk, changed everything. The place where they went home to be buried. I left Delco, the Legacy Lounge, the bungalow on Galewood, doors that opened and closed in the night.
The sun was in my eyes. I pulled the visor down. I wasn’t going back the way I came.
At Route 42, I went north, bypassing Columbus. When I hit Delaware, I saw the signs for Ohio Wesleyan University, turned east on 36, got onto I-71. I had one more stop to make, up on Lake Erie. Even if it wasn’t open yet, I wanted to see it.
Place names recurred, in sets, in groups: Dixie, Bowling Green, the Ottawa River, St. Clair. More Main Streets than there had been swizzle sticks in the liquor cabinet on Maxwell Avenue. Past Mansfield, I saw another sign, another example. Like Bowling Green, like Dixie, Ashland had namesakes. Ohio had an Ashland too. It was late afternoon, I needed to eat, rest, so I went west the few miles along 96, out of curiosity.
I had a chicken salad sandwich and coffee in the Food Court of the John C. Myers Convocation Center, at Ashland University—another deeply rooted sapling in the forest of higher learning spread so generously across Ohio.
They gave me honey for the coffee instead of sugar.
I read The Collegian, the newspaper published weekly by the journalism department, pretended I was a writer, like I had told Bobby Swiss. Surrounded by a hundred landscaped acres, young people opening doors on their futures, I dreamed Adam was the student editor. I saw everyone in my family living different lives, in different places. Anything was possible.
I broke open the packet of honey, squeezed it into my coffee, stirred it in.
Things have a momentum, an inevitability. When Fran and I broke up, back in 1972, I think I was in shock. I still don’t know exactly how it happened. It was a snowball rolling downhill, gathering bulk, unmanageable.
Afterward, the wound closed over, scarred, hardened. But when the weather is damp, when I turn my neck a certain way, I can feel that memory, the past, like shrapnel, shift, sit heavily, throb, then mercifully, fade away once more.
I haven’t seen Fran in twenty-three years. I heard she moved to Los Angeles, was working in real estate. I don’t know. That’s what I heard.
Aidan, my stillborn son, is buried in an unmarked grave, in an area known as Child Common Ground beneath a giant oak in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. He is in plot 391, section 42. You can see the spot when you’re driving along Moore. It’s just opposite Lumley Avenue.
I remember a friend telling me at the time that there was a certain cushion of mercy in the fact that I never got to know him. What that person didn’t understand was that I did get to know him. You live in your imagination. I knew him. I knew him well.
When Jeanne still hadn’t gotten pregnant, after all our adventures, after temperature taking and charts, we were more than a little puzzled. After all, we had both proven fertile in the past: Adam. Aidan.
We took it to the next level. We agreed to visit Siliaris, our family doctor, see what he had to say.
Jeanne volunteered to go first. Bloodwork suggested that she was ovulating. A month or two later, back to the lab, more tests. This time it was a series of intravaginal ultrasounds. Again, everything seemed okay.
Then it was my turn. Where Jeanne had agreed to the usual feminine probing, I had to agree, in male fashion, to be rather more active. I was given a small, sealed container, plastic, instructed to go home and supply a semen sample at my leisure, then deliver it within the hour to the medical laboratory at Danforth and Coxwell.
Into the plastic jar. It was a first. Definitely a first.
What the hell. Jeanne and I turned it into a kind of game. With the exception of the small embarrassment of handing it over to the receptionist while she asked for the appropriate information, it turned out not to be so bad after all.
“It says here that your sperm count is low. Around fourteen million. Motility’s a little low too.” Siliaris was Greek, about my age. He had a remarkable, flowing, dark mustache, glasses. He nudged the specs up his nose a little as he read the printout.
I didn’t know what to say. Fourteen million sounded like a hell of a lot to me.
“I’m going to refer you to a urologist. He’s also a fertility expert. Samuelson. Out in the west end. I’ll have Donna set it up for you.”
“Okay.” A pause. I was confused. Then: “I’ve told you about the baby in the past. What was that—some kind of a fluke?”
“Not at all. That was a long time ago.” He paused. “You’re older now. Things have changed.” He was still studying the paper in his hands. “I’m not real good at reading these charts. Not my speciality. But something here suggests to me that there might be a specific cause. Nothing serious. That’s why I’d like you to see Samuelson. This is his area. He does it all day long. Find out what he has to say.” He looked at me. “He’ll know.”
I sat quiet, humbled a bit. I’d never suspected. Something was amiss. Finally: “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Driving home, staring into the traffic, I heard the words again. The past few years, Jeanne and I, all our attempts, began, slowly, to slide into place. You’re older now. Things have changed.
Samuelson was in his sixties, a jovial fellow who understood the personal nature of his business and took pains to put people at ease. He had indeed been doing it all day long, for years.
He looked up from the chart, over his wire-rimmed eyeglasses, stared at me, smiled. “You’ve got an infection.”
I just stared back at him, silent.
“Here,” he said, placing the paper on the desk between us, turning it so I could read. “This number.” He pointed with his finger. “The white blood cell count is too high. It’s indicative of an infection.”
I looked at it, sat back.
“I want to check for myself, though.”
“How?”
“In here.”
We went into another room.
“I’m going to check your prostate.”
I groaned.
He chuckled. “I know.”
It was nothing new. I was moving into that area where it was an annual event for men my age. But it wasn’t exactly my favorite.
“I’ll be quick.”
And he was. Without telling me he was going to, he pressed suddenly on my prostate gland, exerting momentary pressure—discomfort rather than pain—then held a small glass slide at the end of my penis. I was shocked to find myself exuding a bit of liquid onto the slide.
“Jesus,” I said, stunned. “What the hell happened there?”
“Prostatic fluid,” he said. “I can find out what I want to know in a minute.” He left me, went over to the microscope in the corner, placed the slide beneath the lens, peered down the scope, adjusting for clarity. Without looking up, he said, “You can get dressed.”
I slid off the table, tucked my shirt in, buckled up.
“You’ll be a bit uncomfortable for a few hours. It’ll fade.”
“Good.”
His chuckle was comforting. “Can you imagine how many times a day I do that?”
I shook my head. “I have to admit, I can’t.”
“You’ve got prostatitis, Mr. Nolan.”
I was seated on the opposite side of his desk, back in the first room. It didn’t sound good. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Inflammation of the pr
ostate. Infection. Probably chronic bacterial prostatitis.”
I looked at him. “You have my full attention.”
“You probably got it from a bladder infection. The bacteria can get into the prostate from backward flow. It’s not transmittable from one person to another. Your partner didn’t give it to you, and you can’t give it to her, so there’s no reason for concern there. It’s self-contained.”
“How serious is it? What should I do?”
“I’m going to put you on antibiotics. Six weeks to start. I’ll see you again in six weeks, and you can bring your own semen sample next time.” He smiled. “Easier that way.” He pulled over his prescription pad, began scribbling. “The infection, you see, causes the white blood cells to increase, and the sperm can’t get out properly. It’s like they’re being blocked, and they bounce around inside you. That’s why your count is low. The antibiotics should lower the white cell count, if not get rid of all of them. That way, things should pick up.” He finished writing, looked at me. “You came in here with what you thought was a fertility problem, and it is. But what you’ve got is a larger, general health problem. It’s a good thing you’re here.” The smile again, a kind one.
“How common is this?”
“Much more common than you’d think. It’s not easily diagnosed, as you’ve just found out. You know,” he said, thoughtfully, candidly, “you’ve been sick for a long time.”
I just stared at him.
“I’m surprised you haven’t noticed any symptoms, any discomfort, something that would have brought you to a doctor some time ago.”
“I don’t know what I should have noticed.”
“Frequent urination at night, lower back pain.”
“I thought I was just getting older. I thought everybody had those things.”
“Chills and fever, night sweats.”
I was quiet. He watched me.
“You’ve had night sweats.”
“Yes.” I thought of waking, of dreams, of Jeanne drying me off, calming me.
“The bed actually gets soaked from your sweat.”
“Yes.”
“And no bells went off?”
I shook my head. “I always attributed it to recent events, stress, food I’d eaten, something like that.”
“And stomach pains? Abdominal discomfort?”
“Yes. It would last a week or so, but it always went away. I thought I needed more fiber in my diet. Or stomach flu. Same thing. It didn’t register.”
The prescription sat on the desk between us. “Your reaction is a common one.”
I took the paper, folded it, put it in my shirt pocket. “This is curable? I’m going to be okay?”
“It’s treatable. You’re going to be okay. I’ll see you in six weeks. We’ll go from there.”
“You said I’d been sick a long time.” I was standing, putting on my coat. “How long?”
“Can’t tell. But I’d say it’s been years.”
Years. I digested the word. “How many years?”
“Can’t tell. Could be up to ten years, from what I saw.”
I looked at him. “I thought I was just getting old,” I said.
He nodded, shrugged. “You are,” he said. “But not that old.” He held out his hand. “See you in six weeks. Get a sample jar from the receptionist on the way out.”
I looked down, took his hand, shook it. I had new numbers to think about. Six weeks. Fourteen million. Ten years. They explained lots.
I finished the coffee and sandwich, left the Food Court, left The Collegian on the table, left Ashland, Ohio, got back onto I-71. I wanted to get as close to Cleveland as I could before it got dark. I don’t like driving at night.
II
I’ve mentioned regrets already. I’ve thought of another one. Dad wanted a new window in his room—the room he had when he lived with Jeanne and Adam and me—that he could open more easily than the one that was there. It was an old house, and most of the windows were the wooden ones with ropes and pulleys, ones that had been painted over countless times. When you lifted the clunker in his room, you battled the warping of the years, those coats of paint.
He mentioned it several times. I worked on it a bit, chiseled, sanded, but not too seriously. Finally, one day at dinner, he offered to pay the cost of putting in a new one. I agreed that it sounded like a good idea. But I was reticent to let him pay, and I couldn’t afford it just then. So it kept getting put off. In the spring. Maybe next fall.
Driving on I-71, heading to Cleveland, I saw the window, propped with a wooden stick, saw the fan on his dresser circulating the air. Wished I’d paid. Wished I’d let him pay. It was too late.
“You need to do something. You need to be of use.”
I’d heard my father say this many times.
“Sometimes,” he’d said, “just sitting in this room, I get thinking too much. I get to brooding. You have to do something, or you brood.”
He did small jobs around the house, and we encouraged them. The basement was his personal domain. He painted the oil tank a fluorescent silver, wrapped every visible water pipe with insulation, poly-filled cracks with gusto. These were jobs that his bad eyes could handle—as long as they occurred in the basement where hardly anyone saw the results. In the kitchen, it was a little trickier. Every night when I came home, I’d rewash the day’s dishes. He just couldn’t see enough detail to get them completely clean. And he liked to help by mopping and washing the kitchen floor. Mostly he just pushed the dirt around, and we’d find it in massed, wet piles in corners. Again, it was no big deal. It was easy enough to finish the job when he wasn’t around.
One morning—I can’t remember why—I came into his room when I didn’t know he was there. He was propped on his bed doing sit-ups. The man was in his late eighties. I was impressed. I don’t even do sit-ups.
“I don’t want to die,” he said to me one time.
I couldn’t think of anything to offer in return.
“I don’t want to miss anything. I want to know what happens to you, to Adam. I want to know what happens to everybody.”
I went back to see Samuelson six weeks later. He was such a veteran he could give you an estimate merely by looking through the microscope.
“You’re up around twenty million.” He lifted his head from the lens. “Very good. Excellent, actually. You’re responding well.”
“What does this mean?”
“We’re going to attack it more aggressively. I’m going to prescribe a heavier duty antibiotic. Really go after it.”
I followed him to his desk in the other room, sat down.
He handed me the new prescription. “Six more weeks,” he said. “Any problems before then, let me know.”
I saw Samuelson every six weeks for a year. For the final few months, he returned to the original, milder antibiotic—less expensive, fewer side effects.
My last visit, though, was memorable.
“You’re a miracle,” he said to me.
“Am I?”
“You’re at fifty million. Tremendous progress. That’s a normal sperm count. Motility’s good. You’ve responded wonderfully.”
It was everything I wanted to hear. Over the intervening months I’d heard, twenty-eight million, thirty-five, forty. “I’m cured?”
He smiled kindly. “It’s never really cured. It’s managed. You’ll always have some white blood cells. You still get the occasional days of stomach pains, night sweats, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you will. I’ll give you two prescriptions for antibiotics, ten days worth each, for when it recurs. If it becomes too uncomfortable, fill one of the prescriptions. Take the sulfa pills—with plenty of water. Don’t let it go untreated. But we’re going to take you off this daily regimen. You can’t stay on antibiotics forever. And I can’t see any reason why you can’t go home and make a baby.”
I wanted to phone Jeanne right then and there.
He smiled, rose from his chair. “C’
mere,” he said. “I’ll let you see something.”
I followed him back into the other room.
“Over here.” He was standing by the microscope. The glass slide was still beneath the lens. “Have a look.”
I stared at him, at the microscope.
“Go ahead.” He stood back.
So I looked. I bent forward, focused. Slowly, inadvertently, my mouth opened.
I could hear Samuelson chuckle.
“Jesus,” I said. I could see sperm swimming wildly in every direction, brimming with energy, tails wriggling furiously. In this one drop of semen, life was teeming.
I couldn’t take my eyes away. It was a door into another universe. Inside me, every minute of the day, with my every breath, life was percolating, boiling, fifty million of these were searching for an egg to penetrate, to fulfill a blind destiny, salmon leaping at a waterfall.
Finally, I straightened, wet my lips, looked at Samuelson.
“What do you think?”
“Incredible,” I said. “Unbelievable.”
He nodded, smiling. “I’ve been doing this every day for years,” he said. “I never get used to it.”
I watched him take off his eyeglasses, wipe the lenses with a tissue.
“And you’re right,” he said. He shrugged. “It’s incredible.”
III
I stayed on I-71 all the way into Cleveland, watching for a place to stay for the night. Before I knew it, though, I was caught in the flow of traffic, swept along into the urban center, missing the less-expensive motor hotels and inns on the city’s outskirts. Then I got lost, ended up traveling west along the lake’s edge. It was dark when I pulled over on a side street and unfolded my map, holding it close to the windshield to catch the light from a streetlamp.
Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Page 40