by Чак Паланик
My mom, her eyes stay closed, and her chest inflates and deflates in long, deep cycles.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Imagine a heavy weight pressing your body, settling your head and arms, deeper and deeper.
And she's asleep.
Paige stands up from the recliner and nods her head toward the door, and I follow her out into the hallway.
She looks around and says, "You want to go to the chapel?"
I'm not really in the mood.
"To talk," she says.
I say, okay. Walking with her, I say, "Thanks for back there. For lying, I mean."
And Paige says, "Who says I was lying?"
Does that mean she loves me? That's impossible.
"Okay," she says. "Maybe I fibbed a little. I like you. Some."
Breathe in. Breathe out.
In the chapel, Paige shuts the door behind us and says, "Feel," and takes my hand to hold it against her flat stomach. "I checked my temperature. It's not my time anymore."
With the load already building up behind whatever in my guts, I tell her, "Yeah?" I say, "Well, I may have beat you to it."
Tanya and her rubber butt toys.
Paige turns and walks away from me, slow, and still turned away she says, "I don't know how to talk to you about this."
The sun through the stained-glass window, a whole wall in a hundred shades of gold. The blond wood cross. Symbols. The altar and the Communion rail, it's all here. Paige goes to sit on one of the benches, a pew, and she sighs. Her one hand grips the top of her clipboard, and her other lifts some clipped papers to show something red underneath them.
My mom's diary.
She hands the diary to me and says, "You can check the facts yourself. In fact, I recommend you do so. If only for your own peace of mind."
I take the book, and it's still gibberish inside. Okay, Italian gibberish.
And Paige says, "The only good thing is there's no absolute assurance that the genetic material they used was from the actual historic figure."
Everything else checks out, she says. The dates, the clinics, the specialists. Even the church people she talked to have insisted the material stolen, the tissue the clinic cultured, was the only authenticated foreskin. She says this has opened a giant political can of worms in Rome.
"The only other good thing," she says, "is I didn't tell anybody who you were."
Jesus Christ, I say.
"No, I mean who you are now," she says.
And I say, "No, I was just swearing."
How this feels is like I just got back the results on a bad biopsy. I say, "So what does this mean?"
Paige shrugs. "When you think about it, nothing," she says. She nods toward the diary in my hand and says, "Unless you want to ruin your life, I'd recommend you burn that."
I ask, how does this affect us, her and me?
"We shouldn't see each other anymore," she says, "if that's what you mean."
I ask, she doesn't believe this junk, does she?
And Paige says, "I've seen you with the patients here, the way they're all at peace after they talk to you." Sitting there, she leans forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, and she says, "I just can't take the chance that your mother is right. Not everybody I talked to in Italy could be delusional. I mean, what if you're really the beautiful and divine son of God?"
The blessed and perfect mortal manifestation of God.
A belch rumbles up from my blockage, and the taste in my mouth is acid.
"Morning sickness" isn't the right term, but it's the first term that comes to mind.
"So what you're saying is you only sleep with mortals?" I say.
And Paige leaning forward, she gives me that pity look, the one the front desk girl does so well with her chin tucked to her chest, her eyebrows lifted into her hairline, and she says, "I'm so sorry I butted in. I promise you, I won't tell a soul."
And what about my mom?
Paige sighs and shrugs. "That's easy. She's delusional. Nobody would believe her."
No, I meant, will she die soon?
"Probably," Paige says, "unless there's a miracle."
Chapter 37
Ursula stops to catch her breath and looks up at me. She shakes the fingers of her one hand and squeezes the wrist with her other hand and says, "If you were a churn, we'd have butter a half hour ago."
I go, sorry.
She spits in her hand and makes a fist around my dog and says, "This sure isn't like you."
Anymore, I won't even pretend to know what I'm like.
For sure this is just another slow day in 1734, so we're flopped in a pile of hay in the stable. Me with my arms crossed behind my head, Ursula is curled up against me. We don't move very much or the dry hay pokes us through our clothes. We both look up into the rafters, the wood beams and woven underside of the thatched roof. Spiders dangle down on their strands of web.
Ursula starts yanking and says, "You see Denny on television?"
When?
"Last night."
What for?
Ursula shakes her head, "Building something. People are complaining. People think it's some kind of church, and he won't say what kind."
It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed. Even if it's for sure unexplainable. Even God.
"Defused" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.
It's not a church, I say. I throw my cravat back over one shoulder and pull the front of my shirt out of my pants.
And Ursula says, "They think it's a church on TV."
With the fingertips of one hand, I press around my navel, the umbilicus, but digital palpation is inconclusive. I tap and listen for changes in sound that might indicate a solid mass, but pre-cussing is inconclusive.
The big trapdoor muscle that keeps the shit inside you, doctors call that the rectal shelf, and after you shove something above that shelf, no way is it coming out without a lot of help. In hospital emergency rooms, they call this kind of help colorectal foreign bodies management.
To Ursula, I say, could she put her ear against my bare stomach and tell me if she hears anything.
"Denny never was very together," she says, and leans in to press her warm ear against my belly button. Navel. Umbilicus, doctors would call it.
A typical patient presenting colorectal foreign bodies is a male in his forties or fifties. The foreign body is almost always what the doctors call self-administered.
And Ursula says, "What am I listening for?"
Positive bowel sounds.
"Gurgles, squeaks, rumbles, anything," I say. Anything that indicates I'll have a bowel movement someday, and the stool isn't just packing up behind some obstruction.
As a clinical entity, the occurrence of colorectal foreign bodies rises dramatically every year. There are reports of foreign bodies that stayed in place for years without perforating the bowel or causing significant health complications. Even if Ursula hears something, it won't be conclusive. Really this would take an abdominal roentgenogram and proctosigmoidoscopy.
Picture yourself on the examining table with your knees pulled to your chest in what they call the jackknife position. Your buttocks would be separated and held apart with adhesive tape. Somebody would apply periabdominal pressure while somebody else would insert two tissue forceps and attempt to transanally manipulate and extract the foreign body. Of course, this is all done with regional anesthesia. Of course, nobody is giggling and taking pictures, but still.
Still. This is me I'm talking about.
Picture the sigmoidoscope view on a television screen, a bright light pushing along a clenched tunnel of mucosal tissue, wet and pink, pushing into the puckered darkness until it's there on TV for everybody to see: the dead hamster.
See also: The Barbie doll head.
See also: The red rubber butt ball.
Ursulas hand has stopped its up-and-
down jumping, and she says, "I can hear your heart beat." She says, "You sound pretty scared."
No. No way, I tell her, I'm having a swell time.
''You don't feel like it," she says, her breath hot on my periabdominal region. She says, "I'm getting carpal tunnels."
"You mean carpal tunnel syndrome," I say. "And you can't because it won't be invented until the Industrial Revolution."
To keep the foreign body from moving higher into the colon, you can provide traction by using a Foley catheter and inserting a balloon into the colon above the body. Then inflate the balloon. More common is a vacuum above the foreign body; this is usually the case with self-administered wine or beer bottles.
Her ear still against my belly, Ursula says, "Do you know whose it is?"
And I say, that's not funny.
With bottles self-administered open end first, you have to insert a Robinson catheter around the bottle and allow air to flow past it and break the vacuum. With bottles self-administered closed end first, insert a retractor into the open end of the bottle, then fill the bottle with plaster. After the plaster sets around the retractor, pull it to remove the bottle.
Using enemas is another method, but less reliable.
Here with Ursula in the stables, you can hear it start to rain outside. The rain pattering on the thatch, the water running in the street. The light in the windows is dimmer, dark gray, and there's the quick repeating splash of somebody running for cover. The deformed black-and-white chickens squeeze in through a broken board in the walls and fluff their feathers to shake off the water.
And I say, "What else does the TV say about Denny?"
Denny and Beth.
I say, "Do you think Jesus automatically knew he was Jesus from the start, or did his mom or somebody tell him and he grew into it?"
A soft rumble comes up from my lap, but not from inside me.
Ursula breathes out, then snores again. Her hand goes limp around me. Limp me. Her hair spills across my legs. Her warm soft ear is sunk into my stomach.
The hay itches up through the back of my shirt.
The chickens scratch in the dust and hay. The spiders spin.
Chapter 38
How to make an ear candle is you take a piece of regular paper and roll it into a thin tube. There's no real miracle to it. Still, you have to start with the stuff you already know.
This is just more flotsam and jetsam left over from medical school, something I teach now to the field trip kids at Colonial Dunsboro.
Maybe you have to work your way up to the real bona fide miracles.
Denny comes to me after stacking rock outdoors in the rain all day and says he's got earwax so bad he can't hear. He sits in a chair in my mom's kitchen with Beth there, standing by the back door, leaning back a little with her butt against the edge of the kitchen counter. Denny sits with the chair pulled sideways to the kitchen table and one of his arms resting on the table.
And I tell him to hold still.
Rolling the paper into a tight tube, I say, "Just supposing," I say, "Jesus Christ had to practice being the Son of God to get any good at it."
I tell Beth to turn off the kitchen lights, and I twist one end of the thin paper tube into the tight dark tunnel of Denny's ear. His hair's grown out some, but we're talking less of a fire hazard than most people have. Not too deep, I twist the tube into his ear only far enough so it stays in place when I let go.
To concentrate, I try and not think of Paige Marshall's ear.
"What if Jesus spent all his growing up getting things wrong," I say, "before he ever got a single miracle right?"
Denny sitting in the chair, in the dark, the white paper tube juts out his ear.
"How is it we don't read about Jesus' failed first attempts," I say, "or how he didn't really crank out the big miracles until he was over thirty?"
Beth pushes out the crotch of her tight jeans at me, and I use her zipper to light a kitchen match and carry the little flame across the room to Denny's head. Using the match, I light the end of the paper tube.
From striking the match, the room smells full of sulfur.
Smoke unwinds from the burning end of the tube, and Denny says, "You're not going to let it hurt me, are you?"
The flame creeps in closer to his head. The burned end of the tube curls open and comes apart. Black paper edged with worming orange sparks, these hot bits of paper drift toward the ceiling. Some bits of black paper curl and fall.
That's really what this is called. An ear candle.
And I say, "How about if Jesus got started by just doing nice things for people, you know, helping old ladies cross the street or telling people when they'd left their headlights on?" I say, "Well, not that exactly, but you get the idea."
Watching the fire curl closer and closer to Denny's ear, I say, "How about if Jesus spent years working up to the big loaves-and-the-fishes thing? I mean, that Lazarus deal is probably something he'd have to build up to, right?"
And Denny's eyes are twisted over to try and see how close the fire is, and he says, "Beth, is it about to burn me?"
And Beth looks at me and says, "Victor?"
And I say, "It's okay."
Leaning back even harder against the kitchen counter, Beth twists her face not to see and says, "It looks like some kind of weird torture."
"Maybe," I say, "maybe even Jesus didn't believe in himself at first."
And I lean into Denny's face, and with one puff, blow out the flame. With one hand cupped under Denny's jaw, to keep him still, I slip the last of the paper tube out of his ear. When I show it to him, the paper is gummy and dark with the earwax the fire wicked out.
Beth turns on the kitchen light.
Denny shows the burned little tube to her, and Beth smells it and says, "Stinky."
I say, "Maybe miracles are like a talent, and you have to start with the small stuff."
Denny puts a hand over his clean ear and then uncovers it. He covers and uncovers it again, and says, "Definitely better."
"I don't mean like Jesus did card tricks," I say, "but just not hurting people would be a good start."
Beth comes around, and she holds her hair back with one hand so she can bend and look into Denny's ear. She squints and gets her head around to see in from different angles.
Rolling another sheet of paper into a thin tube, I say, "You were on TV the other day, I hear."
I say, "I'm sorry." Just twisting the paper tube tighter and tighter in my hands, I say, "That was my fault."
Beth stands straight and looks at me. She shakes her hair back. Denny sticks a finger in his clean ear and digs around, then he smells the finger.
And just holding the paper tube, I say, "From now on, I want to try and be a better person."
Choking in restaurants, fooling people, I'm not going to do that kind of shit anymore. Sleeping around, casual sex, that kind of shit.
I say, "I called the city and complained about you. I called the TV station and told them a bunch of stuff."
My stomach hurts, but if it's guilt or impacted stool, I can't tell.
Either way, I'm so full of shit.
For a second it's easier to look at the dark kitchen window above the sink, the night outside it. Reflected in the window, there's me looking as wasted and thin as my mom. The new righteous, maybe-divine Saint Me. There's Beth looking at me with her arms folded. There's Denny sitting beside the kitchen table, digging in his dirty ear with his fingernail. Then he peers under the nail.
"The thing is, I just wanted you to need my help," I say. "I wanted you to have to ask me for it."
Beth and Denny look at me for real, and I look at all three of us reflected in the window.
"Sure, yeah," Denny says. "I need your help." To Beth he says, "What's this about us being on TV?"
And Beth shrugs and says, "It was Tuesday, I think." She says, "No, wait, what is today?"
And I say, "So you need me?"
And Denny still sitting in the chair,
he nods at the paper tube I've got ready. He lifts his dirty ear to me and says, "Dude, do it again. It's cool. Clean out my other ear."
Chapter 39
It's dark and starting to rain when I get to the church, and Nico's waiting for me in the parking lot. She's struggling around inside her coat, and for a moment one sleeve hangs empty, then she snakes her arm back inside it. Nico reaches her fingers inside the cuff of her other sleeve and pulls out something lacy and white.
"Hold on to this for me," she says and hands me a warm fistful of lace and elastic.
It's her bra.
"Just for a couple hours," she says. "I'm not wearing any pockets." She's smiling with one corner of her mouth, her top teeth biting a little on her bottom lip. Her eyes sparkle with rain and streetlight.
Not taking her stuff, I tell her, I can't. Not anymore.
Nico shrugs, and tucks the bra back inside the sleeve of her coat. All the sexaholics have gone inside already, to Room 234. The hallways are empty with shiny waxed linoleum and bulletin boards on the walls. Church news and kids' art projects posted everywhere. Finger-painting pictures of Jesus and the apostles. Jesus and Mary Magdalen.
Heading for Room 234, I'm a step ahead of Nico when she grabs the back of my belt and pulls me over against a bulletin board.
The way my gut aches, the bloating and cramps, when she pulls on my belt, the pain makes me belch acid up the back of my throat. My back against the wall, she slips her leg between mine and lifts her arms around my head. Her breasts wedged warm and soft between us, Nico's mouth fits over mine, and we're both breathing her perfume. Her tongue's more in my mouth than in hers. Her leg's rubbing not my erection, but my impacted bowel.
The cramping could mean colorectal cancer. It could mean acute appendicitis. Hyperparathyroidism. Adrenal insufficiency.
See also: Intestinal obstruction.
See also: Colorectal foreign bodies.
Cigarette smoking. Fingernail biting. It used to be my cure for everything was sex, but with Nico swimming against me, I just can't.
Nico says, "Okay, we'll find a different place."
She steps back, and I bend double with the ache in my guts and stumble down to Room 234 with Nico hissing behind me.