Still Life with June
Page 16
Fortunately, copper-headed Marilyn saved the day. She must have been on her way out of BIG BAD BOOKS and seen Julie and me sitting in BIG BAD COFFEE. Others must have seen us too, but maybe decided we’d had enough humiliation for one day. Marilyn was not so sure. She marched up to our table without announcing herself, and said to Julie, “Well, I’m sure you must be quite proud of yourself.”
In a flash Julie pulled her hand away from mine and hid it in her lap. I have to hand it to her, she kept her expression pretty neutral for a woman in her position. Later, I would tell her she had the missing gonads of a post-menstrual female elephant, a joke that was just mean enough to draw a smile from her.
“What can I do you for, Marilyn?” she said.
“What can you do for me?” said Marilyn, in mock politeness. “Nothing, I would imagine. What could you possibly do for a woman who has done nothing but support you and fend for you only to be betrayed in the end. I think what you did in there was damned awful!”
I wonder if Marilyn knew that, once upon a time, awful and wonderful meant the same thing. That once upon a time, before people forgot what it meant or felt like, being struck full of awe for something, God or Art or Times Square after midnight, was a good thing. Probably not.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Julie. “But I had my reasons.” Good old Dagnia/Julie. Unapologetic to the end.
“I can’t imagine what those reasons would be,” said Marilyn. “I really can’t imagine, Dagnia ... Oh. Excuse me. Whatever your name is.”
“It’s Julie. And I’m not —”
Whatever she was about to say, she never got the chance. Marilyn cut her off. “There is something you can do for me, after all,” she said. “You can stay the hell out of the writers’ group from now on. You too,” she said, flicking her glance derisively in my direction. “Writers’ group is not for people like you. Writers’ group is for writers.” With her conscience relieved and her spleen vented, and a story to tell at next week’s gathering, Marilyn left without giving either of us a chance to respond. Julie watched her retreating back without expression. Finally, when Marilyn had left the bookstore, she turned to me and said dully, “She stole my line.”
She did at that. But it didn’t matter. Neither of us was going to return to the group to read her the penal code. Both of us had had enough of writers’ groups — Julie because she wasn’t really a writer and me because I had found something better to do with my time. In the next issue of the BIG BAD BOOKS newsletter we were to read that the well-known local author Dagnia Daley had become a permanent member of the Thursday afternoon writers’ group. It even said that she was going to head the group for a while, until “someone more qualified comes along.” Julie called me at work the very day the newsletter was published and read it to me over the phone.
“Our little group of hacks and hackettes finally has a real live writer in it,” she said.
Out of a bone-crunching weariness and a desire not to get into the whole thing again, I ended the conversation and my brief involvement with the BIG BAD BOOKS writers’ group fittingly. I passed.
CXXVI
One Friday afternoon, writing about Darrel and June again but stuck for facts and cursed with a temporary failure of the imagination, I rode the bus up to the Sisters Who Gave Good Hope, burst into Dawes’s office, and demanded he hand over June’s records to me. Dawes did not seem in the least bit surprised by my request. He still wore the gold neck chain and the grey suit, still had the Venetian blinds drawn against the world. I had been seeing General Dawes a lot these days — he had taken an interest in me. Or should I say he had taken an interest in Darrel.
When I asked General Dawes for June’s records he just acted like he did any other day. He motioned for me to sit across from him in my usual chair. I didn’t want to sit, but Dawes didn’t like it when people stood in his office. Maybe he didn’t like to be reminded of how slim the rest of the world was. In a chair you could only see head and shoulders and a little bit of front chest above the desk, so it was easier to pretend you looked like everyone else, easier to pretend you didn’t weigh 270 pounds and could only afford one suit because you had to have them custom made at $1,500 a pop, even at MR. BIG, BAD, AND TALL.
“So,” Dawes said. “Why do you want June’s records?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I want to know what happened to her.”
“You know what happened to her. You’re her brother. You probably know more than all the rest of us combined.”
“I told you. I don’t remember.”
“If you don’t remember then there is probably a pretty good reason for that. It means you don’t want to remember. I’m not certain looking at files would be right for you. Or June.”
“So you won’t give them to me?” I didn’t want to push it. I liked Dawes. There were times I was tempted to tell him the truth. But even if he would have understood, even in the unlikely event he still would have let me see June, even in the totally impossible event he still would let me look at the files, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sometimes the lie goes so far that you can’t come back to the truth, no matter how much you want to.
Dawes said, “It’s not that we don’t sometimes let clients’ families look at their files. We do. It’s not that I don’t think it would be valuable for you to look at what’s written about your sister. I do. It’s just that there are a lot of things in there about your entire family. Things you maybe aren’t ready to read.”
“I’m ready,” I told him.
Giddy-up.
CXXVII
After Dawes gave me the file, I decided I wouldn’t go to work on Saturday.
Or Sunday.
Or Monday.
CXXVIII
What surprised me most about the file was its size. I guess I expected something the size of Darrel’s file at the Sally Ann — twenty or thirty typewritten pages with a counsellor’s scrawl added in the margins to record afterthoughts. What I hadn’t considered was that June had been at the Sisters Who Gave Good Hope for over sixteen years, compared to Darrel’s measly eleven months at the Treatment Centre. Her file was huge. In fact, it was a box of files, and even though I felt kind of sleazy about lying to Dawes to get it, especially since I was only working on a stupid story, I couldn’t help but feel elated as I carried it home on the bus. There I was, knee-deep in my little apartment above Rose and Amy’s Shit Palace with June’s photocopied files scattered over the carpet, going through them like the world depended on what I’d find there. I planned story after story about Darrel and June.
Jackpot!
CXXIX
1. The name Down’s syndrome comes from the physician John Langdon Down who described the condition in 1866.
2. In 1959 Professor Jerome Lejeune proved that Down’s syndrome is a genetic condition caused by the presence of an extra chromosome. This extra chromosome can come from either the mother or the father, and is present because of a genetic accident when the egg or the sperm is made, or during the initial cell division following conception.
3. There are three different types of Down’s syndrome. Ninety-five percent of people with Down’s syndrome have the type known as standard trisomy-21. This type of Down’s syndrome is always an accident of nature. It can happen to anyone and there is no known reason why it occurs.
4. Approximately one in a hundred people with Down’s syndrome have inherited the condition from their mother or their father because of a genetic anomaly called a translocation.
5. The third type of Down’s syndrome, also rare, is known as mosaic Down’s syndrome.
6. June Greene has the third type of Down’s syndrome.
CXXX
The features which doctors and nurses look for in infants suspected of being born with Down’s syndrome include:
1. Eyes that slant upwards and outwards. They often have a fold of skin that runs vertically between the two lids at the inner corner of the eye (recorded in June’s files as the epicanthic fold).
3. A face that appears somewhat flat with a flat nasal bridge.
4. A mouth cavity that is slightly smaller than average, and a tongue that is slightly larger. (Thus June’s protruding tongue when she is seriously concentrating on something.)
5. Hands that are broad, with short fingers, and a little finger that curves inwards. The palm may have only one crease across it.
6. A deep cleft between the first and second toe extending as a long crease on the side of the foot.
7. Reduced muscle tone which results in floppiness (recorded in June’s files as hypotonia).
CXXXI
This could have been a description of June from her high-school yearbook. That is, if June had gone to high school.
CXXXII
If I had commissioned an artist to paint a picture of Darrel’s sister, I could have given him this list of deformities so that he could get June just right.
CXXXIII
Still Life with June, by Somebody-or-Other.
CXXXIV
What Dawes didn’t tell me, and what I found after a half-hour of poking through the medical portion of June’s file — every ear ache she’d ever had, every trip to the hospital infirmary for nightmares or tummy ache or allergic reaction — was this. In 1994, June suffered from a marked decrease in motor control and the occasional fainting episode. They moved her into the infirmary for three days and eventually to the Sisters Who Gave Good Mercy Hospital for a spinal and a CAT scan. They suspected what half the nurses and doctors at the Sisters Who Gave Good Hope already knew.
June had muscular dystrophy boiling in her brain and her spine. What June had specifically, according to her files, was Becker’s Muscular Dystrophy, also known as BMD. Symptoms: Generalized weakness and muscle-loss affecting limb and trunk muscles. Calves often enlarged. Significant pulmonary disorders in some patients. All of which meant that June’s life expectancy, even compared to that of the other retards, would be considerably shortened if things kept up.
I wonder how Millennium Prophecies Aborted would tell June to handle this one?
Go to God, likely.
The fucking retard.
CXXXV
Dawes’s only stipulation when he gave me June’s files was that I was to come in to see him once a week, either before or after I had visited with June. Neither Dawes nor I was any dummy. We both knew that he was going above and beyond the call of duty for an under-paid, overweight institutional wing administrator. When I asked him why he did it he only shrugged and said, “June’s case has interested me for a long while.”
“Why? You must have a hundred Junes in here.”
Dawes surprised me. One of the reasons I liked Dawes so much was that he often surprised me. “Not as many as you think,” he said. “It has become the moral consensus of our society that people with Down’s syndrome should be allowed to live with their families, or in co-operatives and group outpatient situations with minimal supervision. We see fewer and fewer people like June now. In fact, the only reason June’s here is because of your family’s unique situation.”
“And what situation is that?”
“You’re reading the files,” Dawes said. “It’s all in there. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I’m still in the medical files,” I told him. “I’m still stuck on the BMD.”
According to Dawes, BMD was the best kind of muscular dystrophy to get.
I told him that was kind of like saying burning up is the best way to die.
Dawes ignored me and said, “Muscle disintegration with Becker’s is slower compared to other kinds of muscular dystrophy she might have gotten. She could live out her full life expectancy with only minimal loss of muscle and motor control.”
“You mean the full forty to sixty years? Hallelujah!”
“Look, Darrel, if you wanted the Good News Bible, you shouldn’t have gone to June’s files. June may not be completely incapacitated, but she does suffer from most of the ailments that people with Down’s syndrome can be expected to, like ...”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I have the list.”
“Okay then,” said Dawes. “On the very top of that list is BMD. I’d say June’s chances of living another twenty to thirty years are quite good, and ten of those may be perfectly happy years without too much degeneration. If you want assurances beyond that I’m afraid I can’t give them to you.”
For assurances beyond that I’d have to go to Feng Shui for Dummies. For assurances beyond that I’d have to pre-order my very own copy of Millennium Prophecies Aborted.
“So,” Dawes said. “What is this about wanting to quit your job?”
There was no getting away from it. In some subtle way Dawes had become the doctor and I the patient. Poor June was left out in the cold once again.
“It’s just a stupid job,” I said. “Besides, I’m writing like crazy. The job just gets in the way.”
“How would you live?” Dawes asked.
“I’d go on burn-out pay,” I told him. “After that I’ll see. Maybe I’ll go on welfare. Or unemployment. Or get another job.”
“You staying clean and sober?”
This was one of those tricky, who-do-I-answer-as questions. Darrel was an addict. Cameron could have a few drinks now and then without moving on to anything stronger. The thing about mixing the narratives and mythologies of two different people is that eventually you are going to slip up and confuse the two. I’d already told Dawes that I drank, forgetting for a moment that I was supposed to be Darrel the clean and sober addict/alcoholic. I decided to continue as Cameron in this situation, although it was getting hard to keep track of who I was all the time.
“I have a few now and then,” I told him. “Nothing that I can’t handle. It seems to be under control.”
“For now,” Dawes said. “It won’t stay that way forever. I’m not unfamiliar with the ways of alcoholics, you know. A lot of them end up here eventually, if they’re not careful.”
I bet they did, at that. Dawes said he had some work to do. I went up and had a game of crazy man’s ping-pong with June and the other retards.
We played pin the tail on the catatonic.
We played measure the vaginal cavities of the retarded girls to make sure the male wards aren’t getting any.
We played let’s all take our thorazine like good little boys and girls.
I went home after just one game of ping-pong, thinking that my mood wasn’t good enough even for the Sisters Who Gave Good Hope. I fell into June and Darrel’s files with a vengeful sigh. I wrote and drank Maxwell House and ate Kraft Dinner and tried not to ask myself the question that always occurs to failed thirty-year-old writers pretending they’re someone they’re not in order to write a few stories that no one will ever read: What in the hell am I doing with my life?
Still Life with Cameron/Darrel/Bubby/Annie.
Take a picture. It’ll last longer.
CXXXVI
Summer came early. By July it was already so hot I could hardly stand it. The entire city seemed to shimmer under the weight of all that heat. The Salvation Army doesn’t have air conditioning, and the temperatures on the dorm floors were torrid. Guys hung bare-chested out the windows of the smoking room, whistling at the girls below and cursing temperatures that were pushing thirty-five in the shade. My apartment on Lime Street was a veritable oven. Juxta had taken to laying on the cool por-celain bottom of the bathtub and, for an occasional change of view, curling up around the base of the toilet. I took to writing in the nude, except for the rubber boots. After lunch, when I wasn’t working, I visited June at the Sisters. I visited her a lot that month because the building was completely air-conditioned.
Of course June always wanted me to take her across the street to the playground. “Oh come on, June,” I’d say. “It’s too hot for that. Why don’t we stay insid
e where it’s cool and play ping-pong?”
But June was having none of it. So out we’d go, with June fighting the little kids for the swings and trying to force her fat ass down the slide. (She always got stuck halfway down and I had to grab her by the feet and pull her to the bottom, while all the kids stood around and laughed.) Usually we weren’t there an hour before most of the parents, disturbed by June’s 210-pound exuberance, pulled their children away just like they did at the movies and we had the entire playground to ourselves. I would sit in a swing and marvel at June’s energy. She would try to roll somersaults in the grass, which she was too fat and uncoordinated to manage, and she’d end up with green stains all over her elbows and the ass of her blue stretch polyester pants. I cringed to watch her play in the sandbox, which God knows how many dogs and cats had shit in lately, and end up with sand in her hair and up her nose. She would insist that I get on the teeter-totter with her, even though she outweighed me by sixty pounds. I’d always end up motionless in the air while June, baffled by the finer points of gravity and leverage, sat flat on her ass, unable to get us to move. “Oh poop!” she would cry, before unceremoniously climbing off and letting me crash without warning to the ground.