My roving mind came to fortuitous rest on a smarmy commercial for St. Mary’s Hospital, a former Episcopal charity for the Victorian indigent, newly reconceived as a for-profit, state-of-the-art maternity clinic. Wil and Lucinda couldn’t swing the insurance for it and had to settle for Occam General. Had St. Mary’s recorded a recent uptick in stillbirths? Had Occam General? Attrition among pets and bees I could make a case for, but not infants, not with Warren Rice as sole example. Yet nothing would be simpler to tally than perinatal death toll. What was it Wil had suspected? That his twins weren’t the first with their symptoms? That hospital staff had instructions to separate such babies from parents? The TV took up the entire top of the squat dresser at the foot of my bed. I hit the Power button with the remote from my nightstand and sank the bedroom into darkness. Sat up with my back against the headboard and deliberated.
To compile who was dying of what, I needed death certificates, and what the hell, I worked in City Hall. Moreover, to avoid electronic fingerprints that online search might produce, I only had to abuse the trust of Mr. Marsh. Mr. Marsh, my immediate supervisor, had no first name as far as we subordinates were aware. He was Chief City Clerk, or officially, sole claimant to title of the City Clerk. From his third-floor sanctum, he issued one mass e-mail each 8:30 A.M., listing every clerk and his or her day’s assignment. Otherwise we’d have had no proof he was in the building, though he’d been as cozily entrenched some forty years as an oyster in its shell. I attributed that staying power to a talent for divesting himself of personality, for absenting from his bodily presence all but the modicum of a self that went through the routine motions. There was too little of him on the job for monotony, office politics, or friendships to make any incursions. A model of “transparency” in government. But in the sense of virtual invisibility, rather than openness.
He indulged one passion in his high-ceilinged oyster shell of an office, and that was what impelled me to sneak upstairs during his dependable noon-to-one lunch hour. In drawers built into all four walls from floor to cornice, in row upon row of steel filing cabinets surrounding his desk like waves overwhelming an island, he had crammed decades of the documentation that municipal database had rendered redundant: building permits, assorted citizen grievances, expired union contracts, and a hundredfold other forms, including death certificates, of course. With everything in an ingeniously alphabetized, chronological system where garden-variety intuition functioned as 95% reliable guide.
The most recent death certificates were at convenient waist level, in an olive-green unit within pool-cue length of Mr. Marsh’s spartan desk, but beyond sight of the door. With a pen and Post-its from out of my hip pocket, I started totaling “stillbirths” as bundles of four lines and a cross-stroke, but as I flipped back through the first half of August and into the folder for July, it behooved me to tabulate “miscarriages,” “fetal deaths,” and “neonatal deaths” as well. This was gobbling up unforeseen amounts of time, and at the prospect of confronting Mr. Marsh my hands grew clammy, and from my empty stomach rose acidic gurgling. I dared not consult my wristwatch, for then I’d feel constrained to check it again and again, squandering valuable seconds and, potentially, my lifetime allotment of heartbeats.
Unsure if my rapid scrawl would even be legible tomorrow, I felt obliged to fray my nerves further by jotting down each new cause of death. “Stroke,” “heart failure,” “seizure,” and “spasms” all smacked sharply of prevarication. The notation for Warren Rice read “umbilical asphyxiation.” Right.
As of mid-July, I counted thirty maternity-ward deaths altogether. That couldn’t be normal. Were Occam’s doctors up against more than they knew, or more than they would say? By accident or design, did those separate headings of fetal and perinatal and infantile fatality disguise an underlying trend, a common mechanism that killed earlier or later? And how to tell when I, like Wil, was in danger of wading over my head into murky conspiracy theory? On the other hand, how could the brain trusts at two hospitals have failed to grasp such a glaring pattern?
Wait a minute. Hadn’t one entry from a week ago been x-ed out except for “seizure”? I backtracked, and through the censoring ink, made out “crawling skin syndrome.” A diagnosis I could safely bet would never surface in the Physicians’ Desk Reference. Or in these files ever again. One or more practitioners had seen something in sufficient numbers to attach a name to it, informally at least, but had incurred second thoughts or higher-ups’ disapproval. How did that old saw go? Just because Wil was paranoid didn’t mean he was wrong? Crawling skin syndrome. My emotive cogs stalled and overheated as I tried to process that.
“Are you about done in here?” I dropped my pen clattering into the drawer and turned my reddening face toward waxen Mr. Marsh’s. He stood beside his desk, hands folded behind him. No malice or sarcasm or rebuke enlivened his speech or his expression. His feelings about my trespass were, I gathered, none of my business. Nor did his bland look demand excuse or justification from me. It was like being busted by Bartleby the Scrivener. Abandoning my pen, I shut the drawer and mumbled apologetically and cleared out. But if I’d insisted I wasn’t quite done yet, would he have backed solemnly out of his own office?
As I clambered downstairs, trying to project an air of blamelessness, Mr. Big Shot Recorder of Deeds was lumbering up, with swaying steps as if the liquid content of his lunch were sloshing back and forth. True to habit, he feigned blindness at my existence and may well have forgotten I’d borne witness to his disgraceful exit from the Aviator. That was heartening, as was the certainty that my intrusion would not be grist for Mr. Marsh’s conversations, insofar as he never had any. All in all, a cloak-and-dagger mission commendably accomplished. But an overall picture of what hung over Occam still evaded me, even after adding and connecting that dot of “crawling skin syndrome” to the rest.
7
My lunch-hour discoveries joined the list of all else I’d withhold from Wil with mixed feelings. I foremost didn’t like adding fuel to any of his destabilizing, obsessive trains of thought, even if (or especially if) they were on the right track. And whatever I did tell him at this stage might beg the question of what I hadn’t told him previously, fraught scene resulting. All the same, when he phoned, I was almost conscience-stricken into opening up to him, until the purpose of his call threw my good intentions overboard.
I should have been used by now to hearing from him at suppertime, just as I was unwinding after work and looking forward to staying put. Could I please come over within the hour and babysit, as I’d promised that night at the Aviator? They had to go out. With leaden emphasis on “had.” Aloud, I acquiesced readily. Inwardly, I groaned like a soul in perdition. He imparted no further details before waxing lavishly grateful, as on that other night when I stopped in and Lucinda’s water broke.
I heated up the last of many servings from that refried spaghetti and let the skillet soak amidst a few days’ cups and dishes in the sink. My hand was on the doorknob when the phone rang again. A reprieve? Please? Afraid not. The archetypal lilt of blueblood matron was requesting I announce the Occam Historical Society’s rummage sale on that “local history program” of mine. She tossed off her name too briskly for me to intercept it. Sadly, her event was happening the Saturday after next, a week before the next Chronicles would air. At this late date, I advised her, she had best submit her info, tomorrow if possible, to the Community Bulletin Board that Pabodie Cable posted between shows. But it sounded like a great event for a worthwhile cause, I enthused, and promised to be there, and hoped it would be a big success. Her cooler tone implied she didn’t care what I hoped if I couldn’t do what she wanted, and after perfunctory goodbyes I pondered how low the old money had fallen, for its Historical Society to go the Swamp Yankee route of fundraising.
In front of Dyer Hall I opened the Taurus door, and hysterical screaming assailed me. Where exactly was it was coming from? Couldn’t say. Somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. Dear God, let it not be Lucinda!
On and on it went, as if expelled from lungs possessed or bottomless. A thirtyish citizen in baggy shorts and Izod shirt strode past, endeavoring to block the racket by riveting his eyes on the sidewalk. I, however, had paused too long, as if a Siren tune were embedded in the caterwauling, which on closer listen revealed semitone shifts in pitch, gradual transitions between vowels, and barely perceptible staccato gaps, like rapid-fire Morse code. In my fascination, these nuances took on a semblance of exotic language. And when the voice abruptly ceased, breath caught in my throat while an echo, or possibly two echoes, lingered somewhere in the brownstone and vinyl-sided walls of urban canyon. Belief in unrealistically long echoes was less problematic to me than belief in one coded scream answering another.
I wagged my head free of trance. Wil buzzed me in, and a hush surrounded me up to the Rices’ door, and it persisted after I knocked and Wil let me in. What hit me instantly was the condo’s overripe, rancid, carnal odor, with a more pernicious element of death, sickening despite half-open windows. A lapse in housekeeping because baby came first could explain neither the odor nor the squalor that also surrounded me. And here I had agreed to babysit for how many hours?
Chic domicile was now the kind of lair where someone manic might have hoarded forty cats. Despair had found expression as disorder. Dirty laundry on the floor, dirty plates and cups on glass and wooden surfaces, spills and stains mottling the carpets and upholstery. And none of it, curiously, included baby bottles, clothes, or diapers. Dog toys, though, still lay scattered about, days after Elsie’s getaway. The air conditioner was broken. Someone had punched in the touch-screen controls.
On the couch, Lucinda, in unclean yellow jogging outfit, blended right in, as good as camouflaged. She sat no less inert than the disarray around her, eyelids drooping under the weight of sedation, so that only black slits stared out. “Jeff’s here, honey,” Wil told her, to no visible effect. I couldn’t define how, but would swear she was physically as well as mentally withdrawn. Literally not all there. Behind ashen complexion, a portion of her had been sucked inward, collapsed, disappeared. And what of Morgan, and where was he?
“Poor Lucinda’s been up against a triple whammy.” Wil’s eyes pleaded with me to understand and, more importantly, to take him at his word. “The postpartum depression, and the problems with Morgan, and then Elsie escaping. It’s come to where I think she needs a clinic for however long, and I was able to wrangle a bed for her even though they don’t usually admit after 6.” Overcoming malaise at her comatose look and the vile smell, I essayed a soft, compassionate smile and vetoed asking if Lucinda had been screaming till a minute ago. Instead, I raised what struck me as a safely moot point, insofar as the die was cast and they were as good as out the door. How was it he trusted the psychiatric establishment more than the medicos?
“This place is holistic. I don’t know if the insurance’ll cover it or not, but the situation’s out of hand, so we’ll have to burn that bridge when we come to it.” And if I read between the lines of that “situation” correctly, then yes, Wil had administered Lucinda something stronger than her wailing hysteria, and it had kicked in upon my arrival. A happy coincidence for me. “Some other new parents who’ve been dealing with the same issues recommended this facility. A lot of herbal and homeopathic therapies.”
Desperate Wil really didn’t want my opinion of “alternative medicine” or New Age anything, but I almost let slip that more new parents were in his boat than he realized. With so much on his plate already, though, why increase his burden with facts? Nor was I quite ready to draw full breath and speak again. Still growing acclimated to the odor and inhaling shallowly. I also had to stop and consider Wil’s talk of “other new parents.” Since Lucinda’s ills went miles beyond his armchair diagnosis of depression, were other mothers of crawling-skin babies “dealing with the same issues” of a similar condition, and were they harbingers of something bigger and worse in the offing?
“Anyway, the clinic’s over in Armitage. Not too bad a haul, but we ought to get going. Jeff, I can’t thank you enough for stepping up like this.” I only nodded and crassly prayed the odor might ease up in Lucinda’s absence. “And don’t worry about Morgan. He won’t need tending to till I get back. He’s a good little sleeper, normally.” I picked up the same overtone of equivocation from Wil as when we’d left Morgan alone with a tranked-out Lucinda while we hunted for Elsie. But let it go! The sooner they went away, the sooner Wil would come back.
“Honey, can we start heading out?” Wil leaned over and appealed to her tenderly, affectionately, but stopped short of touching her. She reacted sluggishly. Her mind remote, I intuited, within an Empty Quarter whose breadth encompassed her former self, and where words were slow to penetrate and slow to make sense.
She wasn’t overweight, in spite of recent pregnancy. Had always prided herself on her figure, in fact, and worked out religiously. Hence my twinge of cognitive dissonance, when each adjustment of her legs and torso for the sake of standing had the ungainliness of a zeppelin uncoupled from moorings. Her mass seemed too cumbersome for her. Her limbs, simultaneously, seemed flimsy and loose-jointed and begged the question of whether she could cross the room without crumbling.
Wil was inured or oblivious, or both, to her fragility, and she poked forward unaided while he instructed me, “The sofa folds out, you know. I might be gone past your bedtime. Feel free to sack out if you like.” I risked gulping foul air to thank him heartily for that. A raft of cleanliness in this unhygienic Sargasso. And that was before my eyes chanced to light on the sofa cushions, where flakes and dust lay like a tentative chalk outline where Lucinda had been sitting. Skin and flesh, precipitating off her brow, out of her sleeves? Was she truly crumbling, grain by grain?
At a polite distance, I followed the godforsaken couple across the room. She was still a step ahead, and struggling to open the door as if she’d never used one before, with left hand on the knob and right hand grasping the jamb. She tottered back, and Wil put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. As if prey to deep-seated reflex, she took a clumsy swipe at him, which he evaded easily and with no show of surprise. How often did she transform into a vicious stranger, lashing out at his good intentions? He had touched something in her that didn’t recognize him at all, and that had distorted her face into malignant unfamiliarity. Wil turned and conceded sheepishly, “She’s not herself right now.” I reverted to calmly nodding. She shambled out, and he hovered beside her, and I locked myself in.
Their Outback was at the curb, and through filmy glass I watched him guide her into it with diplomatic phrases and gestures, as if she were some dim, unpredictable brute. Careful to avoid hands-on assistance. He seemed aloof to a further change in Lucinda that both frightened and baffled me. Was she vaguely luminous, emitting that same unidentifiable color as her amniotic fluid? Or had my tired eyes misread a streetlight or the moon beaming on her? I heaved the window all the way up, but a clearer view made no difference, and as they departed I opened every window all the way.
Next I swept the leather cushions to the floor and dragged a glass-top coffee table to one side and pulled out my fresher-smelling refuge of a queen-size bed. In the process, a TV remote popped free of confinement in unfolding mattress. Perfect! The Rices had sprung for premium channels and, relative to mine, their screen was on a multiplex scale. Did a belly-flop onto the creaky bed, to rest my chin at the foot end, facing the TV across the living room. Unless nature insisted, I wouldn’t budge for the duration. Wil would never begrudge me food and drink, from top-shelf down, but I wasn’t about to set foot in what must have been a nauseating kitchen at best.
After losing myself in a flurry of channel-flipping, the sensation of being too alone here bothered me. I muted the set, and all was quiet as a vacuum. No infantile snoring or rustle of blanket. Had to take Wil’s word for it that Morgan was asleep in a crib behind the door narrowly ajar, adjacent to the open door of parental bedroom. I was loath to go in and see, and upset him into squall
ing. What then? Sight unseen or not, I was profoundly averse to handling that baby. Then too, there were decent odds of a denser stench in that more confined space, sending me, gorge rising, to an equally disgusting bathroom. No, best leave well enough alone.
Lulled myself into switching, at commercial breaks, between a docudrama about the Trojan Horse and some ’30s vehicle for William Powell and Myrna Loy. When ads ran on both channels at once, I pressed Mute and strained my ears, never to any purpose.
The loutish question arose of what the hell I was doing here. The baby was “dead to the world,” as I indelicately observed, while I continued to mouth-breathe, with stomach aching, in that stubbornly abiding miasma. Of course, nobody with an ounce of responsibility would leave an infant to its own devices, and my presence “just in case” was mandatory. My tribulations tonight comprised only a paper-thin fraction of Wil’s everyday own, but I was miserable enough. The evening was playing out as I knew it would, from the moment I’d rashly volunteered.
Or so I thought. Apathetic hours of viewing had dulled my wits, such that I made nothing of the news at 11 that the Canada geese were gone. A voiceover during before-and-after footage of a strutting flock and then of still waters touted this as cause for rejoicing, because the birds had been a perennial nuisance, chasing folks, fouling the shoreline, interfering with recreational craft. Presumably, it had entered their heads to migrate south, for once, and good riddance forever, with any luck. Now, the voiceover sighed, if only the swallows and swifts would do their job and eat this summer’s oversized mosquitoes and horseflies.
The Color Over Occam Page 5