I went to him yesterday because I was lonely. He’s a male doctor, it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, but I think men doctors are softer. All through my twenties and thirties I had a woman, feeling that pap smears and breast exams were less awkward this way, but she was the sort of woman who would stand up before she asked, ‘Is that all?’ – daring me not to have anything else wrong with me. Dr. Trevor has been my doctor for the last fifteen years, taking the practice over from his father. There are almost no men left in family practice anymore, but this man is warm and kind with no interest in surgery or brains – the areas of medicine that would bring him serious money. I got my hair done downtown at Scissors before my appointment.
I stopped being embarrassed ages ago. My graying pubic hair sprouts everywhere, untamed; I used to keep it trim when I could still get my leg on to the toilet seat to shave properly. My armpits I can still manage, but they are sweaty by the time I get to his office. My stomach has crease marks from the skin hanging over skin; I no longer apply the scented shimmering lotion that used to shine when my body caught the light. The thin slivers of scar travel across where my breasts used to be; the Victoria’s Secret catalogues still come years and years too late. Alan used to read them in bed; Anna takes them home now to flip through. All of this I am used to now. He’s just a doctor. A man doing his job. I am nothing to him, an aging body.
I told him my stomach was hurting and he pressed a hand to my belly and asked, ‘Do you feel any tenderness here?’
His hand was dry and warm and all at once I imagined him sliding his hand lower, sliding his fingers into me asking, ‘How does this feel? Down here?’
I imagined this and my body was younger, my thighs smooth and taut, my toenails painted red, my underwear black and made of lace, and I remembered my perfect body lost somewhere inside the one I have now. He pressed the other side of my stomach. ‘What about here?’
I nodded as if that’s where it hurt.
Lying there so sexless and bare, I wondered if there were some instances where despite ethics and codes of conduct and society, the doctor and patient could not control themselves – if somewhere, it must have happened, they were both too wild to resist. I wondered if the doctor, a man of course, became hard underneath his white coat as he returned to the room where his female patient had undressed, if it came as a surprise, if the woman knew her effect on him, if it was calculated. I wondered if, while giving her a breast exam, he brushed her nipple ever so slightly and she gasped, involuntarily perhaps, at the sensation, if he would return to it, questioningly at first, and then encouraged by her breathing and the crinkle of the clean white paper underneath her body as she arched her back, with more certainty. I wondered if he would massage her breasts while she rubbed the front of his khaki pants, grabbing and pulling at him until he lay down on top of her. There wouldn’t be time to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, because everything would be wet, erect, urgent. The condoms would be in his desk drawer. He would be married, or they both would, and despite the circumstances the sex would be routine – quick, but satisfying, absent of any kinky additions like tongue depressors or stethoscopes. She would think about switching doctors but wouldn’t, because secretly she enjoyed this complication in her life.
Is it absurd to fantasize such things?
I surprised myself, how quickly my feelings turned like that, not realizing they were so near the surface, waiting.
‘It’s your posture,’ he said.
He’d determined that my imaginary stomach complaint was the result of my leaning over when I walked, cramping my insides.
‘When you walk imagine a string pulling you straight up towards the ceiling.’
‘Am I going to get a hunchback?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘If you were going to have a hunchback,’ he said, ‘you’d surely have it by now.’
I collected my things quickly and left. I bought a coffee from the drive-through on the way home, but the young woman didn’t let me get a proper hold of the cup before she let go, and it dropped. It splattered on the pavement between us and the young woman said, ‘Oh, fuck, just a minute,’ but I drove away. I didn’t know where to go and didn’t want to go home – back to the memories I had no place for.
I drove around the familiar city streets slowly, looking too often in the rear-view mirror, wondering where I had gone. My hair did look nice, and driving past the post office where Alan used to work I hoped to see one of the men or women leaving on their route so I could pull over and say hello, but it was too late in the day. There was no one. Looking at my reflection again, I remembered something Bryce told me long ago about the Salt Lake Tribune. The obituary section, he said, had ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures. Not after death, but after youth. It was like a Where’s Waldo he had said, staring into the second face and trying to match up the bone structure, the shape of the eyes, to determine if this was indeed the same person.
I drove around for a while, still not wanting to return home. But in the end I did.
Now I am sitting up straight in my kitchen chair, still watching the clock. I can’t decide whether or not I can still hear the warning siren, it seems a part of the atmosphere now, the sound registering unconsciously perhaps, but not really there like the chirping of birds or the sound of waves after a day at the beach. Perhaps I should have asked Dr. Trevor about my hearing.
I remember the invisible string, and concentrate, sitting straight in my kitchen chair because I can’t believe it’s ever too late in life to worry about getting a hunchback.
Mackinac
This morning Velvet sends me to pick up a prescription arriving on the first ferry from St. Ignace and the dock is busy with cigarette-smoking porters and ferry workers sorting out the morning’s orders. On my left are four boxes of tomatoes, eight boxes of black straws (Bryce says all the restaurants use the same straws so they can borrow from each other if they run out), and a bag of mail in a canvas sack marked PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE. On my right is a case of maple syrup and a ready-to-be-assembled oak dresser in a cardboard box. At the end of the dock Rummy stands alone, watching the departing ferry move slowly out into the lake towards the lighthouse. As it disappears around the edge of the island, he flicks a coin into the water, but he doesn’t turn around.
Velvet’s prescription is not at the dock, and one of the porters tells me to try the island’s medical center.
The center is impressive: pink granite and tinted glass with metal bike racks out front. There are no wooden shutters, tubs of geraniums, or wind chimes hanging from the eaves. It is functional, set back from Market Street so its modernity doesn’t offend the landscape. Community flyers on the door advertise Mackinac High School’s Italy fundraiser, Maureen’s Art Exhibition at Old Warren House, the book club led by Father Kim, and a community meeting about the proposed bike helmet legislation. I return to the Tippecanoe with two thousand milligrams of muscle relaxant.
Yesterday Brenna came to work complaining the center doesn’t offer abortions. Blue had followed behind her into the change room, looking horrified.
‘On this fucking island? They’d make a killing,’ Brenna said.
‘Why are you corrupting Blue with all your ungodly sin?’ Trainer yelled through the closed door.
Blue quit this morning, and she must have packed last night as she apparently left on the first ferry. She was a small silent girl from somewhere outside Chicago, and Bryce says she drank the vanilla latte syrup when she thought no one was looking, so maybe she’s better off at home.
Rummy finally arrives late for work and carrying his newspaper and Brenna pounces on him, pulling him into the walk-in cooler impatiently, her Tiffany bracelet shiny against her tanned forearm. He emerges after a few minutes, still carrying the paper and looking upset.
His parents send him the Sunday Star via overnight delivery every week, and he retreats with it to the Voodoo Altar – the ornate walnut end table decorated with carved faces i
s a Velvet family heirloom which also serves as the staff break table. I join him quietly, both of us sipping Velvet’s gourmet coffee thick with cream and sweet with sugar. Sitting across from him it feels like our own kitchen table, our own home, fresh with the smell of coffee and the Tippecanoe’s famous chocolate croissants; I imagine we are married, as Rummy fits the sort of imaginings I have about husbands, which aren’t many.
We sit together every Monday; no one else is interested in his current events, and no one ever asks to read the paper when he is finished with it, although someone usually manages to start the crossword. ‘Hemingway’s paper,’ he calls it. He is in his second year of journalism at a place called Ryerson, and usually when he reads he says things like, ‘Now this is news’ and, ‘This Siddiqui guy, his column is really something.’
Today he says nothing.
‘What do you think about Blue quitting?’ I ask.
He lowers his paper, and stares over at Brenna who is arguing with Chef Walter about a blonde hair he found in the ice machine. Waiting for Rummy’s answer I add more sugar cubes to my coffee, using my pen as a stir stick.
‘I liked her,’ he says finally.
While sucking coffee from the end of my pen, I remember Rummy at the end of the dock this morning and suddenly connect.
‘Is she okay?’ I ask.
He shrugs.
‘And Brenna knows?’
He nods. I’ve secretly always assumed that Rummy was a virgin, but I don’t ask him about it anymore.
‘What did you wish for?’ I ask him.
Rummy stares at me.
‘With your coin. In the lake.’
‘World peace,’ he says, and goes back to his paper.
I realize in spending all my time with Bryce, my relationship with Rummy has suffered.
‘So what’s going on in that great country of yours?’
He straightens the paper and turns the front page towards me so I can see the photo of a black and brown dog. ‘The pit bulls are eating the children. They’re thinking of banning the dogs.’
‘The dogs? What about the owners?’
Skimming the column he shakes his head.
‘Well, that’s the debate. Four people have been killed in just the last month. A five-year-old girl was mauled to death in front of her mother by a trained attack dog.’ He looks up and winks at me. ‘And you thought Canadian culture wasn’t violent.’
I roll my eyes at him. ‘What else?’
‘Global warming, religion… horoscopes?’ he asks, and I nod. ‘Keep your eye on the prize, Virgo,’ he reads. ‘Don’t get caught up in the small details. Things will soon become clear and your path will unfold itself before you. Avoid travel on the 17th.’
‘Great.’ I drink my coffee.
He looks up. ‘Mine says I’m handsome.’
After my morning shift I call my mother using the pay phone furthest away from the restaurant. Located on one of the ferry docks, it is noisy as people load and disembark, their feet pounding along the wooden planks. I wait until the boat sounds its horn briefly and begins to back out and turn around. I put a pocket full of quarters into the slot and the receiver is hot and wet, the humidity suggesting a storm later on this evening. I pray for rain so the restaurant won’t be busy. My mother picks up quietly at the other end, happy to hear from me. To use the library’s internet is costly, and without a phone in my apartment there is little way to get a hold of me besides sending letters.
‘I got your letter, Mom.’
‘Oh, well. It’s fine, I was going to call, but I thought a letter, maybe.’
She tells me there are appointments to keep, and my dad has rearranged his work schedule so they can drive into the city together.
‘We’ll make a day of it,’ she says. ‘A little day trip. We still haven’t tried that Thai place you recommended to us.’
‘The Friendly Thai,’ I say. ‘Make sure you get the pineapple-fried rice.’
‘It’s a long way from plucking chickens,’ she says.
This is a saying she uses sometimes, referring to her childhood farm chore of plucking the feathers off the dead chickens her brother killed. The family chores were divided evenly along gender lines: her brother would kill the chickens, and she would pluck them while her mother, my grandmother, cooked the chickens for dinner with potatoes and corn and carrots. Whatever was left over would go into a soup.
She repeats this saying when she’s trying new things or visiting new places to remind herself of just how far she’s come. It reminds me of just how far I’ve gone.
‘So tell me about your day,’ she says.
When I hang up the phone I observe a man wearing a twenty-five dollar novelty foam cowboy hat on his head, walking towards the docks to wait for the next ferry. His hat is neon orange, although you can get them in pink or green as well. His friends follow close behind him, all of them drunk.
‘Barry, you shithead!’ one of them is yelling. ‘You still owe me twenty bucks for eating that burger off the floor.’
The group pounds past me, the wooden dock shuddering with their heavy feet, the space filling with masculinity, sports teams supported on various T-shirts and one man smacking a miniature basketball against the planks.
‘Fuck off!’ Barry in the neon orange cowboy hat yells at him. ‘You threw up afterwards. It doesn’t fucking count.’
I return to work thinking of pit bulls and abortions and malignant growths, all wearing novelty hats atop their heads.
The chef special this evening is Horseradish Crusted Michigan Whitefish with Caramelized Onion, Seared in a Bacon Emulsion. With a different special every day, I sometimes get the adjectives mixed up, sometimes the meat as well. I had an entire table order veal chops once when the special was actually pork. Depending on the amount of French included in my descriptions, eyes will either glaze over as they hurriedly order the lobster fettucini, or there might be a knowing nod to the rest of the table. ‘I love mascarpone,’ they’ll say, or, ‘the BC salmon has been particularly nice this year.’ I have three tables tonight, two with water and pastas, one with wine (Château Grand Traverse Late Harvest Riesling, 1998), Scotch (Laphroaig), and two chef specials.
The air outside is slightly damp with mist and the sky is gray with clouds. An older woman with beautiful white hair waves me over.
‘Do you know the weather report for this evening?’
‘I think it’s supposed to rain later on,’ I say, having no idea.
Her tanned husband with cufflinks in the shape of anchors wants to know which bars will be good tonight. I list a number of them, telling him whether or not they have live music, and which bar supposedly makes the best Manhattan – his drink of choice. This earns me a wink. I avoid mentioning the Cock.
‘So are you from the island, Bell?’ he asks, reading my nametag.
‘Actually I’m from St. Paul.’
‘St. Paul.’
They look at one another, smiling.
‘Dina loves A Prairie Home Companion,’ he says.
All across the restaurant everyone carries on the same conversations.
The evening drags, and outside the sky gets darker. Waves with rough whitecaps roll towards the shore. I gravitate towards the window and watch the light change. Rummy stands beside me and we stare at the lake, though we are always alert for Velvet’s quick ponytailed figure. I am holding a crystal water pitcher, and he has a tray of carefully balanced dirty dishes, both of us able within seconds to appear busy.
The air in the restaurant changes slightly, cools, becomes heavy. Small sailboats and yachts gather together, heading for the safety of the marina which fills quickly. The black clouds advance and lightning blazes down to meet the water, splitting and cracking with bright silver light. The storm swoops in. The sky is lit every few seconds with sharp lines of electricity, and the wind hurls sheets of rain into the windows. Thunder invades the pleasant tinkling of the Tippecanoe.
‘It never gives up its dead,’ Rummy say
s, looking out the window.
‘What doesn’t?’
‘The lake.’
‘What?’
‘Gordon Lightfoot,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Gordon Lightfoot lyrics. Look it up.’
Rummy likes to lord his useless knowledge over me. I go and find Bryce, forgetting that he does the same. He is in the back polishing silverware with a muslin cloth. Velvet gets these cloths from a supplier in Ann Arbor who imports them directly from India. ‘The best muslin,’ she says with a sigh, ‘is from Mosul of course, but it’s impossible to get.’
‘Who’s Gordon Lightfoot?’ I ask him.
‘He sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”,’ Bryce says immediately. ‘But it sank in Lake Superior, not here.’
‘What?’
He sighs and puts down the knife he was rubbing.
‘Gordon Lightfoot is the folksinger that sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, about the ship that sank in Superior. Twenty-nine people died. Famous song.’
‘Why have I not heard about it?’
‘Because,’ he says, smacking my ass with the flat part of the knife then putting it in the pile of clean cutlery, ‘you’re adorable.’
I go back and find Rummy.
‘He’s a folksinger,’ I say.
‘A Canadian folksinger,’ he corrects me. ‘Like Stan Rogers.’
I sigh. The rain runs gray and streaming down the windows, distorting the view, and someone motions me towards their table to ask when the storm is going to stop.
‘Not tonight,’ I tell them.
St. Paul, 4:07 p.m.
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