by Charles Bock
One form of refuge arrived in the simplest of delights, flickering coolness on her tongue: rainbow sherbet. Alice indulged. The taste allowed her to imagine a very specific freedom: walking down the street, laughing and taking a lick from a waffle cone. Every so often she heard a song and let herself indulge further, imagining that he’d been in a studio for its creation. Alice saw him studying the sheet music, listening for his part and joining in, laying down tracks. She missed the humor of his calls, it was true. At the same time, she could not handle any more of the horror she’d felt those few times when Oliver had expected news from the hospital, and had picked up the phone.
How does Oliver see? The balloon floated through her clouded mind. How does that happen?
—
Past Alice’s bedtime. Her mother in the kitchen nook, zoning, worn out. Another batch of that horrid tea brewing. “To watch my girl slowly disappear like this…”
She balled her hand into a fist, gave Oliver a hard stare.
“I know hippies. I raised my only girl in a hippie town. Lord knows, I don’t have any problems with anyone having a spiritual center. But explain to me—not even going to the care center? Can she actually trust that statue more than her doctors?”
Oliver put an arm on her shoulder, brought himself down to her, and embraced her. In an even, sober voice, he promised: Katherine. He was staying on top of it all.
The next day, walking into the bedroom, Alice’s mother saw her only daughter and granddaughter sleeping next to one another. Half on her side, the baby was leaning in so the crown of her skull almost touched the top of Mommy’s, with Mommy’s shoulder serving as Doe’s pillow. Swathed by afternoon light, the sleeping infant had wrested free of the comforter and was nestled into her mother’s side. Doll eyes were shut, doll lashes long and curving just like her mommy’s had been. Doe’s breaths were slight; the petals of her lips—so delicate they could have been painted on by a toymaker—puckered happily around her pacifier. To her gramma, Doe looked whole, content. Alice remained motionless next to her, asleep on her back like always, compliant to her child’s clinging wishes, satiated by them, or maybe unconsciously oblivious. Alice’s mother could not tell. The two of them, like this, was one of the more tender sights Alice’s mother had witnessed, and one of the most horrifying. Her daughter’s head was so diminished, so stripped down and smooth. Its resemblance to a skull was simply impossible to ignore. Indeed, her daughter’s head was tilted backward, her mouth wasn’t just open but gaping, so wide it might have been unhinged. There was no way around it: Alice looked like a corpse. Even when Doe’s hand spasmed and came suddenly alive, dimpled chubby fingers clutching at Mommy’s neck, Alice did not respond. Alice’s mother dipped in, made sure she was breathing. Ten minutes later, she checked again.
Five minutes after that she still could not sit still. Could not be inside that apartment, could not do anything with her energy but convert it into action. She proceeded to go down the list that had been left for her, deciphered Oliver’s chicken-scratch directions. She let Alice’s friend know she’d be back.
Jefferson Market was acceptable enough, she guessed. Probably too in love with its pedigree for her tastes, and with prices that should have landed them in prison. Katherine loaded up, anyway. The store’s color-coded grid of neighborhoods didn’t include her daughter’s, which meant they wouldn’t deliver; but no matter, Alice’s mother dutifully loaded her grocery bags into a wire rolling cart. Empty cabs zipped past her, and when one finally stopped, the driver asked if she was going uptown, then explained in broken English, Shift over, have to get cab back, sorry. No matter. She continued with the loaded cart, and for a time admired the city’s hugeness, its teeming streets, even as she disliked and feared all…this. It took her some time. The pads of her feet got sore. Her right knee and hip ached. She stopped for bottled water.
Back at home, she turned stove burners on low and searched through cupboards for the right pans, until she remembered they were hanging above the nook. All the while she kept murmuring, continuing her indecipherable running monologue.
You are everything, I love you so much was what she used to tell her daughter when Alice was young.
—
Mouth accepted spoonful. The fluid, runny substance mashed between molars, onto her tongue, against her cheek’s inner cavity.
Without any visual prompts to guide her, without expectations or ideas, she tasted what immediately became apparent as liquid, not water, almost viscous. Light enough, though, with a tang. It was hot. Alice savored a mouthful. Another.
“Sends me right back to being a little girl and coming home from school.” She cooed. “Momma, I love your tomato soup.”
During his evolution toward Buddhaness, Alice knew, the Buddha went through an ascetic phase, one in which he denied himself, each day, all food save one grain of rice and one drop of water. By this train of thinking, suffering could provide. Perhaps it did not provide enlightenment, but instead a means toward enlightenment. Alice figured she had this suffering thing down pat. Perhaps, she reasoned, the narrowing funnel of her visual capabilities could provide her with direction. By narrowing her own focus, maybe she could widen her capabilities, deepen and enrich every remaining sensory experience.
She slowed her thoughts, concentrated, focusing on the smallish grains resting in her soup. Oblong. Thick in texture.
“I get couscous,” she said.
Another sip, a round solid substance, fibrous, with a give, her teeth sinking in. “And carrots. Mmm. Is that cumin?”
“A dash of harissa, too,” her mother answered.
Alice nodded, the name providing access.
Her mother handed her what she said was challah bread. Mom stumbled over the rough ch, her effort game and respectful and a bit comic.
Alice dipped the spongy slice, soaking it; she took a bite, let out a groan of appreciation.
“The world can open in new ways.”
“Sweetheart?”
Alice felt for and gripped and squeezed her mother’s hands, enveloping their bony strength. She took a breath and exhaled.
“I can exist like this.”
—
That afternoon, when Oliver came back from the other office, and entered the darkened bedroom, she was beneath Gramma’s patchwork quilt, in a fetal curl.
“Get out while you can,” she moaned.
Without delay he was on the move, heading right for the walk-in closet, in short order emerging with a sealed plastic bin. “I’m an idiot. Why I didn’t think of this sooner?” Overturning the container, dumping out small black objects shaped like bats. “All these just stored away,” Oliver said. He picked up a pair, checked the lenses. “How do you tell if one has lots of protection?”
She settled on a pair of oval couture Versaces that looked superpunkish, their arms crafted to look like steel safety pins. Today their appeal lay in their streamlined dark lenses, curving around the ridges of the eye like swimming goggles, sealing off all angles of light. Alice remembered them as a score, the primo takeaway item from a goodie bag given to her by a friend of a friend—a model turned trophy wife who’d decided to launch her own line during Fashion Week, hold her own, guerrilla-style show right on the sidewalk outside Bryant Park’s tents. Alice had pulled an all-nighter, alternately sewing and fixing like a banshee, holding the hand of this coked-up madwoman. Somehow, they’d managed to get the cocktail dresses close to wearable. The goodie bag had been Alice’s payment, the sunglasses worn five times then lost in the bowels of her closet.
An aftershave she’d given Oliver for the holidays had a subtle combination—cloves and cinnamon and pepper. It reminded her of the pleasure of snuggling into his chest late at night. The connection between her senses and memories provided a small charge. A belief in her own abilities.
She could open her eyes, Oliver promised, it would be fine.
She ran her hand down the side of his face, appreciating the sandpapery feel of fledgling facial hair,
as well as the lightly oiled flesh beneath. Bracing, she creaked her eyes a sliver.
The lenses did their job, layering the room in brown film. And it was indeed a pleasure to recognize features she well knew, the patient concern in his brow, his widening smile.
He’d shaved recently, she noticed, which charmed her no end.
“Let me take you to the care center,” he pleaded again.
“All I need is fresh air. Maybe we could take a little walk?”
Just around the block? A walk would give her some exercise. So her legs didn’t atrophy? And it would give her mom a chance to change the sheets and air things out—this room was so claustrophobic. Alice’s pulse raced through each spoken phrase: she had the perfect floppy straw hat, the hugest brim. She’d put on a thick medical mask. Alice knew her blood levels were still low, she promised Oliver she didn’t want to make anything worse. It would be so good for her.
The ringing intruded, always at the worst moment. She could tell from Oliver’s shift, his low Jesus, this could be a problem.
But no. She would not let it. Jeans that once had formed a second skin now were comically baggy, and Alice played this up, taking a while to belt them a second time. Though her feet had inflated into small rafting devices, a pair of running sneakers could fit as long as she didn’t wear socks. She completed the ensemble with a knee-length coat of distressed denim, its neckline fringed, white cotton shredded to look like feathers. “After all these years”—Alice laughed—“I’ve become Little Edie. Finally.”
She felt immediately ashamed, wallowing like that; nonetheless, momentum was flowing, the evening under way. “A respite from my own private Grey Gardens.”
Oliver pressed on her shoulder, and joined in with the fun, kissing her cheek, throwing his own idea into the soup.
Now Doe saw Daddy taking the harness from off the closet door. Recognizing that she, too, was going on an adventure, the baby drooled, spat with glee, little limbs flailing.
Alice reminded: Doe should face inward, toward him.
“Way ahead of you.”
Out of the elevator, into the short hallway, overhead halogen sending crackles of fear through her ears, Alice tightly closed her eyes, said “Oliver.” Her cornstalk legs trembled and her balance was unsteady, those ridiculous clown feet like sponges. Yet again, there he was: his arm a solid brick anchor around her waist, his prompts deliberate, his words soothing, his manner careful. “Small steps, all right, that’s it, doing great.” He propped open the front door, his body providing leverage, his hand guiding her forward. “In three steps, you will have the first stair, we need to go down it to get to the street. Okay, one step and now, step. Now, again, step.”
The false spring hadn’t fully disappeared, but nights were getting cooler. Tonight’s air was thick, sticky with the promise of rain. Streetlamp light was diffusive, the neon from stores carrying in small, thinning clouds. Alice shielded her eyes, looked away from brighter areas. With each step she measured and placed herself firmly on the uneven sidewalk. She also used each taken step as an exercise; first to acknowledge the fear in her, and then to gather resolve, continue onward. A few times she felt around Oliver’s arm, tightening her grip, signaling he should slow. The residual stench of dry ice remained, even stronger out here. Still, being outside was a pleasure, the gloom of the Meatpacking District a treat. Even her developing sweat felt delicious, almost libidinous. Doe’s neck was craned as well. Staring at Mommy, her eyes sparkled, that consciousness dawning, thinking what?
At the intersection of West Thirteenth, beneath the near edge of the elevated tracks, a pair of transvestite hookers were at their usual spot, one fixing her wig and applying mascara, the other scarfing popcorn. Donette and Michelle’s thing: they dressed up as identical schoolgirl sisters. Alice had long grown accustomed to them coveting her boots, mangling pronunciation of the brand name of the pencil skirt they swore they’d cut her for. Tonight, however, their cattiness gave way to stone silence. What she must have looked like. She mentioned as much to Oliver.
He did not respond. Rather, she felt a different transition taking place inside him, his fingertips tensing, now gripping her hip, his posture going rigid.
She looked to him and saw his eyes squinting, his attention focused.
“Motherfuck,” he said.
Alice tried to follow, to see what he saw; what met her were blurs, black streaks.
“What?” she asked, but knew, a horrible thrill. “Not again.”
The anger consolidating through him was her answer. But he wouldn’t, he couldn’t abandon his blind cancerous wife on the street, just take off—not with their baby strapped to his chest? He couldn’t make chase.
“Oliver?” she said.
“STOP BOTHERING HER.”
From down the alley came the sounds of trash cans being overturned. Now a small dog, letting loose, pointed and angry yips.
Oliver radiated anger, screaming: “STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM US. I PROMISE. I FUCKING PROMISE—”
—
The child was finally down and asleep, the two of them sitting together on the couch.
“Explain this to me,” he said.
Alice felt his eyes on her face, heard the undertones of his subdued breaths. Now his voice was careful. “I still don’t get how one random conversation in a hallway set this off. You bonded, okay. But…”
“He’s going through something, Oliver.”
Oliver’s hands went wide, gesturing. “As opposed to the game of Parcheesi we’ve got here?”
“I don’t know what you could possibly think happened?”
“On our list of problems, I know. I know.”
Alice promised she had no idea why this man was following her. “We’ve had two conversations. That’s all.”
Oliver stared, as if studying something on her face. “I thought you said only one.”
“The one in the hallway,” Alice responded. “And he stopped by the next day, before he was discharged.”
“So two,” Oliver said.
Alice admitted, two. She admitted, it had been a mistake to give Merv her phone number. This had all gotten out of control, but—her voice went shrill—she’d done nothing wrong. “This is insane. I can’t even remember what he looks like.”
Alice choked up, almost in tears. She caught herself. “Please,” she told Oliver. “We’re getting to a place in this argument where you can be right or we can be married. And I need so badly to be married to you.”
She could sense his rage, but also could feel him working through this. He crossed his arms over his chest. He looked away, into space. He uncrossed his arms and did not move, and yet was not so stiff anymore, but internally seemed to sigh, or somehow deflate, as if some essential part of him were leaking out from a small hole. Again he seemed to sigh without sighing. He repositioned himself, scooting closer to her, reached for her thighs, picked up her legs, and placed them lengthwise across his body, so he could support her while she reclined. He said how proud he was of her for making it all the way to the end of their block. “We should do it every night.”
Alice had small creases on the side of her head, little red indentations where the inside band of her hat had rested on her scalp. Through her tears she asked how she could have possibly done anything. “Why would I want to? Don’t you see how absurd this whole thing is? You are my hero. Do you understand that?”
They talked deep into this night, unburdening, plowing forward, headfirst, through barriers, into confidence. Oliver told her he’d wanted to keep the money side from her, but finally had shared his relief when he’d understood the insurance deal could be a solution. He still worried that eight hundred things might go wrong. The worst and most negative part of him refused to exhale until Peachford had cashed that first check.
For the first time in how long Alice studied his face and recognized that his eyes had dark circles beneath them. He’d gained weight in his cheeks.
He kept on, sharing with Alice
the pressure he felt to get the program finished. Whenever he looked at the Brow’s code, it was sloppy, or rushed, incomplete, or just painstaking, lichen-like in its slowness.
Finding her husband’s ear, she rubbed, enjoying the sensation of follicles just beginning to come in along the space behind his lobe.
“You always come through,” Alice said.
Around his brows there was a tremor; in his eyes something appeared ready to shatter. He looked down, away.
Then Alice was admitting how much she missed Doe burrowing into her breast. She was feeling along her thighs, showing him the bruises from the last time the baby jumped on her. All Alice wanted from life was for Doe to take her for granted the way Alice took her mother for granted. But even that, having her mom here, working and worrying so hard and taking care of her, Alice hated it. She hated feeling helpless. She hadn’t been sick ten days in her life. What, was she supposed to learn to embrace her growing sonar capabilities, like this was some good thing?