Alice & Oliver

by Charles Bock

  But Merv is oblivious. He grabs one of the trash bags the nurse brought in, places the stacks of posters and pictures and yearbooks inside, and then, in quick, disciplined movements, wraps the rest of the bag, in circular layers, around them. “I’ve wasted more time moving gear than you even know,” he says.

  My new room, in comparison to the dungeon closet, is a palace—it could be a large studio apartment—and the far-side wall is essentially a window, with afternoon light filling the large rectangular space, and a view that extends beyond the nearest buildings and water towers. I ask the orderlies to let me sit for a bit on the sunny side, shades drawn. I look out onto the urban sprawl: small old apartment buildings and bigger ones behind them, rooftops and blocked views, spires and towers stacked like toy blocks, juxtaposed, elbowing, sprawling for as far as the eye can see.

  Eventually the nurses do their sorry jobs and ease me into bed; the second orderly tends to the Christmas tree. Oliver keeps bringing packed trash bags into the room. He’s sweating freely but will not take a break. Why he’s decided to nail himself to the cross and martyr himself, whether there’s some inner competitive thing he has, I don’t need to figure it out. Merv has seated himself beside my bed, legs extended, and he’s watching my husband with more than a little amusement, now even putting his hands behind his head and stretching out. Honestly, his amusement is infectious. My system is stressed from the room change. I’m happy to have the company. Happier to share moments of absurdity.

  “So,” he says, once Oliver is safely out of the room. “You holding up?”

  The look I give must suggest he’s insane, stupid as moss. Then I understand. I take my time in smiling at him, doing so without opening my mouth, a fooled Cheshire grin. I feel myself eyeing him, and keep examining him. I am implacable, mysterious.

  “Why do you keep coming around?” I ask.

  He shifts in his seat, rubs the back of his neck. “Well well then.”

  “I don’t mean to offend you.”

  “It’s a problem?” He smirks. “I can see he’s wrapped tight—”

  “I’ve asked you before, haven’t I? I’m just not sure I understand.”

  Is it adrenaline that makes me feel this lucid? I have no answer, but I do feel more alert, much better than earlier. Still, it’s a strain to talk this much; I start coughing. He hurries, offering ice chips, water. My coughing ends, and I thank him, take the glass, sip, feel the cold against the back of my throat.

  Right, Merv says. If his only motivation was to help people, why wasn’t he volunteering in a hospital closer to his dad’s place? Why doesn’t he play music for patients on other floors or in other wards?

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “You need a transplant, you’re getting treated at this hospital, so if there was a pissing chance you were in this ward, I wanted to be here for you.”

  My skin crawling, my innards curl.

  “Wait.” Now his voice carries a level of authority. “I know you’re not, what, available?” He visibly enjoys his joke. “Yeah, bedridden, the radiation, the chemo, that plus the body-wrecking high-end medical procedure—they might have tipped me off. Honest, I’m ashamed of before. When I was laid up in my cast, I kept thinking about the way I’d followed you. Stalked you, I guess. The last thing you needed.”

  Different thoughts flash across his face. Now his fingers move of their own accord, tapping out the rhythms of some exercise or another.

  “A hard cold wind was blowing inside me for a long time,” Merv says. “I knew it, and still let it take me. Told myself whatever, couldn’t stop myself. It was fucked up. I know. Still, even before I was in that cast, this is the truth, when I thought about how you were doing, what you were going through—”

  “Mervyn.”

  “I took it one way, I know, ran down the wrong road. Maybe I’m on the right one now. A lot of that has to do with you. Lady, I think about your will. Your life force. Reaching out like that?”

  He doesn’t have a chance to continue, and I don’t have a chance to answer, for Oliver, with his usual impeccable timing, has returned with another loaded wheelchair. Merv starts to rise, as if ready to help, but Oliver makes a point to proceed as if he does not see him: unstacking the suitcases, leaving the pile just inside the doorway. He wonders whether he should leave some sort of sign at my old room, inform other visitors.

  And then he’s leaving again. Merv and I look at each other. We don’t even try to keep from chuckling. I study his perpetually unwashed hair, always falling down in front of his eyes, his unplucked, full brows. Merv again stretches out that lame leg, feels at his thigh. He bends his knee and extends again, almost as if testing the joint, its working stability.

  “It’s sweet,” I say. “A very romantic thought.”

  “Insane, you mean.”

  —

  My knee touched his, if we are being honest. This was our first contact. While I recovered from my walking laps, we sat and talked in that antiseptic hallway, and our knees touched, and I did not pull away, but allowed my knee to keep touching his. I took my mask down, so it rested around my neck. I tilted my head and moved forward, toward this man—this man I did not know, had not met, until that night. Numb unreality had me, the feeling of entering a new dimension, a place where there were no rules. I pressed my lips against his; he gave nothing in return, a statue, causing me to pull back just a bit. I allowed him a moment. And then my gloved hand cupped the underside of his stubbly chin; I came in for more, and felt him pressing back, acquiescing. His breath was warm and musky, his lips thick, with a supple strength. I took his bottom lip in between my teeth, sucked in its rubbery substance, teasing, gently chewing, and now opened myself, though only a bit, to his tongue. I was the one, directing his hand: taking it from off my cheek, moving it downward, to my breast. I was the one, moving his hand further downward, past the cinched, knotted cord of my bathrobe. Long seconds there. My eyes glassy. I let out a little sound, the fear recognizable in my purr. “That’s enough, I think,” I said, and then took my time, putting my mask back in place, straightening my robe. Me, the demure schoolgirl, without the slightest ambiguity, rising, starting back down the hallway.

  —

  We are grinning like conspirators. We are conspirators. And here is my dear husband, back once again, He Whom Is Conspired Against, on the other side of it all, huffing for breath, his adrenaline receding. However suspicious he might be, the flat truth is, he also is back up, out of his chair, forming a rickety sort of tandem with Merv, the two of them working with a quiet efficiency, putting up half of the wall of pictures. Similarly, they set my clothing into the bureau drawers, hang my coat in the new closet. It is immediately after this last task that Oliver pauses long enough to appreciate the light and space of this new room. He laughs about how tired all this zipping has made him, and says he feels like spending the day in bed, and wants to know can he get in with me, and we do lie together, snuggled in a bed that has been built for one, and the three of us find the cards and play gin rummy. And Oliver stays within striking distance of my point total, and Merv is actually an amateur at cards, which is a bit hard for me to believe—“isn’t there supposed to be all that downtime in the studio?” I ask him—and Merv laughs at himself, and he hangs in as best he can, trying to learn the game, and if Oliver does not join in the laughter, he doesn’t try to trump the guppy straight down the drain, either. And then Tilda surprises us with chocolates and noisemakers, she can’t believe she missed the big event!

  Every night a messenger service delivers vials of my blood to a lab in New Jersey, whose scientists examine it and check the numbers themselves and see what I need, and they make up a special mixture of chemicals and medicinal gunk, which gets delivery-serviced to me for the following day. Nurses replace my intravenous tubing every day to make sure there’s no bacteria growth. One nurse absently tells me she wishes she’d bought stock in medical tape. All of them encourage: I should hang in, I should keep hanging in. Friends kee
p arriving, sitting bedside, strapping themselves in: even Lani, who’s canceled on so many plans, bailed early on so many visits. Face soft and stricken, she presents me with a signed poster from the virtuoso singer-songwriter whose yearly concerts at Town Hall we used to faithfully attend. Underneath the struck, muscular pose the dreadlocked rock star has scribbled my name and Hang in there.

  And my hair is falling out again, in clumps and balls, also short little gray or black strands, pretty steadily now, floating away and resting on my shoulders, the little clippings that must be dusted off after you get cut and blown and styled, and I can’t pretend this doesn’t send me plummeting, and I suspect something must have happened with my most recent platelet infusion, because I’m itching something fierce, my rash morphing into armies of ants up and down my forearms, and the vise has similarly tightened around my throat, and my feet have swollen into cinder blocks (doctors constantly asking if I feel tingling sensations in my hands and feet; I don’t know what to say, don’t know what answer I’m supposed to give); and, if this isn’t humiliating enough, I’ve started getting the runs, again, really bad, and it’s horrible, unmerciful—I can’t really get anywhere, already I’m so weak that a nursing assistant is supposed to accompany me on all trips to the bathroom—as soon as I feel that little rush inside of me, I’m supposed to buzz, and sometimes the nurse makes it in time to help, but mostly I have to use the basin, and there are the times it doesn’t work out, when the assistant has to scrub my bottom clean, and my sheets have to be changed as well, and it’s infantilizing, I am as helpless as a baby, and I weep at this, I weep so much, can’t help myself, and on top of all this, they have me taking that stupid stool softener more frequently, which doesn’t quite make sense, given that I am shitting the bed three times a day. I write a note to Oliver: When does it get easier?

  Vaginal spotting is just another way of saying bleeding. At least I’m down to two pads a day. Still, I’m constantly telling Simone and Requita and Alvarez that I need more pads, please. I taste blood on the inside of my mouth, and only get the taste out when I swish the special mouthwash to prevent sores or infections. There’s an air pick next to my bed that sucks away phlegm and blood and dead skin. My face and neck bloat further, my cheeks droop around my mouth. I get more estrogen. I get this protein mixture that looks like a big bag of urine. My skin is still sunburned and swollen, only now there are cracks and I’m being told it’s not good to have lots of cracks like that in my face, it means my skin is breaking down, I need to apply a lot of lotions. I have store aisles’ worth of lotions, oceans of lotions, and need to apply more. The remaining strands of hair on my head look like stray feathers on a baby chicken. My hands shake and shake and I can’t stop them. An older physician who shows up for rounds—very neat, with straight up-and-down posture—asks me, Isn’t this view astounding? “If only someone would wash the windows every once in a while,” he says. A nursing assistant is outside my room on watch, sitting on a chair around the clock—in order to help get me to the bathroom, that’s how I choose to think of it. Julie reads the day’s gossip from “Page Six.” I hold her hand and laugh with her and stare at her gorgeous face, and from her expression I know she feels my love for her. When I listen to my mother’s updates about Doe, with every gurgle and noise the deepest well of love opens inside of me. When a resident tells me it’s been six days since I’ve had food or water, I want to ask how she thinks this is supportive, and then I try to remember the last time I could speak for myself, but can’t do it, and just can’t worry about it, either. I can feel my heartbeat through my ears. Machines are being plugged and unplugged around me. The Christmas tree is towering now, its battery packs and level monitors giving off a green glow that filters through the bags and reflects off the windows, imbuing this side of the room with an eerie radioactive hue. Over the hospital intercom, someone says, Mary Kate, eighteen, needs something for nausea, and this loops through my head: Mary Kate, eighteen, needs something for nausea. Mary Kate, eighteen, needs something for nausea. I grip my husband’s hand.

  The Fourth Noble Truth of Enlightenment is the truth of the path that frees us from suffering. Humans aren’t meant to have our desires satisfied, or to achieve personal satisfaction. This is a false road. The true quest is for bodhi: to be awakened, to be aware. In this search, a doctrine of activity is demanded. Diligence. Manner. Process. Utility. Habit. The path to bodhi, therefore, cultivates concentration, develops character, and nurtures inner wisdom, showing the way to live a virtuous life, so that, finally, one blossoms, becoming compassionate, becoming wise. An enlightened being. I feel myself separating from the physical world, slipping into something else, and very much doubt that I need to worry about walking whichever path, living any doctrine. There is no pain.

  When I was eighteen, before I went away to college, I was deeply in love with a boy, and one weekend I lied to my mother and we went away to Burlington and I ended up pregnant. I know termination was the right thing, but I have always thought of that little baby, it stays with you, and maybe that fueled the desire in me to get it right someday. I don’t know. I do wish I’d had the chance to really get it right, to raise and love my little girl, to know her and to let her know me. I know I did get a chance to love her, that is one thing I believe is infinite.

  On the morning of my wedding, Tilda and Julie and my mother and my other dearest women friends surprise me in my hotel room with breakfast and all join me, crowding into bed. During the ceremony Oliver and I embrace one another, and our gay Unitarian minister wraps us in a prayer shawl, and as he recites the final benediction Oliver and I hug each other so tightly, I feel the world whirling around us. We spend the next day driving through Vermont in his cousin’s old station wagon, feeding one another remains of our wedding cake. On my lips I can still taste the buttercream icing, the cake’s moistness.

  I am alone in my bedroom with scissors cutting up fashion magazines for my wall collage. I am rushing home so that I can be on the phone with the same friends I spent the entire day with at the high school. On the final night of our goodbye trip before we head off to different colleges, we’re sitting on the steps of Sacré-Coeur, staring at Paris spread out below us. All around us cute European boys party and dance; immigrants rush to try to sell us single Heinekens out of their six-packs. My friends have spread a map of the city and try to reconstruct our path tonight, figure out where Jill might have left her wallet. Jill is half-hysterical. We are buzzed, slurring. I stare out into the black night, more than ready for life to move forward.

  It is 4:00 A.M. and the day is just getting light and down the corridors of the city streets there is not much traffic and I am heading home from that party in Williamsburg, holding my heels in one hand, and I have a bit of a buzz, and am biting into an apple and feeling a sense of possibility, a weird inevitability, as if a key had been discovered to a lock I didn’t know was inside of me. The city feels like it’s mine.

  My dad drives us out to Putney and the biker barbecue place that is our special secret getaway-together spot, and we sit on the picnic benches and swat away bees and share a big plate of ribs and get lemonade and after, he helps me clean my face with Wet-Naps and lets me have a black and white milkshake.

  How much I love shopping for baby clothes—little girls’ clothing makes me so jealous; I would wear so many of those little outfits if they came for adults. Why didn’t I ever design a line of little girls’ clothing for grown women?

  If and when there is a memorial for me, it would be a nice thing if they play my favorite Stevie Wonder song, and let it be known that it is for my beloved friends. Maybe use the chorus, where Stevie is happier than the morning sun, and that lovely refrain, thanking friends for being allowed inside their lives.

  Waiting to get my first period and waiting for it to happen and it will never happen ever—then that afternoon I am lined up with the other girls doing jumping jacks for Miss Rutman and there it is.

  Mother loading bags of candy in her purse
before we head into the gorgeous old art deco theater downtown and watch a matinee.

  The joy of finding that compact changing kit that I could travel with, unsnap and lay the baby onto. The utilitarian pride I feel whenever I whip out that kit, I am a soldier mommy, able, taking care of business.

  They should have a memorial for me. I deserve that.

  Oliver and I are on the couch and it has been a long day; he is squeezing and massaging my feet; I finish rolling the joint, light up, release the smoke toward him.

  I stroke a few lines with my L square as a guide, and complete a drawing of an empire skirt, and the garment seems so simple and perfect and elegant, as if it were the shape that my body had been waiting for, all this time and all these struggles to get it right, but look how easy it is.

  People should not get too sad. I just hope they remember how much I loved them.

  The blue stripe on the tester. It is staying blue.

  Those long moments not knowing whether my baby is a boy or a girl but just holding, appreciating, feeling relief and panic, her body so small and wrinkled and red, holding this little bundle of weight, the tears flowing, finally I give in and say, Okay, tell me.

  Those walnut-large eyes looking up at me, that little potato of a face, delighted.

  I don’t believe that I am going silent. I am joining everything that’s ever been alive. If my vision of the universe is right, I will be helping from the other side.

  But I enjoy my voice. I think I might miss it.

  —

  How the game worked: nurses and orderlies on a floor each ponied up ten bucks every pay cycle. From the desk, they got the bowl. You pick a slip with some random number. Payday comes, the attending physician goes down to the cafeteria, gets a coffee, brings back a dollar bill, a five-spot, whatever piece of paper money. Last two numbers on the serial. Whoever has the lucky number wins the pot. Anywhere between four and seven hundred dollars. You didn’t miss ten bucks from any check, but, baby, when your number hit, you felt that win.