Equal Affections

by David Leavitt

  Danny looked up. The sun was high and yellow, the sky a nervous, bright shade of blue. He remembered he ought to take off his coat and sweater and roll up his sleeves.

  “Are you hungry?” Eleanor said. “I thought you might be hungry, so I brought some cookies.” She pulled a foil-wrapped package from her purse.

  “No,” April said. “Christ, no.”

  “Okay, okay,” Eleanor said. Then a battered station wagon rounded the bend, and they saw Uncle Sid waving and honking the horn.

  ___________

  Sid drove them to April’s house. Jeff and Nina, old friends of April’s from college, greeted them with a wariness which, Danny suspected, was only partially the result of not knowing what to say. Looking around, he saw signs of sudden rearrangement—lines in the carpet suggesting a recent repositioning of the sofa, some concert posters hung askew—all evidence of a hasty attempt on their part to put things back in the order they’d been in when April had rented them the house six months before. The place was theirs, legally, for another year, but even so, April marched through the door with territorial fervor. “Why isn’t there any Tab?” she asked, after opening the refrigerator.

  “Well, we don’t drink it,” Jeff said.

  “But I’ll get it next time we go to the store,” Nina said.

  April sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Seltzer?” Jeff offered. She nodded.

  “We’re so glad to see you,” Nina said, reaching for a glass.

  “Only sorry it had to be under circumstances like this,” Jeff added.

  The sofa bed was pulled out and neatly made, and noticing Danny notice it, Nina said, “We thought one of you could stay here.”

  “And the other in the study. We put the kids together.”

  “That’s fine,” April said absently, sipping from the glass of seltzer.

  “Fine.”

  There was a pop of relief, as if a blister had been punctured.

  Jeff and Nina were responsible leftist ex-hippies in their midthirties, both social workers, so no one would have suspected anything dishonorable of them. Hidden under their bed were the shards of a Mexican vase that their three-year-old, Esther, had knocked over a few months before and which they’d decided not to mention unless April mentioned it first.

  “It must feel funny, being a guest in your own house,” Nina said now, mostly to make it clear April was the guest.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” April said. She got up and stumbled to the bathroom.

  From the backyard the three-year-old, Esther, came charging. She was dressed only in a diaper. “Break out of jail!” she screamed, and ran directly into Danny’s legs.

  “Hello, Esther,” Danny said.

  She looked up at him, shocked, he supposed, by his large and unexpected presence, and then there was that terrible openmouthed moment in which a child decides to cry. Esther twisted her face as if she were about to spit, put up her hands like a boxer, covered her eyes in sheer disgust and terror.

  “Mama!” she screamed.

  “Esther!” Nina said, gathering her up, and laughed. “What’s wrong with you? It’s Uncle Danny. You’ve met him before.”

  “Hi, Esther,” Danny said.

  Buried in her mother’s sweater, Esther shot Danny a look so purely venomous he had to turn away.

  “She’s just scared,” Nina said, laughing nervously. “Right, Essie? She ran into the kitchen and didn’t have any idea Uncle Danny would be there, and she got scared, right?”

  Esther sobbed. April emerged from the bathroom. For a moment her eyes met Danny’s. Immediately they looked away from each other, both frightened, suddenly, by a prospective intimacy that seemed almost incestuous. In all the hundreds of scenarios of his mother’s dying that Danny had invented over the years, he had never imagined anything quite like what he was confronting now: April’s house occupied by strangers; a burn unit; a child covering her eyes with fists. He had envisioned, dreamed, acted out more likely prospects: slow declines, darkened rooms, last requests, the familiar hospital minutes from the house he’d grown up in. Instead here he was, in a different house, half April’s, about to spend a night on a couch before confronting his mother in a hospital he’d never set foot in.

  Was it true he owned a house, had a car, an office with his name on the door, all more than two thousand miles away? That old feeling stole into him, of the East Coast, and all that mattered to him there, becoming unreal. Fear of the planes going on strike, and being trapped.

  He excused himself to call Walter. April’s study was in a state somewhere halfway between its previous identity as a shrine and its current one as the bedroom of a child. There were some hand-scrawled drawings on the wall, scotch-taped among all the pictures of April with famous people. A menagerie of Sesame Street animals was piled in a corner.

  “It’s seventy degrees here,” he said when Walter picked up. “What’s it like there?”

  “Probably forty-five or fifty.”

  “Remember in New Haven, how I used to call you when I went home, and there’d be a storm or something, and I’d make you put the phone out the window so I could hear the wind and the hail? I’d just be standing there, in the sun, in my mother’s kitchen, missing you so much, and I wanted to hear the hail, I wanted to know New Haven still existed, and snow, and you.”

  “I remember,” Walter said.

  “I could see you then,” Danny said, “holding the phone out the window, and the phone getting dusted with snow. I could see you.”

  “I know,” Walter said. “I know you could.”

  Danny cried.

  “If you want me,” Walter said, “I’ll be on the first plane. You know that, right?”

  “The first plane,” Danny said. “Okay.”

  ___________

  They borrowed Nina’s car and drove to the hospital.

  To get to the burn unit, you had to go up to the second floor, then cross a kind of corridor bridge that connected the new part of the hospital to the old one. There was a display of drawings done by burned children—red-scrawled figures, openmouthed, beating off the flames—then a dreary waiting room—three vinyl-covered sofas and a coffee-stained coffee table piled with old copies of National Geographic and Boating News and Family Circle. Nothing you would want to read in anything but a moment of desperation, during which, of course, you would want to read nothing else. The lighting was bare fluorescent strips, one of which, on its last legs, flickered a dull yellow. No effort had been made to make the place cheerier, probably on the theory that anyone sitting there was going to be beyond that point where decor could provide consolation.

  Nat was lying on one of the sofas, a black visor over his eyes. He had Louise’s blue bathrobe draped on his chest. “Dad,” Danny said softly, and his father’s hand reached to pull off the mask.

  “Son, hello,” he said to Danny, squinting into the bright light. “April.” He stood and hugged them distractedly, “just grabbing a few winks,” he said. “Listen, Dr. Thayer wanted to talk to us as soon as you got here, so I’ll just tell the receptionist, okay?”

  “Where’s Mom?” April asked.

  Nat pointed toward a door that said: BURN UNIT—STERILE ENVIRONMENT—PLEASE WEAR APPROPRIATE PROTECTIVE CLOTHING. He signaled to a woman seated at a desk across from the sofas, and she nodded and picked up a phone. Then she hung up the phone, looked at Nat, nodded again.

  “Okay,” Nat said. He led April and Danny through a swinging door into a tiny, windowless conference room. Dr. Thayer came in; he was a man in his sixties, with professorial glasses, graying hair, and a bow tie.

  Danny and April shook the doctor’s hand, said their names, and everyone sat down.

  “Well, I’ve got to say this for your mom,” Dr. Thayer said, “she is one strong lady. Tough as an ox. You take a woman in her sixties, immunocompromised, and with all the shit she’s been through, I wouldn’t have put money on her getting this far.”

  No one said anything.

/>   “Her heart is good and strong, that’s why,” Dr. Thayer said. “And she’s skinny.”

  “All these years Louise swam every day and kept to her diet,” Nat said. “She always said it would be worth it, I should do it too. I didn’t listen.”

  “What’s happened to her?” April asked.

  “Have you ever heard the term ‘chemical burn’?” Dr. Thayer asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, basically what’s happened to your mom is that—something very, very rare, but which happens sometimes to immunocompromised people. There’s a reaction—it could’ve been that drug she was being given, the chlorambucil, or maybe the dental trauma when she had that crown put in—but whatever it is, there’s a reaction in the skin, like an allergy, only much, much worse. It starts off looking just like a rash, and that’s why it’s so hard to recognize. Then it turns into a burn. The skin is the body’s most sensitive organ, and once it’s damaged, anything can happen. You become susceptible to all sorts of viruses and bacteria, and even more so if your immune system’s shot to begin with. And that’s what’s happened to your mom. Her skin has been damaged, and as a result, a number of secondary infections have come in. Pneumonia, for one, and blood septicity, which is what used to be called blood poisoning. Plus there’s some kidney trouble, and a few secondary bacterial infections that wouldn’t in and of themselves be anything to worry about but with insult added to injury are causing her some serious problems.” He coughed. “We’ve got her on every antibiotic you can name, and she’s starting to respond, but I have to be frank with you. I don’t know for sure if she’s going to make it.”

  Danny felt a palpable retreat, a giving way, inside himself.

  “I’ve had twelve cases like this,” Dr. Thayer said, “and I’ve lost eleven of them.” He adjusted his glasses. “Still, your mom is strong. She’s an ox. We’re fighting for her, and she’s fighting with us. We’re doing everything there is to be done—treating her skin, putting her through the baths, the whole shebang. It hurts like hell, but she’s taking it. And by the way, the one nice thing about a chemical burn, it doesn’t leave scars. Your mom pulls through, she’ll look great, like she’s had a face-lift.”

  “You know, I told her that,” Nat said, “and she gave me this look, this classic Louise look, as if to say, ‘Great, all this for a face-lift.’” He laughed. “A sense of humor’s a good sign, I think, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” Dr. Thayer said. “A great sign. So now the job is, get her skin on its way to healing, then deal with everything else. As it stands, we may have to put her on the respirator if the pneumonia kicks up again, but that’s not so bad, really; at least she’s breathing that way. And we may have to hook up dialysis if her kidneys don’t get going. But as I said, we’re waiting before we decide. She’s being monitored sixty minutes an hour twenty-four hours a day in what I can guarantee to you is the best-run burn unit on the West Coast and maybe in the country.”

  “Can we see her?” Danny asked, hoping Dr. Thayer would say no. But Dr. Thayer said, “Sure. I think it would be great for her to see you all.”

  “When?”

  “Right now, if you like.”

  “Wait,” April said. “Wait. I don’t know if I should go in there—I’m pregnant.” She looked around, as if she expected someone to laugh or accuse her of lying.

  “No problem there. It’s a sterile environment to protect the patients from you, not the other way around. As long as you wear protective clothing and don’t stay too long at any one time, there’s no risk to your baby’s health.”

  April rubbed her nose and looked at the floor.

  “Oh, and congratulations, by the by. I’m sure knowing a grandchild’s on the way is one thing that will give Louise real fighting spirit. This the first?”

  “Yes,” Nat said.

  “Have six myself,” Dr. Thayer said. “The oldest is seventeen. The youngest is six months.”

  ___________

  Outside the door to the burn unit, they slipped paper sacks over their shoes and put on white gowns.

  “Did she tell you?” April asked Nat when Dr. Thayer had turned away to talk with a nurse.

  “What? Oh, yes,” Nat said, rather distractedly. “She told me right after you told her. I would have called, but then things started getting bad.”

  “Are you happy?” April asked.

  “April, it’s not a good moment for you to ask me that—”

  “Come on, Dad. Just answer that one simple question, and then I won’t bother you about it anymore.”

  “Look, we can talk about this more once your mother is out of the woods.”

  “Fine. Yes. Just tell me if you’re happy.”

  Nat paused for a moment as he slipped his arms inside the wide sleeves of the white gown. “Yes, I suppose,” he said. “I suppose I’m happy. Do me up, will you?”

  He turned around, and April tightened the gown over his tweed jacket.

  ___________

  “Now I hope you’re prepared for what you’re going to see,” Dr. Thayer said as he led them along the curving corridor that surrounded the burn unit. “She looks like shit. She looks trashed. I don’t want you to be shocked.”

  They pushed through a swinging door into a room full of noisy machinery. Danny smelled burning rubber. A number of nurses and doctors, all dressed, like Danny and April and Nat, in white robes, were doing a number of things—operating the machines, writing notes on big medical charts. One woman was telling another a joke about Jim and Tammy Bakker. In the background someone sang about Luckenbach, Texas.

  “Welcome to command central,” Dr. Thayer said. “The patients are all around us, behind the glass partitions, so we can get to them fast.”

  Like a tourist, Danny looked around at the windowed rooms, most of which had their curtains drawn. In one corner were some large stainless-steel tubs that reminded him of the tubs used in college dining halls to make soup.

  Behind one of the glass partitions the curtains were not drawn. Some more figures, dressed like the rest of them but also in hats and masks, stood huddled over a bed set up in the center of the small room like the bed of a queen. It was in this direction that Dr. Thayer motioned.

  “It’s hot in here,” April said.

  “The burn unit’s kept at a high temperature and humidity level because it helps the skin to heal faster. We even have our own generator, in case of a hospital blackout. Now, put these on and we’ll go in to see your mom.”

  They put on rubber gloves, paper masks, and paper hats patterned with pink and purple flowers.

  “These hats remind me of Aunt Eleanor’s blouses,” April said.

  “Okay,” Dr. Thayer said when they were all done up. He looked them over like a father about to send his kids trick-or-treating. “In we go.”

  Danny thought, It’s Halloween, and we’re all dressed as Aunt Eleanor. They walked through a swinging door into the glassed-off queen’s room, and the phalanx of masked and hatted technicians dispersed. More humming machines, connected to Louise by rubber hoses and thin plastic tubes that intertwined under and around the bed, a nest as confusing as any in the house in Gresham.

  After examining the red numbers on one of the machines, Dr. Thayer said, “I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes,” and headed back out the swinging door.

  There was Louise. Her body was wrapped neck to toe in gauze, like a mummy’s. Someone had greased her hair, and pushed it roughly back behind her head. On her face—the only part of her not covered by the white gauze—red sores and blisters had erupted. Her whole face was red, but not the red Danny thought of when he thought of sores and blisters. This was red as in roses, or fire engines.

  They forced themselves not to look away, even though it was worse than they’d imagined, even though nothing, Danny thought, could have prepared them for what he was seeing. It was as if her body had undergone some magical transmutation or were in the throes of possession. The horror of it was that even like this,
she was still, defiantly, herself.

  April’s eyes, above the mask, were wide; she was standing with her back straight and not flinching. Following her example, Danny pulled himself up tall. (Louise had often complained about his posture.) This is me, he thought, and that is her, and we are in this room. Look at her.

  He looked.

  Louise’s eyes were swollen, bloodshot, and barely open. She started shaking, violently, spasmodically, as if an electric current were seething through her. “I forgot to tell you about that,” Nat said. “Her fever spikes every afternoon, and she gets these uncontrollable shakes. But it passes, it passes.” He moved closer.

  “Hi, honey,” he said.

  “Nat,” she said. “Nat. I—”

  “I know, I know,” Nat said, “these shakes are rough.”

  Her teeth were chattering violently. “I want—I want—don’t—”

  “The kids are here, Louise, April and Danny, see?”

  She lifted her neck slightly, and her head bobbed like the head of the toy basset hound Aunt Eleanor used to have behind the backseat of her car.

  “Hi, Mom,” Danny said.

  “Hi, Mom,” April said.

  She smiled vaguely. “Hi—hi—Dan—” Through all the chattering Danny could hear her striving for a certain jokey intonation she had often used when she was sick—her voice rising into the high-pitched vibrato of the guilt-inducing Jewish mother: “Oh, I’m fine. Your poor old mother is just fine.” It was funny; she could barely get out two syllables, could barely speak at all, and yet the old singsongy rhythm of that punishing, familiar voice remained within her grasp. Even in such dire straits as these, it seemed, she was determined to try for dignity.

  “How are you feeling?” Danny asked.

  Louise managed to shrug a little and say something that sounded like “Eh.”

  And Danny and April laughed. They laughed and laughed.

  “Good old Mom, still has her sense of humor,” April said.

  But she wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. Again she turned to Nat and said, “I want—I want—” and pointed at the table.