The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

by Scott Stambach

  I had hoped for at least three more years to complete the systematic desensitization required to achieve the comfort and confidence required to verbalize utterances to Polina. But, as the universe would have it, we would not even get three more months. In reality, we would only have three more weeks, which, of course, reminds me of Maxwell Maltz’s 1960 book, Psycho-Cybernetics, which explains that it takes exactly twenty-one days to establish a new habit.

  PART TWO

  The Count Down

  DAY 21

  Hazing and Initiation

  The next morning, I prepared all my facial muscles for breakfast. I knew she would instinctually turn to me, if for no other reason than there was no one else to turn to. And she did. But I couldn’t. I knew the second I lost my focus, the pseudosmile would snap back to the other face that I was actually feeling. This was a contingency I had not planned for.

  Of course, Nurse Natalya witnessed all this, as she was particularly curious about my next play. So, in response to my coldness, she took it upon herself that at the onset of TV hour she would, without my consent, and for the first time ever, wheel me right up next to Polina’s wheelchair so close together that our elbows touched, skin-to-skin, closer than ever, and leave me there to drown in whatever storm erupted.

  Reader, please understand this: this was the first time I ever had non-nurse epidermal contact with anyone at all, let alone Polina. I was completely unprepared, and consequently my pee pole jumped to full attention, twitched to the rhythm of my escalating pulse, and pushed the fabric of my shorts taut.

  Now, it may be difficult for you to imagine a mutant with one arm to harbor any trace of self-consciousness. But please believe me when I tell you that this was my most horrifying twenty-two seconds on record. I instinctively used my one flailing arm to conceal the protrusion in any way possible, but this only brought more attention to the situation. As artfully as possible, I tucked my Hui between the nubs that would have been my legs and clenched them together to keep it hidden. I waited several painful moments for the fallout to die down. I was red and sopping with sweat. But this didn’t keep Polina from speaking.

  “Natalya told me.”

  I just sat silently and sweat some more.

  “Ivan, are you okay?”

  “I like your hair, Polina.”

  “It’s a wig, Ivan.”

  The next hour was an incandescent blur. A hazy smear of conversation that I do not remember but only know resulted in a phase transition in my life and Polina’s. From that moment on, we talked through most TV hours and met after lights-out for shenanigans and banter and anything else that might make us feel less lonely. We began by discussing the weather and eventually moved on to our pet peeves and then to our preferred methods of paying rent if we had another chance. Nurse Natalya, of course, was thrilled by our brewing courtship and did everything possible to cultivate it. She raided the homes of her relatives for old Russian games. Then she would secretly wheel us out to the Main Room after lights-out and let us play unchaperoned. Looking back through diminishing vodka eyes, these nights seem so perfectly surreal. Reader, in that place, at that time, Polina wasn’t dying, and I wasn’t a mutant. We shed our bodies and met in another place.

  DAY 20

  The Day We Contributed to Max’s Rearing

  I spent the night after the day that I found out that Polina was going to die considering everything that I would like to do with her before she would be committed to the Red Room. Because I believed we had three months together, the initial list was rather long and included such activities as playing hide-and-seek, sampling Central American coffees (most notably Guatemalan), beholding the Siberian auroras, playing the famed American game truth-or-dare (which often leads to erotic play), composing a song together using the guitar and the piano, visiting Paris and in particular the Eiffel Tower, cooking saag paneer for Nurse Natalya, swimming with dolphins, visiting Nabokov’s grave, making out under a waterfall, riding an elephant, having sex on a water bed, making a snowball taller than both of us, inventing a new color that’s never been seen before, surfing waves in the Maldives, climbing mountains in Central Africa, feeding a giraffe, getting our palms read by a convincing charlatan, visiting a real bona fide carnival freak show, sleeping on a beach overnight (without a tent), singing karaoke in Chinatown or Little Korea, or any other Asian-town, having sex in an elevator, skiing (both on snow and on water), riding a cable car in San Francisco, having multiple children and naming them after where they were conceived (like Madagascar, Middlesex, or Malcolm), having sex on a rooftop (preferably under some form of precipitation), eating lobster in Baja, California, and dressing up in priest-and-nun garb before driving to the beach to make out.

  When the list was finally finished, I put down my pen and looked at the clock. It was 4:00 in the A.M. I put my head down and daydreamed for another hour until I seamlessly slipped into sleep. Life was black until Nurse Natalya knocked considerately on my door.

  “Ivan, are you up?”

  “I am now.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “I suppose.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Then she slowly walked to my bed and sat down where my legs would have been if I had them. Her head and mouth looked like they were overflowing with things to say.

  “Are you in love?”

  “Sometimes you ask all the wrong questions.”

  She smiled, and I forced an insincere one back.

  “Go ahead and ask then,” she said.

  “Ask what?”

  “If you don’t like my questions, then ask one.”

  “What happened when you told her?”

  “She blubbered like a baby.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “There’s always something you can do.”

  And then we didn’t need to say anything else. She stood up, adjusted her scrubs, and exited, while I peed and slithered into my clothing. Two minutes later, I had some pungent cabbage in front of my face and no Polina across the table. I rushed through my food and hunted down Nurse Natalya, who was cleaning a toilet.

  “Where is she?”

  “They doubled her chemo. They’re hoping for a miracle,” she said as she scrubbed dried hairs from the base of the toilet. This meant that Polina was too sick to eat. Also, that Nurse Natalya did not believe in this type of miracle. Also, after seventeen years at the asylum, I still don’t know who “they” are, as there are almost never any doctors here.

  I considered retreating back to my room to masturbate and fall asleep until dinner, except it occurred to me that her fugue might give me time to plan a rendezvous. So I pulled out my list, which was already stained with Vaseline and cabbage juice, and read through my plans for the next three months. Given the severity of Polina’s current chemico-gastro-upheaval, I decided to abandon this particular list and start smaller. I wheeled myself into the Main Room, where thirteen hypnotized patients were watching TV with gaping mouths, and the gingers were tangled up in a yoga move I like to call lesbiyanki v sumerkakh.* I parked myself next to our mutant bookshelf and scanned for my favorite book by Theodore Geisel, which happens to be Slon Khorton Vysizhivaet Iaitso.† It was old and ragged after approximately fifty-seven years of illiterate-mutant abuse. Still, I tucked it under my ass and finished out TV hour like all the other misfits.

  I waited through the morning and returned to the cafeteria for lunch, hoping she would have worked up some hunger by then. She had not. Then into the Main Room for post-lunch TV hour. Still, no Polina. Then again for dinner, Slon Khorton Vysizhivaet Iaitso still tucked beneath my rear side. Then to the Main Room for the post-dinner TV hour, where I sat through fifty wretched minutes of Czterej pancerni Ipies, after which Polina, looking like the world’s most exquisite zombie, finally showed her face. My lips prepared to make words, which she must have noticed, because she preemptively said:

  “I’m fine.”

  In response, my lips began to gather themselve
s again, to which she repeated:

  “Yes, Ivan, I’ll be okay.”

  To which I sat confused for a moment, and slightly deflated, and then said:

  “How did you know that I was going to ask if you were okay? Maybe I was going to ask you about quicksand and why they call it that if you sink slowly. And why didn’t you stop me before this sentence that I’m saying right now?”

  “After my parents died, people have asked if I’m okay more times than all the other times people have ever asked that question in the entire lifetime of the universe. Faces look a certain way just before that question.”

  This didn’t occur to me because people rarely ask me if I’m okay.

  “Have you met Max?” I asked.

  “I’ve only met you. And hardly.”

  As she spoke, I noticed how much thinner her face had become, and how much paler her skin was, and how she had gone back to being bald, which I interpreted as a step back in our rapport building, or maybe a step forward because it signaled a certain comfort, or maybe it meant none of these things at all. Then I turned my head to the TV because I felt like I was looking at her for too long, but was also entirely not sure about what I wanted to say next. Nu, Pogodi! was on the black-and-white TV.

  “Do you like cartoons?” I asked.

  “They’re okay,” she said.

  Her words were short and curt and distracted, which made me think that she was fighting back the contents of her stomach. I wasn’t worried because there couldn’t have been much in there.

  “I want to show you something,” I said.

  “Later, I hope.”

  Because I felt like it was the right thing to do, I didn’t say anything to Polina for the rest of Nu, Pogodi! or for the remaining time it took for Nurse Elena to clear out the mutants and return them to their rooms for lights-out. I didn’t say anything again until Nurse Elena told us to go to sleep. That’s when I told Polina to follow me, and I rotated myself in the direction of the elevators, which I activated. Then I clicked the button for the third floor, which was the floor of the Yellow Room. Polina was lagging, so I held the door open for her by repeatedly hitting the button with the two arrows facing away from each other, which was the most masculine thing I had ever done for someone until that moment, which inflated me like a sage grouse.

  “Where are we going?”

  “A surprise.”

  And besides those words, the elevator ride was silent. When the doors opened, I held the button and motioned for Polina to go first, then I followed. Then I led her down the long, dark, post-lights-out hallway, into the Yellow Room, which was also dark except for small flickering lights, which, I remember, reminded me of small nocturnal critters hiding in an African savannah.

  Polina said, “I’ve never been up here,” with the faintest trace of thrill, leading me to believe that she felt approximately alive. Then she turned on the lights herself, as if she’d been here a million times. Without saying anything, I wheeled my way over to Max’s manger, and Polina followed. I reached over the low barriers and pinched his toes, which was the signal I developed to let him know that it was me. His eyes moved to mine in his endearingly rigid and panic-struck way. Then I looked over at Polina, right in her own eyes, which I never did, and noticed that they were filling up.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

  I said, “I think it’s called arthrogryposis multiplex congenita.”

  Which, of course, actually came out something like “arfogypsos mootopex cogeta,” because I’m not good at English and because my facial muscles were never meant to speak medical jargon.

  “But how do you know?” Polina asked.

  “I asked Nurse Katya, who takes care of him, but she didn’t know. Then I asked Nurse Natalya, and she didn’t know either, but she brought me his file, which only said ‘congenital deformation,’ which just means that he was born with something messed up with him. Then I asked her what was messed up, and she said that she already said that she didn’t know. So she gave me her books from nursing school to figure it out.”

  “Can he talk?”

  “No.”

  Polina reached her arm into the cradle and touched Max’s face, then traced her fingers over the full length of his sicklelike shape, and then back to his tiny clenched fingers, which she held between her thumb and index finger.

  “Sometimes I read to him,” I said.

  I removed the book from my posterior.

  “‘Sighed Mayzie, a lazy bird hatching an egg: “I’m tired and I’m bored.…”’”

  I felt uncomfortable reading in front of Polina, because it highlighted my droopy voice. This prompted me to look up over the words as I read.

  “‘“And I’ve kinks in my leg from sitting, just sitting here day after day.

  “‘“It’s work! How I hate it! I’d much rather play…”’”

  And I could see Polina was just crooning to Max with a sequence of oohs that I could not connect to any particular song but was probably the melody to something written in the ’80s, which made me feel relieved because I’m sure she could barely hear me read:

  “‘“I’d take a vacation, fly off for a rest,

  “‘“if I could find someone to stay on my nest!”’”

  And she sang and petted the panic-stricken child, like the cherub I’d projected onto her when she’d first walked into this hospital.

  “‘Then Horton, the Elephant, passed by her tree.

  “‘“Hello!” called the lazy bird, smiling her best,

  “‘“You’ve nothing to do and I do need a rest.

  “‘“Would you like to sit on the egg in my nest?”’”

  I understood Polina’s fixation, which connected us for a few seconds. For her, this was a momentary time warp to a future she knew she’d never have. A chance to touch, for even a moment, her entire purpose for living at all.

  “‘“Me on your egg? Why, that doesn’t make sense …

  “‘“Your egg is so small, ma’am, and I’m so immense!”’”

  The Oedipal tones of an impending lost motherhood.

  And as soon as this thought occurred to me, I saw one shiny streak drip down Polina’s porcelain cheek, which momentarily magnified her beauty mark as it passed.

  Then she turned to me and said, “I want to read now.”

  I handed her the book, and Polina started reading in her exaggerated maternal tones. She slipped right into a Seussian rhythm, like she was born for this sort of thing, which felt momentarily unfair given the circumstances.

  And I just sat back and quietly watched as she got lost in the pages and forgot that I was in the room, which didn’t bother me.

  That night, we both fell asleep next to Max, until the beeps of his heart monitor woke me up. I couldn’t bring myself to wake her up, so I quietly wheeled myself back to my room and let her sleep next to the baby.

  DAY 19

  Game Night

  I awoke the next morning in a state of “holy shit!” and also to the metallic rapping of Nurse Natalya knocking at my door. “Ten minutes left for breakfast hour, Ivan,” she said, resonating through the metal like a robot version of herself.

  “All right, all right,” I said.

  “Three times in one week, Ivan?”

  “All right, all right,” I said.

  “Can I come in? I have something for you,” she said.

  My mind has been Pavlovianly conditioned to salivate when Nurse Natalya comes to my room with any somethings. Typically, the somethings are books, but I had a feeling, given the circumstances, that this particular something might be something even better.

  “Yes, please.”

  Nurse Natalya entered with a large plastic white bag and tossed it onto my bed.

  “This is all I have, Ivan. I haven’t used them in years.”

  I opened the bag and started pulling out box after box, each one an edition of a game, most of which I had never heard of, with odd names like Underwood, The Hat, Pantomime, The
Victory Day, Backgammon, and Great Hooduu.

  “Look at this,” she said. “This is Monopoly. I bought it when I visited New York. Twenty years ago, we would have been detained by the Committee for State Security* for owning this capitalist smut,” she said.

  “So I’ve been rotting in this dreary hospital for eighteen years, and all the while you’ve been hoarding these games?”

  “And who were you going to play with, Ivan?”

  “You, for one.”

  “Stop being so dramatic. You were too buried in your books to play games with an old lady. You stopped playing chess with me ten years ago.”

  “Only because you’re wretched at it.”

  “My point.”

  “I get to keep these?”

  “Long-term borrow.”

  “And the ginger twins don’t get to play with them?” I asked.

  Nurse Natalya scoffed and waved her hand dismissively.

  I started sorting out the boxes on my bed into various categories according to the details listed on the side of the box and almost forgot that Nurse Natalya was still in the room until she started booming on about only five minutes left for breakfast hour, to which I asked:

  “Is she there?”

  “No, and she won’t be anymore. Not in the morning, anyway—6:00 A.M. dose.”

  “I will be fine without breakfast today,” I said.

  I found a colorfully stained napkin and a nearly dead pen next to my bed. Then I scribbled some words in my atrocious handwriting. Then I wheeled myself to Polina’s room and slipped the napkin under her door.

  I waited patiently throughout the day, extraordinarily aware of every ticktock of every clock in every room in the hospital (despite the limited funding and technology at this hospital, there were a frustrating number of clocks). I took a few bites at lunch hour and a few more during dinner hour. I made an appearance in the Main Room for various TV hours, wandered the halls like a ghost unsure of its destination, and made several trips to the community bathroom, all of which were veiled (and failed) attempts to locate Polina, which I largely expected, given the fact that she was likely huddled over the toilet in her room with fluids coming out of both ends of her body.