by Greg Sisco
“What about it?”
“Bark from the tree by my house got in my eye. Now it’s itchy and uncomfortable and… if one of those things grows out of my eye I’m probably gonna lose the eye. What do I do about it?”
“Your eye is fine,” he says. “No sign of infection, no scratches to the cornea. The discomfort should pass. If you get any irregular build-up of fluids or the pain escalates, come back and see me, but I really don’t expect any trouble.”
“And if a tree sprouts out of it?”
There’s a little pause before he answers and I half expect him to say “Join a circus,” but he ends up coming out with, “Come see me.” The smile on his face is a hell of a fist-magnet.
I knew it wasn’t medical anyway. I don’t even know why I came. If it was medical a tree wouldn’t be telling me I’m selfish.
But if it isn’t scientific, then it’s supernatural. And if it’s supernatural, then of all the mediums in this town, all the mediums in the world, all the conmen and cheats and bad fathers, I keep asking myself why me? I can’t be the worst, so how was it that I got picked to be made an example of?
* * * * *
Elaine still doesn’t know. Is that why it hasn’t stopped? I can’t tell her. Not yet. Not until I can figure out how to do it without ruining what we could have.
Or is that the point? That I don’t deserve her. I’ve lied to her and manipulated her and I have to face her wrath for what I’ve done. I have to accept that I stumbled across a woman who I could love and I ruined it by being the person that I was. I can change, but it has no meaning unless I accept the place I’m starting from.
“Hello?” she answers her phone.
“Hi, Elaine.”
“Hi, Casey. How are you? I’m just on my way to work.”
“Oh, okay. I just wanted to… talk to you about something.”
“Yes, I do want to set up another appointment, I just don’t know exactly when yet.”
I have to tell her. This is wrong. If I’m worth forgiving, I can convince her to forgive me, but I have to tell her how I got here.
I could tell her tomorrow though. Or the next day. If I can lay enough positive foundation, the negative won’t break us. Right now I can’t save myself from the hole I’ve dug.
How do you take a business relationship built on lies and turn it into a personal relationship built on devotion? Is it even possible?
It must be. Surely a client has fallen for a lawyer at some point. A criminal for a cop. Stockholm Syndrome is so goddamn common it’s a household name. It’s a big world. You’re hardly ever the first to do something crazy. Even when plants sprout from your body, you’re still not the first.
No. The question is one of ethicality, not possibility. Stop asking what can be done and ask what should.
“Are you still there?” comes that elating tickle in my ear. “I can’t hear you.”
“Yeah. Yes, I’m here. Um… That wasn’t what I wanted to tell you.”
“Oh. What did you want to tell me?”
“Elaine, I… I’ve done a terrible thing…”
It’s a conveniently structured version of the truth, but it is the truth. Strap me to a polygraph and I could pass. The truth is if I have a gift, it’s in seeing how people are hurting and in knowing what to say to help them cope. I’ve been extremely dishonest in how I’ve used it, but I always thought I was helping. Well I’m starting to doubt it. I can’t talk to the dead, I just understand pain. I know what I’ve done is terrible and I know you’re probably furious and I understand, but if you’d let me, I’d love to keep talking and to do it honestly this time. I’d love to try to help you, for free, in a way that isn’t a lie.
Not a word of that comes out.
Instead what comes out is, “I’ve gone and become attracted to you.”
“…What?”
I force a laugh. “This is going to sound forward. Actually, no, it’s going to be forward. Elaine, I wanted to tell you I’m attracted to you and I wondered how you’d feel about going to dinner with me sometime soon.”
“I see.” There’s not enough in her voice to detect discomfort or excitement or anything other than surprise. This is where a lot of guys panic and backpedal and the whole thing gets ugly.
I don’t know what happened here. This isn’t what I intended when I dialed. I have no control over my own actions.
That rational selfishness shit though, sure, fine, it’s airtight and the sycamore wins. But what if Elaine needs this too? What if a father figure would help bring Macie back to a normal childhood? Even if I’m serving myself, am I necessarily the only one I’m serving?
“What would that mean for the sessions? Would we have to stop?”
Tough question, actually. Very tough question. “We’ll play it by ear, figure it out as we come to it. I’m not too worried about that.”
“Is it ethical?” she asks, plucking thoughts from the mind of the man I was five minutes ago. “I mean, there’s not a code, or…?”
“You’re mixing me up with a shrink. They talk to living people. I talk to dead ones.”
“Ah. So as long as you don’t date dead people…”
“Exactly.”
She laughs. It’s a pretty laugh. I believe it may be the first time I’ve heard it.
“Are you interested?” I ask. “That’s the only real question where ethics are concerned. It’s not very ethical for two people who think they might have a connection to dream up reasons to keep it from blossoming.”
“Well aren’t you a philosopher.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been on a date since Russell left. I haven’t even thought about it.”
“Neither have I.” A half-truth, I guess you could call that. Or maybe more like a quarter-truth. When Elaine says she hasn’t even thought about it, I have a hunch she means she hasn’t banged thirty-five guys and sent them packing when she finished, but we all deal with grief in different ways.
“The whole dating game is… I’ve been out of it so long.” Still making excuses.
“So have I,” I say. “But you know what? Better idea. Forget dinner. We’ll do lunch. Lunch is easy. You don’t have to dress up or act formal, you’ve only got an hour before you’ve got to go back to work so you don’t run into awkward goodbyes, and the kids are at school so there’s nothing to plan.”
She chuckles and sighs. I imagine she’s in the parking lot at work now, trying to get off the phone so she can go inside and punch the clock. I nailed the timing.
I hear her shaking her head and looking for more excuses.
“Sure,” she says finally. “Lunch it is. But just a trial date. Really casual. See if it’s weird and go from there.”
“That’s what a first date is,” I tell her. “You have been out of the game a while, haven’t you?”
Over the receiver I can hear the smile. “Bye, Casey.”
She hangs up.
It’s like being in high school again. I want to jump up and cheer. Brag to my mom. High five my friends.
High five. The thought makes me notice it. All of a sudden my fingers feel fine.
* * * * *
Dad died in a car accident, but that’s not really the truth.
The truth is he died of internal bleeding a few hours after a crash, but even that’s not the whole truth.
The whole truth, I think, is that he just gave up.
Those last hours in the hospital he kept saying, “God has a sick sense of humor.”
He’d gotten a big promotion that day, and he and Mom were coming from a charity event for church, helping underprivileged orphans or whatever good Christians do. At seventy miles an hour, metal crushes against metal and the car goes over the guardrail on a freeway overpass.
People keep telling Dad it’s a miracle he’s alive. That’s the word they use. Miracle. They say, “God was looking out for you.”
Dad’s not feeling it. Mom’s dead. The promotion he cou
ldn’t stop thinking about two hours ago means nothing anymore. He can’t feel his legs.
The car that smashed into him, the driver who got distracted, was their fucking preacher.
I don’t know if Dad lost his faith in those last moments. I just know he kept saying, “God has a sick sense of humor. He can be a real tease. Makes you think everything’s gonna be perfect for you and then bam!”
And he laughed and coughed and winced and cried.
I don’t agree with the God part, but Dad sure was right about the sick sense of humor.
I fall asleep smiling, giddy for tomorrow’s lunch date, and three hours later I wake up screaming.
All ten fingers are sprouting plants and so are most of my toes. Two are coming out of my gums, protruding from behind my upper lip and giving a twisted new image to the concept of a vegetarian vampire.
My left eye is red and ugly like I burst a blood vessel, but so far there’s nothing growing out of it. I know it’s coming though. Another day, two at the most, and whether I pull it out or not it’ll be a miracle if I don’t lose sight in that eye.
Yeah, a miracle. Like Dad’s last few hours.
Then it’s both eyes, my ears, my dick and my asshole. How long before they’re sprouting on the inside from my lungs or my heart or my brain? How long before my landlord opens the front door and finds a half-decomposed human flower pot sitting in a chair in the living room?
“What are you doing to me?” I scream at the sycamore from the window of my bedroom, but the tree just stands with its leaves in the wind.
I get in the car and drive. Eighty miles an hour on residential streets. Bare foot to the floor on the gas pedal because shoes aren’t made to fit creatures like me. There’s a Big and Tall Man shop, but no Half-Tree Freak of Nature shop.
The doctor wants to see what these things look like when they’re attached. I’ll show him. I’ll show him the goddamn monster I keep waking up as. I’ll take that stupid smile away from him so that he’ll never throw that passive aggressive shit at a patient again and try to make them feel crazy.
I can barely hold the wheel between these ridiculous things I used to call hands. Every time I have to turn it puts pressure on places I don’t want pressure and I have to grunt and squint and try not to shut my eyes so I can still see where I’m going. Every time I have to step on the brake the nails on all five toes feel ready to snap off.
If this keeps up much longer, maybe I should think about just ripping all my nails off and seeing if it helps the pain any. I’m sick of this Hungry Hungry Hippos shit they keep doing.
One of the plants sticking out of my fingers catches the turn signal switch as I’m turning and I jerk my hand back. My eye instinctively goes to it and when I look back up there’s a man standing in the middle of the road.
I step hard on the brake and scream at the fire in my toes. I wrap a hand around the wheel and the saplings sprouting from my four fingers press down on my palm and snap upward, pushing back the nails.
My eyes fill up with tears and I jerk the wheel. The car bumps up on the curb. I overcorrect, still blinded, and a loud bang and the feeling of impact bring everything to a stop.
The airbag doesn’t deploy and my face hits the steering wheel above the lip. That metal taste of blood fills my mouth and I spit onto the windshield. One of the growths from my face comes out with the blood and the other one drops onto my shirt a second later. I go to pick it up and my shirt is like my hand, all blood, with chunks of plant and flesh. Every growth on every finger has ripped back, tearing most of the fingernails off. I pick away what’s left of them, hanging there.
Miracle.
God’s looking out for you.
I laugh that cough-laugh like Dad.
My brain seems to rewind and play through the accident again. The growth snagged on the turn signal. The airbag. The man in the road.
Man in the road…
It finally hits me. Arthur. My client with MS who slurs his words, who’s obsessed with his in-laws. What the hell was Arthur doing in the middle of the street at three o’clock in the morning?
What the hell was he doing, and… did I kill him?
I can’t see him out the window. I open the door and poke my head out.
“Arthur? Arthur, is that you?”
No answer.
I’m about to stand from the car when my left hand brushes the door and electric pain goes through my fingertips. I look. Those growths have broken off too. I’m not sure where I hit that hand or how it happened. I put my left foot down on the road and look at my toenails.
God has a sick sense of humor.
For a second I forget about the man I may have just killed. I turn, frantic, to my rearview mirror. My face, my nails, all my fingers and toes. I search for just one growth still holding on, still sticking in place. I almost pray one has started from my eye just so I can prove it to somebody.
But I’m normal again. I can hear sirens in the distance and soon they’ll come this way, and what will I tell them? I’m a normal human being who just rammed his car into a tree in front of a man’s house driving eighty miles an hour on a sidewalk at night. And a minute ago I was sure they’d say I wasn’t crazy.
It feels too convenient. Fifteen growths coming out of every end of my body and all of a sudden I’m back to normal in an instant as soon as other people are on their way. These growths that are stuck in my body so tight I can barely rip them out when I’m at home with a pair of pliers, they all pop off like party favors when I crash the car. Every last one, without exception.
I don’t think I buy it. The plants don’t want to be seen by other people. The plants are avoiding other people. In fact… I have to wonder…
“Arthur!” I shout, standing from the car. “Arthur, are you out here!?”
Dammit, Casey. Don’t chase this train of thought.
“Arthur!!”
Really, though… What if…? The thing is in my eye now, maybe even my brain. And I don’t see Arthur anymore. What if he wasn’t here? If the plants don’t want to be seen… If the growths drop off when the police are on their way… Then maybe this thing in my eye… I mean, I have to acknowledge the possibility…
“Arthur!”
What if it’s controlling what I see?
“Arthur, answer me!”
Lights are coming on in the houses all around me and everyone must be holding their breath as the sirens get closer. I’d hate to see how I look from their perspective. I’ve crashed a car into a spruce tree at quadruple the speed limit and now I’m screaming a man’s name into the empty night.
A tree. Christ. Fucking figures I hit a tree.
You said it, Dad.
I fish my cell phone out of my pocket and find Arthur in my contacts list. It rings through all the way to voicemail and I hang up and call again.
“Goddamnit, Arthur. Goddamnit. You answer me.”
Finally I hear the line connect and it’s a minute before a woman’s voice answers, “Hello?”
I pause for a minute, still dazed from the wreck and not sure what’s happening anymore.
“Hi,” I say. “Is this Arthur Harris’ phone?”
“Yes it is. Who is this, please?”
“This is, uh… my name is Casey Holt. I’m his, uh…” I remember the last time I spoke to him and I have to laugh. “I mean, up until recently, I was his medium.”
“His medium…” says the female voice on the other end.
“Yeah, uh… I thought I just saw him on the street and I… I’m sorry, I’m all over the place. This is his wife?”
“Arthur’s dead,” she says bluntly.
A silence falls between us like a three-ton pine tree. I feel I’ve been slugged in the gut.
“I… I just… I mean, I could’ve sworn I just…” I make myself stop. “I’m sorry for your loss.” I almost hang up, but I have to ask, “How did it happen?”
Whoever I’m talking to, I can almost hear her roll her eyes.
�
��Next time you’ve got your crystal ball out,” she says, “why don’t you ask him yourself?”
She hangs up in my ear.
I can see blue and red lights in the distance, coming around the corner. I lean against my crushed-in car and stare at nothing as I try to make myself breathe.
I wish I hadn’t called. I wish I’d let myself wonder. I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or not, but the growths, the sycamore, my eye, Arthur, my job, Elaine… It’s like I can see enough to know it’s connected but I can’t make sense of the connections. And I think that must be how insanity feels.
Crazy or not, I wish every answer I found in life didn’t take the form of three new questions and a punchline. It makes you wish you could forget everything.
Thursday, September 30th
I look at my watch. 11:15. Forty-five minutes and the bistro where I’m meeting Elaine is a ten-minute walk. I could go early, but I don’t like doing that. On the off chance she drops in twenty minutes early I don’t want to be there. Makes me look desperate. My policy is I always show up late, but never by more than a minute.
The theater down the street is showing a double feature of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Little Shop of Horrors. The park may be full of trees, but sitting on this bench is still a better way to kill time than that.
And speaking of killing time, here’s a thought experiment. Or even an actual experiment if you’re brazen.
Suppose you call a medium. You find a number somewhere for someone who says he or she can talk to the dead and you call. When they pick up, you ask, “Can you really talk to the dead? I mean really, honestly, no bullshit, can you do it?”
This person says, “I can communicate with them, yes.”
You say, “No, but I mean seriously. I’ve been a professional medium for years and I’m a con artist. I do cold readings. I lead people. I fish for what they want me to say and I throw out Barnum statements and in fifteen minutes they’re in awe of me. But no spirit has ever said a word to me, and now there are growths coming out of my body and I’m terrified the real dead are cursing me.”