by Don Lee
Jeanette was forgetting: he didn’t watch the news on TV, nor did he read any papers. “He raped a housekeeper?”
“Some sort of assault. I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But it was bad. And he’ll get away with it because he’s a diplomat or something with loads of money.”
Now he was concerned. “Anything happen to you thus far?” he asked. “A guest ever proposition you or, I don’t know, expose himself?”
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” Jeanette said, unperturbed. “Remember, I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement the day I was hired. It’s like the CIA. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“Oh, yeah? How would you kill me?”
“Well, first I might have to tie you down, like this.” She grabbed his wrists and, rolling halfway on top of him, pinned his arms above his head. She looked down at him, then kissed him lightly on the mouth, tasting of wine.
She had a wide face, with small eyes spaced far apart. Her mouth was small as well, framed by lines. When she smiled, she did not like to open her lips, embarrassed by her crooked incisors. She swept her hair—parted on the side in a shaggy, layered bob, longer in back—across her forehead and kept it tucked behind her ears. He thought her pretty, even though she did not consider herself pretty. She had done something odd to her eyebrows, however, since the last time he’d seen her. It appeared she had plucked the hairs almost bare and was now penciling them in.
As was their custom, they made love during the Andy Rooney segment of 60 Minutes and finished just before The Amazing Race began, a window of thirteen minutes, and, as was customary, Jeanette did not have an orgasm.
“Should I keep trying?” Yadin asked.
“It’s okay,” Jeanette said.
“Isn’t there something else I can try?”
“No, it’s all right.”
“I wish there was something I could do for you.”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m happy. Come up here. The show’s beginning.”
Before Yadin, Jeanette had been celibate for at least ten years, perhaps longer. She wouldn’t say, exactly. He had wondered at first if she had once been abused or raped—maybe by someone like the French guy—but she refuted it. It was only when she told him about Étienne Lau, her long-ago fiancé who’d died in a car accident, and the baby she’d miscarried, that he had begun to understand somewhat.
He didn’t mind that they had sex so infrequently. Sex—except with his first girlfriend, Mallory Wicks, née Wickenheiser, when he was twenty-three—had never really mattered to him. As a musician, he had had no-name flings with groupies and barflies (if you were a singer and guitar player, even an ugly one, there were always women willing to fuck you), but even in those encounters, he could never lose the feeling that it was a performance, that he had to measure up to vague yet ever-present expectations, and he never drew any real pleasure from the act, just relief that he hadn’t made a fool of himself, that the women had not been repulsed by him. Of course, since alcohol and drugs were usually involved, he sometimes did make a fool of himself, impotent or premature, and the women did end up repulsed. Over the years, he could do just as well without sex, and that was what he chose—not seeking it, trying not to think about it.
His Sunday routine with Jeanette was deeply satisfying to him. He didn’t care that their lovemaking was less than spectacular. He didn’t care that overall they had little in common. They didn’t share many interests or hobbies. They didn’t discuss politics, or books, or art, or sports, or music—notably, his music (he was pretty certain Jeanette had listened to his albums only once through, as a courtesy). They didn’t discuss religion—just updates about her committee work and gossip about church members (he was scared, with her devout atheism, to bring up the religious conversion he seemed to be undergoing). They didn’t talk about anything, really, other than the quotidian: tidbits about her job, the town, Joe. Yadin didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. It wasn’t perfect, but what relationship was?
He did not want to be alone. It haunted him with a squashing sadness, the thought of being alone, never having anyone to take care of him or missing him, wondering where or how he was, waiting for him to come home. Before moving to Rosarita Bay, he had been convinced that he would be alone forever. Often he’d realize that he had not talked to anyone in days—even weeks. The telephone wouldn’t ring. No one would knock on his door. He had no friends. All he did was go to his job—whatever job—during the day and write songs at night. When he got sick with Ménière’s and started losing his hearing and couldn’t work or play music anymore, he wouldn’t bother to shower or get dressed or leave his apartment.
Jeanette was his reprieve. She had saved him. She had given him a community—the church and her family (“You’re practically family,” Joe had said)—and she had supported him during the worst of his financial woes. Without her, he was sure he wouldn’t have survived. She was his last chance at something approaching normalcy, belonging to someone and some place, having a life that was no longer provisional.
Yet there was something holding her back from him—not just sexually, but emotionally as well. He felt it most keenly at the end of their Sundays together, when she would send him home, no longer making any pretense that she wanted him to spend the night. It made him terribly sad, having to leave.
He gathered his laundry and Costco sacks and tubs of salad, and he loaded his van while she changed into her pajamas and arranged her accoutrements for the night: eyeshades, earplugs, night guard, and a thin, flat pillow for her head.
At the door to her bungalow, she hugged Yadin, and they kissed good night.
“I love you, Jeanette,” he told her.
“I love you,” she told him.
He stared at her penciled eyebrows, which made her appear skeptical. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. Why?”
Yadin removed the hearing aid from his ear, switched it off, and put it back in his pocket. “I guess sometimes I’m not so sure,” he said.
He began losing his hearing eight years ago, in 2003, when he was on tour for his last album. In the middle of a show in St. Louis, he became dizzy and nauseous. He wandered to the side of the stage, puked, and tried to negotiate the steps to the green room but tumbled down the stairs and broke his left wrist. He thought he’d been sick because he was drunk and high—he always got drunk and high to perform. He was taken to a nearby ER and was discharged in the wee hours of the morning. After sleeping in his van for a bit, he drove back to Portage, Michigan, since the rest of his tour would have to be canceled. He couldn’t play guitar with a cast on his wrist.
A few days after getting home, he was walking out of a 7-Eleven, and he felt something odd happening. His right ear stopped up, as if he were descending in an airplane, and the pressure kept building as he was overcome by a whooshing sound, like from a conch shell, only much louder. He began to sweat profusely, and the horizon started to spin, turning on an axis, the sky and the ground awhirl, as if he were on a rapidly listing ship. He fell to the asphalt, splitting open his forehead, and vomited repeatedly. He believed he was having a stroke. Someone called 911. The EMTs transported him to the Bronson ER, where he stayed for ten hours, mostly passed out from an IV of Antivert for motion sickness, until the vertigo faded. The attending physician kept asking Yadin what he had taken, what he was on, but at the time he had been absolutely sober.
During the next few days, he had an excruciating headache that no amount of aspirin could relieve. He was weak and unbalanced on his feet, needing to prop his hands against walls and furniture to walk. His right ear continued to block up. He couldn’t hear anything out of it other than that mysterious whooshing noise. He’d swallow and yaw his jaw for thirty minutes, finally pop his ear, but then it’d stop up again. The following week, just as he was beginning to feel better, he was hit with a more severe episode, this time at the laundromat. Once again he was hauled to the ER, and once again the attending ph
ysician was dismissive, releasing him without an explanation or prescription or referral.
Worried he had a brain tumor, Yadin took it upon himself to see a neurologist, who ordered a CT scan for him, but it turned up negative. He then made an appointment with an internist, who said it could be a number of things: stress, allergies, anemia, something metabolic, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, migraines, diabetes. He removed the wax from Yadin’s ears with a curette and ordered a batch of blood tests, all of which came back negative.
He had three more episodes, spaced about a week apart. They’d arise like panic attacks, and all of a sudden he’d be on the floor, vomiting. The internist then said perhaps it could be MS or Lyme disease or even syphilis (he was a musician, after all), but those tests, too, came back negative. The internist suggested he go to an ear, nose, and throat specialist.
The ENT ordered an audiogram, a basic hearing test, and Yadin sat in a tiny booth wearing a headset as the audiologist whispered words for him to repeat: “cupcake,” “hot dog,” “ice cream,” “river,” “father.” Often he only caught the hard consonants of the words. Sometimes he did not hear them at all. The ENT ordered a more sophisticated test, electroco chleography, and Yadin’s hearing in his right ear was found conclusively to be impaired. The ENT said perhaps it could be an acoustical neuroma (benign tumor pressing against his auditory nerve) or otosclerosis (abnormal bone growth) or vestibular neuritis or labyrinthitis (infections), any of which could explain the combined occurrence of vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss. The tests—with no health insurance, the bills were enormous for all these doctors’ visits and tests—came back negative. And, confusingly, a subsequent audiogram showed his hearing had improved in the interim.
He spent another six months trying to find out what was happening to him, going to two more ENTs for second and third opinions, getting more tests, all the while having near-monthly attacks. By this point, he could tell when an episode was in the offing, his ear and hearing closing up, the tinnitus ramping into a howl, his vision tunneling, the geometry of the world suddenly slippery and tenuous. Usually he had a minute or two before the spins would arrive, and he’d pull over if he was driving, or sit on the ground if he was walking, or lie down on his bed if he was in his apartment. Then the vertigo would engulf him, everything unspooling, pulsing, rupturing. It’d last anywhere between five minutes and several hours, and he’d be retching and heaving, and then afterward, drenched in sweat, he’d have to sleep for twelve hours straight, and he’d wake up the next morning feeling as if he’d been pummeled with tire irons.
For a while his manager would check up on him, inquiring how Yadin was faring, when he might be ready to resume his canceled tour, when he’d begin thinking about a new album. There was no way Yadin could make it onto a stage or into a studio in his condition. Nonetheless, he asked his manager if he might be able to get a small advance from his record label. His manager hooted in laughter. Eventually he stopped calling Yadin altogether.
He couldn’t resort to his usual day jobs. He couldn’t go on ladders or scaffolding or operate tools or machinery. He could barely manage to leave his apartment. He had to walk with a cane, his equilibrium was so off now, and he wore sunglasses even when it was raining, because changes in light would make him reel, subtle shifts feeling abrupt and magnified, like exiting a movie theater on a bright day. He couldn’t watch TV or look at a computer. He couldn’t read a book. He kept his apartment pitch-dark, the shades drawn. He had to apply for disability. Welfare. Food stamps.
His hearing deteriorated further. Perplexingly, some days he could hear perfectly fine, but overall, during the recovery periods, the effects were worse and more prolonged and, most distressing, were beginning to migrate to his left ear.
He was losing the edges, the lower frequencies. Everything sounded metallic and distorted. People on the phone seemed to be speaking underwater. When receptionists called to him in doctors’ offices, their voices would be patchy walkie-talkies. It was embarrassing, not realizing that he was being addressed, having to ask people to repeat themselves. He would try to guess words. It helped if he could watch lips. But often he’d be mistaken. He’d answer questions that hadn’t been asked, or restate what the person had just said. He began to simply nod as if he understood. Entering into any conversation—even the most innocuous exchanges, like with a kid taking his order at Burger King—made him feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. It was easier just to withdraw, not talk to anyone.
Then his hearing oscillated to the other extreme. Certain things—crying babies, car alarms—he began hearing too well, the volume piercing. Even softer noises, like water pouring from a faucet, were agonizing. For several weeks, he couldn’t shower without wearing earplugs. Soon, tones doubled up. He’d pluck the D string on his guitar, hear a C or D-sharp or both, then a D. It was like having a tremolo bar—hooked up to a chorus pedal and a ring modulator—that would randomly bend and release on everything. It was impossible to play music, much less listen to it.
At last, one of the ENTs gave Yadin a diagnosis. He said Yadin probably had Ménière’s disease, a disorder linked to an imbalance in inner-ear fluid pressure. He couldn’t be sure, since there were no specific blood tests, scans, or X-rays for Ménière’s, but it fit all his symptoms.
Ménière’s had no known cause. Theories about its roots varied from viruses to immune reactions, head trauma, and herpes. But the ENT speculated that playing music, the construction work, chemical exposure—they could have all been contributing and cumulative factors. It was hard to predict a prognosis. Ménière’s affected patients in different degrees and durations. His vertigo and tinnitus symptoms could dis sipate or disappear entirely in time, or be episodic, dormant for months or years before recurring. His hearing loss could fluctuate, but overall would likely get worse. The enlargement of the endolymphatic sacs had damaged his auditory hair cells—damage that was degenerative, and would be permanent. There was no cure. All Yadin could do, the ENT said, was manage his symptoms. Cutting back on salt, caffeine, and alcohol seemed to help people, as did certain medications: Dramamine, Serc, Valium, Natrilix. But basically Yadin would just have to learn to live with it. Almost certainly, the ENT said, he would have to give up his music career.
Yadin refused to believe him. He couldn’t stop making music. It was his entire life—the only thing that gave him succor and purpose. There had to be something that could be done.
He turned to the Internet, where he discovered a dizzying (and often contradictory) wealth of information about Ménière’s. It was comforting to find allies online, where they called the disease MM, after its German name, Morbus Menière. There were tens of thousands of fellow MM sufferers out there, going through the same misery.
Probing deeper into forums, Yadin read some encouraging reports. For many MMers, the vertigo attacks subsided substantially after two years from the onset of the disease, and the tinnitus became less acute. It was true that once MM went bilateral to affect both ears, the hearing loss was usually progressive, but miraculously, some people had been able to reverse it, regaining their hearing. Indeed, there were stories of complete remission. The first step, Yadin understood, was to stop smoking, go completely sober, and make rigorous, wholesale changes to his diet and lifestyle. The next was to try out various drugs to curb the attacks and preserve his ears’ remaining health.
After a few duds, he settled on Meclizine (anti-vertigo), Prednisone (steroids), and Dyazide (diuretic). In short order he knew more about Ménière’s than his ENT, who would wearily prescribe whatever Yadin asked for. There were side effects. The diuretic made him need to pee all the time and threw him into electrolyte imbalance, causing his fingers to tingle. The steroids gave him stomach acid and insomnia. Yet, as hoped, the vertigo all but disappeared.
A lot of posters on the forums touted a holistic, alternative-medicine approach as a long-term solution, and he experimented with an assortment of supplements. Then he ran across an antiviral re
gimen devised by someone known only as “John of Ohio.” People said it worked wonders. He followed the protocol of homeopathic remedies, and he was fully symptom-free for three months, until he had an unexpected relapse. Still, he thought he was on the right track, and consulted a naturopath. After much trial and error, his Ménière’s finally stabilized to the point where he could ditch all of his prescriptions, just taking daily doses of L-lysine, vitamin C, and a natural antifungal called pau d’arco. As long as he kept hydrated, kept his stress low, ate clean, and got regular sleep, he could work again.
Since moving to Rosarita Bay, he had experienced just two mild episodes: once when he accidentally ate something splashed with soy sauce, another time when he had a bout of insomnia. The aural fullness and the tinnitus returned, and he got a bit of the spins, but it wasn’t so bad, and the symptoms vanished in a couple of days. He wasn’t cured by any means, he knew. This was a lifelong illness, and he would have to remain vigilant. But for the moment, his condition was tolerable, except for one lingering, major issue.
His hearing never rebounded. It still came and went—deaf one day in certain situations, clear the next. He’d halted a precipitous slide, but every year, he went in for an audiogram, and every year, he was told that his hearing had become a little bit worse. Slowly but surely, certain sounds, certain frequencies, were receding from him forever. He was losing parts of himself, note by note. The ENT had been right, after all. Yadin had to accept that, for all intents and purposes, his music career was over.
4. One-Night Cheap Motels 4:02
She caught a glimpse of her on Thursday morning. Fleeting, just a phantasmal blur from around a corner, but Jeanette was sure it had been Mallory Wicks walking down the hallway on the third floor.
The actress was staying in one of the Centurion’s best suites, and Jeanette had heard about some of her Charisma notations, despite strict guidelines about their confidentiality. Ms. Wicks was being permitted to smoke on her private terrace and provided with ashtrays, when the entire resort property was supposedly smoke-free. She was being allowed tee times as a single, when, as a general rule, the starters at the club always tried to pair singles with other golfers to make up a foursome, threesome, or at least a twosome. She was being supplied with a bottle of twenty-year-old Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve, a coveted small-batch bourbon, as well as a stock of Tasmanian rainwater. Apparently the list went on.