by Lisa Alther
Instead, she sat on the stone steps and brooded. It seemed unlikely that she could throw up at will to provide them with food. And anyway, human digestive juices would probably corrode a bird’s gastric tract. Staring distractedly at the stone steps, another image assembled itself: She was holding a baby bird on a step in one hand. In the other hand, she held a big stone, like the decorative piece of white quartz next to the doorway. One well-aimed stroke would do it…
Seizing a machete off the wall, she went out front and hacked away at the kudzu in the hot sun, trying to postpone the decision. But as she was hacking, she had another vision: a baby bird on the chopping block by the side of the cabin; one deft slice with the machete…
She marched to the pine tree. As she unhooked one bird from his perch, he opened his dark round eyes and screeched at her, as though beseeching her to deal with him mercifully. The water had apparently revived him? She made the decision not to decide. She would give the horrid parents one more chance. She definitely didn’t relish being God.
She put on a fresh Boone’s Farm Apple Wine T-shirt and some bib overalls. Then she sat down and tried to decide whether even to go to the hospital. She and her mother had wound up yesterday yelling at each other. That certainly couldn’t be very good for her mother. And she knew it wasn’t good for herself. She had woken up that morning with a horrible headache and overwhelming seizures of remorse. Maybe she should think of an excuse for rushing back to Vermont? And then go somewhere else instead. If only she had somewhere else, anywhere else, to go. And if only she could learn how serious this disease was.
She went to the phone and dialed Dr. Tyler. No answer again.
On the way to the hospital, she stopped at the big house and gathered up the photos of relatives from her mother’s bedroom mantel. She would take them as a peace offering. Taking down the photo of her Great-grandmother Hull, her mother’s grandmother, Ginny scrutinized it. Her mother had always said that Ginny looked so much like her. She was Ginny’s age in this photo, in her late twenties. She wore a high-necked lace blouse with a pin of some sort at the throat. Her hair was mostly pinned up, but wisps escaped here and there.
Ginny moved in front of the ornate gilded mirror above the mantel and studied herself. As always, it was a shock. She rarely recognized her own reflection. Her estimation of her looks varied with her mood; today she rated herself well below average. She held up the picture of her great-grandmother so that she could see the two of them side by side. Squinting her eyes and then opening them wide, she still couldn’t see the physical similarities that everyone had always insisted existed — other than the fact that they each had a nose and two eyes and so forth.
She stared hard at this great-grandmother whom she’d never met. Dixie Lee Hull. She had been a legendary cook, right up until the day she had cut her finger on the recipe card for spoon bread and had died of blood poisoning. Nine children she left behind her. One of her daughters, Ginny’s grandmother, had loathed housework and cooking and had spent her adulthood going to club meetings. One child had been more than enough for Ginny’s grandmother, Ginny’s mother, who had devoted herself completely to her family and her home. And so it went, alternating generations, each new scion implicitly criticizing its parents by rejecting their way of life. Ginny knew that even before she was born, she had been fated to neglect her child and her housework, to be driven from her home at gunpoint. Just as poor Wendy was now fated to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by her grandmother, Ginny’s mother, and to keep a spotless house packed to the rafters with babies. It was exhausting, this process, and in contradiction to Hegel, no progress appeared to be resulting from this recurring juxtaposition of thesis and antithesis.
But the most remarkable thing, Ginny reflected, was that she contained within each of her cells the tiniest fraction of a germ of nucleic acid from the very body of the woman in this cracked yellow photo, delivered to her via the intercession of her mother and grandmother. Traced back twenty generations, or six hundred years, Ginny calculated that she would find herself directly related to some 1,048,576 people — probably the entire population of northern Europe at that time, which was where her forebears had come from. It gave her a creepy sense of continuity, as though she were onstage now, muffing her lines, with ghostly ranks of ancestors backstage hissing and booing.
If you cared to carry it back through the centuries, every person in existence had identical submicroscopic specks of genetic material from the original man and woman. Forget Adam and Eve — each person had the tiniest imaginable flecks from the original cell, fertilized into existence by a lightning bolt.
It was stifling really. No wonder humankind was insane, with so much inbreeding through the eons. This speck of genetic material from her great-grandmother exercised such a pervasive influence as to make Ginny look almost identical to her — or so everyone said, although Ginny herself still couldn’t see it This speck accounted for the fact that, although they had never met, Ginny could see that their smiles were exact duplicates: They both smiled mostly with their eyes rather than with their mouths.
Ginny wondered what one picture her descendants would seize on to remember her by. This was probably one of the only pictures ever taken of Dixie Lee Hull. To have it done, she would have had to take a day out from her spoon bread baking, put on what was probably her only fancy outfit, and travel to Big Stone Forge by wagon. It must have been a big deal. Whereas Ginny had appeared in hundreds of photos by now, in various poses and moods and modes of dress, to say nothing of the thousands of feet of Kinflicks that featured her. How would her descendants be able to settle on one shot as representative? Which one would Ginny herself select?
Then she remembered that this question was strictly academic. At the rate she was going, her descendants would hasten to prune her from the family tree. Ira was doing his best to make Wendy forget her, and Ginny couldn’t imagine that she’d ever marry again or have another child. The line of Hull women had perhaps gasped its last.
Inordinately distressed by this thought, Ginny rushed downstairs and rifled her mother’s desk. She removed some pictures from an album — a shot of Ginny as a baby in a white dress being held by her own mother, and another of Wendy as a baby being held by Ginny. She stuffed these in an envelope and addressed it to Wendy in Vermont. Surely Ira wouldn’t dare to confiscate Wendy’s mail?
Drained, she picked up the cherished Hull family clock with its steepled roof and etched glass door. She dusted it carefully with the tail of her shirt. Then she wound it — eight turns and no more. She and Karl and Jim had waged horrible battles over whose turn it was to wind the clock each week. Even as a supposed adult, Ginny enjoyed the crunching sound as she wound. As she was wrapping the clock in a sheet, she heard a scratching sound at the door. In burst a middle-aged woman in a blond wig. Close behind her came a middle-aged couple, both dressed in fashionable summer suits. The woman was shrieking in a thick New Jersey accent, ‘Oh Harry! Don’t you just love it? The children would be so thrilled to live in a real southern mansion!’
Harry grumbled, ‘Well, it needs a lot of work, dear…’
The woman in the wig drawled encouragingly, ‘Well, honey, you can’t get much more authentic than this in Hullsport. It was built by Mr Zed Hull hissef. Lord, if you knew the people that would love to live in this house! Why, it’s a gem, purely a gem!’ She looked up, startled to find Ginny suspended midway through wrapping a clock in a sheet.
‘Well, howdy, honey,’ said the woman in the wig. ‘I bet you’re the cleaning girl?’
‘No, I’m a burglar,’ Ginny said, staring insolently at the three housebreakers. ‘Actually, I’m Virginia Babcock. Who are you?’
‘Why, I declare!’ the woman cried. ‘Ginny, honey, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you that I like to not knowed you! Why, you must have grown two feet!’
‘No, I’ve always had two feet,’ Ginny replied, glaring at her. Who was this babbling idiot?
‘Thelma Buford, honey, from
up at Southland Realty,’ the wigged woman reminded her, sounding hurt.
‘Oh. Yes, of course. Mrs. Buford. How are you?’ Ginny had been at Hullsport High with her daughter. The daughter had talked too much, too.
‘Fine, thank you. And yoursef?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘These here people are the Hotchkisses. They’re moving down from up at New Jersey. Mr. Hotchkiss is with your daddy’s plant. They’re just real interested in your house here.’
‘We think it’s just elegant,’ Mrs. Hotchkiss assured Ginny.
Thinking fast, Ginny said, ‘Oh, you mean my father cleared up that mess about the title before he died?’
‘What mess?’ Mrs. Buford snapped. ‘The title is clear as a bell.’ She smiled reassuringly at the Hotchkisses.
‘Oh, that’s right!’ Ginny gasped. She threw her hand to her mouth. ‘I wasn’t supposed to mention it, was I?’
Mr and Mrs. Hotchkiss were glancing at each other uneasily.
‘What are you talking about, Ginny?’ Mrs. Buford demanded.
‘Oh nothing!’ Ginny said brightly, with a knowing glance at Mrs. Buford to indicate her infinite cooperation in deception. ‘Nothing at all.’
The Hotchkisses fidgeted nervously. ‘Well! What else do you have to show us, Mrs. Buford?’ Mr Hotchkiss finally asked.
Her mother was at breakfast when Ginny arrived in her room. Hurriedly she unwrapped the clock and placed it on the bedside table. Then she took out some gummed picture hangers and positioned them on the wall beside the bed. When they had dried, she hung the photos — Dixie Lee Hull, Great-uncle Lester, Cousin Louella, Grandpa Zed with his wild white hair. Nothing got things accomplished quite so efficiently as guilt, Ginny reflected.
Then she sat down and listened with pleasure to the steady tick-tock. Soon her pulse was throbbing in cadence with the ancestral clock.
As Ginny sat concentrating on this unlikely biological feat, her mother shuffled in on the arm of Mrs. Childress. Mrs. Babcock glanced around the room, startled. As she saw the clock and the photos, her tired yellow face burst into a smile, and she said with surprise, ‘Why, thank you, dear.’
Ginny smiled back, her guilt temporarily allayed. It was really so easy to please her mother. She didn’t require much. Why then had she, Ginny, spent most of her life trying to make her miserable? ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘Fine, thank you. Better.’ Mrs. Babcock settled herself in bed and gazed with affection at the faces in the photographs while the clock ticked away.
Soon Dr. Vogel appeared. He sat in an armchair and crossed his legs, prepared to stay a while for once. ‘All right, Mrs. Babcock, I’ll give it to you straight, since you’ve asked me to.’ They settled back, bracing themselves for their respective tasks in this interchange.
‘Now. How does blood clot? All right. In grossly oversimplified terms, there are some twelve compounds referred to as clotting factors. These factors interact in various ways to produce an enzyme called prothrombinase. Prothrombin in the presence of prothrombinase and calcium yields thrombin. And fibrinogen in the presence of thrombin yields fibrin. Platelets under the influence of thrombin break down so as to liberate ADP, which causes other platelets to clump at the site of tissue injury. The clumping platelets, interspersed along fibrin, form the clot.’
Ginny looked at him with disgust. Was this the best he could do for the unfortunate layman? Mrs. Babcock looked dazed.
‘Hmmm, yes, hmmm,’ he continued. ‘So you see, a disorder at any point in this chain can inhibit clotting — the absence of any of the twelve factors in appropriate amounts, a malfunction of any of the chemical reactions. Hemophilia, for example, results from a factor deficiency. However, because of your platelet count, one can conclude that factor deficiency doesn’t apply in your case. You see, those with factor deficiencies don’t exhibit low platelet counts as well. Hmmm, yes. So — you are not factor deficient, you are platelet deficient. You have only 16,000/mm’ compared to a normal count of over 150,000/mm3, using the Coulter Counter Model F.
‘Hmmm, yes, hmmm. Now. How do platelets come to be deficient? Hmmm, yes, hmmm. Well, platelets can be deficient if an insufficient number is being produced. Yes? Or if they’ve gone into hiding somewhere. Hmmm, yes. Or if they’re being destroyed. The reason people have been extracting all the blood from you, Mrs. Babcock, is that we’ve been doing tests to try to narrow down the reason in your particular case. Hmmm, yes. Now cells in the bone marrow called megakaryocytes exude the small bodies of protoplasm that we call platelets. If platelet production were low, one would expect the megakaryocyte count in the bone marrow to be depressed. However, we’ve done a bone marrow aspiration and your megakaryocytic count appears to be normal. This is nice because it means that you aren’t in the early stages of leukemia, which sometimes exhibits symptoms similar to yours.’
Mrs. Babcock felt stricken. She might have been dying of leukemia unawares because nobody had bothered to consult the subject of all these amazing tests?
‘Hmmm, yes. So — this would indicate that your platelets are hiding, Mrs. Babcock. Or that they’re being destroyed. Now. How are platelets destroyed?’
Ginny felt as though she were being hypnotized by the ticking of the clock and the simultaneous pulsing of her blood, which blood was apparently healthy only through some fluke of nature. How could anyone’s blood be healthy with all these things to go wrong?
‘The spleen functions as a filter,’ Dr. Vogel was saying. ‘It sequesters and destroys worn out or diseased blood components. It’s possible that your body has formed an antibody to your own platelets and your spleen is destroying them. We’re still trying to narrow this down and should have an answer for you in the next few days. Well! Any questions?’
Ginny and Mrs. Babcock sat as mute as college students during a discussion period. ‘How does the spleen destroy platelets?’ Ginny asked finally.
‘Hmmm, yes, hmmm. Ah, actually we don’t exactly know.’
‘Who is this “we” you keep referring to?’ Mrs. Babcock asked.
‘Hmmm, yes. “We.” Modern medicine, I suppose.’ He blushed and shifted in his chair.
‘So you gave me steroids to spur platelet production even though you already knew from my bone marrow aspiration that I was producing enough?’ Mrs. Babcock asked casually.
‘Hmmm, yes. Well, no, not exactly. Well, you see, we don’t know exactly how steroids work. We just know that often they do work.’
‘But not this time,’ Mrs. Babcock reminded him.
‘Well, no.’
‘So what happens next?’ Ginny asked.
‘Hmmm, yes. Well, next we try a transfusion. We’ll give you two units of whole blood, Mrs. Babcock, with the idea that your bloodstream can use the foreign platelets to stem your bleeding, until they die off. Plus it will alleviate your anemia and low blood pressure for a time. By then we expect to have pinned down your difficulty so that we can treat it directly. It’s also possible, though not medically proven, that these foreign platelets could exercise some sort of “priming’’ effect on your own bloodstream. I’ve seen it happen.’
‘What you’re saying is that you really don’t know what you’re doing?’ Ginny asked.
Dr. Vogel stood up. ‘My dear young lady, I assure you that we in the medical profession know a good bit more about what we’re doing than a layman.’
Ginny didn’t reply. She had learned from observing Eddie Holzer, who had done it all the time, that it was impossible to discuss issues civilly with a person who insisted on referring to himself as ‘we.’
‘Granted it’s trial and error, to an extent, but it’s educated trial, trained error.’
Ginny stared at him evenly.
‘And so we’ll begin the transfusions as soon as we can find a donor. We need fresh blood, not more than an hour old, because the platelets in stored blood are often injured or dead. But you have an uncommon blood type, Mrs. Babcock. Did you know that? You could get forty-five dollar
s a pint for it on the Bowery in New York City.’ He laughed weakly. ‘But we’re typing the staff for a donor right now.’
‘What type is it?’ Ginny asked.
‘B negative.’
‘That’s my type. I could maybe be her donor.’
‘Why didn’t I think of you? Let me type you.’ He raced from the room in search of a syringe.
Only then did Ginny and Mrs. Babcock realize simultaneously that they still hadn’t gotten any definitive answer about the ultimate severity of Mrs. Babcock’s condition.
‘What did he say?’ Mrs. Babcock asked, her yellow face haggard.
‘I don’t know,’ Ginny confessed. ‘But I think it sounds pretty good, don’t you? I mean, they’re certainly going all out with these tests and things.’ She knew that her efforts to feign cheerfulness weren’t convincing. ‘Where’s Dr. Tyler these days?’ she asked, intent upon tracking him down so that she could question him.
‘He goes to his cabin at Spruce Pine near Asheville in the summer now.’
Ginny turned on the television. ‘The Price Is Right’ was on. She and her mother stared at it vacantly. Ginny was well-acquainted with the show. It had formed the backdrop for much of her morning housework in Vermont. Most of the things being won — a lifetime supply of Alpo dog food, a ceiling-to-floor bookcase complete with a leather-bound set of the outer covers of the world classics, a year’s subscription to New York’s most prestigious wake-up service, a ship-to-shore short-wave radio — neither of them needed, which was nice because it meant that they didn’t have to squander their vital energies being envious of the shrieking winners.
But eventually a three-week tour of Ireland was up for grabs. Mrs. Babcock had always longed to go to Ireland, Scotland, England in search of the towns her forebears had come from. Wesley had always refused to take her. He had no business to do over there. The trip wouldn’t be tax-deductible. It was out of the question. What about the IRA? she had suggested. Don’t they make bombs? It had never occurred to her to go alone. The household would collapse in her absence.