The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  I walked down the path toward Mona’s and Atheliah’s farm. The path was overgrown, nearly undetectable. I thought I might stop by and say hello. I hadn’t seen them for over a year. The last time had been in the IGA. They raced up with arms outstretched to embrace me. I glanced around nervously. Two of Ira’s aunts and several cousins and the owner of the store were watching. Where did my loyalties lie? I knew by now that both sides refused to let them lie in both places. It was a wrenching moment of truth. My arms rose flutteringly from my sides of their own accord. Hastily, I drew them down and greeted Mona and Atheliah coolly, with words alone. I had made my choice. But I was now no longer quite so sure about it.

  I stood overlooking the rambling house. A party was in progress. They had probably drummed up some obscure saint’s day as an excuse for a festival, or perhaps it was an Indian Summer rite. Black pots were being stirred over fires. People lay around in the sun, mostly undressed, playing instruments, smoking dope, laughing. A wild running and leaping game was going on where the cornfield had been. I saw no evidence of even a token garden this year. I started down the hill toward the encampment, with a big smile on my face.

  Then I stopped abruptly and stared at the scene, while the pain I had been expecting finally swept over me in a great tidal wave. I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes tightly against it. I shook with agony. And I knew that there was no going back. I didn’t know how to go forward, but I knew I couldn’t go back. I would turn into a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife fleeing Sodom. But I wanted to go back. I wanted to loll in the sun with Eddie again and smoke dope and laugh and forget about baking soda douches and dirty diapers. I wanted to default on my duty. But the flip side of lolling in the sun was the burst of insanity that resulted in my neglect of Wendy, the day Ira found her in the road. The two went hand in hand and had killed Eddie….

  Wendy awoke with a start and began whimpering. I slid off the pack and lifted her out. Then I sat against a rock, holding her on my lap facing me. I kissed her chubby face, all flushed and damp and grumpy at being awake. She smiled reluctantly. I bounced her and blew in her ear to cheer her up. She laughed, but angrily, not wanting to.

  My little vampire bat grabbed the dried goldenrod out of my buttonhole. I restrained an impulse to grab it back. I forced myself to sit and watch calmly as she slowly dismembered it, leaf by leaf. Then I took the pack in one hand, and Wendy’s moist chubby little hand in the other, and we tottered back through the woods toward town.

  12

  Friday, July 7

  By now, when Ginny tossed the baby birds into the air, they at least flapped their wings cooperatively as they plummeted to the ground like stones. They were getting the idea. They were exercising their muscles, and perhaps even hastening the development of feathers. She told herself that their learning to fly would happen like Wendy’s learning to walk: One moment she was crawling, watching adults towering past, and the next moment, in a burst of inspiration, she too was walking. One morning the birds would suddenly fly away and never be seen again. Ideally.

  Twice a day, in the morning when she got up and in the late afternoon when she got back from the hospital, Ginny would take them outside, stroking their heads with her index finger. By now those heads were covered half with the fluffy gray down of infancy and half with sleek black adult feathers. The down stuck out in unruly clumps from the smooth shiny hood that would soon extend to cover their backs as well. They were ugly, she had to admit it. They looked like Australian kiwi birds. They were clumsy and awkward and ugly, like any adolescent form of life. If she hadn’t been a compulsive personality, she’d have flushed them down the toilet. She had to force herself not to strangle them. What in hell was she doing saddled with two young birds who screeched mercilessly the minute she set foot in the cabin? Didn’t she have enough problems without theirs as well, what with going every day to play Clara Barton to her mother’s Camille?

  When Ginny reached her mother’s door, she paused. Over the past two weeks she had developed a real reluctance to enter this room. She never knew what new horror of physical dysfunction would greet her. The second transfusion had worked for four days. The various membranes had stopped leaking, her mother’s platelet count had risen, her bleeding time had fallen. Then everything had broken down again.

  Taking a deep breath, she knocked, waited, then pushed in the door. How dreadful to be always available like this, for a woman who cherished her privacy. Her mother looked up from her encyclopedia and smiled faintly.

  ‘Hello, Mother.’

  Her mother nodded.

  Ginny sat down and tried to think of something cheerful to say. ‘Pretty day out,’ was the best she could do.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Remember those birds?’

  ‘Yes. How are they doing?’

  ‘Fine. I’m giving them flying lessons.’

  Her mother laughed. ‘That should be entertaining. What do you do — jump off the porch flapping your arms?’

  Ginny smiled. ‘Actually, I just toss them into the air and let them figure it out. I wonder, though. Do you suppose birds know how to fly instinctively, or do they learn by watching their parents?’

  ‘Hmmm. Good question. I don’t know. Did you look it up in that book?’

  ‘Birdsall doesn’t know either. Or if he does, he’s not telling. What I can’t figure out is if I can speed things up. I have to get rid of them before they’re totally dependent on me. After all, I won’t be here much longer.’

  ‘Well, I could always take over when you go back to Vermont.’ Mrs. Babcock was surprised at the ease with which this rolled off her tongue. Was Ginny going back to Vermont? Mrs. Babcock had reason to think not, adding up several dozen facial expressions and a few veiled remarks. And she herself wouldn’t be out of this hospital any time soon, if at all. This morning in the bathroom mirror she had discovered blood blisters on her gums. It appeared that the mucous membranes of her mouth would be the next tissues to let her down. She hadn’t yet notified Dr. Vogel or Miss Sturgill. She was feeling very protective toward them, and most of all toward her own worried and unhappy daughter. They were all young people, caught up in the problems of living, blissfully unaware of those of dying.

  Ginny winced, both at her mother’s belief that she’d be out of the hospital soon, or ever, and also at her mother’s assumption that she herself would be returning to Vermont Although this was what she now thought she wanted. It was agony returning every evening to the empty cabin. When her evenings had been crammed with Wendy’s bath and bedtime, with dirty dishes, with eleven o’clock feedings, with lovemaking, she had wished fervently for just one long luxurious evening uninterrupted by demands from her insatiable child and husband. Now, after two weeks of such evenings, she couldn’t bear it any longer. She would pace the floor, hovering over the phone, struggling with herself not to pick it up and call Ira and beg his forgiveness. A dozen times a night she would open the refrigerator door and stare into it without being hungry. Cups of cold coffee and tea sat undrunk all over the living room. She would devote more time than she ever had to Wendy and Ira to her ridiculous birds — putting fresh grass in their basket, cleaning up fallen bits of food, stroking their ugly heads, when they only wanted to be left alone to sleep. The night noises — bullfrogs in the pond and locusts and lowing cattle — would alarm her into double-locking the doors and shutters and propping a loaded rifle by the front door. She would fling herself down on the couch and snatch a book from the bookcase, but her mind would be in Vermont — picturing Ira settling back in his armchair and drawing on his cigar, while Wendy scrambled onto his lap and intently tried to poke a finger through the smoke rings he’d blow for her. Ginny would crawl miserably into bed and wrap her arms and legs around her pillows, pretending that they were Ira’s warm body.

  All the comfortable domestic routines she had found so tedious toward the end — she had nothing new to take their place, and familiar patterns didn’t fade easily on their own. She wanted them back.
She ached for the familiar odors — Ira’s cigars, Wendy’s baby powder, the lemon oil on the antiques. The familiar sensation of Ira’s hands moving over her body, Wendy’s chubby fist clutching her index finger as they walked. True, she had had her reasons for placing all this in jeopardy by taking on Hawk. What had they been? They had seemed so crucial at the time, and now she couldn’t even remember them…

  ‘I don’t know if the birds could adjust to a new mother figure,’ Ginny said weakly. ‘I’d rather have them on their own before I leave.’

  As they labored down the hall to lunch, they heard angry voices in Mrs. Cabel’s room. On the open door hung a sign saying ‘No Visitors.’ The voices were now discernibly Mr. Solomon’s and Sister Theresa’s. Mrs. Babcock stopped.

  ‘Did I tell you Mrs. Cabel went into a coma yesterday afternoon?’ Mrs. Babcock asked, watching her daughter’s face closely to learn if this would upset her.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Ginny said, guarding herself against revealing any emotion. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Inside, Mrs. Cabel’s room was identical to Mrs. Babcock’s but with no ancestral portraits or clock, fewer flowers and cards. The same wall of windows, the same fake Danish modern furniture, the same twin beds. Mrs. Cabel lay flat in one, her eyes closed. Various tubes ran down her nostrils and into her arms, and a bank of machines with a vast expanse of knobs and dials, like the control panel on a space capsule, sat next to the bed.

  Mr. Solomon in a navy wool robe and brown leather slippers was standing at the foot of the bed with his arms outstretched, apparently blocking Sister Theresa. Sister Theresa in her hospital-issue gown and robe towered over little Mr Solomon, whose thick glasses flashed like a Morse code transmitter as he gesticulated angrily with his head.

  He was growling in a low voice, ‘The hell vith your “dignity” and “self-possession” for her spirit, Sister! Can’t you grasp the fact that this is all there is? Let the voman have her last few days of biological survival. She’ll spend eternity in a cold black void!’

  ‘No, Mr. Solomon,’ Sister Theresa insisted, her face flushed with thwarted conviction. There is within each of us a spirit that survives the dissolution of the flesh. Life on this earth, in and of itself, is not sufficiently sacred to warrant our reverence. It’s the quality of that life, Mr. Solomon, that counts. We must set Mrs. Cabel free from her pointless misery. She’s ready now. She’s a caged bird. It is interfering with the will of the Lord to hold her back like this, lashed tightly to her rotting flesh with plastic tubing by well-meaning but godless people!’ She tugged emphatically at her ‘Not My Will But Thine’ medal.

  ‘The fact of human life is sufficient reason for its inviolability,’ Mr. Solomon snarled, scooting sideways to block Sister Theresa’s renewed efforts to get to Mrs. Cabel. ‘Each individual life is precious beyond all question of interference by another. There is no need to prove someone’s right to continue living.’

  Mr. Solomon, noticing Mrs. Babcock and Ginny, said gruffly, ‘Go get Miss Sturgill, please. Sister Theresa is trying to pull the tubes out of Mrs. Cabel.’

  ‘Isn’t that decision up to her family?’ Mrs. Babcock inquired, with an uneasy glance at Ginny.

  ‘They’re relying on the doctors,’ Sister Theresa replied. ‘But I know Mrs. Cabel, and I know what she’d want.’

  ‘And I know Mrs. Cabel, and I know vat she’d vant,’ Mr. Solomon growled.

  Since Mrs. Cabel hadn’t been able to speak since she’d been here, could only bob her head and drool, everyone tended to interpret her enigmatic nonreplies as agreement. Mrs. Babcock had seen Mrs. Cabel cornered by both Mr. Solomon and Sister Theresa. Each would expound to her as though she were a new convert, and she would bob her head and drool and point to her fluffy red slippers for approval.

  That afternoon during its training flight, one of the birds flapped its wings more enthusiastically than usual and glided for several yards. As Ginny watched, applauding, it crashed with a sickening crunch into the trunk of the pine tree — and fell lifeless to the ground. After staring at it with disbelief for several minutes, Ginny tossed it into the kudzu, close to tears.

  Now there was one.

  The next day Ginny found her mother lying supine with her eyes closed. Something about her face looked odd, other than its now familiar roundness and yellowness.

  As she studied the sleeping face, its eyes opened. Her mother nodded. ‘I’m afraid I can’t talk very clearly,’ she mumbled. ‘My gums are packed.’

  ‘Why?’ Ginny asked with alarm.

  ‘They’re bleeding.’

  The two women looked at each other helplessly. Ginny pushed back her mother’s lower lip to reveal cotton rolls, like those a dentist would use.

  ‘When did this happen?’ Ginny asked, sitting down abruptly.

  ‘Yesterday.’ Mrs. Babcock’s various membranes were rupturing one by one. It was logical to assume that one day soon her brain tissue would hemorrhage and her cranial cavity would turn to mush. Should Ginny be told this? No, it was better that she not know, better that they continue to pretend that all would be well. Anticipation was usually far worse than actuality.

  Ginny sat thinking of cerebral hemorrhage. For the hundredth time she asked herself if her mother should be told, so that she could be preparing?

  ‘It’s good of you to keep me company. I know you must be eager to get home to Wendy and Ira,’ Mrs. Babcock said casually.

  Ginny looked away quickly, unable to withstand her mother’s gaze.

  ‘How is Ira managing?’ Mrs. Babcock went on relentlessly. She was worried. She didn’t want to pry, but she had a right to know if the well-being of her granddaughter was being attended to.

  Ginny shrugged. ‘Ira’s sister keeps Wendy during the day and Ira has her at night. Fortunately, I don’t regard myself as indispensable to my household, the way you always did.’

  Mrs. Babcock raised her eyebrows at this unwarranted attack. Yes, she was clearly treading on touchy ground.

  ‘I think it’s good for Wendy to have close relationships with other adults,’ Ginny continued belligerently. ‘It will give her something besides me to reject when she’s an adolescent.’

  Mrs. Babcock laughed. ‘I wouldn’t count on it. I always forbade you children to chew gum on the same principle. I thought maybe then you’d rot your teeth to defy your father and me, rather than smoke and drink and take drugs and — so on. But it didn’t work, did it?’

  Ginny smiled. ‘No, I guess not.’

  ‘I must say I was always so surprised at the degree of defiance I could provoke in you children. I always thought of myself as being too amorphous to butt heads with. It must have been like locking horns with a marshmallow.’

  ‘Well, it’s true that you didn’t seem to understand what was expected of you. I remember one time screaming, “I hate you!’’ And you replied calmly, “Well, that’s what parents are for, dear.”’

  ‘Oh dear, did I really? I do apologize. It must have been very frustrating.’

  ‘Well, the Major made up for it.’

  They smiled at each other like soldiers who have been through a war together.

  Dr. Vogel appeared in the doorway, a huge Good Humor man in his white lab coat. He marched across the room demanding, ‘How are we this morning, Mrs. Babcock?’ He looked at her chart and frowned. He studied the filter paper from that morning’s bleeding time test. He removed the stained cotton rolls from under her lips and poked at her gums. He asked her to open her mouth wide and inspected the insides of her cheeks.

  ‘Well!’ he said, trying to sound cheerful in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. ‘We’ve been consulting some specialists at Duke Hospital about you, Mrs. Babcock. We’ve concluded that our next step is to remove your spleen.’

  Mrs. Babcock and Ginny stared at him numbly.

  ‘There is evidence to suggest, Mrs. Babcock, that your platelets are being kept out of circulation in your spleen.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’ Mrs. Babco
ck asked. She had heard so many definitive diagnoses.

  ‘Hrnmm, yes. Well, your platelet count is reduced. That fact is the only positive evidence one has to go on with ITP. Any further diagnosis is based on negative evidence, a process of elimination, so to speak. We’ve eliminated factor deficiencies, such as cause hemophilia. The smear study of your bone marrow indicates normal numbers of platelet precursors. But something is happening to those platelets upon leaving your bone marrow, Mrs. Babcock. We suspect that some serum factor is rendering them abnormal, hence subject to sequestration and destruction by your spleen.’

  ‘Is this operation standard for ITP?’ Mrs. Babcock inquired.

  ‘Yes, certainly. If steroids fail.’

  ‘And what is its success rate?’

  ‘Fifty to eighty percent of ITP patients who are operated on are cured by splenectomy. In your case, Mrs. Babcock, I think we have every reason to expect favorable results. We’ve held off to discover if the steroids wouldn’t do the trick. We’d rather not operate on someone with a severe bleeding problem. But we feel that the time has now arrived.’

  The operation went well. Mrs. Babcock was transfused with fresh platelets to minimize postoperative bleeding. Her platelet count was high, and her bleeding time was low. The hemorrhaging of her various membranes ceased. For five days.

  On the fifth day, gastric bleeding resumed. Her platelet count dropped like the altimeter of an aircraft in a nosedive.

  When Ginny sought out Dr. Vogel in his lab, he looked gaunt and haggard, in spite of his fifty excess pounds. Averting his eyes, he said defensively, ‘The histological analysis of her spleen showed all the nonspecific changes characteristic of ITP — hypertrophy of the lymphoid follicles, dilated sinusoids, varying numbers of megakaryocytes, eosinophils, and neutrophils…’

  ‘Dr. Vogel, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Ginny interrupted.

  ‘All I’m saying is that the splenectomy is a therapeutic failure, but not a result of misdiagnosis.’