Love Warps the Mind a Little

by John Dufresne

  She said, “I’m losing part of myself.” She smoothed the sheet over her stomach and thighs. “What will I be like?”

  “You’ll be healthier.”

  “One minute I think, yes, I’ll be alive and all better and back to normal. The next, I think this is just the beginning of the end.”

  I squeezed her hand and smiled.

  She shook her head. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”

  I ran my fingers through her fluffy hair. She winced, told me that her head hurt, her eyes, her shoulders.

  “Stress,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s good you get scared like this. You realize how important life is.”

  I heard the squeaking wheel of a gurney approach the room and pass.

  “I had a dream last night,” Judi said. “I was in a kitchen.” She closed her eyes. “Linoleum floor had a green border, and the rest was cream-colored with confetti flecks of red and black everywhere. A table, chrome legs, with a red and white checked tablecloth. A stick of margarine wrapped in foil on the table. It had a four-leaf clover on it and said ‘Good luck.’ ”

  I said, “Well, that’s appropriate.”

  She opened her eyes, smiled. “Two places set with pink Melmac dinnerware, Mason jars of chocolate milk. A glass ashtray and a pack of Old Golds. I’m in this kitchen, Laf. I walk over to the window and look out. It begins to rain, and suddenly, instead of a clapboard house next door, there’s a vista, you know, hills, ponds, forests, mountains, and it’s raining like mad—raining all over the world. It’s raining in the kitchen, water is running down the walls, down my face and arms. It’s like music, and everything I see is lush and shining, and I realize in the dream what the dream is all about—that we’re all like the water. All the water that there will ever be on earth was there at the very beginning—there’s never any added or taken away. And it’s like that with souls. All the souls that have or will exist were here at the start—we fall to earth, we’re condensed by death, evaporated, I guess you’d say, and we fall as rain again.”

  “Judi Dubey.” A nurse read the name off a pink sheet of paper. Judi raised her hand. The nurse told me I’d have to leave.

  I kissed Judi, said I’d be there when she got back from recovery, when she woke up, when it was all over.

  She said, “Laf, don’t leave me.”

  I smiled, kissed her again. “I won’t.” I walked to the solarium. I tried to read. I guess I fell asleep.

  Biff Evinrude shook me awake and told me that living inside someone else has its advantages. He introduced himself. We shook hands, and then he folded back his flannel bathrobe and showed me his catheter and his leg bag. He smiled like he’d just won a bowling tournament. We were sitting in the solarium on 4 North at Memorial Hospital. He said, They finally believe me. I’m sick again, and it could be the big one this time. He told me he already had multiple sclerosis, but it was in remission, and he was epileptic and would have dramatic and alarming grand mal seizures, especially when he didn’t take his Dilantin. But why wouldn’t you take your medication? I said. To have the seizures, he said. I said, Who’s living inside of whom? That’s one nasty-looking tooth, he told me, and then he padded off down the hall in search of a Dr. Patel.

  I checked my watch. Judi was either still under the knife or in recovery Just to make sure, I walked by 424 and peeked in. Empty. I took the elevator down to the cafeteria, sat at the counter, and ordered a coffee. I wondered what would fill the void in Judi’s body when they finished digging all that mess out. Do the other organs settle? Would her abdominal cavity collapse? I didn’t know why I thought Judi would be in and out of here in a hurry. I figured she’d get the surgery, wake up in recovery, dress in her room, stop down at the pharmacy for medication, and go home to recover. This was all much more complicated than I had wanted to believe. She’d be here four days minimum, according to Stoni.

  The man beside me told me his wife had the Big C, was how he put it. He explained that cancer is a symptom of something else. When I just nodded, he said that the disease is a physical manifestation of sin is what it was. Well, that’s one theory, I said. The guy gave me a look. I said, What I mean is it’s a useful metaphor. He said, Metaphor my dimpled ass. Cancer is a hellfire in the body. He said, Tillie’s up there on 5 South right now, dissolving. I told him I was sorry to hear that. I bought him a coffee and got myself a refill. I left a tip and told my friend, Tillie’s forlorn husband, that I had to run. I wished him the best. I told him to hang in there.

  I got off the elevator on 4 North. I saw Biff Evinrude at the nurses’ station. He was demanding an enema. I went to the pay phone to call my father. He told me that for a couple of hours last night everything was upside down. But then he drank a cup of coffee and it went away. He said, Pretty soon I’ll be seeing inside out. He told me people’s faces looked really funny upside down, talking through their foreheads and everything. I saw Trixie get off the elevator and head for Judi’s room. I told my father I had to go, said to say hi to Mom and Edgar for me. He told me they were all on their way to Orlando for the wrestling matches. I thought, Where the hell did I come from?

  Trixie told me I looked awful. I told her how we’d been up all night. She fished through her purse, drew out a small gold case, and tapped out a white pill. Take this, she said. I did. She said she’s always been blessed with vim and vigor. Never a sick day in her life except for a little bit of polio when she was a child. I stared out the window down at the parking lot. A clutch of nurses was standing by the admitting entrance and smoking. Trixie asked me what I thought about her new look. She’d had her lips and eyebrows tattooed, the lips a Castilian red, the brows a darker shade of brown than her hair. You look spectacular, I said. She said she was saving up for a beauty mark on her right cheek.

  Trixie shifted in her chair. She said, There’s really nothing to worry about. This morning she’d called the Psychic Friends Network and had spoken with Shandra, who told her that Judi would come out of this better than ever. I said, Do you really believe in that stuff, Trixie? She said, If I didn’t believe, it wouldn’t work. I said, It’s all superstition, don’t you think? Trixie said, Well, I’m certainly not taking any chances with my daughter’s life. And then she told me that Shandra had predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, the whole messy business with the Royal Family, the Burt and Lonnie troubles, and that flood in Bangladesh. I said, If Shandra’s so good, why hasn’t she given you next week’s lottery numbers. Trixie said, Shandra wouldn’t soil her powers with vulgarity.

  “Is Stoni on duty?” I said.

  “She’s working graveyard tonight.”

  “How are things with her and Richie?”

  “Richie’s got himself a job.”

  “Doing?”

  “He’s a bouncer at the Hot Tin Roof.”

  “Perfect. Have you heard anything about Arthur?”

  “I just got a postcard from him. He’s down the Cape.”

  Trixie’s little white pill had a lot of words in it. I told her about Dale and Theresa and how Dale had called Theresa after a week, and they’d had a polite, but not particularly tender, dinner out at the Cattle Baron. Trixie said, I have a good feeling about your friends. I think they can work it out. I told her about my father’s curious vision and Spot’s improbable diet, and she said how I had quite a vivid imagination. I told her how I thought you could always revise your life, how you could work and work on it, finesse the details, see if what you’re saying is what you wanted to be saying. That’s what I loved about life, I said. You always have another chance to get it right. She said that would be so nice if only it were true. I told her about learning to ride a bicycle, about seeing my best friend in grammar school get struck in the forehead by lightning. How it lifted him right out of his shoes, incinerated his socks, and charred the bottoms of his feet.

  Finally Dr. Pawlak, the oncologist, came in. She smiled, looked at a chart she carried under her arm. Well, she said, everything looks remarkably good. Dr. LeClair g
ot it all out, it looks like. She’s as pink in there as Nova lox. I think Judi’s going to be okay. I really do. Of course, we’ll continue to be cautiously aggressive with our therapy. Dr. Pawlak said that Judi would not be back from recovery for several hours yet, and when she got back she would be in no condition to receive visitors. Probably, we should just come back in the morning.

  34.

  Time Is a Test of Trouble

  A. “AT THE HOSPITAL”

  On the day after her surgery, Judi lay in bed fevered and incoherent. She’d been given Dilaudid for the pain and she was hooked up to IV drips and monitors. Stoni, Trixie, Hervey, and I sat in her room and talked quietly about her. Occasionally, Judi would speak a single word: Scarlet. Baffle. Pygmy. Bouquet. Shame. Stoni explained the treatment plan. Judi would receive six courses of chemotherapy in three-week cycles, which would begin in two weeks—time to get her strength back. Judi was sweaty, pale, and grimacing. Hervey chewed gum and dug dirt from his fingernails. He told us about an uncle of his who was digested by a slow-eating cancer. Trixie cleaned out her purse and told us all that we had nothing to worry about. The worse was over. Stoni told us to expect problems. First of all, there would be the withdrawal from the painkillers and the steroids. Then there would be the hormonal changes brought on by the hysterectomy. And then the chemo was likely to be unpleasant. There would be possible further surgery—to insert a Port-a-Cath in her chest, first, and later, to take a second look inside. Yes, Trixie said, but the worst is over. Let’s look on the bright side. Stoni said, Well, the bright side is that Judi should be out of here in four days if everything goes well. The four days, it turns out, stretched into a week.

  I had to deal with Judi’s initial indifference to my being there and her subsequent anger. She said I was a selfish bastard, and I suppose she was right. After all, I hadn’t even sent her flowers. I must have thought my presence by her side would be comfort enough. Trixie and Hervey sent a bouquet of pink roses; Judi’s colleagues at work sent a blooming milk-and-wine lily; even Noel sent flowers—red carnations and baby’s breath. Arthur sent a card; Richie sent a card. I just showed up. After the first day I figured, What the hell, I screwed up already. What’s the point?

  Biff Evinrude got discharged on Tuesday, but refused to leave. He sat in the solarium wailing and keening and cursing the nurses. A pair of security guards took him away. Stoni told me that Biff was a notorious chronic at all the local hospitals. He’d opened his abdomen one time with a filleting knife, made a lateral incision just below the navel, and fished out several inches of intestine. Then he telephoned the paramedics. Another time he stapled his dick to his thigh with four industrial staples. Get out of town, I said. Stoni said, It gets worse. I don’t want to hear it, Stoni.

  Layla came for a visit by herself. I asked her where Pozzo Beckett was. She told me he’d gone to Vermont with a couple of characters named Bo and Peep, who were humanoid emissaries from another galaxy. So what’s in Vermont? I said. That’s where the spaceship is picking them up, she said. They’re going to Venus. I said, Venus? That would be impossible, Layla. They’d burn up, disintegrate. Layla said, Not if you know what you’re doing. And you forget, she said, who Pozzo is. I said, And you passed up the chance to go? She told me she didn’t have the fifty bucks for the ticket.

  B. “AT DENTALAND”

  Small world. It turned out that I knew my new dentist, Dr. Vigeant. She was the same Ginny Vigeant I went to grammar school with. She had been overweight then, quiet, and very smart. She sat between Carolyn Cupit and Carla Nettlebladt in eighth grade. She looked at my tooth and shook her head. Who did this? she said, meaning the dismal crown. I told her. She checked my records, nodded. You normally get nitrous oxide? And Novocain, I said. She smiled. I said, I’m not at all ashamed of having a low threshold of pain. She patted my arm and told me not to get so defensive. She explained how she would take this monstrosity out of my mouth, make a cast—I know you’ve done this all before—fit a temporary crown, and in a week and a half I’d have a tooth I could be proud of. We agreed on a discounted price. Even the temporary will look better than what you’ve got, she said. She said she needed me awake for some of this business today, but if I wanted, she could put me under for a while. I wanted. Very definitely. Under the gas I dreamed that Spot and I were cruising down a back road in Vermont. I was driving my father’s car, the 71 Plymouth Fury Spot was watching cows out the window and telling me that some dogs, mostly your purebreds, believed in an afterlife, but he certainly wasn’t one of them. I said, Look at me when you talk. I want to see your lips move.

  C. “AT THERAPY”

  Martha said that her life was collapsing, that she was feeling self-destructive, that if anything happened to her, it would be my fault. I’ll tell you how bad it is, she said. I’m reading self-help books, listening to self-improvement tapes. She had invested sixteen years in our relationship, and now it was not paying off. What was she supposed to do? How could I expect her just to start over? Do you know what’s out there? she said. Do you? Slimeballs with hairy backs, bald heads, and groping hands. Worms, she said. Cretins. Moral degenerates. Both Martha and Terry referred to my behavior as a “midlife crisis,” and it pissed me off royally, I suppose, because it made me seem both predictable and ordinary. I’d rather be on fire than be ordinary.

  D. “AT 137 VANZETTI DRIVE”

  While Judi was in the hospital, I left the typewriter on her kitchen table. I kept the lawn mowed, the hedges trimmed, the shrubbery pruned. I got my first real acceptance for a story from The Quixote Quarterly. The story was “Mr. Buttinski,” about what happens when a man hears a terrible domestic dispute through the bedroom wall of his apartment. It’s the landscaper guy—Mr. Greengenes, his trucks say—and his wife. The man, Al DeBettancourt, can hear the husband accuse the wife of having someone’s (sounded like “Fernando’s”) cock in her mouth. He hears her plead with her husband. He hears punches and slaps. Something, a lamp maybe, or, Jesus, maybe her head, slams against the wall. Al yells, “I’m calling the police!” and everything goes quiet. That’s how the story starts.

  Anyway, I was understandably in heaven, but I had no one to share the moment with. Spot could tell I was excited when I read Mr. Robt. Coffin’s letter of acceptance to him. He wagged his tail and licked my leg, but then he went right back to chewing on the plastic bedpan I’d brought home for him. I felt legitimate for the first time. Real. Valid. I was encouraged to get back to Hobbs, back to Dale and Theresa.

  It was a Sunday afternoon. Theresa must have spoken with the children, or maybe they really did miss having Dale around. Anyway, Theresa and Caitlin are in the kitchen making pan-fried chicken, smashed potatoes, as Caitlin calls them, and snow peas. Dale and the boy are on the living room floor building a house of cards. When the house collapses, Peter just laughs and laughs. Dale pretends to be frustrated, and they begin again. The dinner is more than delicious. After eating and doing the dishes—Theresa washes, Dale dries—the four of them go for a walk. Dale pulls Peter in a red wagon. Dale feels proud, like he’s been responsible for something significant in his life. He feigns ease, like he’s so used to these Sunday walks. Dale stays the night. After making love with Theresa, he wonders is it the feeling of family he enjoyed or that warmth coupled with independence. He was, after all, uncommitted if not unengaged. He thought about Keynes, home alone, and he realized he was being irresponsible by staying over. Maybe the next time, he thinks, he’ll bring the dog along. Theresa has her back to him. She is not asleep. She’s staring at the clock on the nightstand.

  Two days after my story was accepted, I got a rejection in the mail. This sort of thing keeps you humble. You’re only as good as your last verb. The story was called “And Then the Windows Failed.” The editor at the Great Salt Lake Review, Maurice Fields, called the characters unimportant, the language arch, and the plot pedestrian. He included a subscription form with his letter. A joker.

  35.

  Post-op

 
I WAS ON MY WAY TO PICK UP JUDI AT THE HOSPITAL. SUPPOSEDLY, DR. PAWLAK would meet us there for a pep talk. Judi had already given me the bad news over the phone the previous afternoon. The cancer was, in fact, a little worse than the tumor board had originally thought. Stage IV I said, III-A, IV, what’s the difference? Judi said, There’s no Stage V She read to me from the notes she’d taken. Undifferentiated epithelial carcinoma of the ovary. Malignant cells implanted on the peritoneum, on the surface of the liver, the stomach, the colon, the omentum—whatever that is—on the bladder, on the diaphragm. This sucks, Laf. Judi began to cry. I said, Hold on, I’ll be right up. But she told me she’s already been doped up and would be asleep in like five minutes, and anyways, Trixie was there, and she’d see me in the morning.

  Judi was sitting in the chair near the window. She had on her blue silk shirt and her denim skirt, and she looked great, maybe because I had braced myself for worse. Judi said her throat was sore. They’d been making her cough all the time to keep her lungs clear while she was in bed. She showed me her leg and foot exercises.

  Dr. Pawlak walked in, followed by four young interns, three men and a woman. Probably here to see how you deal with one of the tough cases. She shook my hand, Judi’s, leaned against the foot of the bed. She gave Judi a schedule of the chemotherapy Judi said, Is it worth it? All eyes on the doctor. What we’re attempting to do is halt the spread and kill any wandering tumors, cells, that sort of thing. Six cycles. Every three weeks. We’re going to be very aggressive. You’ll be getting intravenous administrations of a combination of drugs. She discussed side effects. The interns took notes. All fast-growing cells would be affected: hair follicles, bone marrow, cells in the lining of the mouth, the stomach, the bowels. But all the damage—the hair loss, the sores, and so on—are temporary. So we’ll see you in two weeks. And then she was gone, entourage following.

  The nurse who was wheeling Judi to the front door had a guardian angel pin on her uniform. She smiled at me and said it sure looked like rain today, but we sure could use it. I nodded. Had I missed a drought or something? I ran ahead to the parking lot and pulled the car around to the pickup lane.