Love Warps the Mind a Little

by John Dufresne

  Judi would imagine the medication as a platoon of marauding soldier ants devouring every tumor in its path. The next time it might be her white blood cells as a plague of locusts laying waste to her malignant fields of cancer, or her T-cells as a frenzied school of brutal and efficient piranhas tearing the flesh from this unfortunate carcinoma. She said she thought the exercises were working. And, of course, we both wanted to believe they were. I said, Well, it makes sense. You’re taking control of the struggle this way You’re bringing your creative powers to bear. I told her to envision a million microscopic televangelists surrounding the tumor like hungry Pac-Men and haranguing the cancer cells into submission. She told me that wasn’t working. So we tried to send in a zillion little Camille Paglias with tiny holsters and six-guns to blast away every politically and physically incorrect cell. Better. We filled Judi’s body with Ahabs and Bruce Lees and jackals and a squadron of warrior androids from the planet Hippocrates in the star system Cos. We were having fun with cancer. Which worried me. I worried that Judi would ultimately pay for this affront to the illness. Of course, I also worry that if I change seats while watching a ball game, the Sox will blow whatever lead they have.

  The night before chemo, Stoni came by to check on her sister. She told us about a Port-A-Cath that the doctors would be inserting into Judi’s chest. She didn’t know when, but it was the usual routine. This clever installation would allow doctors to administer their chemicals with an IV needle directly into her body without poking around at her collapsing veins. Judi seemed to be paying attention. I got Stoni and me another beer. I think Stoni told Judi, though I’m not sure about this—there’s only so much I wanted to know—that they also used the cath to perform what Stoni called “water washes,” where they flushed out the exfoliated cancer cells. Something along those lines. I opened the beers, slid one across the table to Stoni. But I kept feeling the pressure of my swollen prostate, the throbbing of the unsettled nerve in my new crown (Dr. Vigeant, bless her heart, had replaced the loosened temporary with an appropriately dishwater-gray permanent, at long last), and this dagger of pain behind my left eye. Danger made me frantic.

  When Stoni raised her glass, her eyes caught mine, and I recognized pain, fear, or resignation, or something I was not meant to see. Stoni caught me watching her and shook her head, lowered her eyes, I know she did, to tell me that our brief season of hope was ending. There was a long winter ahead.

  That night Judi couldn’t sleep. She cried. I held her. She read a while. I tossed. She was afraid, she said, of what was going on in her body right now She couldn’t visualize. She was too distressed. She didn’t know if she wanted to go through with this chemo tomorrow. I told her, Don’t be silly. You have to. She put out the light, lay back. She said she had pain like a thick belt around her waist, and it was like someone was squeezing it tighter and tighter. Stress, I said. You’ll be fine. Now get some sleep. At three I slipped out of bed and went to the living room couch with my pillow. I fell asleep in seconds, it felt like.

  Judi shook me awake. I asked her what time it was.

  “Three-fifteen. Come on,” she said, “I’ll make you some coffee.” We went to the kitchen.

  All I had to do was just smell the coffee, and I started to wake up. I could feel all my nerve cells tremble with anticipation. Fascicular junkies. Judi said she didn’t know if she’d had a dream or what it was, but before, in bed, she kept seeing a buttery flower pushing up through this creamy mound of snow. Springtime, I said. Rebirth. She smiled, said, Winter first.

  We ended up talking about our work. It’s like we started gabbing and couldn’t stop ourselves, like we were teenagers who’d just discovered that war was bad, love was redeeming, capitalism preyed on the poor. It started with sex. Judi said that as a therapist she had more privileges of intimacy than she did as a lover. There are things I can’t ask you yet, she told me. But the client is asking me to open him up to find out what’s going wrong.

  While she talked about paying attention, I squeezed oranges for juice, fried us some eggs, toasted raisin bread. I set the table. Judi folded napkins. I kissed her on the head. I served the food and we ate together.

  “Therapy,” she said, “is seeing the universal in the particular—the essence. Clients are not subtle even if they think they are.”

  I pictured myself in Terry’s office. My legs were crossed, my hands clasped on top of my head.

  “You see the way they’re dressed, the way they sit or stand. You hear the tone of voice, the rhythm of their speech.” Judi mentioned a young woman who’d come for a session yesterday. “She was late. She wore no makeup. She looked at the floor when she spoke, worked her engagement ring on and off her finger. She didn’t have to tell me she was depressed. She showed me.”

  And then I heard the crows in the fir tree and saw the gray light of morning out the window. It was 6:45. I told her she’d better hurry up and shower before we had to leave. We’d talked, I realized, for three hours without a breath, but we hadn’t talked about cancer or chemo or pain or dying or any of that except that as she got up from the table, Judi said, Maybe the chemo will be easier this time.

  It was worse. She threw up in the car on the way home. I figured it was the heater, the stuffiness and everything. She didn’t have the strength to be upset about her mess. She looked yellowed except for her knuckles and the swelling under her eyes. She threw up again in the garage, all over her parka and her sneakers.

  I cleaned her, changed her into a nightgown, and got her into bed. That whole time she cried. She couldn’t talk. Could shake her head a little. I called Dr. Pawlak and got her machine. It’s an emergency, I said. I called Stoni. She listened and calmed me down. She’ll be okay. This is bad but not unexpected. She said she’d be by around three to check on her. I called Nicky, said I couldn’t come to work. I cleaned out the car as best I could. I went back in to check on Judi. She was asleep, it looked like. I took her sneaks and parka out to the deck to hose them down. Of course I had to play with Spot first. He’d been lonesome. He tried to lick the vomit off the shoes. I hosed the shoes, the jacket, the dog, the deck. I set out Spot’s food and water. I tossed the mess in the washer. Judi was still sleeping. Good, I thought, maybe the nausea had passed. I tried to be quiet while I mopped up in the bathroom.

  I could tell when she opened her eyes and probably saw herself in the ceiling that Judi didn’t know where she was. She looked around with her eyes, not her head. Laf, she said when she saw me, oh, Christ, Laf. She cried. I wiped her eyes with the hem of the sheet, made a mental note to buy Kleenex. She told me the light hurt. I drew the blinds. Her whole body, she said, felt like a toothache. The phone rang. Dr. Pawlak said I should take Judi’s temp; she’d hold. And I would have if I could have found the thermometer. I told Dr. Pawlak I’d have to wait till Stoni got here. She said to call her with the temp, and if it’s 106 to call an ambulance and get her back to the hospital. She said, I want you to know this is not an uncommon reaction to the chemo. These medications are extremely toxic. My guess is that Judi’s over the worst of it. I said, Are you sure you didn’t give her too much of it? I mean I’ve been reading in the Globe about the health reporter who was killed by the cancer clinic. Dr. Pawlak was certain that Judi’s dosage was correct.

  I sat with Judi while we waited for Stoni. I helped her to the bathroom to be sick again. Nausea and diarrhea. She drank a little water, but threw it up minutes later. Stoni arrived, helped me change Judi’s clothes and bedsheets. I ran out to Monahan’s Pharmacy and got tissues, a thermometer, some toothpaste, toilet paper, hand soap. I got an ice pack, a heating pad, Band-Aids. I was going to be ready for anything. Judi’s fever was 104.9. Every joint ached, she said. Stoni cooled her down with ice on her forehead. Stoni said she was staying and maybe she should sleep in here with Judi. I thanked her. She told me, This means the chemo is working—it’s knocking everything out of commission.

  For the next couple of days Judi felt nauseated. She could barely eat: G
erber’s strained peaches once in a while, orange Popsicles, a bite or two of Jell-O, maybe some cooled mashed potatoes. She was down to ninety-eight pounds. Leaden pounds, she said. She could barely lift an arm much of the time, slept sixteen to twenty hours. I was concerned that the disease was back in spades and was busily ravaging her. Judi told me sleep was her way of battling the illness by conserving her strength, channeling all her energies and her will to the immune system.

  I decided to start doing my typing out in the garage, make the area into a sort of writer’s studio. This way Judi wouldn’t be disturbed by the slapping of keys and the balling of paper. As sweet as she was, Judi had already explained to me on the third day that if she could manage a rocket launcher, she’d have blown the freaking typewriter to Kingdom Come and me with it. She closed her eyes and turned her head on the pillow. To smithereens, she said. I catch your drift, darling, I told her, and I brought a gooseneck lamp up from the cellar and set it out on the workbench in the garage. I even let Spot come and keep me company while I wrote. I let him chew on old tomato crates, on a cribbage board I’d found behind a Studebaker hub cap, and on whatever else looked expendable. I wrote one story out there, “The House of Good Eats,” but then the weather turned colder. I brought out the quartz heater and I was still cold. Then I brought Judi’s car in from the driveway, and I sat inside it and typed with the machine on my lap and the heater on low. Still didn’t smell right in there. I sprayed it with lilac air freshener. I was careful not to drain the battery. It became clear to me, however, that I would soon need to adjust my technology—I’d have to learn to write with pen and paper so I could write in the house again.

  By Tuesday Judi was feeling better. She even yelled at me for being a slob. Why couldn’t I have vacuumed at least once? Because your head was exploding, I said. And get your shit off the table. The paper, the notes, the books, she meant. She was still tired, however. She told me this constant fatigue was as debilitating as the pain almost. Made her depressed. I heated up some chicken bouillon and poured her a cup. We sat at the table. She blew on the spoon, sipped. Hot. I put an ice cube in the broth. She said was it going to be like this for the rest of her life? Was she going to be in pain all the time, every minute?

  “It’s not the cancer doing this, Laf. It’s the drugs.” She pushed the cup away, wiped her mouth with her hand. “I can’t go through this hell again.”

  I explained to her what she already knew—that the chemo was temporary, and, yes, it was awful now, but in the long run she’d be better off. Chemo was hope.

  “Hope for what? Stage Four, remember?”

  “You have to fight this thing.”

  “I can’t even think, Laf. Can’t read. I can’t work like this. I haven’t been able to remember things. It’s like my mind is going blind.”

  I said, “You know, maybe the next time will be like the first and not like this one. Maybe it won’t be bad at all.”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  In a few days, when her pain was a memory, I’d reason with her, beg her if I had to. And she’d have to tell Stoni and Trixie and Dr. Pawlak, and they would all, I was sure, explain the foolishness of her decision.

  44.

  Love and Marriage

  I BEGAN TO WATCH THE NEWLYWEDS WHO HAD MOVED INTO MR. LESPERENCE’S house. Marriage, I figured, at its best anyway, is a collaboration of hearts. The couple were the Nybergs, Chet and Maryalice. When I first introduced myself and Spot to Chet, I told him, Love is the house that marriage builds. He looked perplexed. He stepped back. I told him I was a writer. He smiled, relaxed a bit. I wasn’t out for his money or his soul, he realized. Chet was a lawyer just starting out his career with Bowditch and Dewey. Bowditch, I said. Some Bowditch painted the house. Yes, he said, same family Maryalice worked part-time at Sharfman’s Jewelers. One afternoon I brought her over a carrot cake I’d baked and said, Love is not a singular affair, is it? She laughed at that and said that Chet had told her about me. You’re Laf, right? She told me to have a seat, she’d cut the cake, perk some coffee. She told me she’d start a career (law, sales, public relations, who knows?) as soon as the kids they were going to have—a boy and a girl, she hoped, C.J. and Grace—got to first grade. Maybe I’ll even teach, she said.

  Chet and Maryalice dressed alike in chinos, oxford shirts, cable-stitch sweaters, and deck shoes. On Monday nights Chet had his buddies over, and they all watched football in Chet’s den. Every week Chet invited me over for the game. I kept meaning to go even though I knew I’d be incredibly depressed. I didn’t have a cap with a team logo on it like Chet and his pals. I know this sounds snotty, and I apologize. One guy they called Tubba wore a Patriots uniform every week—shirt, knickers, athletic shoes, the works. Whenever something remarkable happened in the game, the pack of them would whoop and leap. I could hear them from our house. If I looked over through the window, I’d see them laughing like mad, slapping each other’s hands. They scared me a little.

  Spot and I ran into Maryalice one morning. We were walking through Abbie Hoffman Park; she was jogging. She stopped to say hi. Spot sniffed her shoes, licked her salty legs. I told him to quit it. She joined our walk for a bit. She asked me what I was writing about these days. I said, Love. What about love? she said. We stopped so Spot could lift his leg and mark the hydrangea. I mentioned Theresa and Dale and how their story was now a novella and threatening to become a novel. It was a story about love trying to exist without marriage. Maryalice said, Don’t you think it can? I said, I suppose so, but can it exist without commitment? She said I sounded old-fashioned. We were quiet, and then Maryalice said, So your wife’s a nurse? I said, It’s not my wife you’ve seen. Maryalice said, Oh. I said, That’s her sister the nurse. You haven’t met Judi because she’s laid up with cancer.

  And after that remark, Chet and Maryalice became less visible, less congenial. I understood. They were not afraid of contagion, but afraid to think that this is where their bloomy marriage was leading them to inevitably—the cancer ward or the trauma center or the nursing home. How do you maintain buoyancy in an ocean of grief?

  Our received wisdom declares that it takes two people to destroy a marriage. But maybe not. Look at Marvin and Pauline. Marvin was married to an angel who remained devoted to him. He pretty much went out, got himself hooked on dope, lost a business and then his family And look at me. Didn’t I just walk away from a woman who loved me and needed me? And why? So I could sit around and think and write about imaginary people? Is that good enough?

  I needed to start paying close attention again. And I might have gotten right to it if Richie Muneyhun hadn’t had a craving for baklava. What happened was he was home watching Mighty Joe Young on the VCR when he found himself hungry, and all he had in his fridge was tuna and peanut butter. He got on his bike and cruised into Worcester and up to Eleni’s Midnight Café. And that’s when he saw Stoni and Arthur in Arthur’s pickup pulling out of Eleni’s lot onto Franklin Street. He followed them. And then Ronnie showed up.

  45.

  My Name Is Legion; for We Are Many

  JUDI’S FATHER COULDN’T STILL HIMSELF. EVER SINCE I’D SHAKEN HIS HAND AT the back door and invited him into the kitchen, he seemed ruffled and agitated. He tried to sit at the table with me, strained to hold himself down, but just bounced right up off the chair and paced the room. I thought of a fly buzzing against a lampshade. He leaned his duffle bag against the fridge. He washed his hands at the sink. He smelled his hands, palms and backs, and washed them again. He looked out the window and told me a dog was chomping on an umbrella. Spot, I said. He told me his full name: Hieronymous Ulysse Dubey. I told him mine: Lafayette Kosciusko Proulx. My father studied the Revolutionary War, I said.

  Hieronymous had a repertoire of erratic, jerky little moves. He pulled up at his pant waist, reached down to tug at a cuff or a sock, scratched his ear, rubbed his eyes, wiped his nose with the heel of his hand. He did this thing where he pressed his fingertips together and held his arms
out in front of his chest, then moved them back and forth like some kind of crab or insect. He rocked back on his heels, lifted up on his toes, twirled his hair around his index finger, scrunched his face like a weasel, squinted, blinked, stretched his jaw, twitched his shoulders, shook his head. I was exhausted.

  “Hieronymous, can I get you something to drink or something?”

  He told me to call him Ronnie.

  “Ronnie, then. Some tea? milk? cranberry juice? Moxie?”

  He wanted milk. I poured him a glass. He told me he was paranoid-schizophrenic. Diagnosed and certified. He drank the milk, wiped his mouth with his hands, and washed his hands. But I’m not routinely deranged, he said. No garden-variety crackpot. I’ve boldly gone where no schizophrenic has gone before. He explained that all his activity, his gestures, all this stage business, he called it, was part of a song, a kinetic melody he was playing. The music of the spheres, he said. I keep the universe going. I hear myself when I move, you know. Every tic is a note, every twitch a chord. Every flourish is a tone. Nothing’s random, he said. I’m a new symphony every day. Every hour a new movement. You watch me, he said. You’ll learn something. More milk, please.

  He wore a blue and yellow plaid flannel shirt, a navy cardigan, and a powder-blue polyester suit with white stitching. It matched his eyes. Ronnie had come to see his daughter, whom he hadn’t seen in seventeen years. Hitchhiked down from Henniker soon as he heard. Trixie had got hold of him. I told him that Judi was off with Stoni at the hospital. More tests. They’ll be back in a couple of hours. I asked him if he’d like to shower. Ronnie said he hadn’t thought to bring along a change of clothes. I was in such a hurry, he said. I looked at the duffle bag. My notebooks, he said. Flyers and things. My songs. I told him he could wear my clothes. He said, I’ll need a shave. Beards are not hygienic. Facial hair traps chemical pollutants like benzene and ammonia. It’s like inhaling DDT every minute of your life. If you have a mustache, forget about it. The Chinese have done a lot of research in this area. We got a lot to learn from those Reds. I set out a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, underpants, and socks on the john. I heard Ronnie talking to himself in the shower.