Permanence (15 page)

Suddenly, I am an intruder

Doctor and I are driven to the hospital in the rear of a police car. On the way, doctor leans his head against my shoulder and remains so still I must check to see that he is not sleeping. I must answer many questions about the accident. What I saw. Who was responsible. Am I hurt internally? Would I like to see a lawyer?

I answer the questions vaguely.

I now know the reason why the other passengers of the bus quickly lost themselves amongst the crowd.

Once in the hospital, doctor is treated for a mild concussion. He receives eight stitches in the place where his lower lip split when he hit his face against the rigid plastic backing of the seat directly in front of him. Nurses repeatedly ask doctor to remain in the hospital overnight. Of course, doctor refuses. They cannot convince him to stay, nor can they force him to. He is a doctor, after all.

I am given a mild sedative. The black and blue swelling at my forehead is rubbed clean with an alcohol rub and then bandaged.

No one suspects my pregnancy.

The attending physician is a good-looking man with short black hair that has grayed at the temples. Doctor and he confer about something of which I know nothing while I stand inside this doorway of the physician’s office. I stare at the walls in the hallways. The walls are hospital-white and the floors are battleship gray, with a wainscoting of ceramic tile. Bright overhead lights illuminate the hall while the occasional voice sounds tinny and distant over an invisible public address system. Nurses and workers move about, all dressed in white. On occasion a patient wearing paper shoes scrambles past, making a sandpaper noise with his feet against the floor. There is a familiar worm smell.

I look at my watch: 10:30 A.M.

I am dead tired.

Doctor and the Swiss physician continue to confer about something I suspect is other than his tour bus accident. There must be a reason they will not allow me to listen. But I listen anyway. I listen as intently as all I can from the doorway. But all I can discern are the words “Venice” and “five days.” Still, there is no mistaking the physician’s question that follows:

“Are you certain?” he asks with a withdrawn face.

I turn to look at doctor. He turns slowly, then looks at me. I turn away. I face the hallway outside this office. I feel my heart pounding. And then I hear doctor say it.

“Certain” he says. Once more, I look inside the room. Doctor has his head lowered. He is staring at his lap. The physician will not take his eyes off doctor. Neither man is smiling. There is a deadly silence, other than the robotic voices coming from the PA system that echo throughout the corridor of this hospital.

I feel my stomach constrict and knot.

Suddenly, I am an intruder.

Here’s what I do: I step outside into the hallway of this hospital. I lean up against the wall. I close my eyes, I remember doctor’s difficulty with swallowing even the simplest of liquids. I recall the care he has taken recently with cutting his food into tiny bites, as if the food were meant for a child. I picture the little, careful sips of wine he takes with his meals. I see the pain and the blood that filled his mouth after his face slammed into the seat when the truck slammed into our tour bus. Doctor cut easily. Perhaps too easily.

I think of doctor’s incessant cigarette smoking.

I calculate the risks both real and imaginary.

When doctor comes out of the office I say nothing of my fears and suspicions—that he is sicker, and has been sicker, than he admits; that this trip to Italy is more than pleasure and for conferences…

My stomach is tied in knots.

If doctor loves me the way he says, why then won’t he tell me everything? Perhaps he will tell me. Until that time, I will say nothing. Nor will I ever say anything.

Maybe I don’t want to know, because I don’t know what I will be capable of if I should lose doctor.

I imagine the pain before I feel it

Doctor looks at me now with wide eyes and a withdrawn face. We are standing outside of this hospital in historic Florence, Italy. Thin strands of white surgical tape and gauze cover the stitches along doctor’s swelled bottom lip—a lip that is turning purple.

“How do you feel?” he asks me with slurred speech, bringing his fingertips up to my forehead, gently. But I rear backward. I imagine the pain before I feel it. I say nothing. I laugh a nervous laugh although the pain is no laughing matter. Doctor takes his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“No,” I say. “Don’t be.”

And then, after a time: “Are you sorry about coming here with me?”

“I needed to come here with you.”

“If you like, we could leave early. Head back home.”

“No,” I insist. “I don’t want to leave.” And I don’t.

We walk along the sidewalk, near the front entrance to the hospital.

“Right” says doctor, stopping and turning to me. “Don’t worry about anything.”

I remain quiet.

“I can tell,” he goes on. “Your forehead is wrinkling again. You’re worried.”

I smile a nervous smile.

“I’m trained to notice these things,” he adds in a painful, padded-sounding voice. “I’m a psychiatrist. I can read your face.”

“I won’t worry,” I say, after a beat, “if it makes you feel better.”

We walk.

“In a few days,” says doctor, “I’ll be able to travel again. And then everything will be like it was for us. Once the superficial wounds heal, there will be nothing to remind us of the accident.”

“No more accidents,” I say. But I know doctor and I are lying. Accidents happen when we least expect them. Doctor manages a smile, despite his stitches and his swelled, purple-colored lower lip. If he feels any pain, he says nothing about it. I greet his smile with a smile of my own. I feel the small bandage on my forehead with my fingertips. “No more accidents, no more pain,” I say, my forehead feeling as though it has been split in two.

Timeless David

We do not leave Italy.

Two days of bed rest later I carry my little silver pillbox with me onto the streets of Florence. The pillbox remains suspended from my neck with a hair-thin, Sterling silver chain doctor bought for me from a vendor on the Ponte Vecchio. The little box bounces against my breasts when we walk the cobbled streets to the Academia, the nondescript brick building that houses Michelangelo’s timeless statue of David. This is the grand, white marble statue that stands one-story high and looks, at first glance, not like a statue at all, but a living man about to walk away from the pedestal on which he stands.

Doctor and I, along with many others, stare at the great statue. We absorb each and every angle, each and every muscle, vein and capillary, carefully carved out of white marble. Doctor snaps photographs. He is careful to the keep the camera away from the stitches on his lower lip which has remained swelled and purple.

We make our way around the statue. First the front, then the side and the rear.

“Come here,” says doctor, his whisper echoing inside the great rotunda and hall. “You can see the veins carved out of the stone that run down the length of his back and his legs. You can feel the intricacy.”

I am taken aback at doctor’s appreciation for this work of art. This is a side of him I have never experienced until now. I feel the slight pressure of the pillbox against my chest. I feel for it with my fingertips.

“He’s moving,” says doctor. “David looks as though he will jump away from us. For something hewn from stone, he seems absolutely mobile.”

“For something so timeless,” I add.

We spend an entire hour looking at the statue, discovering and rediscovering the numerous facial expressions he bears as the sun, beaming in through the glass windows of the rotunda ceiling, shines upon the statue’s white face and his athletic body.

“David,” says doctor, “is not like a statue at all. There is nothing fixed about him.”

Doctor speaks the truth. The statue’s stance is slightly cocked at the knee, poised, a sling over his shoulder.

There
is
something chasing David. Something frightening. That something is almost certainly danger, death. There is utter fear on his face. But then, David is motionless, like a photograph. He is timeless, permanent. But I know this: if only he were flesh and blood, it would not be long before his fate—the demons that chase him—destroyed him.

So wonderful, so horrible

The more intent I become with studying paintings, the longer it takes for something on the canvas to move. Of course, nothing ever moves, except for the nightmarish images. For instance, I lose my breath when together, doctor and I come upon the image of the Medusa inside the Uffizi Gallery.

“My God,” he says, the white bandage still covering his swelled lower lip. “How can something be so wonderfully rendered, yet so horrible to look at?”

Again, doctor’s assessment possesses stunning accuracy.

“Look,” I tell doctor. “She can see us.”

“Right through,” he agrees.

She is an image that is painted not on canvas, but on a soldier’s wooden shield. Her mouth is open slightly, her lips pale and swelled, slightly purplish, her skin white. Her eyes move with my eyes.

She follows. She is alive. She is screaming, but she is silent. Her eyes move with my every movement. Her hair is a tangled mass of poised blue and black serpents that seem ready to lunge out after me. I wait for the shout that never comes from her mouth, the horror of her presence. She is not human. She is death.

I feel nauseous, crippled.

Doctor is looking at me strangely. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Why don’t we get a drink of water.” He tugs at my hand. He wants to take me away from the horrible image so beautifully rendered by Caravaggio .

But it is not the Medusa I am seeing.

I am seeing the horrible image of my husband, Jamie, the evening we found baby drowned in the bath. I see Jamie’s startled, horrified fact as I held lifeless baby in my arms. Jamie’s mouth was open, just slightly, his lips thin and losing their color, his skin white. He seemed about to scream, but he was silent. His hair was a tangled and disheveled. I had woken Jamie from a sound sleep.

I turn away from the Medusa. I look at doctor.

“Water,” I say. “Water would be good.”

An obvious question

Doctor and I walk slowly back to our hotel after sharing a brief, silent supper in a small trattoria just a few buildings away from the Uffizi. Tipsy from the house wine served to us inside the pastel-colored pitchers, we follow the cement sidewalks that parallel the river. The night is very dark. Once, we stumble over one another’s footsteps, but this is no laughing matter.

Doctor and I move forward in the silence of the night. I hold to my little silver pillbox for security. I press it between my forefinger and thumb or allow it to dangle beside my heart, feeling the tiny metal weight bounce against my breasts. I listen to the perpetual movement of the river and to the occasional car that speeds by along the narrow cobblestone road that follows the path of the river.

I pretend to be enjoying myself, for doctor’s sake. But I feel horribly alone.

I try to give myself over completely to doctor. I try to love him, the way I loved Jamie—the way I still love Jamie. And I do love him. But I sense that doctor will not be with me much longer. I sense something is terribly wrong. Day by day, doctor seems to become paler, thinner, slower. He rubs his forehead with his fingertips as though suffering from headaches. His bottom lip is still swelled and the bandage that covers the stitches is turning a soiled, brown color. It’s as though the accident on the bus opened a vein of destruction for doctor’s body; as though he had already been sick, but waiting for something to trigger his inevitable, rapid decline.

Listen: doctor looks like he’s dying.

We walk to one of the many bridges that span the river like a half-moon. Doctor stops and leans against the metal pipe railing. He takes a cigarette from his breast pocket and lights it, his sunken face clearly visible in the light from the flame.

I snatch the cigarette out of his mouth and throw it into the river.

“Maybe you should lay off for a while,” I insist.

Doctor stares into the river, invisible in the dark, other than the halo of light made from the overhead street lamps. Without a word, he pulls another cigarette from his pocket and lights it. Smoke floats gently away from doctor’s nostrils and damaged mouth. He leans up from the abutment and, of all things, offers me a cigarette. When I decline, he laughs a sarcastic laugh. Then he turns again to look at the river in the darkness.

“I don’t want to interfere,” I say, standing away from doctor, staring now at the back of his head. I see the glow of the cigarette in the darkness.

“Don’t worry about me,” doctor offers. “I thought we came here to help you? Remember? I’m your doctor. You’re the patient.”

“Your throat. You can’t keep pretending your throat is normal.”

“I’ll decide what’s best for my throat.”

“You’re sick.”

“How do you know?”

“I think it will help if you quit smoking, even for a while”

“There’s nothing wrong with my throat that a little medicine won’t cure.”

“You’re lying.”

There is a pause.

“I’m sorry, but I care.”

“You have a mother’s instinct.”

With the tips of my fingers I feel the pillbox around my neck.

“How many women have there been before me?” I ask this question casually, as though this is an obvious question. Doctor is turned away from me, leaning on his elbows against the bridge railing, the cigarette smoke rising above his head.

Doctor tosses the last of his cigarette onto the riverbank. Rats scurry along the gravel, upsetting the debris and the garbage, immersing themselves in and out of the water. The lamps that illuminate the sidewalks of the bridge act as spotlights. From where I stand, I can see the rats run in and out of the light, their long, fat bodies worming, their black fur matted and slick as with oil or slime.

Doctor turns to me. He takes my hand and holds it tightly.