Ill Will (3 page)

That was part of what we’d lost and were yet to come to terms with. Before Katrina, there were two grocery stores within about ten blocks of our house. It was no problem for me to swing by them, even on busy days. That was our pattern. I’d get the food and do most of the cooking, since my hours were more flexible than hers, and she’d take the major part of the cleanup.

With her clinic destroyed and rebuilding still up in the air, she’d taken work where she could find it. There was a need for doctors, so great it was part of the problem. Cordelia worked longer hours than she had before the storm. So from her point of view, it probably still seemed like I should continue to do what we’d always done. It just wasn’t working for me.

She was tired more often—or so she claimed. But her tiredness had stretched since before the holidays, now months past. I’d suggested depression, but she’d blown that off.

Just one more fucking thing to deal with in a fucked-up city. Cold shrimp po-boys wouldn’t make anything any better. I started my car and drove away.

“I thought you were going to the grocery store,” Cordelia asked as she entered the kitchen and saw me unwrapping po-boys. She had been home long enough to have changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt, opened a beer, and finished a third of it.

“I work downtown. The only open grocery store is way uptown,” I said.

“Oh, okay. Are you going to make it tomorrow? We’re running low on toilet paper,” she said, taking another swig of her beer.

“Do you have some grocery store disability?” I snapped. “Is there a reason I’m the only one to go even though your work is half a city closer than mine is?”

“You’re angry,” she ever-so-perceptively noticed.

“I’m tired,” I said tersely. “I guess you haven’t noticed I’m working a lot of hours, sometimes more than you. And that I’m the only one who goes to the grocery store. And that—”

“I’ve noticed,” she cut in.

I got a beer out of the refrigerator and opened it.

“I don’t guess you noticed when I took our car out to be serviced,” she said.

“That was your car.”

“That you were driving more than I was.”

“It was two weeks ago,” I pointed out.

“I had to drive out there in the morning, get Kathy to pick me up on her way to work and drop me back again in the evening to pick it up and I had blood on my clothes when I went back out there because I didn’t have time to change and—”

“I was working that day. And I hate Metairie.”

“It’s not my favorite place in the world.” In a softer tone she added, “I know. That’s why I went there.” For a moment we were both silent, “Please, Micky, let’s not fight.” And then very quietly added, as if to herself, “I can’t do this if we’re fighting.”

Oh, no you don’t
, I started to say. But didn’t—even I’m not that much of an asshole. This was her usual way out of the argument, to be too tired, too overwhelmed, too bruised and battered by what she’d been through in Katrina and what she faced afterward. I couldn’t call her on it because it was true. But it was true for me as well, just not as ragged and messy. I hadn’t been trapped in Charity Hospital for almost a week, waiting for rescue, helpless in the festering heat as patients who should have lived died. I had evacuated, watching my city and every part of my life torn apart on a TV screen. That was what we struggled with—we were all battered and no one was left whole to lean on.

“We need to find a better balance,” I finally said. “I can’t do everything I did before.”

“Let’s eat. Someone told me there’s a new store up on Carrollton, that it just opened. I’ll go after we’re done.”

“And stick me with the dishes?” That got a wan smile from her. I was trying to be funny. “Let’s eat and then we can both go. A new grocery store on this side of Canal Street—even if it is up by City Park—is a good excuse for an outing.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t move for a moment, the beer motionless in one hand, the other hand reaching for the sandwich wrapper, but still. “I’m sorry this is so hard. Please know that I love you.”

I put down my beer, cupped her face in my hands. Something had happened today. I needed to find my better angel. “I know that. I’m sorry it’s hard, too.” I leaned in and gently kissed her. It was soft, a brief touch of comfort and love. Then I let go. “Should I microwave these? They’re better hot than cold.”

She nodded and I did. We talked as we ate, small talk, the weather, who’d told her about the newly open store—“he said he screamed like a girl when he heard the news”—what to put on the grocery list—talking as if we needed to avoid silence.

She let me drive.

As we waited for the light at Claiborne and Esplanade, she said, “I had an appointment with Jennifer today.”

“Jennifer?” I asked, trying to place the name.

“A…specialist.”

“Why?” I asked as the light changed and I shifted into first gear.

“Probably nothing. But I’ve been so tired lately. Plus losing weight.”

“Which you’ve wanted to do.”

“I’m not trying. Thought it might be thyroid, but we did those tests and everything came back negative.”

I briefly glanced at her. Cordelia has struggled with her weight more than I have. I seem to have one of those obnoxious metabolisms that allows beer and brownies with no bulge. She’d lost weight after her ordeal in Charity and as far as I could tell hadn’t regained it. The hollowness in her cheeks was still there. Had she lost more?

“What are you being checked for?” I asked.

“The usual, any swelling or mass.”

“Cancer?” The word hung in the air.

“That’d be the worst-case scenario. It’s most likely a low-grade infection causing the swollen lymph glands. I’m probably also going to find out that I’m borderline anemic and need to eat more protein.”

“What are the possibilities?” I tried to keep my tone neutral. She brought it up because she was worried about it.

“The doctor side of me knows that most of the time it’s nothing, a few tests, some anxious moments and that’ll be it. We did the needle aspiration of the lymph nodes today. It’ll be about a week before we get those results back.”

“What about the patient side of you?”

“I’m not used to being the patient.” She was silent. Finally she said, “It’ll be okay. I’m probably only trying to find a physical reason for my mental malaise. Tell me about your day. Anything interesting?”

I let her avoid the subject. They’d run a few tests, we’d know then. There was no point in worrying about it now.

“It seems that someone is selling Lake Pontchartrain swamp water as the cure-all for everything. And it somehow became my job to solve the case.”

“Lake Pontchartrain swamp water? Really?”

“Probably not,” I amended. “But one of those ‘natural miracle drugs’ that the government doesn’t want anyone to know about because it’s so good. I was supposed to prove that it didn’t work, convince the nephew he was throwing money away, all for a nominal fee that I’d waive in the end because this is such a do-gooder case.”

“Did you take it?”

“No, of course not. I’m busy enough and have no experience in medical fraud even if he was willing to actually pay me anything. I told him to go to the FDA. If people are stupid enough to fall for swamp water as a cure for cancer, there’s not much I can do about it.”

“Desperate,” she said softly.

“What?” I asked as I stopped for the light at Broad.

“Desperate,” she repeated. “Most of them are desperate. Clinging to a fragile hope that the answers they’ve gotten so far—that there is no cure—aren’t the only answers.”

For a brief second a haunted look crossed her face, as if she could feel that desperation, then it was gone and the Cordelia I knew returned. I didn’t know if she was talking about herself or remembering someone else’s desperation.

“So desperate they’d try something insane?” I asked.

But the fear I had glimpsed was gone. Or hidden. The perilous week in Charity Hospital would haunt her to the grave. Maybe some vestige of that would always be hidden behind her eyes. Her answer was calm. “Snake oil salesmen have been with us since there were snakes. Until around a hundred years ago, it was a free-for-all, totally unregulated so-called patent medicines whose main ingredient was either alcohol or opium. We only started regulating these things in 1906.” She was comfortable with information; sometimes she hid behind it. “The first law here was introduced then and it only required that ostensible medicines disclose ingredients like alcohol or opium. Quite a number of temperance ladies were distressed to discover that Mrs. Pinkham’s potion was more alcoholic than their husband’s gin.”

I interrupted the lecture. “But that was then. Now we have better regulations, right?”

“Better regulations, yes, but also a much more complicated medical system. Drugs approved by the FDA have to go through a series of clinical trials to prove that they’re safe—at least safer than the disease they’re treating, all drugs have side effects—and actually work better than a placebo. If it says it reduces high blood pressure, then it has to reduce high blood pressure. But there is a whole unregulated side, the nutritional supplements.”

“They don’t have to work?”

“They can’t claim to treat disease, they can’t say ‘reduces blood pressure,’ but they can be vague and say things like ‘promotes heart health.’ They’re considered safe until proven otherwise.”

“So people can still sell snake oil?” I asked, making the left at City Park to get onto Carrolton.

“Essentially. They can’t claim on the labeling that it cures cancer or HIV. The latest trick is to have one website extolling the virtues of snake oil with a link to another website that makes no health claims but actually sells the stuff.”

“Is that legal?”

“Freedom of speech.”

“So you can claim Lake Pontchartrain water cures every disease known to man—and woman, and I can sell it and it’s all legal?”

“Pretty much.”

“What if it kills someone?”

“If it’s harmful, it can be pulled from the market.”

“Cold comfort if you’re already dead.”

“Very cold. It took years for ephedra to be banned despite mounting evidence that it killed people. The deaths of several prominent athletes were required to get Congress to outlaw it. The supplement makers took it all the way to the Supreme Court to get the FDA ban overruled.”

“They lost?”

“Yes, but they have a powerful lobby—the money to buy influence.”

“So is all that stuff crap?”

“No, some of it is clearly worthless, some actually helpful, and most is in the don’t-know category. It’s expensive to do research, and there is no incentive to spend money when you’re already making money without spending it.”

The welcoming glow of lights appeared ahead of us. A grocery store had indeed opened below Canal Street. That burst of normality cheered me considerably. It still wasn’t close to our house; before Katrina this had been the far grocery store, one I went to if I had something to do up here. Now it was the near one.

“It’s true; they did reopen,” Cordelia said. She reached over and took my hand. “I hate going to the grocery store because I always forget something and you get upset.”

Peeved perhaps, I started to argue, but not really upset. But I have gotten old and wise enough to know that sometimes right and wrong isn’t the issue. I kept my mouth shut.

She continued, “There are things that I just don’t think about—like garlic—and if it’s not on the list, I overlook it.”

She had a point. Things like garlic, onions, and lemon are staples; they’re always on the list, even if they aren’t written down. But just because I know that in my head doesn’t mean she does.

“Okay, how about I make the list and if it’s not on the list, it’s on me.” I turned into the parking lot. Either not many people knew this store had opened, or it was late enough that it wasn’t very crowded.

“Okay, fair enough,” she said. “Thank you.”

We went and made groceries, as they say down here.

As I was drinking my coffee after having just arrived at my office, I remembered how nice it was to have someone to share the daily chores with. In our grocery run last night we had flirted over the avocados. I’d found out that Cordelia liked a variety of apples, not just Red Delicious. We splurged on a really nice piece of salmon and a decent bottle of wine. If it had just been me, I would have gotten the usual apples, passed by the salmon and wine. And been prosaic over the avocados.

We held hands on the way home.

More importantly, we agreed that we had to find more ways to do this, to capture the small moments and be together. We had gotten too practical, dividing things so we ended up doing them alone to save time. But how you spend time can be more important than saving time.

The avocado flirting had led us to the bedroom and we’d made love, slowly, gently, not a hard passion, instead a tender connection.

“You devil, you,” I said aloud to my coffee cup. “You’re always in a better mood after sex.”
Good sex
, I amended in my head.