Out of the Blue (8 page)

Something new showed up in Dr. Kratz’s eyes, which was not easy to spot since she’d narrowed them to little slits. But I now felt confident of one thing: my jaw was going to sport the tidiest little stitches of her career.

“You got a radio around here?” My dentist lets me listen to it if he has to fill a cavity. The last time he’d used novocaine, I’d had facial paralysis for two months and I learned that a person with facial paralysis drools a lot.

But there was no radio. The next half hour was a blur of what the medical community refers to as
discomfort.
Joe held my hand through it all and dried my cheeks when they got damp. I will not admit to real tears because I was not crying. I believe it’s just one of those natural anatomical responses to somebody making a hem in your face—your eyes do tend to water.

The receptionist appeared briefly on some excuse, presumably because she’d never heard of anybody getting fourteen stitches without anything to kill the pain. I didn’t look at Joe during the procedure. His face, so full of misery, undermined my resolve, and I needed it all. So instead I stared at the part in Dr. Kratz’s hair, admired the coloring job and repeated to myself over and over:
om, om.

I woke up just as we were crossing the Triborough Bridge. The sun was hanging out over New Jersey, and the Manhattan skyline was so crisply focused it made my eyes ache. The inside of my mouth felt like a subterranean cavern that was home to a million bats. I reached for the lemon lozenges in my bag. When I sat up, Joe was looking at me in the mirror. There were no smile lines now.

“How long did I sleep?” My jaw was throbbing. Talking didn’t help.

“About an hour. How do you feel?”

“Not bad.” Kind of like I went a few rounds with Mike Tyson and he bit my face off.

“I’ll pull over and you can come up here with me.”

“No. This is nice. I feel like I’m having a hot thing with the chauffeur.” Much too long of a speech. I’d have to learn to keep it clipped until I healed. Tasteless to crack wise anyhow, given that Joe was probably pretty fed up with me. “Are you fed up with me?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say?”

“I wonder why you insisted on climbing up there.”

My relationship with Joe up to now had been entirely unlike any other in my life. I thought back to our first meeting in the photography center, to the random or, who knows, destined reconnection at the Morgan Library, to our lovemaking suspended in sky and water. I made what I felt to be a brave decision, brave because it was difficult for me, far more difficult than enduring fourteen stitches without a painkiller.

“I was jealous of Lola Falcon.”

“What are you talking about?”

He had moved into the right-hand lane, where he could slow down and hear me more easily. Traffic was heavy moving south from the bridge, maybe bringing people into the city for Halloween revelries. “I saw the photo you took for her book jacket, in the mountains. I was trying to compete. Didn’t work out.”

Our eyes met in the rearview mirror and held for longer than was probably safe given the vehicular insanity on the FDR Drive. I could have sworn his eyes filmed over for a second before he looked away.

“Don’t ever do that, Anna,” he said.

“Okay.”

We didn’t talk again for a while. My jaw would just as soon I never uttered another word as long as I lived. But there was just this one more thing. “We should head straight for the bakery.”

“Don’t you want to go home?”

“Ma will be fretting.” I said
fwetting.
For some reason, it was easier on my stitches. “She’ll want to see I’m alive.” Joe had called her from the clinic when he was trying to track down Dr. Klewanis.

Thankfully, there was a parking space just down the block from Norma’s Crust. Joe came around and extracted me. When I stood up, I almost passed out from the pain. He hung on tight. Even then, I was aware of his body, of the lean strength in his arms.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“You have every right to ask,” I said. It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t brought a man home to my mother in a long, long time. “Ma can be cranky.” Especially when she sees her daughter looking like she had her jawline restructured by a bulldozer.

I’d helped Ma decorate the bakery window in black and orange crepe paper for Halloween. There were the standard festive items: cookies in the shape of ghosts, jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, and so on. But Ma being Ma, there were also the not so standard inventions that the neighborhood had learned to expect: a severed ear that dripped raspberry sauce (she called it the Van Gogh special); the Rudy Giuliani Phantom of the Opera; and my personal, if obscure, favorite, the Leona Helmsley Lady Macbeth.

I wanted to steady myself before she saw us. I stopped Joe and sneaked a look inside. Suddenly I noticed that Ma seemed older than her age, which was fifty-two. There wasn’t a lot of glamour in her tangle of curly gray hair and generous body, and I could tell by the slope of her shoulders that she was tired. She finished waiting on Father Dewbright, who only stopped by to find an excuse to grab Ma’s hand and propose to her. She turned to send Carmen into the kitchen for something.

When Joe opened the door for the minister, I nodded and he gave us that smile, which I have to say was more devilish than heavenly. With his myopic eyes, he probably didn’t even notice my bandages. Not so Ma. Her eyes locked on me, then on Joe, then on me and back to Joe. She looked like a spectator at Wimbledon.

“Trick or treat,” I said.

“Fuck,” Ma replied.

“Brought you Joe Malone,” I said. It came out
Mawone.
“Joe, Ma. Norma Bolles.” He held out his hand, which she didn’t take. A bad sign.

“What have you done to my daughter?” she asked.

“Me,” I said. “Joe told me not to. I was an idiot.” The edges of her mouth began to pull downward in little twitches. During my adolescence, those ominous spasms pretty much guaranteed that I was about to be grounded. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Carmen watching from behind the kitchen door. I took note that you can see the whites of people’s eyes from afar, if they open them wide enough.

“Your mother’s right, Anna,” Joe said. “It was unconscionable to let you go up there.”

“You bet your skinny ass,” Ma growled at him. She untied her apron and I knew she’d be around the counter in two seconds.

“Shut
up
Both of you!” I said, and had to grip the counter to keep from falling over. They stared at me dumbstruck while I waited for the flashbulbs to stop going off in front of my eyes. “A short speech because this hurts. I did something stupid and I’m paying for it. You’re both making it worse so cut it out.”

There was a silence. Then Ma looked at Joe. “You want to come over and get something to eat?”

“Sure,” Joe said.

The apartment building was only four doors from the bakery. When I was diagnosed, we moved from a brown-stone that had a lot of stairs and too many narrow doorways to a slick new boring building that made more sense.

I was torn between the desire to head straight for my mattress and a profound curiosity, not to mention anxiety, concerning Joe and Ma. Since the living area of the apartment was open, I could lie on the couch and see what was going on in the kitchen. I opted to flop down there so I could ensure that things didn’t get out of hand.

In the old days Ma often had a gallery at mealtimes. Her kitchen always smelled so good, and my friends enjoyed shooting the breeze with her and serving as the tasting brigade. She was a safe adult, an emissary from the bewildering grown-up world that both fascinated and repelled us. My friend Patsy Waterman could show up smelling like an ashtray and hear from Ma, “What’re you Pats, a moron, frying your lungs with that shit?” whereas the mildest rebuke from her own parents would elicit plans to run away from home. She knew that Ma adored her unconditionally, and if she should wind up in the hospital with a chest full of lung cancer, Ma would be there with containers of Patsy’s favorite vegetarian chili.

Joe leaned against the bookcase in neutral territory halfway between the couch and the kitchen. He’d dipped into the giant bag of goodies for trick-or-treaters and was munching on a gooey popcorn confection Ma had made. Just watching him chew made my jaw throb.

“What can I do to help?” he asked Ma.

“Can you cook?”

He shot a look at me. “I think you’d better ask Anna.”

“No,” I said.

“Then you can’t help,” she said.

The pain in my face had taken on a life of its own by now. I tried to separate it, imagining a self-contained globe of fire that didn’t quite touch me. Nobody was saying anything, and given the way Ma was beheading the broccoli, I figured I’d better make an effort.

“Father Dewbright ask you out?” I had to talk with my lips narrowed, which lent my speech a somewhat sinister quality. Ma looked up uncomprehendingly, so Joe repeated my question.

“He wanted me to go with him on a retreat,” Ma answered, resuming her executionary mission. “I have to give the old guy credit. He hangs in there.”

“Father Dewbright was Ma’s very first customer,” I explained to Joe. Sheets of red rain poured down in front of my eyes and I knew I’d reached my Waterloo as far as conversation was concerned. They’d have to manage without me.

“He was a missionary in Kenya for fifteen years,” Ma said, “and I think he figures he can convert me to his point of view if he hangs in there long enough. Oh, hell, he’s a good old fart.”

I wanted to tell her thank you. I knew she was angry at Joe and that it demanded heroic effort for her to behave with civility. I tried to imagine her from his fresh point of view. She had what my grandma called “peaches-and-cream” skin, and her eyes were a lively blue. Her lips had a girlish shape, but the lines on either side of them made her look older. And the gray hair, of course, which she would never consider coloring.

After that, sleep triumphed. I floated up for a moment when I heard Joe telling Ma about my stitches, that I was brave. Then they were standing over me. I felt Ma’s hand on my forehead, and they were gone again. The next time I came to, they were sitting at the table drinking wine. Fragments of sound passed back and forth between them.

“How come it took you almost three months to call her?” Ma asked. Did she mean me? I swam in a helpless mixture of horror and curiosity.

“I was thinking it over,” Joe said.

“Because of her illness?”

I couldn’t hear the answer, but assumed he was nodding his head.

“Well, what about it?” Ma asked.

I protested, or tried, but they didn’t hear me. Or maybe I only thought I was making noises.

“There was no choice,” Joe said.

“There’s always a choice,” Ma responded.

“It was pretty simple. I just had to see her,” Joe said. “The MS didn’t matter.”

“That’s bullshit. Of course it matters.”

The amazing thing was, I had the most peculiar sense of detachment. All three of us were reduced to characters in some TV drama unrelated to my life.

“You
still love her, MS and all,” Joe said.

“I’m her mother, for fuck’s sake.”

“Is this a test, Mrs. Bolles?”

“Strap yourself in, honey,” Ma answered. “I’m just getting started.”

She appeared beside the couch out of an orange cloud and asked me if I didn’t want to go to bed. I remember thinking that they wanted to get rid of me so they could beat each other up undisturbed. I don’t remember if I actually said so, but she let me be. I drifted off and woke up in the hospital. At least, that’s what I thought. There was a ringing sound like the bell that precedes an intercom announcement. But it didn’t quit: bing, bing, bing. I saw Ma move past me to open the front door and then a shout. “Trick or treat!”

I forced myself up through the dark layers of pain, back into the living room, and blinked hard to keep my eyes from closing again. We didn’t get many trick-or-treaters, I don’t know why. Maybe my wheelchair scared them off.

I caught a glimpse of knee-high goblins, probably from the superintendent’s family. With the exception of the baby, they all wore the map of Ireland on their faces. Dennis, however, was at seven months his mother’s child. She was Neapolitan, and had bequeathed to her youngest the liquid eyes and olive skin of Italy. As soon as Dennis saw Ma, he lifted his chubby arms in the air and started shrieking at her. Meanwhile, the others kept yelling, “Trick or treat!” until the Weimaraner in 4B began to howl in protest. But Dennis knew what he wanted and wasn’t about to back down.

“You kids’re supposed to do the tricks, not me,” Ma scolded. Dennis offered a perfect smile. “Two new teeth,” Ma remarked. “Way to go, Dennis.”

“Do it, Mrs. Bolles! Do it! Do it!” the children clamored. So Ma swooped Dennis up, wrapped her hand around his feet and balanced him up over the children’s heads. I had been watching Ma do this for decades, and it was uncanny how the babies were never afraid. They felt completely secure, always crowed with delight and stretched out their arms like tiny acrobats.

Joe had stopped breathing beside me on the arm of the couch. At least Ma hadn’t kicked him out yet.

“She’s never lost one,” I said. Or tried to. Nothing was working very well. And the sight of my mother balancing that child hurt my heart. I felt as if I
were
Dennis, Ma’s day-to-day, hour-by-hour Dennis, whom she held aloft through her own audacity and agility. But today she seemed worn-out, and suddenly I could anticipate the time when a child would lift its arms to her and she would have to shake her head. Just like me. I will never do this, I thought. And in fact, it wasn’t until this moment that I understood so clearly why I had isolated myself from Dee Sunderland these past few years.

Dee headed the Art department at Cameron and had once been my closest work friend. I had always been in the thick of her family, rolling around on the floor with the kids, playing dopey games with them, wearing babies on my shoulders and hips. It was expected from “Aunt Anna.” But once I got sick, I stopped sweeping up a toddler for a ride on my knee. I no longer pressed for my turn to feed an infant its bottle so I could lay my face against the damp hair and inhale the delicious baby scent. I realized that a numb arm or a sudden spasm could make me an unreliable, even dangerous caretaker. I was no safe haven for a child and I never would be. It simply became too painful to sit and watch the youthful tumble, to shake my head when a tiny hand pressed my knee for a lift up. Perhaps I’d gravitated to Grant because he was unlikely to present me with the family scene I’d once assumed was guaranteed in my future.

The children had gone on down the hall, and Ma came out of the kitchen with a bowl of pureed broccoli. She sat down on the coffee table and started spooning it into me as Joe watched. It tasted so incredible I couldn’t even be mortified at behaving like a baby bird.

“Joe’s had three bowls,” Ma said. I wondered if Joe had figured out that the way to Ma’s heart was to ask for seconds.

“Along with curried scallops, stir-fry vegetables, and some potato thing …” Joe said.

“Not for you,” Ma told me. “We’ll stick with the goo and glue until those stitches come out.”

The soup made me feel as if I might resume living someday. I wondered what had been going on here while I was down for the count.