The Virtues of Oxygen (16 page)

“C’mon, I’ll be fine. It’s not like I can’t find ano
ther job.”

Even as the words came out of her mouth, Holly saw herself surrounded by even more bills she couldn’t pay. A future without a paycheck looked like a dark, open maw into which she would pour all her worldly possessions—tossing in tablecloths and Christmas ornaments and dining-room chairs until there was nothing left. And what about her boys? Who would give them a future? Even if they went to community colleges, the cost would eat her alive if she didn’t have a paycheck and benefits. It was bad enough as it was. Darla, Marveen, and Portia were all looking at her as if she had announced she had a terminal illness. She couldn’t bear their pity, so she transitioned into
boss mode.

“So who’s covering homecoming tomorrow night?” Holly said. “We need a big photo
gallery.”

After the meeting, Holly allowed herself a few moments at her desk to brood about Racine. He hadn’t called her over the weekend, and she hadn’t called him to thank him for dinner. Marveen came back into her office just as she was starting to dial h
is number.

“So, let’s talk about something far more interesting than all this doom and gloom,” Marveen said, sitting down in the chair in front of her desk. “How did your
date go?”

Holly knew Marveen’s real motivation in coordinating her date night makeover. It was to give her leverage in insisting that Holly spill when it
was over.

“We had a nice time,” Holly said, not wanting to admit how sadly her date had ended after Marveen’s Herculea
n efforts.

“That’s it? That’s all I get? It was ‘nice.’ Jesus, Holly, we’re not in high school. Did you or did you not sleep
with him?”

“No, Marveen,” she said, looking up at the ceiling, defeated. “I did not sleep with him. In fact, I thought I was going to throw up, so I went home early. I didn’t even enjoy m
y dinner.”

“All that work for nothing,” Marveen said, slapping a hand on the desk. “Well, get him to ask you again. You deserve a little fun in y
our life.”

“He hasn’t called me, and I’m not sure if I should call him
or what.”

“Under no circumstances should you call him. That’ll look desperate. You have to wait for him to come around, like a prize marlin. You have to let out the line to ree
l him in.”

“Are you seriously comparing him t
o a fish?”

“Look, Holly, this is no reflection on you, but he probably has a woman in every town with one of these gold joints. If you want him to stay interested, he has to think you’re not in
terested.”

“See, this is why I don’t date. It’s way too com
plicated.”

Marveen stood up to go. “It’s always been complicated, Holly, from time immemorial—which I date to about 1976 and my first movie with a boy. I was afraid my hand would be clammy if he tried to hold it, so I kept eating popcorn one kernel at a time. He never called me again, and it sti
ll hurts.”

CHAPTER 17

Vivian’s Unaired
Podcast #6

D
uring the years that most of my former schoolmates started careers, got married, had children, and bought their own homes, I existed. There’s not much more to it than that. I slept, I ate, I watched television, and read; my breath went in and out; my heart pumped. I endured countless doctors and medical procedures, and I lived for the days when my parents could muster up the energy to take my iron lung outside for a few hours so that I could see the trees, smell the perfume of the lilacs in our yard, and gaze at the sky, which changed so beautifully, unlike the living-roo
m ceiling.

I existed.

Toward the end of what I would later come to call, ironically, the Endless Years, I became aware of another person who had been in an iron lung for about the same amount of time that I had. His name was Lance, and he had almost my identical
diagnosis.

I was thirty-three years old when I saw Lance on a television program about polio that displayed him smiling at the screen from a lung that looked almost exactly like mine, down to the yellow enamel. They didn’t interview him, but I deduced from his face that he was intelligent and kind and just as frustrated by his circumstances as I was. I began to lay the groundwork to get my mother to arrange
a meeting.

Lance lived in Pennsylvania, so I asked my mother if I could be brought to New York City for my thirty-fourth birthday, which was
in April.

“I know it’s a lot, Mom,” I said. “But I’ve always wanted to see New York. We could just drive around, and I could look out the
windows.”

“Oh, Vivian,” she said. “Where would we stay? I’m not sure a hotel would even allow it or if they could get you insid
e a room.”

“It’s less than two hours away,” I told her. “We could leave early in the morning and come back at night. You and Dad could take turns driving. Please, Mom. I don’t ask for much, and it might be my las
t chance.”

I had long since stopped feeling ashamed for the way I could manipulate my mother. It was nonsense that I didn’t ask for much—I asked for things all the time—but in the context of my narrow existence, it wasn’t like asking to walk again. I knew that, if she could, she would try to give me anything
I wanted.

So we planned a trip to New York, picked a date the week after my birthday, and once it was all on the calendar, I told my mother that I wanted her to write to Lance. I had some movie-of-the-week transcript of how it would all go in my head, but I needed my mother’s help to make
it happen.

“Remember that man we saw on the TV program about polio, the one who’s been in an iron lung all his life?” I said
one day.

“I remember,” my mother said c
autiously.

“It turns out that his home hospital is New York-Presbyterian. Maybe we could meet up with him while we’re in
New York.”

“And you just thought of this,” she said,
smiling.

I think it made her happy to know I had come up with a scheme to relieve my own
boredom.

My mother managed to track down Lance’s address in Pennsylvania, and she sent him a letter that I dictated to her. I’m sure she worried about the outcome, but she also knew that a little adventure might be good for all of us. The Endless Years probably felt endless to
her, too.

When Lance answered back—via his caregivers—that he would absolutely love to meet a fellow iron lunger and could arrange to be in New York that day, I began to construct elaborate fantasies that involved the two of us falling desperately in love from the moment we met and being kindred spirits who, despite our physical limitations, would share an emotional bond so powerful that it transcended the corporeal. I tried to temper my expectations, but the fantasy was too powerful: Who else but a man in an iron lung would understand my futile hopes, my restricted world? Who else would ever fall in love with me? And despite my realization at the age of twelve that I would never have a romantic relationship, I let myself fall into a dream that culminated in a long, passionate glance. I wasn’t sure our lungs would let us get close enoug
h to kiss.

When the day came, we left for New York before dawn. I dozed the whole way as my father drove the van, but before we got to the city I asked my mother to put a little makeup on me. It seems pathetic now, but I wanted to look my best for a stranger in the overwrought hope that he might find my face attractive and want to spend time with me. We arrived at the hospital by 9 a.m., although it took until almost ten o’clock before they could safely transport my lung into the operating theater—one of the few rooms large enough to accommodate two i
ron lungs.

Lance’s caregivers obviously thought it was sweet to have two iron-lung patients of about the same age and opposite sexes, and they had brought flowers for him to “give” to me. I was first in the room. They wheeled in Lance, who lifted his head a bit to smile at me. They parked us side by side but facing in opposite directions because we were both more comfortable turning our heads to
the left.

“Hi, Lance,” I said, giving him the most genuine smile I had used in the la
st decade.

“Hi, Vivian,” he said. “Great to meet you. So glad you got
in touch.”

My heart jumped. He had a bit of rosacea and a prominent forehead, but his smile transformed his face from bland to almost handsome. One of the hospital administrators asked if she could take a picture, and we did our best to pose for the camera. The caregivers on both sides of our lungs began shaking hands and talking to each other, no doubt sharing stories of close calls and testing each other’s tolerance for iron-lung humor. I didn’t listen, because I was too caught up in Lance. I wanted him to speak again, so I asked him a
question.

“What kind of music do y
ou like?”

“You don’t have to try so hard,” he said. His smile was gone. His eyes held little more than
hostility.

“I’m not. I’m just wondering if we have anything in common besides this,” I said, nodding toward
the lung.

“I agreed to this because it made my mom happy,” he said. “Believe me, you don’t really want to know me. I’m not in a good place r
ight now.”

“But that’s why we could help each other,” I said, so disappointed that he hadn’t been sincerely happy to meet me. “I know exactly how you feel. I’m one of the few people in the world who could possi
bly know.”

Lance’s face softened a bit, but he didn’t seem capable of pretending that he wasn’t there und
er duress.

“Do you fantasize about dying every day?” he said. “Do you wonder how you can stand another twenty-four hours with your parents hovering
over you?”

“I have good days and bad days. But I know what you mean. After all this time, it’s like a contest to see how many days they can get o
ut of us.”

“Not a contest I want
to win.”

Before I could respond, the hospital administrator who had taken our picture decided to make a little speech about our incredible will to survive and the amazing advancements in medical care that kept both Lance and me alive when no one had believed we would live past childhood. Lance smiled again and turned his head toward his mother, who had approached him from the o
ther side.

“Have you two had a chance to chat?” she said in a singsong voice that gave me some indication of why Lance was so desperate to escape. “I think it’s just remarkable that you found ea
ch other.”

Found each other
, like this one-day meeting justified a life stripped of mobility, a life that subsumed other lives in its neediness. It made my fantasy—already juvenile—just sad. I called my mother over and told her I wasn’t feeling well. All I had to do was cough a few times to end the conversations and congra
tulations.

Before the medical teams could regroup to move our iron lungs again, Lance asked if we could have a moment alone. Since we were in an operating theater and could be observed through the glass walls, our parents agreed. It took several minutes for them to all file out, during which time Lance rolled his eyes a few times and made
me laugh.

“Watch this,” he said, moving his right eyeball toward his nose with perfect control. “I’m not as good with the left, but I’m working on it. What else do I ha
ve to do?”

“Why did you send them out?” I said, confused about the sudden change in his attitude. “You’ve made it pretty clear that you’ve given up. Why eve
n bother?”

Our faces weren’t that far away from each other, maybe eighteen inches, so I could see the anguish in
his eyes.

“I really like looking at your face,” he said. “You’re a pre
tty girl.”

This was not what I had expected to hear from a man who had numbered his own days, but it was a compliment, and
I took it.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re not half bad
yourself.”

He laughed a little, but I could see that any emotion took its toll. His face was so pale, as if he never saw the sun, not even one day or so a month,
as I did.

“When they’re gone,” he said, nodding toward the glass where our parents kept vigil, “or even before they’re gone, you’ll have to find some other reason to wake up in the morning. Something that motiv
ates you.”

“L
ike what?”

“I don’t know. If I could figure that out, I wouldn’t be where
I am now.”

Normally advice was easy for me to ignore. Who are you to tell me to hold a paintbrush in my teeth and “create” when you can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to have an unimpaired brain inside a body that might as well be made of wood? But Lance was different. He knew. He knew that I needed to find that motivation before I slipped off the ledge from which he had alrea
dy fallen.

“I’ll try,” I said. I felt tears sliding down my nose, but I couldn’t brush them away, so they dampened the sheet where my che
ek rested.

“Please try,” he said. “I want yo
u to try.”

Our parents had figured out by then that we were both crying, so they sent in the cavalry and pulled our lungs apart, steering us to different dest
inations.

“Good-bye, Lance,” I said, turning my head to watch him for as long a
s I could.

“Bye,” he said in a muffled voice, and I never saw
him again.

As we drove away from the hospital, I pulled myself together long enough to glance through the windows of the van at the sidewalks packed with pedestrians and at the massive buildings, though I couldn’t look up far enough to see how tall they were. The density of it all scared and thrilled me at the same time. At one point my mother got out at a street corner while my father drove around the block. She climbed back into the van with a giant pretzel crusted in salt and a bottle of Coke, a drink I wasn’t normally allowed to have, because the caffeine kept me awake
at night.

“A treat,” my mother said, smiling. “What a very special day
this is.”

She broke off a small piece of the pretzel and placed it in my mouth, then let me wash it down with a sip of Coke through
a straw.

A few weeks after the trip, we heard from Lance’s parents that he had died. No explanation of how, just that he was gone. I wept upon hearing the news—both in grief for myself and in jo
y for him.