This Is the Life (12 page)

20

Observer

You get worried sometimes that people might go wandering—go wandering and not come back, and then somebody might ask you what happened to them, and say, “Weren't you responsible?” And, “Weren't you looking out for them?” which you can't be, not all the time.

The operation is called “debulking.” It is not removal. It is a matter of reducing the mass. A tumor in the brain cannot be fully excised because to do so would mean to remove good tissue along with the bad—and the possible consequent loss of many things: vision, hearing, balance, ­personality, cognition, thought processes, motor skills. The edges of the tumor are not clearly defined. Often they are tentacle- and ­thread-like. As much of the tumor as can be safely removed is, then the remaining cells are bombarded with radiation and chemicals. Few people have part of the brain removed and remain just as they were. There is usually something lost.

We were in the supermarket, and I looked up from the frozen foods to discover that Louis was no longer beside me.
I took the cart and went looking for him. I found him by the yogurts.

“Louis—”

“Yeah?”

“You all right?”

“I'm all right.”

“I thought you were with me, Louis.”

“In what sense?”

“I thought you were right behind me.”

“Ah.”

“I thought we were getting the groceries.”

“We are.”

“What are you doing, Louis? Why are you just standing here?”

The beanie hat was pulled down low. The beard was getting wild again. There was paint and oil on Louis's old shirt, and some holes in it too. He was wearing his work shorts—but then, all his shorts were work shorts, even the ones he slept in. Or maybe they were his sleeping shorts and I just couldn't tell the difference.

At the end of the aisle a security man was keeping an eye on us. Maybe he was bored and hoping for excitement. Even so, why look for the obvious? Why wouldn't the shoplifter be smartly and soberly dressed, so as to attract little attention? Wouldn't that make more sense?

“Louis—Louis—are you coming? You want to get a pizza tonight? Louis, what are you doing?”

“I'm looking.”

“What are you looking at?”

“Everyone.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I'm trying to see who's got a brain tumor.”

“Louis, how are you going to know that?”

“I'll know.”

“Louis, a tumor is on the inside, not the outside. How are you going to tell?”

“I'll know. I do it all the time. I look at people and I think, Have you got a brain tumor too?”

“So . . .”

He showed no signs of moving, so I stood with him and watched the cart pushers go by. The security man was slowly but surely coming up the aisle toward us.

“Have you seen any yet?”

“Not yet. I had a possible earlier.”

“Where?”

“But he's gone. I decided it wasn't a tumor. It was just learning difficulties.”

“Well, that's a relief.”

“You see that woman there, and the man with her?”

“They look all right to me.”

“I think he's got a tumor in its early stages but it hasn't been diagnosed yet. You see the way he's acting? That's a tumor way of behaving.”

I watched the man, but he looked all right to me; he behaved no differently from anyone else.

“What's the tumor way? He seems fine.”

“He looks a little confused, and slow. You see the way he's staring at the prices. He's trying to make sense of them and he can't. He's having trouble processing the information and he doesn't know why. He doesn't want to worry the woman and he doesn't want to worry himself. But he is worried and he knows something's wrong. And he doesn't want to go to the doctor and get the bad news. But he'll have to.”

“Louis, I don't think you can tell that from—”

“It's an affinity. Like with gays.”

“What about them?”

“They can spot each other. Gaydar.”

“And you've got tumor-dar?”

“You don't believe me, you go and ask him.”

“Sure, Louis, I'm going to ask a total stranger in a supermarket if he thinks he might have a brain tumor.”

The security guard was almost upon us now.

“How about this guy, Louis? This guy in the uniform? Does he look like he might have a tumor?”

“No. He looks like he might not have a brain at all.”

“Don't cause trouble, Louis.”

“How can I? I'm an invalid.”

The security guard approached with politeness and re­­served hostility.

“Everything all right here, gentlemen? There a problem here at all?”

“Yeah,” Louis said. “The food's pricey.”

“We're okay,” I told the guard. “We'd just forgotten something. But we're okay now. My brother's just a little unwell.”

“I've got a big bloody brain tumor. Or rather, I haven't,” Louis said. “It's been taken out. So I've got a big bloody hole instead.”

“Can you point me toward the pizzas?” I said.

“Next aisle,” the security man said. Then, “Is he okay?”

“We're fine,” I told him. “Louis—you coming?”

We moved on and got the rest of what we needed. Louis had no interest in what we were getting at all. He was keeping his eyes peeled for brain tumors.

“Louis, if you find someone who looks like they definitely have a brain tumor, what are you going to do? Say hi? Swap experiences?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Birds of a feather and strength in numbers. If you're interested in boats, you hang around with guys with boats. Same thing. Like a club.”

“Louis . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

We waited in the line to pay for the groceries. I noticed that Louis was intently studying a man's head.

“Louis,” I hissed.

“What?”

“If you keep staring you're going to irritate people.”

“Him,” he said. “Him. Definitely.”

“You can't know that, Louis, not from the back of his head. They had to give you a scan, remember? You can't just tell by looking.”

“I can. Wait until he turns.”

The man turned side-on, ready to bag up his purchases.

“There, see.”

He had a large elliptical scar on the side of his head and his hair was shaved.

“You believe me now?”

“He might have been in a fight or something. Or had an accident.”

But Louis just gave me one of his smug and satisfied I-knew-I-was-right looks. I found his patronizing attitude rather irritating and always had. Funny how people can do that. Even at a time when you ought to be forgiving them anything and putting up without complaint with everything they can throw at you; even when you know that you're going to feel bad that you weren't more tolerant and patient and accommodating; even with all that—they can still get on your nerves.

I look at the people in the supermarket too now, and I wonder if they have what I have—or if I have what they do—and what traits and concerns we might hold in common.

I wonder who's happy and who's lonely and who's sick at heart. I see the men and women with young children and wonder how tired and exasperated they are today. Or I see the expectant woman and wonder how happy she is, and how apprehensive. Or it's the lovers, all wrapped up in each other and themselves—and who can't remember that, if they once experienced it, and who wouldn't give some substantial savings to feel that way again?

I wonder how irritated people are with each other, or content.

But, unlike Louis, I don't think you can tell easily. I think most people go out well-disguised. You don't know the half of how they feel inside. Most of them just look normal and ordinary. Like you. Like me. Maybe.

21

Interlude

To my left was an opera singer, and to my right was an acrobat. The acrobat was a foot juggler, so we have to make the joke. No, she did not take her feet off and juggle them. What she did was to lie on a small ramp onstage and use her feet to juggle objects and keep them in the air—things like hoops, balls, small barrels. And she was very adept.

She was small in stature, not slim, but compact. She was in the seat by the window; the opera singer was by the aisle. I was stuck between them. We were eight miles up in the sky and eleven hours' flying time from Singapore.

I hadn't been able to get on the Internet to grab an aisle seat with some extra legroom for myself, so, the flight being full, I took what I was given, and that was what I got.

In the rows behind us were various other artistes—more acrobats, tumblers, trapeze artists, high-wire specialists, a guy who did a routine involving two ropes and a lot of bathwater.

They were headed for Australia, the same as me, going to put on a show at an arts festival there. With the exception of
the opera singer, they were German. The singer was American, but she too lived in Berlin. She had married a German, she told me, but it hadn't worked out, and after seven years they had divorced.

I guessed she was in her early thirties, but it was hard to tell. The captain had turned the lights down by now, and the porthole blinds had been closed. People had eaten their tray meals and drunk their wine and were settling down for the night, or watching movies with their headphones plugged into their ears.

As we flew, she told me a little about herself, about the small town without ambition that she had come from in the American heartlands; of her large collection of siblings and their problems and difficulties, and how she was the only one to fly the coop; of how her brothers and sisters were­ also divorced and separated, though her parents were still together; of how they had financial problems, and she helped out when she could.

But work was hard to get. Singing opera was a hard and competitive and often unappreciated business. She had known some lean years and had been thinking of giving up singing and finding something else, when this had come along—singing with this troupe of acrobats in this show. She punctuated the acts with another kind of entertainment. The show was doing well and had been positively received around the globe. But she only had a short-term contract for a limited run, and what then?

All the same, her mind, she told me, was in a good place, and so was she. She was thinking positive, because that was what you had to do. Those who thought positive would be successful, she said. You make yourself what you are. You make your own chances, your own luck.

How about ill people? I said. How about people who are born disabled?

That was due to their conduct in a former life.

So they were still responsible for their misfortunes? I asked.

Yes, she said. They were.

I asked her about people with brain tumors and if they were responsible for them. She felt that they probably were, due to their negative thinking and not being in a good place.

But don't we all die? I asked her. No matter how positive we think.

Maybe not, she said.

Then she told me that she had been touring in New Zealand once, and the stress of all the performing had taken its toll on her, and she just needed a massage. So she called a masseur, and he came to the apartment she was renting, and he gave her a back massage and she felt somewhat better for that. But a few more concerts, and the pains came back. So she called him again.

This time, during the course of the massage, he asked if she might be interested in any “additional services,” which he sometimes offered. She got angry at this, because the masseur had already told her that he was married.

“What about your wife?” she said.

But he just said that his wife was in the same line of business.

She told him to go. So he went.

She related this story to me with some heat and indignation, but I didn't see why. What, after all, did she expect? She had asked him back a second time to a place that she lived in on her own. He maybe thought that what he was offering was what she wanted—her whole object in asking him back?

By now most of the reading lights were out in the cabin and many of the screens were dark. Being a trained singer she had good voice projection and as a result maybe talked a little loud. Just as she began to tell me something else, a woman leapt to her feet four rows away and came down the aisle.

“Can't you keep your voice down?” she demanded. “There are people here trying to sleep.”

Without waiting for an answer, she returned to her seat.

The opera singer made a face.

“I guess we'd better keep it down,” she said.

The conversation petered out. She didn't ask me one question about myself. But then performers seldom do.

As I was dozing off, I became aware of the acrobat on my right, moving in her seat.

“You want to get out?” I asked, getting ready to move. But she smiled and shook her head, indicating I should stay put. Then she stood up on the armrest, hopped over me to the next one, hopped over the opera singer and landed on her toes in the aisle.

She returned to her seat more or less the same way, just in reverse.

It must be good to have skills in life that actually come in useful.

* * *

When I got to Singapore I discovered that I didn't have the necessary visa to let me fly on to Australia. But a man at the boarding gate got me one online, for forty dollars. Some people restore your faith in human nature, and usually while the opposition is simultaneously undermining it.

For this leg of the journey I had an aisle seat, but when I arrived at it, I found someone sitting there.

“Excuse me, but I think that might be my seat.”

I showed the woman my ticket.

“Yes,” she said. “I have a ticket for this seat here.” And she pointed at the one on the inside. “Maybe you might prefer to sit there.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I'll stick with mine.”

Reluctantly and with ill grace she moved, conveying with looks and muttering that I was not a gentleman.

When I told Louis about it, he said, “You should have sat on her lap.”

But he was always there with the lateral thinking. Though I don't know that the seat belt would have gone around us both.