To Feel Stuff (6 page)

Then I became fixated on Vivian's parrot and the red spiky feathers shooting out from its head and the orange ones from its tail, and I started to think that Vivian's shoulder was catching on fire. But I was too transfixed by the sight of the flames to do anything about it, to yell out or warn her or anything, because I was in a fully meditative state.

“I talked to the firefighters this morning and they said, ‘No, miss, don't worry, we have it contained,' but then I watched the news and the weather guy said there were going to be winds. One spark jumps a couple houses, catches that one on fire, and then a spark from that new fire jumps, and my house is toast.”

I blinked to try to reawaken myself, and I remember reaching above my head to feel the cool of the white walls. Things got better. I brought my arms down and propped myself up on my elbows, since I suddenly felt a strong, mandatory need to stare at you. A voice inside of my mind said, “You must do this.” But, since the whole mission at hand is to be truthful, beyond truthful, I have to say that what I was doing was beyond staring. I was boring a hole into the center of your face so that the orange coming from behind you seemed to be coming through you. It was like there was something in you that I knew I had to have, and if I could just focus hard enough, I could get it, El.

“It's in disrepair anyway, so I can't care about it too much, but I brought the pets in anyway,” Vivian said. “My kitten's in the supply closet outside.”

I was shooting my heart at you like it was a spring-loaded snake from a fake peanut can. Some of the errant heartstrings might have even landed on Vivian, since that day felt like an emergency, and in that emergency all these feelings were firing in panicked, unchecked explosions. I know that all of this sounds very extreme, but you've got to understand how I was working.

“She's meowing her heart out, but I keep asking her, ‘Would you rather Eve in confined quarters for a while or die of smoke inhalation and third-degree burns, you ungrateful little—'” Vivian said this while almost glowing, because it was like she was soaking in the fantasy of awful circumstances and was dragging me there with her. But, still, I couldn't tear my gaze from you.

Sarah appeared in the doorway and said, “Going for doughnuts. Just me and the guys. Me and the boys. Take care, everyone.”

“See you tomorrow night,” you called out.

The heater was churning, hot air lodging in the back of my throat. The whole room smelled like warm apple. When you left the room later I asked about the smell, and Vivian told me it was the smell of your shampoo. She said the heater always spread the smell of whatever shampoo you'd used that day throughout the infirmary, and I remember thinking, “Please, god, bottle some of that up for me. Elodie included.”

Vivian asked, “So do either of you want cereal? Toast?”

“I'll take some toast with grape jelly,” you replied, rising from your bed and looking at the clothes in your hands. “After I get dressed.”

“Chess, you?”

“Please, Vivian, God, please. Pick up the phone,” pleaded the bird. Vivian smiled because C.C. was doing his impression of her boyfriend, who I still think she loved even though we watched her dump him weekly. She just had a messed-up way of showing it, but hey, don't we all?

My daze persisted as you opened a door in the wall that I hadn't even realized existed. You in your white nightgown and me in my drugs—you were the white rabbit and it was like I was in Wonderland. There was a click of the door and another mention of toast—

“Chess, do you want toast? Cereal?”

I had to remind myself of the necessity of real things like eating and drinking.

“What kind of toast?” I asked.

“I can get you rye, wheat, white, Texas. Anything that the Ratty supplies.”

“Texas toast bread, then, with some butter, please.”

“Juice too?”

“I'd love some juice,” I said in the movie in my head.

Then I was left alone in the room, but the magical thing was that I was still feeling attached to you and Vivian, like I'd been drawn and bisected by your departures. I murmured to no one out loud, “I know that maybe this sounds ridiculous, but I already feel like I'm growing as a person because of this incident.” I felt that change that I've been writing about taking root, and that change gripped me tight, tight, tight. I truly meant what I said.

“Tarzan Boy” seemed to have been sung so long ago that my childhood memories were crisper in comparison.

Suddenly, the door in the wall clicked (I jumped and wondered if this was what post-traumatic stress was like) and you came out, dressed.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“Elodie,” you said.

“Have you been here long? You seem to know everyone well.”

You stood at the foot of your bed and brought your upturned palms to breast level, a gesture of wanting to be able to explain more but being unable to. All that you said was “I essentially live here.” And I needed to know everything about you, so I asked, “What are you talking about, what's wrong with you?”

Paxil CR: Get back to being you

 

If I'd been a big talker, I would have begun with the Bell's palsy and worked my way through my first semester of sickness. Then the second. Then the summer. Then fall semester again, all the way until you were up to date. It would have been a talking marathon, disease after disease after disease, and we would have been there all day.

I couldn't bring myself to have that conversation, though. I remember wanting to play all that down. So I went out to the file cabinet at the nurses' desk, and I got my folder. I was a little embarrassed that it was soft and furry like cotton from so much use, but I brought it back into the room anyway. I figured it was pointless to hide.

Inside, my illnesses were bulleted. They looked like a list of things to do, and I thought you'd be less alarmed by the format.

I handed you my folder, and you thumbed through it, looking up five minutes later with a starry expression. “And your bruise up here,” you said, gesturing to your own forehead. “Where'd that come from?”

“I got in a fight.” Your unflinching eye contact was confusing me. To avoid it, I concentrated on a lock of your hair that was glued to your forehead from when you went down face first in the snow.

Most people's eyes dart around me. I mean that both ways. They dart around my body when they're trying to see how I'm holding up. And they dart around me, the presence, when they don't want to look.

“You got in a fight?”

“Yes, just like you.” I punched into the air for effect.

Then I heard a cry from the hallway, which was Vivian's, and I was relieved to have an excuse to break away. When I got out to the desk, I understood from pieces of her phone conversation that the house next door to hers was on fire. C.C. was walking all over her desk, catching his feet on charts and prescriptions.

“Should I come down there?” she asked. “I know. But . . .”

I could tell that the policeman on the phone was explaining that he was sorry, but there was no point in coming and watching her house burn down. Vivian burst into tears.

“I don't know why I'm crying,” she said, and I went over and sat down next to her because I knew she was talking more to me than to him. I hate sympathy, and anything I hate, I never give to anyone else. Vivian looked over at me and nodded, then pressed the phone to her chest. I could hear the policeman's voice buzzing his version of comforting talk.

Vivian said to me, “I can't stop thinking about my boyfriend's reaction. He's going to pull me to him and kiss my head, and then I'm really going to cry hard.” I just listened. She returned the phone to her ear and listened, too.

“Yes, I have insurance,” she said after a pause. “I wasn't even going to stay there long. The plan was always that I was going to fix it up and rent it out.” I knew that by the time she saw her boyfriend tonight, Vivian wanted to be dry-eyed and stoic, since she hated the idea of being a wimp in front of him. That's why she was practicing with the policeman, trying to put some rationality into the loss.

There was a meow from the kitten in the closet. I had heard that animals were supposed to be able to sense earthquakes, but I'd never heard anything about house fires. “And I have my animals,” Vivian said, stroking C.C.'s breast with her pointer finger.

Then the Health Services doorbell rang.

“How much time would you give it?” Vivian asked.

The doorbell rang again, the bing which I've always thought sounds like glass, and the bong which I've always thought sounds like copper.

“No. I'm not interested in seeing that,” Vivian said.

I hate sympathy, but I can stomach empathy, which I think I, more than most people, am in a realistic position to possess and dish out. But empathy takes weird forms in me. On that day it took the form of me reaching out to press the hang-up button, disconnecting Vivian from the police.

“You seemed like you didn't want to talk anymore,” I said.

“My house—” she whispered back.

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“They estimate that my porch is going up in two minutes.”

“You just painted it that green, too,” I said.

“How'd you know I painted it green? I never talked about that here,” Vivian said.

“You must have told me,” I said. “Do you need to watch your house go down?”

“The police said I couldn't come,” Vivian said.

“Fire is public property,” I told her. “The house is your private property. You're entitled to watch it either way.”

Down the hall, near the blood-drawing closet, I saw a hunched kid with longish black hair shuffle past in a bathrobe. I squinted but couldn't make out his face, and then he disappeared into the room.

“Who's that?” I asked Vivian.

She looked where I was looking, but there was no one left to see. “Who?”

“I just saw a guy in a bathrobe. Is he a new infirmary patient?”

“Not that I know of. Where'd he go?” Vivian asked.

“Into the blood closet”

“He shouldn't be in there,” Vivian said, perking up now that she had something new and impersonal to freak out about. “He might be stealing needles. I should go confront him.” The doorbell sounded again. I think it was the first time she became aware of it. “Will you get the doorbell?”

“Sure,” I said. Now someone was pounding to get in.

I knew that I was taking the staircase like a person five times my age. Or like a zombie fresh out of the ground, reacquainting itself with mobility. But I could bag on myself all I wanted, and it wouldn't make me go any faster. I had to clutch onto the rail with both fists and make my way down while turned toward it.

The rubber soles of my slippers kept sticking to the marble, so I put extra effort into kicking my legs forward. I think the doorbell went off at least three more times, and there were a few more rounds of knocking, too. When I finally reached the front door, I used both hands again to turn the lock, and then to hold the knob and pull on it with everything I had left.

The sunshine I let in was staggering. The day was so brilliant that I almost didn't believe in it.

I saw your friends Marna and David on the doorstep. Mama's stud earrings twinkled in the light like her head was a switchboard. She looked foreign, and I expected to hear a Swedish accent. David's cigarette was dangling from his mouth, and the light at the end of it seemed too bright, like a flare in front of his face.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I'm sorry we rang the doorbell so many times,” said Marna.

“Why are you apologizing to her?” asked David out of the side of his mouth. “I'm sure part of her job is answering the door.” To me he said, “We kept ringing the doorbell because we didn't hear any kind of movement inside.”

“You can't hear anything through these doors,” I explained. “They're thick. Can I help you?”

“Is this Health Services?” Marna tried to peer inside.

“Yes. Are you sick?”

“Actually, it's our friend. Chess Hunter. He was struck in the knees last night—”

“I know Chess. He's upstairs.” I stepped back and pulled the door with me, inviting them in. Marna and David entered tentatively. They looked like kids going into a haunted house. I wondered what I looked like to them.

“When you get to the second floor, make a right and sign in,” I told them, and I started to release the door so I could follow them up. Except a breeze hit my cheeks right then. It bent backwards and returned outside, where it belonged, and I felt the force of its leaving like a boomerang taking some of me with it. I felt like a string of tissue was being pulled from my stomach and stretched down the walkway.

Glancing over my shoulder, I watched Marna and David climbing the stairs, talking quietly, but the space bounces voices everywhere:

“I had no idea this was even here,” Marna said.

“Me neither,” David said. “I've never had more than the flu, and then when I do, I just stay in bed and sleep it off.”

“My doctor from home prescribes everything over the phone. I fill it at CVS.”

“Same here.”

I looked back outside, and the world seemed so interesting. It used to be that I rarely followed a lot of my impulses, but that day, all of a sudden I was on the other side of the door. I was hearing it shut behind me. The feeling I had was that the bulk of the door was pressing on the back of me like a magnet, expelling my north pole from its own.

First I stood and rolled my head in a circle, noting the lack of ceiling above me. After that I grasped onto the iron rail, which was pretty cold, and lowered myself down the steps. Then I let go (I had no choice—the rail ended) at the start of the walkway. Snow took a nose dive into my slippers. My feet were numb and wet by the time I hit the corner of Brown and George, and I was thrilled about that.