“Because I’m in desperate trouble, Che,” whispered Larissa. “I’m in terrible trouble. I couldn’t write you about anything
because it’s just too awful to put into a letter. But I really need your help.” The words were coming out unintelligible. “I have no one in the world to turn to. You’re so far away, and I need you so much. I can’t tell you how much I need you.” Larissa blew her nose, wiped her eyes. “Che? Are you there? Did you hear me? Che!”
They’d been cut off. Larissa couldn’t go back to sleep, pacing around her dim silent house. The next morning, she went to the mall, bought fourteen maternity outfits, two for each day of the week, and sent Che a package, with a money order for a thousand dollars. She included a congratulations card but no letter. She had absolutely nothing to say.
4
Larissa the Epicurean
E
zra and Larissa were having their monthly lunch to go over department things.
“Why do you look so nice?” Ezra asked.
She was wearing a denim Escada jacket and black True Religion jeans. “Not that nice, Ez,” said Larissa. “Jeans and a jean jacket.”
He looked her over. “I don’t know. Pretty put together for a Tuesday afternoon is all I’m saying.”
“Well, thank you. And I like your green corduroy blazer. It goes with your purple tie.” She smiled.
“Uh-huh. So listen,” said Ezra, “Have you been thinking about the spring play?”
“No! It’s January! We’re still in rehearsals for
Godot
, with that insufferable Leroy.”
“Here’s the thing. We’re reading Shaw’s
Saint Joan
in AP English. It might be a nice parallel for the kids to perform it while they studied it.”
Larissa considered it. “
Saint Joan
? Spending three months listening to Bernard Shaw apologizing for the English?”
Ezra smiled thinly. “
Saint Joan
is brilliantly written, and it’s
got like twenty parts in it. But who could play Joan? The whole play is in her casting.”
Larissa sighed. “I don’t know. Tiffany?”
“Give me a break,” said Ezra with tired bemusement. “She was okay and camp in
Dracula
, but she’s not serious enough.
Saint Joan
is about sacred things.” They both petered off; Ezra looked down into his coffee, Larissa into hers.
“Can we make it into a musical, Ez? With interpretive dance numbers. Maybe when Joan is getting burned at the stake the dancers can sing, ‘Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.’”
“Too avant-garde for me.”
“What about a melancholy guitar that from stage left punctuates the action with song?” Larissa stirred her cold coffee. “Listen, it’s not the worst idea you ever had. Let me find it at home, and I’ll reread it. I’ll let you know.”
“No need to search,” Ezra said, pulling out a copy from his worn briefcase.
“You’re something else.” She took it from him, noticing the gaunt red look around his eyes.
“You okay, Lar?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You seem…”
“I’m fine.” Larissa frowned. “Why do you ask?”
“I dunno,” he said. “You’ve been a little off lately.”
“Off, like spoiled milk?”
He smiled. “Off, like something is not right.”
“Funny, because I was going to say the same about you.”
“I’m fine.” Ezra paused. “Maggie hasn’t talked to you?”
Larissa became alert instead of inert. “About what?”
He sighed. “She hasn’t been feeling well.”
“She’s mentioned that, yeah.”
“Well. She’s got this…” He broke off.
“She told me a while back,” Larissa continued for him, to
help him, “that she keeps getting…what is it…oh, yes, urinary tract infections.”
Ezra’s lip twisted. “Actually…I’m surprised she hasn’t told you, but she’s been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease.”
“What? No. Poor Mags.”
“Yeah. Not quite a UTI, is it?”
“No. What causes that?”
“High blood pressure in her case.”
“Maggie has high blood pressure? I didn’t know that.”
“She’s been on blood pressure meds for years.” Ezra frowned. “What do you mean, you didn’t know that? She had hypertension with Dylan. Had to deliver him six weeks early. It’s the reason she can’t have more children.”
“Yes, of course. Funny, I thought it was pregnancy-induced and temporary.” Larissa hurried past Ezra’s puzzled, scrutinizing eyes. “But now what?”
“Now she’s sick all the time. The kidneys aren’t filtering fluids like they’re supposed to. They keep getting infected.”
“What do they prescribe for that?”
“Believe me, she’s taking one of everything. Twice a day. She’s still miserable.”
“Well, inflamed kidneys will do that.”
“Yeah.” Ezra was not looking at Larissa. “It’s changed her life, our life. And not for the better.”
“Oh, Ezra. Are you worried about her?”
He waved his hand. “A little bit. She’ll be okay. It’s just that…I don’t know if she’s spoken to you about this, but one of the effects on her is this thing sapped her of all energy and health. She’s been constantly sick.”
“This I’ve noticed.”
“You girls haven’t been out much, not shopping, or lunch.”
“No, nothing.”
“She’s actually thinking of stopping teaching.”
“No!”
“I know. Seems inconceivable. I told her, why? You’re going to stay home and do what?”
“Exactly,” Larissa agreed. “I should talk to her.”
“Please. But I don’t want her to think I’m complaining to you. She won’t like that.”
“You’re not complaining. You’re worried about her. That’s different.”
Ezra wasn’t looking at Larissa again. “Except for one tiny thing…”
“A little complaint?”
“Tiny one.” He cleared his throat. “This whole kidney business has really put a damper on our, um, love life.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Like how much of a damper?”
“Like…a dam sort of thing.”
“Hmm. Dam: a little water released every once in a while?”
“No, uh-uh. More like totally dry beds.”
“Dry? Really? For how long?”
Ezra was silent at first. “Since summer.”
Larissa was shocked. “But, Ezra…”
“You’re telling me.”
“Oh, Ez. I had no idea.”
“I thought she might’ve mentioned it.”
“It
is
strange she hadn’t.”
“You know, Lar, Maggie says she’s finding it harder than usual to talk to you these days.”
A disconnected Larissa didn’t ask for clarification.
“She says you’re not listening.”
“To what?”
“To anything.”
“Well, that’s silly. Of course I listen.”
“You’re very good at covering up. I’m just telling you what Maggie said.”
“Maybe that’s why she hasn’t talked to me. Because she thinks I’m not listening.”
“Perhaps.”
“I’m going to try to do better,” Larissa said. “Okay?”
Ezra nodded. “She could really use a friend right now.”
“Exactly. And who can’t?” She gazed at Ezra with sympathy. “I’ll talk to her, I promise. I’ll be very tactful.”
He scoffed. “You can try. But a heads-up—you know how Maggie is. She’s been trying to figure out why this illness has been given to her.”
Larissa shrugged. “Oh, not that again. Why does there have to be a reason? Why can’t it just be given?”
“Given by whom?”
“Isn’t that the eternal question?” She laughed lightly, becoming more animated. “But why can’t Pozzo in
Godot
be right? One day he woke up and he was blind as Fortune. Why can’t we get sick because of dumb blind fortune?”
“You know that Maggie doesn’t believe things just happen.”
“Not even headaches?”
“This isn’t a headache. It’s total body misery. And it affects her life, her entire family. She feels responsible.”
Larissa chewed her lip. “But look, she’s asking too much of her body. She didn’t get kidney disease on purpose.”
“‘Course not. But she’s trying to figure out”—Ezra tightened his mouth as he continued—”if this is Thomas Aquinas’s warning or an Epicurean struggle for her to work harder to achieve the absence of pain.”
“Epicurus seems to be losing.”
“No kidding.”
“What did Aquinas write?”
“He wrote,” said Ezra, “that pain
is
given to us by God so that we can protect our material body and stop doing whatever it is
we are doing that’s causing us pain, and thus, by protecting the material body, we protect our immortal, immaterial soul.”
Larissa was thoughtful. “Immaterial, like not important?”
Ezra chuckled. “You
would
ask that. No. Immaterial like standing outside matter.”
“But didn’t your Epicurus say that nothing exists outside matter?”
“Yes, but Maggie is suffering. She needs to come to terms with this transformation of her body and consequently her entire life.”
“But why can’t it be nice and plain? Why
can’t
blind Pozzo be right?”
“Because she’s not getting better, Lar,” said Ezra. “And this causes spiritual suffering for her. Maggie thinks that her pain means she’s breaking some boundary, transgressing laws put into her mortal body by a life-creating force. Perhaps she’s been careless or overindulgent. She’s not a naturalist, Larissa. She doesn’t obey
random
laws of nature. She is an ethicist. She obeys the laws because she sees in them a divine source.”
“Careless?” Larissa shook her head. “That’s not Maggie.”
“She likes her food, she likes salt, doesn’t drink enough water, hates cranberry juice.”
“Oh, Ezra. You don’t get
punished
with kidney disease!”
“She thinks she did.”
“She just got a lousy set of genes from her parents. What does that have to do with her?”
“Because it’s her life that’s being altered,” Ezra replied. “And mine.”
“Well, I don’t know how blaming herself is going to help,” said Larissa firmly. “I’m sure Epicurus agrees with me.”
Ezra smiled. “Sure, to swirling atoms all this blather about ethics is meaningless.”
“There you go. Isn’t that more comforting?”
“Maggie doesn’t think so. But she
is
trying to work toward the Epicurean model.”
“A fine goal to shoot for,” Larissa agreed brightly. “What does Epicurus say about the soul?”
“Oh, brilliantly, he says we ain’t got one.”
No soul! Larissa widened her clear eyes. “No soul, really?” She mulled. “That means no God?”
“Right. In his day it was gods, but same difference, yeah.”
No, God, no soul!
“Wouldn’t that be easier for Maggie,” Larissa asked, “to live in a soulless universe?”
“Would it?” Ezra shrugged. “Without a soul, the here and now would be all you’d have, all you would ever have.”
“Exactly!” Larissa became lively, encouraged.
“But in the here and now, Maggie’s body is sick,” said Ezra. “If Epicurus is right, and the only thing she has is her body, her body is failing her. That doesn’t provide as much comfort as you might think.”
“I guess.” Deflated, Larissa palmed her coffee cup. “But you know what? If there’s no soul, there is no God, and if there’s no God, there’s no judgment. And if there’s no judgment, with a little bit of hard work, there could be no conscience.” No conscience! “No moral boundaries, no ethical laws, see? No consequences means no punishment. Tell Maggie that. Then you don’t have to suffer. You just have to feel better.”
“How?”
“I’ll talk to her, Ez. I’ll set her straight. I’ll tell her that if God doesn’t interfere with nature, he doesn’t interfere with man’s mortal body. If there’s no God, it means you can reason yourself out of anything.” Or into anything.
“Reason yourself out? But by what method, Larissa? The swirling atoms?”
“Right! Because atoms can’t reason.”
Ezra smiled. “Exactly. Matter must somehow learn to stop
contemplating itself. That’s a neat trick. Maggie hasn’t mastered it yet. Have you?”
“Well, it’s not easy,” Larissa agreed.
“Yes, because first you have to explain by what method you manage to examine yourself in the first place. Molecules can’t, can they? Atoms can’t reason. They’re neither naturalists nor ethicists.”
“Right, they’re nothing. Just nothing,” she said. “Why isn’t that comforting?
I
feel better already. Tell Maggie to drink some cranberry. It’s miracle juice for the kidneys.”
“She hates cranberry juice. Perhaps I forgot to mention it.”
Larissa suddenly jumped up. She grabbed her lunch plate and cup like an efficient waitress.
“Where are you going? It’s only noon.”
“Gotta get stuff and do stuff. Who’s going to go food shopping while we sit here and contemplate our molecules? I don’t have cleaning people anymore.”
“You don’t? What happened to Ernestina?”
Larissa waved her hand across her throat. “I had to let her go.”
“What? Why? When?”
I hear them walking, walking. I want them to stop, I have to get the phone in case it rings, but I can’t open my door, and they’re always knocking, every two seconds, asking me if I want coffee, clean sheets, if they can do my bed now, clean the bedroom, if I need anything at the store, where the paper towels are. I’m going to go crazy. They’re outside in the hall bathroom, they’re in the hallway, vacuuming, every time I turn around, they’re right there. One, another, a third. I tried to switch them for a different day, not Mondays, but they have no openings. They come to my house at 8:30, the children barely having left for school, and they’re already knocking
.
“I’m getting ready, no, no, thank you. I don’t need anything.”
I hear them like mice, like squirrels outside my door
.
“Look, how nice you look! Where you going, Miss Larissa?”
“To the school, Ernestina. I’m directing a play.”
“Look so nice. So pretty. You dress up for the store like I dress up for my boyfriend.”
Larissa shrugged. “I was tired of them being in my house, Ezra. Besides, I think one of the girls might have been stealing.” This wasn’t true. It was just to end the conversation.