Interstate (28 page)

So you go with the doctor to the room Julie's in and the doctor says, right outside it—door closed, no little window in it, legs so weak while you walked that the doctor had to hold your arm, you said “I think I'm going to fall, grab me,” and he did, while you walked you thought “It's like an execution I'm going to, mine, hanging, shooting, injection, gas; fear, weakness, feeling you want to heave,” sign on the door saying “Do Not Enter, Medical Staff Only, Permission Required”—“She's in there on the bed. It's not really a bed, we call it something else, but for our purposes we'll call it that.” “What do you call it normally, meaning the technical calling—the word, you know?” and he says “‘Bed' will do.” “But I'd like to know, if you don't mind. I'm not sure why, peculiar reasons probably, but just, could you?” “An examination table, that's all it is, but now it's made up to look like a bed—sheets, a pillow.” “For under her head.” “Under her head, yes.” “You're giving me a lot of your time, I'm sorry.” “It's okay, what I do.” “I've been thinking of her head, only before, I think, on a pillow when she was alive. Everybody's sure she's dead?” He nods. “Then I'll see her in there. I mean, I would, of course, if she were alive, but I'm saying for now.” You put your hand on the door. It has no knob or bar, only needs a push. Which side of the room will the bed be? The left, you guess. But it's a table, so may be in the middle. “Yell for me, ‘Dr. Wilkie,' if all of a sudden you need assistance. Or if you want, I'll come in with you.” “You've seen her?” “Uh-huh.” “No, I want to see her alone.” “I can go in and leave when you want. Or with a flick of your finger, if you can't speak, or point to the door.” “Nah, I want it to be now just me and her. ‘Me and she' sounds better but it's ‘me and her, me and her.' Meaning, they go together, correctly, though in that case it could be ‘she and I' for all I know. Why do I bring these things up? Delaying.” “No matter what, I won't budge from here unless there's an emergency I'm absolutely needed for. Chances of that are minimal, and I've asked another doctor to fill in for me. But you never know.” “You never know,” you say. “And I suppose I should go in now, get it over with. Somehow I imagine her in the middle of the room on that table-bed, head on the left side of it, so, perpendicular to us,” and you show with your hands in a T what you mean. “I believe that's the way it is.” “So there. And all my life, you know, I've been getting things over with—no window in the room, probably.” “None.” “Lots of lights, some side tables with instruments and things on them, and so on. In fact, there's a standard joke, a running one, rather, around my household—no, it's no time for lines or jokes. This isn't one, what I was about to say, but might sound like it. I haven't told you it yet?” “If you mean now or before, not that I know of.” “I think I've told everyone else in the world. I have so few things to say. Of interest. Though it always had a serious degree to it.
Side
. It borders.
Straddles
.” “Go on, tell me if it'll help relax and prepare you for going inside. Remember, here and now, anything you do or say is okay.” “Right, better I feel that way, relaxed, prepared, so I don't crash first thing on seeing her, my dear kid, truly the dearest little girl-child-kid there ever was,” and you start crying and you cry and say “Everybody says ‘ever was,' I bet, everybody, in a situation like this, and I should stop all this kind of talk. Just saying it, of course I know what it'll do, so I have to wonder if I didn't say it just to go to pieces and delay some more my going in. There,” patting yourself under the eyes, tears, “these goddamn these. Stop, stop, stop,” slapping your cheeks. “But my nonjoke. Nonintended for one, the something I was going to say and will probably say it that I said might sound like a joke, and other times it could be. Now it's just a fact. An insight into me. So I'm telling it as an illustration of my always wanting to get things over with—trips, books, days, work, housecleaning, even sex sometimes. Cooking, quick, quick, quick. A joke to everyone I know, I can tell you, as if work to get rid of to clear yourself for the real or more important work, stuff that's killing you for you to do and which turns out to be the same thing, get rid of it, clear yourself for something else, and so on. So say it. Or do it. My hand's on the door again but I'm not pushing it even a quarter-inch. I can't seem to get in there. Whyever why? The example's this. That I want on my tombstone for it to read—Rather, that I want my epitaph to say on my tombstone, chiseled in—Rather, for ‘tombstone' sounds so Western western—in other words, fake—that I want my head- or footstone—my gravestone epitaph to say, you know, under my name, birth and death dates—anywhere on the stone—‘So, I got it over with.' Just that. You see the point; message is clear, isn't it? It's not funny now. Of course, nothing is, goes without saying, and long way I told the story, end of it was dead before I got there,” dropping your head, crying again, hand off the door. “This is too hard. Impossible. Why does it have to be? Her, I mean. I know, old question, but couldn't this all somehow be a wake-up dream? All that's done-before crap too, everybody must say it in a situation like this, and especially to you, true?” “But any other time your epitaph line would be humorous. I understand that. You got it over with—you're a man who likes getting things over with, and the big thing, the biggest, life, you're saying in this fictitious epitaph, you did.” “Maybe it was ‘Well, I finally got it over with' what I told my wife and friends countless—endless amounts—countless times. Or no ‘well,' but a ‘finally.' So just ‘I finally'—and no ‘so' either, so just i finally got it over with.' I think that's it. It is. Anyway, what's the damn difference? One of those. And I should get it over with, finally. I know I have to see her, I want to.” “You're right when you imply I know how difficult it is,” he says. “I've been through this with plenty of other people.” “Other fathers? But ones who adore their kids? Love them, adore them, worship them; if there was one word for those three, then that?” “Fathers, mothers, husbands, children for their sisters or brothers—everyone close.” “Okay. You close your eyes, you hold your breath, you push open the door and walk in. That's all you have to do, just those.” You do them, push the door shut behind you without turning around, let your breath out and smell; nothing unusual, something medicinal; and open your eyes. She's as you imagined; on her back, sheet up to a little below her shoulders. Okay, you imagined it'd be up to her neck. Everything, whole room, sheet, her hair, neat. Eyes closed; of course, so nothing unusual to imagine; if they were open you'd leap at her and say “You're alive, you've opened your eyes, don't do anything, say anything, stay still, I'll get help.
I knew
, I
knew
. My God, this is the happiest moment of my life.” Arms by her sides. Someone put them there. Imagine, arms were somewhere else, they almost had to be, across her, above her, twisted in some dead position, kept out of the way somewhere so they could examine her, and someone straightened them out and put them by her sides. This is all done for me, you think, has to be, and anyone else who comes to see her but not to work on her or take official notes. And then when I'm gone, what will they do? They'll have to lift her arms up, maybe one at a time, there might be some resistance, to pull the sheet down to do what they'll be doing to her later on. And under the sheet, what? Little skimpy hospital gown, you can see, and you're sure not tied or fastened in back, and holes, some exploratory, one from the gun, maybe some stitched or just pinned or taped closed for the time being so the medical examiners from the hospital or county can resume looking into her later on. Ah what do you know? You know this, that she's there in this very white room with you, a room for sure not for sleeping or recovering, palms up. But you're not feeling, you thought by now you'd break down and drop. You'll feel, plenty, after this; for now, you want a good look first. They place the palms that way too? They were able to? That resistance. Put the arms down, turn the hands up if they weren't, even separated the fingers so they'd look natural and not gnarled? Pinky so much distance from the second finger and so on? What do you think, nature did it on its own? Please, these are experts you're talking about here, every big hospital has to have them, a series of them on duty or call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, must be hundreds of them in the state, maybe tens of thousands in the country, a hundred thousand in the world, trained to do these things, think of it, and like the doctor said they've been through it plenty of times. Hell, if he has, so have they. So? So, she doesn't look as though she's sleeping. Isn't that what she's supposed to be? Maybe they were in too much of a rush to fix her up for you or that's a job the funeral people do, not the hospital's. Here, just make her presentable for the hospital viewing. And you, what are you doing? You're not feeling, you don't even look as if you are, you can feel that in your face and the way your body's so straight, not bent from suffering, also your legs not weak or knees buckling. I told you, this is how I'm approaching it now. I want to take in everything while I have the chance, not miss a trick. And all for myself, to steep myself in it after, for I won't tell anyone else. Later I'll have plenty of time to fall to pieces and I'll be doing it every way, body, head and face. She looks as if she's about to nod off to sleep and was only waiting for your kiss goodnight. Oh, all the stories you've read and made up for her then. A fairy tale come true? What do you mean? There's something in that thought that means something and seems intriguing and you're not getting it. It can't be the prince kissing his future princess out of death or interminable sleep, for you're the king in this parallel and he usually dies from despair when he sees his daughter like this. Then a fairy tale in reverse? Again, seems intriguing but you can't come up with a meaning. Listen, this is all coming too fast and think of it, you're in here at last, and you're in mourning, so you've a right to be incompetent, stupid and confused. “Oh my darling dearest,” you say, “dearest” because she's dead, for both your daughters were your dearest—
are
,
were
, you want to punch the interloping verb, stick it in your mitt and mash it, dash it, grind it to air—and you go to her and take her hand. You think the regardful part's going; something tells you. But don't goof, left hand will feel left out and unloved and you take that one and lean over and say to it “Don't worry, I love you too,” and hold and kiss them both. Now the flood will come or soon. “Now come alive,” you say; “anything the king says, goes. This is that kind of kingdom. This room's my reign. You're my obedient subject. Do you know your king? Try to sit up when he speaks. The one who told you tales in bed, you and your sis, and got you into this fucking mess. No he didn't. Excuse the language. He did the best he could even if it came to nothing. None of us is great. Put in a predicament like the one we were in, what could any king have done if he also didn't have magical powers—‘Away car, guy's gun to suddenly become gum, vanish, road home now clear!'” You think: If you were alive, my darling, you'd laugh; any pun with “gum.” “But the king's wish. This is it. Hear me, I'm speaking for the king. If I only have one, here it is. I only have one and this is it. If we have to trade places to get it granted, so be it, he'll do it eagerly, immediately, me. Come alive! I'm and he and all of us are ordering you to. But slowly, you don't have to jump right up. Go easy on yourself, my little princess, you've had an unbelievably tough time. Or no fooling around. It's not working besides. Julie, you are—no princess or king or plenipotentiary, the minister who stands in for him—just come alive.” You can't believe your eyes are still dry. Must be something physiological, brain-body, you were an inch away from it, now you're rock bottom, a place where tear ducts don't produce. You also don't shit there, piss or sweat. You certainly don't get hungry, thirsty or hard-ons. It's a place like death but where you're breathing and can still fart. It's the next step over from not. In fact, you just laid one. “Oh my gosh, my darling, I'm so sorry if what you're smelling now is foul.” Where your skin continues to shed and hair and nails grow, but so slowly—as in death, so in life—that you don't see their ongo-ingness. You've no clue as to what you're talking of or alluding to but you do know why. And your eyes, they're still dry. Of course her hands are cold, not to your mouth as much as to your hands, and they don't get warmer the longer you hold them. Should you now say aye, is it finally time to face up and snuff out the royal blather and brain-body stuff, enough of all this wishing-fishing-blaming-talking-to-the-dead such malarkey: cold hands, in a heated draft-free room, that can't even get a touch warmer when you keep them folded over in yours for so long, proof she's dead? But never said out loud. Good God, she might hear, be once again on the edge between life and death—bordering it; rather, straddling—and one line like that might be all it'd take for her to give up and die. Her quick last thought: “If Daddy doesn't believe I'm living, I'm dead.” Daddies have that sway. This one perhaps with this kid in this situation anyway, so you don't say a thing. You hold, enclose, rub her knuckles, you look, you can barely see her now because of the water in your eyes, she does seem so peaceful, she does look as though she's sleeping, that's a bad sign, at least people in comas, you've heard or at least you saw with your father nights before he died, seem fidgety or in pain or get that way every so often, so it's coming, ducts functioning, entire head's sweating, you might even end up shitting and pissing in your pants, the whole works of you might go. It's possible you might just fall into many pieces, no center hold. But you want to see your little baby so you wipe the water away. What else do you do now? These little fingers, a little puffy now, same with her little face. That little long neck, slim like a slim kid's before, now blotchy and purple or red. Those shoulders, her big brainy forehead. You can't stand it. There are altogether too many signs. Probably same with her whole body, the clotting and swelling and slime. But come on, what more do you do when you've been standing by your dead daughter's bed for so many if not way past the maximum allowable minutes and sense the doctor's getting impatient waiting and they want to come in and take her out so they can do what they have to with her or just to the room with her out of it so it can be reused? It's just that something tells you there's something you can do for her that you haven't done and you don't want to leave her till you've found out and tried and you also don't want to go because if you do it'll really be as if she's gone. So you stay, but what do you do while you're here? You hope that whatever that something is comes to you. And you look, you hold, you enfold, you bend down again and kiss her big forehead. Where do all the thoughts and stuff go? Just puff, cut? So you also think dopey, not dopey but preposterous hard-up thoughts. And you speak. You say “My little darling”—or does some of it stay in her head or around her awhile or even around you in the air, maybe trying to reach you some way with a last message or word or just anything in the little time it might have and feeling, like you trying to reach her or bring her back from wherever she is, that it can when it knows it can't?—“what more can I actually say, I mean do for you now but say ‘my little darling'? If I knew, about what I could do, I'd do it, you know so, and if you could tell me—tell me if you can, make a noise, give some sign—I'd do it faster somehow, I swear,” water all over your face till you can't see her, so even if there is some visible sign now you'll miss it—is there? can there be? just one and then it's gone for all time?—your lips touching her face in different places till they find what feels like her mouth and with your fingers you touch it and your lips on it and it is. Then someone's behind you. You jump up; must be the doctor. Does he think what I was doing peculiar? you think. Well if he does, so what? I'm allowed, he said, I'm allowed, but maybe it's a different doctor or an aide or even with the same doctor you're only allowed to go so far. Door opened so quietly you didn't hear the person come in. Or it opened normally but you were so absorbed in what you were doing and thinking that you didn't hear it. Or it opened loudly. Loudly for the doctor or this other person, by accident perhaps—he pushed the door harder than he wanted and it slammed the wall. Or he pushed it harder than he normally does because he was angry or impatient or just tired of waiting outside and he wanted you to hear, but you still didn't or hear even other things he might have said trying to get your attention. You turn around, she'll be okay for a second, wipe your eyes, same doctor, doesn't seem to be in any of the moods you thought he might if he'd slammed the door, and he says “Excuse me, Dr. Frey, but don't you feel it's around the time you should come away from here?” “What makes you think I'm a doctor? Wish I was; bet she would've got twice the activity on her if I'd announced straight off she was an M.D.'s daughter, not that it would've…well, it wouldn't've hurt. I should do that next time—why didn't I think of it for this? I could kill myself for not,” and he says “I thought you were a Ph.D. doctor at a university; I thought somebody told me that, excuse me. And as we said before regarding our efforts for her—” and you say “‘if you were a doctor or a plowman'—where'd I turn up ‘plowman,' how, why?—‘she would have got the same rigid'—not ‘rigid' but…but something, oh fuck it—excuse me, my darling,” turning to her, she's still the same, such a darling, as if cold-capped, cold-cocked, knocked out cold, but warm, lying, sleeping, and then to him “‘care,' just ‘attention and care.' No, I work in a grade school, or did, years, years ago. Not her age but junior high. I was called ‘teacher,' most times ‘teach.' Now I don't know what I do or am going to. Wait!” and he says “Anyway, sir—” and you say “No, wait, one more thing. Don't push me out of here. Maybe something you said or what we were talking of set it off. But it's what I was looking for before to try when I was by myself, with her, here, I mean. And maybe I already found and tried it but I don't think so.” “I don't know what you—” and you say “But not here in this room with her do I remember trying and finding it after everything else had failed or just didn't take place, and with a feeling—listen, I have to be quick about it so you have to go—as deeply as I have now. Not ‘fervently,' I don't want to use stupid words to something my argument, but that it could be possible, work. So I have to,” and he says “Excuse me, you're talking so fast, I'm confused—you have to what?” and you say “Out, please get out, just another few minutes, you have to let me and leave me alone,” and push him out the door, you don't actually push him but put your hands on his chest and by walking forward you make him move back a step and then he looks at your hands flat on his hard chest—maybe he's even flexing his pects to warn you to back off—with this, ironical's the word, expression where you don't know if he's not going to surprise you and suddenly haul off and sock your face, and then at his watch and says “Fine, a few minutes, but only a few—