Permanence (11 page)

“My thirtieth birthday?” I ask.

“No,” says doctor. “A wish. You forgot to make a wish.”

Delicate

Doctor and I share our first meal together ever, at a small trattoria in beautiful, romantic Venice.

This is really an outdoor cafe located on a long terrace protected by a canvass canopy overhead. We are seated beside a dark, narrow feeder canal that separates us from a row of connected brick and mortar buildings on the other side. We see the backsides of the buildings, their cracked stucco walls and sharply pitched clay tile roofs. Some of these buildings also serve as restaurants and trattorias. From where I sit, looking directly across this narrow canal, I see a man appear. From this distance, I see he is dressed in a white smock and hat. He appears and reappears for only a few moments at a time, through a doorway that leads only to a stone landing and steps running down into the canal.

I watch the smocked man, intently.

He dumps pots of food scraps into the canal. The scraps make a slight splash before sinking.

I turn to doctor. He is watching me, his bearded face suddenly gaunt in the candlelight, his flesh pale behind his beard, his hair thinning. I recognize a distance in doctor’s eyes that suggests something could be on his mind other than our dinner, something other than my presence. Something complicated.

But I do not pry because it is not my place to pry.

I am doctor’s patient, after all.

We drink a house wine that comes to us in pitchers hand-painted with pastel-colored fruit and flowers. I think. Even the wine pitchers are art in Venice. We drink the wine with vigor as though a reward for having made it all the way to romantic Venice. And it is.

“Here’s to being alive in Venice,” says doctor, lifting his glass high above our metal table, “if only in our minds.”

“Now that’s a joke only a psychiatrist can get away with.”

Doctor forces a smile as though agreeing.

“Here’s to surviving a flight,” I continue, “that should have cost us our lives.” I laugh, touching my glass to doctor’s glass, the glasses clinking. “I mean, whoever booked that flight for us should be made to pay dearly.”

“Spoken like a true travel agent,” says doctor.

I drink to our toast, the white wine tasting light, but tangy.

“Drink as much of this as you like,” comments doctor. “It rarely affects the brain.”

We drink heavily, until doctor chokes.

He places the wine glass back down on the metal table. He sits back in his chair and coughs, his face becoming bright red behind his beard.

I stand up.

“My God,” I say. “Are you all right?”

But doctor waves me away as though nothing is wrong. He doubles over and brings his fisted hand up to his mouth. I am helpless while, across the width of this canal, the man in the white smock tosses more food scraps into the dark water.

The waiter rushes to our table. He is a young, thin man with black hair pasted back on his head.

“Okay?” he says, in forced English.”
Signore
, okay?” He gestures with open arms as if he wants to help doctor. But doctor’s face goes from red to white to blue, his horn-rimmed glasses sliding down his nose.

Doctor is really choking.

I move forward, lean myself against the table. My chair falls back and slams against the slate. The patrons of the trattoria stare at doctor and me, ignoring their food and drink.

I reach around to loosen doctor’s tie, but as I reach him, he waves me away.

I am helpless.

“No,” says doctor, in a raw voice that comes from deep inside his throat. “I’m all right,” he whispers, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down inside his throat.

“Okay?” repeats the waiter.

“Yes, yes,” insists doctor. “I’m okay.”

Doctor waves us all away and attempts a smile. But I know the smile is a fake. Listen: the smile is contrived and strained. Doctor’s eyes are filled with tears. He removes his glasses and sets them down, atop the table. I step back and retrieve my chair, setting it upright. I sit back down, apprehensively. I am ready to move if doctor begins to choke again.

I look all around me.

The patrons of the trattoria manage to pull their eyes away from doctor and me. They go back to their dinners and conversations. But I know this: doctor and I remain strangely out of place.

Doctor brings his shaking, fisted hand to his mouth. Tears run the length of his bearded cheeks. I see the man appear from across the canal; he is standing beneath a light bulb that dangles by a wire above the doorway of the building. I watch the food scraps disappear when he dumps them into the canal.

Doctor seems to be recovering. His color is returning.

Of all things, doctor pulls a cigarette from his breast pocket and lights it while wiping away tears from his face and eyes.

“I’m okay,” he insists. His voice is too painful to listen to without imagining the same pain in my own throat.

“It’s only wine,” I say, lifting my glass. “It’s not even solid food.”

“This is getting to be a habit with you and me,” says doctor, exhaling a stream of white smoke. His voice sounds so painful and strained.

“Drink this,” I say, pouring him a glassful of the mineral water set on our table beside the pitcher of wine.

Doctor lets the water sit on the table without drinking it. I am thinking about how unusual—how utterly frightening—it is for a doctor to be choking on liquid, not once but twice.

I think about the weight doctor seems to be losing and the constant cigarette smoking. I see the reflection of the overhead lights in his glasses and his distant eyes. Clearly, something is happening with doctor—something he feels he cannot tell me.

“I have to be careful not to drink too fast,” he says. “I have to make sure everything goes down the right pipe.” He is sucking on his cigarette, avoiding the stares of the people eating their evening meal in this trattoria in romantic Venice.

“Life seems very delicate lately,” I add, reaching across the table for one of doctor’s cigarettes. I know I am pregnant and that smoking might affect the child. But I swear, I cannot allow this pregnancy to last.

“Life…delicate…lately?” comments doctor with a hoarse laugh. “You must be joking.”

In a place we’ve never been

I hold to doctor with my life.

I close my arms around him in bed inside the room we’ve rented above the Grand Canal. We are together in a place we’ve never been and in a way we’ve never been. We have been lovers for months, but now there are no bright, ceiling-mounted lights overhead, no cold leather from the patient’s couch adhering to my back, no mechanical sounds of Albany’s rush-hour traffic going past.

Listen: in romantic Venice, doctor takes his time.

There is nothing but the darkness and the intermittent soft yellow lights that come from outside and flash through our room. I listen to the sound of water splashing against the boats and the gondolas that pass beneath us. There are the voices that sing not to doctor and me, but I will make them our own anyway. The voices are soft and distant but can be heard above the accordion music.

I am not really showing yet, so doctor does not suspect anything about my pregnancy. Or perhaps I am just fooling myself.

Our underwear and clothing lay in a heap on the floor. When doctor leans over me, separating his body from my own, supporting himself above me with outstretched arms, his eyes wide without his glasses, he trembles as though suddenly deprived of the strength necessary to carry things through. And, I fear, he is. But I feel doctor over me, against me. I take hold of doctor and help him enter me. And together we begin the familiar motion.

Then doctor says, “I love you, Mary Kismet,” the way I do not expect.

Here’s what I do: I stop all movement. I make my body rigid. I push doctor off me. This happens not by choice, but by instinct. My actions take little effort, because doctor will not resist. Doctor responds as he should.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he says, leaning one arm against the mattress. “I’m sorry.”

I say nothing. I’ve known for a long time now that doctor loves me. After all, why would he invite me to accompany him to Venice? It’s just that doctor has never confirmed his love by saying it. Suspecting love and then hearing it from doctor are two different things.

“Mary, listen,” he says.

I jump out of bed. I run into the bathroom, turn on the bright overhead lights. I slam the door closed. I sit at the edge of the bathtub. I run the water in the tub, let it flow into the basin. I listen to the sound of running water. I stare into it. I am consumed with the memory of Jamie and baby. I see their faces in my mind, as if they never left me.

There is a knock on the bathroom door.

“Mary,” says the voice. “Mary, I’m sorry. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have spoken about love.”

I say nothing. I do nothing.

The water flows into the tub.

Listen: I’m not afraid of doctor’s love. I’m afraid of my own love. I’m afraid that I will begin to love doctor as much as he loves me. I’m afraid that my love will overpower my need for doctor, and that by loving him, I will forget about baby and Jamie. I’m afraid I will decide to keep doctor’s child, a child that might take the place of baby—the two-year-old toddler Jamie and I lost. Listen: I will never forget about baby. The memory of baby will be with me forever, just like the memory of my mother and my father.

I stare into the water.

I run my hand through it.

“Mary,” doctor repeats. But I try not to listen. I listen instead to the sound of water as it fills the basin.

In the morning

In the morning, doctor treats me as though he does not love me at all.

We remain polite, but distant. We remain silent. Doctor is in a rush. He does not want to be late for his morning conference which, he claims, begins in a half-hour.

We dress ourselves separately inside the bathroom. I am suddenly embarrassed to be naked in front of doctor in the gray daylight of Venice. And while he showers and dresses, I sit with my knees pressed up against the railing of the balcony with the windows wide open and the breeze blowing steady and cool against my face.

I drink cappuccino and listen to the voices of the gondoliers and the sound of the water slapping against the boats.

When doctor enters the room I turn to look at him. He is dressed only in his pants; his hair is wet, combed back flat and neatly against his scalp. His chest is visibly sunken, his arms are like twigs. He is smoking a cigarette, already. He sits at the edge of the bed and tries to catch his breath. I am suddenly reminded of his choking at the trattoria the night before. I am reminded of his choking back home in his office. I feel my stomach, but this is not from doctor’s baby. This is from worry.

I stand up from the seat and sit by his side on the bed.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

Doctor looks at me.

“Let’s go to a cafe today and just drink,” he says. “When I get back from my conference.”

“You’re getting far too thin. You haven’t been eating anything.”

“We’ll eat pizza in the cafe and drink beer. I’ll get fat for you.”

“I’m worried.”

Doctor turns to me, forces a smile that seems genuine.

“Worried?” he asks. “Really worried?”

“Yes,” I say.

“And this worry you claim you have for me is not a sign of love…even an inkling?”

I sit and stare at him for a moment. I don’t know what to say. I am confused between need and love, love and need. I want doctor more than he knows. My God, I came to Venice with him.

“Worried,” I say. “That’s all, just worried.” And with that I kiss doctor softly.

Close your eyes, and remember

“Close your eyes,” says doctor. “What do you see? What do you feel?”

What I see is simple. I see nothing.

But what I feel is not so simple. I feel empty. This is from the loss of baby and Jamie. This is the loss that
seems
more like a loss since coming to Venice with doctor, since learning about his love for me and the growing feelings I have for him.

I open my eyes.

Children shout and run through the rain and around the fountain in the center of the square. A man in a gray suit drapes a trench coat over his head and darts through the square in the rain. He runs past the children, soaking now in their clothing and standing in the empty basin of the fountain. The man disappears into an alleyway. The children laugh in the rain coming down now in sheets.

Doctor and I sit across from one another at this outdoor cafe with the rain drumming against the canvas canopy above us. This is only moments after doctor has finished with his conference—the once a day conference he leaves our hotel room for first thing in the morning, every morning, since our arrival in Venice, days ago. These are the conferences doctor will not allow me to attend. The boredom, he says, would be overwhelming. So I do not argue with doctor about attending.

Now we occupy this small outdoor cafe with the rain misting in our faces. I drink Chianti and rest an open hand against my stomach beneath the table. Doctor drinks his beer, taking tiny sips and occasionally touching his throat with his fingertips.

“Hold my hands,” he tells me. He reaches for my hands from across the table. I take his hands into my own and feel his warmth along with the cool, moist feel of the metal table.

“Close your eyes and remember. Remember everything that happened to you, to Jamie and to baby, as if it occurred moments ago. I want you to remember now so that later, you can forget.”

I close my eyes. I feel my chest tighten, the walls of my stomach collapse in on itself. The rain suddenly picks up and begins to come down heavier against the canopy. I hear the water running between the cobblestones and streaming into a basin not far away from this table. Even the children who were playing in the empty fountain have run off.

I open my eyes.

“Let it go,” insists doctor.

I close my eyes. In the darkness of my memory I see all of it as it happened, the way I have never forgotten. There were just seven or eight inches of water in the bathtub. I see baby laughing a tight, crumpled-up laugh, playing with the water that came from the spout with his hands, twisting and turning them inside the steady downpour.