St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) (17 page)

"Chills and fever, night sweats."

I was quiet. He watched me.

"You've had night sweats."

"Yes." I thought of waking, of dreams, of Jeanne drying me off, calming me.

"The bed actually gets soaked from your sweat."

"Yes."

"And no bells went off?"

I shook my head. "I always attributed it to recent events, stress, food I'd eaten, something like that."

"And stomach pains? Abdominal discomfort?"

"Yes. It would last a week or so, but it always went away. I thought I needed more fiber in my diet. Or stomach flu. Same thing. It didn't register."

The prescription sat on the desk between us. "Your reaction is a common one."

I took the paper, folded it, put it in my shirt pocket. "This is curable? I'm going to be okay?"

"It's treatable. You're going to be okay. I'll see you in six weeks. We'll go from there."

"You said I'd been sick a long time." I was standing, putting on my coat. "How long?"

"Can't tell. But I'd say it's been years."

Years. I digested the word. "How many years?"

"Can't tell. Could be up to ten years, from what I saw."

I looked at him. "I thought I was just getting old," I said.

He nodded, shrugged. "You are," he said. "But not that old." He held out his hand. "See you in six weeks. Get a sample jar from the receptionist on the way out."

I looked down, took his hand, shook it. I had new numbers to think about. Six weeks. Fourteen million. Ten years. They explained lots.

I finished the coffee and sandwich, left the Food Court, left
The Collegian
on the table, left Ashland, Ohio, got back onto I-71. I wanted to get as close to Cleveland as I could before it got dark. I don't like driving at night.

II

I've mentioned regrets already. I've thought of another one. Dad wanted a new window in his room—the room he had when he lived with Jeanne and Adam and me—that he could open more easily than the one that was there. It was an old house, and most of the windows were the wooden ones with ropes and pulleys, ones that had been painted over countless times. When you lifted the clunker in his room, you battled the warping of the years, those coats of paint.

He mentioned it several times. I worked on it a bit, chiseled, sanded, but not too seriously. Finally, one day at dinner, he offered to pay the cost of putting in a new one. I agreed that it sounded like a good idea. But I was reticent to let him pay, and I couldn't afford it just then. So it kept getting put off. In the spring. Maybe next fall.

Driving on I-71, heading to Cleveland, I saw the window, propped with a wooden stick, saw the fan on his dresser circulating the air. Wished I'd paid. Wished I'd let him pay. It was too late.

"You need to do something. You need to be of use."

I'd heard my father say this many times.

"Sometimes," he'd said, "just sitting in this room, I get thinking too much. I get to brooding. You have to do something, or you brood."

He did small jobs around the house, and we encouraged them. The basement was his personal domain. He painted the oil tank a fluorescent silver, wrapped every visible water pipe with insulation, poly-filled cracks with gusto. These were jobs that his bad eyes could handle—as long as they occurred in the basement where hardly anyone saw the results. In the kitchen, it was a little trickier. Every night when I came home, I'd rewash the day's dishes. He just couldn't see enough detail to get them completely clean. And he liked to help by mopping and washing the kitchen floor. Mostly he just pushed the dirt around, and we'd find it in massed, wet piles in corners. Again, it was no big deal. It was easy enough to finish the job when he wasn't around.

One morning—I can't remember why—I came into his room when I didn't know he was there. He was propped on his bed doing sit-ups. The man was in his late eighties. I was impressed. I don't even do sit-ups.

"I don't want to die," he said to me one time.

I couldn't think of anything to offer in return.

"I don't want to miss anything. I want to know what happens to you, to Adam. I want to know what happens to everybody."

I went back to see Samuelson six weeks later. He was such a veteran he could give you an estimate merely by looking through the microscope.

"You're up around twenty million." He lifted his head from the lens. "Very good. Excellent, actually. You're responding well."

"What does this mean?"

"We're going to attack it more aggressively. I'm going to prescribe a heavier duty antibiotic. Really go after it."

I followed him to his desk in the other room, sat down.

He handed me the new prescription. "Six more weeks," he said. "Any problems before then, let me know."

I saw Samuelson every six weeks for a year. For the final few months, he returned to the original, milder antibiotic—less expensive, fewer side effects.

My last visit, though, was memorable.

"You're a miracle," he said to me.

"Am I?"

"You're at fifty million. Tremendous progress. That's a normal sperm count. Motility's good. You've responded wonderfully."

It was everything I wanted to hear. Over the intervening months I'd heard, twenty-eight million, thirty-five, forty. "I'm cured?"

He smiled kindly. "It's never really cured. It's managed. You'll always have some white blood cells. You still get the occasional days of stomach pains, night sweats, right?"

"Yes."

"And you will. I'll give you two prescriptions for antibiotics, ten days worth each, for when it recurs. If it becomes too uncomfortable, fill one of the prescriptions. Take the sulfa pills—with plenty of water. Don't let it go untreated. But we're going to take you off this daily regimen. You can't stay on antibiotics forever. And I can't see any reason why you can't go home and make a baby."

I wanted to phone Jeanne right then and there.

He smiled, rose from his chair. "C'mere," he said. "I'll let you see something."

I followed him back into the other room.

"Over here." He was standing by the microscope. The glass slide was still beneath the lens. "Have a look."

I stared at him, at the microscope.

"Go ahead." He stood back.

So I looked. I bent forward, focused. Slowly, inadvertently, my mouth opened.

I could hear Samuelson chuckle.

"Jesus," I said. I could see sperm swimming wildly in every direction, brimming with energy, tails wriggling furiously. In this one drop of semen, life was teeming.

I couldn't take my eyes away. It was a door into another universe. Inside me, every minute of the day, with my every breath, life was percolating, boiling, fifty million of these were searching for an egg to penetrate, to fulfill a blind destiny, salmon leaping at a waterfall.

Finally, I straightened, wet my lips, looked at Samuelson.

"What do you think?"

"Incredible," I said. "Unbelievable."

He nodded, smiling. "I've been doing this every day for years," he said. "I never get used to it."

I watched him take off his eyeglasses, wipe the lenses with a tissue.

"And you're right," he said. He shrugged. "It's incredible."

III

I stayed on I-71 all the way into Cleveland, watching for a place to stay for the night. Before I knew it, though, I was caught in the flow of traffic, swept along into the urban center, missing the less-expensive motor hotels and inns on the city's outskirts. Then I got lost, ended up traveling west along the lake's edge. It was dark when I pulled over on a side street and unfolded my map, holding it close to the windshield to catch the light from a streetlamp.

I turned around, went east, back the way I had come, followed the bright lights, the tall buildings, ended up on Lakeside Avenue, turned capriciously when I saw a familiar name, Ontario Street, crossed another street whose name was duplicated from city to city—St. Clair Avenue— and saw the Marriott. I stopped.

It wasn't what I had in mind. But I was tired, disoriented, and ready to stop driving.

You can rationalize anything.

I told myself that I deserved a little luxury, a nice hotel, a treat, after a Best Western, a Hampton Inn. When I finally got into my ninth-floor room, though, which turned out to be half the size of the former two, at twice the price, I gave up my rationalizing. I had to admit it. It was actually a step down. Another big city had taken a bite out of me before I'd mustered any defense.

In Jake's, the bar downstairs, I ordered a Bud, opened a couple of the city maps available at the Information desk, tried to figure out where I was. I had to eat dinner.

The Flats, a developing area on both sides of the Cuyahoga River that twisted through Cleveland, was nearby. It seemed promising. It said that
Cahagaga
was Mohawk for "crooked river." I liked it. Sounded touristy.

What the hell. The hotel hadn't quite worked out. Maybe dinner would. Back in my room, I made a reservation at a restaurant called Watermark, profiled in "The Critics' Choice of Cleveland's Best Restaurants," showered, changed my clothes. I got the Honda out of its underground parking, made my way onto Old River Road in the Flats, let myself be seated at a table by the window overlooking the brown Cuyahoga River.

It wasn't Pizza Hut. It wasn't Chi-Chi's. I had a nice salad with Romaine, mesclun, iceberg lettuce, and croutons, tossed with carrot, scallion, and Romano cheese; the dressing was a honey rosemary vinaigrette. For an entree, I ordered Lake Erie walleye—coated in a blend of mustard and cracker crumbs, served golden brown, with Ohio grown broccoflower and carrots. Just to make sure I hadn't forgotten my roots, though, I ordered a Guinness, always a complement to seafood.

Over coffee, I watched the late July sun set over the river. Nice. Very nice.

Jeanne, I thought. Adam.

I missed my family.

Back at the hotel, I rode the elevator up to my compressed Marriott cubicle. Sitting on the bed, I phoned home, told her I'd be home tomorrow evening. Told her to expect me.

Stillwater, Mad River, Crooked River.

I dreamed I got separated from companions at a bazaar, surrounded by tables with mounds of exotic foods. Wandering among brightly colored canvas, along dirt footpaths, I examined bowls of spices, desserts of nuts and syrup cut into small squares, until I was confronted by a Gothic building—elaborate stonework, ivy—set against a river. I went inside, looked into vaulted rooms with leaded windows, great fireplaces, high ceilings, finally descending worn stone steps out the back way, opened a domed wooden door, and walked down to the water. It was twilight. The evening crackled softly, perfectly: streaks of dark clouds in a pewter sky. The river was still, a wide ribbon, a sinuous mirror. I watched sleek birds plummet from above, tucking their wings flush to their bodies, projectiles, diving beneath the surface, emerging with fish, lifting off once more into the air, circling, high.

A woman approached, dressed in a long gown, asked me to take her picture against the slate and purple sky.

At the water's edge, bending down, I picked up a small, round, smooth stone, closed my hand on it. I looked about me, at the dream, knew it was real. Knew everything was real. I squeezed it tightly.

In the morning, I awoke feeling rich, lucky, comforted. Beside the bed, on the night table, was the stone. The new one.

SIXTEEN

I

Music needs a shape. Sydney has the Opera House, a concrete jester's cap with vaulted roofs angling away like the blossoming of a Fourth of July explosion, dominating the city's harbour. Cleveland has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, hundreds of glass windows tapering up, slanting back, pyramiding to a point, among towering white concrete disks, points, jags, a sentinel on Lake Erie.

The sun reflected hotly off the cement of the expansive circle that skirted the entrance where I stood. It looked like, I thought suddenly, the landing target for a spaceship that might descend from above.

It was 10 a.m., Saturday, July 29, 1995. The information in the pamphlet in my hand told me that groundbreaking had occurred on June 7, 1993. Billy Joel, Pete Townshend, Sam Phillips, Sam Moore, Dave Pinter, along with the inimitable Chuck Berry, had witnessed the event. It would open to the public on Saturday, September 2. I was five weeks too early.

I looked at it, the angles, the lines, the curves, and I could see the music. When I closed my eyes, I could hear it. I could hear the crying. I had learned something from Bobby Swiss.

Back on Monday the twenty-fourth, when I'd left home, I'd told Jeanne I'd be gone three days, maybe four. It had been six days now. I took one last look, listened one last time, got into the car, rested my arm out the window, saw the broad, imposing hood of my long-gone 1960 Chev through the windshield, got onto I-90, and headed for Toronto.