Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (25 page)

O
n the operating table, Lucy dreamed of the beating Heart cadaver, deciding he was a boy. He smelled scummy and animal, like sheep.
It's a boy,
Lucy said, like he was being born, recognizing Kitten nesting bluish and strictured among his ribs.
Drip, drip.
He reached inside himself for his Heart and plucked it. There came a light sound of ripping, for his Heart actually had strings. It wasn't just something people said. Things were all happening the way people said them.

The boy pushed Kitten through her throat, past her collarbones, let his hand hang still for a shattering second down her esophagus. Shelving it like a bottle of Riesling. She didn't choke, but his arm tickled. The Heart pulsed, nuzzling Lucy, dwarfing her body. The beat felt heavy and collective, a curlicued round of applause.

You.

Have such.

A big mouth,
the boy sniffled. Then the generous sucker played her bones, one at a time, like a pianist pressing keys or a cancer inflaming her. When he kissed her humerus, they both started laughing. She looked down, and she was clothes-less. Such an emblematic, a clichéd, dreamer. Then she looked at the boy. He was even more naked. His body was carnage, a lather of color, a meaty confetti. His insides reflected off her: elucidated, clocklight-toned. Lucy felt something complicated, like love.

L
ucy woke up: victory! Hymns draped over the room. Not traditionally religious songs, just the songs she loved so much. Stevie Wonder, Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez; not the lyrics, the actual music. Had she lost her most primary senses, or was she hallucinating a synesthesia? Perhaps it was a dream she was leaving. Startled, she looked down at her feet, and thank god she recognized her squashy toes, the mini pears she'd used her whole life to kiss the ground when she walked.
Princess toes,
her mom called them, feet where the big toe is biggest and the rest align in a slope.

She was alive, with somebody else's Heart inside of her. -
Hallelujah, -
she thought. Then -
thank the lord. -
Though she didn't consider herself religious, she had so many pious words and phrases engrained in her mind during her most despairing times, often invoking the word
god
without consciously realizing whom she was talking about.

The Heart is in,
said the surgeon, whose name she couldn't remember, though he'd already placed her Heart(s) in his hands. He had tourmaline skin and a dazzling accent, and was buried beneath scrubs and a mask.
Your body passed with flying colors.

Lucy loved so much that he used these words, words with merit. She loved the surgeon's face. She loved the room's ceiling and floor and its satisfying, snow-shaded walls. She loved
the feeling of her body on the bed, and she loved the feeling of having a body.

The surgeon told Lucy that she'd remain in the Intensive Care Unit until likely the next week, when her body would be safe to leave the comfort and sanitization of isolation, strong enough to survive on its own. He told her that at the moment, her condition was
good
. -
Doctors and teachers are similar
, - thought Lucy. -
They categorize in gradients
. - Excellent, good, fair, poor.

Lucy sneezed, felt the pleasure of winnowing effluvia, but nobody else was in the room.
Bless me,
she said.

I
'm sorry,
Jane said to her brother, who was standing across from her bed.

For trying to kill yourself or for not succeeding?
Claudio asked his sister.

Succeeding?
asked Jane, now among the micro percent of the time she could be cogent, even clever:
you have a pretty cheap idea of success.

I didn't do anything,
dodged Claudio.

It doesn't take very long to bleed to death. Jane had cut a main artery, and minutes had counted. Now she was safe in the hospital, had gotten her arms stitched up in the ER. They were in a ward just two floors above where Lucy was recovering from her surgery. Jane was unaware of their proximity, which gave Claudio a perverse feeling.

I was thinking about how it's my birthday next month,
said Jane,
and how I so badly wished I never had one.

The notion of his sister without a birthday made an endearing and terrible sense to Claudio. He made the choice not to picture the strange idea any longer, instead thinking of her moment of birth. How stupid and happy his family must have been. How much like a family.
Mom always used to tell me that right before you were born,
he said,
I had told Mom that I changed my
mind and didn't want a sister anymore. And then I saw you. And there you were. And I said we can keep her, but let's give away any others.

Precious,
derided Jane.

What on earth triggered you?

Life gets to you sometimes, Claud,
she said.
You of all people should know that.

I have children,
said Claudio.
It's a different way of thinking.

Like how?

It's easier to forget what your favorite food is or what color you look best in or what makes you depressed.

I would love for forgetting to come easy.

You just don't have the time for yourself. You realize you don't really even need that time.

I see what you mean,
said Jane.
But a child is never fully safe.

You're right,
said Claudio, and this was the saddest truth he'd ever confirmed.

You're a good man,
Jane said to her brother.
If I ever had children, I'd be scared of hurting them.

Come again?

Like you said, you think of them before you think of yourself.

Claudio closed his eyes. Jane was sick. Life was hard for her. Naturally she'd want to spare her potential children the suffering. It wasn't because she wanted to hurt them. In the hospital, too frail to touch, lying with her arms in white bandages for shackles, it wasn't that she wanted to be damaged. He had to keep reminding himself of this.

Why didn't you ever want my nieces to meet me?

Claudio was not expecting this.
I always told you, I wanted you to. It was just a matter of finding the right time.

What time would that have been?
Jane looked at her ripped wrist as though she were wearing a watch.

As soon as you felt better,
pivoted Claudio.

Lucy came to visit me.

What?

She told me she was having trouble with her Heart. Why, with that timing, you'd think god had some big idea for our family.

But how?
Claudio asked in the voice of a small boy.

Her mother told her. Lucy said.

Claudio had no more means of continuing this conversation with Jane, for now. He wouldn't interrogate her over the petty details—this pickle called for more difficult conversations with different people. So he said the only words left he had for her.

Please, just stop hurting yourself. And stop letting yourself be harmed.

Easier said than done.

Do something nice for me,
he said,
and Lucy. Keep yourself alive, if only for that.

If only for that.
Jane laughed.

You know I don't mean it,
said Claudio.
You have lots of other reasons to be alive.

Give me one. Please.

The way you sing.

What Jane didn't know about the day Claudio picked her up from New Orleans was that Claudio had arrived at Otis's house earlier in the morning, watching from his car as Jane left, holding her tin can. Claudio had followed Jane to the French Quarter, watched her sing Tom Waits, and listened to her because she was so lovely. He'd listened all afternoon, and she'd had no idea. She hadn't seen anything.

Let me sleep,
said Jane. She reached for the cup of water on her nightstand. As she sipped, one of her bandages flipped open, exposing a skin-fizzling bruise. It looked fake, like a special effect.

You've slept enough.

I don't like being awake.

You're afraid of being awake,
he said, in a way that made them both want to cry.

Claudio felt his phone buzzing. It was a text message from
Mathilde:
I need you.
She always thought she did. Claudio sat down on a visitor's chair and played with his hands, moving his wedding ring up and down the knuckle. Sometimes it was so sad to be needed.

Sleep tight,
he told his sister.
I have to go. I'll be back tomorrow.
Then he looked at her for as long as he could stand it.

Before you leave,
said Jane.
I wrote a note. Before. It was supposed to be for you. You can still read it, if you want.
She motioned toward her nightstand, where the staff had moved her measly belongings.
Open the frame. Underneath the picture of those people I don't know.

Claudio did as he was told, without asking any questions, and without reading the note just yet.

I just wanted somebody to understand, I guess, even for just a little bit. But none of that matters anymore. Nothing is how I imagined. For one thing, I'm alive. I had no idea that would happen. So night night.

Good night, Jane,
said Claudio.

Jane crossed her arms, wrapping herself in her elbows. Her brother had good intentions, but really, that was it. And what good did it do her anyway?
You're not my hero,
she announced to the shut door, because Claudio had already left for his other family, the family that mattered to him. She scratched one scarred hand with the other, then switched. Residual blood on her arms flaked asymmetrically, like batter.

A few minutes later, she heard a rustle at the door, but her brother hadn't come back, of course. It was her doctor, who asked her how her arms felt. Jane said,
they're the only things that still hurt.

N
atasha opened a plastic tin of mini cupcakes.
From your math class.

How do you feel?
asked Carly.

Still froggy groggy,
purred Lucy. The drugs made her act bafflingly, yield to impulses such as sticking her hair in her mouth, trying to eat it.

The number of flowers, candy, and stuffed animals Lucy received from her classmates and neighbors was tremendous. She named the animals after references in Elton John songs: Blue Jean Baby, Tiny Dancer, Norma Jeane, Mona Lisa, Mad Hatter, Johnny Empty Garden, Little Jeannie, Crocodile Rock, Bennie, Honky Cat, Nikita, Daniel, Levon, and You. You was the
You
in “Your Song.” You was a stuffed giraffe from Natasha. Lucy sometimes pointed at the giraffe and said,
hey, You.

How wonderful life is, when you're in the world.

During her recovery Lucy finished all of her “get-well present” books, even the campy commercial fiction where the author thinks (s)he's a good writer just by using big words from time to time.
I can't not finish books
was her justification. She watched movies, categorizing into marathons by theme: straight-to-video Disney sequels (
Cinderella 3
was her favorite), wintry movies with religious/atheistic undertones (like
Narnia
or
The Golden Compass
), inspirational music mentorship movies
(
Mr. Holland's Opus
or
August Rush
), sports movies with racial ties (she wondered,
- does a movie exist with Denzel Washington that
doesn't
have a message? -
), period pieces, bad movies with animals, worse movies with talking animals. She also started a journal.

The summer before the surgery, Lucy's cardiologist gave Claudio and Mathilde the name of a psychologist.
Lucy may think it'll help to voice her anxieties to somebody who doesn't play a role in her life.
Lucy refused them all; it wasn't that she didn't believe in therapy, she just could identify her feelings with much fluency and felt tacit about life not being reasonable. She lived in a world where most of her country wasn't ready for Uncle Sawyer and Uncle Noah to get married and where her aunt Jane couldn't speak like a normal human being and where Carly's biological parents abandoned her most likely because of a government's policy and where her very own Heart was failing. She understood all of that and didn't feel like she needed to talk to an objective stranger with a degree about it.

So Mathilde bought her daughter a notebook, and Lucy filled it with poem after poem about pain. This was her therapy, and it was sacred, and it was free. The day she arrived home from the hospital, Lucy tattooed her body with Bic pen—one vertical ode on one arm and another on her leg, pressing them together to make a collaborative horizontal poem. She called it,