Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (34 page)

I like this one,
said Carly.
It reminds me of the goodness of humans.
The word had authority over the body, not as a form of branding, but a form of art.

In the end I didn't get it, because I'm not my grandfather. But the thing was, he wasn't his number, either. But I'm scared. I don't want anyone to forget about it. The survivors, they're all dying now.

People won't forget,
said Carly.
And the Venetian Jewish History Museum is still there, even when it's barely there,
her hope leaking. At lunch, right after she handed in her paper the next day, Carly overheard the janitor say to the lunch lady,
somebody unplugged the ice cream machine as a prank. I have to clean it out. All the ice cream's melted by now.
And Carly cried, her eye-whites runny as
oeufs au coque.
Untoward how she'd arrived at the point where crying felt routine, like brushing her teeth or tipping a waiter.

She left the cafeteria, felt a blueberry seed in her teeth, and was fishing her pointer inside as Molly, a high school senior who used to be Natasha's best friend, turned a corner.

Help me,
said Carly.

Molly took her outside, put her bossy arms around Carly so that Carly's head was clutched between her funny-bone muscles. Molly's arm hair, the tint of curry, tickled Carly. An archangel.
Sorry I have such a small head,
said Carly.
And a small brain.

What are you talking about? You and your sisters are smart as whips. You legit are.

I'm not really a Simone,
said Carly inaudibly.

Molly, though sensitive to sound, tactfully ignored Carly, accustomed to not acknowledging everything she heard (one of the requirements of her teenage-girl strength). She opened the door to the warm inside of her boyfriend Matt's car, a Lincoln.
It's his dad's,
she told Carly.
I know. It looks like it's straight out of
The Godfather.

Molly drove to the neighborhood diner. Their sides touched as the host led them to a booth. Then came the waiter.
A turkey burger, please,
said Carly, and within minutes it appeared before her on a plate. She lifted the seeded bun and dumped ketchup all over it. The food shifted from teeth to tongue to throat to stomach, where her bolus would digest. Her stomach growled, like the wheels of a penny-farthing were caught in her ribs.

They weren't comfortable with each other yet. Carly cared about such technicalities, aware of how cumbersome she felt. Social anxiety whitewashed her tragedy.
Sorry for crying.

Please! Don't worry about it
. The words seeped from Molly's mouth.

Carly kept thanking Molly, pleased and disturbed at the same time, challenging her memory to unearth the last valuable time she'd spent with a friend. Not Stephen or a family member. A girlfriend to go to lingering lunches with and talk about teachers they didn't like. Carly suddenly felt a wide need for friends.

What happened?
asked Molly. They'd been eating in silence for almost half an hour, but Molly noticeably must've classified too long a silence unsustainable.

Carly nodded in response to nothing. -
Nothing happened, -
she thought.

You know how she's not doing so well?
Carly wondered why it was so hard for her to tell Molly, for she knew telling somebody had no effect on the probability of events. There were superstitious people out there, those who didn't throw baby showers until after the baby was born, but Carly wasn't like that. Superstitious notions to her were frightened ways to keep wishing.

The Heart is starting to reject her body. We'll have to call everybody we know and say she's dead. There are close to three hundred names in our family address book. I won't want Mom or Dad to go through with it, so Natasha and I will split the duties. I will have to call a hundred and fifty people and tell them.

Her voice loud, soft, loud.
Do you think it can be a hundred and forty-nine people? Can I just text you with the words
it happened
? It would help me. You know.

You sure can.

Do I ask who they're with before I tell them? What if they aren't alone? Should I call them back later? And what if they are alone? What if being alone is worse?

Do I ask them if they're sitting down?

Do I say I have bad news?

Carly was a child: powerless, desultory, displaced.

Molly said,
let's eat some dessert.

Carly said,
I can never eat when I'm sad.

Shut the front door,
Molly said, instead of
shut the fuck up.

Carly made a laughing,
tssss
sound to break the silence, a noise she made with her tongue against her teeth. Her real laugh came from the base of her belly. It had been a while since she'd heard it.

We can go back now. I'll be all right,
she lied.

O
utside, god held court, and there fell a thick rain. The clouds covered the sky like wallpaper, and they were all equal in the sky, as no overcast patch was heaviest. Mathilde picked up lunch from the hospital's Au Bon Pain, with its distinctive odor of zesty soups and salads. The indignity and injury of this strapping smell guaranteed that every time Mathilde would ever go inside a future Au Bon Pain somewhere else, she'd be reminded of the hospital.

Mathilde had been telling Lucy stories all week. Lucy listened in her skimmed way, sometimes not even awake. She told her mother not to look at her, alleging it was due to her self-consciousness. Her body exhausted itself, and yet she saw the therapeutic effect these costly cradlesongs had on her mother and didn't want to fritter it away. It was what she could do for her mother, to keep her from thinking. As long as her mother didn't have to think of Lucy, she'd be all right.

Tell me a story from when I was too young to remember.

How young?

Lucy said,
go back to the beginning.

Lucy came into the world looking shriveled, like an old lady.
The first thing Daddy said when he saw you was a prayer. I was doped up on painkillers, but I still remember.

Daddy, praying?

He kneeled down and said to god,
thank you for that amazing music.
Those were his exact words. Like he had just left the Philharmonic. And then, together, we picked you up and looked at you from every angle to make sure you were healthy. We knew you were original because you had a little birthmark on you.

This one?
Lucy pointed above her wrist.

The very one. The one in the shape of an envelope.

Lucy smiled. When she was three, she had pointed and said,
does this come off or stay on?
Her mother had said,
that's a beauty mark. That's how we know you're one of a kind.
Lucy had said,
can you take it off? It won't hurt. I promise.

Mathilde told true story after hyperbolic story after ghost story, all with happy endings (for the time being), her train of unfocused and inefficient thoughts fishtailing one another. After another hour she turned around to ask if Lucy needed another glass of water and found her sleeping smoothly, breathing, still living.

A
s Kitten rejected Lucy's body, her organs meting out like crumpled petunias, Lucy read books about animals. She studied their rituals and losses. Elephants, such subtle and sensitive creatures, bury their dead and grieve just as consciously as humans. Not only that, if elephants recognize bones as elephant bones, they will stand for a long time near the gravesite. Lucy wondered why some animals, even domesticated animals like dogs and cats, given the opportunity, enter the forest to die. She was going to die in the suburbs, and probably in a hospital. This was implicit.

Claudio asked Lucy if she wanted anything.

I'd like to see Aunt Jane again,
said Lucy.

Claudio drove to Lincoln the following day, signing his sister out. Jane looked at home in her clothes: gray parka, pajama bottoms, a secondhand T-shirt reading
NOBODY'S UGLY AFTER 2 AM
. They drove from one hospital to the other hospital.

Look who's here,
announced Claudio.

Look at this place.
Jane twirled around.
Your hospital room is even smaller than my hospital room.

Yeah,
said Lucy.

It wasn't long ago when I was here too. But I don't really remember. I don't like this place,
said Jane.
It's where my ghost came out.
This phrase seemed to grip at a chilling profundity to Claudio,
or probably he, as always, was interpreting some clarity among nonsense.
Can we go somewhere?

I don't think they'll let me leave,
Lucy said. Untimely lines gathered at her temples: thin, and so many more than anyone would expect, like bobby pins hidden in a large hairdo.

I just wanted to take you to this restaurant Sawye
r
took me to,
said Jane. Her Heart flooded at the memory.
We had so much fun. We drank two juices each and ate croissants. The breakfast of angels.

Well, maybe if we can get a pass, you can take me out in a wheelchair.
Lucy hadn't been outside in weeks on her own volition—the air's cleanliness depressed her, the drippy clouds depressed her, the sun depressed her. Anything within limitation reminded her that it would be around forever, and she only temporarily.

Claudio was still in the corner of the room, gnawing his fist. He'd never been the kind of person to even consider an affair, but for once he thought he understood how it must feel to be a man whose wife and mistress meet, even conspire.
I'll ask the nurse.

Jane clapped her hands like a little girl.

So, what's new?

Nothing much,
Lucy's classically conditioned words.

Claudio poked his head in from the hallway.
Unfortunately, all of the guest passes are out for the afternoon, so we can't leave.

We can't leave?
Lucy and Jane asked simultaneously.

Not now. Maybe we can play a board game.

I don't want to play a fucking board game,
Jane screamed, jarring her brother and niece both.
We are the Simones and the Simones don't curse
was something Claudio had been repeating for his daughters' entire lives
. Remember, those words are more unoriginal than shocking. It's like how gory movies aren't scary, they're just stupid. You want to really offend, choose smarter words.

Shh.
Claudio reached for his sister's elbow, but she pushed it into his abdomen. He sputtered and locked her body so she was not in pain but couldn't move. Instead, she screamed,
Fuck you, Claudio! You should be the one dying!

Wait,
Lucy said weakly.

She's not having a good day,
her father said.
I'm going to take her back, and then I'll come back. I'll see you tonight, honey.

Get off me!

Lucy felt surprised to wonder if it was the last time she'd ever see her aunt Jane. It wasn't like they were close, but for the first time Lucy understood she was lucky by comparison. Lucy would die, and the pain would stop. Aunt Jane would keep living, and the pain would go on for as long as she'd let it.

L
ucy's uncles were to wed at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. With her finger, Lucy followed a curled vein up her shin. She'd lost her ability to walk stalwartly a week ago, and relied on a daisy-garlanded walker. Soon it wouldn't be
her body,
it would be
the body.
Not hers anymore, but the earth's. Nothing anyone worried about anymore, put out of everyone's misery.

During the reception, Stephen sat down next to Lucy.

Hey.

Lucy raised her frosted coupe.

Someday this will be me and your sister,
Stephen emitted.

She's pretty crazy about you too,
admitted Lucy.

One day,
said Stephen.

I'll miss it.

Well, I could marry her tomorrow.
He fretfully bounced his left leg, wrapping an arm around his girlfriend's older sister, knowing her jealousy was more than for just their health. He pressed his chin into his shirt and made a noise that could have been happy or sad. As they made eye contact, Lucy shockingly discovered which it was.

Why are you crying? What happened?

Well,
he found himself saying.
I'd marry you tomorrow too.

Please stop,
said Lucy,
just stop.
The tone killed her, as it was
such schmaltz, this patronizing idea of Stephen being able to love her. As related to her needs he thought this love was, deeply it was the opposite—just pretending, even more devalued than the truth, and the truth was a question: who could
really
love her in a patient and reliable way?

No. I won't stop.

Then for a second—
she breathed—
can you call me Carly?
A proxy Carly. To dream of walking with her sister's legs, swallowing from her sister's throat, hearing high truths, and thinking with her sister's brain. -
This is the way love works
, - she thought to herself. -
Somebody falls in love with the person you want to be. -