“The maggots in the iron lung won’t copulate,” said Jared. “Then later he changes it to . . . the maggots in the eye of love won’t copulate.”
“Oh.”
“That’s the Misfits. I’m learning how to play that song right now, but I don’t really have the calluses yet,” he said. “I started too late.”
“Guitar?” I asked.
“Damn right,” he said.
“It was . . . a very accomplished song,” I said.
“Yeah.”
He watched his mother for a moment. She was listening to the receptionist, nodding her head solemnly.
“Let’s go outside,” he said.
“Now?”
“Yeah, I hate this stupid place. I need some air.”
He was already getting up, and when he began his journey toward the exit, I found myself following. It seemed like the right idea. I could already tell that objectionable things happened inside the building. People breathed into machines. Grandmothers were wheeled away to secret rooms.
So we stepped outside into the early afternoon air. The sun had vanished behind an opaque cloud cover, and a green neon cross above us cast an unearthly light on the pavement. Jared reached back into the tentlike folds of his leather coat and produced a pack of cigarettes. He tapped out a Lucky Strike.
“You tell Janice about this and I’ll make sure you die in a drainage ditch someday,” he said.
“Understood,” I said.
He lit the cigarette and then smoked what looked like a fourth of it in one long inhalation. He pulled in the enormous drag, then coughed it out in a thick, green-tinted cloud.
“So you really live in that goddamned thing in the middle of the forest?” he asked me, in between puffs. “Is that what you’re feeding me?”
“You mean the Geodesic Dome?”
“Yeah. That thing.”
“I really live there.”
“And you go to school there?”
“Nana instructs me,” I said.
“So is she, like, your overlord?” he asked.
“She’s my guardian,” I said. “She says we have a bond stronger than the average parental one.”
I watched him blow smoke through his tiny nostrils.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“We make up for the lack of direct mother-son connection with a greater communicative capability.” I was talking too much, but I felt the words coming against my will. “A kind of telepathic bond,” I added.
He stomped out his cigarette and immediately reached for another one.
“You can read each other’s thoughts?”
“Not exactly,” I said, “but there’s a kind of hyperawareness present. She senses me.”
Jared considered this. “Okay, then,” he said. “If you can read her mind, then what’s happening to your grandma now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is she going to die?”
I felt something inside me drop. I looked down just to concentrate on something. I looked at the flattened cigarette butt lying in front of me. It was still emitting smoke.
“I resist my powers,” I said.
And before I could really think about it, I picked up the remains of the cigarette, appraised it, and took a small puff. My first ever. I got a little smoke, and almost immediately began to hack. I took a step backward and steadied myself against a metal bench. My throat and nostrils felt scorched.
“That’s the filter,” said Jared. “You’re not supposed to smoke that part.”
The taste in my mouth was horrible. Like the smell of burning plastic. I rested the back of my head on the top rail of the bench. I felt my nose starting to run. I wiped my forearm across my face, but it didn’t stop.
“Are you crying?” asked Jared.
I didn’t answer.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, man. I’m sorry. I’m sure she’s going to be okay and everything.”
Jared walked over and stood next to me. He reached in his coat for a wad of old Kleenex. He unwrapped it and handed it to me.
“People get sick, you know?” he said. “Bad stuff happens.”
His voice was an octave lower now, and quiet. He sat down next to me, reeking of smoke. Then he glanced at the hospital sign.
“Believe me,” he said. “This is the kind of shit I know about.”
Jared looked away. He coughed a little. Suddenly a voice came from behind us.
“Sebastian!”
We turned around, and Janice was standing in the doorway, the institutional light of the hospital shining behind her. She walked up to us and pulled the unlit cigarette out of Jared’s mouth. “Are you crazy?” she said. “Have you gone absolutely insane?”
She snapped the cigarette in half and tossed it in the bushes. Then she shifted her gaze directly to me. Her face softened, and she attempted a comforting smile.
“I found a nurse,” she said. “I found a nurse to take you to Josephine.”
MY NURSE WAS A MUSCULAR WOMAN IN OLIVE HOSPITAL clothing. And she spoke to me about brains while we traversed the spare hallways. She spoke about brains in general, but I could deduce that she was really talking about Nana’s brain. She told me that they needed nutrients and oxygen, but that sometimes clots or clotlike things blocked the arteries and resulted in interruptions of blood flow. Some version of this interruption, she said, had happened to Nana. And it had caused a thrombotic stroke and some temporary aphasia. Nana was having some difficulties with her speech. Fortunately, they had been able to supply her with drugs in time to ward off too much permanent damage. Still, said the nurse, strokes killed brain cells; that was what they did.
When she finished, we were standing at the door to Nana’s room. It was a sizable space, with a row of empty beds. It smelled like moth-balls. Nana had the room to herself, and the second I stepped inside, her eyes fluttered open and followed me, just as they had when she was taken from her home. I walked to her bed where she sat, pierced by a few small tubes. Her skin was pale, and her lips were chapped. Her unwashed hair had been matted down against her head.
I hefted myself onto her bed and sat beside her. The nurse stood outside, scrawling on her papers. I rested my hand on Nana’s shoulder. When I was five, the only way I could fall asleep was with her hand on my back. That weight had to be there. I needed something to pin me down. I worried that sleeping without an anchor would cause me to drift right through the domed ceiling and out into the night.
“Nana,” I said now. “I understand you have aphasia. So I’m just going to speak slowly to you.”
She coughed a single soft husky cough.
“You told me once,” I said, “that physical bodies are just elements and energies. That they are always changing. That’s what you said.”
Nana did not look at me.
“I mean some of the things that are me today, were just proteins and water yesterday. There is no ‘real’ me. I am in a constant state of flux. Right?”
Nana closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then her eyes opened again.
“Soba,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
Nana contorted her mouth.
“You drank soba,” she said quietly. “Coke cola.”
I looked closely at her. “Janice gave me an RC,” I said.
Nana winced and shook her head.
“You should,” she said, “you should not consume . . . these things.”
“Nana, you’ve had a stroke,” I said.
This gave her pause. She looked around the room and down at her hospital gown. She seemed to see it all for the first time.
“I was worried,” I said. “I’ve been out there worrying about you . . .”
I heard my voice shaking.
“Sebas-yan,” she said. “You shouldn’t drink these things.”
She didn’t seem to be listening anymore. I looked out into the hall and the olive-clad nurse was still there. She was watching me. “She’s experiencing some disorientation,” she said. “I wouldn’t pay much attention to what she’s saying at this point. Your grandmother is on some strong medication.”
Suddenly Nana opened her eyes wide and gasped. I turned to her, startled.
“You are going away,” said Nana.
She grabbed at my arm, but her body wasn’t quite getting the messages.
“No, Nana, I’m right here,” I said. “I’m right here with you.”
She looked at me, but I couldn’t tell if she was really seeing me.
“You are going away,” she said. “I know this.”
Her eyes fell closed. I wanted to reassure her, but she had already drifted from consciousness again. I watched her sleep for a moment. Then I got up and left her bed. I intuited my way back to the waiting room and found Janice reading from a glossy paperback and eating a bag of saltless pretzels. Jared was no longer beside her.
“Mrs. Whitcomb?” I said.
She looked up at me, chewing slowly.
“It looks like I’ll be sleeping here tonight,” I said, “but I want to offer thanks again for your help.”
“Oh, of course,” she said. She got up and threw her arms around me. “Is everything going to be all right?”
“I hope so,” I said.
She let go and took another bite of a pretzel.
“I’m going to give you something,” she said.
She rifled around in her overlarge handbag until she pulled out a receipt and a pen. She began scribbling something. “Jared wanted me to give you this information,” she said. “If you ever want a day away from your . . . home, you should just call us up or e-mail Jared. I know you kids get on your computers and talk that way sometimes. And Jared is . . . well, he’s had some troubles. But he’s a sweet boy at heart. He’s in the car right now, thinking about his behavior.”
She handed me a phone number and an e-mail address.
“Jared told you to give me this?” I asked. I gripped the paper hard in my fingers.
“Well, he didn’t actually say it, but he doesn’t say much of anything to me. I could just tell he wanted to hear from you again.”
I stuck the receipt in my pocket, and Janice gave me another hug.
“Immanuel Methodist,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s where I teach the Youth Group. I’ll bet you would like it, Sebastian. I really bet you would. There’s singing and study groups, and we have outings from time to time.”
“Nana and I don’t attend church,” I said. “We believe in synergy.”
“Even so,” she said, “maybe you’ll consider it.”
She handed me her bag of pretzels and smiled. Then she turned around and walked out of the hospital. Not far away in the parking lot, I could spot the teal minivan. It stuck out, half bathed in a dim parking light in the darkening evening. And directly under the light, coming out of the van’s open sliding door, I could see a black pair of tennis shoes swinging against the side of the van in a steady beat. Jared’s music player dangled at his side, illuminated, and there was something affixed to it. I narrowed my eyes.
It looked a lot like a Buckminster Fuller sticker.
3.
The Domecoming
THREE DAYS WENT BY BEFORE NANA RECEIVED PERMISSION to leave the hospital. Three days of waiting. Three days of consuming forkfuls of odd-smelling food and viewing inscrutable daytime television programs full of people who laughed and cried and fondled each other’s bodies, all within a half hour. I had never really watched much television before, and I was surprised to find so many lives full of constant torment and indecision. The people in the programs just endlessly
wanted
. They wanted things and other people and they wanted other lives. Then some music played, and it all began again somewhere else. And, in the midst of all this, I continued to wait for what I knew I wanted: to go back home.
When the moment of Nana’s release finally came, the afternoon was alive with the first snow flurries of the year. It was like the world had suddenly been reanimated. The snow came down in wisps, spun-out flakes, twirling toward the sidewalk. Some hit Nana and blended seamlessly with her hair, making her white bouffant look like a giant dew-wet dandelion spore. I watched this while I waited for the cab we’d called. Nana stood, silently holding a twenty-dollar bill in her fist. She’d hardly spoken in days.
The rules of her departure were as follows: Nana was only allowed to go home if she promised to come back to the hospital for regular checkups. And she had to call once a week so they could monitor her progress. These conditions were nonnegotiable. Her doctor was a compact man with thin brown hair and a nervous habit of licking his mustache. And before she could be discharged, Nana had to stutter her way through an argument with him about whether or not she could still take care of me. I was forced to leave the room, so I could hear nothing they said. But when he came out into the hall, the doctor’s tongue was darting all over his upper lip, and I was going home with Nana.
I hadn’t slept much the last three nights. The hospital was an unnerving place, and I couldn’t get comfortable in the bed next to Nana’s. The first night she was hooked up to two machines that blinked red and white and hummed like a refrigerator. The faint glow made Nana’s features look spectral. She slept fitfully, and a few times I had to call the nurse because of her moaning. I assumed she was in pain, but she was always fine when awoken, with no memory of her dreams. Once, however, on the second night, she called to me after a long, low whine. My name came out crisp, in a voice seemingly unaffected by the stroke. Every syllable in line, “Se-bas-tian.”
“Yes?” I said, startled awake. “It’s me. I’m here.”
She sat up in her bed and looked across the dark at me, her eyes wide again.
“You are mine,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
She looked at me for nearly a full minute without speaking. But I think she was still asleep. “It’s already happening,” she said.
Then she lay back in her bed and closed her eyes again.
“What?” I asked. “What is happening?”
I waited for her answer. But it didn’t come. The hospital was entirely silent around me. I got up and pushed my wheelie-bed closer to Nana’s. I tried to sync my breathing with her measured rasps. One . . .
wheeze
. Two . . .
wheeze
. I counted each breath until I got above a thousand. Then I started over.