Permanence Read online

  “Are you certain?” he asks with a withdrawn face.

  I turn to look at doctor. He turns slowly, then looks at me. I turn away. I face the hallway outside this office. I feel my heart pounding. And then I hear doctor say it.

  “Certain” he says. Once more, I look inside the room. Doctor has his head lowered. He is staring at his lap. The physician will not take his eyes off doctor. Neither man is smiling. There is a deadly silence, other than the robotic voices coming from the PA system that echo throughout the corridor of this hospital.

  I feel my stomach constrict and knot.

  Suddenly, I am an intruder.

  Here’s what I do: I step outside into the hallway of this hospital. I lean up against the wall. I close my eyes, I remember doctor’s difficulty with swallowing even the simplest of liquids. I recall the care he has taken recently with cutting his food into tiny bites, as if the food were meant for a child. I picture the little, careful sips of wine he takes with his meals. I see the pain and the blood that filled his mouth after his face slammed into the seat when the truck slammed into our tour bus. Doctor cut easily. Perhaps too easily.

  I think of doctor’s incessant cigarette smoking.

  I calculate the risks both real and imaginary.

  When doctor comes out of the office I say nothing of my fears and suspicions—that he is sicker, and has been sicker, than he admits; that this trip to Italy is more than pleasure and for conferences…

  My stomach is tied in knots.

  If doctor loves me the way he says, why then won’t he tell me everything? Perhaps he will tell me. Until that time, I will say nothing. Nor will I ever say anything.

  Maybe I don’t want to know, because I don’t know what I will be capable of if I should lose doctor.

  I imagine the pain before I feel it

  Doctor looks at me now with wide eyes and a withdrawn face. We are standing outside of this hospital in historic Florence, Italy. Thin strands of white surgical tape and gauze cover the stitches along doctor’s swelled bottom lip—a lip that is turning purple.

  “How do you feel?” he asks me with slurred speech, bringing his fingertips up to my forehead, gently. But I rear backward. I imagine the pain before I feel it. I say nothing. I laugh a nervous laugh although the pain is no laughing matter. Doctor takes his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “No,” I say. “Don’t be.”

  And then, after a time: “Are you sorry about coming here with me?”

  “I needed to come here with you.”

  “If you like, we could leave early. Head back home.”

  “No,” I insist. “I don’t want to leave.” And I don’t.

  We walk along the sidewalk, near the front entrance to the hospital.

  “Right” says doctor, stopping and turning to me. “Don’t worry about anything.”

  I remain quiet.

  “I can tell,” he goes on. “Your forehead is wrinkling again. You’re worried.”

  I smile a nervous smile.

  “I’m trained to notice these things,” he adds in a painful, padded-sounding voice. “I’m a psychiatrist. I can read your face.”

  “I won’t worry,” I say, after a beat, “if it makes you feel better.”

  We walk.

  “In a few days,” says doctor, “I’ll be able to travel again. And then everything will be like it was for us. Once the superficial wounds heal, there will be nothing to remind us of the accident.”

  “No more accidents,” I say. But I know doctor and I are lying. Accidents happen when we least expect them. Doctor manages a smile, despite his stitches and his swelled, purple-colored lower lip. If he feels any pain, he says nothing about it. I greet his smile with a smile of my own. I feel the small bandage on my forehead with my fingertips. “No more accidents, no more pain,” I say, my forehead feeling as though it has been split in two.

  Timeless David

  We do not leave Italy.

  Two days of bed rest later I carry my little silver pillbox with me onto the streets of Florence. The pillbox remains suspended from my neck with a hair-thin, Sterling silver chain doctor bought for me from a vendor on the Ponte Vecchio. The little box bounces against my breasts when we walk the cobbled streets to the Academia, the nondescript brick building that houses Michelangelo’s timeless statue of David. This is the grand, white marble statue that stands one-story high and looks, at first glance, not like a statue at all, but a living man about to walk away from the pedestal on which he stands.

  Doctor and I, along with many others, stare at the great statue. We absorb each and every angle, each and every muscle, vein and capillary, carefully carved out of white marble. Doctor snaps photographs. He is careful to the keep the camera away from the stitches on his lower lip which has remained swelled and purple.

  We make our way around the statue. First the front, then the side and the rear.

  “Come here,” says doctor, his whisper echoing inside the great rotunda and hall. “You can see the veins carved out of the stone that run down the length of his back and his legs. You can feel the intricacy.”

  I am taken aback at doctor’s appreciation for this work of art. This is a side of him I have never experienced until now. I feel the slight pressure of the pillbox against my chest. I feel for it with my fingertips.

  “He’s moving,” says doctor. “David looks as though he will jump away from us. For something hewn from stone, he seems absolutely mobile.”

  “For something so timeless,” I add.

  We spend an entire hour looking at the statue, discovering and rediscovering the numerous facial expressions he bears as the sun, beaming in through the glass windows of the rotunda ceiling, shines upon the statue’s white face and his athletic body.

  “David,” says doctor, “is not like a statue at all. There is nothing fixed about him.”

  Doctor speaks the truth. The statue’s stance is slightly cocked at the knee, poised, a sling over his shoulder.

  There is something chasing David. Something frightening. That something is almost certainly danger, death. There is utter fear on his face. But then, David is motionless, like a photograph. He is timeless, permanent. But I know this: if only he were flesh and blood, it would not be long before his fate—the demons that chase him—destroyed him.

  So wonderful, so horrible

  The more intent I become with studying paintings, the longer it takes for something on the canvas to move. Of course, nothing ever moves, except for the nightmarish images. For instance, I lose my breath when together, doctor and I come upon the image of the Medusa inside the Uffizi Gallery.

  “My God,” he says, the white bandage still covering his swelled lower lip. “How can something be so wonderfully rendered, yet so horrible to look at?”

  Again, doctor’s assessment possesses stunning accuracy.

  “Look,” I tell doctor. “She can see us.”

  “Right through,” he agrees.

  She is an image that is painted not on canvas, but on a soldier’s wooden shield. Her mouth is open slightly, her lips pale and swelled, slightly purplish, her skin white. Her eyes move with my eyes.

  She follows. She is alive. She is screaming, but she is silent. Her eyes move with my every movement. Her hair is a tangled mass of poised blue and black serpents that seem ready to lunge out after me. I wait for the shout that never comes from her mouth, the horror of her presence. She is not human. She is death.

  I feel nauseous, crippled.

  Doctor is looking at me strangely. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Why don’t we get a drink of water.” He tugs at my hand. He wants to take me away from the horrible image so beautifully rendered by Caravaggio .

  But it is not the Medusa I am seeing.

  I am seeing the horrible image of my husband, Jamie, the evening we found baby drowned in the bath. I see Jamie’s startled, horrified fact as I held lifeless baby in my arms. Jamie’s mouth was open, just slightly, his lips thin and losing their color, hi
s skin white. He seemed about to scream, but he was silent. His hair was a tangled and disheveled. I had woken Jamie from a sound sleep.

  I turn away from the Medusa. I look at doctor.

  “Water,” I say. “Water would be good.”

  An obvious question

  Doctor and I walk slowly back to our hotel after sharing a brief, silent supper in a small trattoria just a few buildings away from the Uffizi. Tipsy from the house wine served to us inside the pastel-colored pitchers, we follow the cement sidewalks that parallel the river. The night is very dark. Once, we stumble over one another’s footsteps, but this is no laughing matter.

  Doctor and I move forward in the silence of the night. I hold to my little silver pillbox for security. I press it between my forefinger and thumb or allow it to dangle beside my heart, feeling the tiny metal weight bounce against my breasts. I listen to the perpetual movement of the river and to the occasional car that speeds by along the narrow cobblestone road that follows the path of the river.

  I pretend to be enjoying myself, for doctor’s sake. But I feel horribly alone.

  I try to give myself over completely to doctor. I try to love him, the way I loved Jamie—the way I still love Jamie. And I do love him. But I sense that doctor will not be with me much longer. I sense something is terribly wrong. Day by day, doctor seems to become paler, thinner, slower. He rubs his forehead with his fingertips as though suffering from headaches. His bottom lip is still swelled and the bandage that covers the stitches is turning a soiled, brown color. It’s as though the accident on the bus opened a vein of destruction for doctor’s body; as though he had already been sick, but waiting for something to trigger his inevitable, rapid decline.

  Listen: doctor looks like he’s dying.

  We walk to one of the many bridges that span the river like a half-moon. Doctor stops and leans against the metal pipe railing. He takes a cigarette from his breast pocket and lights it, his sunken face clearly visible in the light from the flame.

  I snatch the cigarette out of his mouth and throw it into the river.

  “Maybe you should lay off for a while,” I insist.

  Doctor stares into the river, invisible in the dark, other than the halo of light made from the overhead street lamps. Without a word, he pulls another cigarette from his pocket and lights it. Smoke floats gently away from doctor’s nostrils and damaged mouth. He leans up from the abutment and, of all things, offers me a cigarette. When I decline, he laughs a sarcastic laugh. Then he turns again to look at the river in the darkness.

  “I don’t want to interfere,” I say, standing away from doctor, staring now at the back of his head. I see the glow of the cigarette in the darkness.

  “Don’t worry about me,” doctor offers. “I thought we came here to help you? Remember? I’m your doctor. You’re the patient.”

  “Your throat. You can’t keep pretending your throat is normal.”

  “I’ll decide what’s best for my throat.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I think it will help if you quit smoking, even for a while”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my throat that a little medicine won’t cure.”

  “You’re lying.”

  There is a pause.

  “I’m sorry, but I care.”

  “You have a mother’s instinct.”

  With the tips of my fingers I feel the pillbox around my neck.

  “How many women have there been before me?” I ask this question casually, as though this is an obvious question. Doctor is turned away from me, leaning on his elbows against the bridge railing, the cigarette smoke rising above his head.

  Doctor tosses the last of his cigarette onto the riverbank. Rats scurry along the gravel, upsetting the debris and the garbage, immersing themselves in and out of the water. The lamps that illuminate the sidewalks of the bridge act as spotlights. From where I stand, I can see the rats run in and out of the light, their long, fat bodies worming, their black fur matted and slick as with oil or slime.

  Doctor turns to me. He takes my hand and holds it tightly.

  “Am I the only patient you’ve slept with?” I whisper.

  Doctor holds me too tightly, hurting my hands.

  “I have to know,” I say. In the distance, at the opposite end of this bridge, I can see a man walking toward doctor and me.

  “Will you believe me if I say there was no one else?”

  “Yes or no?” I beg.

  The strange man comes closer.

  “And what difference would it make in the long run?” he answers, unsatisfactorily.

  “Yes or no?”

  The strange man is even closer and I can begin to make out a face as it appears for me in the pale overhead lamp light.

  “You place undo importance on the past.”

  “Listen!” I scream. “Yes or no?”

  The young, strange man tosses a glare at doctor and me as he passes by. Then, like a ghost, he disappears along a side street and into the darkness.

  The small white bandage that covers the stitches on doctor’s lower lip makes his normal, expressionless face even more mechanical looking.

  “If you have to know, I will tell you the truth. But only if you believe me.”

  “I will,” I whisper, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. I have little choice but to believe him.

  “Never, until you. I’ve never made a habit out of sleeping with my patients.”

  “And I can believe you?”

  “You must believe me, or this will never work.”

  “None of this is my business,” I say. “I’m sorry for prying. Your past is your past. It needn’t concern me.”

  “You have every right,” admits doctor, “considering what we’ve been though together; considering how I feel about you.”

  The rats move across the rocks, in and out of the light and into the river, making little splashes.

  “What happens when we get back home?” I ask.

  “We have work to do when we get home.”

  “And there will be no more talk about love?”

  “There will be some problems.”

  “Professional or personal?”

  “Both,” says doctor.

  “Then let’s not ruin anything we have right now.”

  “I never wanted to,” says doctor, lifting himself from the metal railing. He turns to me and takes hold of me by the shoulders. “When I told you I loved you in Venice just a few days ago,” he says, “I meant it…and I mean it now. But I shouldn’t have said anything. Not because it is bad ethics for a psychiatrist to fall in love with his patient, but because I know, as your doctor, that you are not ready for love.”

  “I need love, just like anybody else.”

  “But from me?”

  “I need you; I need to be with you. That’s why I came here. If that’s not love, then what is?”

  “What we have together is dangerous,” says doctor, coughing a deep, chesty, sickly cough. “What we have is nothing like the love you shared with Jamie and your baby. And there are other complications now, as well.”

  I peel doctor’s hands away from my shoulders. I turn to the river.

  “Let’s not talk anymore,” I say. “Not tonight.”

  Doctor coughs, bringing his hand up to his mouth. In the lamp light I can see the spot of blood on doctor’s hand, blood that is the result of his deep cough.

  Together, we see the blood.

  But doctor quickly wipes the blood away with his handkerchief. He turns to the river.

  I grab hold of doctor’s jacket. “My God,” I say. “What is wrong with you?”

  Doctor turns back to me. “You’re right,” he says. “Let’s not talk anymore. Sometimes it’s best not to talk.”

  Then doctor walks ahead of me, away from the river where the rats run in and out of the light, with the cars speeding by along this cobblestone road in historic Florence, in the night. Soon, we will travel to R
ome together. But we are not the same people. We are not the same people we were even a few days ago. We are never the same people we were. Ever.

  Rome

  Two days later, we travel to bustling, cosmopolitan Rome.

  Doctor seems bored, but somehow happy or at peace with himself. He does not smoke cigarettes while we rummage through dozens of shops that make up the business district of this sophisticated but ancient city.

  I wonder if I have really gotten through to him—the patient to the doctor.

  We share pastries while sitting on the Spanish Steps, throw coins into the Trevi Fountain, snap photographs—still lives. Doctor and I busy ourselves in order to avoid the questions that go unanswered. Will we continue to love one another? Will we ever be truthful to one another about the physical problems that threaten doctor’s life, and about my pregnancy? How long will we have together? What will happen to me if doctor must leave me?

  We act like tourists.

  I toss coins into the basin of the Trevi Fountain but avoid making wishes, although I say nothing of this to doctor.

  We do not talk about us anymore.

  We sleep together, but we do not make love.

  We visit the ancient Coliseum and the Roman ruins. We visit Saint Peter’s and are ushered quickly through the Catholic opulence of the Vatican. Coming out of the Vatican, we see a beggar sitting with his back up against the wall that surrounds the mammoth compound. Doctor stops, reaches into his pocket, and tosses the man some lire. The man gives us a startled look, his eyes wide and mouth gaping open. He springs up from his cardboard box bed and runs away.

  We climb the staircase Jesus climbed in His judgment with Pilot—the set of white marble steps having been transported to Rome from the Middle East during the time of the early Christian crusades. These are the steps the women of Rome climb one step at a time, not with their feet but from their knees. They dress themselves in mourning black and clutch rosaries, whispering prayers. The women are believers.

  Doctor and I walk. We avoid automobile transportation in the interest of protecting our lives.