Permanence Page 14

  Doctor had been deceiving me all along. Venice only proved to confirm what the American physicians (and fate) had already diagnosed, and in this doctor had deceived himself. Doctor possessed acute cancer of the throat and mouth. There was no doubt about an operation if doctor wanted to survive. There was no doubt about doctor wanting to survive. Doctor didn’t want me to know, that’s all.

  Honesty

  Doctor and I communicate now with the aid of a notepad strung about his neck like a necklace. The notepad is like the tiny silver pillbox doctor bought for me in Venice that I keep wrapped about my own neck where it dangles against my chest, near my heart. The pillbox has become my most precious keepsake from a man who is just a shadowy reflection of the person he once was—the doctor I came to know seven months ago after the loss of baby.

  I tell doctor honest things.

  I tell him that I missed him terribly for the two weeks we were apart while he was recovering from his operation. I tell him of the anger I feel from his having deceived me. I could have helped, I tell him. Doctor says nothing. He sits motionless in his usual chair—the great leather chair behind his desk. Doctor smiles a tight-lipped smile, but this is not a real smile. Doctor is always smiling now, whether he wants to or not.

  I feel my stomach, but there is nothing there.

  I tell doctor I have fallen in love with him.

  For the moment we stare at each other as if stunned. But it’s true—I honestly know now, how much I love doctor, as though the prospect of his death has confirmed my feelings.

  Doctor lifts a pen from his desk and scrawls against his notepad as rapidly as possible. He tears away the sheet of paper from the pad. He hands it to me, wide-eyed, reaching across the enormous desk with trembling fingers. I lean up to the desk from where I sit on this patient’s couch. I take the paper. I read the few words that say it all:

  “You can’t love me anymore.”

  Not ever, I admit silently.

  Then there is a pause between us when I do not speak and doctor does not write. But then I ask him this: “Do you still love me?”

  Doctor writes. He tears away the paper and motions for me to take it. It reads, “I’m sorry. Truly sorry.” And this I understand. Doctor is sorry for himself and for me. You see, I already know how much doctor loves me. But we both know the truth: doctor does not have long to live.

  Like a doctor again

  Doctor is acting like a doctor again. I will see him once a week, whether I want to or not. The visits are not necessarily voluntary visits. I need doctor; doctor is there for me now that Jamie and baby are not. Doctor has helped me get through the loss and, in turn, I have fallen in love with doctor. But the appointments we share should have nothing to do with love.

  Plain and simple, the appointments are for understanding my apparent “gross negligence” for the time I left baby alone in his bath. And now there are the voices that speak to me inside my head—demons that tell me doctor does not have long to live.

  Listen: seeing doctor is intended to make me feel better.

  So here’s what I do to get my money’s worth. I ask doctor to finish what he and I have started together. But now I am overcome with an emotional contradiction: even though I love doctor, I can’t stand looking at his face—the false smile, the pale skin, the dying body, the notepad hanging from his neck.

  I dread the thought of doctor leaving me, yet I want to know when I can stop seeing doctor so that I no longer have to look at his face.

  I feel my body tremble, the voices in my brain mumble incessantly. My mind works overtime.

  Here is the prescription doctor writes for me in his notepad: we will meet only four more times.

  Doctor continues writing. He does this by bearing down on his pen, allowing his gray tongue to protrude from between his elastic lips. Another note reads this way: doctor says I will be doing most of the talking (he follows with a cynical “ha, ha,” but unlike doctor, I am not in a laughing mood). What he wants from me, he says, are assessments and conclusions concerning the relationship that is no longer a relationship between baby, Jamie, and me. Listen, writes doctor, no matter what has occurred between the two of us, I am still his responsibility, in the eyes of psychiatry and God. In short, I must learn to get over the loss of baby so that I might live a normal life.

  But how will I ever get over the loss of baby and Jamie?

  Have I ever gotten over the loss of my mother and my father?

  Will I get over the loss of doctor?

  Doctor lifts himself from his leather chair. He moves slowly, achingly, his lanky arms and legs looking comical in his usual gray suit. He moves like a very old man. He struggles. When doctor moves he does not look at me, for fear, I think, that I will be taking full notice of his disability.

  I try to be considerate.

  I try to avoid looking at him when he stands before the windows where he immerses himself in deep thought, looking out into the empty parking lot. I finger my silver pillbox. I feel it now in place of the doctor I once knew—the man who clung to me when we lost control of an engine over the Atlantic ocean; the man who clung to me inside the room with the floor-to-ceiling windows that opened up onto the sounds and smells of the Grand Canal in romantic Venice, Italy; the man who held my hands until they hurt when he made me recall how I lost baby. In place of reaching out to feel for doctor, I feel the cold metallic box that dangles next to my heart. But I know this: there is no substitute.

  What I want to believe (once and for all)

  “I want to believe Jamie left me because baby left us. I want to believe Jamie never stopped loving me. I want to believe Jamie does not blame me for baby’s death. I want to believe this: when there was suddenly the two of us again, the silence that consumed our lives was unbearable for Jamie.”

  I steal one of doctor’s cigarettes from the pack on his desk. These are the dry, stale-tasting cigarettes that have been sitting on his desk for nearly one month, since doctor had his operation. I take the cigarette to the open window that overlooks the empty parking lot and smoke it there. I stare out on the blackness broken by the bright orange light of the tall street lamps. I can clearly see the image of doctor inside the glass. He is watching me. His jaw is nearly gone; the red and purple scar has now faded from pink to peach, although it is still swollen. The smile on doctor’s face is permanent, his lips taught and sewn together at the comers of his mouth. Doctor can say nothing.

  “Listening,” doctor writes for me in his notepad, “is my job now. My only job.”

  I inhale a long puff of smoke and let it ooze into the window, into the reflection of doctor. I look beyond his image, into the space of the parking lot and remember what I want to believe.

  “For starters,” I say, “the apartment was too neat. We rarely cooked. We ate out. There were no dirty dishes, no empty bottles piled inside the sink, no crayons for the vacuum to suck up, no pacifiers inside the cushions of the couch. There was nothing.

  “Listen, doctor, there was no watching out for baby underfoot.

  “There were no sounds of baby crying in the night to wake Jamie and me from a sound sleep. No bottles to heat, no diapers to change. There was no sweet smell of baby.

  “Things became so quiet, we couldn’t sleep. I would lie awake in bed and listen to my heart race. That kind of quiet.

  “Jamie would suddenly raise his hands to the ceiling and shout, ‘Somebody make some noise. For God’s sake, somebody make some goddamned noise.’

  “Jamie and I did not make love after the loss of baby. Jamie couldn’t. It’s not that we didn’t try. We tried. But Jamie said he couldn’t help but see the image of baby when we tried to do it. According to Jamie, there was no replacing baby.

  “And I think the memory of baby was always on his mind. I think Jamie blamed me for wanting to make love after we lost baby. I think Jamie thought I wanted another baby. Jamie said he couldn’t stand to see the sight of another baby. Not ever. ‘So what’s the point,’ he said, ‘of y
ou and me?’”

  Promise

  Doctor and I sit for a while in calm silence and say nothing. Our time together is nearly up, for now. But I know this: the time doctor and I have together is nearly finished for good. Doctor looks at me with wide, sunken eyes. Doctor’s job now is to listen, nothing more. He can do nothing more for me. He cannot love me any more than Jamie could have. He cannot live for me any more than baby could have. I want none of them in my life ever again. This will not be a difficult promise to keep.

  The whole truth (so help me God)

  Doctor bears down on his ballpoint pen.

  He licks his thin lips with the tip of his tongue. He begins to scribble another note. When he is finished, he hands the note to me.

  “Finish it,” reads the note. “Today. Now.”

  For a while I just stand before doctor’s desk, staring into it. Then I sit back down on the leather patient’s couch. I take a deep breath and recall the final moments of my life with Jamie, just a few weeks after we lost baby.

  “Jamie wouldn’t talk to me. Not a word. Only the necessities. He wouldn’t open up. Jamie blamed me for the death of baby. He was silent. Here’s the funny part about silence: after baby was gone, Jamie hated the silence that replaced baby.

  “Jamie became a complete stranger. He stopped reading the newspaper, stopped taking interest in the news of the world. He no longer fell asleep on the couch while watching television. Jamie drank at home. He got drunk while watching the television. We shared the same bed, but Jamie wouldn’t sleep with me. He’d just lie there, passed out, his breath sour.

  “I’m not completely naive, you know. I don’t blame Jamie for leaving. I couldn’t expect Jamie to keep loving me when it just wasn’t possible. I couldn’t expect Jamie to risk any more of the love he lost on baby. I think that kind of love would have been asking for too much.

  “Listen, doctor, I am not without guilt. Despite our meetings, I’ll keep my guilt. Maybe this is my fate, my destiny. Jamie blames me for the loss of baby. Because I was responsible. I was the last to be with baby. I had been giving baby his bath. I left baby alone in the tub for that one fragile moment—the moment baby tried to stand, but slipped and hit his head against the spigot and drowned in just six inches of water. I lost baby in the safety of my own home.

  “But do you want to know the real truth, doctor?

  “Do you want to know whole truth?

  “Listen: Baby and I were only a few feet apart, separated by a plaster wall. But I could hear baby playing in the water. Jamie was asleep on the couch. I took one, maybe two puffs of a cigarette. No more. Maybe more. But I just stood there, minute after minute, waiting in the silence of the kitchen. And it was at that very moment that baby hit his head. I was only a few feet away from baby. I heard the dull thud and his body collapsing into the water. I wasn’t sure what had happened. I wasn’t sure that I understood what I had heard. But I didn’t check to see either. I just stood there.

  “And so now I’ll tell you the truth about the tragedy Jamie and I shared together. Maybe I set a little trap for baby, without realizing it. Maybe I was obsessed with the voices in my head always speaking to me, telling me that baby was fragile, that I could lose precious baby in an instant. Maybe I was so obsessed with the voices of the demons I had to cheat them. I had to let baby’s life go so that the demons couldn’t get to him first. When I heard the commotion coming from the bathroom, and I realized baby was in trouble, I went with it—I just stood there in the kitchen, smoking. I let nature take care of everything.

  “Listen, doctor. Don’t you understand?

  “I had to let baby die in order that I might live again.”

  What I have done

  When I lift myself from the patient’s couch I can see that doctor’s eyes are closed, his body is rigid and still. I look for his chest to rise. I look for life. I feel the sudden surge of panic shoot through my veins. Then his mouth opens, slightly. He breathes, slowly, steadily through the smiling, butchered lips. I think, Doctor is sleeping a deep sleep. But I am wrong. Doctor is only keeping his eyes closed.

  Doctor opens his eyes, wide. He stares at me, right through me. I feel stunned, my legs numb, as though having become detached. My heart is racing, my stomach caving in. Doctor leans over his desk, bears down upon his ballpoint pen, and begins scribbling in his notepad.

  I think, Doctor does not have long to live.

  I walk to him. I want to beg his forgiveness for what I have done to baby, as though doctor is my God. But I want him to understand that what I did to baby—what I did for baby—I did for love, not hate.

  I walk past doctor, where he writes furiously with bony, trembling fingers. He is clearly disturbed. He tears the paper out for me to sec. “My God,” it reads, “what have you done, Mary Kismet?”

  I say nothing. How can doctor understand about the voices that spoke to me inside my head? That speak to me still? These are the voices that never disappeared after baby’s death and the voices that remain even now that doctor is about to be taken away from me.

  But doctor will not look at me.

  Doctor stares down at the top of his desk. He is motionless and silent. There is nothing left for us to accomplish together.

  I stand and stare at doctor. I hold the paper in my hand until I allow it to slip away from my grasp. I go to doctor, where he is seated at his desk. I go to him, to embrace him, kiss him, tell him I love him, no matter what. Listen: I need doctor. But as I approach him, he extends his arms to me and attempts to push me away, as though he cannot stand the sight of me. Then he lays his head back down on his desk, inside his arms, hiding his face completely.

  Doctor and I do not touch.

  But I allow my hand to brush his hair when I let myself out of the office.

  Messages for me

  Jamie has been leaving telephone messages for me again. The messages say this: Jamie wants to set up a time so that he can pick up the last of his things. These are the things that used to be our things, but that suddenly became his things after baby died.

  Listen: I won’t allow Jamie to get away with it. I won’t allow Jamie to step inside this apartment ever again. Not without me.

  I listen to his messages one by one.

  I listen to the voice messages over and over. I allow him to leave the messages until there is no more room for Jamie’s voice on the tape.

  Jamie knows I am here, listening to his voice. I am sure of this. The hesitation that occurs between his words gives him away. His voice comes to me from the bedroom, from the living room, from the kitchen.

  Sometimes I pretend Jamie has come home again. Pretending is not difficult. All it takes is a little imagination and a little silence. These days, silence is easy to come by.

  I listen to Jamie’s voice, echoing inside the bathroom where I sit at the edge of this bathtub.

  I hear Jamie’s soft, detached voice echo inside the ceramic-covered walls of the bathroom. Listen: Jamie’s been leaving messages for me that I will leave unanswered, until I find the right time for Jamie to come home again, with or without me.

  The dream lives on

  I sleep on the couch in the living room.

  I sleep in total darkness. I dream about the orange flames as they crept up the walls of our home and the mad rush of the men who ran up the stairs for my mother and me. I see the bright flame, smell the acrid kerosene smell, feel the heat, choke from the smoke that’s invaded my lungs. I feel the loss of my father; I feel the loss of mother, after all this time.

  But this is only a dream and the dream never dies.

  Smile

  I walk to doctor’s desk. His usual pitcher of water is there. There is a glass of water with a straw in it. There is an open folder on his desk with my name on it. The folder is a new folder, different from the folder I destroyed with spilled water.

  The folder is open, but there are no papers in it, no papers with information concerning my appointments. Just nothing.

  I loo
k at doctor and his tight yellow skin. The area where his jaw was removed has become black and blue. The scar that wraps around his neck is red and inflamed. He is thinner than ever. His eyes are large and sad. His tongue moves in and out of his mouth uncontrollably, like a snake. He shakes, trembles. He has this permanent smile, but I know this: there is little reason to smile.

  Doctor and I are almost finished together.

  So now I make a smile for doctor. This is an old smile. This is the kind of smile doctor will remember, the kind of smile I would have made for him in romantic Venice, in the room we rented that overlooked the Grand Canal and the gondoliers who sang in soft voices in the gray mist and the steady rain. The smile is a happy smile but is no more genuine than the permanent smile doctor is forced to wear now.

  So here’s what I do for doctor to prove my sincerity: I walk around to the back of his desk, where he is sitting in his enormous leather chair. Doctor stands, awkwardly and with difficulty. I wrap my arms around him, feel his skin and bones against my limbs and body. I feel like crying, but I hold it in. Doctor, in his baggy gray suit, bow tie, and closely cropped hair, is too stubborn and too stoic to cry. But he is not strong enough to hold me back.

  He fails.

  This is not a romantic, mysterious landscape. This is not a sunny, relaxing adventure for two. Listen: I hold doctor in the silence of his office with the bright overhead lamp light.

  We are home again, in Albany.

  We hold one another and do not let go as the rain outside this window turns to snow, the white flakes mixing with the orange light that comes from the street lamp in the empty parking lot.

  Doctor and I are failing together.

  We are nearly finished.

  The business of healing

  Doctor has lost more weight, weight he can ill afford to lose. He looks emaciated, the outline of his skull clearly visible through taut skin. His wounds have swelled. He moves slowly. He moves without alarm or without feeling. He floats as if he were a ghost. He drinks from a clear glass. He takes little, desperate sips from a straw—dare I say it—like a baby. His body shakes uncontrollably. He clutches the glass with two hands when he drinks.