Daphne_A Novel Page 12

  Second drawer: My work tights, day-of-the-week panties, faded “There’s More Than Corn in Indiana” T-shirt, two unopened, expired boxes of condoms shoved in back.

  Third drawer: his work hoodie, his “dress” hoodie, his track/house pants, a shirt that read “Oscar Grant: The Movement for Justice.”

  Fourth drawer: his spackle-spattered jeans, my vacuum-sealed bags of going out/modestly revealing outfits, backup pajamas for when Brook used to spend the night.

  Bookcase: my art and design books, his Merle Haggard, Replacements, and Ramones LPs, Whole Earth Catalogs, and heavily highlighted philosophy books, from which I’d patiently removed all the dirty yellow “Used” stickers.

  East wall: flat-screen TV concealed and revealed—cleverly, I’d add—by my vintage pull-down classroom map of California. My display of hand mirrors working perfectly by the door. His (ugh) Budweiser poster of a dog playing pool he insisted he could not live without. His (much better) immaculately restored console hi-fi, which lent the apartment an intriguing ’70s rumpus-room feel I’d not previously considered.

  South wall: I’d stenciled, right on the wall, the outline of a fireplace and hearth and inside of it arranged a clutch of bleached driftwood to bring out its Goldsworthy-like qualities. On the old card-catalog side table, his slightly shaggy bonsai tree—“Steve,” he called it—next to a Rhys chair that maybe wanted a partner, a little conversation nook in progress or evocatively unfinished, I wasn’t yet sure.

  West wall: I’d stretched to buy in the Grove for its waist-to-ceiling windows, the promise of watching the sun melt over the neighborhood and Twin Peaks, the evening laying its soft blanket of fog over the city. But now, every time I looked out at all of that widescreen beauty, the question beckoned: drapes or blinds, drapes or blinds, drapes or . . .

  Kitchen area: No changes other than the occasional six-pack of Tecate in the fridge. When Ollie moved into the Grove, he didn’t bring a single pot or dish or piece of cutlery. He and his roommates had owned all of that collectively, and it and they had dispersed when, mid-May, their landlord sold the place out from under them with less than a week’s notice. Ollie had talked about finding his own place, maybe even on a real lease. But on his scraped-together earnings, he would’ve had to live in Oakland or Daly City or worse. I couldn’t have him that far away. So now I had him close, very close, and I liked the sudden bustle of life together, the choreography around the sink and chopping board as we made long, elaborate meals, fitting ourselves together on the couch, me wearing his dress hoodie around the apartment even when I wasn’t chilly, just to wrap his presence around me. And there was the new casualness of touch, him brushing a crumb off my chin, me playing with his hair in the drowsy morning, his body glancing mine as we followed our separate but parallel paths through the day.

  Closet: The nightmare was locked away. His old CDs and mixtapes jammed into milk crates, boxes and boxes of fuses and resistors and capacitors, at least forty envelopes of loose snapshots—family, life on the commune, travels in the drizzly Northwest. His mud-caked work boots, his Carhartt jacket hanging right in the middle of my pressed, plastic-sheathed coats, making them smell like a construction site. In fact, the air in the entire apartment seemed to have changed. Even after Ollie started using my shampoo and all of his clothes had gone through my washer with my detergent, it felt different, ionized in some peculiar way. I held my hand up to my nose and drew a breath, and I couldn’t be sure, but I swore I could smell him on my skin.

  WHEN I CAME HOME from work, I’d often find him on the couch, fiddling with some old radio part while watching the news: Crowds packed the Wisconsin statehouse. Judges were choking one another. The exultation in Egypt had given way to trials, paranoia, more beatings. Everywhere, there seemed to be mobs in the streets, dirty plumes of smoke, scattered, charred car parts, body parts, and the women, always the women, coming out of their homes to wail and scream, to suffer before the cameras—everything in the world coming undone, and Ollie inhaled it all. And if I succeeded in changing the channel, he’d pace the apartment with my phone, reading aloud the latest horror story. I’d keep murmuring in agreement, then, finally, pull him down to the couch.

  “What?” he said. “Aren’t you interested?”

  “Seven billion people in the world, I’m working on my own little corner.”

  “We’re talking historic change. We can’t just perch up here and ignore it.”

  “Haven’t we just had ten years on why we should stay the hell out of other people’s business?”

  “And if the revolution goes worldwide?” he asked in all sincerity.

  “Remember three years ago, election night, everyone partying in the streets? He said one word—‘hope’—to us, and we all went insane. Admit it,” I said, grinning, antagonizing him with a little too much glee. “Politics is all emotion—hating the other side, valorizing your own, propping up your own identity. I’m right, I’m righteous, I care. No one can stand to admit they’re as compromised and clueless as everyone else. People decide something feels right, then they warp all their thinking around that.”

  Ollie got up and started pacing again. “You can’t rationalize disengagement. That’s how we get the Third Reich, Rwanda, the fucking icecaps melting.” I watched him warily as he went on about the people’s voice, the end of tyrants and strongmen. “Don’t you wish you could get over there? Cairo, Tunisia, Syria?” He wandered back to me, a big, expectant smile on his face. “Don’t you wish you could see it?”

  “You’re about as much revolution as I can take right now. Here,” I said, reaching for him again, “come back down here, my little Molotov cocktail.” With a laugh, an eye roll, and a sarcastic but eager wrinkle of his brow, he flopped back down on the couch. “Wait,” I said, “hold on.” I got up, grabbed my camera. “Do that again.”

  “What?”

  “That look you just had on your face. Just hold that a minute.” He sat on the edge of the cushion, looking at me with vexation. I fired off a few shots. “Okay, come on, relax a little.” He slouched and sat on his hands. “Not like that. Stretch out, put your hands behind your head.”

  He grimaced into a new position. “Okay, make like this is the happiest, most relaxed you’ve ever been.” He broke into a big crackerjack smile. “Now you look like Jack Nicholson putting his head through the door. Stand up.” I adjusted a few settings on the Nikon. “Now fall down on the couch. Just like before.” He did a stiff, perfunctory flop. “Okay, but more casual. And more energized. Both at the same time.” He did it a few more times. I got off some decent shots. “If only we had a dog for you to pet,” I said. “But then there’d be hair all over everything. Jesus, those tours are such manicured bullshit. I swear they bring in professionals. Here, one of you and me.”

  I put the camera on timer, then positioned myself next to him on the couch, straightened my shirt, ruffled my hair. I’d only half-done my makeup that day, but Interior Life liked their shots “authentic.” The camera started beeping down the last few seconds. I did a little hop off the couch—“Hey!” Ollie cried—and bounced the two of us into each other, so it’d look like we’d been frolicking all afternoon. But when I checked the photo, my huge, open-mouthed grin looked a little insane and he just seemed irked.

  “This is for that website you’re always looking at?”

  “Let’s do one where we’re just next to each other. Sit up straight, okay? They sometimes like these weird, ramrod-straight American Gothic poses.”

  When we finished, he was mopey and put out. But a few shots were good enough to send off that afternoon. Him looking fed up and vacant and me stifling a smile somehow came off as chic.

  “ONE LAST THING, EVERYONE,” Sherman said as we were extracting ourselves from our desks. It was my first time back at group. They all seemed to have, more or less, forgiven me; our worst selves often came to these meetings. Sherman seemed quieter, and there was a reluctant crimp to his mouth as he ended the meeting. “About that study
I mentioned . . .” The rest trailed off into a mumble.

  “What about it?” I said, loud enough for the rest of them to pay attention.

  “Canceled,” Sherman said offhandedly. “Low enrollment.”

  There was a ripple of acknowledgment around the room, but no one seemed surprised. The rest of them raided the cookies one last time and shuffled out into the July evening. Sherman and I stacked chairs in silence. “I’m really sorry,” I finally offered.

  “Like you said, probably pointless anyway.”

  “But it’s Stanford. And Bell probably thought pretty highly of the guy running it. Not that I ever met this protégé. But he didn’t trust many people with his work.” Sherman hefted up a last chair and stood rubbing his jaw. I saw another bruise under a couple of weeks of beard. “What’d you do to your chin there?”

  Sherman rattled out a desiccated laugh. “Let’s just say it’s time for a new coffee table. ‘Skin heals, wood doesn’t.’ Olivia used to say that.”

  “How’s Prince Hairy?” Maybe I should’ve let him go on about his ex-wife. But I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to get him off the floor by myself.

  “The Prince has been puking on everything.”

  “The royals do have all of those adorable ailments.”

  “Maybe it’s time for him to find a new kingdom.” Sherman took the snack tray and dumped the whole thing in the garbage. “You didn’t want any of that, did you?”

  “No, Ollie and I are roasting quails tonight.” My phone vibrated, a text saying my car service was outside. “Need any more help? I can hang out for a bit.”

  “Janitorial staff gets the rest. These rooms don’t come free.”

  “Want a ride home, then?”

  In the back of the car, I could smell the sweat coming off him. His pre-rumpled Oxford had a few extra rumples, and his brogues hadn’t been shined in weeks. “We need to make a stop for my friend,” I told the driver. Sherman’s address was further out than I thought, almost as far as Ollie’s old place, out where the fog veiled everything and the city dissolved into ocean, sand, and sky. Sherman told the driver to stop in front of a faded pink stucco two-story.

  “Want some company? The quails can wait.”

  “Apology accepted,” he said.

  “And it’d be nice to meet His Highness.”

  “You’re kind. But I’ll keep the cat puke to myself. See you next week maybe.”

  “No, I’ll be there,” I said. “Next week. Definitely.”

  I watched Sherman drag himself up his front steps. Until next Sunday’s meeting, he could work from home. He could order in groceries and cat food, get his laundry picked up, dropped off. Obscure movies, craft beer, high-end toiletries, organically grown weed, gift-wrapped llama shit—anything he could dream of ever needing he could call up online and never have to go out. I watched him check his mail and disappear inside. Back home safe.

  Trapped but safe.

  EIGHTEEN

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, MY CONSCIENCE KEPT POKING me. Maybe the Stanford study getting canceled had been my fault—my antipathy for researchers and clinics had spread to the whole group. Maybe I’d infected them with my scorn.

  After the movie theater, there was no more pretending. Until then, I thought I’d been hiding my little slips so well, even if my mother had been after me for months: “Are you eating? Lunch? Every day? Eat more fruit. Get more iron in your diet. Daphne, sit up. You’re practically falling asleep at the dinner table. No more staying up all night. You think I don’t see the light under the door?” Neither of us understood then. Her finely honed concern, my somersaulting adolescent exasperation—of course I was fluttering and slumping. I’d been holding myself so delicately, just getting through the day left me frazzled. Still, I acted as if she were persecuting me, a cover for my own bewilderment.

  After the movie theater, I expected my mother to freak out. And when she got the call from the hospital, when she burst into the recovery room to find me wrapped in a blanket and sipping orange juice from a paper cup, she did. She plastered me with kisses, clobbered me with hugs. Then she screamed at the various administrators who came to us with their apologies and litigation-anxious assurances. She wanted the two EMTs fired and the coroner as well. Not that I minded her outrage; Lord knows I couldn’t express my own. But what came later unnerved me: the eerie, freighted resignation she carried through our endless appointments with specialists and therapists—as if she’d always known some catastrophe would visit us.

  Our family GP only knew how to kid around and treat me like I was still eight. He asked me all of the same questions everyone at the hospital had, ordered some blood work with the halfhearted suggestion that we might look out for anemia, then asked my mom to step out. “Okay,” he said when we were alone, “you know how these work?” He handed me a small plastic stick about the size of a toothbrush.

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t mention this to her just yet.”

  “But I haven’t even . . .”

  I wasn’t going to cry, not in front of this man who used to give me lollipops when I bawled after vaccinations. That test and all the others came back negative. But they set in motion a series of visits to gynecologists and questions about flow and cramps and discharge that all ran together into one long humiliation. Then came the child development people, the psychologists and psychiatrists, two neurologists, CAT scans, MRIs. Every time some new possibility was raised—palsy, epilepsy—a dull panic pulsed through me, made me weak and leaden. But several months passed without answers, and I grew inured to the constant speculation about my body. It was mid-August, two weeks from the first day of my senior year. I’d spent the summer in doctors’ offices and on the couch at home, watching movies and playing Nintendo, stretched out in my dad’s old spot, the cushions still worn to the shape of his body. Sometimes Brook came over to veg, or we’d ooze around the neighborhood, pitching stones at stop signs, hot and bored and apprehensive. My mother would just stare at me, as if trying to memorize my face, then smile so sweetly I’d almost eye-flutter from impatience and dread. We were all waiting for the big, awful news: cancer or some other body-rotting disease.

  The third neurologist—an Indian neuropsychiatrist at IU-Purdue—didn’t order any scans, thank God. He talked to me for an hour and a half, about school, sports, my plans and ambitions. He had me describe, several times, my spells and when I had them, nodding the whole time and taking notes like he was interviewing me for a job or something. At the end, he took my mom aside. He was referring us to a colleague, a researcher with a lab down on IU’s main campus in Bloomington. “A brilliant man,” the neuropsychiatrist said. “Leagues ahead of everyone in this field. Truly, leagues. However, please, do not judge him on his personality.”

  MOM DROVE US DOWN to Bloomington on the Saturday before the first day of classes at Arcadia. We found the address, a cinder-block building that looked like some maintenance way station. The waiting room was filled with dusty institutional furniture, one armchair still wrapped in yellowed plastic. I’d gotten used to idly flipping through Time or National Geographic. Here there were only stacks of blandly designed periodicals with titles that started with The Journal of and ended with strings of words I could barely decipher.

  Off the waiting room, there was a locked door. Mom knocked, called out hello. Several minutes later, a skinny guy with wiry, dark hair poked his head out, drawled, “Ten minutes, you’re early,” and closed the door again. A grad student, who looked about as stoned as Kyle Magolski after lunch hour. When we went through to the exam room, he pointed to a folding chair, “The mother, there,” gave her a long, appraising look, then turned to me. “So, you’re the one those second-raters at St. Mary’s put in the freezer.”

  And, of course, this was no grad student but the miraculous Dr. August Bell. He didn’t look older than twenty-five—thirty-eight, it turned out—and his dry, red eyes and high, hollow cheeks came not from pot but from all th
e sleep he skipped. His baggy khakis bloomed around his thighs like riding pants, and his name tag was pinned, upside down, to the untucked hem of his shirt. There appeared to be a fleck of salsa on his glasses.

  “Well, this isn’t church,” he said to me, his voice pitched between disdain and conspiratorial collusion. “We’re not servile and mute. We speak, don’t we?”

  Haltingly, I tried to explain the last few years. Mom cut in, but Dr. Bell would only give her a wan, abstracted smile and turn back to me. “Keep going,” he said, “keep going. This is interesting, don’t we agree?” After a time, however, his attention seemed to wander. He dug through stacks of paper, put on a pot of coffee, finally wiped off his glasses. “Describe the episodes,” he said brusquely when I trailed off. “More detail.”

  I came to the movie theater, the EMTs, the morgue. He seemed no more moved by this than any of the rest but made me describe at length—“detail, please, detail”—the actual moment of my attack. “Yes, very common,” he said, circling the room like a ringmaster about to blithely bait a toothless lion, “an utterly common trigger.” I went on, not understanding. He circled and circled, seeming annoyed. Then he stopped, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Did you hear Princess Di was on the radio?”

  “What?” Princess Diana, I thought, had been dead for months.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “and on the dashboard and the steering wheel and the . . .”

  Was it funny? Or was I just taken aback by him telling an actual joke? Either way, I slumped over in my chair, and with one quick step Dr. Bell took me by the shoulders and propped me back up. “So, now we see!” He grinned wolfishly, batted his lashes at my mother. “Common—the first major episode triggered by laughter—utterly common.”

  But when we asked him to explain, begged him even, he just turned us out of the office, saying he wouldn’t make a diagnosis until he knew more, more detail—oh, why didn’t anyone ever know themselves well enough to give him proper detail?