“Damnit!”
“Not to worry. He said for you to call him this afternoon at his office.” She spoke as she changed the bag to Joaquin’s IV and made sure the oxygen tank was working properly. She touched his forehead, then softly combed his hair with her fingers. “He’s nice-looking—beautiful, looks like a boy still,” she said softly. She looked directly into Jacob’s eyes. She wanted to ask him questions. She knew them, knew those eyes. She tried to remember where they’d met, maybe a long time ago—didn’t it seem that she’d known him all her life? She felt a chill, ignored it. She even knew his voice—or was it that he simply reminded her of someone? She wanted to touch him. “You look like a boy, too,” she said.
He wanted to ignore her, yet her voice made him smile, made him want to speak. “You always talk to your patients like this?”
“Only when they happen to be drop-dead gorgeous.” She laughed. “Did I embarrass you?”
Jake laughed. “No. It’s nice.”
“Well, I’m a nice person. Damn fine nurse, too—my name’s Lizzie. Did I meet you in a former life?”
“I never had a former life. Maybe we met in a bar.”
She offered a handshake to Jake. “Lizzie,” she said again.
Jake took her hand and shook it firmly. There was something about the way she touched him. “I’m Jake—and if I was straight I’d many you.” He was amazed that he’d said something like that to a woman. It wasn’t his style to flirt—not even with men. He wondered what it was about this woman that made him want to be a boy.
“Sure you would. That’s what they all say.”
Jake laughed again. “Do you make it a habit of flirting with gay men?”
“Well, yes,” she said. “It’s safe.”
He smiled. “Smart girl.”
“Yeah, smart girl.” She looked at her watch. “Listen, if you need anything just yell.” She started toward the door, then turned around. “You know, his eyesight’s going. Doctor Michaelsen’s going to put him on medication to kill the bacteria—”
“Does it work?”
Lizzie put her hands together as if she were going to pray, then placed them on her lips. She thought a while.
“Yes. Generally, it works.”
“When doesn’t it work?”
She was silent for a minute. “Sometime’s the patient’s very tired.” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Anyway, Dr. Michaelsen said he’d fill you in when you called him at his office.” Jacob shook his head, but said nothing. She patted the back of his head and walked out the door. A few seconds later she poked her head through the door again. “Yes, you can take him home. As soon as Tom gives his approval, you can take him home. He doesn’t have to stay here if he doesn’t want to.” He doesn’t have to die here, she wanted to add.
He turned around and stared at her. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
“Magic,” she said. “If you work here long enough you can read minds.” She disappeared down the hall.
What a strange woman, he thought, strange and beautiful and strong. He felt something urgent come over him. He shook his head. “This is crazy—she’s just a nurse—she’s just being nice. It’s her job to be nice.” He sat there for a long time and stared at Joaquin. He pushed his chair closer and placed his head on the bed and closed his eyes. He thought about one of the times he’d left him. He pictured the kitchen where they’d fought: “You said you’d be home after work. Since when do you work until 11.30 at night?”
“Oh great, J, now you’re acting like a middle-class housewife.”
“I’m not a housewife, and I’m not middle class you stupid sonofabitch. Jose, Mike, and Connie came to dinner—and you’re the one who invited them. We ate without you. They send their regards.” He grabbed a piece of cold chicken from the stove and threw it at him. “We had chicken. It was good.”
“You do that again and I’ll kill you.”
“You have no imagination, you know that. Jake? You’re a very old story: you drink too much, you go out with other men, you don’t talk. you don’t know how to say I love you, you don’t know how to say I’m sorry—and you threaten people. A real credit to white boys everywhere.”
“Shut up, J! Just shut your mouth—and don’t open it until I tell you to.”
“What?”
“Shut up, I said.”
“I’m going to bed, Jake. I can’t talk to you right now.”
“J, you walk out of this room, and I swear I’ll walk out the door and never come back.”
“Don’t make promises you won’t keep, gringo.”
“I’ll keep this one, J.”
“I’m going to bed.” He picked up the piece of chicken from the floor, and put it in Jake’s pocket. “It’s for lunch, darling.”
Jake flung it from his pocket and tossed it in the sink. “Goddamn the day I met you, Joaquin! Goddamn you!” “I didn’t mean those things, J. I was different when I came back, I was good, I was good to you after that.”
He felt J’s hand on his head. “Are you beating up on yourself again, Jacob Lesley?” His voice was weak, and a tittle distant.
Jake looked up at him and nodded. “I was only beating up on myself a little. How do you feel?”
“You don’t have to talk so loud—I’m going blind, not deaf.”
He lowered his voice. “How do you feel?”
“I want to go home.”
“I haven’t talked to Tom, yet, but the nurse says it will be fine. We just need Tom’s OK, that’s all. There won’t be a problem.”
“I don’t give a damn what Tom says. Tell Tom I want to die at home.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Don’t be afraid, Jake. I’m not. I’m really not.”
“J, don’t—”
“Please, gringo. You never want to talk about this. You think if we don’t, then it will go away. You think if I take my medicine then I’ll get better? I’m not going to get better.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You’re fine.”
“No. I’m not fine.”
Jake sat nodding for a few minutes.
“I’m begging you, Jake.”
“Won’t it get complicated at home?”
“Tom will help us.”
“You just said you didn’t give a damn what Tom said.”
“I get confused. He’ll help if I ask him.” He swallowed hard, then looked into Jake’s face. “He cares.”
“I know.”
“Do you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind.” He rubbed Joaquin’s palm.
“Then I can die at home.”
Jake nodded, “OK. Soon as Tom says we can go home, we’ll never come back here again.”
8
“THE BODY IS open and porous. The body is open and porous.” Lizzie found herself repeating this phrase as she took her morning shower. “The body can go anywhere. The body has no limits.” She caught herself, became aware of the words she was uttering. Suddenly she wondered if words could be weighed, “There must be something physical about them. The body … What the hell am I saying?” She stared down at the drain in the bathtub. She wondered if she were going to leave her body again. Maybe she would fit in the drain; maybe she could become water and float below the city. She hugged herself. She felt her nipples grow hard, harder and harder until they hurt. She wanted to let herself go. She wanted to rip off her clothes and then jump out of her skin. She could press against the sky closer than she’d ever pressed against any man. The sky would never hurt her—not like men. “I can’t, I can’t. I’m late for work. Can I shed a body like an old coat?” She repeated her own name: “Lizzie” or was it “Maria de Lourdes?” The names sounded foreign to her as if they signified nothing. She laughed. How could she have ever thought her name or her body meant anything at all. Her names were strange, she had a strange body, and now she felt as if she could call herself anything since now she was a part of ever
ything. She could call herself a man if she wanted to—or a frog—or the earth—or the grapes that grew from it every year—or the new wine. Crazy. Crazy to have equated herself with her name and her body.
She had always seen herself as Lizzie the WASP who liked being a WASP and liked hating herself for it. But was she really Maria de Lourdes? What did that other identity mean? “Salvador,” she said out loud, “I can call myself Salvador. I am my brother’s body.” She looked at her breasts. “Is this what makes me a woman?” For an instant, she wanted to cut them off. She shook her wet hair and tossed it around as if she wanted to shake it free from her head. She stared at herself as she put on her makeup. What a strange thing to be doing—putting on makeup. What a strange and stupid custom. What was she, now? Was she Mexican because her mother was Mexican? She looked at her skin. Nothing Indian about the way she was raised, the way she looked, the way she thought. She put on a pair of dangling silver earrings—they shook like wind chimes. She removed them. She pulled at her nose, her ears, her cheeks. She felt heavier than she’d been—but also lighter. She was relieved that the man she had called “father” for most of her life was not her father. But hadn’t he been? Wasn’t she his daughter? Was blood everything? Was it anything? “Stop it,” she told herself. “Stop it! You’ll make yourself crazy.” She stared into the mirror. She was certain if she looked long enough at herself, she would begin to disappear “I have disappeared,” she thought, “I’m gone.” She laughed. “And since I’m gone, I’m going to quit my job. Ghosts don’t need to work. I’ll get a new name, a new house. Maybe I don’t need a place to live at all. The former things have passed away.” She drove to work singing. She was especially kind to her patients that day and felt so much love for them that her body hurt. She thought she was breaking. She wanted to tell them that nothing separated them now—except she knew it was a lie. Her body was healthy—theirs were not. It was a lie to think that nothing separated them, a lie, a lie, and she could not utter that lie and did not know why she felt it, so she just smiled and said nothing—smiled and felt sad because not everything the body felt was the truth, felt sad because she knew it was almost time to leave. At the end of her shift, she handed the head nurse a note she’d written during lunch. All the note said was: “I have to leave. I’m sorry, but I just have to. This is an official two-week notice.” She said nothing as she handed the note to Cassie.
Cassie read the note and nodded. “You can’t. You’re our best nurse.”
“What does best mean?”
“It means the patients need you. You are so human with them.” “I don’t know what human is anymore.”
“That’s a funny thing to say.”
“Is it? Are these guys dying in here human? What’s so great about being human? Give me a definition of human. Spell it out for me—it’s not a word I know anymore,” She was almost yelling. She was surprised at her own rage.
Cassie stared at her. “Lizzie? Are you sure you’re OK? Maybe you just need some time off.” She paused, stared into her face. “Look—just lake a month—maybe you just need some time to think.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. You’re acting funny.”
Lizzie smiled. “Yeah.”
“Have you been to your doctor?”
“What the hell does a doctor know?”
Cassie laughed. “Nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Cassie reached over and touched her cheek. “Lizzie, please be OK. You’re the best I’ve ever seen.”
“The best what?”
“Just the best, Lizzie.”
Lizzie looked down at the letter Cassie was holding. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“I don’t want you back here tomorrow. I want you to take a month—then I want to see your ass back here, OK? No resignation, no two-week notice—just a little leave for a woman who needs some personal time. How’s that sound?”
“It sounds fine,” Lizzie heard herself say, but she felt hollow and numb. She reached over and kissed Cassie on the cheek. “I’ll see you in a month.” She walked slowly out of the hospital. She wanted to turn around and ask her patients for forgiveness; she wanted to say good-bye, but she had said good-bye too many times already.
Lizzie listened to the voice on the answering machine: “Yes, Hello? Elizabeth? This is Mrs. Moncado, the secretary at Mission Dolores Catholic Church. You were in the rectory three days ago, and you asked me to let you know if I heard anything about a certain Mr. Salvador Aguila’s funeral. Well, he was cremated a day after he died. Apparently, he left very explicit directions. But he also requested a funeral Mass here at Mission Dolores. A young man came in to make the arrangements. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know. There will be a memorial Mass for him this coming Monday at ten in the morning. If you need to call me back, you can just call me here at the rectory …” Elizabeth liked the sound of Mrs. Moncado’s voice. She played the message again—then again—before letting the machine go on to the next message. Conrad’s deep baritone voice filled the room. His voice, like his presence, took up too much space. She pictured the five o’clock shadow on his almost-handsome weathered face, his thick graying hair, his deep-set olive eyes. He had a deceivingly kind face. “Hi. Sorry I haven’t been in touch. How are you? Uh. I was a little surprised by the message you left. Uh. well, actually, well, I’ve been doin’ some thinking. Actually, we’re not exactly meant for each other, are we? Listen, listen, we can be friends, right? Let’s be friends, huh, Lizzie? Uh, give me a call, huh? She nodded, “Right, Connie, we can be friends—pure and chaste from afar.” She laughed. She knew he would never call back, and she could see no compelling reason why she should try and contact him. Actually, we’re not exactly meant for each other … He didn’t know how to be friends with a woman—not that he knew how to be friends with a man, either. Maybe a dog—maybe he could be friends with a dog. “Poor Conrad,” she said, “poor, poor Connie.”
“Hi Sweetie, it’s me, the very pregnant Helen Marsh. Do you think I made a mistake by taking Eddie’s name? Sometimes I feel as if I should have kept my own damn name—but that would’ve been—well, it’s too late—and anyway, I like his name. Can’t you tell I don’t have anything better to do with myself than to call and talk into your machine? It’s the pregnancy. I’m getting a little anxious. I had false labor pains this morning. Oh, God, Lizzie, I’m terrified. And if you want to come and live with me until I deliver, I won’t stop you—I really won’t. How’s that for a subtle hint? Please come—I’m making Eddie crazy. And I have something to tell you—it’s about—well, it’s about—damn!.—I can’t say this right. I want to tell you in person. I’m not who you think I am. It’s a long story. Call me, and we’ll have a long, long talk. See you soon, yes?” There was a desperation in Helen’s voice that unsettled her. She pictured what Helen looked like as she talked into the receiver, how she might tug at her long black hair, how her dark eyes would plead, how she might measure her words. She talked at the phone. “Helen, your voice is so pretty. Can I have it?” She took off her nurse’s smock, her blouse, her long white skirt, then took off her bra and underwear. She walked to a chair in her bedroom and put on her white cotton robe, soft on her skin. She put a pot of coffee on the stove, a pot her mother had bought in Mexico when she had first been married, Elizabeth had retrieved it from the trash. She wished for a cigarette and somehow expected one to appear in her hands. She remembered a dream she’d had the first week after she’d quit smoking: She was walking down the street dressed in a long, black strapless dress as if she were going to a formal dinner. As she reached the place of the party, she had suddenly become nervous. She’d stuck out her ringer in front of her and a cigarette appeared. She’d stuck it in her mouth and it had lit itself as she sucked on it. It was good. It was so incredibly good, the smoke tasting better than any lover she’d ever had. She smiled as she thought of the dream. The dream had come several times before it had left her in peace. What was she going to do with
herself now that she’d left her job? She’d saved enough money to go on a trip, but now she thought she’d use the money to live on for a while. It would last six months—maybe a little longer if she lived sensibly. She laughed. “Shit, I haven’t lived sensibly a day in my life.” Her parents had been surprised she’d gotten herself through nursing school. She’d resented them for it—but even she had been surprised that she had stuck to it. She paced the apartment thinking—the thought of Salvador returning to her again and again. And then—from the hospital she had just left—the faces of two men entered her body or perhaps just her mind. Whichever it was, she felt their presence as something physical. Then, they were gone. She was suddenly cold. She poured herself a cup of coffee and and added a little Kahlua. She tried to place the identities of the two men whose presence she had just felt in her apartment. She knew them, remembered them, felt them move under her skin. Then she remembered she had flirted with one of them a few days earlier in the hospital—handsome and so scared, his lover mute in his sickness. They seemed to have become little boys, little boys lost in hospitals that threatened to steal the little bit of life they had left. She remembered how beautiful they were, how moved she was by what they felt for one another. She remembered the blond man, striking and chillingly familiar. She was angry with herself for not remembering their names. “It will come. Their names will come. And where in the hell do I know him from?” She wrapped her hands around the mug of coffee and took a drink. It was good. She walked over to the phone and brought it back to the table in the kitchen where she was sitting. She dialed Helen’s number. She heard the voice on the other end. “You’re not Helen,” she said.
“No, but I’m her husband.”
“Husbands don’t count.”
“I already know that.”
“It’s Lizzie.”
“I already know that, too.”
“How are you, Eddie?”
“I’m beautiful.”
“Yes, you are. I was hoping you wouldn’t find out. Wouldn’t want you to get a big head. What would we do with you, then?”