“Started a few days ago.”
Peter hesitated, confusion and then embarrassment washing over his freckled face. “What a piece of shit,” he said and let out a long groan of air. “I should have come sooner. I’m sorry, Bill.”
“Describe them to me. I’ll pick one and you can frame it. I’ll put it on the table beside the bed.”
“Shit.” Peter put up a hand and covered his face for a moment. “All right. All right.” He pointed at one of the photographs and said, “We’re sitting at the counter at Zeppi’s. Both sixteen, I’d say. I can’t remember who took it. You’ve got on that ragged Phillies T-shirt you used to wear, looking like a goofball that Lisa Bell wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, and I’ve got a big mouthful of hamburger or something, handsome though.”
In his mind, Bill was back there at Zeppi’s, watching that lean chef with the veins popping in his arms as he grilled onions and hamburgers behind the counter. Smell of hot oil and cheese and french fries, burgers hissing on the grill. And that chef with the veins had eleven things going at once, hamburgers with cheese, hamburgers without cheese, hamburgers with grilled onions, maybe some bacon going for a BLT, maybe some pancakes for somebody who thought it was breakfast time at one o’clock in the morning, flipping burgers here and there like they were platinum 45s, just perfect, scooping onions and hash browns when they were golden, drawing a Pepsi or Coke in between, just to the point where the fizz started to crawl over the sides of the glass, and that chef moved from item to item with the grace of a ballet dancer, never making a wrong move, never messing up, perfect timing, and he had his white chef’s hat cocked back on his head like he knew he was being watched and admired. Chrome metal going up the walls behind the grill, chrome sliding drawers, all sparkling clean, scrubbed-looking, six stools in front of the counter with red vinyl tops, three or four tables in back but nobody sat at the tables, a front wall of solid glass with “Zeppi’s Grill” in red curly letters, nobody knew who Zeppi was. But the chef, the one they came to watch, was named Frank. And there was nothing finer in life than to sit eating one of Frank’s medium-rare burgers in a toasted and buttered sesame-seed bun after they’d watched him perform for a half-hour. Maybe before that, they’d been to a movie downtown or walking by the river or out at Clear-pool at a party. It would be a Friday or Saturday night, one o’clock in the morning. And they’d sit eating their burgers and fries and turn around on their rotating thrones and stare out through the glass wall at their kingdom, the endless black night, endless like they were, stretching down Roosevelt Boulevard past streetlamps and parked cars and side streets, past closed stores with fronts lit up in neon, past houses and apartment buildings, their own three-story rowhouses with their harmless parents sleeping in their rooms, past the homes of girls they might visit later that evening. Or they might decide to sit in Zeppi’s until dawn, maybe talk one of the red-eyed customers into going across the street and buying some beer for them, not too much nuance at this hour of the night. Or they might just get into Peter’s ’63 Triumph with its burgundy upholstery and cruise, make a tour of their dark domain, let the burgers and fries and their own natural body electricity work on them while they popped and whizzed and grew bigger than mountains. They could do all of it, and it was all theirs, all theirs.
Bill’s remembrance was so hard and strong that it ached in him, but at the same time it had a terrible distance, greater than displaced time and space. Maybe it was his illness. And his friend, Peter, his best friend in the world, had the same terrible distance from him even though he was ten feet away.
The yellow freesias on the blanket-box chest were smelling like damp honeysuckles, and Peter was describing another picture, one of him and Bill lying bare-chested on top of his Triumph, and Bill remembered the afternoon they slammed into the rear end of a Pontiac Firebird turning in front of them at Broad and Columbia, Peter knowing he could slow down but also knowing it was the other guy’s fault and hitting him anyway just to prove the point. Not a life-threatening hit, just a good clip of the tail feathers to prove his point. The other guy was definitely a herbivore. They used to classify people as either carnivores or herbivores. A herbivore with a brain too big for his own good. And then they felt responsible and offered to pay for the whole thing, even though it was the other guy’s fault for turning in front of them. When was that? Junior year? No, the summer before college, when they shot themselves out of cannons. Now this distance, greater than displaced time or space. What was it? What could he say to Peter? How could he explain that the world was suffocating itself. That he watched and did nothing.
“Which one you want me to frame?”
“You pick.”
Now Bill heard Virginia downstairs, talking to Melissa near the front door. And his mother shouted something. Was she calling for him?
“The photo’s for you,” said Peter. “You pick.”
“You pick.”
Peter sighed and collected the photographs, gingerly, one at a time, and put them back in the envelope in his pocket. He looked sad. Even though Bill could not see much, he knew that his friend looked sad.
“All right,” Peter said. “I’ll pick. I’ll send it to you.”
“It’ll go on the table beside my bed. How’s the med center?”
“I hate administration.”
“Why don’t you get out?” said Bill.
“I can’t get out. I’m making too much money.”
There was more noise from downstairs, shuffling and voices. “Rosalie wants to come up,” Melissa shouted.
“Does she know I’m here?” Bill shouted back.
“I don’t know. She just wants to go up the stairs.”
“Maybe I should go out for a few minutes,” said Peter, “and leave you and your mother alone together.” He moved slowly toward the door, limping slightly. He paused. “You still don’t know what it is?”
“No.”
“What a goddamn shitty thing. You’ve got the best doctors. Maybe if they can’t find anything wrong, it’ll go away just like it came, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll just be downstairs. I’ll be back.” He gave Bill another hug, unable to look at him, and went out the door.
Moments later, Rosalie entered the room a little uncertainly, her dyed blond hair still up in the scarf she had worn in anticipation of a cool New England fall day. Bill had sent her a scarf for her last birthday, and he peered at this one, trying to see if it was his gift, a billow of fabric on her restless shoulders. And something swung near her hips, a purse or an umbrella.
“Delphinium,” she exclaimed at once in her lilting voice and went straight to the flowers on the bureau. “Two-toned. Witches’ hats. And snapdragons. Where did these come from? I can’t get snapdragons this time of year.” She turned and gazed at the door from where she had come, as if she might want to go back out again, then at Bill for the first time. Her jowly face with flirtatious mouth, expectant even when she didn’t know what she was expecting. She looked at him and through him. Suddenly he heard her voice in his mind: “I love you oodles and caboodles,” what she used to say to him. Now she was looking at the door again.
“Sit down, Mother,” said Bill. “Sit at the vanity. It’s a good chair.” She looked at him with faint suspicion, as if unsure whether she should be following his instructions. He could smell her damask rose powder, the same powder she’d been using for forty years. The powder in his nose along with the stargazer lilies. He wanted to kiss her, but he found himself unable to move, a thousand miles away. She was a dim setting moon. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“Yes, I know who you are.”
“You’re looking beautiful.” He lied, matching her lie.
“Thank you. I don’t feel beautiful. I don’t get out anymore.
They don’t let me drive. I’ll have to talk to Ted about that.”
“You haven’t been driving for ten years.”
“Ten years?” For an instant, her face decompo
sed, turning into a blob of pink putty. Then it was her again, at least what he could see dimly, and she looked at him and nodded. “It’s been ten years since I was driving. I haven’t been driving for ten years. What do you think of that.”
Driving. Memories flooded over him. Out on the Schuylkill Expressway, seventy-five miles per hour, eighty-five miles per hour, passing other cars as if they were motionless, reflector disks careening past like bullets from a machine gun, air sucking hard at the half-open window, her hair flying beautiful, her left gloved hand on the steering wheel, her right holding a cigarette. This is when she talked to him, took him driving with her to talk. She loved to drive fast more than anything in the world, and she took him because his father, her husband, wouldn’t go with her, was afraid to drive that fast. You’ll kill yourself one of these days. Ninety miles per hour, and she would ask him about school, his friends, his girlfriends when he got older, his entire life because she didn’t want to miss any detail about her son, she wanted to savor everything about him. She was the one who listened to him. She was the one who made him feel like he was worth something. She was his biggest cheerleader, always. Shouting back and forth, to be heard over the howl of the wind. It never occurred to him to ask her about her. He was frightened, of course; he could have had the safety of his father, but he went with her because he wanted the closeness, even when he was fifteen and sixteen, the smell of her perfume, her aliveness behind the wheel, her joy of life and of him. With her, he took chances. She had such strong likes and dislikes. Nothing was neutral. Hot fudge she loved, so much that she would eat it right out of the can without wasting it on ice cream. Flowers of all kinds she liked. Other women she rarely liked. Books she hated, she didn’t have the patience for sitting days and weeks reading a book, she would far rather see a good film, be thrown into laughter or tears on the spot. Singing. She could have made a career as a singer, and even when she gave it up for marriage she sometimes sang at a cabaret in town, into her mid-forties. And she loved speed and fast cars. Once, she had just bought a new sports car, a red convertible, and she roared up to the house at great speed, spewing gravel, and knocked down a lamppost by the front door. Then she pretended that nothing had happened and made no comment about the gash in her car and drove it around like that for a year.
She was saying something now about the weather in Philadelphia, always a safe topic. No names, no contradictions. Bill nodded, trying to hear the person he knew in the rise and fall of her voice, word choices, minute inflections and pauses. Who was this woman? How could she still be here, miraculously, after she had faded away? He wanted his mother, his real mother. He was burning. He closed his eyes and tried to see her as she had been, wearing her white cable-knit sweater, sometimes a flower in her hair.
When he opened his eyes, Rosalie was staring at his legs.
“You’ve injured yourself,” she said. “You’re in a wheelchair.”
“Yes.” He returned her gaze, looked into her eyes. Did the eyes make a mother? He wanted his mother back, he wanted his mother back. He shoved hard against his brain, trying to remember the way she was, things she had said to him, moments. Talk now was futile. He loved her even like this, he had to love her. He wanted her to know. No, he didn’t want her to know anything. He should wheel himself into the bathroom and wash. “My legs have become paralyzed.” Help me, help me. Mother.
“I’m so sorry, young man,” said Rosalie. She continued to look at him, at his legs, and she smiled sympathetically. “I can’t drive, and you’re in a wheelchair. What a shame.” She sighed. “Ted is always breaking an arm or a leg or something. I don’t know how he does it sitting in that office all day, but he does and then he comes home and expects to be coddled. I tell him that I don’t coddle and he sulks. I can’t stand sulking men. They’re not like people.” That’s her, he suddenly thought to himself, and he clenched the metal bars of his wheelchair so tightly that his hands turned white. Yes. That was his mother speaking. I can’t stand sulking men. They’re not like people. Tears came to his eyes. Rosalie, embarrassed and puzzled, looked away. Then he saw tears in her eyes, too. She was crying softly, even though she didn’t know why.
The telephones were ringing again, absorbing light and air. As soon as his mother left, he would rip them out of the wall. “It’s Alex,” Melissa shouted from downstairs. “He says he won’t be able to read your e-mail messages for you tonight, he’s going out with Brad. Why did you ask him to do your e-mail? He’s got homework.”
“Excuse me,” he said to his mother and turned to the open door. “I didn’t ask him,” Bill shouted back to Melissa. “He volunteered. He wanted to do my e-mail for me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said to his mother. “This shouting.”
“Oh no, I’m interrupting,” said Rosalie. She dried her eyes and shifted on her chair, gathering herself up. She searched around for something. “If you could just ask that nice man downstairs to come get me. The one who brought me. He drove me in his car.” She looked blankly at her son.
“Peter.”
“Peter. Is Peter still here? He said he would come and get me.” She stared at the door.
“Please stay a few minutes more.”
“Peter knows where I am?”
“Yes.” He was burning. There was no way to begin over. His life had dwindled to this tiny cupful of air, this moment. He wheeled himself to her and held her hand and imagined her hand as it was, her left hand, the hand she placed on the steering wheel in his mind. Looking down, he saw milky veins, splotches of brown.
“What a shame about your legs,” said Rosalie, flustered but allowing him to keep hold of her hand. “We get used to things.” She looked around the room, at the window, the four-poster bed, the bureau, as if wondering why she was here, and then at the door again. “She was rude downstairs. She told me I couldn’t come upstairs. Is she calling me? Tell her I’m not ready.”
NURSE
The visit from his mother had unleashed memories. When she went back to Philadelphia, Bill could not stop thinking of her as she once was, in motion, flying down highways and expressways, oblivious to the needle of her speedometer. Indistinct shapes of furniture in his bedroom turned into parts of her automobiles: curving hoods, mirrors, exhaust pipes, flywheels and crankcases, even herself, sometimes standing in that impatient manner of hers, sometimes leaning over the dashboard. On the floor he drew pictures of her driving her car. Jumbled lines barely connecting, resemblances only in his imagination. He could only vaguely see his drawings, they happened more in his mind. There, in his mind, he imagined himself standing over a painter’s easel, brush poised and ready, his mother posing reluctantly. Each movement of his imaginary hand on the imaginary canvas sent a wisp of an electrical impulse to his actual hand on the floor, so that he didn’t have to see his hand move on the floor, he could just watch the imaginary hand in his mind. This twice-removed invention was another history of a kind, a history not of the movements of the earth through space but of the movement of his memory through time. He remembered other things: playing gin rummy with her late in the night, massaging the back of her neck with safflower oil when she asked, rubbing her knobbly shoulder blades so hard he feared they would crack.
But what he drew mostly was pictures of her driving at great speed, with trailing lines to show the whoosh of the wind.
These new pictures on the floor, recognizable to no one but himself, overlapped leaves, images of dogs, hypothetical animals and plants. When he estimated that the floor had been covered in its entirety, he moved to the lower sections of walls. Then to the front of his bureau, the headboard of his bed, anything he could reach. It seemed to him that he must be recalling details of his mother that he had never seen before, seeing them for the first time in his memory. And yet he was filled with the same sense of distance, excommunication from a world that was hurtling further and further away into heaven, or hell, unbending in its frightening trajectory.
A moment came, the Saturday after she’d g
one, when he could no longer give movement to his hands. In his mind, the imaginary hands at the easel came to rest, and so did those on the floor. It was 3:12 in the afternoon.
He was almost relieved. He’d been wondering what would be next. Now, complete paralysis of legs, arms, and hands, an orderly progression. From the beginning, it had seemed odd to him that he could move parts of his body that he could not feel. Now all was in accordance. What did not feel did not move. Finally, his limbs had deserted him altogether, leaving brain only, dim images on the optic nerve, sounds spiraling in auditory passages, smells. Vocal chords. He could ask Melissa to wheel his brain from one side of the room to another. Shout at her. That was living now, to shout at her, and then listening to her shouting back, or weeping hysterically. That was life now in these four walls of his illness, his prison, the box that enclosed what was left of him. Windows taunted with glimpses of another world, people walking under their own power, moving bodies. Look what his awareness had gotten him. He was magnificently aware and unable to wiggle his little finger. Some people were born like this, he thought to himself, totally paralyzed from birth, nothing but brain stems. He hated them all, for living. For thinking that this paralyzed existence was life. “Bill, I love you. What can I do?” What was that? Some auditory sensation of his brain, emanating from a dim shape that might be his wife. “You promised you wouldn’t die.” Another auditory electrification of the brain stem, possibly even an illusion. Maybe the world was all imaginary. How would he know? And when he had to eat or piss or crap, totally helpless to relieve himself, those urgent sensations in his petrified body were nothing but his imagination at work, errant electrical currents running through his brain stem, floating in nothingness like signals to cell phones, his brain flagellating itself out of pure boredom.
What were his drawings now? Final histories of the earth? Or were they, too, only illusion. Wasn’t this all punishment for his failure.