Sayuri arrived first. I’ve mentioned before that she always seemed to carry her tiny body behind a gigantic smile, but on this day only the tiny body was present. When I asked whether everything was okay, she answered unpersuasively that it was. Rather than push the subject, I asked whether she’d bought my gift for Gregor yet. She replied that she had and in this, at least, I believed her. I was going to ask a few more questions when Marianne Engel and Nan entered the room like horses jockeying for position. Marianne Engel looked directly at me and stated: “When you get out of here, you’re coming with me.”
“Not so fast,” Nan said sharply, before turning her attention on me. “As you know, you’ll probably be released in a few months—”
“—and then you’re coming to live in my house.” The impatience in Marianne Engel’s voice betrayed that she thought this meeting was unnecessary.
“Calm down.” Nan held up her hand while shooting Marianne Engel an exasperated look. “That’s not your decision to make.”
“He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Nan countered, “I’ve already arranged for a place in Phoenix Hall.”
“He doesn’t want to live there.” Which was true, I didn’t, but Dr. Edwards had long been recommending it because of its highly trained workers, job placement programs, and proper medical supplies. In addition, it had counselors, not to mention other burn patients who would be facing the same challenges as I.
“I work with the patients at Phoenix,” Sayuri said, “so if you go there, we can continue your gait training.”
“I’ll hire you,” Marianne Engel said. “Money isn’t a problem. You can do it at my house.”
This suggestion made Sayuri look towards Dr. Edwards uneasily. “I don’t know hospital policy on that.”
Nan replied that beyond policy issues, Phoenix Hall had a host of professionals, all ready to offer their expertise. Marianne Engel reiterated that she was willing to provide whatever I needed. “If Mizumoto san is too busy, we’ll hire someone else. But we’d prefer to have her, because we like her.”
She wheeled around to look directly at me, and finally asked what I wanted. “Do you want to go to this Phoenix place?”
“No.”
“Do you want to come to my house?”
“Yes.”
Marianne Engel turned her attention back to Dr. Edwards. “There. Discussion finished.”
It might have been prudent to claim that I needed time to think. After all, I had just chosen Marianne Engel over the doctor who’d been expertly guiding my recovery for months. My hasty answer was, to say the least, illogical.
If there was one thing I could be certain about, however, it was that everyone in the room truly had my best interests at heart. I hadn’t known that Marianne Engel and Nan had been arguing about my living arrangements for weeks; since I saw both of them almost daily, this could only have occurred if they were working together to hide it in order to keep my stress level as low as possible.
“There’s still plenty of time to make an informed decision,” Nan said, indicating that this discussion was anything but finished. It was not lost on anyone how heavily she stressed the word informed.
There were practical concerns that I could not ignore in regard to living with Marianne Engel. One was that, although she said she had plenty of money, she probably couldn’t afford me.
Housing a burn patient is incredibly expensive. Beyond my treatment costs—Sayuri’s fees, medical supplies, exercise equipment—there would be regular living expenses. Food. Clothes. Entertainment. Utilities. She would have to pay the costs of my life not only as a patient, but as a man as well. While there might be government programs or charities that would contribute to my care, I doubted Marianne Engel would ask for their assistance; her personality being what it was, I expected pride, paperwork, and privacy issues would prevent her from even looking into it. She claimed to have the resources to support me, but I could hardly accept this as fact—a shoeful of hundred-dollar bills was not enough to convince me of her fortune. Was this money as much a fantasy as most other aspects of her life? Was I to believe that she had been saving her pennies for seven hundred years?
Not only was living with her fiscally questionable, it was also morally suspect. As the basis of the offer was her belief that her “last heart” was for me, I would clearly be taking advantage, under false pretenses, of a confused woman. As the sane one, not only did I know better, I was obligated to act upon the fact that I knew better. And in any case, why should I put myself in the position of depending upon a mentally ill woman whom I hardly knew? Although my circumstances had changed and I was less physically able than previously, I had been on my own since my teens. Before that, even: as guardians, the Graces had been competent only at guarding their drug stashes. For all intents and purposes, I had looked after myself since I was six years old.
So I had been mistaken in accepting Marianne Engel’s offer, and Nan had been correct. I would reverse my rash decision and enter Phoenix Hall after all.
When Gregor came by that afternoon to drop off Sayuri’s present, he congratulated me on my decision to move in with Marianne Engel. When I informed him that I’d changed my mind, he backtracked and said that I had made the only logical decision. “I think your progress has been fantastic under the guidance of Dr. Edwards. I hold her in the highest esteem.”
I knew Gregor well enough to recognize when he was not saying all that he was thinking. This was one of those times. “But…?”
Gregor looked to the left, and then to the right, to ensure that no one was around to overhear him. “But even monkeys fall from trees.”
I had no idea what this meant, so Gregor explained: Even experts make mistakes. “While Dr. Edwards is your physician, and a good one, I don’t think you should underestimate Marianne’s effect on your recovery, either. She comes every day, she helps with your exercises, and it’s obvious that she cares deeply about you. God knows why. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.”
HE THINKS YOUR NUTJOB GIRLFRIEND IS SERIOUS ABOUT YOU.
Shut up, fuck. I corrected Gregor. “She’s delusional.”
“Go ahead and deny it,” he said, “but it’s obvious.”
THAT’S SO CUTE.
I wasn’t going to bother arguing the point; I didn’t feel up to that. “What would you do?”
“I’d be worried about living with Marianne, too,” he said, “but you’re no prize, either. If you can put up with each other, I think you should do it.”
“Even if she is fond of me—and I’m not saying that she is—I’m not really sure how I feel about her.” I paused. “I don’t know.”
“If you don’t accept her invitation, you’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met,” Gregor said. “In addition to being a lousy liar.”
When you lie in a hospital bed long enough, you start a mental catalogue of all human contact. I touched Gregor on the back of his hand, the first time we’d ever touched, and said, “Thank you for bringing Sayuri’s present.”
A TOUCHING MOMENT . . .
I buzzed the nurse to ask for more morphine.
. . . BETWEEN LOSERS.
On Christmas morning, Marianne Engel appeared in my room with a sack of presents and a silver briefcase that she immediately slid under my bed. We passed a few hours, speaking as we often did about everything/nothing, while she fed me mandarin oranges and marzipan. As usual, she made her regular trips outside to smoke cigarettes, but I noticed that sometimes when she came back, she didn’t have the telltale smell of fresh smoke upon her. When I asked her if she had something else going on, she shook her head no. Her smile, however, betrayed her.
In the early afternoon, Sayuri and Gregor arrived, followed by Connie, who’d just finished her rounds. Dr. Edwards never worked on Christmas Day, and Maddy and Beth had both booked the day off to spend with their families. With no one left to arrive, Marianne Engel dragged her sack out of the corner and we began to exchange gifts.
>
The nurses had pitched in to buy me some books on subjects that had recently taken my interest, such as the inner workings of medieval German monasteries and the writings of Heinrich Seuse and Meister Eckhart.
“You aren’t easy to buy for, that’s for sure. I had to go to three different bookshops,” Connie said. As soon as she realized this might sound like a complaint, she hastily added, “Not that I minded, of course!”
Gregor gave me a stationery set, as I’d confided to him that I’d been working on some writing in recent weeks, and Sayuri gave me some lavender ice cream that I happily shared with everyone. Marianne Engel seemed to enjoy it the most, and was tickled by the fact that it turned her tongue purple.
To the nurses I gave compact discs by their favorite artists. While this was not particularly personal, I didn’t know much about their nonhospital lives. To Sayuri, I gave the gift that I’d asked Gregor to pick up on my behalf: two tickets for an upcoming Akira Kurosawa film festival.
“I got the idea when Dr. Hnatiuk was telling me about it. He loves Kurosawa, you know.”
Marianne Engel looked at me, raising an accusatory eyebrow, because subtle I’m not.
Next came my gift to Gregor, as picked up by Sayuri: coupons for a dinner for two at a Russian restaurant with the highly unoriginal name of Rasputin’s. I asked Sayuri whether she’d ever eaten authentic Russian food, and she answered that she had not. It was now I who raised an eyebrow in the direction of Gregor. When they thanked me for their gifts, I grumbled that “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without any fucking presents.” No one seemed to understand what I was talking about, which only proves that more people should read Louisa May Alcott.
Next, Marianne Engel gave her gifts. The nurses got day passes to a spa, which Connie tucked away with the CDs. Sayuri received an intricate blown-glass Buddhist temple, while Gregor received a pair of wrought-iron candlesticks. They were impressed with the handmade quality of the items, and Marianne Engel boasted that the gifts were the work of two of her friends.
As for Marianne Engel and I, we had already decided to exchange our gifts later, in private. And maybe I was the only one who’d noticed, but apparently Sayuri and Gregor had also come to the same understanding.
After a while, Gregor said, “Are we ready to move along?” Everyone looked at Marianne Engel, who nodded. Christmas truly was a time for miracles, if the medical staff was looking to the schizophrenic to provide guidance. Sayuri put me into a wheelchair and Gregor pushed me down the hall, and when I asked where we were going, no one would answer directly. Soon I figured out that we were heading to the cafeteria. Perhaps there was some sort of Christmas function, a hired Santa or volunteer carolers, although the fact that I’d heard nothing about it struck me as odd. After so many months in the hospital, very little escaped my attention.
When the doors of the cafeteria slid open, I was battered by the smell of every food in the world. Against the far wall, a small task force of caterers was tending to a series of heavily laden tables. Thirty or forty people were milling around the room, under red crepe streamers that hung from the roof, and a few of them gestured in our direction. At first, I thought they were all pointing at my appearance but when the caterers waved to Marianne Engel, I realized that she was the center of attention, not I. The patients started ambling towards us: an old man with a cough, a curly-haired woman with bandages on her arms, a handsome boy with a limp. Bringing up the rear was a preteen girl with no hair, a fistful of balloons, and a cheering section of relatives.
Everyone thanked Marianne Engel for what she’d done; at this point, I still didn’t know what that was. After Gregor pushed me to the catering tables and helped me out of the wheelchair, he explained that she had arranged and funded the entire party. This, in accordance with her general lack of restraint, was no small undertaking. Even having seen the outsized dinners that she brought to my room, I could scarcely comprehend what was available.
Turkey, ham, roast goose, chicken, meat dumplings, curried goat, boar, venison, meatloaf, carp (carp? who eats carp?), cod, haddock, lutefish, shellfish, cold cuts, a dozen types of sausage, roasted eggs, oxtail soup, meat broths, onion soup, more cheeses than you could shake a cow’s udder at, brown beans, gungo peas, onions, pickles, rutabaga, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweeter potatoes, sweetest potatoes, cabbage, carrots, parsnips, squash, pumpkin, basmati, white rice, brown rice, wild rice, tame rice, antipasto, stuffing, assorted breads, bagels, buns, cheese scones, green salad, Caesar salad, bean salad, pasta salad, jellied salad, whipped-cream-and-apple salad, spaghetti, fettuccini, macaroni, rigatoni, cannelloni, tortellini, guglielmo marconi (just checking to see if you’re still reading), bananas, apples, oranges, pineapples, strawberries, blueberries, mixed nuts, mincemeat pies, Christmas pudding, Christmas bread, coconut shortbread, pecan pie, chocolates, chocolate logs, chocolate frogs, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, fudge, sugar, spice, everything nice, epiphany cake, fruitcake, gingerbread men, Torte Vigilia di Natale, snips, snails, puppydog tails, cranberry punch, eggnog, milk, grape juice, apple juice, orange juice, soft drinks, coffee, tea, you say to-may-to juice, I say to-mah-to juice, and bottled water.
Everyone in the hospital must have filled up their plates once, twice, thrice, and Marianne Engel charmed each guest with her grace and eccentricity. It didn’t hurt that she had slipped into an elf costume and looked astoundingly cute. Music played and people talked merrily to each other, everyone partaking in the spirit of the event. Patients who otherwise would never have met were speaking at length, probably comparing illnesses. Coughs were drowned out by laughs, and there were squeals of delight from the children, who each received a gift from under the plastic Christmas tree. Apparently Marianne Engel couldn’t obtain permission for a genuine pine, but an artificial one was more than good enough. If flowers might kill a man, just imagine what a conifer could do.
For this one afternoon, I was a hospital celebrity, as the word spread that it was my friend who’d done all this. An old man came to talk with me with such a large grin on his face that it was a shock when he mentioned that his wife of sixty years had recently died. When I told him I was sorry to hear it, he shook his head and clasped his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be wasting your sympathy on me, kid. I did pretty damn well, I’ll tell you what. You snag a woman like that, you don’t ask what you did to deserve it. You just hope she never wises up and changes her mind.”
During the party, a feeling of strange relief had come over me. From our first meeting, Marianne Engel had shown such irrational affection towards me that I expected it to disappear as abruptly as it had started. Relationships fall apart, that’s their nature. We’ve all seen it a thousand times, even between couples who we were certain were “going to make it.”
I once knew a woman who liked to imagine Love in the guise of a sturdy dog, one that would always chase down the stick after it was thrown and return with his ears flopping around happily. Completely loyal, completely unconditional. And I laughed at her, because even I knew that love is not like that. Love is a delicate thing that needs to be cosseted and protected. Love is not robust and love is not unyielding. Love can crumble under a few harsh words, or be tossed away with a handful of careless actions. Love isn’t a steadfast dog at all; love is more like a pygmy mouse lemur.
Yes, that’s exactly what love is: a tiny, jittery primate with eyes that are permanently peeled open in fear. For those of you who cannot quite picture a pygmy mouse lemur, imagine a miniature Don Knotts or Steve Buscemi wearing a fur coat. Imagine the cutest animal that you can, after it has been squeezed so hard that all its stuffing has been pushed up into an oversized head and its eyes are now popping out in overflow. The lemur looks so vulnerable that one cannot help but worry that a predator might swoop in at any instant to snatch it away.
Marianne Engel’s love for me seemed built on so flimsy a premise that I assumed it would come apart the moment we stepped through the hospital doors. How could a love based on a fi
ctional past survive into an actual future? It was impossible. That kind of love was a thing to be snatched up and crushed in the jaws of real life.
That was my fear, but this Christmas Day had shown me that Marianne Engel’s love was not feeble. It was strapping, it was muscular, it was massive. I thought that it could fill only my room in the burn ward, but it filled the entire hospital. More important, her love was not reserved only for me; it was shared generously with strangers—people she didn’t think were friends from the fourteenth century.
All my life I had heard foolish stories about love: that the more you give away, the more you have. This had always struck me as nothing more than a violation of basic mathematical principles. But watching Marianne Engel share her love so widely awakened in me the weirdest of romantic feelings: the opposite of jealousy.
It comforted me that love was her soul’s natural condition and not an aberration built on fantasies. Her love was not a lemur, an animal so named because Portuguese explorers in Madagascar noted large shining eyes peering out of the forest when they sat around their campfires. Convinced that these eyes belonged to the spirits of their departed companions, they christened the animals with the Latin word meaning “spirits of the dead.”
When the last turkey leg had been eaten, Marianne Engel thanked each caterer and passed out envelopes that contained “just a little something extra for working on the holidays.” While she was wheeling me back to my room, she claimed that this was the best Christmas she’d ever had. I pointed out that that was quite a claim, given that she’d had seven hundred.
After she helped me into bed, Marianne Engel sat with a satisfied thud. I observed that the party must have cost her a fortune; she dismissed this with a wave of her hand and pulled the silver briefcase from under my bed. “Open it.”
The briefcase was fat with sleeves of bills, fifties and hundreds. In my days of pornography and drugs, I’d seen the occasional satchel of cash, but nothing like this. I spun the numbers around my skull, trying to come up with a rough estimate. It was difficult to do the math—I was still too stunned by the fact of the money—so Marianne Engel saved me the trouble. “Two hundred thousand.”