“How about men,” she joked, but she looked hurt.
“Men are just guys with bad haircuts.”
We both smiled, and there was my opportunity to leave. I set my glass on the tray and stood up. “I’ve got to get going,” I said. “Thanks for lunch.”
“Will you go tonight?”
I sighed. Sometimes, standing with Jamie at some party, or even just following her into a bar, I felt years too old for what I was doing, like a chaperone who’d rather be home in bed reading.
“I’m working till ten,” she said. “Meet me here at ten-thirty and we’ll do tequila shots first.”
“I’ll pass on the shots,” I said. “But I’ll come.” I stood up and held out my hand, and after a moment she covered my palm with her own. I headed for my car. I was parked facing the wrong way, and when I pulled into her driveway to turn around, I saw that she’d already repositioned her chair so she could be seen by the guy in the yellow T-shirt.
The hospital was crowded. Saturday afternoon, and people milled around, big multigenerational groups of them standing in clumps outside the gift shop, lining up at the florist’s to buy stiff arrangements of carnations and baby’s breath. I wandered past the cafeteria and looked in.
GET WELL SOON
read a Mylar balloon tied to a chair at an empty table. A heavy smell of gravy came from the kitchen. In one of the lobbies I sat on a tweedy couch and ended up staying for half an hour, thinking every minute that
now
I’d go. I counted five little boys with casts on their arms before I finally stood up.
On Mike’s floor the blond nurse named Joan stood talking to Mr. and Mrs. Mayer. They were at the other end of the corridor from the elevator, standing in front of a glass-encased fire extinguisher. I started to duck down a hallway, but Mrs. Mayer looked up and saw me. “Carrie,” she called, “the most wonderful news! Joan thinks Michael is going to wake up soon!”
“Actually …” Joan began, but Mrs. Mayer ignored her. She’d been wringing her sweater as if it were a wet towel, and now she tucked it under one arm, came and took hold of my elbow, and started walking me toward Mike’s room.
“Joan’s worked with a lot of head injuries,” she said, “dozens of head
injuries, and she’s seen people with the exact same thing as Mike who just woke up one day and were—well, practically fine.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “His neck—”
But she wasn’t listening. “It all comes down to you and me, Carrie, because women are stronger. Do you understand? It takes
strength
to have hope.” Abruptly she stopped walking and stared into my eyes. “Being hopeless is easy, Carrie. And you know who it hurts? Mike, that’s who!” She shook her finger at me. “It hurts Mike! You don’t believe me, but it’s true.”
Mr. Mayer came up and took her hand. “It’s OK, Jan,” he said. “It’s OK.” He looked at me, and an agreement of some kind passed between us, that soothing her was all that mattered right now. He said, “It’s all right, Carrie. We’re going out to Sears now before they close. We’ll leave you to visit with Mike by yourself.”
Mrs. Mayer looked hard at me while Mr. Mayer took her sweater and shook it, then draped it over her shoulders. Watching them walk away, I thought I’d never seen her so disturbed.
Joan came up and gave me an apologetic look. “My fault,” she said. “I mentioned a boy we had in here last year who—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
Mike’s room was cold. His room was cold, his hands were cold, his feet were cold. Like on winter nights when he’d stay over: when he came back to bed from a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom, he’d hold his feet away from me, his knees, his frozen hands. But if I got up he’d let me touch him with my cold toes, he’d hold my feet between his legs to warm them. “So cold,” he’d say, and he’d pull me close until I felt him all along the length of my body.
I stood at the foot of his bed. Next to the wall there was a slice of space a couple of feet wide, wide enough for a sleeping bag, and for a moment I imagined myself moving in, just a nightgown and a toothbrush and some sad bribe for the nurses. We had never even gotten to live together, never even gotten to try it. Why had the prospect deflated? Why had I begun to cool?
I looked at him. I wanted to see everything there was to see, his arms slack at his sides, his closed eyes. One tube ran into his nose to feed him while another entered a bandage on his throat and brought him air. Two more went into his forearms, and under the cloth draped over his middle he was hooked to a catheter. Filling him and emptying him. They even shaved him, although not every day, and looking closer I saw that it had been three or four days: his beard was coming in striped
by a surprising blond. Eight and a half years and I had never wondered how he would look with a beard, never wanted him to look any different at all. I had never really wanted him to be different. It was only myself who was wrong, who had changed somehow,
become
wrong—for him. For us.
C
HAPTER
4
State Street was the center of Madison, a half-mile run of shops and restaurants that connected the university to the State Capitol. Closed to all traffic but buses, it was Madison’s boulevard, its town square—the place you’d go when you didn’t know where else to go. On Wednesday, done with work at five, I trudged past shop window after shop window, hungry for clothes, CDs, shoes, books—for things that I wanted to buy more than have. The sidewalks were crowded with UW students and high school kids, skateboarders flying by. I passed the street guitarist who played bad James Taylor, then the one who played bad Bob Dylan. I was in a funk, struggling over whether or not to call Jamie: Saturday night I’d backed out of going to the party at her neighbors’ house, and we’d fought on the phone, a sullen exchange of resentments until, in a troubled voice, she said, “What’s
with
you?,” a question that I knew pertained not just to the present moment but to months and months.
I could have been honest with her. I could have said:
I don’t know. Something. Help me
. But I didn’t. Instead I asked her how she could even
wonder
such a thing, and we both hung up furious. That we still hadn’t talked four days later was just about unheard of in our friendship, and as I walked I felt gloomy with guilt, certain I should call but equally certain I wouldn’t. I didn’t
want
to: didn’t want to hear whether she’d gone to the party anyway; didn’t want to hear about whatever had or hadn’t happened with Drew, which would be exactly like something that had or hadn’t happened with half a dozen other guys from her recent past.
After a while I came to Fabrications. It was the only boutiquey fabric store in town and it had prices to match, but I loved it, loved going in to wander among the Liberty cottons, to stand in awe before the wall of silks in the back. It was a quiet store, rarely populated by more than one other customer. I’d never bought more than a spool of thread.
From the sidewalk I looked in the window. There was a sleeveless blue dress hanging there, beautifully simple, with a square neckline and a nipped-in waist. The envelope for the pattern had been pinned to one shoulder, a Vogue pattern I’d used once. Through the window I couldn’t really tell what the fabric was like, so I went inside and reached over the display ledge for a touch: it felt like silky tissue paper.
I turned around. The store was empty, not even a salesperson in sight, just bolt after bolt of gorgeous fabric. I breathed in deeply. Places like House of Fabrics and the Sewing Center smelled harsh from all the sizing, all the manmade fibers, but in Fabrications the only smell came from a bowl of potpourri on the counter at the cash register, its contents changed with the seasons. I crossed the store and looked into the bowl. Today it held dried peach pits, sprigs of rosemary, and slivers of a fragrant, spicy wood.
From the back room someone coughed, and I left the counter and approached the silks, columns of them on swinging arms. I found the blue of the dress and reached for the tag: thirty dollars a yard. At that price all I could make was a sash.
Yet I didn’t turn away. The silks were exquisite: shiny satins and shimmering jacquards; colors clearer than cotton could ever be, subtler than wool. A pale gray shadow stripe suggested a coat dress with a notched collar; a brilliant black and red and gold print some kind of fluid pantsuit with a black camisole underneath. Who knew where you’d wear such a thing, it would be enough just to get the fabric home and touch it, work with it, be surrounded by it for a while.
Reluctantly I turned and left the store, the question of what to do next filling me with anxiety. Then I thought of Mike’s brother, scooping ice cream a block farther up the street, and although I had no idea whether he’d be working or not, I headed that way.
It was six o’clock on a weeknight, but the place was jammed—people spoiling their dinners, or maybe having them. John was alone behind the counter, dressed in a blue-and-white striped shirt and a little paper hat, and he smiled when he saw me come in. I took my place at the end of the line and watched him work, admiring how calm he was despite the racket, the voices of all the people ahead of me bouncing off the black-and-white tile floor.
The crowd thinned out and finally it was my turn. “Dinner rush?” I said.
John laughed. “I guess. Personally, the idea of ice cream makes me want to puke.”
“Nice.”
Behind me there was a couple in navy blue business suits, the woman wearing a little scarf that made her look like a flight attendant. I said they could go ahead, and they moved forward and ordered: a single chocolate chip milkshake that John made in a big metal cup, the sound deafening while the ice cream churned. The store smelled of sugar cones, sweet and waffley. He poured the shake into a paper cup, and they paid and left.
Now we were alone, and John blushed a little, looking at me.
“Do I get a free one?”
“Sure.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Bubblegum’s popular.” He pointed at the container: lots of pink bleeding around the gumballs. Next to it was something called Hawaiian Blue, which certainly was.
“Let’s concentrate on the brown family,” I said. “How about Toffee Crunch, how’s that?”
He dipped a tiny plastic spoon into the ice cream and offered it to me.
I tasted it. “Sold.”
“You mean given.”
“Right.”
He scooped the ice cream onto a cone and handed it over the counter. I licked it and looked at him. “How are things at home?” I said after a while.
He blushed again. “OK.”
“Going to the hospital tonight?”
He grimaced. “I have to work too late.” He put the scoop back in the water. “Are you?”
I shook my head. It wasn’t something I’d decided against, but all at once I knew it was true: I wasn’t going to go, I couldn’t bear to go, and I felt terrified by the knowledge. What if I felt this way again tomorrow? And on and on?
John was waiting for me to say something.
“I just can’t get myself to,” I told him. “Do you know what I mean? I know I should. I
know
I should. But I just can’t.” I took a bite of ice cream, and suddenly tears massed in my eyes and then covered my cheeks, making the ice cream in my mouth feel painfully cold. John passed me a napkin
across the counter and I handed him my cone, then dried my face and blew my nose. Here they were at last, my first tears since the accident, and it was shocking how little I felt: just the tiniest easing.
The door opened and a group of teenagers entered the store: boys in gigantic jeans cut off below the knee; girls in various examples of what I thought of as bra-strap dressing, tops and dresses that revealed the shoulder straps of black or light blue lingerie. “Eating on the job,” one of the boys said to John, and I recognized him as one of John’s friends.
“What’s up,” John said. He was blushing again.
“Ohhh,” said another of the boys.
“Shut up.” John handed me my cone and busied himself wiping down the counters.
The girls leaned against the ice cream case, ostensibly talking to each other but looking me over all the same. It was dispiriting to know I could pass for sixteen. I took a napkin from the dispenser and wrapped it around my cone. “Bye, John,” I said. “Thanks.”
When I was at the door he called my name, and I turned back. “I do know what you meant before,” he said. “I do.”
I waved and left. Walking by the wide glass windows, I saw the teenagers laughing and moving in to needle him. Then I felt the glow of Mike’s accident coming back, and I knew that in a moment their faces would fall, that the teasing would dissolve when they learned who I really was.
When I got home it was a little after seven, and visiting hours were still on. Mrs. Mayer was probably there, wondering where I was, and when eight o’clock came I started waiting for the phone to ring, for her to say again, in that casual voice, “Could you stop by tomorrow?” But nine came, and then ten, and the phone never rang.
The next day I had no trouble going. I got off work in the middle of the afternoon, and I went right over, spent an hour or so alone in the lounge and even got the full ten minutes for that hour in Mike’s room, with no one else wanting part of it. He was on his stomach, and as I stood there looking at his bare back, at the familiar scatter of freckles across his shoulders, I thought I was OK, I thought I’d be able to return and return, without any more moments like I’d had in front of John Junior.
When I got home I fixed myself some iced cranberry juice and got ready to sew. I set up my machine and threaded it; I got out my iron, filled it with distilled water, and plugged it in; I took the fabric for my mother’s
kitchen curtains and set it in folded stacks on the table. But I couldn’t get to work, and the reason was Mike’s back.
I kept seeing it. The pale skin and the freckles, the wiry hairs: all as familiar to me as parts of my own body. There was the broadness of his shoulders, the wide, wide span of his upper back. And he had a place a little lower down that was strangely sensitive: the slightest pressure on it made him flinch, but not in pain—more as if he’d been tickled or poked. I thought of that place and wondered if it had been affected neurologically by the accident, and all at once I was brought up short by the fact of what had happened to him.