Edited to 102
A Pee and a Poop at Midnight
by
Barry Rachin
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
Published by:
Barry Rachin on Smashwords
A Pee and a Poop at Midnight
Copyright © 2012 by Barry Rachin
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
These short stories represents a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
107 Degrees Fahrenheit
Kissing his sister goodbye in the lobby of the Bonanza Bus Terminal, Nicholas Holyfield was blind-sided by a wave of emotions. He hadn’t seen the tears coming, didn’t even have time to avert his puckered, soggy face. “Sorry.”
Mary Beth only smiled and wiped the wetness away with the heel of her hand. The visit to Providence lasted two days. The bus to Boston was boarding now. She pulled him close for a final hug and said half-jokingly, “If you meet a pretty coed at college, bring her along next time.” She nuzzled his cheek with her lips, turned and limped away, swinging her crippled, left leg in a sweeping arc as though the errant limb had a mind of its own.
Nicholas boarded the bus and sat next to a fat black woman, poorly dressed and smelling of body odor laced with Jean Naté. As he slumped down, the woman, who had been reading, looked up and smiled. One of the front teeth was capped in gold. Nicholas leaned slightly forward and peered out the window. Mary Beth was a good two hundred feet down the road headed in the direction of the East Side, her body bobbing up and down like a cork on rough, tidal water. The way she moved gave the false impression she was careening at a diagonal when, in fact, her forward progress was straight ahead.
More tears came and, this time, Nicholas couldn’t shut the spigot. Like a toddler bereft of its mother, he was sitting on a Boston-bound bus crying inconsolably. His shoulders heaved, the breath caught in jagged spasms. The black woman glanced up curiously, opened her mouth but then closed it without saying anything. She turned her attention back to a pamphlet printed on cheap, grainy stock. The driver shut the door and threw the shift into reverse. Moments later, they were leaving Providence, Rhode Island, heading north in the direction of the interstate. Nicholas felt something soft and fluffy rubbing insistently against his wrist. The black woman pressed a Kleenex into his hand and discreetly turned away.
The bus passed the statehouse exit; the ivory dome of the capitol building materialized and was gone in a blur. They entered Pawtucket with its grimy factories and mills. The mayor had been indicted for extortion and racketeering the previous year and was now somewhere out of state at a country club prison for white-collar criminals. His biggest regret wasn’t betraying the public trust but being careless enough to get caught. “My sister was hit by a car.” Nicholas spoke, not so much from a need to unburden himself, but to justify his lack of restraint.
“Dear God!” The black woman threw the pamphlet aside and stared at him. Her sympathy, though slightly theatrical, was genuine, not driven by idle curiosity. “She isn’t in a coma or on life support?”
Nicholas frowned and felt the skin on his cheek draw tight where the salty moistness had evaporated away. “No. The accident occurred last winter while jogging. A car skidded on black ice. Broke her leg in three places.”
“Driver drunk?”
Nicholas shook his head. “Not hardly. Just an old lady returning from church at twenty miles an hour in a residential area. The car skidded on the frozen road. No one was at fault.”
The black woman directed her eyes at her hands which were large and formless, devoid of jewelry except for a simple, gold band on the third finger of her left hand. “Why was your sister jogging in the middle of winter?”
Nicholas reached into his breast pocket and located a wallet from which he removed a newspaper clipping. Underneath a picture of Mary Beth dressed in a sweat suit with a medal hanging from her neck, the caption read: Collegiate track star places in first, NCCA professional meet. “That’s my sister.”
The black woman took the tattered paper and held it to the light. For a woman with hands like Stillson wrenches, she was remarkably gentle with the parchment-thin clipping. “I’m trying to recall,” she chuckled, “last time I was that thin, but my mind don’t travel quite that far back.” She handed the article back to him. “Where’d she run?”
“The track meet was in New Jersey - East Rutherford. Fifteen hundred meters.”
Nicholas had been to East Rutherford in February of 1990. He was twelve years old but still remembered the competition vividly. The athletes, especially the runners with their unwieldy, long legs - calves hewn from rock maple, bulging, muscular thighs. Glistening, sexless, sinewy bodies primed for one task: outpace the echo of the starter’s pistol from the sprinter’s block to finish line. Mary Beth’s curly brown hair was tied back with a single strand of blue ribbon, a matter of convenience rather than aesthetics. Her tanned, lightly freckled face pivoted to one side as the women settled into their respective lanes. On your mark! Get set!
“Mary Beth didn’t actually win. She came in third behind the Romanian, Doina Melinte, and Mary Slaney. The Romanian ran the 1500 meters in four minutes, seventeen seconds and set a new world record. My sister was only 8 seconds off the winning time.”
“Eight blinks of an eye!” The black woman said with a earthy grin. “Since the accident, she don’t race no more?”
“No,” Nicholas said softly, “she can hardly walk much less run.”
“My nephew, Delroy, got a club foot.” She held her paw of a hand up with the fingers skewed stiffly at an odd angle. “Like this.”
Looking at the stubby fingers made Nicholas slightly nauseous, and he regretted sitting next to the garrulous woman. “The bum leg taken aside,” the black woman rushed on, oblivious to Nicholas’ distress, “Delroy done good with his life. Works in an upholstery shop. Got married a few years back and has two healthy children.” She smoothed the front of her dress with the massive hands. “What does your sister do now she ain’t racing?”
“With the money from the insurance settlement she doesn’t have to work.”
Mary Beth turned professional in January, three months before the accident. Negotiating the size of the financial settlement, her lawyer estimated potential earnings (including commercial endorsements) at half a million dollars. The insurance company balked, arguing that, in her short-lived career, she hadn’t won any major races, and it was unclear whether the young woman would fulfill her athletic promise. For every Doina Melinte, there were half a hundred also-rans. Mary Beth’s lawyer threatened to push for a jury trial.
Check. Checkmate.
Despite all the legal maneuvering, the final settlement proved rather modest. Mary Beth paid her lawyer and invested the remainder in stocks. A month later, she moved to Providence, Rhode Island and took a studio apartment on the East Side.
“I meant,” the black woman clarified, “what does your sister do with her free time now that she can’t run anymore.”
“She makes custom wedding albums from fabrics and lace and also takes small orders for decorative brochures.”
When Nicholas arrived at the bus terminal on Friday, his sister was there to greet him. He hadn’t seen her in six months, since the fall when she moved south. Mary Beth had aged. Nothing dramatic. It wasn’t the smattering of gray hair or crow’s-feet dimpling the eyes. Rather, her wiry body had gone soft and sedentary. The hard-edged posturing was gone; she no longer looked like a competitive athlete. Worse yet, she didn’t care.
“Little brother!” she hugged him close and lead the way out of the bus terminal in the direction of her 89 Nova. Turning onto North Main Street, she shot up College Hill. Though the temperature was hovering in the low nineties, Mary Beth wore dungarees. She always wore pants or long dresses to hide the scars and ravaged muscles on her left leg. When she was leaving the hospital, an orthopedic doctor suggested further ‘cosmetic’ surgery, but she nixed the idea. “Leave well enough alone.”
A group of college students with backpacks and tanned faces passed in front of the car. “That deep sea diver remark,” Nicholas said, directing his words at the dirt-streaked windshield, “hurt Mom’s feelings. She cried for half an hour.”
The previous month, Mary Beth’s mother visited Providence. It had been six months since they had seen each other. Mrs. Holyfield was a short, round woman with close-cropped, dark hair. The short hair made her look heavier; to compensate, she wore loose-fitting shifts and baggy dresses which only compounded the problem. “Why do you cloister yourself away, avoiding family and friends?”
“Think of me as a deep sea diver coming up for air as slowly as possible so I don’t go get the bends or go crazy,” Mary Beth replied cryptically. Taking her mother’s hand, she squeezed it gently. “Don’t know how else to explain it.”
Mrs. Holyfield saw no connection between the question asked and the answer proffered. The remark frightened her. It was the first thing she talked about, returning home after the visit. “If your father were alive,” she confided petulantly to Nicholas, “he’d make Mary Beth go see a counselor.” “A psychiatrist!” she added just in case her son failed to grasp the magnitude of the problem.
In late March of the previous year, Mary Beth returned home from the rehabilitation center. Having run the 1500 meters in just over four minutes, it took half as much time to hobble sideways, one riser at a time, up a short flight of stairs to the second floor landing. She refused to answer the phone, would not go outdoors except to sit in the back yard staring morosely at the empty bird feeders. If neighbors appeared, she retreated back into the house.
A week passed. Mrs. Holyfield took Nicholas to the K-Mart near Beacon Circle and bought bird food - a mixture of black sunflower seeds, cracked corn and millet for the jays and cardinals, thistle for the finches plus blocks of greasy suet for the woodpeckers and other, insect feeders. “Hard to believe,” she said, letting the feathery-light thistle sift through her fingers, “there’s nourishment in such tiny seeds.”
Mrs. Holyfield stuffed the feeders to overflowing and placed a wedge of peanut butter suet in a rectangular, wire cage. “Except for the most common varieties, people don’t know their birds; the hard part is learning the differences among species - the downy woodpecker, let’s say, from its close relative, the ladder-back.” Mrs. Holyfield launched into an unsolicited and rather long-winded description of each bird’s physical attributes, distinctive markings, size and habits. She picked up a single thistle seed - an eighth of an inch long and the thickness of several sheaves of papers - and let it roll off the tip of her finger. “Or a goldfinch from a pine siskin. That’s a bit harder. But still, where’s the pleasure of bird watching if you don’t know what to look for? It’s like giving a house party and not bothering to remember your guests’ names.”
“I think,” Nicholas said warily, “your analogy’s a bit thin.”
“Yes, but you understand what I’m trying to say.”
Nicholas shook his head. He did, up to a point, understand the implicit message.
The next day when Mary Beth went to sit in the yard, her mother joined her. It was forty degrees, the ground muddy and lifeless. “A pair of cardinals were here earlier. A male and his brown mate. They only stayed a short time. I think the jays scared them off.” Mary Beth shrugged noncommittally. “And all the goldfinches have lost their color. The bright, lemony yellows have faded to greenish brown. It may be a seasonal thing - like deer molting in the spring.”
“Yes, probably,” Mary Beth said dully.
“Don’t stay out too long or you might catch a chill.” Mrs. Holyfield went back in the house, sat down at the kitchen table and began to cry. Upstairs in his bedroom, Nicholas placed a pillow over his head to drown out the sounds of his mother’s private anguish.
After supper he went to his sister’s room, knocked and let himself in. Mary Beth was lying on the bed with her hands wedged between her thighs in a modified fetal position. She didn’t bother to look up. The color was bleeding out of the evening sky, causing familiar objects to blend and blur. “Tell me what to do?” he whispered.
In the kitchen Mrs. Holyfield was drying the last of the supper dishes and humming a melody from the church hymnal:
Lamb of God, You take away
the sins of the world.
Have mercy on me.
“Tell me what to do to make your pain go away.”
Mary Beth continued to lie quietly on her side. A half hour later the spongy, gray light congealed into total darkness and Nicholas trudged quietly back to his own room.
After Mary Beth relocated to Providence, Mrs. Holyfield began talking in code. She would say peculiar things like, “I talked to Providence,...” when she could have just as easily said, “I spoke to your sister, Mary Beth, earlier and ...” Was she trying to transform the infirmity into an abstraction? To restore her daughter through linguistic alchemy?
The night before Nicholas went to see his sister, Mrs. Holyfield came into the room and sat quietly on the edge of the bed. The latest issue of The Audubon Society magazine nested in her ample lap. Nicholas was packing. Not that there was much in the overnight bag - a change of underwear, socks, a disposable razor, toothbrush and Sony Walkman. He pulled the zipper shut and placed the bag on the floor.
“What’re you wearing?” Mrs. Holyfield asked. Nicholas pointed to a pair of cotton slacks and a navy shirt draped over a chair. “Yes, that will do nicely.” She drifted to the open window and looked out into the back yard. The bird feeders were empty. She never filled them after the middle of April. “Did you know,” she tapped the magazine lightly against the window sill, “that in winter, a black-capped chickadee can raise its body temperature to 107º Fahrenheit?”
Mrs. Holyfield was constantly collecting fragments of incidental trivia from the various birding magazines and newsletters she subscribed to. Familiar to her melodramatic pronouncements, Nicholas stared at his mother with a dumb expression. “Their bodies become feathery furnaces, internal combustion systems to ward off the extreme cold.” She came away from the window and sat down again on the bed. “At night while they’re resting, their temperature can drop as much as thirty degrees - a survival mechanism to preserve energy for daytime foraging.” Mrs. Holyfield smoothed Nicholas’ navy blue shirt with the palm of her hand. “When you’re in Providence, don’t say anything that might stir up bad memories.” She waved a finger preemptively. “Not that I doubt your good judgment in all such matters.”
All such matters. Nicholas had no idea what his mother meant by the odd remark and strongly doubted that she did either. “No, Mother, I won’t say anything that might upset Mary Beth.”
The previous winter on the third of February, two feet of snow fell through the day; a wicked, bone-chilling nor’easter sent the wind chill plunging to fifteen below zero. Nicholas, at his mother’s insistence, dug a path out to the bird feeder and filled the trough with fresh seeds. Only the chickadees - apparently, hunger took precedence over fear - were brazen enough to feed while he was standing there adjusting his gloves. With Nicholas a mere twenty feet away, they flew up to the lip of the feeder and pecked away at the ice-covered corn and sunflower seeds.
But where were the larger, normally more aggressive birds? The red-winged blackbirds? The crows with their lacquered, silver-green necks? The bedraggled mourning doves, the woodpeckers, jays and cardinals? Nicholas took a step closer. Several chickadees flitted away but were quickly replaced by a fresh batch of voracious birds. He moved closer still. The diminutive birds never flinched. Another two steps nearer; he was ten, perhaps only eight, feet from the feeder and, with the powdery snow swirling up around their black heads, Nicholas could see the birds in fine detail. The patch of white stretching from the eye around the side of the face; the narrow, gray edging on the wing feathers.
Nicholas turned and stared at the house. In the upstairs bedroom window Mrs. Holyfield was gesturing frantically, imploring him to come in from the cold. For a fleeting instant, Nicholas had the impulse to hunker down in the soft, insular snow and, if only for an hour or so until the light seeped totally out of the western sky, renounce humanity. But by then the birds would be gone. Even the chickadees had better sense than to remain exposed through the bitter night. A blast of frigid air caught Nicholas under the rib cage, knifing through his parka and flannel shirt. He picked up the shovel and empty seed pail and trudged back to the house.
Mary Beth pulled up at a traffic light, reached out with a free hand and tousled his hair. A wistful melancholy swept over her face only to be replaced by a good-natured grin. “About the deep sea diver remark - it was meant as an allegory. I didn’t get the bends or go crazy.” Turning onto a side street, she pulled over to the curb in front of a three-story, wooden structure and got out of the car dragging her foot stiffly. “How do you feel about sleeping on an inflatable mattress?”
Nicholas shrugged. He wasn’t quite sure what to say - or feel. “All that money in mutual funds and you can’t afford a sleep sofa?”
“It’s a studio apartment,” Mary Beth quipped. “Where the hell am I going to put a sleep sofa? On the goddamn fire escape?” All bitterness dissipated; the spell was broken. They went into the building.
The apartment was, indeed, quite small. A room with a bay window that fronted on a gentrified, tree-lined street served as a combination living room-bedroom. A tidy kitchenette and bathroom were connected at the far end. The furnishings were meager - a twin bed with a maple headboard, two end tables and a cheap stereo – vintage, Salvation Army decor. Despite the monkish austerity, the apartment had a cozy, lived-in feel. Nicholas went into the bathroom and threw cold water on his face. When he came out of the bathroom, Mary Beth said, “We’ll get something to eat and then feed Elliot.”
“Who’s Elliot?”
“She grabbed her keys and headed for the door. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Most of the artsy college types had cleared out for the summer leaving a mishmash of locals and diehard, summer students. A saxophonist with a goatee and dark sunglasses was playing Up Jumped Spring in a breathy legato at the corner of Thayer Street; a hat with dollar bills lay at his feet. In his sister’s presence, Nicholas had always felt a sense of reverence bordering on the mystical. At first, he associated the feeling with her athletic success, but, following the injury, realized that he had always felt that way. He experienced it now sitting opposite her in the restaurant. “Do you miss running?” As soon as he spoke, Nicholas realized the blunt foolishness of his remark.
Mary Beth’s head was cocked to one side. She was still listening to the saxophonist in the street. The player ran a series of dissonant, polytonal progressions then deftly modulated into another bebop tune. “I still compete, after a fashion. At night, in my dreams, I run a mean quarter mile. And that’s without the rigors of daily training!” Glancing up, she saw that Nicholas was flustered, his lips moving inaudibly. “The best kept secret in track and field,” she continued impassively. “is that East Rutherford was my high water mark. It was a fluke; nothing more. I peaked and was already past my prime.”
“You had some good races after that,” Nicholas protested.
Mary Beth’s features dissolved in a dark smile. “Half the races I never even placed, and in the few that I did, I was too far off the winning time to be considered competitive.” She put her hand under his chin and lifted his face so their eyes met. “It’s over, Nicky. Except in my dreams, I don’t run anymore.”
Walking back to the apartment, Mary Beth detoured through a park. She knelt down beside a scruffy plant with a thick stem and wide oval leaves. Withdrawing a jackknife from her pocket, she cut the stem, and a viscous, opalescent liquid resembling Elmer’s Glue bubbled out, staining her fingertips white. “Milkweed,” Mary Beth replied in response to Nicholas’ probing eyes. She put the jackknife away and they retraced their steps.
On the porch in the rear of the apartment, was a cardboard box. The sides had been cut away and replaced with a screen mesh. Inside was a caterpillar, its bulbous body ringed with yellow and black stripes. “You raise caterpillars?”
“Butterflies,” Mary Beth clarified, lifting the top of the box. “Monarchs. The caterpillars are just a means to an end.” She removed a wilted stem - most of the leaves had been chewed away to nothing - and lowered the fresh offering into a container of water wedged at the bottom of the box. She pivoted the plant so several leaves from an adjacent stem were touching - a bridge from one diminished food source to the next. Replacing the cover, they went back into the apartment.
“Where did you find your little friend?” Nicholas asked.
“In the same park where we got the milkweed. Two, white eggs, no bigger than a grain of salt, were stuck to the underside of a leaf.” She went into the bathroom. When she emerged, Mary Beth was wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. “There’s a second caterpillar; it’s already in a cocoon and should be emerging soon. Perhaps you’ll get to see it before you go.”
She handed him the air mattress and Nicholas began inflating it with a bicycle pump. The sun having gone down, the heat in the cramped apartment was finally beginning to abate. Only now when she removed the cotton bathrobe, could Nicholas see his sister’s left leg. The deformity wasn’t as bad as he feared. Some tissue missing, the lower portion below the knee twisted, ever-so-slightly, out of alignment. “What’s the purpose,” he asked “of raising butterflies?”
Mary Beth was smoothing her brown hair with a rather expensive-looking, ivory-handled brush. The brush and butterflies appeared the only extravagances she allowed herself. “Marauding insects and harsh weather often destroy the eggs. Raising them in captivity helps even the odds they’ll survive to adulthood and reproduce.” She pulled the brush through her hair, the bristles tugging the tight curls to full length before springing back to hug her scalp. “There’s even a wasp that bores tiny holes in the monarch cocoons, injecting her own eggs in the growing host. The eggs eventually hatched and devoured the half-formed butterfly. When the cocoon split apart, the wrong insect, depending on your point of view, emerges.”
The mattress fully inflated, Nicholas laid it on the floor next to his sister's bed. She got some sheets and a light blanket. “I doubt you’ll need that,” she said pointing to the blanket.
“No, I shouldn’t think so.” Nicholas went into the bathroom, showered and changed into his pajamas.
“Anything else I can get you?”
He lay down on the thin mattress. It was surprisingly comfortable. “No I’m fine.”
Mary Beth flicked out the light and rolled over on her side away from him.
Despite the muggy, midsummer weather, the tiny apartment was reasonably airy. An occasional car passed in the street, accompanied by the incessant drone of crickets. The studio apartment felt infinitely comfortable; it offered safe passage through the predicament of present uncertainties. Stripped of all worldly luxuries and material excesses, except for an ivory-handled brush, it helped ‘even the odds’. “A mausoleum,” Nicholas said without prefacing the remark, as though in response to a conversation already in progress. “Mom made a goddamn shrine of your bedroom.”
Mary Beth groaned and lay flat on her back. “She put all your medals and trophies on a shelf,” Nicholas confided. “Even had the snapshot of you with Doina Melinte blown up and hung on the wall. It’s so God-awful morbid!”
Mary Beth stretched her hand over the edge of the bed until it came to rest on his face. The feathery touch went through his body like a benediction. “She can’t help it.” The hand brushed him a second time and disappeared. Shortly, he heard his sister's regular breathing. She was sound asleep.
Tell me what to do to make your pain go away.
In late March, the day Nicholas visited Mary Beth’s room and found her lying on the bed with hands sandwiched between her thighs, his best intentions counted for nothing. All his furtive prayers produced no benefit. During those sullen, wintry days, he could do no more to help his sister than his mother with her blustery chatter. Now this pilgrimage to Providence - but for what purpose? A social visit? An act of atonement for having done so little at a time when so much was required? Before dozing off, a phantasmagoric image flitted across Nicholas’ fading consciousness. He saw Elliot rear up vertically, while gripping the milkweed stem with the rear portion of his body. Like an automated, spring-loaded mechanism, the caterpillar launched his jaws kamikaze-style at the leathery leaf, hardly bothering to masticate the soggy pulp before swallowing. Chop. Chop. Chop. The attack was grim, relentless.
In the morning Mary Beth showed Nicholas the chrysalis. Mint green and wrinkled like a bloated raisin, the cocoon hung by a single thread in the topmost corner of the butterfly box. Elliot had shifted from the shriveled milkweed stalk to the fresh offering and was weaving and bobbing at the meaty leaf like an overweight, punch-drunk fighter. The caterpillar had grown noticeably overnight. “The larvae feed on the milkweed plants and produce a bitter alkaloid that’s distasteful to other birds and predators. Each fall the butterflies migrate south to Florida and Mexico.”
“Here’s the tricky part.” She replaced the lid, taking special care not to jostle the green sack. “The slightest trauma and the butterfly emerges deformed.”
“Deformed,” he said, wondering if she caught the implicit irony. “How long do they live?”
“Two years.”
At ten o’clock there was a knock at the door. A young woman with blonde hair and dishwater-blue eyes stood in the doorway. Mary Beth brought her into the kitchen, sat her down at the table and handed her a manila folder from which the woman removed a pamphlet slightly larger than a small book. The pages were wrapped in a stiff, expensive looking covering - eggshell white with flecks of blue and reddish purple. A single strand of crimson floss ran through the spine holding the contents intact. “Shall we say 200 copies?” The blonde woman seemed pleased.
“I’ll have them ready in a week.”
“About the cost... ”
“I quoted you a fair price,” Mary Beth parried the remark deftly. “My costs are the same no matter whose poetry I bind.”
“Two hundred copies,” the blonde repeated without further quibbling and went out the door into the bright, morning light. Mary Beth made a note on a slip of paper and placed it, along with the manila folder, in a drawer. Later that morning at a graphic arts store near the municipal court building, she purchased supplies for the blonde woman’s pamphlets. On the ride home, she stopped at a bridal boutique on Wickendon Street. The owner had sold two satin, wedding albums over the weekend and placed an order for several more.
After lunch they assembled 50 of the pamphlets. Using a paper cutter, Mary Beth showed Nicholas how to trim the decorative coverings to size. “The unusual blue and purple flecks are seed husks tossed into the mush before the paper is cold-pressed to its proper thickness and left to dry.”
Running a length of linen thread through a ball of beeswax, she demonstrated how to sew the booklet signatures together, pushing the needle through the paper from the innermost fold to the back. Mary Beth creased the individual pages with a bone folder and collated while Nicholas used a carpenter’s awl to punch holes in the spine. By three in the afternoon a hefty pile of poetry was scattered over the length of the table. “Enough for today,” Mary Beth announced throwing the bone folder aside.
Later that night, Nicholas said, “If you’d tripled the price, the woman would have placed the order.”
It was almost midnight and pitch dark; the crickets were in rare form. “Yes, I suppose so.” Mary Beth giggled at the queer notion, her soft, musical laughter rolling out of her throat and resonating in the blackened corners of the tidy room. A group of Brown students returning from the last show at the Avon Cinema passed by their window, hooting and jeering. They were intoxicated - not with liquor, but the warm weather and their own, unquenchable youth.
“Mother has her birds to look after,” Nicholas said, “and you have Elliot.”
By now the Brown students had disappeared down the street, their joyful exuberance swallowed up by the rowdy crickets and steamy, night air. “Maybe that’s what it’s all about,” his sister murmured. ‘Looking out for each other, evening the odds.”
“I’m going to tell Mom to dismantle the shrine,” Nicholas said, the last, few words catching awkwardly in his throat. “And I’ll explain that the deep sea diver remark was a figurative slip of the tongue.”
“Yes, do that.”
“The picture with you and Doina will go up in the attic.”
“Or, preferably, out with the trash,” She was leaning far over the side of the bed. Though he could not see his sister’s face in the darkness, Nicholas could feel her warm breath on his cheek. “What I’m doing her in this apartment,...it’s not a life,” Mary Beth whispered. “It’s only a beginning and nothing more.” There was a long silence. “A person must start somewhere.”
In the morning before leaving, Mary Beth said, “Mom’s birthday is next month. I thought I’d surprise her and come up to Boston for a week. Is there anything she could use?”
“She dropped her binoculars last week and cracked the lens.” Mrs. Holyfield owned an Eagle Optics model featuring nitrogen purged fogproofing.
“Say no more!”
Nicholas went out onto the porch to say goodbye to Elliot. A gooey puddle stained the lower left-hand corner of the butterfly box - an afterbirth of sorts. The cocoon was in tatters and an orange and black monarch, its moist, newly-formed wings closed together, was resting on the topmost leaf. Oblivious to everything, Elliot continued his eating frenzy.
Mary Beth removed the lid and placed her hand under the butterfly’s slender legs. “Problem is, we don’t know how long he’s been free of the cocoon. Once the wings dry he’ll have the urge to fly, so we need to get him out of the box.” The insect stumbled onto an outstretched finger. She lifted him gently from the enclosure and went down the backstairs into the sun-drenched yard.
“Did you want to hold him?”
Nicholas shook his head. He was too shocked by the transformation. The butterfly, which was easily three times the length of the wispy chrysalis, flexed its moist wings several times, laying them flat on a horizontal plane. Another five minutes passed. The insect hardly moved as the wings gradually dried and stiffened. Suddenly, in a frenetic burst, it flew straight up in the air and was gone from sight.
“If you come again,” Mary Beth flashed her low-keyed, convoluted smile, “I can’t promise such a spectacular ending to your stay.”
Nicholas had a dream.
He was in the mountains west of Mexico City. The trees were painted reddish brown with millions of monarchs. Shimmering showers, molten firestorms of burnt umber and black. His head rocked forward, eyes opened. Just as abruptly, the millennial dream came to an abrupt end. Nicholas had dozed off on the black woman’s fleshy shoulder. “Excuse me.”
“You looked so tired, I didn’t have the heart to wake you,” she said. The gold-capped tooth caught a burst of noonday sunlight and flamed in her mouth like spontaneous combustion.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “My sister raises monarch butterflies.” He told her about Elliot and the butterfly they released earlier in the day. The bus passed through Sharon and Canton on the Massachusetts south shore. The Blue Hills loomed into sight. Another half hour and they would be entering downtown Boston. Nicholas couldn’t stop talking about the butterflies. The black woman was an eager listener. She shook her head, asked intelligent and thoughtful questions and even laughed when he described how the newly hatched insect rested quietly on Mary Beth’s finger. “Well, imagine that!”
“The longest recorded flight for a tagged adult is eighteen hundred miles from Ontario to the American Southwest.”
“Eighteen hundred miles!” The black woman exclaimed, stunned by the improbable statistic. “Wherever did you learn such a thing?”
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A Heart Yes, a Waltz No
Dr. Stanley Gilford, chief cardiologist at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, was not some mind-in-the-gutter degenerate. He never rented dirty movies - hadn’t bought a Playboy or Penthouse since his college days. More to the point, there were scads of desirable woman - nurses and technicians - who he saw daily at the hospital; he felt no compulsion to undress them with his eyes, to imagine lewd and lascivious trysts. And yet, here he was sitting at the counter of the Central Ave Diner in Pawtucket, Rhode Island indulging his sexual fantasies. In this latest installment, Ruby, the head waitress, was flitting about the restaurant dressed in black, see-through panties and tasseled pasties. The previous week she sported a dominatrix’s leather and chains. Since first coming to the Pawtucket diner six months earlier, he discovered that the erotic possibilities and permutations were endless. Still, it was not his fault. The waitress was a sorceress; she had put a hex on him.
“The usual?” Ruby eased Dr. Gilford’s mug across the counter, filling it with steaming, black coffee. Less than two feet away behind the counter, her hazel eyes never rose above his Adam’s apple, as though the physical effort to lift her head might provoke an hernia. Her pearly skin was flawless, the blond hair gathered at the nape with a hardwood comb. Midriff spilling over skintight jeans, the woman - she had to be at least thirty-five - exuded a flinty, hardscrabble loveliness undefiled by age.
“Yes, thank you.” Dr. Gilford had a triple bypass scheduled at 10 a.m. then a round of consultations. Afterwards, he would go back to the office to see private patients - a brutal and demanding regimen. For the next fifteen minutes though, he could thoroughly relax and enjoy his meal. What intrigued him most about the tight-lipped blond was the contrast between her perfunctory way with customers - they could collectively and without regard to race, creed or color, all go straight to Hell - and the great care she paid to the food.
Ring! The cook had a small bell which he tapped with the palm of his hand each time an order was ready. The breakfasts - two ham and egg specials, a stack of blueberry pancakes and order of poached - for the truckers crammed into the end booth were done. Snatching the first plate, she ran the rest up the inner curve of her left arm well past the elbow. Ring! Ring!
“Who’s got poached?” She set the plates on the table. As she turned back in the direction of the grill, a heavyset man with a walrus moustache grabbed her arm and muttered something under his breath.
“Only in your dreams, Romeo,” she replied. The heavyset man chuckled and released his grip.
At the cash register, Ruby made change and set a family of five up near the door. A toddler upended a glass of milk. She cleared the mess and went back to the counter where an elderly man with a face like a dried prune complained that his ‘eggs-over-easy’ were runny. “Ain’t gonna eat this soggy crap!” The old man pressed his wrinkled lips tightly together and twisted his scrawny neck to one side. Ruby hustled the plate back to the cook, who cracked two more eggs and threw them on the grill.
Ring! At the end booth, the heavyset fellow tried to revive his tasteless repartee, and the family of five finished their meal, leaving a huge mess. Sneering at no one in particular, the elderly man wolfed down his eggs and hurried off without leaving a tip.
“More coffee?” Ruby asked.
“Yes, thank you.” She filled the cup. “I’m Stan.”
Ruby gazed over his head at the row of paper plates describing the luncheon specials tacked to the far wall. “Got a job?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“What type?”
“Cardiac.” She stared at him dully. “A heart surgeon,” Dr. Gilford clarified.
“Oh, yeah.” She went off to check the food on the grill.
The product of liberal-minded Episcopalians, Stanley Gilford grew up in a tony section of Connecticut, peopled by bankers, lawyers, computer executives and the like. Blue bloods - well connected and, except for a few Johnny-come-latelies - backed by ‘old’ money. After high school, Stan chose the Brown University medical program. He met his future wife, Bernice, while interning at Rhode Island Hospital. They were divorced five years now.
Bernice, the love of his life. In later years, Bernice, the trial lawyer who let the courtroom invade their bedroom - who openly acknowledged the brain’s preeminence over the heart and all other, ephemeral organs. In the summer of 1991, a physician in the cardiac unit of Fatima Hospital, Dr. Nesbitt, was sued for malpractice by the widow of a former patient. An improbable twist of fate, Stan’s wife was spearheading the prosecution. “Perhaps you could remove yourself from the Nesbitt case?” Stan said. By this time their marriage was characterized by polite formalities.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Dr. Nesbitt’s a colleague.”
“I’ve nothing against the man,” she said frigidly. “It’s strictly a legal thing.”
Something went awry in his brain - synapses misfiring, imploding and setting off multiple chain reactions. Neurological fission. Stan headed for the hall closet where they stored the 36-inch Pullman suitcase. “I’ll pack my bags and be gone in the morning. But don’t take it personal - it’s a doctor thing.”
During the trial, the prosecution created the appearance of wrongdoing and incompetence. Dr. Nesbitt‘s flawless record counted for nothing as did the fact that the deceased had been steadily losing ground to obstructive pulmonary disease long before coming under the physician’s care.
The appearance of wrongdoing.
Through legal artifice, smoke and mirrors, Bernice persuaded the jurors to see Dr. Nesbitt as a bumbling fool. The doctor’s physical appearance only bolstered the unflattering portrait. Tall and ungainly, his pilly, brown socks trailed around his ankles. The socks you noticed; the IQ of 130 and encyclopedic, medical mind were not so readily apparent. In the end, the jury found in favor of the widow. The heart doctor protested the decision and lost again on appeal.
Limbo: the abode of just and innocent souls on the border of hell.
When Stanley Gilford was a child, a pet spaniel got hit by a car. After the accident, the dog limped downstairs to the basement where it lay listlessly on a throw rug for the next six months. Its spirit and hind limbs sufficiently mended, the animal finally hobble outdoors. A year after the divorce and his friend’s trial, Stan Gilford - his six months having long since expired - was still cowering on a metaphorical throw rug in the basement of his mind. Drifting aimlessly in a hellish limbo, he stopped attending church, let his membership in the tennis club lapse, swore off women altogether.
Dr. Gilford was away at a medical convention the following week - a new laser treatment for cardiac stenosis. When he returned to the Central Ave Diner, another women, a chain-smoking redhead, was serving the food. “Where’s Ruby?”
“Sinus infection. Won’t be back until the end of the week.”
For the next three days, Dr. Gilford ate all his meals at the hospital cafeteria. The next time he visited the diner, Ruby was back behind the counter. Dr. Gilford took a seat next to a well-dressed man in his sixties reading the Providence Journal Bulletin. Like weeds on a bone-dry, August lawn, twin tufts of hair sprouted from the old man’s nostrils. “Water’s the thing, you know,” the older man said, turning to Dr. Gilford with an easy smile.
“How’s that?”
The man thumped the newspaper with a stubby index finger. “Politicians worry about air quality, global warming, holes in the ozone, hazardous waste. But talk to any self-respecting ecologist and they’ll bend your ear about the shortage of potable water in third-world countries. Am I right or what?”
Dr. Gilford didn’t have to consider the answer. “Yes, that’s true.” At the grill, the cook was mutilating an order of bacon. He always cooked the bacon too long, and it came away with the consistency of cardboard. The fact that they favored extra-thin strips didn’t help matters.
“Desalinization,” the old man said. “A great idea in theory, but those underdeveloped countries that need the technology most can least afford it.”
Dr. Gilford agreed implicitly with his point of view. What future was there in desalination when people living in coastal areas of Africa and Asia were dying of endemic diseases such as cholera and typhus - both infectious organisms easily spread by contaminated drinking water?
The older man grinned broadly, wiped his mouth with a napkin and fumbled in his pants pocket for a wallet. “Money’s on the counter, Ruby.” With a half-dozen orders bubbling on the grill, the waitress didn’t bother to look up. Grabbing a topcoat, the old man nodded pleasantly and headed out the door.
Twenty minutes passed. Except for a booth full of townies dawdling over tepid coffee, the Central Ave Diner was empty. “Planning a vacation?” Ruby leaned over the counter with her pretty face no more than an inch from his ear.
Dr. Gilford looked up from the travel brochure he had spread on the Formica surface. “Copper Canyon. It’s in the hill country of northern Mexico.” He handed the brochure to Ruby. On the cover was a picture of a steep canyon with a waterfall cascading over rocky ledges down to a boulder-strewn riverbed. “In September, I’m going on a 5-day backpacking trip with a friend from the hospital.”
“White water rafting and horseback rides into traditional, Tarahumara Indian country,” Ruby read in a gravelly monotone. She flipped the brochure over. There were pictures of dark-skinned Indians, a Catholic mission constructed in adobe style, and hikers trekking through a verdant valley. “Not taking the wife?”
“I’m divorced.”
Ruby bent so far over the counter, her breasts were almost in his face. Dr. Gilford could smell her musky perfume - a pungent scent reminiscent of English Leather. She held her left hand up, splaying the unadorned fingers. “Welcome to the lonely hearts club.”
Dr. Gilford retrieved the pamphlet. “Not a very exclusive organization according to statistics. Would you like to go out some time?”
Ruby’s features went slack. “You mean a date?” He shook his head up and down. The waitress let out a loud belly laugh, a cross between a guffaw and a whooping, straight-from-the-gut howl. Several of the customers looked up in mild surprise.
Dr. Gilford turned the color of fried kielbasa. “A simple yes or no would have sufficed.”
Her face remained neutral. “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.”
He handed her his business card. “You can catch me at the office anytime after noon most days.”
She thrust the card into her jeans pocket without looking at it and plucked a pencil from behind her ear. “So, what’ll it be - besides a romantic interlude, that is?”
Had he totally lost his mind? Cruising down route 95 toward the hospital, Dr. Gilford felt his face flush hotly for a second time in less than an hour. He should have simply shown her the brochure of Copper Canyon and let it go at that. Not that there was any predicament, no reason for self-flagellation. The waitress’ erotic good looks taken aside, Dr. Gilford understood perfectly well his own, hidden agenda: Ruby’s appeal resided in the fact that, in virtually every respect - physical, emotional, intellectual and aesthetic - she was the exact opposite of his ex-wife.
He needed a strategy to recreate a semblance of order in his out of control, personal life. The Central Ave Diner was off-limits. A Newport Creamery two miles up the road served breakfast; if he didn’t want to eat at the hospital cafeteria, he could stop there. As an additional precaution, he would instruct his receptionist to run interference; when Ruby called and was rebuffed a half dozen times, she’d get the not-so-subtle message. The burning pressure, like acid reflux, began to seep out of his chest. He felt restored, more his disciplined, purposeful self.
Around 11p.m. as he was preparing for bed, the phone rang. It was Ruby. “How’d you get my home phone?”
“It was on the card underneath the office number,” Ruby replied. “Still want to go out with me?”
He did not even pause to consider the question. “I’d like that very much,” he replied meekly.
“Here are the ground rules: if you come back to the diner, don’t expect preferential treatment. I’ll serve your number two specials and refill your coffee mug once at no additional charge. When you’re finished eating, you pay the bill and go about your business.”
Dr. Gilford placed a hand over his eyes and squeezed hard. “OK.”
“I’ve had two cesarean sections and breast fed both my kids; with all the wear and tear, these knockers ain’t holding up so well. Just so there won’t be any illusions, I ain’t half as nice to look at in the buff as I am with clothes on.” “Not that my naked body should be of any interest to you,” she added quickly, “cause I don’t put out. Not on the first date, not on the twentieth.”
His head was spinning. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’re losing me.”
“You don’t get no sex without marrying me.”
Dr. Gilford considered the double negative and was almost tempted to tell her what the sentence actually meant. “I asked you for a date, not a commitment for life.” He shifted the phone to the other ear. “What are you doing Friday night?”
When he hung up the phone, Dr. Gilford was ecstatic, euphoric - out of his mind with joyful expectation; which is to say, he was more confused than ever. He went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Ruby’s disembodied voice - as abrasive and bruising as 50-grit, garnet sandpaper - kept floating back to him. Dr. Gilford climbed out of bed and wandered into the kitchen. On the oak table was the brochure from Copper Canyon. Next to a picture of several Indians, their skin so dark it might have been rubbed with black earth from the rain forest, was the following:
“Tata Dios made us as we are. We have only been as you see us... there is no devil here. Only when people do bad things does He (God) get angry. We make much beer and dance much, in order that he may remain content; but when people talk much, and go around fighting, then He gets angry and does not give us rain.”
Tarahumara Shaman 1893
Dr. Gilford desperately needed to visit a place where the devil hadn’t made any appreciable inroads; where poverty, in the modern sense, was a relatively new phenomena; where people drank tesgüino, corn beer, and danced to appease the Gods so there would be sufficient rain for a plentiful harvest. An amorphous lump welled up in his throat and began to throb like a vestigial heart.
At forty-two, only now was he beginning - at the most crude and fundamental level - to understand certain basic truths, truths which had eluded him for the better part of a lifetime. He went back to bed and, almost immediately, fell into a thoroughly restful sleep.
On Saturday night Dr. Gilford drove to the working class, Mount Pleasant section of Providence past rows of three-decker tenements. The homes were older, some in disrepair. Not a bad neighborhood; certainly not the best.
“Hey, this here’s a swell car!” Ruby noted as they drove toward the downtown district. She ran her hand over the Lexus’ leather upholstery. “A heck of a lot nicer than my bag of bolts.”
They ate dinner at the Biltmore. Following the Caesar salad, the waiter returned with two cut glass bowls of lemon sorbet. “To cleanse the palette,” the waiter explained in response to Ruby’s puzzled expression and hurried back to the kitchen.
Ruby tasted the tart ice and put her spoon down. She wore a tight-fitting green dress with heels that showed her supple legs to good advantage. On anyone else, the outfit might have seemed tawdry, but the absence of makeup or jewelry threw the focus on her haughty good looks. No pretense or posturing - just a woman on the front side of middle-age perfectly at ease in her lovely body. Stan sensed that, if not a single waiter or guest were present in the dining room of the Providence Biltmore, Ruby would still cross the floor with the same blithe flair. By whatever name - duende, panache, esprit - she possessed it in ample supply.
After the meal, they went into the lounge for drinks. “You’re obviously not dating me for my brains,” Ruby said, her voice as dry as the wine she was sipping, “and the prospect of sex doesn’t loom large on the horizon. So what’s really happening here?”
Dr. Gilford thought a moment then gestured with his eyes at a youngish woman, a brunette talking energetically with a man of about the same age. The woman was impeccably dressed in a blue serge suit with pearl earrings and a matching pendent on a braided, silver chain. “That executive type sitting at the table in the corner - what do you make of her?”
“A classy dame with more than a few bucks in the bank.”
“Or an upwardly mobile, workaholic - opinionated, self-serving, opportunistic. A woman who won’t give you the right time of day unless she’s billing at 150 bucks an hour.”
Ruby leaned forward over the narrow table, kissed him on the ear and whispered, “You sure are a strange one!” As she pulled away, she let her lips brush the length of his cheek.
Dr. Gilford lifted his glass and stared at the transparent liquid without drinking. “I examined a five year-old boy this morning with a hole in his heart.”
The boy had come to the office with both parents. He was underweight and sat listlessly while Dr. Gilford applied the gray blood pressure cuff and squeezed the rubber ball. With a wheezing sound the influx of air swelled the cuff into a turgid mass, and he stalked the thready pulse as it surged at 160 and skittered into oblivion at 110. He touched the flat disc to the narrow chest and studied the percussive sounds. There was the systolic contraction followed by the less intense diastolic release. And now a third sound - whispery soft, ominous. The raspy backflow of oxygenated blood spraying in the wrong direction; the fractured music of nature gone haywire.
An operation to repair the faulty valve had been scheduled in March but abruptly cancelled. Blood chemistries showed evidence of possible kidney damage. “When your son’s condition stabilizes,” he counseled the anxious parents, “we’ll consider less invasive options.” Dr. Nesbitt’s bitter lesson was still fresh in his mind; too prudent to risk killing the child while repairing the damaged valve, Dr. Gilford finessed the pallid boy into a purgatory of chronic illness.
When his condition stabilizes ...
“A human heart is not suppose to beat in three-four time,” he confided, sipping his gin and tonic. “Wrong cadence! A waltz yes, a heart no.”
As they walked back to the parking garage, Dr. Gilford wrapped his hand around Ruby’s waist, and her hips drifted close to his body. When they reached her apartment he kissed her on the lips. She kept her mouth closed and moved away almost immediately. “The sorbet taken aside, I’d a swell time.”
She was already halfway up the stairs before he could think to ask, “Can I call you again?”
“Sure, I’d like that.” Ruby went straight into the building without looking back.
On Monday morning, Dr. Gilford told the receptionist, “Any calls from Ruby, put her through immediately; if I’m already on the phone, let me know she’s holding.”
“But I thought - ”
“Disregard,” Dr. Gilford blustered, waving his hand abruptly in the air, “any previous instruction to the contrary and put the woman through.”
The receptionist eyed him curiously. “Whatever you wish.”
Later that night he called Ruby at home. “What are you doing this weekend?” She said she was free. “This time you choose.”
“Dersu Usala,” she replied almost before the last words left his mouth.
“How’s that?”
“It’s a Russian foreign film playing at the Avon. One week only. I’d like to see it.”
Dr. Gilford had expected something a bit more mundane, blue collar. “Yes, well that’s fine.”
“The film’s in subtitles so you might want to bring reading glasses.”
A waitress with a chastity belt and penchant for foreign flicks. The relationship was getting weirder by the minute. “I don’t wear reading glasses.” Dr. Gilford hung up the phone.
Friday afternoon, Dr. Gilford picked Ruby up around six. Arriving a half hour early, the line in front of the ticket window already snaked up the street to the end of the block. “It’s a cult film about a Mongolian hunter, who leads an expedition into the Siberian wilderness,” Ruby said. “They bring it back every so many years. The crowds keep growing. Mostly Brown students and the hoity-toity, East Side set.”
In front of them was a skinny girl with blue hair and a silver hoop in her nose. “You’ve seen the movie before?” Dr. Gilford asked.
“Three times.”
The light went on in the ticket window and the line surged forward. “With your ex-husband?”
Ruby shook her head violently. “His idea of a culturally uplifting experience is sipping boilermakers at the Willow Street Tap. She reached out, grabbed his hand and gave it a playful squeeze. “My ex-husband is a Central Falls wise guy. The less said the better.”
A Central Falls wise guy. Dr. Gilford was familiar with the type. The mental cretins with five pounds of gold jewelry dangling from their necks and wrists; tough guys and tough guy wannabes who punctuated every sentence with a certain, ubiquitous four-letter word and gesticulated wildly when they talked - a barbaric, sign language for the morally impaired. As a rule, they didn’t spend much time on College Hill or frequent the Avon Cinema.
“After the divorce,” Ruby interrupted his reveries, “weekends were the hardest. A waitress took sick, I was thankful to pull an extra shift just not to be alone. One Memorial Day weekend, I came up here and was wandering the streets like some half-crazed bag lady, and what do you think was featured at the Avon Cinema?” She pointed at the marquee.
Throughout his sheltered, college years, Stan had been dismissive of ‘working class’, blue-collar types - the depth of their feelings, sincerity and conviction - as if human virtue were a function of culture rather than innate character. Listening to Ruby’s frank confession left him feeling like an elitist snob. An emotional fraud. Again the line heaved and contracted as people ahead trickled into the theater. “Funny thing is,” Ruby added, “I don’t choose the movies. They choose me.”
The skinny girl with the hoop in her nose turned fully around. Her sneakers were so frayed they looked like they had been fed through a food processor. She wore no bra and her nipples caused the material of her tie-dyed T-shirt to pucker suggestively. “I don’t follow you,” Stan said.
“I only come up here when I’m lonely or depressed. Whatever’s featured, that’s what I get to see. French, Russian, Chinese, South American, German. I never even bother to read the reviews in advance.”
They reached the ticket booth and Dr. Gilford pushed the money through the window. Ruby was in a pleasant enough mood, but once the film began, she pushed his hand away, fixed her eyes on the screen and withdrew into an emotional shell. Near the end of the film, when the Mongolian hunter lost his eyesight and was forced to give up his exotic lifestyle, Dr. Gilford glanced over at Ruby. She was sitting in the dark with tears streaming down her face, a wad of Kleenex clutched in her hand.
“If you’re interested,” Ruby noted as they were making their way back to the car, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show is playing over at the Cable Car Cinema the week after next.”
“Another film I’m not familiar with.”
“It’s a spoof on horror films. This drag queen who...” Ruby pulled up abruptly. “There really isn’t much of a plot.”
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