“You’re always so negative,” my grandmother said.
“You got all the positive genes.” Amazing, considering her condition, considering the condition of the world.
Toward the end of her illness, even my grandmother had to face sorrow. She cried in her sleep. I couldn’t stand to hear her suffering. I left the cat I’d adopted to keep watch over her, curled up on the hospital bed I’d rented, and I went to stand outside, where I could breathe in the brackish air. It was spring and there was pine pollen everywhere; things had turned a sulfury yellow. That night I wished that my whole life had been different and that I could start all over again, in Paris or London, in Italy, even across the river in New York City, where I’d gone to school. I was still young. I wished I could shed my skin, walk away, never look back. But starting a new life was not my expertise. Death was my talent; before I could stop myself, I wished my grand-mother’s pain would end. I wished that this world would no longer have a hold on her.
She died that night while I was sleeping on the couch. The cat was beside her, and when I heard Giselle mewling, I knew what had happened. My brother didn’t come up to New Jersey until several days after our grandmother’s passing; the funeral had to wait because it was exam week at Orlon University. Ned realized what was happening to me as soon as he walked in the house. I was like a bird that had been let out of its cage only to find it could go no farther than the windowsill. All those years of planning my escape from New Jersey, and now I couldn’t even leave the living room. I’d pretty much stopped eating, aside from cornflakes and milk, which was the only thing I could keep down. I hadn’t showered and I gave off a faint odor of mildew, the scent of the ruined and the lost. I had called in to the library to let them know I wouldn’t be coming back. The reference desk was too much for me. Everything was. Jack sent me a sympathy note on police stationery; he wrote that he missed me, more than he’d ever expected to, and was hopeful I would soon return to my desk. But that wasn’t about to happen. I could barely find a reason to get dressed, let alone field meaningless research questions or have sex with someone I didn’t care about in the backseat of his car. Sometimes I simply stayed in my bathrobe. I had lost the will to wash my face, to look in the mirror, to step outside, to breathe the air.
My brother and I hadn’t had a real conversation in years. Too busy, lives too far apart. But after the funeral he sat beside me on the couch. He was allergic to cats, just as I was, and his eyes had already begun to water because of Giselle.
“This is not going to do you any good,” Ned told me. “You can’t stay here.”
Logical still, as if it mattered. Logical then, as well. I thought of the morning of my mother’s death; before my grandmother had arrived, I’d wandered out in my pajamas and saw him in the kitchen. I think he might have been cleaning up. He was orderly even then. It’s too early, Ned had told me. Go back to bed. I did exactly that. Two days later we’d sat together, side by side on folding chairs at my mother’s funeral, held at the gravesite. A few of my mother’s friends were there, all in black dresses. Ned wore a black suit, borrowed probably. I’d never seen it before. I had a navy blue dress with a lace collar that I’d snipped off with the same shears I’d used to cut my hair. There was a plain pine coffin, closed. Still, I’d read enough fairy tales to know the dead were not necessarily gone. Our mother might have been asleep, under a spell, ready to rap on the coffin from within and beg, Let me out!
It could happen at any time. The sky was gray; there was ice on the ground. And then I saw that Ned was crying. He was quiet about it. He didn’t make a sound. I don’t think I’d ever seen him do that before, so I quickly looked away. And then the coffin looked different. Shut tight. Over and done.
At my grandmother’s service, Ned and I were the only mourners. Same kind of plain pine box, same graveyard. We had never gotten around to putting a marker on my mother’s grave, and I was glad of this. I didn’t want to know exactly where she’d been buried. Maybe she hadn’t been buried at all. Maybe I’d been wrong and she had indeed flung open the wooden box to run through the dark and the cold the moment we’d left the gravesite. I looked for footprints, though it had been more than twenty years. Only the scratch scratch of birds. And something else — the tracks of a fox.
Ned had not only handled my grandmother’s affairs, he’d already done the research needed to set my life in order as well. He had found me a job, at the public library in Orlon, and a cottage to rent only a few blocks from the university campus. We debated the merits of a move. Statistically, the odds weren’t on Ned’s side. Had money been involved, I would have bet my future consisted of twenty more years in my grandmother’s house, wearing my bathrobe. But my brother was a worthy opponent, methodical if nothing else, and a challenge never deterred him, even if that challenge was me.
While I was moping about and eating cornflakes, Ned packed up the house, called the real estate agent, had new tires put on my car. And so it was. I was leaving New Jersey. My colleagues wanted to give me a going-away party at the library, but without me, there was no one to organize it. I took the cat with me. I had no choice. Giselle jumped in the car and made herself comfortable on my brother’s jacket, ensuring that Ned would sneeze all the way down to Florida.
It was an unseasonably hot day when we left. The air was sulfur-colored, gray around the edges, and the humidity was at 98 percent.
“This will get you used to Florida.” Ned was oddly joyful.
There was sheet lightning ahead of us on the New Jersey Turnpike, the silent sort that is so vivid it can light up the whole sky. My brother was delighted by the weather; his department was currently involved in a lightning study and he was one of the project advisers.
“Without thunderstorms, the earth would lose its electrical charge in less than an hour,” Ned told me.
He kept notes on the storm as I drove. I was used to being alone, accustomed to talking to myself; without thinking, I made another wish aloud, despite how it burned. I wished lightning would strike me.
“Like hell you do,” my brother said. One of the tasks of the meteorology department at Orlon was to work with a team of physicians and biologists, addressing neurological injuries found in lightning-strike victims. “You have no idea of the damage that can be done. None whatsoever.”
But it didn’t really matter. I had made another death wish, and I could tell what was to come from the bitter taste in my mouth.
It was too late to take it back.
II
The cat wasn’t at all happy with the move. I couldn’t blame her. Orlon was hardly a paradise. Cats, after all, are creatures of habit, said to become more attached to a place than to a person. This was certainly true of my alleged pet, who had never seemed to miss the original owner from whom I’d inherited her. Not for a moment had she sat by a window, waiting to be rescued. Why, she didn’t even seem to recognize the existence of human beings. My prize. My pet.
Giselle, I’d call when she was out in the garden, but she’d only ignore me and flick her tail, as though I were another fly, one of the thousands that seemed to be breeding in Orlon. Even my own cat disliked me. What had I expected? Life was no better here in Orlon, despite what my brother had promised, only hotter, buggier, far more humid than New Jersey at its worst. The library where I found myself employed was underfunded: there was one other librarian, Frances York, who had worked at the same post for forty years and whose eyesight was now failing — hence my job. Untrustworthy as I might be, I was to be her eyes.
This is what I saw: Most of the shelves were empty. Budget cuts. Public’s lack of interest. I had more books packed in cartons and left in storage in New Jersey than the Orlon Public Library had in its entirety. There were no computers available to the patrons, only one ancient word processor at the desk, and an old-fashioned card catalog was still in use. As for the reference department, there didn’t seem to be one. After several weeks at work, there’d been only three calls of any kind: two concerning the pr
oper use of fertilizer, and a third from a second-grader wanting to know what medical school Dr. Seuss had gone to. Maybe I should have lied to my young caller, but it wasn’t in my nature to do so. When I told her that her favorite author wasn’t a doctor, that in fact his last name wasn’t even Seuss, she hung up on me. I suppose no one had told her before that she mustn’t trust words, not even the ones in books.
Because we were a college town, the students at Orlon had their own high-tech facility, so our little building was all but invisible to them. And as our budget didn’t allow the purchase of any new editions, even the local folks stayed away. The only weekly activity was the nursery-school reading club, but that group was nearly disbanded after I read “The Goose Girl,” a tale in which a truth-teller, a beloved, loyal horse named Falada, continues to speak long after his severed head is mounted on the wall. Frances took back the position of reader, even though she was nearly blind and had to hold a book right up to her face to make out the story.
Frances was polite about my removal, and I understood. Death was my talent, not lively toddlers. I gratefully relinquished the nursery group, happy enough to avoid the rush of noisy little creatures on Thursday afternoons.
During my hours at the library I found myself longing for questions about death. New Jersey had begun to seem like a dream rather than a nightmare. I stared at the phone, missing Jack Lyons and his calls; our longest, most intimate conversations had been about diseases that were spread by mosquitoes, especially West Nile virus. As for my brother, he and Nina were busy with their work at the university; after they’d helped me set up the house — which my brother had failed to mention was not air-conditioned, there was only a ceiling fan — I rarely saw Ned and his wife. I hadn’t expected more, and why should I have? They had their own lives, after all.
In the evenings, I listened to the radio and busied myself with killing flies, using a flyswatter I’d bought at Acres’ Hardware Store. A bit of death at home. Something I understood. Something I was good at. I’d killed hundreds of flies in no time. I kept piles of bodies on the windowsill. That’s what I was doing when it happened. I was holding the flyswatter when I saw something that appeared to be a tennis ball right in front of me. The window was open, the ceiling fan was on, the sky was heavy with heat. I thought perhaps some neighborhood kids had thrown the ball through my window. I didn’t care for children of any age or size. I knew how they thought and what they were capable of. I was about to shout out for the culprits to get off my lawn. But then I saw that the ball was oddly bright, so shimmery I had to squint. When my gaze shifted I noticed that the flyswatter I was holding was edged in fire and that the fire was dripping down onto the floor, like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.
I was paralyzed, I think, helpless to do anything but watch as the ball fell to the floor. I heard a huge noise: an explosion of some sort, like a shotgun. I thought of the ice that had ricocheted off the roof when my mother drove away. Death sound. The thud of what cannot be stopped. For a second I thought, It’s the end of the world. My world, I meant. In a way this was true. In a matter of seconds, everything changed. If I had turned left instead of right, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened; if the fly I’d swatted had never come in through a hole in the screen, if I’d never left New Jersey, if a butterfly in South America had never unfurled its wings and with a single beat altered everything, now and forevermore.
When I awoke in the hospital I knew at least part of my wish had come true. I could taste it, the burning flavor of death. The wish I’d made in the car traveling down to Florida had accomplished half of its mission, but I was still half alive. I couldn’t move my left side. Arms, legs, trunk, had all been affected. There hadn’t been a multi-organ disruption — no kidney or lung effects. But my heart had been affected and there had been neurological damage, the two most frequent causes of mortalities in lightning-strike victims. All the same, I was informed that I was lucky to be in Orlon, where there were more lightning strikes than anywhere else in Florida — glorious Florida, the top state for deaths and injuries caused by lightning. Because of this, the medical care in our county was expert. I was supposed to be grateful for that. I would need physical therapy and a serious relationship with a cardiologist, since my heart now skipped a beat. I could feel it fluttering inside me — torn posterior pericardium, they said. It was as though a bird were trapped inside me, one that belonged in a place outside the cage of my aching ribs.
While I was being told about my condition, with my brother and Nina looking on, the only thing I could concentrate on was the clicking inside my head. That wasn’t unusual in cases such as mine, the doctor assured me when he heard my complaint. Neither was my nausea or the pain in my neck or the swelling in my face or the fact that my fingers were numb. But look at all I’d escaped! Pulmonary edema, tympanic membrane rupture — deafness brought on by sound and shock — thermal burns from ignited clothing, serious vascular effects, heart attack, cataracts, lesions on the brain, the eye, the skin.
I had been unconscious for thirty-two hours, hence the IV in my arm. Naturally things were fuzzy. Of course, my brother and Nina looked concerned. And so I didn’t mention anything when the nurse came in with a dinner tray. I didn’t say a word when I noticed that the Jell-O I was being offered was the color of stones. The nurse herself, not more than twenty-five, appeared to have long white hair. The flowers my brother and his wife had brought me seemed dusted with snow. I understood then. I had completely lost the color red. Whatever had once been red was now cloudy and pale. All I saw was ice; all I felt was the cold of my own ruined self. Perhaps I had an ocular reaction to the heat of the strike — vitreous hemorrhage was one of the many potential effects on the eye, along with corneal scratches and cataracts. Why the absence of a color would affect me so deeply, I had no idea, but I suddenly felt completely bereft. I had lost something before I’d known its worth, and now it was too late.
I stayed in the hospital for nearly two weeks. I didn’t see much of my brother, but Nina went daily to my house to feed Giselle. When I was finally allowed out, still using a walker because of the weakness on my left side, Nina picked me up and drove me home. I saw that my sister-in-law had also stocked my refrigerator. I think she may have vacuumed. I understood why my brother had been drawn to her. Nina was logical, a great believer in order, and like my brother, she was not a fan of emotions. She stood there and wrung her hands while I sat on the couch and wept.
“Sorry,” I said to Nina. She nodded and waved me on. I kept at it, running through nearly a box of tissues. It was my first cry in a long time, and I overdid it. I sat there sobbing, shudders running through me. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by everything, a wreck, true enough. My hair had fallen out in clumps and there was that dreadful clicking noise in the back of my head. I still wasn’t able to hold down solid food. The doctor had told me the symptoms were similar to someone suffering from radiation poisoning. That’s how I felt — to my bones, to my toes — poisoned. All down my afflicted side there was a wrenching sort of feeling, as if something had been twisted. A short in my electrical system, I supposed. My very essence, my inner self was gone. I reached for things and couldn’t feel them. It was as though everything solid had slipped away from me. Inside, my heart felt frozen.
The weather was still humid and stifling; no outsider could be prepared for Florida. We weren’t even close to summer, still the heat exploded in midair, then settled; it weighed you down. All the same, when Nina asked if I’d like anything, I asked for hot tea. I sat there shivering, colder than ever. Ice in my veins. Ice behind my eyes as well, it seemed. While my sister-in-law fixed the tea, I looked out the window. Everything out there was the color of ice. I wondered if the bougainvillea was scarlet: I’d never noticed it before. Now the vine was pale and ghostly, frostbitten and shivering in the heat. I felt as though I had one foot in this world, and one in the next. I couldn’t even get the death wish right this time around. I was like a person who’d tried to commit suicide by jumpin
g out a third-story window, succeeding only in breaking every bone. Still alive, still more or less intact, still trapped in the same life.
Before she left, Nina told me a physical therapist would be coming to see me. When the therapist appeared the next morning and rang the bell, I didn’t open the door. Maybe I didn’t want to be healed. Maybe I deserved whatever I got. Maybe this was the fate I deserved. I sat on the couch with Giselle, imagining I was safe from the well-meaning and the helpful. But my brother had an extra key, which he’d handed over, and the physical therapist let herself in. She introduced herself as Peggy Travis. As though I cared. As though I intended to make this personal. I suppose Peggy was wearing a red striped dress, but it was gray to me. She went through the list of exercises we’d be doing to strengthen my left side. I excused myself. Fumbling with my walker, I went to the bathroom and threw up.
“It’s very common to feel sick.” My unwelcome visitor had actually come up behind me and was watching me vomit. “For some people it lasts only a short time, for others it’s different.”
She shut up then. But I got the drift. For others it’s an eternity.
I was pathetic really. I couldn’t even squeeze a rubber ball. More clumps of my hair fell out just from the stress of trying. But my Peggy wasn’t the type to let her charges give up. She had seen it all in working with her clients — the lame, the frail, the screwed-up, the messed-up, the chewed-up, the burnt, the sorrowful. She told me about them when we had tea — hers iced, mine steaming. I’d sweated and grunted through my workout, with my swollen face swelling even more and the clicking going on nonstop; I hardly felt up for conversation. That’s how people like Peggy got to you; they waited till you had no defenses, then talked you to death. I felt like a time bomb, as a matter of fact, but I drank my tea. I had no choice but to listen. I heard about Peggy’s last client, a man who’d been mauled by a bulldog. By the time the attack was over, the victim had only three fingers, total, and I should have seen how quickly he’d improved. He was now working at Acres’ Hardware Store. Before that, it was a woman in a car crash who couldn’t remember her own name and needed to be spoon-fed but was now up and about and taking art history classes at Orlon University.