American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [15]
Do any of you ever see things when you take care of patients? Or hear things?
Everyone has stories.
He seems to have a lot of stories, Honor said.
She was leaning forward now, searching for help.
He’s been through a lot, one of the nurses said.
Honor leaned forward more.
Do you know what? she asked them, scanning their faces. I mean, do you know what he’s been through?
They were quiet for a moment and then one of them said:
You look like you’ve seen something.
I have.
She sat there in her coat and scarf, looking at them. She had the distant benevolent gaze of an angel in a painting. But her skin was ashen and it looked like it had been stretched across her skull. Her hair was unwashed. Her hands were bones.
Try not to let it frighten you.
Okay, she said.
You should get home and get some rest.
Okay.
One of them walked her back to the elevator and pressed the button. Honor looked at the oily smears of fingerprints on the metal plate around the buttons and thought that she might be sick. Inside while she was making the short descent, she had to sit down on the floor of the elevator so that she wouldn’t fall down.
CHAPTER FOUR
They met on the steps of the Museum of Natural History. Vivian had never been there and Joe was stunned when she told him because he knew that she had grown up in New York City. I like looking at art not at animals, she had said. He had told her that these animals were works of art, or interesting specimens anyway, and it was a good place to meet. He waited in the wind. He sat down on a step. He thought she might not come. He wouldn’t blame her for not coming. He shouldn’t be there himself. He should be studying in the library. People walked up and down the steps with intention and meaning. Children ran. It was late October and the sky was darkening over the park, quickly, like a bright face turning away to show only a head of falling tresses. The orange and yellow leaves on the trees were shadowed and what had looked golden in the sun now seemed thinner and more tissue-like, papery, not as real although actually more so. He had the newspaper with him but he didn’t read it. It stuck straight up out of his jacket pocket. He decided to stand. He stretched his legs. He walked to the top of the stairs. He gazed north.
She surprised him from the other direction. She came up behind him and said his name. It sounded different when she said his name because now she knew him and he could hear it in her voice.
In the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, which had just recently opened, people stood rapt in front of the dioramas of bongos and mandrills and impalas. They peered into the meticulously reconstructed alternate worlds and seemed to be transported through space. They were still wearing their hats and gloves. Children pressed their hot faces against the glass and the guards kindly told them to step back but it was hard for the children to understand why they could not walk inside, in the wild. Joe identified with the children; he wished he could enter other worlds. Vivian stopped and dutifully admired the taxidermy and detail but she could not pretend that she felt anything. Joe looked at her while she looked at the rain forests and savannahs and he thought that it would be beautiful to see her in those locations under a real moon, a living sun. He could sense that she didn’t really care for any of it, but she was not unkind and said that he was right, it was interesting. They walked around and around the elephants.
I can picture you in any of these places, he said. India, Burma, Siam.
I’d love to go, she said. But I can’t say I feel like I’ve been there from coming here.
I can tell.
I’m sorry.
Don’t be sorry. I thought you would like it but I was wrong. I’m wrong about a lot of things.
He dug his hands into his pockets and looked down at the shiny marble floor.
Like what? she asked.
Hmm, he thought. He lifted his head and gazed up at the ceiling.