Turn of Mind - Alice LaPlante [69]
I like tactile things. A carved wooden candlestick, from a beautiful grain, I guess mahogany. A string of prayer beads with the Turkish evil eye hanging off as a pendant. A porcelain teacup patterned in royal blue curlicues.
And there is a scarf. A plain cream-colored woolen scarf. But long. Long enough to reach from the head of my bed to the foot. Perfect for wrapping around my head and lower face to protect against the Chicago winter.
I remember winters. Once we lost heat for a week and the water in the toilet bowl froze. We had to move out. James insisted on the Ambassador East. It was a frivolous choice, as the children were still young and the luxury was wasted on us. We all slept in one bed, the baby crawling among us, her breath tickling our cheeks. That golden time! James let Mark shave, smeared menthol shaving cream all over his six-year-old face, carefully pulled the razor across his fuzzy cheeks. I painted the baby’s toenails a bright magenta. We ate at the Pump Room every night, the kitchen made macaroni and cheese for the kids, and James and I ate lobster risotto and veal chops, and eggs Benedict in the mornings. The tangy half-cooked yolks, the creamy hollandaise, the asparagus that delicately scented our urine for days. Ana would show up as breakfast was ending so James and I could go to work. I’d put on layers of clothing and that woolen Irish scarf, and head off to the hospital.
All this evoked by a simple article of winter clothing. Something I won’t need again. For winter doesn’t exist here. No seasons at all. No heat. No cold. They’ve even banished darkness. They said, Let there be light, and there is, perpetually. A temperate climate for intemperate people.
There is a young man interested in me. A teacher crush. How we used to laugh when it happened, we women. For the men, it is no laughing matter, however. They are tempted. They fall. It is a serious thing. But for us, amusement only.
Yet this one. The way he watches me. And he is beautiful. Does that matter? Yes. He comes to my office after lectures on various pretexts. Once he pretended not to understand the basics of tendon transfer surgery. Another time he asked me about skin grafting, that most basic procedure.
Once he posed a riddle and I answered it, not realizing he was joking. What do you say when someone tells you, Doctor, it hurts when I do this? I absentmindedly replied,Tell them not to do it. He laughed and I looked at him for the first time.
It makes you feel young. It makes you feel old. You feel powerful. You are vulnerable.
It was none of those things. I felt no guilt. I felt no shame. And not because of James’s own behavior. I simply wanted to take it as far as it could go, to run it into the ground. This was a new experience.
For the most part you leave doors open. Bridges unburned. You don’t accept hopeless cases. You make sure to have an exit strategy. There was none in this case.
Hello, old friend.
A balding man, Asian American, with a strong Bronx accent, is standing by my chair. He is smiling familiarly at me. That is, he is smiling as if he expects to be familiar to me. He is not.
Do I know you?
I say this coldly. No more pretense. No more smiles for strangers.
Carl. Carl Tsien. We were colleagues. At Quicken St. Matthews Medical Center. I was Internal Medicine, you were Orthopedics.
That sounds plausible, I say.
Ah, you’re being cautious. Not committing yourself. He smiles as if he has just said something witty.
So, you say we were colleagues? I ask.
Yes.
Why were?
I am testing him, not just for knowledge but for truthfulness. Trustworthiness. He hesitates for a moment, then speaks.
You retired.
A nice euphemism.
Yes. To his credit, he looks a little chagrined. Well, that’s what you called it at the time. So you’re aware of your disease?
On good days like this, yes, I am completely aware of how far