Passo di Verra

You wake up in the night to a sound, but by the time your eyes can reel in the twinned digital numbers that seem to float out from the clock’s face, you cannot be sure what you heard. It is either 5:33 or 3:55, but the numbers will not focus, and your eyes cannot make the doubled image converge. The memory of the sound evaporates before your brain can grasp it, examine it, but you are alert now, listening. Sulphur light flows through the curtain. Ginger asleep somewhere in the house is reassuring. But there was something that woke you, and lying there, you are sure beyond any doubt, as sure as you have ever been about anything, that you are not alone.

You hold your breath, you listen. You can hear below you the humming cycle of the refrigerator. A stinkbug vibrates in a high corner. Distant trucks jakebraking on the thruway. On the river, a boat’s tentative toot, then another. But as you start to breathe again, you think you hear it, a shuffling like silk or smooth skin somewhere in the house. Then nothing for a long time, and then you wake again, opening your eyes to the clock a moment before its buzzing alarm jutters the still air. Ginger scrabbles her toenails on the hardwood floor downstairs, stamping in excitement for kibble.

Only when you’re backing down the driveway, twisting to look through the frosted rear window, careful to aim between the hulking snow piles, do you think: you should have checked the house, the windows. Rattled the front door knob. But it all seems ridiculous now. The thought that someone was with you in the house. As you back carefully onto the street you look up toward the house, the windows all seeming to hide someone behind the reflected morning sun, someone watching through a curtain that just moved slightly in the moment before you looked.

Before you can pull away you feel it rising. You pull halfway onto the sidewalk, and the gag reflex boils through the muscles in your chest, your throat and jaw clenching, the small muscles under your chin snapping taut and pulling your mouth open. You retch, gripping the steering wheel, making sounds that do not sound human. When it passes you are breathing heavily, your chest and jaw throbbing, your fingers sore. You watch as the steering wheel rubber slowly reforms, your grip marks evaporating ghostlike. You concentrate on those marks until you’re sure the nausea is gone. You bump the shifter into drive.

Should you see a doctor? You haven’t, not in a long time. “A coon’s age,” you say aloud to the windshield in a voice not really your own, waiting for the light to turn green. Where did that come from, ‘a coon’s age’? Something someone long ago said? You do not know precisely how long raccoons live. On average, the average raccoon. You try to resurrect the voice a second time, but it won’t come. But yes, a doctor, maybe.

You blink up at the slightly pendulumic traffic signal, waiting, working hard at focusing. Even now, fully caffeinated and two hours into the day, your eyes don’t want to focus. Images diverge. It takes an effort to flex some heretofore unknown muscle to keep the world recognizable. You watch the light, needing to focus on something, but the slight swing evokes a kind of vertigo, as if you were swaying back and forth under a stationary light. For a moment you wonder: What if inside the signal was a tiny elevator that moved a bare bulb up and down, between the red lens, through the yellow, to the green? But that’s not logical — there is no down elevator. Only when it goes from green to red, only when this bulb takes the elevator up.

You shake your head, focusing. The red light disappears, the green illuminates, and you drive, and resolve, Okay, yes, you will see the optometrist, though you don’t have one, or know where one is, other than the heavyset guy who checked your eyes at Pearle Vision Center in the mall. Is this malady something you can fix at the mall? You hope it is.

The twins are late to first period, and enter like spectral wisps. In September you had to speak to them, reminding them that class begins with the bell and tardiness was not acceptable, what with missing the Do-Nows and maybe not realizing that homework had already been collected, not to mention the disruption, and the fair and universal application of classroom rules, etc. And also, preparing for careers that will require promptness. They gazed at you as if you were quoting Wittgenstein in Hungarian, or reciting lyrics from a medieval ballad. They smiled, they sat, they continued arriving late, always like ghosts, without a sound, smiling and content and so pleased with their arrival that mid-October you stopped questioning it, stopped marking them tardy. You long ago decided that the wolves who raised them did not read your e-mails.

But today when they arrive there is drama. Mikka is in tears, her purple eyeliner dribbling, and Arkadia stomping in her Sacajawea boots, one lace trailing wetly behind like seaweed. They crumple into their seats, you stand frozen, marker poised above the whiteboard. You had hoped the themes of Prudentius might interest them, might engage them in a discussion about Greek poetry and expression, but you feel the twins exist beyond your grasp, these girls and whatever world they find worth imagining.

“Girls?”

Neither responds. Mikka is already doodling a dragon in her Writer’s Journal and Arkadia’s face is pressed nose-down to her desk, purple tresses forming a canopy beneath which you hear heavy breathing.

This is a moment. You know there may be something to do here, but what is it. You stand frozen, the rest of the class staring at the whiteboard, pens hovering, relieved for a moment there’s nothing to copy about Greek poets.

“Mikka? Arkadia? The hallway, please.” Neither budges. “Sarah, you’re in charge. Give everyone enough time to copy the essential questions before we discuss last night’s reading. I’ll be right outside.” She leaps to her feet, ready to play teacher. You clear your throat, though it is dry, dusty even. “Girls, outside please.”

Mikka follows airily, gazing at the classroom walls and ceiling as if she hasn’t seen them 58 days already, and finds it slightly amusing. Arkadia remains submerged in her under-hair world. At the door you turn and consider your options. None of the other students seems to notice this turn of events, so you say, “Arkadia, I’ll talk to you after class.”

You push the door closed behind you, thinking maybe it’s for the best afterall to separate the girls, and turn to find Mikka already twentysome feet down the hallway, walking a meandering course toward the cafeteria. You find yourself working hard to focus her into one Mikka.

“Mikka! Come back here.”

She turns immediately. Her feet seem only loosely connected to her legs as she works her way back up the hallway, stopping silently in front of you.

“Listen, I’ve turned a blind eye,” you start, then reconsider. “You and Arkadia — you both…” But you think now how hard it was at first to tell them apart, not because they looked identical, but because they constantly morphed themselves into strange versions of themselves and, as far as you could tell, even each other. Mikka would dye her hair orange, Arkadia purple, then the next day they’d appear with dreadlocks tipped with jangly bedazzles unfathomably glinting in the classroom glare. You’d adopted a policy, therefore, of simply referring to them in the plural when you could, or, returning papers, saying each one’s name loudly, trying to detect some movement that might reveal who was which. But clearly, this was a different circumstance.

“Look… Mikka, you can’t disrupt class like that. What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, it’s not nothing. Arkadia’s crying, and you’re… well, you’re upset, I think.” She is looking at you, it seems, but also not. Her eyes are focused on some point several feet behind you, a micrometer to the left. You think of a figure of speech that has never before felt so literal — she can see right through me — then shake that thought from your head.

“Did anything happen at home?”

“I got into Tisch,” she says, now staring resolutely at your shoes.

“That’s great news — that’s something!” you say. But then a glimmer of understanding starts to come into focus. “Oh, right. She’s upset? She hasn’t heard anything?”

“Kadie’s not applying. She didn’t apply anywhere.”

“She’s not going to college?”

“No.”

“Then there’s no reason for her to be jealous — she should be happy for you!” You realize you’re adopting a tone, though you’re not sure what it is. By Mikka’s face, you can tell it is one she’s heard before. “Maybe this is something you need to talk to guidance about? Have you spoken to Ms. DeBree?”

Without a word, Mikka turns from you and resumes her walk down the hallway, the light reflecting from the well-waxed tile in a way that blinds you, makes it look like Mikka is walking on nothing but light, floating into aether, her arms limp at her sides.

When you open the door to the classroom, Sarah is standing at the whiteboard, marker in hand, labelling a large Venn diagram. Arkadia is at the board too, drawing an anime cat, curled as if ready to pounce. No one notices you at the back of the room, watching. Sarah turns to the board, nodding at something someone just said, and writes “DEAD” in blocky neon green above the left circle. Then, in the right region, she uses a red marker to write in perfect calligraphic letters “alive.”

Jack raises his hand.

Sarah puts the marker on the tray, crosses her arms, and says in a voice that, you think, might be a mimicry of your own. “Yes, Jack, something to share?”

“Maybe the cat’s just asleep?” he says. “If you poke it with something, then you’ll know?”

Sarah claps her hands, uncaps an yellow marker, and draws a highly-detailed stick puncturing the middle of the Venn. She stands back to appreciate her work, then adds several acorns falling to the bottom of the whiteboard’s margin, shading them with the slim edge of the marker. Arkadia has erased the cat’s tail and replaced it with some kind of pronged, scaly appendage. It might be soaked in blood.

You have no idea what they’re talking about.

Bad news comes fast when it comes. You are sitting on the examination table, considering a painting of mountains. You lean forward and can make out the title “Passo di Verra.” Italy, maybe? It is done in pastels, hung the slightest bit askew, and you find your mind wondering if Doctor Brokes owns or rents some chalet in Italy, or maybe Switzerland, and why the choice of pastels when acrylics or even oil would have been a much better choice? Your mind is drifting. You feel a little bit like you feel when you’re high. You have this second level of thinking, questioning the questions. Are you just trying to distract yourself from the real question of the day, and somehow you’ve convinced yourself you care about this innocuous afterthought of a décor accent? Are you groping for something to say, some small talk that might make this room feel more comfortable, might make you and Doctor Brokes something other than what you are, make this room something other than what it is, as if it could be just a living room where two friends might trade stories about their property in the Alps?

This habit you have, of shaking your head as if to rid it of thoughts, like it’s an iPod in need of shuffling. You did it just then, shuffling away from considering that painting, shaking your head and the crackling paper underneath your butt. The new thought, though, is no better: This paper is butcher’s paper, and you are about to be rung up, tied with twine, bustled off to a waiting, glowing-hot oven. You are the feast. You move your eyes back to the painting, trying to discern where one color turns into another, what pigments enswirled to make this tinge of blue, wondering about the exchange rate, how much it would cost to get into the Alpine chalet property market — words not your own but words you think Doctor Brokes might speak.

On the other side of the door a folder ruffles like a bat’s wings inside the walls. You listen. Someone is reading your medical history, thumb and forefinger absently framing his chin. He is lost in detail, eyes scrolling. The creak underfoot of shifting weight. Outside the glass-block window, the traffic light changes, brakes squelch, then the guttural impatient wail of a large motorcycle, the sputtering clatter of small cars, a honk. The doorknob not a knob but a lever, like in Europe you think, but probably like in hospitals, you think again, because weak people cannot turn round knobs. They paw at them like dogs needing so badly to get out. Or we paw at them — do you include yourself now? Are you a sick person? Do you understand, suddenly, these design choices because they are design choices made for someone like you?

You tense your fist, turning an imaginary knob. Then as if in response to your flexed fist, the door lever dips, and he’s standing in the doorframe, not quite in the room. Your folder is not in his hands nor is it in the clear Lucite pocket screwed to the outside of the pale yellow door.

“Lewis.”

“Chandler,” you respond, because Lewis is your last name. This happens all the time, being mistakenly addressed by your last name. “Chandler Lewis,” you say, as aw-shucks as possible, then add helpfully, “Lewis is my last name. I go by Chan, I mean, usually.”

He doesn’t introduce himself. You push yourself off the table, crinklingly, awkwardly jutting your heels beyond the pull-out drawer-step, turning to pinion your body to stand, and reach a hand out to shake. That there is a pause — almost imperceptible, but you are on guard, you are vigilant in this place, and he is not, and so you notice there is a pause — means what? You are sick? Or on principle he does not shake hands with patients, this is not an introduction, which it isn’t, and this is not a done deal, not yet? All of these things could reasonably explain that one-hundredth of a millisecond pause. It could also be that you are dying. He takes a step toward you, into the room, and holds your hand. His hand is a corn husk.

“Please,” he tells you, sweeping his hand back to the table. You sit.

“Well,” he begins, “let us start. You’ve been feeling nauseous?”

“Um, yes, nauseated. And my eyes, they don’t…”

“Nauseated?” Something ticks in the folded skin at the corner of his eye.

“Yeah, no, you know, it’s an old English teacher thing, I guess. Like, you’re nauseous if you make other people feel nausea, feel sick. But if it’s you, then…”

“Oh? An English teacher thing?”

“But if it’s you, when you feel it, you feel nauseated. I mean, most people… It’s like, um, like ‘the children are revolting,’ right? Like are they having a revolution, or…”

“Sorry,” he holds up a hand in mock — or mocking — surrender. You have said too much. “You are having some nausea, how’s that?” His eyes seem to move closer together, and you hunch a little, hands palm-down on the paper, fingers achingly splayed. You feel the crinkled protective material under you, try to work the wrinkles smooth. “How long?” he asks.

“Yes, it’s been a few weeks, but my insurance was…”

He waves your words away with a hand and you close your mouth. He pulls the wheeled stool under him and sits on it with his knees akimbo, heels hooked on the metal ring, the smell of musky crotch tinting the air. There are stains on his suit jacket like paisley organisms swimming upward toward his shirt collar, which is unbuttoned one too many buttons.

“Okay, the tests will be back in 48 hours, but I may not see them for 96.” He clasps his hands in front of him. “But that’s neither here nor there. That is, if I may say, the tests, I think, are only confirmation of what I know. The bloodwork might help us more than the fecal, but, again, these will just confirm. The nausea is from stress, or pressure, on both your circulation — that’s why you’ve been dizzy — as well as your nervous system. I’m not ruling out gastroesophageal dyspepsia, but there’s more to it than that. You have some growth that is taxing these systems, impinging on the free and unfettered flow of blood, which is symptomatic of a number of conditions a man in his 50s might feel that wouldn’t cause us too much concern, but, again, that your nervous system seems to be impaired as well is what, as I said before, makes me feel pretty confident I can suss out what’s going on here. When I look at the most recent x-rays, we’ll know. Any numbness?”

“Wait. Growth? Like a tumor, growth?”

“Well, ‘cancer’ is a pretty inclusive term. Pretty broad. Generic. Any tissue growth is cancer, in the general definition.”

“Right, I know, benign and malignant, but — I have a tumor?”

“It’s a more complex problem than that — you have a lot of growth.” He pauses and looks up at the painting of the Alps, then gets up and straightens it. There is a tap at the open door, an ashen-faced teen holding a manila file folder. “Ah! So.” He does not thank her and she disappears up the corridor as he presses the door shut with his knuckles.

“A lot of growth as in malignant, um, cancerous tissue? I don’t know what…”

“You are growing everywhere.” He is holding a blurry x-ray to the recessed lighting, a square of film that seem to show a grinning lamb, just teeth and eye sockets and fuzzy wool. A second identical x-ray lamb gazes at you from inside the folder. He slips the plastic sheet into the folder and looks at you for the first time, quizzically.

“I want to examine you — just your neck, shoulders, back. Can you take your shirt off, please?”

Your thoughts turn inward, frantic, as his hands rove. You remember your last haircut, a torture you avoid until it’s necessary, the feeling of not knowing exactly where the next clip will come, trying to know when to move and when not to, trying to predict the exact tilt that will help the barber, that he’ll appreciate your willingness to succumb to his expert clipping. Your body is not your own, surrendered temporarily to the tools and techniques of someone who for the moment knows you better than you know yourself. Dr. Brokes’ fingers poke your flesh.

He sits again on the stool. You relax your shoulders, which seem to fall a great distance.

“We may need to do some more tests.”

“Bloodwork?” You are happy to have this word come so easily.

“Well, no, I think I need to see you tomorrow.”

“What…” You think hard how to phrase this, but fail to find a sufficiently medical combination of words. “What’s wrong?”

“You are growing another you inside of you.”

Four missed calls vibrate for your attention, and you do not recognize the number. It’s your area code, though, and somehow, lately, you are willing. For years the cell has been a nuisance, a constantly-filling portable in-box that demands to be opened. It’s the source of the first jaw-spasming gags, just thinking about calls you had to make, voicemails through which you had to patiently sit idle, mumbling replies that you’d never actually send. But now that’s all gone. Now, when you feel sick almost every moment of the day, suddenly talking to someone is a reprieve, a chance to get away from your thoughts, to get outside yourself, a brief respite from you. You poke the screen and the phone dials.

“Ah! Mr. Chandler, I just left a message!”

You do not correct him, partially because the voice is friendly, conversational, someone who, despite not knowing which name is comes first, knows you.

“Yes? I haven’t listened, I just saw your number and…”

“It’s about our twins.”

“Our twins?”

“Mikka — and Kadie. Arkadia.”

“Ah. Right. I meant to follow up with you — Mr. Ellis — about your daughters, about what was going on today.”

“Well, no, no — I — I should have let the school know about what’s going on. It’s been a real rollercoaster, and, and the whole teen dramas on top of that.”

“Well, I know Mikka went to see her guidance counselor today, which seemed best. She’s not…” It was difficult to know what to say. You picture a wolf holding the phone, the coiling cord wrapping around a forepaw, one claw twirling it into a tangle. “She’s not so willing to talk to her teachers, so maybe Ms. DeBree was helpful?”

“Well, I don’t know anything. We’re always the last to know!” You hear him chuckle to himself, phone held close to his chin. Whiskers brushing against the mic. “But they didn’t cause any trouble, I hope?”

“No — well, they were late — again — and we had to put class on hold for a moment, both of them were a little out of joint, it seemed…”

“Yes, I had a feeling when they left…”

“Mr. Ellis, I know Mikka got good news about college, but it seems Arkadia is taking it a bit harder than maybe Mikka realizes. She’s not going to college? Akadia, I mean?”

“Kadie? No — we decided — Kadie and I, I mean, decided it wasn’t the right next move.”

“Okay.” You wait. The words seem easy, flowing through the phone’s ear piece, but behind the words there is a slight echo, Mr. Ellis’s words doubling themselves, forming a chorus, then the delay expanding, the echo stretching out as if he were speaking to you in a large cave.

“So, why was I calling you, you’re wondering, and I don’t blame you, I know you’re busy. Teachers, I don’t know how you do it! I look at what my girls are doing and think, thank god I went to school in the ’90s, I’d be a dropout if I had to read this stuff. The Greeks, that’s some heavy stuff, the language, all that. Anyway, I know you’re busy, so I just wanted to, I just want to give you a heads-up about Kadie, and see if maybe you can help us out a little.”

“Yeah, no, sure, whatever I can do.”

Are you lonely? You ask yourself this holding your arms out to your sides, palms raised in the posture of a balance. You tip a little left, then a little right. You wonder if anyone watches you through the window as you pantomime this balance, and wonder again if such thoughts prove you are lonely, tipping to the left a bit more. You eat dinner leaning toward the computer screen, keeping your right hand clean of taco juice to operate the trackpad. You talk to the dog in human tones without mockingly dog-related content or syntax, sussing out real issues pertinent to you and, you hope, to Ginger. She nods solemnly often, arches her uneven eyebrows.

You cannot tell. There are things you want to know about yourself, but feel too close, like an eye pressed up against the surface of a vast painting, a blind man stroking the foot of an elephant. You don’t feel lonely. But you feel a longing. It isn’t urgent or insistent, but always that feeling of incompleteness, of needing someone else, a jealousy when you stroll the mall and see a woman link her arm in a man’s, thoughtessly and naturally, as they walk in unconscious synchronicity into The Gap, into Brookstone, the Yankee Candle.

You microwave a second taco, rip a square of paper towel from the roll, and sit in the computer glow. You navigate to the Substitute Finder site and log in. You click tomorrow’s date, hover the cursor for a moment over “sick,” and then instead check the box that says “personal day.” In the box that says “instructions for substitute,” you type with your right hand “None.” You eat your taco, green chile habanero sauce dripping from your knuckles.

That night you fall asleep quickly, but wake again to what sounded, in some dream, like whispering, the words incomprehensible, more like sand paper rubbing against your eardrum. The clock is a red fog. The house is encased in silence and stillness, the air as heavy as the blankets, the mattress a bog, a tarpit. You sink there, this just below the surface of sleep and dreaming, remembering some fleeting image — a pond or a mountain lake, the Alps rising around it, some unseen creature snatching insects from its reflective surface, Venn-like ripples that keep expanding, keep growing — as the darkness shifts from black to blue and, finally, to a grey wash that pours syrupy into the room, so thick that even the pillow over your head cannot shield you from the day.

You remember little of your dreams, just the rippling, though you know you dreamed vivid and richly-detailed sagas, epics, adventures. You saw the monster under the surface, but cannot give it a face. You do remember that you’ve taken the day off. You remember putting your plate in the sink, unwashed. But beyond that it’s as if your mind cannot recall, has no access to your thoughts. A dull whisper washes out the morning noise of birds and cars and clattering garbage cans dragged back from the curb by their be-slippered owners, dogs yapping as they maintain their urine-marked perimeter once again.

You are ready when it happens, but you’d thought it would be at night. You expected that, like in a dream, you would undergo some transformation, wake up no longer a chrysalis, bright morning sun and birds chirping beyond clear windows. Brand new day. But when it happens it is not like that at all. The sky is a patchy quilt of heavy clouds and distant blue sky glimpsed through holes that seem drilled through the clouds. They rove low over the valley, the trees droop and sway, the air swings from 45 to 60 degrees in the few minutes the sun finds your skin through the window, the glass looking molten and alive in that brief moment its particles and bubbles are illuminated, then returns to dull grey as the clouds duck in again.

You are exhausted. You decamp for the brown couch, wrap in the orangey-yellow afghan, remote control two full feet beyond your reach next to an almost empty glass of water, some crumbs floating therein. When it happens you feel the strange constriction of your throat, your intestines, your sphincter, your skin seems to shrink into your tendons and your tendons bear down on your bones and your bones themselves feel both thinner and harder, and an incredible heat erupts but you cannot tell from where. Your eyelids seem to have disappeared altogether. You cannot speak, you try to call out, to rouse Ginger from her slumber on the hall floor, but your lips have contracted and your teeth have shrunken and your tongue is a desiccated leaf blown to the back of your mouth by the faint whisper of breeze that is your clattering breath.

And when it’s over, and the sun once more slants in upon you, and you are alive and warm on the couch under your blanket, and your dog wanders in groggily, head tilted the better to see you, to see us, I am grateful. I am so grateful to have been allowed to see this, and you, and what will happen next.