Cleopatra and Frankenstein(114)

*

My mother is skimming through one of the magazines in the waiting room while my father does yet another round of tests.

“None of this makes sense to me,” she says.

I assume she’s talking about his illness, the precariousness of life, health and wealth and all its implications, but she points to a page of ads in the magazine.

“What are these even for?” she asks.

“Oh, that’s easy,” I say. “This one’s for PMS. This one’s for a fancy watch. And this one’s for an old woman having a seizure.”

“You have a gift,” she says.

“Less than a year in advertising, baby.”

*

Frank and I haven’t spoken since I left the agency. It’s been three months. I dream about him still, I’ll admit. Last night, for instance, I dreamed he was brushing my hair. My head was resting in his lap, and I felt happy. Then I raised a hand to my scalp and felt only skin. I looked down at the floor, and my hair was scattered all around us like seaweed. When I sat up, Frank was gone. I was bald and alone. I’m no Carl Jung, but that feels inauspicious.

*

My father still has all his hair, at least. That is something I’m proud of. You’d be amazed how rare a full head of hair or set of teeth is around here. I hope his teeth are still intact, too. I guess if he ever smiles again, I’ll know.

*

I’m in the living room when my mother calls something from the kitchen that I miss.

“What’s that?” I yell from the sofa.

“What did you say?” she yells back.

“What!”

“What?”

“What!”

“What?”

“Never mind!”

*

I send the first two episodes of Human Garbage to my agent in LA. Amazingly, she never fired me, even after I called the showrunner of the clairvoyant cat show a cunt. She has, however, yet to respond. I guess a show about two parasites called Scrip and Scrap living on a garbage heap at the end of the world doesn’t have the same commercial appeal as the show she wanted me to write for, which was about a hard-hitting yet sexually available lawyer having an affair with her drug dealer.

*

I step outside the hospital for some fresh air. All around me, old people tip forward in their wheelchairs and puff on their cigarettes with grim determination. If they want to convince teenagers not to smoke, they should really make them hang out here. Just try to still find smoking sexy after seeing a liver-spotted eighty-year-old shakily unhook the nasal tubes of his oxygen tank so he can light one up.

*

Stacy trundles by with a tray of catheters. Today she is wearing mango orange.

“How you doing, baby?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” I say. “How’s your son?”

“He has three girlfriends.” She rolls her eyes. “Tell me, how did I give birth to my ex-husband?”

I laugh.

“Your father in surgery?” she asks.

I nod and feel my eyes prickle.

“You got to distract yourself,” she says. “He don’t want you sitting here worrying.”

“I know,” I say. “I will.”

“Good girl.”

She gives my shoulder a squeeze. “What do transplant nurses hate most?” she asks.

“What?”

“Rejection!”

*

I take Stacy advice and go down to the gift shop to find something to read. I flip open a fashion magazine. Right at the top of the masthead is the name of Frank’s friend Anders. I think of his handsome face at the office holiday party, winking in time to the Christmas tree lights. It seems absurd to me now, standing in the harsh fluorescence of the hospital gift shop, that I ever knew such a person. I put the magazine back on the shelf.

*

My father wakes up from surgery. He is, we’ve been informed, in tremendous pain. I hover at his bedside, watching him, but he can’t see me. He opens and closes his mouth in dumb protest. His eyes roll around the ceiling. His neck is sinuously thin, it cannot lift his head, but his mouth keeps working, reaching for words. He looks like the ancient tortoise my kindergarten class had as a pet; we used to hold a rose petal just out of reach of his mouth and watch as he grasped, mutely, determinedly, for it again and again.

My mother stands up and leans over his face, so he can see her. She strokes the creases between his eyebrows with her thumb and says “There, there.” She kisses his temple. Tears are leaking out of his eyes into his huge soft ears. I leave the room.

*

“As long as there’s chicken parmigiana in the freezer,” a lady says into her phone as she walks past me, “everything will be okay.”

*

My father is asleep. The night nurse wears a crucifix around her neck, crucifix studs in her ears, and a diamond ring in the shape of a crucifix.

“Do you think she’s crossing the line?” I say to myself.

The pun machine marches on.

*

Our noisy dishwasher has finally kicked the bucket, so my mother and I are doing the dishes by hand. She washes, I dry.

“Why do you still look after him?” I ask. “You haven’t been married for years.”

My mother glances at me out of the corner of her eye and keeps scrubbing. I nudge her elbow. She puts the sponge down.