Calypso(40)

“Now, that’s not true,” Joan said.

“Even if she did see them, the pier is at least a mile from here,” Hugh added.

“Sharks do this thing called ‘swimming,’” I told him. “A mile is nothing to them.”

I turned to Madelyn, who had drawn a ten and, instead of moving forward like a normal, sweet sixth-grader, employed the card’s other option and took one step back, thereby returning my pawn to start, though I posed no threat to her whatsoever.

“You will grow up to be a terrible person,” I told her. “I mean, more terrible than you are now. If that’s even possible.”

“He didn’t mean that,” Joan called from out on the porch.



My goal on this beach trip was to find the snapping turtle I’d befriended the previous summer and feed him the lipoma I’d had cut out of me in El Paso. It had been in the freezer for nine months now, in a ziplock bag with DAVID’S TUMOR written on it. Every day I’d go down to the canal and stand on the narrow footbridge. The snapper I was searching for was as big as my rolling suitcase and had a hideous growth, a little top hat of flesh cocked just so on his head. There was no mistaking him for anyone else—that’s what I liked about him. He had style.

I mentioned him at the Sorry! board, and Madelyn, not caring that I’d called her a terrible person, said, “Didn’t Daddy tell you? That turtle is dead.” It seems she and Paul had gone looking for him earlier in the summer and were given the news by the man who lives beside the bridge and who had apparently found the body. So there went that.

Still, there was no reason to let a perfectly good lipoma go to waste. And so I went in search of another candidate. The one I chose lurks behind a shopping plaza. A lot of turtles congregate there—not just snappers but sliders as well—because vacationers feed them. There’s a coin-operated machine that dispenses what looks like dried dog food, so kids will buy a fistful and drop the pellets piece by piece into the water ten feet below. Others skip the dispenser and toss in their leftovers from the two nearby restaurants. French fries, onion rings, pizza crusts—the turtles will eat anything.

The day I brought out my defrosted tumor, a dozen or so people were gathered around the railing. I reached into my ziplock bag, realizing as I did so that what I was touching was myself, or what used to be myself. The egg-size lipoma had been diced into ten or so pieces and was greasy and blood-soaked, not like anything I’d put my hands on before. I threw a dollop to the fiercest of the five snapping turtles idling among the pylons, and he ate it with gusto. Then I threw in another bit, and another after that. Beside me stood a potbellied man in a baseball cap. His shirt had short sleeves and was unbuttoned almost to the waist. “I don’t know what you’re feeding that guy, but he’s sure loving it.”

I nodded.

He looked at my ziplock bag. “What is that, by the way?”

I emptied the last few bits and, realizing how complicated it would be to answer “My tumor,” I said instead, “Nothing much. Just some raw chicken.”

I’d brought a damp paper towel to wash my hands with, but my lipoma was messier than I’d anticipated, so I went to the Food Lion that’s attached to the shopping center to buy some wet wipes. The store was crowded with vacationers, renters who, grocery-wise, were having to start from scratch: salt and pepper, cooking oil, aluminum foil, ketchup. Carts were heaped. I got into the express line behind a middle-aged man in a T-shirt. I never saw the front of it, but the back pictured a Labrador retriever standing on the beach with a bikini top in his mouth. Below him were the words GOOD DOG.

Some people, I thought, opening the wet wipes so I could wash the tumor off my hands before I touched my wallet.



Over a game of Sorry! that night, I told Kathy and Madelyn about the turtle I’d thrown my lipoma to. I had four pawns on the board, more than anyone else, but it was too early to start gloating. Fortunes can reverse in a matter of seconds, especially when my niece is around. “I thought I’d be able to feed him a kidney as well, but it fell through,” I said, praying as my sister-in-law reached for a card that it wouldn’t have the word SORRY! written on it.

Kathy drew a useless twelve. “A kidney from a dog or cat?”

“No,” I said. “From a human teenager.”

Madelyn drew a one and released the first of her four pawns from the starting gate. “Who was the teenager?”

“A sixteen-year-old I met in Albuquerque last spring,” I said. “The two of us got to talking, and when I asked if he was getting a summer job, he said no, that after school got out he’d be checking into the hospital. One of his kidneys was dead inside him, so he was going to have it removed.”

Kathy looked up and frowned. “Poor guy.”

“There was something special about him,” I told her. “He was funny and remarkably articulate for someone his age. I asked if he had an iPad, and when he told me no, I said, ‘Well, you do now. I’m buying you one so you can use it in the hospital.’”

“Wow,” Kathy said. “That was really nice of you.”

“Wasn’t it?” I took a moment to feel good about myself. “In exchange he promised me his dead kidney, though I knew it was a long shot. Goddamn doctors. I understand not giving him the entire thing—it would be a lot to carry—but the least they could have done was break off a corner.”