Sweet Lamb of Heaven (56)
Now I feel an ache of remorse when I think how we stopped laughing at his jokes. I would laugh so hard, if I could have a do-over. I can see that to Solly we’re only losing my father now, where to me we lost him some time ago—or maybe it’s fairer to say that Solly seems to be able to lose him twice, while for me once was all I could do.
Still Ned’s casual assertion a few weeks ago, his matter-of-fact statement that my father would get sick with lymphoma—which at that time I assumed was just a fictional element of the so-called narrative—vibrates so hard I almost get a headache. I’ve actually been taking painkillers when the thought of it starts to make my temples send out their thin flashes of pain.
But Ned’s foreknowledge vies with the diagnosis for my attention and I can’t let it go. It may be coincidence—or maybe it’s information gleaned from surveillance. Could he be surveilling them as well as me, tracking my father’s diagnosis? Observed by Ned or his consultants, did my mother find out weeks ago and only tell us now? And what use would it be for Ned to spy on my parents anymore, when he already has my cooperation, when I’ve already done what he wanted me to do?
I’m going to ask my mother tomorrow when she heard the diagnosis. I’ll reassure her that it’s not a problem if she decided to delay telling us—we understand completely. But I need to know when she heard.
YESTERDAY, she said.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech . . . And the Lord said, Behold: The people is one, and they have all one language . . . and now nothing will be restrained from them . . . Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. —Genesis 11:1–7
I HAVE IT—I have it here on my desktop, a written record.
It’s in the “templates,” as he and his staff call them: the schedule for the narrative, with our travel dates; the list of his positions on issues, which I’m supposed to know even though I won’t parrot them, and a partial list of planned public appearances, both with Lena and me and without us; the breakdown of campaign employees by job description, plus key volunteers. All this is supposed to be memorized before our next stint in Alaska.
It’s so repellent that I hadn’t looked at it after a cursory glance, but here it is. The templates are connected to my laptop’s calendar, which I don’t use for anything else, with events assigned to months or weeks or days. The events pop up, color-coded, and I can’t take them off again—I tried once and it gave me a message about contacting the administrator.
Apparently I don’t have permission.
The developments connected to my father, and therefore my extended absences from Anchorage and Ned’s campaign, are lime-green bars extending across several different blocks of days on the calendar.
They’re labeled like this, on various dates:
LYMPHOMA STAGE 3. DIAGNOSIS, PROCESSING
TREATMENT MODULE 1: SURGERY, CHEMOTHERAPY
TREATMENT MODULE 2: RADIATION
METASTASIS: BONE MARROW, CEREBROSPINAL FLUID
And there’s one I didn’t notice before, a little further on.
PALLIATIVE CARE/MEMORIAL SERVICE
“Lymphoma Stage 3” is assigned to this month, the month we’re in right now: February.
I called Ned, I left a voicemail for him asking how he knew, but I strongly doubt he’ll tell me anything at all.
He typically has his staff email me when information needs to be exchanged; he and I don’t communicate.
“STAGE 3,” said my mother, on the phone again.
I’M PASTING IN an email I got from Kay, strange and dense. I think she may be bipolar.
You said you wanted to hear everything I know. So OK. So I have trouble explaining how I know it & what it is—writing isn’t my thing. I mean I was more the organic chem type!!! I used to get visions of like resonance structures & chair conformations & stuff, when I was holdig Infant V. But so. You know how I told you we r the only ones it leaves, what I meant was, it doesn’t leave the whales or the crocodiles, it doesn’t leave the plants & the trees, & that’s not because, like, theyre dumb. Theyre not. Deep language is in all living things but all the others, it stays with. Only not humans. Its because the other things, apes, cats, even the grasses in a field, don’t live just for themselves. They live for the group. They live for all, this whole of being. We used to be like that to, once a long time ago, once in our evolution, I don’t know when but once. But slowly it chaged & now we live for ourselves. So the deep language does’nt stay with us when we get our own, our surface language, you coud call it. We split off from it then & are forever alone. God leaves us Anna.
God leaves us.
I can’t tell how much is rumination or fabrication, whether some is intuition, how much she was given to know. In short I’m not sure if she has much authority.
But I’m keeping her message. I read it over in quiet times.
MORE GUESTS ARE leaving the motel, Big Linda reports, all vowing to keep in touch—I’ve started to check in on the Listserv, where so far Navid’s the only one absent. Regina and Reiner have gone back to their professions in the city, and Gabe has decamped too. He cited the needs of a lonely Bedlington terrier, pining away under the care of a neighbor back at the condo he shares with Burke, who’s soon to follow him home.