Trouble Page 5

  Outside, a neighbor was yelling about getting charcoal.

  “Your hair is okay,” he said. “You could use a bath.”

  “I took one.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  Lying or disoriented: he didn’t know. She needed a shower; she often needed one, as George was embarrassed by her nudity and chafed at bathing her, leaving it to Jonah or Bernadette, the nurse who came three days a week.

  “To get the oil out,” he said.

  She nibbled her thumb. “He doesn’t like to.”

  He glanced into the living room. George had nodded off, bottle slumped against him like a tiny, misshapen lover.

  Jonah looked at her. “Okay. Let’s you and me.”

  HER BACK WAS so white it was almost green. Her legs hadn’t been shaved in an eternity. Her armpits. Once upon a time, her left shoulder had been slightly bigger than her right: evidence of overuse. Now they had evened out, shrunk, her musculature softened and swallowed by fat. Still, he assumed she had strength buried in there. These days he could beat her in arm wrestling but that was new.

  She hunched over as he soaped her, covering her breasts in an imitation of modesty. He had no trouble remembering the moment she had become asexual to him: the first time he saw her forcibly sedated. Watching her kick, and spit, and buck, and bellow, he had thought that she resembled nothing so much as a baby. Such helplessness rendered lust a perverse non sequitur, and all his desire imploded, flash-bang-gone.

  Realizing this was bittersweet, because one of her chief attractions had been the way she looked up to him, and she’d always had a sort of neonatal quality: from her big fish eyes to her tendency to burrow into his body, searching out refuge and pulse. Even before getting sick, she had enabled him to feel like a provider. Used to being the baby brother, used to having his judgment second-guessed, he loved to be her hero.

  They met at Michigan. Lance introduced them; his mother had been a friend of Wendy Richter’s, and when Hannah returned to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1998—a semester off—following Wendy’s death from breast cancer, he took it upon himself to cheer her up by introducing her to some cool frosh. (Later she told Jonah she’d lacked the heart to inform Lance that “cool frosh” was an oxymoron.) You’ll like him, he’s a New Yorker, too.

  No thanks Hannah said. Displaced East Coast kids gratingly tended to stick together, and she wanted out of that scene.

  No thanks Jonah said. He’d known Lance for a month by that point, and had learned enough to be skeptical of his skills as a matchmaker.

  But Lance prevailed upon the both of them, and on Halloween Jonah found himself at Skeepers talking to a girl with black hair and widish shoulders, and before long they decided it was too noisy inside, and before long they were kissing, and before long they were e-mailing each other a dozen times a day, and before long his sister had declared them an item.

  A convenient enough phrase from her outsider’s perspective; but looking back, he perceived its inaccuracy. Their itemhood was more correctly an absorption, Hannah soaking into him. Shy, solitary, she preferred to concentrate on one thing at any given moment. The same singularity of purpose explained her choice of sport, pitching being an activity that compresses the world down to a point, moving along a line, with human hands for endpoints. She had the true athlete’s monomania, and turned toward him with a devotion of gemlike density, so raw it sometimes stung him.

  In retrospect, of course, he questioned the depth of what they’d had. They’d been young; and today he was different, rusty. Guileless Hannah; trusting; optimistic: qualities that today struck him as naïve; an amendment to his thinking caused, ironically, by watching her decay, numbering its banal tragedies. Were he to travel back in time, see her through the prism of the present…but he couldn’t travel back in time, nobody could, and it was pointless to sit there what-iffing, so he wouldn’t.

  What he had loved about her: she was giving. She was humble, holding opinions without the need to impress them upon everyone. Even at her saddest, she was not without some light. Except for those shoulders, she was eminently holdable, and those he got used to. She didn’t care for parties but went when he asked. She had a fantastically beautiful back, strong and smooth and caramel-colored. She would stick bottles of chocolate milk in his backpack for him to discover right when he was searching for his ID to buy a drink. She took compliments well; did not, like so many other girls, believe that to be attractive she had to speak a little bit simpler, rope in a few IQ points. She got him into running; together they would make lazy circuits of the campus. She didn’t care what kind of doctor he decided to become, although when he told her he was thinking of oncology she took it as a gift—a tribute to her mother—and she cried, so happy that he was part of her life, would be part of her life forever.

  By the start of his senior year they’d come up with an absolutely ironclad plan. They would move to New York so he could start medical school; she would find a job in…that part was never clear…and they would share an apartment until he finished his third year, at which point they would defy fashion and prudence, and get married.

  His mother hadn’t been crazy about them living together, but—lacking prudish or religious grounds on which to justify her qualms—never said more than Aren’t you a little young? Her attitude remained a sore point, as Jonah believed that she’d never liked Hannah to begin with. As evidence, he noted the haste with which she had rushed to push him back into the dating pool. It’s not healthy, Jonah. Life goes on. Kate has friends. Eventually, he told her to stop it. With his mom, that was enough to shut her up.

  It seemed incredible that he had missed the first signs: fireworks going off in his face. But what had he known? He’d been busy. First studying for med school. So much reading. So many tests. He’d been too, too busy. Too busy to speak up when, the April before graduation, she quit the team, citing an inability to focus. Shocked—but supportive—he said nothing. (And how long before then, he wondered, how many times in the first three years, how many hairline cracks.) Too busy to see a problem when she began to withdraw, stopped going out with friends, didn’t want to go to the movies. She was too tired to run; they stopped running. Once or twice he arrived at the house on Greenwood she shared with four teammates to find her heaped on her bed, bawling into a pillow. (Or maybe more than once or twice, maybe more than that, maybe.) After recovering, resetting herself, she would write it off as residual depression about her mother, and—too busy to consider other possibilities, accepting her at her word—he said nothing.

  That summer, 2002, they moved back to New York and took a cramped fifth-floor walk-up on East 103rd, within walking distance of the hospital. The exigencies of school left him no time even to unpack, but Hannah assured him she would do it all. She intended to get the place in order; with his help, she made a list of all the stuff you forget you need until you need it: Brillo pads, Q-tips, lightbulbs, hangers, paper plates, batteries, a screwdriver, a bathmat, vinegar. She talked about going to the Bed Bath & Beyond on 60th and First. She hoped they delivered.

  She never did any of it. Not wanting to inaugurate their life together by fighting—too busy—he said nothing.

  She did not get a job, spending hours staring glassy-eyed at the classifieds or craigslist. She did not call up friends. She did not go to the gym. She complained of fatigue. She would read the same words over and over and over; they had lots of paperbacks dog-eared on page three. She forgot things. She did not brush her teeth for days, then a week, then weeks; she developed a bad cavity but never bothered to find a dentist. She was skittish, labile, weepy, unpredictable. She sobbed that he would stop loving her and he—befuddled, unprovoked, distracted by reams of niggling anatomical detail, chalking her outbursts up to weather or boredom or anomie or PMS—gave her a kiss and a hug and said nothing. He told himself that she was stressed about being unemployed; pressuring her would make it worse. He said nothing. Nothing at all, nothing for months, though she continu
ed to crumble. He would get up at night to go to the bathroom and discover her standing by the window, mumbling. He thought she was sleepwalking; he said nothing.

  Hindsight made him into a fool. But there had been no breakpoint, no howling neon arrow; life provides few exclamation marks. He stood by as she boiled by degrees.

  Not until December, when he came home from a late night in the HUM library and found their bookshelf emptied, Hannah in a pool of confetti, did he understand.

  I took out the sharp letters.

  He stood in the entryway, snow-speckled backpack still on his shoulder.

  They’re dangerous.

  He picked up his copy of Evolutionary Analysis. Deep scratches marred the cover, so that it read olu ionar nal sis

  Hannah, trembling, smiling joylessly, said They can cut you.

  He calmed her down and ran her a bath. He pocketed her Lady Bics, settled her into the water, and said I’ll be right back.

  He went through her phone until he found George’s work number.

  Something’s wrong.

  And George said—in way that suggested he’d been expecting this call—I’ll be there in an hour.

  He brought her back to Great Neck. Two weeks later, George came home from the market and heard water running upstairs. She stood in the shower, letting it blast her square in her chest, her clothing clinging to her like so many drowned rats. Her shoes on. She was screaming, afraid of everything, accusing the air. She attacked him with a half-empty bottle of shampoo. She put her fist through the glass shelf underneath the mirror, requiring twenty-six stitches near her wrist.

  Despite having a test the next day, Jonah took a car service out to Nassau University Medical Center, where George greeted him with a handshake. There was no anger in his face, no Why didn’t you speak up or How could you do this to my daughter. Instead Jonah saw the same haggard acceptance he’d heard over the phone, as though George considered this disaster—this inversion of the universe—about as novel as sand at the beach. And Jonah, who had always believed Hannah’s mother had died of breast cancer—because that was what she had told him—said You’ve been here before.

  George nodded.

  With Wendy.

  George nodded again.

  Jonah said nothing. He did not ask what, ultimately, had happened to Wendy—but he knew that it sure as fucking life wasn’t breast cancer. He sat in a hard plastic waiting-room chair, listening to the hospital sounds that were growing familiar to him, pages and beeps and squeaky rubber wheels, and with a supreme effort, went over his conversations with Hannah on the subject of her mother, a reexamination yielding the distinct impression—rewriting history, or knowing?—that her reluctance to talk about her death sprung not from pain but from fear that he would leave her if he knew. He looked at George, toeing the clean floor with his balmorals, and understood that he had been sold a false bill of goods.

  A month later he illegally sublet the walk-up and moved in with Lance. Living in the Village would mean a forty-minute commute, but Jonah had no intention of staying uptown, much less in the apartment. It only took a few hours to get his possessions in order: most were still boxed. He left them that way for another month, at which point he realized that he was in for the long haul, and began to unpack.

  A year and a half later he was here, in that same upstairs bathroom. The supports for the glass shelf had been removed, leaving two caulked-over holes in the tile below the mirror. A year and a half; a dateless time; an aging time; a time of starvation and of gluttony; of caretaking and suspended animation; of off-peak ten-trip tickets and crossword puzzles and denial and regret and futility, most of all futility, the refuge provided by routine. He had not gotten over it because he had no idea what that meant. She was still alive. She was naked. He soaped her back. He wet her hair.

  AT QUARTER AFTER five George ordered a pizza. While Jonah ate, he wondered if the Iniguez funeral party was coming to a raucous head. They weren’t Irish or anything, they probably had a home filled with dark nosegays of Catholic fatalism. He didn’t want to think about it.

  At six he got up to leave. George said No no no, I’ll drive you. Jonah declined. He needed the fresh air, needed to stretch his legs. Most of all he needed to be away. For this he hated himself.

  “You don’t want to leave her alone for too long,” Jonah said.

  George scoffed. “Five minutes.”

  As they drove, George said, “Have you given any thought to what I asked you.”

  “What’s that.”

  “I’ve been doing some poking around. I found a package. It’s a cruise. I asked you about it last time.”

  “I don’t remember.” He remembered perfectly well.

  “The week of Christmas. A full Christmas dinner is included. The Caribbean. They make stops. Islands and things.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  George nodded. “So what do you think.”

  “I think it sounds like fun.”

  George glanced at him, and when he said no more, said, “It would be a huge help to me. You could sleep in the basement. You know the bed down there.”

  Jonah nodded once. “Mm-hm.”

  “You’re out here enough as it is.” George looked at him again. “Bernadette can come during the day. You’d be in charge at night.”

  “That’s my vacation time.”

  “You told me, and I understand that.”

  “I was hoping to get away myself.”

  “You still can. It’s just the week.”

  “Right, so—”

  “You told me your vacation was two weeks.”

  “I—okay, but—”

  “So you’d have one week here and one to yourself. You can go away for New Year’s.”

  “Why can’t she come with you?”

  “You know the answer to that as well as I do.”

  “I honestly don’t see the problem.”

  “It’s a ship, Jonah.”

  “I’m sure they have doctors on board.”

  “That’s not the point.” George shook his head. “I need a break.”

  Jonah said nothing.

  “I don’t ask you for much.”

  Jonah said nothing.

  “If it were up to me, I’d have Bernadette in the whole time. It’d never fly, you know that.”

  “What about Reese.” Hannah’s aunt—her mother’s sister—lived in Ohio.

  “She and Lewis are taking the kids to visit his parents in Delray Beach.”

  “There must be someone else free.”

  George said, “She asked for you, Jonah.”

  Guilt is malleable; it is enterprising. It seeks a level; it glues together unrelated events, giving the appearance of causality. A dead man; a sick girl. Jonah’s guilt engine, already smoking, burned hotter.

  And it was true, wasn’t it, that George didn’t ask him for much.

  He had never asked him to start coming out in the first place. He’d never asked Jonah to put the coffee on, to untangle Hannah, to pick up the occasional bouquet of flowers. Of his own accord, he had started doing these things, and they had become truths. If every day he came obligated ten more, he had only himself to blame: he had fixed the exchange rate.

  They arrived at the station. “I can pay you,” George said.

  “You don’t need to pay me.” Jonah zipped up his bag. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Give me a call.”

  “Okay.” He wasn’t saying yes.

  “Let me know soon, we have to book the tickets.”

  “I’ll call you.” He was saying yes.

  George put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  “I’ll give you a call.”

  LIGHT SUMMER RAIN fell, the sourceless mist that somehow manages to leave the City dirtier than before, turning manholes to matte pennies and ferrying downwind whiffs of garbage. Though it was after eight, most shops were open. The counterlady from Bar Racuda lingered outside on a smoking break. Beneath a frowny-
face umbrella, a man wearing fake eyelashes waved to attract a cab, pausing to wink at Jonah as he trudged up Avenue A.

  Hello world he thought. Must be going. Till tomorrow.

  He ducked into a bodega, grabbed a bag of pretzels, and stepped up to the bulletproof booth. The clerk rang him up without taking his eyes off a black-and-white TV set showing the Red Sox–A’s game.

  “What happened to the Yankees?” Jonah asked.

  “Rain ow.” The clerk dropped a nickel, bent to get it, and when he came back up he was Raymond Iniguez.

  Jonah reeled backward, wiping a row of peanut-butter jars to the floor and slamming against the freezer case.

  “Heya.” The clerk was on his feet. “Whassa matta wih you? You stupeh?” The clerk was Korean and in his sixties. “You go to break someting.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jonah said and rushed out.

  He stopped on the corner, stooping, licked by the humidity, digging his nails into his palms. Unreasonable. Out of control. If he could transmogrify that guy into Raymond Iniguez, he could do it to anybody.

  He peered into the bodega. The clerk had gone back to his TV. No harm done.

  Then relax. Relax.

  As he stepped into his building, the door whacked a tall brown paper parcel bearing his name and a return address in Bismarck. For an instant he strangled on the notion that it was a bomb sent by Raymond from beyond the grave or arranged by a vengeful family member. It would blow off his arms, smear him along the walls like raspberry jam will you chill out for god’s sake I mean come on.

  He ran his hands along the package. Why would someone send him a bomb from North Dakota. Middle America bore him no grudge; he was an alum of one of its finest educational institutions. People out there didn’t mail explosives to random strangers, unless you counted the Unabomber, and he was off fermenting in prison. It was probably a, he had no idea.

  The paper concealed a plain white box, sealed at both ends with industrial-sized staples. He pried them free with his housekey, loosing a flock of foam 8’s.