Kinflicks (56 page)

‘How can I help you with this?' he asked in a choked voice.

‘I never want to see you again. Please go away.'

In the middle of that night, half-asleep, I scooted over to fit myself into the curve of Eddie's body so that we could sleep as we usually did, as two interlocking S's. I scooted some more, fumbling with my hands for her warm smooth flesh. I scooted some more — and fell out of bed.

As I lay dazed on the cold plank floor, the events of the evening returned to me. I couldn't wrap myself around Eddie. She wasn't here. She was in the funeral home in Stark's Bog, finally at peace with The People. I sat up and wrapped my arms around my legs and rocked back and forth, moaning. I dug my teeth into one knee.

Christ, I wanted her so much! I imagined skiing into town, sneaking into the funeral parlor, searching through the coffins, finding her…headless. That body that had given me such intense pleasure — how was it possible that it could be cold and inert, unresponsive? That body that had trembled and shuddered under my hands — I could caress it through all eternity and it would never stir again. But if those familiar mounds of flesh weren't ‘Eddie,' what
was?
Where
was
she?

I tasted blood. I had gnawed through the skin on my knee.

Unable to track down Eddie's mother, we made the arrangements. When her ashes were returned from the crematorium in Montreal, the others agreed that I should dispose of them in solitude as I thought most appropriate. One afternoon I took the pot and walked out to our garden. The weeds and crop residues from the previous summer poked up through the snow. With a shovel, I cleared the snow from the tomato patch. One handful at a time, remembering with a faint pained smile lying there while Eddie lectured me on how weeding the tomatoes would weaken them, I scattered the ashes. Then, with the shovel, I replaced the snow.

Mona and Atheliah and I tried to carry on with the Free Farm as we felt Eddie would have wanted us to, rather than shutting down for an extended period of mourning. Sugaring was in full swing, and every day we had to collect the sap, in addition to barn chores and housework and stints at the clinic. But my efforts were lackluster. As far as I was concerned, the dynamic had departed. At various points throughout the day, I would pause at my tasks and stare off into the distance and wonder why I was bothering to do whatever I was doing. The only thing that kept me at it was some obscure notion that my halfhearted activities were a tribute to the memory of Eddie.

Several times a week one of us had to stay up all night in the sugar shack to stoke the fire to boil down the sap. One night I lay on the floor of the shack, drenched in sweat from the heat of the fire. In a detached intellectual fashion I was exploring the topic of Eddie's death: Had she ridden into the barbed wire that night by accident or on purpose? In other words, was it entirely my fault, or only partially so? Had I unwittingly driven her to suicide by feeding her insane jealousy? Or had she merely been caught in her own diabolical trap? There was no way I could ever know. I would carry the question, and the guilt, with me to my own grave.

Suddenly I smashed my fist into the wall in frustration and collapsed on the floor sobbing.

As I wiped my tears with my shirtsleeve and sniffed, a snow machine arrived. The door of the shack opened and there was Ira, his nostrils flaring and his sensitive mouth quivering.

‘Look,' he said hastily, in answer to my obvious lack of enthusiasm, ‘I feel terrible about your friend. I haven't been able to sleep. I don't exactly understand what was going on that night, but I feel somehow responsible. Isn't there anything I can do?'

‘It's not your fault. But please go away and leave me alone.'

‘Won't you at least explain what was going on?'

‘No.' He backed out the door, looking at me pleadingly.

The next few days there was an unpleasant odor around the cabin, and particularly in the kitchen.

‘Death,' Mona said darkly. ‘It's the smell of death.'

I shuddered. Then I went into the living room and got sticks of sandalwood incense for us. We lit them and waved them around, and soon the room smelled much better. We repeated this ritual for several nights running.

Then one morning when the three of us were on the hill collecting sap, the cabin below erupted in flames with a great whoosh like a gigantic gas oven lighting.

The cabin had burned to the ground before the volunteer fire department, in their black hats and yellow mackintoshes, could even get up the hill from town. The snow was melted for several hundred yards in every direction.

As Atheliah and Mona and I stood surveying the smoldering and flaring ruin, Ira came over and asked us questions in a very official tone of voice. ‘Gas leak,' he finally concluded as we described our efforts to expel the odor of death with our incense sticks. He looked at us as though we were aborigines. “You smelled gas and you lit
matches?'

Mona glared at him with hatred for his macho ability to cope with plumbing and wiring. She and Atheliah stalked to the truck, announcing that they were going back to their old commune. I said I'd be over later, I wanted to be alone.

The fire engines roared away with the volunteers clinging to them, disappointed to be done out of an opportunity for heroism. Ira walked toward his red fire chief car with its flashing roof light. Partway there, he turned and said delicately, ‘If you need a place to stay, I have a big house with lots of extra rooms.'

Gratefully, I walked to the car and climbed in next to him. I felt the need for some order in my life.

10
Friday, June 30

On the third morning after her transfusion, Mrs. Babcock discovered a tarry black material in her stool.

‘It's melena. From gastric bleeding,' Dr Vogel informed her briskly, not looking at her. ‘I'm putting you on a bland diet. And a different medication' ACTH.' He prodded at her abdomen. ‘And this afternoon we'll administer another two units of whole blood.'

‘There's very little doubt in my mind,' he added, half-sitting on the end of her bed, ‘that it's a question of sequestration, presumably in the spleen. We're about to pin it down. We're doing platelet antibody tests at the moment. Purpura haemorrhagiea, you have, Mrs. Babcock. Werlhofs syndrome. Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Morbus maculosus werlhofi.' He recited these names as though invoking Roman deities to her bedside.

Mrs. Babcock nodded gravely, trying not to show irony. Why, this blond man was young enough to be her son! His pleased expression over his mastery of these complex medical terms amused her. She recognized it so well from when the children were young. Karl would offer grandly to show her his Boy Scout knots. She would watch closely, forcing herself to be interested in sheepshanks and half hitches. She would ask him questions about their uses and virtues, and he would give her lengthy dissertations with that exact same look of self-importance over acquired expertise. Then he would pull a knot tight to demonstrate a point, and the rope would unravel and fall limply to the ground. Karl would blush and stammer. Picking it up, he would clandestinely consult his handbook, while explaining that he had done that on purpose in order to illustrate how
not
to tie a clove hitch.

She wished Dr. Tyler were around. They'd been through so much together' births, deaths, menopause, strep throats, Pap smears, depressions. At least he would level with her. His age and his experience permitted him to admit it when he didn't know what he was doing.

‘Young man,' she asked Dr. Vogel, who was listening to her heart through his stethoscope, ‘how sick
am I?'

He straightened up and averted his eyes. ‘Hmmm, yes, hmmm, well, obviously you're quite ill or you wouldn't be here, would you?'

As she nodded in agreement, he edged toward the door.

‘Might I die?' she inquired calmly, hoping to catch him off guard.

He cleared his throat and frowned. ‘I wouldn't say you could
die
…but, on the other hand, no one lives forever.'

As she lay there trying to diagnose this answer, he slipped out the door, letting in a burst of words from next door: ‘You run until you drop, and then you pick yourself up and you run some more! Do you understand what I'm saying, men? You…'

Mrs. Babcock reviewed her situation. Wesley had died of a heart attack on his office floor. Two months later she had had a bloody nose lasting for several hours. A tourniquet test and platelet count had sufficed for Dr. Vogel to prescribe prednisone. It had worked, and she was out of the hospital in a week. Three months later an identical episode had occurred. Three weeks ago, a year to the day after Wesley's death, her nose had begun bleeding again. The drug had not worked this time. The transfusion had worked only briefly. Tests were being done. Other treatments would be tried. But what was
really
going on? Why was she being treated like an idiot child? Whose body
was
it?

The door opened and in slouched her daughter, in bib overalls and a dingy T-shirt that read ‘Boone's Farm Apple Wine.' Mrs. Babcock closed her eyes and sighed with exasperation. ‘Where did you get
that
outfit? At the feed store?'

Ginny glanced at her sullenly. ‘I'm sorry if it offends you, Mother. These
happen
to be the only clothes I own.'

Mrs. Babcock sighed. ‘Poor dear. I
know
how difficult it must be to make ends meet on only $8,000 in dividend checks a year.' She forced herself not to study Ginny's braless breasts. Watching her children develop physically had never ceased to amaze her. True, she and Wesley had set the whole process in motion, but almost immediately it became apparent that genes, and not they themselves, were running the show' laying down the framework and fleshing it out. If
she
could have run things, she'd have arrested their development at around age five. She had adored their compact little bodies at that age. No longer did every object in the house represent a potential calamity. No longer did they require her constant vigilance and assistance. When they'd dance to their records, they were so breathtakingly graceful and unself-conscious that tears would come to her eyes. And yet they had still required her in other ways, had scrambled onto her lap for cuddling and tickling and reassurance.

But there was a descent into a pit before them. They grew up overnight upon starting school and shrugged off caresses and insisted on doing everything for themselves and no longer sought the safety of her lap for recharging. Having finally learned to accept responsibility for them gracefully, she was now suddenly expected to unlearn all that and let go of them. And then the physical transformations' the boys' voices began cracking, they became as awkward and as timid as two-year-olds, but covered it over with an irritating braggadocio. Ginny had begun menstruating, had developed hips and breasts. It was appalling really' because it meant that these creatures weren't a superior species after all. They would lust and hunger and burn, just as their parents had. And out of it all would come children of their own, to whom
they
would look wistfully, hoping for more original things.

Wesley had taken it especially hard, for well-documented psychological reasons, when Ginny began dating, and coming in late with her make-up smeared all over her face. He always said it was like having some scuzzy ground hog take a bite out of a prize eggplant you'd been nurturing to perfection in your garden all summer. And when they'd seen Ginny in the emergency room after she fell off the Cloyd boy's motorcycle' her back red and skinless like a raw roast beef, and her leg purple with a jagged bone poking through the skin — she and Wesley had fallen weeping into each other's arms.

All Ginny's adult life Mrs. Babcock had had to force herself not to think about who was doing what to this young female body that she simultaneously loved and loathed. For the sake of Ginny's mental health, she had struggled to develop a sublime indifference. Besides, it was ridiculous — her feeling of physical possessiveness. And yet after so many years of tending this body — bathing it, dressing it, feeding it, binding up its wounds — how could she be expected to feel otherwise? Now that Ginny had a child of her own, was she aware of these undercurrents? Probably not. Ginny didn't seem to be aware of anyone's feelings except her own — or else she wouldn't be in her mother's room in bib overalls and a T-shirt.

Ginny sat down and stared at this shrew who was inhabiting her submissive mother's body and who kept insisting on making unexpected appearances. ‘I'm sorry you're not feeling well today,' she offered, studying the hideous bruises on her mother's arms and reminding herself that the woman was very ill. In truth, Ginny was resentful at the way the whole thing was dragging on and on, and was guilty at being resentful. But after all, she
did
have her own life to lead, such as it was.

‘I'm sure,' her mother said sardonically, adding as though reading her mind, ‘I'm sorry I can't just die and get it over with, so that you can get on with your life.'

‘Mother, for Christ's sake!'

‘Ginny, I've
asked
you to spare me your blasphemies. Do you
mind?'
Mrs. Babcock herself was a little startled at these appearances of a personality she didn't recognize as hers. These great bursts of irrational hostility were suddenly surfacing. She had simply been born in the wrong generation: When she had been a child, children were expected to defer to their parents in everything, to wait on them and help around the house and so on; but when she became a parent and was ready to enjoy her turn at being deferred to, the winds of fashion in child rearing had changed, and parents were expected to defer to their children in hopes of not squelching their imagination and creativity. She had missed out all the way around.

But the interesting thing was that since she had begun giving vent to her irritation — in other words, since Ginny had arrived — she hadn't been depressed. Before, if the children's behavior had annoyed her, she had blamed herself for the way she had brought them up. She was a failure at her chosen vocation -parenthood — and she had sunk deeper and deeper into the black pit of self-condemnation, had drugged herself into immobility with the pills that Dr. Tyler had given her, and had lain around the house feeling hopeless and worthless. But no more. Not now, when one would most expect her to be depressed, lying in a hospital bed with her hematopoietic system collapsing.