Mount Pleasant (17 page)

H
ARRY FIRST NOTICED THE DULL
,
NAGGING PAIN IN HIS
lower abdomen shortly after the dinner party. When it persisted, he immediately suspected something serious. One of the benefits of the Internet was that it could confirm your worst fears about anything. Deep into a series of hyperlinked sites that demonstrated a causal link between cancer and negative thoughts, using pie charts and testimonials from doctors identified only by initials, Harry was convinced he carried the disease. These days, he
only
had negative thoughts.

He hastily scheduled a prostate exam, blood tests and a colonoscopy. The first had revealed normal swelling, the second came back clean, and the earliest colonoscopy appointment was months away. Then a cancellation allowed Harry to jump the Soviet-length queue, and now he sat in the endoscopy waiting room, that dismal casino. As he flipped through a dated magazine, he recalled the odds that someone had of developing colon cancer: a very promising seven percent if you were under
fifty (which he almost was), had no obvious symptoms (no rectal bleeding) and no family history. He hadn’t been in a hospital since his vasectomy five years ago. He recalled the pleasant, middle-aged nurse washing his freshly shaven testicles in warm soapy water as they talked about funding cuts to hospitals, though the encounter ended with the soldering iron and the smell of his burning flesh.

This colonoscopy had already required two days of abstinence (no alcohol), fasting, laxatives and purgatives, which had left him feeling both empty and enlightened, in a religious state, ready to receive the spirit. He put on two hospital gowns that were so thin from a thousand washings they hung like gossamer. The first gown was open at the back, the second at the front. When we put on the uniform of the old and infirm, he thought, we inhabit their world. His exposed white calves were complicit: thin and hairless and vulnerable.

Led to a gurney and instructed to lie on his side, Harry contemplated the equipment hanging from the ceiling, de Sade–like and dated, like the waiting room magazines. The paint had peeled on the walls, and there were water stains on the acoustic tile ceiling. The anesthesiologist introduced herself—Marta?—an austere woman with narrow hips and a slight paunch that protruded under her scrubs. She put an IV into his hand and Harry watched something drip into him.

“What is that?”

She listed a handful of unfamiliar drugs.

“Are those morphine-based?” he asked.

“Morphine,” she repeated noncommittally.

Harry was already agreeably, effortlessly high. He wanted to engage this woman in conversation. He wanted to buy her a drink. A sign came into focus on the far wall—a small homemade sign that said,
REMEMBER THE OXYGEN
!

“That isn’t a good sign,” Harry said.

“What?”

“Remember the oxygen.”

“Oh,” she laughed. “It isn’t what you think.”

“That’s your story?”

“And I’m sticking to it.”

Harry was floating just above this woman and wanted to bring her along to where he was going. Perhaps he called her name (or what might be her name). He found himself in a darkness that was comforting, like floating in warm salt water. There were shapes just beyond his reach. Something crawled up inside him. The gate had been breached, a snake sliding in, stealing his secrets.

Few things are as elemental as the colon. You consume, you process, you excrete; this is the essential biology of the living. Whatever else you do is up to you. You procreate, if the mood strikes you.

When he used to bathe Ben, the happy, splashing baby, there was a comfort in the way those tiny hands held onto him like a marsupial. The perfect harmony that exists before language complicates everything. But he saw this scene from Ben’s perspective now, the looming shape of Harry over the bath, the looming shape of every father, large in their presence, larger in their absence. Harry’s face leaning down, young though not youthful, the smile and sounds that were reserved for children. And Ben’s (his own) arms reaching up.

Harry floated onward. Though he wasn’t alone in this; the world was unanchored—cut loose from history, free of the church, the nuclear family lurching into the sunset. What binds us now? Debt, all of us chained to the same rock, our livers being delicately gnawed at eighteen percent compounded annually.

The other shapes around him—were these people? He couldn’t tell; the light was so dim, the air so thick it was more like liquid. His limbs were moving, but he made so little progress. He could hear voices. Maybe it was only one. It was slowed down like a tape recorder with dying batteries. The vowels were drawn out, elongated into soft sounds.

Aaaauuuuglaahh
.

What?

Harry, did you need it all?
The voice was suddenly clear.

Did I need …

So much was unnecessary. The indulgence. All that wine. Pecan pie
.

It wasn’t that much, really
.

You’ve lost track. But not me
.

Harry kited through the amniotic fluid, floating, arms out. Lost track, he echoed in a musical voice.

I remember every chocolate-covered espresso bean, every cognac, every woman you tasted, everything that passed through. I can’t forget
.

Was Harry talking to his colon?

Now look at me. A camera. I guard my privacy, Harry
.

Your fifteen minutes
, Harry said.
You should be happy for the attention
.

I’m not happy, Harry. I wasn’t expecting company
.

But look at you! I’ll bet you’re pink as a newborn, as fresh as lavender
.

Harry, I don’t deserve this
.

Harry suddenly had a bad feeling. It crept through the fluid, infiltrating his druggy dream.
Have you betrayed me?
he asked.

I betray you? I’m not capable of betrayal, Harry. I’m just a factory worker. I take what I’m given. You’re management. You betrayed me. You make the decisions and we all live with them. Try to live, anyway
.

What the hell do you mean by that?

The room came into focus slowly, a different room. An old man lay on a bed next to Harry’s. Like Harry, he was on his side. A druggy groan came from him. Harry was still enviably stoned. He thought of the few drug experiences he’d had, the one time he took LSD, with Jonah Freedman in university. They went to the Army Surplus store and wandered the dark aisles, among the faded green jackets and heavy boots, and fell down laughing. They found everything in the store hysterical. Jonah tried on a helmet and looked into the cloudy mirror, then laughed so hard he peed his pants slightly. The owner berated them in an accent so thick they couldn’t understand what he was saying. Jonah tried to buy a switchblade knife at the counter, but the owner wouldn’t sell it to him and told them to leave. They stood on the suddenly bright street laughing, the world seen with what seemed to be absurd clarity. They counted their money four times before convincing themselves they had enough for a movie. It took three hours to decide which one and then find the theatre. It turned out to be one that both of them had already seen.

After five minutes, Harry was helped onto a lounge chair, where he sat beside a woman with a sleepy grey face, wearing the same gowns as him. They chatted drunkenly. A nurse gave him a small cup of apple juice and handed him a form. On the top, written in blue ink, were the words “seven polyps (small).”

Harry got dressed shakily, then was ushered into Dr. Nathlett’s office, where he began to focus. Dr. Nathlett had a small head, a ring of ginger hair, a freckled face that looked unhealthy, a heaviness that spread over his chair.

“We found something,” he said.

“Seven polyps.”

“We took them out. They’ll get looked at.”

“What if they’re cancerous?”

“Well, let’s wait on that. They’re small. It’s lucky you came in when you did.”

But seven—such a precise number. Harry wondered if there could have been eight, or nineteen. Did they find everything? What could you see in that underwater camera, that searching eye that crawled along his scourged bowel? Don’t we have sixty feet of large intestine? Or is it more? The colon was only part of the intestine, though Harry wasn’t clear on that relationship. How could you check that expanse? It would take a crew of technicians, a Cousteau expedition.

“We should have some results in two weeks.”

“But if the result is positive? If they are cancerous?” Harry was suddenly sure they were.

“Well, we have options.”

“Options.”

“At this stage, with their size.” The doctor held his thumb and index finger a millimetre apart to indicate smallness.

“You’ll call, then.”

“Better that you check back in two weeks. Call my receptionist.”

Harry left the hospital and got into a cab. He watched the east-end houses go by, modest bungalows built for returning World War II veterans. He passed the halal butchers, the impromptu mosque, the cutely named organic café, the Greek clubs with men sitting outside in the cold air, smoking and gesturing, filled with solutions. The drugs were regrettably wearing off, leaving him bereft. A group of boys spilled along the sidewalk, slapping, laughing and grabbing one another. Two weeks to wait for news. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It was someone’s motto.

FIFTEEN

“Y
OU DON’T SEE IT
. That’s the beauty. It’s invisible. It’s moving through this room right now, millions, the molecules traceless. It’s silent, and everywhere it goes it takes something. It moves like the plague. That’s how you tell it came through. You count the dead.”

“But it gives something.”

“Money’s a dark gift, Harry.”

“You bought my mother’s house.”

“I’m putting it on the market. It’s too broody for me. All those old bricks. They’re like tombs, those places. I’ve got a condo, windows on three sides. You wake up you know it’s morning. In those old places, you wake up, its 1912. You want to buy the place, Harry? It’s yours if you want it.”

Dick Ebbetts punctuated this offer with a shrug. The considerably padded shoulders of his tight suit didn’t come back down with his shoulders but stayed up around his ears. He was framed by the pewter-coloured banquette. Above that, a
million dollars’ worth of climate-controlled Burgundy. They were sitting in Crux, amid the animated lunch crowd.

Harry considered the imbalance between himself and Ebbetts. Harry was burdened by debt and colon cancer (he was increasingly convinced), and unburdened by sex. This troll was rich, from all accounts had inventive sex with beautiful escorts and was, as far as Harry knew, disease-free. These comparisons with other people had become involuntary for him. He had invited Ebbetts to lunch in the hope of getting more information on BRG in the wake of Tommy Bladdock’s news that the Securities Commission was looking at the company.

Harry stared at Ebbetts’ stubby manicured hands. Ebbetts the thug. So thought his mother and sister. Perhaps they were right. But Ebbetts was the only one at BRG who wasn’t tied to the company through the daisy chain of bloodlines, intermarriage, and racquet club memberships. The meeting was awkward because of his mother and her house, though Ebbetts’ purchase of it was chalked up, nominally at least, as an act of charity.

“How did BRG come out of the subprime crash?” Harry asked.

“We’re far enough from the killing floor that we didn’t get any blood on our shirts.”

“But they didn’t see Lehman Brothers coming.”

“No one saw Lehman. You figure banks are the bedrock. Then you find they’re basically the big, disruptive dummy in the back of the class who gets pushed through the system because no one wants to deal with him.”

Ebbetts’s plump hands described tiny circles in the air. “Look, the whole thing was going to topple anyway. More people got in, they started working the margins at first. For a long time you could do pretty good just eating after the big
cats were full. But this clusterfuck between the bankers and the carnies, they gave birth to that monster: a million subprime mortgages hustled to single mothers in Florida that are going up three points after year two. You take that debt and roll it up with Russian oil and student loans and the Vegas line on whether Tom Cruise is gay, and you dress it up so it looks like a bond and sell off slices in London and New York, and pretty soon even you don’t know what you’re selling. You’re the guy selling the air inside Yankee Stadium, and everyone is thinking, Well, we have to
breathe
.”