Permanence (6 page)

Doctor says nothing for a time. Then he says this: “You need to get out more often, Mary. You need to start living life again, stop wallowing in isolation and self-pity.”

I turn away from the window, startled. I glare at doctor.

“You’re a son of bitch,” I say in a deliberate, whispering voice.

Doctor says nothing. Not a word. Not even the slightest crack in his indifferent expression.

But I know this: doctor is absolutely right.

Reflection

Doctor continues smoking cigarettes, one after the other. It’s as if he fears clean air. The smoke rises and covers his face in an eerie white haze.

We are practicing “reflection.”

This is just a fancy term for draping ourselves in silence. According to doctor, “Not all analysis is conducted through the spoken word, but through the meditative silence of inner reflection.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, finally. “But I’m not a son of a bitch.”

I choose not to speak.

“What I want to tell you is this: you are concentrating on what you have lost rather than how you lost it.” He pauses, looks to the ceiling and smokes. “You don’t consider living a life for you anymore. You’re still living for your child and Jamie. But they’re gone, Mary. Ridding yourself of the guilt is like facing your worst fear. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to confront just how you lost your baby. But you will do this on your own terms, not in terms of sentiment and guilt. Relive the experience like rewinding a tape. Let it spill out of your system. Then create new memories to take its place.”

We reflect in the usual heavyweight silence.

The images flash through my mind at lightning speed—the tub filling with the water from the spigot, Jamie asleep on the couch, baby splashing in the water…

I take a deep breath and I begin: “I remember the tub filling with the bath water for baby…”

“Good, Mary,” shouts doctor, jumping up from behind his desk. “Now finish it. Get it out of your system.”

But I break down and lose my resolve. I will not tell him the story of baby. Not now.

Tears stream down my face and into my mouth.

“I can’t,” I say. “Not yet. Not now. Maybe never…Maybe. Never.”

Time’s up

Later on, doctor stands up from behind his desk. He comes to me the way I expect him to. He stands beside me. We see our transparent likenesses reflected inside the window. It is easier for me to watch our reflection than our real-life persons. I’ve stopped crying, my tears having dried on my cheeks.

I expect doctor’s touch, but he does not touch.

Doctor lights another cigarette and allows a stream of cigarette smoke to ooze contemplatively from his mouth and lips.

“What you need, Mary, for your life, is to begin living again.”

He places his free hand inside the pocket of his woolen pants. He acquires his usual indifferent, stone-like frown. “You need to get out of your apartment for a while, perhaps forever. You’re a travel agent. Schedule a trip to a faraway place. To forget about things.”

I say nothing.

Doctor walks to his desk and stamps out his cigarette, only half-smoked. I take a seat on the patient’s couch. Doctor comes to me, slowly, without urgency. He joins me here, on the couch. This is the usual way he comes to me on Friday afternoons. Doctor sits close to me. Our shoulders meet. I do what comes to me naturally. I place my hand on his leg, slide it gently up the length of his thigh.

But doctor lifts my hand from his leg and places it back against my lap. He wraps his arms around me, gently. He runs his hands through my hair and pulls my head towards him, tightly, against his chest.

I smell his familiar, musty aroma. I feel his touch. But doctor’s touch is not a sexual touch. I know that after so many months of meeting with doctor, whether I want it to or not, doctor’s touch has become a feeling, loving touch.

“There’s this conference I’ve been invited to in Italy,” he explains. “I’ll be submitting a paper, giving a lecture, visiting some hospitals.”

Doctor speaks with some hesitation, as if this doctor whose baby I carry is suddenly suggesting we break his code of ethics. And he is.

“We could go there…together,” he says, fumbling the words, “if you feel up to it.” Doctor releases his grip on me. He gets up from the couch. He walks back to the window. He places both hands into the pockets of his wool jacket. I see his fingers moving inside the pockets. He is unusually nervous, anxious, almost regretful. He is staring at my reflection in the window.

“Have you ever been to Venice?” he asks.

I say nothing for a few beats. I take time to reflect. I feel my stomach, what is developing inside of my stomach.

“No,” I say almost matter-of-factly. “I’ve never been overseas. But I’ve arranged trips for other people.” What I do not tell doctor is that I haven’t been anywhere really, preferring to stay home, where it’s supposed to be safe.

I look at my watch. Six-ten.

Doctor speaks into the window: “You’d love the canals and the deep, dark basin off Piazza San Marco; the gondolas, the trattorias…Venice is like nowhere else on earth. Venice is timeless, permanent. A living museum.”

“I’ve never been there,” I say. “But I’ve seen all the colorful posters of ‘romantic Venice.’ I’m sure the real romantic Venice is beautiful.”

“Think about it,” says doctor, stepping away from the window, walking back to his desk. “I’ll be gone for more than a month, which means I won’t see you for quite some time.”

Doctor looks first at his watch and then he looks at me. He makes a few notes and shuffles through some papers.

“That’s it for today,” he says. He looks at his watch again.

I stand up from the patient’s couch, press my hand flat against my stomach. I gather my things—my coat, my bag. I walk to doctor’s desk. But I drop my coat to the floor. When I bend over to pick it up, I spill the contents of my purse. My hands are shaking; my head is buzzing. Doctor comes to me, kneels down beside me on the floor. He helps me replace the items into my pocketbook. Then he sees it, I can tell. We see it together. Folded instructions for a pregnancy test kit. I look at doctor, try to divert his attention. But he does not look up to me the way I expect him to. I replace the instructions back inside my pocketbook.

I think about life without doctor.

I think about the time he will be gone away from me and how he has been my only companion during the last six months. I see doctor whether I want to or not, whether I need to or not. But now that doctor tells me he is going away, I know this: I want doctor; I need doctor. I like being with him. My God, he is my lover and the father of the child I am carrying. Am I falling in love with doctor? Perhaps I have already fallen in love with him and do not know it. But one thing is for certain: I will not let him get away. I depend upon him to keep me sane—to keep me without guilt. I don’t know if I can live without him.

When my purse is refilled with the spilled contents, I step behind doctor’s desk were he has resumed sitting. I allow my hand to gently brush against doctor’s shoulder. But he does not look up at me. He hesitates, then snatches my hand into his. He grips it and holds it. I feel doctor’s feeling grip. This is a grip that tells me doctor is in love with me. It is a grip I find myself wanting to feel. We do not look at one another, but we understand our feelings. Without getting up, without looking at me, doctor releases my hand.

“I know it’s short notice,” he says in a whisper voice. “But I want you to think about Venice. I leave next week.”

“I know,” I say. “I will.” But this is a lie. I do not need to think about anything. I cannot bear the thought of living without doctor even though I only see him once a week for a little more than an hour at a time. It’s just knowing he’s there for me that keeps me secure. I have made up my mind about doctor’s offer. Whether I want to travel away from the safety of my home or not, I will go with him. Listen: other than doctor, I have nothing to lose.

My God, I’m flying

I will not let doctor go, even for a little while. I need doctor now, in order to live. So I hold to doctor with my life in the bucket seat of this jet plane. I feel my stomach, in my throat. I try not to think about dropping while this jet plane points upward to the heavens.

“Takeoff,” says doctor, pressing his forearm against my own, holding my hand tightly. “Takeoff is my favorite part of flying.”

Doctor says this with such an unusual, suspicious smile, I feel he is taking me somewhere I do not belong. And he is. But I press myself against him as we leave the solid ground behind. I feel the lift throughout my body, feel gravity pressing me into my cushioned seat, against my back and legs.

My hands are shaking.

I hear the scream of the jet engines and see the mechanical movement of the air flaps along the silver wingspan when doctor points them out to me from where we sit in the rear of the plane, economy class. There are the bright lights that flash in unison above my head. These are the NO SMOKING and the PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT indicator lights, as if seatbelts will make a difference should this jet plane tumble to the solid earth.

I stare out of the porthole window as a tourist, not a travel agent. I am leaving the solid earth to fly the “Friendly Skies.”

The land I leave behind is a patchwork of square plots, divided by roads and berms. The buildings appear as tiny boxes until cloud cover and distance cause them to disappear from view.

I swallow and my ears clear.

I feel a dull, tight pain just below my belly.

Flight attendants shuffle about and perform their various duties. They wear these false, reassuring smiles that say this: if I’m not afraid, neither should you be.

I look at doctor.

His eyes are closed. Doctor is still smiling. This is completely unlike the doctor I have come to know—the doctor I need for my well- being.

My God, I’m flying. I’m really flying.

So far, I think, takeoff is not my favorite part of flying. But landing safely will be.

Lesson about living life

This jet plane levels off.

The overhead PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT indicator lights disappear to the sound of a small chime, like a baby’s toy. The NO SMOKING signs also vanish. Doctor wastes no time.

He pulls a cigarette from his breast pocket. He lights up, sucks the heavy smoke as though this were his first cigarette ever. He offers me the pack. But I have this mental image of the entire plane going up in flames if doctor were to light a cigarette for me. So I refuse.

Outside, nothing but peaceful blue skies.

Inside, doctor sinks back into his seat and blows the thin, white smoke up into the ceiling.

“Letting go,” he says. “That’s what I call flying.” He takes another, deeper puff of his cigarette and speaks while the smoke oozes from his nose. “It’s the next best thing to challenging your greatest fears and beating them.” He sits back in his bucket seat. Then he comes forward again. He looks at me and waves his cigarette in the air like a baton. “Flying is the next best thing to risking your life and living to tell about it.” I see him pull a sheet of blank paper from his coat pocket. I see what he is writing:

NEW CONCEPT: PATIENTS MAY OVERCOME SENSELESS FEARS THROUGH FLYING…BUILDS CONFIDENCE, ETC.

Doctor folds the paper and stores it in his breast pocket along with his pen. He takes another drag of his cigarette. I am traveling with him to Italy because I do not want be without him—without his soothing words or his soothing body.

Doctor is my drug.

I say nothing, but I want to tell him this about flying: I’m just not ready yet.

“Sometimes, Mary Kissmet,” doctor says, “you’ve got to place your life in the hands of something you don’t understand. Not God, but something even more powerful. Trust in fate. You have to let yourself go, no matter what you think might happen.”

This, I assume, is doctor’s lesson about living a life in the face of death.

“You see, I knew that once I got you up into this jet plane, there would be no going back—fear or no fear.”

I turn to doctor.

“I never once mentioned a fear of flying.”

“But I’m your doctor, after all. I know all about fear.”

“Listen,” I tell him. “It’s not flying I’m afraid of.”

Doctor smiles a rare smile.

“You guessed it,” I say. “It’s crashing.” Doctor forces a small laugh. He stamps out his cigarette in the armrest ashtray built into his bucket seat.

I continue to hold to doctor with my life.

I feel my stomach.

I watch the clouds outside this airplane, through the porthole in this window seat doctor requested for us in the rear section of a 747. We are flying in the interest of saving time—risking our lives for convenience sake. But I know this: we fly because doctor makes me face my fears as a part of my treatment.

So far, so good.

What I mean is this: I’ m scared to death, but at least I’m still alive.

Smoke

And then it happens, the way I knew it would:

Black smoke and sparks spit out from the engine on the left wing--the wing I can clearly see from my seat in the tail end of this jet plane.

To my surprise, I do not panic. I feel an odd sort of peace run through my body as if stepping chest deep into warm water. I hardly believe my calm. Neither can doctor when I wake him to point out the fiery wing.

“Good morning,” says doctor, stirring from his nap.

“Outside,” I say. “Look outside.”

Doctor leans forward in his seat. He examines the fire. He says nothing. He sits back in his seat and closes his eyes again. But I know this: he is not sleeping. He is not dreaming. He expects me, I think, to scream out in utter terror. But I don’t.

We have been flying for nearly eight hours now, through the late afternoon into the night and back to daylight again. I have been counting the hours as they lapsed, one by one, while most of the passengers, including doctor, slept. In less than an hour and we would have made it safely to Rome.

Black smoke becomes thicker, turns to all-out fire.

The fire spreads rapidly, engulfing the entire engine. I see other window seat occupants turning their heads to view the fiery spectacle. This is a fiery spectacle that should not be happening.