The Nose from Jupiter (2 page)

Something Different About My Nose

“Oh, hi,” I say. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

–
I’ve been busy.

“I thought you were in a coma too. Did you know that I was in a coma?”

–
No, really? I was in the garage.

“Say, what happened, anyway? How did I get knocked out?”

–
How should I know? I’m not a doctor.

“You were there, weren’t you?”

I’d better explain. My nose’s name is Norbert. No, that’s not right. Norbert lives in my nose. He’s from Jupiter originally but, for the past little while, he’s been staying with me.

I know what you must be thinking – there are times
when I think I’m crazy too. Poor Alan, no wonder the doctors keep asking him how old he is. But other people can hear Norbert too. Angela the nurse came in this evening with a really funny expression on her face, and asked me whom I was talking to. “Your mom is down the hall at the nurses’ station,” she said. “There isn’t anyone else in the room, is there?”

“No one,” I told her.

“I was standing outside your door, and I heard this squeaky voice. Were you talking to yourself, Alan? It really sounded different from your voice.” I smiled. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked.

Norbert landed one afternoon back in September while I was cutting the grass. An unexpected, uninvited guest. He unpacked his stuff, and he’s been with me ever since. As he said when he moved in –
It’s a big place, your nose. There’s a back room, a kitchen and bathroom, and a garage.
I still have trouble understanding this. But my nose wrinkles up the way it used to, and, when I blow it, the stuff on the Kleenex looks familiar.

“What’s in the garage?” I asked Norbert.

–
A spaceship! How else do you think I got here?

My dad comes back with a nurse. He’s got coffee for himself and a can of ginger ale for me. The nurse takes my pulse and temperature, and goes away. My dad falls asleep sitting in his chair, halfway through his cup of coffee. It’s quiet in the room. I ask Norbert what he’s been doing in the garage.

–
I’m almost finished
, he says.

’Almost finished what?’ I wonder. I wonder if everything’s okay in there. He’s been awfully quiet ever since I woke up. I’ve hardly been able to get a word out of him.

I think back, and that makes my head hurt.

Memories. One of the doctors told me not to worry, that my short-term memory would return if I just relaxed and gave it time. But it bugs me that I can’t remember what happened to me at the river.

“How did I fall in, Norbert?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Was Miranda with me? Was that how come she was there to save me?”

He doesn’t answer. I’m tired. I fall asleep.

When the nurse wakes me up, it’s morning. The thermometers and blood pressure gauges are all busy, and wheels are squeaking on all the trolleys. The nurse changes my bandage, takes my temperature and blood pressure, and asks if I’d like breakfast. I would. I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday – unless you count that bag of clear stuff going into my arm – and that doesn’t taste like much, let me tell you.

My dad wakes up with a start. When he sees me he smiles and stretches, then stops smiling when my mom comes into the room. She looks like she slept in a chair too, but she’s changed her clothes and put on makeup. My parents don’t say anything to each other.

“Do you want some help going to the bathroom?” the new nurse asks me. Like I’m a baby. But when I sit up – not stand up, just sit up straight for the first time in a long time – my eyes swim and my head decides to do a complicated figure-skating jump – a triple something or other – and I fall back against the pillow.

“Oh you poor thing,” says my mom.

Yes, I do want help going to the bathroom. And you know what? I’m not even embarrassed, at least not until the nurse stares down at the kidney bowl and says, “Good for you!” Then I blush a bright, neon red and try to disappear under the blanket.

The doctor is pleased with me. “You know, Alan, I really think there’s nothing wrong with you. If it weren’t for the MRI, I’d let you go home right now.”

“
MRI
?” says my dad.

“Don’t you know what an MRI is?” asks my mom.

I remember. I had one last night, as soon as I woke up. It’s kind of scary, getting an MRI. They strap you onto a stretcher and slide you into this big sewer pipe, which takes pictures of what they call “soft tissue.” Sounds like my friend Victor’s rear end. Or his head. Anyway, it’s stuff the X ray misses. They spent most of their time around my head and neck, checking for brain function. I asked if they’d found any, but they didn’t answer.

The doctor explains all this to my dad who says, “What’s wrong with Alan’s MRI?”

The doctor spreads the picture against the big lamp beside my bed. “See here,” she says. I turn my head. My dad frowns. “What is it?” he asks.

Good question. The picture looks like a satellite weather map.

“This,” says the doctor, “is Alan’s nasopharynx and sinus cavities – the area behind his nose.”

“And there’s something wrong with it?” says my dad.

“Let’s say, something different,” says the doctor.

I feel a sneeze coming on.

“Something bulky and oddly-shaped must have got in the way of the scanner,” the doctor goes on. “There are a couple of these projections – whatever they are. The technician says she’s never seen anything like it.”

“What could they be?” asks my mom.

“Well, I’m no expert. It’s probably a fault in the machine. But they look almost like …”

“Yes?” My dad sounds worried.

“Well – a spaceship. There, do you see?” The doctor laughs. My parents both laugh. I sneeze. The doctor wants to keep me under observation for a little while longer. If I keep improving, I can go home this afternoon.

“What about his nose?” asks my mom.

“I can’t find anything wrong with his nose. He’s not running a fever. There’s no infection. He looks like a normal, post-concussion patient. I certainly don’t want to perform an emergency exploratory operation on someone who’s recovering nicely.”

“Operation?” I say. “On Nor – I mean, on my nose?” Norbert doesn’t even squeak. Maybe he’s fainted.

The doctor comes over, takes my hand. “No,” she says. “No operation. I want you to relax for a few more hours – chat with your parents, watch TV, maybe take a little walk. And, if you feel like it, try to remember what happened yesterday.”

“I’ve tried. I can’t even remember walking home from school. Not really.”

My mom pats my hand. “Oh you poor thing,” she says.

The doctor comes around to the other side of my bed. “Do you like jigsaw puzzles, Alan?” she asks.

I shrug. Not really. Mom and I used to do them. She’s one of those people who can see that the piece has to fit
this
way. I’d be busy trying to fit bits of the sky into the flowerbed, or the windmill, or the castle moat. And what’s the point of a jigsaw puzzle, anyway? What do you do when you’re finished? Do you admire it like a painting, or play with it, or use it? No, you take it apart.

“Well, right now yesterday is like a jigsaw puzzle with a few holes in it,” says the doctor. “A few missing pieces. Right?”

I nod.

“Approach yesterday like a puzzle. Start with what you do remember. Start at the edges of the puzzle, and work inward. Sort your memories like puzzle pieces. Put them together bit by bit. Soon you might have a picture you recognize.”

“What if I can’t?” I ask. “What if I work and work, and I can’t put them together? What if some of the pieces of yesterday are lost?”

I must sound scared because she smiles reassuringly.

“That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. They’ll probably come back later, on their own.” Probably.

“Where do you want me to start … yesterday morning?” I ask.

“Wherever you like,” says the doctor.

A trolley squeaks its way into the room. Stacks of plastic trays. “Breakfast for Dingman,” says the guy pushing it. I tell him my real name. He shrugs. He’s got a floppy shower cap on his head so he won’t contaminate my food and drink. Actually, just drink. My breakfast is a gloppy, yellow milkshake. The doctor screws up her face at the sight of it. “That looks awful,” she says. “And probably tastes even worse. Orderly, can we find this boy a snack? And for lunch he’d like some real food. Right, Alan?” I say yes.

The shower-cap guy frowns. “But doctor, I just handed in my lunch forms,” he says.

“Change them,” she tells him.

“You want me to go through all the forms, just to change Dingman’s lunch?”

“That’s right.”

The orderly sighs heavily.

“Dingwall,” says my dad. “Not Dingman.”

The orderly sighs some more.

“Oh you poor thing,” says my mom.

An hour later my parents are snoring. My breakfast tray has been taken away empty, and I have gone to the bathroom, so I’m empty too. I went all by myself, which wasn’t nearly as easy as I expected. Not a straightforward proposition, if you follow me. Anyway, I’m okay now – which is a step up from last night. I’m thinking about the doctor’s suggestion. I wonder where I should start remembering.

I can picture Miranda smiling at me. That’s easy. And the soccer game. And the assembly. And the fight in the bathroom afterward. After that, things start to get blurry. “I was walking home along King Street,” I mutter to myself. “A gray afternoon. Yesterday? Was it only yesterday? Victor was scared to come with me, so I was all by myself.”

–
I think you should start the day I arrived.

“Oh, hi, Norbert. I thought you were asleep. Have you been listening?”

–
You remember the day? In the backyard?

“How could I forget? But that was weeks ago. I’m not going to start way back there.”

–
Why not? Haven’t I changed your life? You were bored, upset, lonely. A real loser.

“Thanks,” I say.

And then I came. Think of that. The Coming of Norbert.

“Sh,” I whisper. I don’t want to wake my parents.

–
Who beat up the bullies? Who introduced you to Miranda? Who scored the winning goal against the Cougars?

“Not you.”

–
Yes I did!

“Sh,” I whisper again.

–
Think about it. The Coming of Norbert was the most important day of your life. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it!

“Sh!”

Have you ever won an argument with your nose? Didn’t think so.

The Coming of Norbert

The bell rang, separating silence from noise. Before the bell, the classroom was hushed. The kids were bent over desks, concentrating. After the bell was pandemonium. Friday afternoon – time to stretch your cramped muscles, time to put away weekday anxieties and spend two days thinking about nothing much. So why was I so grumpy? You’d think I wanted to stay in school.

“Walk you home?” Victor called from the desk ahead of mine. “Great afternoon for a walk. We won’t even need our jackets.” He had a smile on his face. He liked home.

Maybe that was it. I wasn’t looking forward to going home. Partly because it was so darned quiet at home. Just me and the dust balls under the TV cabinet until my mom
got home from work at six. I nodded to Vic. Sure, I’d walk home with him.

Miranda was looking at me. She was one of the nicest kids in the class and, by far, the best athlete. Smart too, and pretty. Looks like she eats lots of fiber and does pushups every morning. No reason for her to notice me. Not me, boring old Alan Dingwall. I ate potato chips and generally had no idea – I mean
no
idea – what was going on in math class. Mr. Duschene might as well have been talking a different language. Sanskrit, maybe. I tried to smile at Miranda, but by then she had turned away.

Victor was right; it was a lovely afternoon. Late September – the sun was shining hard and hot. It was like summer, only somehow more precious than summer because you knew it wouldn’t last. More precious and sadder. We tied our jackets around our waists.

The bullies from class 7L were hanging around the south end of the school, so we left by the north gate. The Cougars, they call themselves – kids my age who happened to be bigger and tougher than I was. Actually, Prudence wasn’t bigger. She was smaller.

There are two gates into our school yard. Every afternoon the Cougars hang out at one of them. Sometimes north, sometimes south. And everyone else goes out the other one. That day we all left by the north gate because the Cougars were at the south one. It meant a longer walk home, along Elgin, but I didn’t mind.

Actually, that’s not true. I did mind. I minded a lot.

I minded not having the choice to go home the way I wanted. I minded having to do what the bullies wanted. I minded not mattering. The bullies weren’t doing this to terrorize
me
, Alan Dingwall, or my friend, Victor Grunewald. Or any of the other kids who walked home. It wasn’t personal … it was all of us. None of us mattered.

I minded not being able to do anything about it too. What could I tell my teacher, Miss Scathely? Or the principal? The bullies don’t threaten us; they don’t beat us up or take our lunch money. They don’t hurt any of us. But they could. They’re mean enough.

Once last year Gary, one of the Cougars, tripped over a kid named Cecil and fell in the mud – an accident. Cecil apologized and everything, but Gary’s pants got all dirty. The next week Cecil came to school in short pants. When asked how come, he started to cry. Turned out
all
his pants were dirty. The bullies had waited until wash day, and then taken every pair of pants he had off the clothes line, and dipped them in black paint. And then hung them back up.

To me the scariest part of that episode was the bullies following Cecil to his home. A guy’s backyard is his castle; I’d hate the idea of them hanging around where I lived. Cecil and his family moved during the summer. I don’t think the paint episode had anything to do with it, but you never know.

Last week a new kid walked past the bullies. It was her first day, and she didn’t know what she was doing. We watched her, all of us standing there in the middle of the
playground watching this kid from out of town – a Grade Sixer, not big and not small, just a regular girl – walk out the gate past the Cougars. They let her go. They didn’t even look at her. They looked at
us.
She walked down the street, all by herself.
And none of us followed her.
We all turned and walked out the other gate. She probably thought we were being snooty, but we weren’t. We were just terrorized.

The next day the kid knew better. Somebody in her class told her. From then on, she has gone out the same gate as the rest of us.

It isn’t right – all of us acting like sheep, checking to see where the Cougars were hanging out, and turning in a flock to go out the other exit. Another reason I hated going home.

Miranda doesn’t act afraid of the Cougars. Mind you, she goes home on the bus.

I stared across the sunny school yard at the Cougars: Larry and Barry, Gary and Big Mary. And Prudence. The rest of us wheeled away from them, heading slowly but inevitably toward the other side of the school yard.

Larry and Barry aren’t typical bullies. They’re big and dumb, and laugh when someone belches. In a regular class they’d probably get called Moose. But in a class with real bullies – in the same class as Gary, say, or Mary, who laugh when someone gets hurt – they act like bullies too. And, of course, everyone in the class defers to Prudence, who never laughs at all.

Mary is crude; a playground supertanker, sailing on a sea
of snot and dirty words. And gas – I don’t envy whoever sits behind her in class. Prudence is an odd one – at first glance, you wouldn’t think she belonged on the same school yard as Mary. She doesn’t look nice, exactly, because she never smiles. But she could be nice looking. She’s small and thin, with a pretty face, I think. She’s tidy – hair in a braid, nice clothes. When she spits, she doesn’t get any on her. What she is, she’s tough. Inside and out. If you did anything bad to her, she’d get you back, even if it killed her. If you knocked her down and then moved across the continent, you wouldn’t be able to rest easy. Someday, maybe not this week or next week but someday, you just knew that Prudence would find you and knock you down. And then stomp on you.

And she’s strong. Once at recess, I saw her squeeze a can of beans until it burst. Some kind of bet with Gary. There was a crowd of us. The metal of the can cut into her hand so it bled, but she kept on squeezing and never changed expression until the beans erupted out of the end of the can. Then she nodded at Gary and walked away, blood dripping from her fingers.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to worry about the bullies?” I said to Victor, walking over the Elgin Street bridge. We leaned over. The water was high. Victor wiped his nose. “I don’t worry about the bullies,” he said.

“We’re going the long way home tonight, because of them,” I said.

“Oh sure. But I’m not worrying about them.”

“It’s not right!” I almost shouted. “Don’t you see? They shouldn’t be getting away with it. We should be standing up to them. I wish I weren’t such a…such a…”

“Coward?” suggested Victor. My friend.

“Thanks, Vic,” I said with a sigh. But he was right.

“You don’t want to get yourself beaten to a jelly,” he said. “Nothing cowardly about that. You’re not Superman, just a regular guy.”

“Then I need help. We need help. Where should we look for it?”

Victor stared at me. Then he pointed up in the sky. “Look,” he said. “Up in the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?”

That Victor. What a riot. I punched him lightly.

“Ow. That hurt.”

“Sorry.”

He rubbed his arm. “That was a pretty good punch. Maybe you don’t need any help, Alan. Maybe you’re strong enough already.”

I laughed. “Seriously, don’t you wish you were seven feet tall,” I said, “so you wouldn’t have to worry about the bullies?”

Victor shrugged. “If I were seven feet tall, I’d make millions of dollars a year playing basketball. I wouldn’t worry about anything.”

I sighed. I can’t decide whether Victor is the most sensible guy I know, or the thickest.

Turning down the crescent where we both lived, I noticed Victor’s mom in the garden. I started to wave, then
stopped myself. Victor wasn’t waving, why should I? She wasn’t my mom.

“What are you going to do when you get home?” he asked me.

“I don’t know” I said. I felt kind of mad at myself. I didn’t want to watch TV or play on the computer. That’d be too easy. I wanted to punish myself for not standing up to the bullies … for not having anyone waiting for me at home. Stupid, I know, but that’s how I felt.

“I think I’ll cut the grass,” I said firmly.

Victor stared at me. He knows I hate cutting the grass.

“No, really,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

The collie dog didn’t seem to have any owner. It hung around, panting and looking at me. “Go away!” I shouted over the noise of the lawn mower, and the dog trotted about four feet away, and relieved herself on one of our rhododendrons. I went back to the lawn. I’d missed cutting it two or three weeks in a row, and it was tough going. I turned off the power, so I could untangle the long grass from the rotor blades. I was thinking about how good a glass of lemonade would taste, when I heard that low buzzing right beside my ear, so close I could feel as well as hear it. You know the sound. So did I. There was a bee nearby. If you can hear it right in your ear, it’s too close for comfort. I turned quickly and caught a flash of something hovering right in front of my face – a black and yellow blur about the size and shape of a bullet. I let out a yell and
jumped back. The buzzing followed me. I started to run away and tripped over the dog. Stupid thing, probably thought I wanted to play. I stumbled, and the dog and I fell to the ground together. I don’t know about the dog, but I got the wind knocked out of me. For a minute or so I couldn’t breathe. I lay on the ground in a ball. Finally I was able to take long, excruciatingly painful breaths. “Breathe slowly,” they say, “in through the nose and out through the mouth.” I heard the bee again, faintly, but I didn’t care. I hurt too much. I closed my eyes. ’In through the nose and’ – the next thing I knew, I felt a sudden sharp pain.

Yes.
In
my nose. Way in.

I don’t know if you heard the story about the bee that flew up the guy’s nose, and kept going, crawling and buzzing right into his brain, and stinging him, and he died? Did you hear that one? And when I felt the pain in my nose, that’s what I thought about, and I panicked. Hey, wouldn’t you?

I blew my nose as hard as I could, holding my other nostril to force the air out of the blocked one. No Kleenex around, but this was not the time to be worrying about manners. After a minute I stopped. Pretty messy, but I didn’t care. Was the bee gone? I couldn’t see it. Or hear it. Maybe it had flown off to look at the flowers. Maybe not. I blew some more.

My nose didn’t hurt.

I didn’t know whether to be worried or not. I was pretty sure I’d had something in my nose, and pretty sure I hadn’t blown it out … but my nose didn’t hurt. Not at all. Somehow I figured that if a bee was inside me, I’d feel it.

The collie, meanwhile, had moved a few feet off and was staring at me with her head on one side, like I was a circus act. Stupid dog.

I started to sneeze. I sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. Finally, about twenty sneezes later, I stopped. I couldn’t feel anything. I sniffed a few times, experimentally. Still no feeling.

Fine. I must have dislodged the … whatever it was. I went back to the lawn mower. That’s when I heard the voice.

–
Here we are at last
, it said.

I looked over my shoulder to see who was talking, but somehow I knew there wasn’t anyone there. The squeaky voice was coming from inside me. Inside my nose.

–
Ah, this is nice. Say, this is a great place you’ve got here.

“Hello,” I said. “Who are you?”

–
Living room, bedroom, kitchen, back room. And a garage, of course. Very nice indeed. I think I’m going to be happy here.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

–
If you could see the place I was living on Jupiter, this… this is luxury. Just like the commercials you people send out. This is the life. Ah.

“That’s my nose you’re talking about,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

–
You tell me. I’m a stranger here myself.

A high and squeaky voice, coming from inside my nose. Suddenly I panicked. I didn’t like the idea of something alien living inside me. I had to get it out. I made a fist and hit myself in the nose. Ouch. I held my breath and blew out as hard as I could, one nostril at a time. I screamed and
hummed and ran around the backyard, shaking my head. I must have looked like a horse being driven crazy by flies. The dog thought the whole thing was a game. Chased me around the yard, barking and jumping up.

I stopped running. Panted. The dog panted. We stared at each other. Silence.

Could it have worked? I didn’t feel anything inside me. “Hello?” I said, very tentatively, hardly daring to hope.

–
Whew! Is it hot in here or is it me? I hope you’ve got air-conditioning. The last place I stayed at, all they had were these little fans and let me tell you
…

That did it. I sat down and started to cry. The dog barked in my face. I tried to shoo it away but it wouldn’t budge. I cried harder than ever.

–
Hey, stop that, Big Fella. You’re drowning me. Leaking all over the back room here.