A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl Page 16

  Where did you go when you died? Anywhere? Maybe you turned back into atoms. Sparks like colored fireflies, like the bits of light scattering overhead, chasing the music. Why was she thinking such a thing at such a time, with the boy’s warm mouth up against her ear, with small rippling explosions passing through her skin? His hands were warm and stealthy. She let them go where they wanted to go. And all the while the flecks of light flew and circled, preventing her from paying full attention to him, as if her grandmother was zooming around in her head, saying, Here I am, yoo-hoo!

  What a wonderful invention, the body. This lovely cage of skin, with its tides of breath sifting in and out. And it moved here and there as you wished it to. (Even if dancing bewildered it.) It was an entire garden of sensations, the ordinary ones, and then you turned up the dial. This boy, Cedric, was doing his best to make a case for sensation, in ways that she couldn’t ignore. But she was also not a part of it. She was outside of it, looking on. Because you couldn’t forget that it didn’t last.

  I might have told you so, her grandmother said. But nobody listens to an old lady.

  Like that wasn’t weird. Grace laughed, ha ha, to show she knew how wacked-out it was, having spooky little conversations with her dead granny. She was only pretending to have conversations. Because it had already been such a long, difficult day, and now night, because she was balancing on the edge of some new and bigger sadness. She would have liked to explain this to someone but the music was too loud. This boy trying to convince her of something, who was he?

  In a moment, it all turned strange. She stopped moving. The boy leaned toward her, smiling, meaning it to be a question? It was too loud for talking. She shook her head. The lights had gone blue. “I’m sorry,” she said, but he wouldn’t be able to hear her.

  She left him there. She got through the crowd, moving sideways, and reached the front door. The music was still going on, as wild and rowdy as ever. She’d have to apologize to Michael for not staying longer. But she’d heard him through and through.

  She drove home and let herself into the quiet apartment. The light was on over the stove. The bedroom door was open and the room beyond it was dark. It took her eyes time to adjust. Ray was lying in bed, not asleep, with his arms stretched out above his head. She went to him and lay down with him and his arms closed around her. This dear and familiar comfort, in spite of everything, and for a little while longer, at least.

  III. GRACE AND LAURA

  Whenever Grace taught a yoga class for the park district, she could expect three or four of her regular ladies to enroll. She was fond of them, and they of her, but privately Grace would have been just as glad to see the last of them. They took class after class without ever getting much of anything right, they chattered away while Grace tried to explain things, and they bossed the new students around under the guise of encouraging them. Peggy, Helen, Rita, Flo: they were all senior citizens with enthusiasm for self-improvement activities, and they all assumed that Grace needed their opinions, commentary, and cautionary advice about her personal affairs.

  Grace did what she could to keep them gently at arm’s length, but they were oblivious. Why didn’t she have a boyfriend? They knew some nice boys she could meet. She was such an independent modern girl; they worried about that. Tonight Flo, who was somewhere north of seventy, and who favored hot-pink headbands and T-shirts, had told Grace that she shouldn’t wait too long to have babies. “I know you’re just as fit as a fiddle, but Mother Nature has a few tricks up her sleeve. My daughter had her first when she was thirty-six, and her little private parts have never been the same.”

  “That’s something to think about.” Grace made a point of nodding gravely. She knew Flo’s daughter, who ran a carpet-cleaning franchise. Fortunately, there were other options in town for carpet cleaning, operated by people who kept their private parts private. As for having babies, if that was something that kept not happening, she guessed she was all right with that. Mother Nature could go jump in a lake.

  The class met from six thirty to seven thirty. The students finished up their corpse poses and namastes and helped her roll up mats and stow blocks. Grace waited until they’d all gone, then used a push broom to sweep the studio floor. It was a welcome moment of quiet that helped her center herself, get back a little of the tranquillity that was always lost when she wound up directing traffic in Yoga for Life. She said good night to the park district guy who worked the front desk and walked out into the fine October evening, a welcome edge of chill in the air.

  And this was the very last moment she would be untroubled by dread, the last before all the sorrow in the world was let loose. She followed the sidewalk out to the parking lot and her little car. The park district classes went on for another hour and there were still people coming and going. Lights were on at the outdoor basketball court and three boys were shooting hoops, the ball making a pleasant smacking sound on the pavement. Her muscles were light and loose from the class. The hot shower she’d take when she got home would feel good. She got into the car and started it, then dug her phone out of her bag to turn it on and check it. There was a text from her brother:

  MOM IN HOSPITAL.

  She tried to call Michael back and got his voice mail. Then she rang the landline at the house and got her mother’s recorded voice. Her father never answered his phone but she tried it anyway. She texted Michael:

  WHAT HAPPENED?

  Nothing came back from him. She wanted to get out of the damned parking lot, go to where she needed to be, but where was that? There were two hospitals in town. Grace kept the engine running while she looked up the numbers. Her fingers were clumsy and she was dialing wrong. She called one hospital and then the other, swearing at the voice mail, struggling to make herself understood by the eventual human being who came on the line. Was her mother a patient there? No and no. “Did you want to check the emergency room?” one of the operators asked.

  At the emergency room, a clerk took Grace’s mother’s name and typed it into a computer. Yes, she was here, but no one was available to speak with Grace at present, if she would just take a seat. She tried Michael’s phone again. She was going to kill him for not answering. A nurse in blue scrubs came out and called Grace’s name and she followed the nurse back through a hallway lined with metal carts and wheelchairs. There was a nurse’s station, and someone talking loudly behind a curtain in Spanish. An old man with a bandage of gauze and tape over one eye glared out at Grace, daring her to stare. For all she knew she was in the wrong hospital.

  But here, finally, was her father coming at her down the hall, though he was not looking at her and nearly went right past her.

  “Dad?”

  He stopped short and visibly recalibrated to account for her. “Gracie.”

  “What happened, was there an accident? Where’s Mom?”

  “Upstairs. They’re admitting her. Did you see your brother? I don’t know where he went.”

  “Dad, tell me what happened.”

  Her father rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand, an ugly gesture she’d never seen him make before. “She was feeling sick. She couldn’t breathe. They did a heart procedure. They had to drain fluid from around her heart.”

  “She had a heart attack?”

  He shook his head. “No, it was just this fluid. It’s from something else, I have to talk to the doctor.”

  “How is she? Who’s the doctor?” Everything about her father seemed vague and slow, as if he was moving underwater. “Dad!”

  “The doctor’s Chinese. Chin or something. He’s upstairs, we should go find him.”

  She kept waiting for him to say her mother was all right and he kept not saying it. “Where upstairs, show me.”

  They took an elevator up two floors. Grace checked her phone again, hoping Michael had answered; nothing. “This is it,” her father said when the elevator doors opened, but he didn’t move to get off, and Grace had to tell him to come with her.

  At this nurse’s stat
ion she asked for her mother and her mother’s doctor. She was told that her mother was being brought up from X-ray—X-ray for what? Why?—and that Dr. Chang would be with them as soon as he reviewed the results, and would they like to wait in the family lounge?

  The hospital was the older of the two in town, and the lounge was furnished with chairs upholstered in cracked green vinyl, like the seats in an old taxi. The walls had been painted a bright, flat brown, a mistake. They had entered some zone of hospital procedures and protocol, where all you could do was wait for someone to remember you were there. The only other people in the room were a black family, a middle-aged woman and a young couple and their sleeping baby. They looked like they had been sitting there a long time, waiting purposefully, as if they were being paid by the hour.

  Grace’s father, restless now, tapped his foot. She wanted to smack him to make him stop. Instead she asked him what had happened, how her mother had ended up in the hospital.

  “She started feeling bad a couple of days ago, she said she was tired, but you know, she’s tired a lot.” He frowned, trying to adjust the ordinariness of everything to what had happened. “And then tonight she didn’t want dinner because she thought she was coming down with something, and then she said she couldn’t breathe, it was hard to breathe. So we all drove over here.” He stopped and looked around the room. “It wouldn’t hurt them to clean this place up a little.”

  “What happened when you got here, what did they say?”

  “Well, there was this heart thing. It’s been very confusing.”

  Grace gave up on him. He wasn’t even drunk, just overwhelmed. The door opened and a doctor, an Asian man, came in, followed by Michael. Grace and her father stood.

  “How’s Mom?”

  “This is my sister,” Michael said. “This is Dr. Chang.”

  Dr. Chang was serious, tired looking, gray haired. His English was flavored with strong vowels and a hitch in his consonants that made some words come out in forced barks. Grace watched Michael’s face as the doctor spoke. She saw the bad news before she heard it. Mrs. Arnold was comfortable, she was resting, they could see her soon. She was getting the best of care. Michael looked away. “But what’s wrong with her?” Grace asked, couldn’t keep herself from asking.

  Dr. Chang was deliberate, patient. Not allowing himself to be thrown off script. The heart procedure, the draining of fluid, had been necessary to give her immediate relief, to ease her breathing. But it had happened because of an underlying condition, and that was what they had to diagnose now.

  Their father asked what underlying condition was that, what was he talking about, and Dr. Chang said there were indications—at this point that was all he was prepared to say—of growths in the lung.

  “You mean lung cancer? She doesn’t smoke. She never has.”

  Their father was insistent on this point. He did not say “bullshit,” but he clearly wanted to. Dr. Chang said it was preliminary. Nothing was certain yet. But say this was the case. There were patients who developed pathologies in the lung due to exposure to chemicals, perhaps. Or for unknown reasons. And if that proved to be the diagnosis, there would be a treatment plan. Medical interventions. Supportive care.

  This was all the time it took, to go from a well person to a cancer patient.

  Their father said he wanted a second opinion. The doctor said that as of now, there was no first opinion. Very very early for that. Of course they could arrange for Mrs. Arnold to be treated anywhere they chose. If she stayed here, there would be a team approach, they could certainly consult with others on the medical staff.

  They were no longer listening.

  Grace asked what room her mother was in and Michael said he knew where it was. Dr. Chang said that Dr. Park would be the one to see them in the morning, Dr. Park could tell them how things would proceed in the morning. He was very sorry about the delay.

  Dr. Chang excused himself and left them there. Michael said, “Come on. It’s down this way.”

  They followed him. The halls were bright but quiet. Doors to patient rooms stood half-open. It was hard to tell if anyone was inside, and whether they were sleeping or awake, dreaming or dying. Michael said, “She was asleep a little while ago. I think they gave her something.”

  Here was her mother’s name written in marker on a whiteboard on a door. They hesitated, then Grace took a step forward to peer inside. It was dark except for a small light over the bed nearest the door, her mother’s. The bed next to the window was stripped and empty. Her mother slept on her back with her mouth open and crumpled looking. She wore a blue flowered hospital gown and a plastic bracelet around her wrist. Without her glasses her eyes were the eyes of an old lady, veins standing out on the eyelids. This room was the first of the things they would have to get used to seeing.

  Grace backed out again. “I can stay with her,” she told her father and Michael. “Somebody should stay.”

  “Do they let you do that?” her father asked.

  Michael started to say something, then tucked his chin and kept silent.

  They decided that Grace’s father would keep watch while Grace drove home and showered and made ready to spend the night at the hospital. She would drop Michael off at the house on the way. “How could she have lung cancer,” Michael said, as Grace drove. “That’s screwed up.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t, maybe it’s something else.”

  “Like what, the flu? He already knows it’s cancer, he’s just giving us time to get used to the idea.”

  “Well,” Grace said after a moment. “I’m not used to it yet.”

  They didn’t say any more to each other. There was something almost like shame in the enormity of their fears.

  She left Michael at the house, drove home, showered, tried to think of things she would need to do: call work, call the yoga center where she taught classes tomorrow night, call her friends, call her mother’s friends, but maybe not yet, call her uncle Mark. She packed a toothbrush and hand cream and some energy bars and bottled water and the charger for her phone. There was only so much you could keep in your mind at one time.

  It wasn’t late but it felt late when Grace returned to the hospital and found her way back up to her mother’s room. Her mother’s head was tilted to one side and her breath made a buzzing sound, like snoring but more mechanical. Her father got up from his chair next to the bed. “She woke up a little while ago. Real groggy. Then she went right back to sleep. But I got to tell her good night.”

  “So, it’s good you were here.”

  “What do you think of that doctor? There’s something about him, I don’t know, he seems shady.”

  “What?” Grace tried to whisper. It was just like her father to dislike someone for no real reason, just because they brought bad news. But was it bad news? Yes. It was bad news until proven otherwise. “Let’s not talk in front of her, OK?”

  They went out into the hallway, empty and full of glare, and walked to the elevators. There was a nurse’s station halfway down, where a nurse, a Filipino man, sat behind the counter working on a computer. Her father said, “I’ll be back first thing in the morning. As soon as I can check in with work and get over here. Call me tonight if you need to.” He pushed the Down button and it chimed. The elevator door slid open but he didn’t get on.

  “Dad?”

  He shook his head, not speaking. The elevator car stood empty and waiting and then after a moment it closed again. Grace said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Your mother might be really sick.” He stared her down, as if Grace might be inclined to doubt it, or was hearing it for the first time. “We all have to be on our game.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We can’t let her know how bad things might be. We have to stay strong.”

  “You can’t hide people’s conditions from them. Doctors don’t do that anymore, it’s not ethical.”

  “I mean, no crying. No hysterics, no scenes.”

  “Dad, do I
look like I’m having hysterics?” Her father was the one who looked worn and unwell. “Are you all right to drive?”

  This annoyed him. He didn’t like weakness, he was done with it. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about your mother.” The elevator door opened again, with the magic illogic of machinery. Her father turned and grasped Grace around the shoulders. “Stay strong,” he said, then stepped into the elevator and nodded good-bye as the door closed.

  Grace stopped at the nurse’s station but now there was no one behind the counter. The light over her mother’s bed made her mother’s skin look dry and even witchlike. Grace turned it off. She lay down on the empty bed by the window. Her mother was now definitely snoring, something that would have embarrassed her. Grace had not been so close to her in sleep since childhood.

  She didn’t expect to sleep herself, in this strange place with its half-heard noises and buzzing lights. The bed too was strange. She found a scratchy blanket in a closet and used her bag as a pillow. She was too tired to think and too awake to sleep. Instead she dozed and her mind flickered back and forth between dream and dread. Someone was talking loudly. A doctor? He was telling a joke she couldn’t follow. She laughed politely anyway, ha ha, so as not to let on she didn’t get it. She either woke up or dreamed she woke up. It was very early morning, with gray light at the window. Her mother was awake also, staring at her from across the narrow space between the beds.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “He’s at home. He’ll be here a little later.”

  “Did I have a heart attack?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God for that.” Her mother closed her eyes and slept again. Grace got up to use the bathroom.

  Grace lay back down, but the hospital was waking up around her and after a time she rose and went out into the hallway. She checked her phone for messages. There were none. She said good morning to an aide in scrubs who was pushing a linen cart and asked if the cafeteria was open. It was, and Grace made her way downstairs. She bought two coffees, a banana, orange juice, and a cup of yogurt. Patients would get breakfast, but there was no telling when or what. The coffee tasted murky and she loaded it up with milk and sugar.