To Feel Stuff (20 page)

“Sorry,” added Deondra.

I didn't have it in me to go to the pharmacy and drag some chairs over from there. But I remember thinking that I should have at least tried once your parents were sitting on my bed with us like we were all on a small boat together.

I wasn't trying to be rude when your mom asked me about how I'd been in the infirmary “for a while.” I know she wanted me to talk about it, and I understand that it's a topic of interest. But the way I was feeling was that a new year was about to break, and I refused, if just for that one night, to spend time looking back. That's why I answered in short bursts. I was all yeses and nos, and I heard in my head how terrible that sounded, but it was really all I could do.

I knew that my shortness was freaking out your mom even more, and I wished I could have told her that it wasn't personal. I thought about saying something to that effect, but that kind of talk just doesn't seem to have a place at a first-time meeting. If it had been our second, maybe I would have explained that being quiet was something I had to stick to for myself. The best thing I could think to do was not drag down the mood, which everyone was trying hard to keep hopeful. Your parents were so excited about you starting physical therapy.

Your mom was talking about the power of a positive attitude, and then suddenly she was asking me, “Don't you think so, Elodie? I would think you've had some experience in the area.”

I didn't say this, but I agreed, technically, that the mind has far more power over the body than most people believe. But I also factored in that the mind is harder to reach than most people realize. Though I just answered, “Yes, I agree.”

By the time it was almost midnight and your mom started talking about that show she saw on the Discovery Channel featuring a tumor that had a mouth, teeth, and hair, she was only addressing me. We were all pretending to have a group conversation, but she made contact only with my eyes. You were stroking my hair. I don't think you noticed. But I guess that your mom thought I would somehow know about a tumor like that, like maybe she thought I'd had one before. I'd never said that I hadn't.

Your dad asked us, “What do you two do for fun around here?” and you said, “It's always hard to remember at the end of the day. I'm always looking at Elodie at night and saying, ‘What the hell did we do today?' This place has its own time zone, if that makes sense. The hours here don't feel like my old hours. Your hours. So I don't know. We talk—” You looked to me for input. We both knew that we couldn't really tell them what went on in here because it was too hard to explain.

That's why I said, “We read.”

I left out the part about how we lie in bed and go through the accidentally donated porn magazines. How we especially love it when we can match a doctor on the mailing label to his fetish. I couldn't tell them about my favorite times with you, which I think are either (1) when we get up very early and go into the waiting room to drink Coke before appointments start. The light's really good there in the morning. Don't take this the wrong way, but seeing you in it makes me care about you even more. I also like getting that hyper in the morning, when I feel like no one else is awake except us (and the nurses). Or (2) when I sit in your lap and you wheel us down the hallway as fast as you can. And we shout at the nurse practitioners, “Out of our fucking way! We're breaking out of here, suckas!”

How could I tell that story to your parents? I don't think they'd love me for it.

Your parents seemed so relieved when the temps invited us to come out to the desk and watch the ball drop on TV with them. Your mom couldn't say “We'd love to” fast enough, and your dad was already breaking out those gold hats he brought. I put on the hat as my one social concession. It was nice to have everyone crowding around Deondra's tiny TV, focused on that ball. No one was judging anyone for an entire minute.

When everyone shouted, “One!” I realized that this was the first New Year's party I had ever attended, if you could count it as a party. There was silly string and more than one person beside myself, so I'm calling it a party. You pulled me down into your lap for the kiss, and I shut my eyes so I wouldn't have to think about whether or not your parents were looking on and worrying. That kiss made me happy to be alive. It made me feel like I should run out and sign up for a decathlon. In the background I heard people cheering on TV, fireworks blasting in the sky, and Lauren telling Deondra that she was going to sleep with fewer men this year, and “less Italians.”

When we went to bed I had the delusion that I'd never be sick again. You and I lay together, saying nothing, and that we didn't have to talk anymore made me feel peaceful. I've always believed that a comfortable silence is something that's earned. It's not the same thing as the silence that comes when people start to take each other for granted. That kind of silence isn't even recognized, because the people involved are too wrapped up in their own problems and their own indifference. They forget that they're not talking. But I think a comfortable silence is an act of love. It's saying to each other, “It's enough for me just to be by you. You don't have to say anything, I adore you anyway.” That's what we had on New Year's Eve, and it felt enormous.

After you fell asleep, I got up to call my parents, since I had this feeling of missing them. Or it was more like I had this feeling of wanting to start over with them. Or I could just admit that the whole idea of New Year's was really getting to me, like I was getting carried away with what the rest of the world was up to.

The first holiday I missed was Christmas of freshman year, when the fibromyalgia had just started I was getting over a big case of the flu, and the doctor thought flying was a bad idea. When I called home to break the news to my parents, they didn't really know that I was still getting sick. They wouldn't see the noncovered medical bills until the bursar statement arrived at the end of the year.

“Why, what's wrong?” my dad asked.

“I'm just having too much fun,” I lied.

My mom got on the phone and said, “I had a dream about you last night. I saw what you're going to wear at Christmas. I'm not going to tell you what outfit I saw you wearing in the dream, and then I'll see if you choose the same thing. I feel like you will. When are you flying in?”

“Well, as I was just telling Dad, I'm going to stay here over winter break.” In the background I could hear my dad repeating the message. It was echoing. We have fantastic acoustics in our house.

“You're really not coming home?”

“I'm going to take a special month-long dance workshop,” I told her. Another girl was staying in the infirmary because of her debilitating migraine headaches, but she opened her eyes and looked over at me.

“Dance?” she asked, because she knew I was full of shit.

My mom sighed. “Maybe I had that dream because you weren't coming home. Maybe I already knew because I don't know why, but I feel less shocked that you're not coming than I should.” It was two o'clock in the afternoon, but cars had their headlights on. And I watched them from my window, feeling a hundred stories away from anything that moved faster than me. There was the sound of tires rolling through slush, and I swear I could hear the snow falling from the sky. Altogether the effect was that of the world rushing to get away from the point where I stood.

You don't know this, but my parents call once a week to say, “You can come home, no questions asked. We'd love to have you back.”

And I always say, “I know. Thank you.”

My mom gave up trying to get information from me. I could tell she was refusing to be the kind of mom who had to force her way into her daughter's life. She feels bad about all the years she's spent trying to make me into a ghost hunter. Only once she asked, “Are you sicker than I know, or not that sick at all?” But before I could answer, she cut in and said that I shouldn't say anything. That she had to trust that I knew what I was doing.

On New Year's, she was the one who picked up the phone. I told her about you for the very first time. I said, “I have a boyfriend.” She wanted to hear all about you, but I found it difficult to sum you up. I could have said, “He's the most fun I've ever known,” except that says nothing about the kind of fun that you are, and it was like that with every description I attempted. So I asked her how her Christmas was instead.

“It was okay.”

“What'd you get?”

“Some dresses, some books, some jewelry. The stationery from you. Thanks, by the way. Oh, and I got a new oven.”

“So the old one really was leaking?”

“Your dad decided that he should buy me a new one because he didn't trust the old one, even if it was repaired. So, we have a new oven. It has a lot of options on it”

“You don't really cook all that much,” I pointed out.

“I know. They say it's the thought that counts, though.” I could hear tension in my mom's voice. She was more disappointed by the oven than she'd admit to me. That's why she changed the subject so fast. “There's a picture coming into my head right now,” she said. “I think it's a picture of your boyfriend. Does he have black hair and a nose that curves down a little at the end?”

“That must be a picture of someone else. He's a dirty blond.”

“Watch,” Mom said, “tomorrow I'll run into someone that looks just like that, and then I'll know where the picture came from. The pictures come, but they don't come with captions.”

“Well, keep me updated,” I said.

When I came back to bed I was feeling so high that I couldn't help but marvel at your face, which meant nothing to me two months ago. Now, all over the place it said “your best friend.” I touched your hair and your cheeks. You kept sleeping. Maybe unconsciously I was trying to wake you up. I touched your nose, and then, because I'm sick like that, I decided to lightly stick a finger inside one of your nostrils. I thought to myself, “I know what people are talking about when they say they wish they could climb inside someone else.”

The Journal of Parapsychology October 2004

 

E's supernatural encounters began to occur more frequently. I suggested to her that this was because we had opened a mental floodgate—or, to be fair, that
she
had opened a mental floodgate—through all of our explorations and hard work. E felt, however, that perhaps these abilities had been attempting to surface for the past three years, and that this was the first time she was willing to receive them. She remembered “getting messages that had nothing to do with anything” throughout her stay in the infirmary. She had never given them much credence. Now that she was moving toward a state of acceptance, she had become more sensitive to her paranormal abilities.

I told her that this reminded me of the part in
Peter Pan
where children must clap if they believe in fairies in order to save Tinkerbell's life. There was an almost childlike simplicity in her dependency on “believing.” One who believed saw. One who didn't believe didn't see. It was that simple. I asked E if she thought that what she'd inherited from her family was simply a genetic capacity for belief. Perhaps the study I should be conducting was the isolation of a strand of heavy-believing DNA. I was mostly joking with her.

E said only, “I don't know.”

“You don't know?” I asked. “That's all you have to say?”

E began to clap slowly, raising one eyebrow at me. “Okay?” she asked.

The day after New Year's, we met at the hospital while E was being examined for a bloody nose. It had started that morning. Because the nose had no accompanying symptoms, on an ordinary person it would not have been a cause for concern. Even though E was bleeding only from the anterior epistaxis, she was taken to the ER for an examination. The nurse practitioners did not like to take chances with her.

Now that I believed E's avalanche of illnesses reflected less on her health than on her special faculties, I was not especially worried about her. While I am not claiming that I have any supernatural abilities, I did have a certain “sense” that she was not in physical danger. I no longed believed that she would succumb to disease at an early age.

While we waited for her test results, I took E down to the hospital cafeteria. Surveying the array of foods, she asked me if I thought that they had a Belgian waffle maker. The cafeteria did, indeed, have waffles, although because it was past breakfast time, they weren't available.

“What will it take to get a waffle?” E asked the server behind the counter.

“The iron has been turned off for over two hours,” he replied.

“What will it take to get it turned back on?”

“I can't. It's after breakfast hours.”

E looked at me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You're the one who has the money.”

“You want me to bribe the cafeteria worker?”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm letting you write about me. I don't think it's that much for me to ask you to slip him a twenty.” Finding her reasoning persuasive, I opened my wallet and offered the server a twenty-dollar bill. He accepted it and reheated the waffle iron for us. I asked him to make me one as well, since I had paid for the privilege.

As E and I sat at a table with our waffles, she told me about how she had spent New Year's Eve. After watching a midnight celebration on TV, she had excused herself from the group at the infirmary desk, which included two temporary nurse practitioners, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's parents. She announced that she had to retrieve her medication from the bathroom. She noted that “they were all talking and blowing noisemakers, and I don't know that they really noticed my leaving. C's parents were encouraging him to set detailed resolutions having to do with his legs. He was into it.”