SUMMER of FEAR Page 21

  "What a beautiful blouse," Grace said.

  There was an awkward silence, finally broken by Joe "Tea, beer?"

  "No," said Isabella. "No. We're... we're... we're gone!

  "She started getting ready three hours ago," said Corrine "She was happy as a kid going to Disneyland."

  Izzy shook her head and wheeled forward toward the door. "H-h-happier than Mom, that."

  "She has a surprise for you tonight," said Joe, a little worriedly, I thought.

  "Oh no," I said, a running joke from the days when Izz would heap home-improvement projects on me almost as fast as I could dodge them. Surprises, she called them.

  "Oh yes," said Isabella. "But h-h-home first." She hugged Corrine and Joe long and dearly as a person saying good-bye forever. And with a chilling clarity, I saw in her face the fear that this was exactly what was happening. I looked away.

  Home. She wheeled around the first floor, touching familiar objects, exclaiming in surprise, delight, satisfaction, wonder. She seemed bedazzled as one might have been at the Creation. She opened the refrigerator and itemized the contents.

  "Who m-m-made the stew?"

  "I did," said Grace. "Would you like some?"

  "Maybe l-l-Iater."

  Izzy rode the lift up to the bedroom. The contraption did its usual screech-and-groan, a rather startling sound that I suddenly realized I'd been missing these last few days. She continued her tour. She stared for a while at our wedding picture; ran her hands over the polished wood of her piano; touched the hanging crystal hummingbird so it swung slowly. I could hear Grace downstairs, talking quietly on the phone.

  "So h-h-hot," said Izzy.

  "Over a hundred today. Welcome home, love."

  "I love this h-h-house. I'll never run away from home anymore."

  She reached back into the pack she kept tied between the handles of her wheelchair and came out with a small wad of shiny black material, which she held out to me. I took it and let it unfurl. It was a swimsuit.

  "My surprise is y-y-you are taking me swimming. Then, t-t-t-tomorrow, the alteration."

  Her face held a world of hope, another of fear, both of which were echoed by the hard, deep beating in my chest.

  She smiled, steadying her eyes at mine. "I think it will be a good th-thing. B-b-but Russ, there's the ch-chance I could wake up being a s-s-spit-dribbling v-v-vegetarian. Even Dr. N n-nesson said so, but in different worlds... words. So I want to go sw-sw-swimming."

  "Swimming? Where?"

  "Ocean, silly."

  "Gosh, baby—kind of rough out there."

  "I c-c-called surf report. No s-s-swell, seventy-three in the water. I'm s-s-swimming."

  She looked at me then without speaking, but volumes of emotion came through to me from her face. I understood the Izzy was more terrified of the operation than she would let or that if she awakened even more damaged tomorrow—or not at all—she would have had this final trip to her beloved ocean

  "Can Grace come?" I asked.

  She smiled. "Suretainly"

  "Here, let's put on your suit."

  "No. I w-w-want Grace to."

  Grace was standing at the top of the stairs. "Never let man dress you if you can help it," she said. "Your husband would probably put your new suit on inside out."

  We all laughed. I had, in fact, managed to do that once

  The water broke coolly around my legs as I carried Isabella through the shore break at Main Beach. But the night was still hot and by the time I leaned forward to set her in, the water felt warm and welcoming. Izzy groaned as I placed her down in the waist-deep sea, the same groan—I recalled—that was often evoked by our lovemaking. She jerked abruptly when her head neared the water, grabbing my arm hard. Her legs, almost powerless, sank, then rose to the surface. Grace steadied her from the other side. For a moment, all three of us waited to see what Izzy's body would do. With my left hand under her head and my right hand under her butt, I eased her toward deeper water. I felt her grip release on my arm. She drew one hand through the water, up past her head. Then the other. Then, with a gently affirmative "ahhh," she brought them down together to her sides and I felt her glide ahead, self-powered. "Ohhh, yes!"

  We floated out past the waves, which were small and occasional, nothing more than brief levitating humps that lolled through us without adamance, rose minimally, wavered, then crumbled as if with old age into faint suds that spread and flattened on the shore. With my right hand under the small of Isabella's back and my left pulling us forward, I could kick in a wide, strong scissor that gave us a delayed and subtle surge. Grace floated on the other side, her head close enough to Izzy's that her spreading black hair seemed to be shared by both of them. We progressed, under stars, westward. Then Grace rolled away and slipped under the water with an astonishing beauty, no visible means of locomotion, not even her scarred feet, which simply followed her down unmoving, then vanished. She surfaced ahead of us, pale, subaqueous arms in motion, hair shining in the moonlight. I guided Izzy forward and let go of her with a slow push. I felt her arms quicken, deepening their pull. I sidestroked alongside her, close as I could get without interfering, synchronizing my stroke with hers, watching her upturned profile, her face of concentration, her eyes wide and starward, the parted lips through which she breathed, her white smooth head moving through the water like that of a creature designed for water, her arms sure and unhurried and capable, the dead lower half of her only a faint suggestion within the dark ocean through which it trailed like some devolving superfluity that would diminish and disappear in a short few million years.

  "This is what I want it to be l-l-like."

  "What to be like?"

  "The dying."

  "You're not going to die."

  "You know I am, Russ."

  "We all are."

  "But I'll die sooner than you. And I w-w-want it to b-b- be like this. N-n-not an end, b-b-but a... change."

  "A beginning."

  "Yes. And I think it w-w-would best be done w-w-ith the eyes closed. Th-then you could see where you're going. l-l-like this."

  She shut her eyes and continued on, arms opening, arms closing. Grace appeared in the mid-distance, then was gone. Beyond Izzy's profile, the cars on Coast Highway crept along beneath streetlamps, and the bottom-lighted palms of Heisler Park drooped green-black against a sky of specifically rendered stars.

  "Russell, c-c-close your eyes and come with me."

  I did. The world became immediately louder. The water lapped at my ears with a new sharpness; the cars echoed from town with a kind of muted urgency: Izzy's breathing rose to a forceful rhythm.

  "K-k-keep them closed, like me. Let's see h-h-how far out we can go. Kay-o?"

  "Kay-o."

  Blind, we continued. I turned onto my back so I might feel her, intermittently, with my fingertips. I stopped kicking and allowed my legs to sink partially, like hers. I listened to her breathe.

  And then, strangely, I began to do something I had not done in a long time, something I once practiced with conviction. I had lost that conviction as Izzy lost her legs, as I sat in her hospital room asking for it to stop—imploring, begging—to no effect whatsoever upon the continuation of Isabella's relentless and irreversible (the doctors refused to use that word) damage.

  I prayed.

  Dear Father in heaven, I am small, corrupt, hateful, mean-spirited and too much a coward to sin importantly: I am a fool. Hear my prayer. I know how you value humility, so I confess to all this to assure you I know my place in your order of things. I deserve nothing. I expect nothing. I will ask for nothing. But you are absent here, you ceded this earth to us, and there are some things you should know. We suffer. We cry. We toil. Sickness comes to us. Death moves among us with arrogance. We die, trembling, bound for unspecified destinations. Christ died for our sins once: we die for them again. His agony is over, but ours continues. Our anguish is real. Do you remember how it feels? I know that your design is huge, so I have stopped trying to unders
tand it. In your larger hands, we leave the larger motions.

  My concern is this life you have given us. I am too stupid to believe it is only a prelude. I am too weak to be happy that there may be a reward at the end of it. I am too literal to believe that the heart of the matter lies elsewhere. This is the heart of this matter. Do not think less of me for holding dear the life you've given. I lied when I said I would ask for nothing. This is what I want: I want you to treat Isabella with respect. I want you to give me the love that I want so badly to have for Isabella in these coming days. Give it to me so I can give it to her. I ask to be your representative. Do not leave us without love. Respectfully submitted to you in this hour of need,

  Amen.

  Two hours later, I got into bed and lay down beside my wife. We whispered and kissed and embraced and we made love.

  Whatever motion she lacked, I tried to offer for her; whatever feeling she missed, I tried to feel. The cry that came to my throat hurt, and my ears rang and my eyes burned and my daughter whom I had quite frankly forgotten was downstairs, banged out of her room and threw on a light. Of all things at that moment, I was only dimly aware, except for the quaking of my body and Isabella's voice.

  "It's kay-o, Grace. Russ just s-s-sort of... well."

  My father was waiting on the steps of the UCI Medical Center when we admitted Isabella just after sunrise the next day. He nodded at me rather curtly, which, in the minimalist language of his body, meant that everything was okay. Obviously, Amber was not with him. He smiled and wrapped his weathered dark arms around Isabella and held her for a long while in a strong and gentle embrace.

  The morning was already hot as I pushed her wheelchair up the ramp toward the tower. We were expected; all was in order. A medical student from China conducted the preop interview. He explained the procedure to us—debulking by resection—introduced our anesthesiologist, and informed us the one of the possible side effects of this procedure, among others, was death. We signed the consent forms. Paul Nesson appeared an hour later. He was grave and gentle as always, and I sensed in him the focus and intensity of a soldier preparing for combat. He seemed reassuring, in an invisible way. He shaved Isabella head again, though there wasn't much hair to take off. Then the six of us—Grace, Joe, Corrine, Izzy, Dad, and I—squeeze into the prep room when Nesson left. Isabella was given Dermerol. Her smock was tied in only two places at the back, an she shivered in the rampant air conditioning of the medical tower. A few minutes later, she was helped onto a hospital bed and we wheeled her up to the swinging double doors of the OR. She held my hand fiercely. I kissed her, then two orderlies took the bed and disappeared into a territory of chrome and tile and tubing and sheets. A group of green nurses converged on my wife as the doors swung shut.

  The minutes could have been hours; the hours seconds. I drank coffee, bought all the morning papers, glanced at my front-page article, noted the garishly big headlines the Journal reserves for garishly big stories, TWO PEOPLE, 27 PETS DIE IN CANYON SLAUGHTER— Special to the Journal by Russell Monroe.

  Theodore informed me that—as I suspected—Amber had never returned. But she had called the night before, late, to tell him she was all right and not to worry. I shook my head, hardly able to factor worries about Amber into the larger concerns of the moment. If she didn't have enough sense to stay with Theo, then she could suffer the consequences.

  I was heading outside to smoke a cigarette and passed the main desk, where I overheard this snippet of conversation between a small, somewhat disheveled-looking woman and the security guard.

  "I would like you to page a Mr. Russell Monroe for me. It is very important."

  "Your name?"

  "Tina Sharp, with Equitable."

  Without breaking stride, I made it outside and sucked down the comforting smoke. I had another. I walked the hospital grounds for half an hour and then went into the cafeteria the back way.

  I ate breakfast, locked myself in a bathroom stall an threw up, rinsed my face in cold water, then found an empty seat in the waiting room and leaned my head back against the wall. I felt like the most vital and precious part of me had been removed and that it might not ever be returned. I wondered how forty years of life could suddenly boil down to a lesson in triage. I closed my eyes, said a prayer, lost my train of though and fell asleep. In the dream—short and vivid as a memory---I approached a table tucked under a palapa at the edge of a orange grove, at which sat Isabella, who, when she lifted her face to me and moved her lips, made no sound at all.

  Six hours later, Paul Nesson eased across the waiting room an approached. He looked calm, composed, and, strangely, shorter. He still had on his pale green scrubs, and each shoe was wrapped in a green plastic moccasin that bunched at the top like a shower cap. He smiled wanly at Joe and Corrine and Grace.

  "She's doing fine. Everything went very well."

  "How much of it did you get?"

  "All I could. There are viable brain cells on the perimeter of the mass, so I worked with the core—the necrosed tissue.

  "How much tumor is left?"

  "It's hard to say. These astrocytomas grow in fingers, very small. They're like the roots of weeds. In a day or two, we can talk about some new modalities of treatment."

  There was a pause in the conversation then, during which I noted in Paul Nesson's eyes the dullness of exhaustion.

  Corrine wiped her nose with a tissue, then cleared her throat. "How long does she have?"

  "It would only be a guess, so I'd rather not make it. It's an unpredictable neoplasm—we see them accelerate, then stabilize, then accelerate again."

  "Do you ever see them go away?" asked Joe.

  "No. Look, Isabella will be in Recovery for an hour, then I'd like to move her to ICU for the night. She'll be ready for a quick hello in a couple of hours. After that, maybe you all should get some rest, too."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "You're welcome," said Nesson, then he padded back through the double doors and out of sight.

  Her head was wrapped in bulky white gauze that formed a turban. Both eyes were swollen; the left was already turning purple underneath. She was still on oxygen, fed to her by a plastic tube in her nose.

  She became aware of me as I stood beside the bed. Her vitals issued across the monitor elevated in the corner. I put my cheek against hers and listened to her breathe.

  "You're not going to believe this," she said. Her voice was slow and remote. "But... I'm going to get better. I dreamed it when I was under... that they were taking all the bad... things... away. I'm going to be... okay."

  No stutter, no mistakes.

  "I love you," I said.

  "I'm so glad... you're here."

  "Are you still my baby?"

  "I'll be your baby as... long... as ... you... want me."

  "How about forever?"

  "Forever... sounds just right."

  I was surprised, even through my exhaustion, to see Karen Schultz walking across the hospital lobby's floor late that afternoon. Her heels clicked officiously on the tile, and she had picked me out of the intensely quiet crowd before I realized who she was.

  She smiled briefly at the others, shook hands as I introduced them, then directed her tired eyes at me. "Russell, car we talk?"

  I followed her outside. The temperature was ninety degrees, according to a mall sign across the street. I watched a tiny woman pushing a wheelchair containing a large man up the ramp, zigzagging up toward the medical tower.

  "How is she?"

  "Fine. They got most of the tumor."

  "Oh, Russell, I'm so happy to hear that." At this point, she wiped a tear from her cheek and stared off toward the freeway. "I just never know what to do about... in situation; like this."

  "It's good of you to come. You could leave some flowers maybe, or a note."

  "No. That isn't why I'm here." Karen hugged herself and walked to the far edge of the outer patio, where a dysfunctional wheelchair lift waited, neglected and unrepaired.
/>   I waited and lighted a cigarette.

  "Look," she said, returning to face me. In the harsh afternoon light, Karen Schultz looked a hundred years old. "I've been... life is... full of compromises sometimes. I'm a single girl who needs her job and likes her job, and if I've given Winters occasional shit about his decisions, well, that's what he pays me for. What I'm saying is, I don't act out of spite against anyone in our department—I like our department and I think we do a good job. But..."Karen's voice vanished as she looked out toward the mall. "Couldn't they find an uglier place for a hospital?"

  "I guess not."

  Karen's eyes looked pained but inscrutable. "Look, you talked to Chet, right, about the... irregularities?"

  "That's right."

  "Do you appreciate what they mean, or have come to mean?"

  "They mean Martin's building a case against me and my daughter for a crime we didn't commit."

  "Yes. But you're a step behind, Russ. In practical terms, do you know what this means?"

  I couldn't help but wonder whether Karen had seen Martin's videotape of me and Alice Fultz. What earthly good could it have done Parish to reveal it now? "I'm not sure how to handle Martin," I said.

  "Russell, I'll tell you. Do you know a good criminal attorney?"

  "Yes."

  "Hire him."

  This bad and somehow inevitable news seemed to come at me from some blind spot in my mind. "Do you think Parish is going to take his case to the DA?"

  "Russell, he already has."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I sat with Isabella three hours that evening while she slept.

  As I gazed at her swollen, sleeping face, at her once-Iovely head now bound by gauze, at the clear plastic oxygen mask banded across her nose and mouth, I could only wonder at how far this woman had come, how compromised and torture was the flesh of her body, how betrayed she had been by life.

  I heard one of the nurses steal in behind me, but when I turned to see her, I found myself looking into the doleful dark eyes of Tina Sharp, from Equitable.