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Authors: Michael Cadnum

Edge (11 page)

BOOK: Edge
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“He cannot breathe on his own,” said the doctor. “He has no sensation in his extremities.”

My mother was about to say something, and the doctor hurried himself along. “I alluded to this before,” he said, sketching in the rest of the outline in blue, a profile like an ad for cough medicine, Where Colds Strike.

A dotted line stitched across the blank white, intersecting with the neck. It was a feeble drawing compared with the bullet slashes of comic books, a tender hint of real harm. “If a muscle is severed—”

I thought I could read his eyes as he considered adding more hurtful words,
torn, sliced
, and deciding against them, sticking to the brief lecture he had delivered many times, in this very room. “The muscle fiber can grow back. I think of muscle as being like wood, full of green sap, able to heal itself together again. But with our nervous system we face a different situation. In a child, or a young person, we might hope to see some regeneration—”

“He's going to be paralyzed,” said my mother.

I expected the surgeon to respond: no, of course not, that's not what I'm trying to say.

He said, “We have to anticipate that.”

I told myself the doctor had not spoken these words. My ears had tricked me, my brain making up voices on its own.

“How bad will it be?” my mother was asking, draining all the emotion out of her voice, like a pilot's voice during turbulence, just the words, no feeling.

But there was something relentless about her, too, needing to be in charge. I wanted to tell her to just shut up. She was making it worse.

“I'm going to have a physical therapist examine Mr. Madison tomorrow. The sooner we begin the better.” He lifted a finger to beg my mother's patience. She turned away, unable to look at him.

It's hard to say what pause, what gesture, earned my trust. He spoke in a different voice, gentle, like the recording of a pleasant
The Bay Area has suffered a major earthquake
. “We have to expect the paralysis to be from the neck down, and permanent. We have to expect him never to recover normal activity.”

Sofia jammed a knuckle between her teeth. My mother looked at the tip of her shoe, breathing hard. Daniel at last wrestled the space knight from my hand and wiped it on his T-shirt.

“But it's too soon to tell,” said Sofia.

My mother put a hand on Sofia's sleeve and squeezed. The satin bunched in, Sofia slim under all that padding.

N
INETEEN

Late Friday afternoon I plopped down in front of my computer, turned it on, and read a message from Perry. He said that his kayak coach was one of those guys with thick necks and small ears, too muscled to do anything but stand around and look strong. But Coach Bicep was an expert in grizzlies. He led expeditions into Denali National Park, and Perry might trek up there next summer to help tag bears.

This was typical of Perry, always saying something dramatic, a way of keeping our friendship going. At the same time he made me realize how far away he was, gossiping about a kayaking grizzly expert I would never meet.

I sat the keyboard for a long time, but I could not bring myself to tell him anything about my dad. I felt like a witness finding it impossible putting words to some obscene thing he was under oath to describe.

Deena's Diner was a former health food restaurant trying to look like restaurants in another era, green Depression glass saltshakers and sun-yellowed Coca-Cola ads on the walls. It even sported an awning that overhung College Avenue,
EAT AT DEENA'S
in white lettering against the blue canvas.

I hadn't bothered to change out of my work clothes, heavy gray pants, steel-toed boots, a Ben Davis cotton blend shirt with the sleeves cut off. One of the nurses told me Dad had fierce headaches, the only part of his body with feeling.

Unable to tell Perry about Dad, I was in no mood to talk to anyone. I realized as soon as I sat down that my mom was right: she had taken to jogging out by the Marina in San Francisco and up the long hills into Pacific Heights, providing herself with sweatpants and a nylon zip-up top. When she was sitting still, you could hear her experimenting with breathing exercises, laboring to keep her nerves under control.

I should take up running, weight-lifting, anything. Bea pretended she didn't see me when I came in, but I could tell by the sudden pink in her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes. I found a table and leaned back, watching her deliver a plate of tuna salad littered with bean sprouts to a man sitting under a Ford hubcap on the wall.

The man smiled up at Bea, one of those men who like to look women right in the face and let them see what they are missing in life. And Bea was looking right back, hitching her hip out to one side just like her mom. The man was laughing and Bea was joining in, only Bea's laugh was quiet, like a cough.

I stretched out my feet and leaned back in my chair, a person who could take his time.

“Zachary, I didn't expect you,” she said, and I was even more sorry I had come. Bea was embarrassed about her apron, I could tell without asking. And the little plastic button,
HI, I'M BEA
, and the other button,
ASK ME WHAT'S SPECIAL
.

“Is the tuna fish salad special?” I asked.

“Cobb salad is,” she said in her scratchy voice.

A big woman with a broad, fleshy face leaned against the counter, watching. When she shifted her elbows, a paper clip stuck to her elbow dimples for a second.

“What is Cobb salad, exactly?” I asked.

“It's got iceberg lettuce and cubes of turkey and avocado and bacon, if you want, and grated egg, served with a pitcher of bleu cheese on the side.”

“I'm pretty hungry,” I said. “That doesn't sound like enough food.” Bea and I used to go up to Tilden Park and toss a Frisbee around, both of us having just the right touch. We could snap a Frisbee back and forth for half an hour and almost never let it kiss the grass.

“Zachary, don't do this,” she said, responding to the unfriendly weight behind my words. “Come pick me up at eight and we'll go the gym.”

“And watch you box?” I knew I was being unfair to Bea, mad at myself because I couldn't explain to my best friend what had happened to Dad.

Her lips pressed together for an instant. “I work out with the big bag and the speed bag, to music. You can do it, too—I'm allowed to bring one guest on a first-time visit.”

“You don't call me,” I said.

“I do,” said Bea. “I think about you all the time,” complete with a little catch in her voice. “I leave messages.”

“Why do you suppose it's called Cobb salad?” I asked.

The Big Lady eased herself around the counter and brought herself within earshot. She gathered some menus off a nearby table and stacked them, tapping the bottom edge on the table-top. “That's a matter of some debate,” said Bea, sounding like her old self, the way we used to be.

“Can I order it without the lettuce?” I said.

“Zachary, I'm going to bring it out here and dump it all over your head,” said Bea, making it sound like one of those carefree things people say to each other.

“This is why I never see you. All these friendly people here in Deena's Diner.” I said
Deena
especially loudly because I wanted the big woman to hear me. “Your mom doesn't hesitate.” I was being unfair but I couldn't shut my mouth. “She drives right on up in that new van of hers, with the calico curtains. She asks me if there's anything else she can do.”

“I don't want to hear about it,” she said.

“You ought to learn how to lean forward and let your front hang all over people, just like your mom. Pour out that free refill and make the customer smile.”

“I think about how much you're going through these days,” said Bea, her voice broken. I shouldn't have talked about her mother.

But I couldn't stop myself. “My dad can't cough up his own phlegm and you stand around carrying on the family tradition, wiggling your butt for customers.”

I had not expected to say anything like this. I knew at the time it wasn't right. Rhonda Newport's pass at me had been a nonevent, I had come to believe, the result of eggnog and “I'll Be Home for Christmas” on the stereo.

“Bea, honey, you want me to ask this gentleman to leave?” said the Big Lady.

“That's a good idea,” I said, lounging back in my chair with a smile: Go ahead, ask.

The woman looked me up and down, a little prickle of sweat on her upper lip. But she was cool about it, and when she left, shuffling briskly toward the swinging kitchen door she left a presence, an empty hole where she had been.

“I made Deena mad,” I said.

Bea laughed, a real laugh, kind, but with humor. “Zachary, that isn't Deena.” This was a new kind of smile for Bea, knowing, well-informed on some practical matters about which I was totally ignorant. “That's Ruth,” Bea was saying, “and do you know what her hobby is?”

I could think of about a dozen bright things to say, but I was tired of looking at the reflection of the room in the polished hubcap, a smear of colors, humans wiggling along the edge.

“She listens to police calls on her shortwave radio,” said Bea.

“I'll pick you up at six,” I said, standing up, trying to make it all right by changing my tone, considerate, giving her a little chicken-peck kiss on the side of her neck.

“I think you better learn to operate your answering machine, Zachary,” she said, pulling her blouse down hard, so
BEA
trembled at the point of her breast.

I thought about Bea all the way home, all the way into the kitchen, where I sat at the answering machine and listened to a line-up voices, one at a time, far-off associates of my mom's, most of them saying they didn't know what to say.

And sometimes Bea's voice was there. Bea, who didn't like to leave messages, was there like an ancient recording of a human voice, someone almost lost to memory. She didn't like to say anything straight out. She would say she was afraid of an on-rushing avalanche by suggesting that we might not want to get our clothes dirty.

“It's three in the morning, Zachary,” her recorded voice whispered. “I'm thinking about you.”

I didn't believe Bea and I would ever be close in the way we used to be, but the sound of her voice on the answering machine changed the way I thought about my friends. I had been thinking that Bea couldn't possibly know how I felt. After all, I had been thinking, she had never even met my father.

I went into my room and booted up the computer. I sent Perry a message.

T
WENTY

Perry's voice was on the answering machine early the next morning. I phoned him and got Perry's dad, a man who always sounded like he was a desert island and hadn't heard a human voice in weeks.

“Zachary, jeez, it's great to hear your voice,” he said, crunching breakfast toast. “God,” he interrupted himself, shifting to a more serious tone, like a sports announcer handed a grave news bulletin. “Perry told me.” His dad expressed his condolences, a smart man who sometimes sounded dumb because of his enthusiasm for things, and then the telephone made a fumbling whisper and Perry was there.

I had the picture in my mind, Wheaties and muffin crumbs, a nearly empty carton of nonfat milk. I saw Perry in my mind, taller than me, tanned from exposure to the northern sun. Perry said very little, mostly uh-huh as I told him what I knew, doctors, IVs, cops. We were more comfortable snapping E-mail back and forth, voice communication clumsy and complicated, having to express everything out loud.

“This is awful,” said Perry at last, and I felt bad about making him so solemn. Perry doesn't say
How awful
or
That sounds bad
. With Perry you get
This is true
or
This is bad news
.

I was happy to change the subject, just to hear Perry express some of his old interest in things. I said it sounded great, all of his plans, and we agreed that when this all got resolved maybe I could fly up for a visit, maybe look at the fish ladder, watch salmon swim upriver over a set of locks from salt water to fresh, all that Northwestern activity that sounded like life on another planet.

I was so happy to hear his voice, I went into my room and sent him an E-mail right away, letting him know how good it was to hear from him “voice-to-ear.” But what I really wanted to tell him was to forget about kayaking and bear-tagging and take up an interest in sea otters or mule deer, some animal we have in California.

The water that runs out of a hose is sometimes hot as soup, even the brass nozzle gets hot. You can hardly touch it.

I let this first water run out of the hose for a while before I let it trickle onto the tendrils of my beans. Some of my beans were adult, nearly, having muscled all the way up the stake and then, with nowhere to go, spiraling down again. Only a few whiteflies danced around the pods as I splashed water over the plants.

What I saw next did not make sense.

The tomato plant, Mom's prize, was shivering. It wiggled, shuddering inward toward its stake. The leaves were nodding. Green tongues sprouted from the green rope of the stem.

I took my time, marching to the faucet, turning off the water, approaching the tomato plant cautiously. At times like this I find myself keeping up a running dialogue, like a cop chattering into his radio, except it's all in my head.

Okay, what is it, I queried myself. Some kind of disaster.

The plant was alive with fat green worms, each larva the size of my thumb, but longer, and when I stepped on one by accident it was green pulp inside, half-digested leaf. The sound of the feeding host of green caterpillars,
Hyles lineata
, was like rain heard far away. The fruit was untouched, green blushing orange, days from being fully ripe.

The dozens of swollen green larva of the white-lined sphinx moth were finishing the last foliage as I watched.

BOOK: Edge
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