The Age of Miracles (28 page)

“She's with Ginger's mother.” Bobby Lee stood up straighter, took my hands. “Thank you for coming down, Letitia. Stay with us awhile. You were magnificent this morning,” he added. “I was so proud of you.”

“I have to serve fifty hours of community service thanks to you. Why did you do this to all of us? Subpoena us like that.”

“I don't know,” Ginger said. “Something just came over me.”

“And me,” Bobby added.

“We told her we'd make up if she'd start breathing,” Ginger added. “But she won't start. Maybe she's forgotten how.” She began to weep. It was not the first time she had cried today, that much was clear. The front of her sweater was stained with tears. Tracks of my tears, I was thinking. It is a song the band has been playing.

“Play music for her,” I said at once. “Go get a tape player and some music. What does she like to hear?”

“She loves Miles Davis,” Bobby said. “It's all she's been listening to for weeks.”

“Where's a tape player? I'll go get it. You can't leave.”

“Will you?”

“Sure. Tell me where to go.”

Bobby gave me a key to his house and I tore out of the hospital and drove over there. A little blue house on the wrong side of the tracks. At least it wasn't that filthy apartment he had at first. I opened the door with the key and found the tape player. It was one of those big heavy things teenagers carry around. I think its called a Bomb Box or something like that. I found the Miles Davis tapes and some of Gato Barbieri and John Coltrane and took them to the hospital as fast as I could go.

It was one-thirty when I got there but of course time has no meaning in an intensive care ward when a child has decided to stop breathing.

Bobby plugged in the Bomb Box and turned it on. We all stood around the bed watching to see if Roberta's eyes would open or her hands move. Nothing happened that you could see, but the music seemed to lighten up the room and the sickbed with it.

“You go on home, Letitia,” Bobby said. “Take Ginger home too. I'll stay tonight. I'll sit here and change the tapes.”

Which is what he did. In the morning Roberta began to listen to the music. In a week she was home. In ten days she was back in school. The doctors told her not to play the trumpet for a while but Ginger told me in the hall one day that she was playing it anyway. “How High the Moon,” “Viva Emiliano Zapata,” “My Funny Valentine.” Her breathing is doubly precious to me, since she may be the only child her age in the United States interested in preserving the great jazz music of the past.

Nothing much has changed in Harrisburg since then. Except that people have gone back to taking marriage very, very seriously. If it's going to be that hard to get out of marriages we are going to have to be more careful about getting into them.

Remember Ginger and Bobby Lee
. That's what parents around here are telling their children. Leda and the swan, Romeo and Juliet, Burt and Loni, Woody and Mia, Prince Charles and Princess Di, Bobby Lee and Ginger, whatever it takes to get the point across.

Aside from that, summer is here. The woman dentist has taken up with the carpenter in the OFF DUTY shirt. We all go down to the Lonely and read foreign newspapers and eat cake. The band plays on. As for me, I'm a heroine in certain circles now and will always be. I wish my mother could have seen me at that trial. She was the newspaper editor in this town and a free-thinker from the word go. I think she would have been proud of me. And the first to warn me about pride.

The Uninsured

August 1, 1993

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

I got your letter advising me that you are redoing our health insurance plans. I guess this means you are going to be raising our rates again. I know you
want
to raise my rates since for the past ten years it has cost you more to pay my psychiatrist than you have collected from me. We may be getting tired of each other. It may be time to sever our relationship especially since I am about to cut down on the number of times I see him each week and aside from that am in perfect health.

Yours most sincerely,
Rhoda K. Manning

September 3, 1993

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

While I wait to see if you have figured out a way to make money from me instead of me making money from you I have done the following at your expense. Had a mammogram and Pap smear. Had a bone density evaluation and scan. Had an AIDS test. Had a blood profile and blood pressure check. Had ten small skin lesions removed from my hands and arm and lower legs. Had all my prescription drugs filled.

I have also driven up to Jackson, Mississippi, to visit my eighty-six-year-old parents and found them both in perfect health. From all these tests and the evidence of my genes it is clear that, barring accidents, I will live to be about ninety years old with no bone, heart, liver, lung, or brain disease. My blood pressure is ninety over sixty. My bone density is that of a thirty-year-old woman. It is obvious that if you raise my rates I will have to consider bailing out of your Flex-Plan.

Yours most sincerely,
Rhoda K. Manning

October 10, 1993

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

I have applied to the John Alden Insurance Company of Springfield, Illinois, for inclusion in their Jali-Care Program. I am going to let the two of you bid for my healthy body. A healthy body, I might add, that has been shored up by twenty years of psychotherapy which has taught me to love, care for, and value myself.

The John Alden representative in our area has come to visit me. He is a very nice man about my age who once was a forest ranger in Oregon. We chatted and drank bottled water and he took my medical history. He said that, with the exception of my twenty years of psychotherapy, he was certain my record would be well received at the John Alden Jali-Care Evaluation Center. “I am not mentally disturbed,” I told him. “I am a writer. The reason I have never been blocked is because I have been in psychotherapy and therefore able to withstand the pressures of society upon my artistic nature. It is also the reason I have never been depressed or had accidents.”

You people at Blue Cross may think the four hundred dollars a month it has cost you to pay my psychiatrist is a lot of money but think of what it might have cost you if I had harmed myself with food or drink or drugs or unhappy love affairs. You are coming out ahead, I assure you.

Well, this is just to keep you updated while I wait for my letter telling me about the restructuring of Farm Policy Group Seven's Comprehensive Major Medical Coverage for the Future.

Yours most truly,
Rhoda K. Manning

November 7, 1993

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

I just got my flu shot. I didn't charge it to you since I just ran by the Mediquik and it only cost five dollars so I thought it wasn't worth the paperwork. I have been racking my brain trying to think of something else I can have done to myself before I bail out of the health insurance business and devote myself to staying in perfect health until I am sixty-five and can get some of my tax dollars back in Medicare.

The John Alden Insurance Company sent a sweet young woman out to do a medical check on me. She called one afternoon at four and asked if she could come the next day at noon. I guess that was to make sure I wasn't forewarned in case I secretly smoke or drink. I told her to come on and she said I had to fast from eight that night until noon. That was the hard part. I never go eight hours without food as I believe in controlling the blood sugar levels at all times.

She arrived promptly at noon. It turns out she lives in my part of town. She said when she was ready to buy a house she asked a policeman where the safest place in town was and he said these old neighborhoods on the mountain. The houses were built in the sixties and look like there would be nothing here to steal.

She came in and weighed me on a pair of scales she carries with her in a carpet bag. Then she drew blood and separated it in various little cylinders and sealed them up and put them in a pack to be taken by Federal Express to a lab in Kansas City. I had to sign a paper saying they could do an AIDS test. That's two in two months' time. I was glad to do it. As I told Sharon Cane, that's her name, if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. A gay friend of mine tells that to anyone who won't be tested for HIV.

Next I gave Sharon a urine specimen. She explained to me that they could tell from it if I had smoked a cigarette in the last ten days or had a drink. I have not had a drink in twenty years. A hypnotist in New Orleans talked me out of that years ago.

The way I feel now is that if the John Alden Jali-Care people don't have enough sense to want my $157.69 a month after all of this they can go to hell.

You may think from the tone of this letter that I am getting mad at you, but you would be wrong. I have appreciated all those checks for fifty percent of my psychotherapy. I don't blame you for trying to figure out a way to get your money back but I don't think there's any reason for me to give it to you.

Yours sincerely,
Rhoda K. Manning

December 4, 1993

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

John Alden Jali-Care is considering my application. I passed all my physical tests with flying colors but they are worried about the years of psychotherapy and have requested a letter from my psychotherapist, which he is drafting now.

I assume that the reason I haven't heard from you about my policy is that you have been busy with the lawsuit the Arkansas Senate is bringing against you for raising all the rates of people with preexisting conditions to such exorbitant amounts that they (we) are all going to have to quit. In the meantime I am pursuing other options as I have told you in our correspondence.

It said in the paper today that you had begun all this in order to get ready for the great Health Care Debate of 1994. Well, all I can say is I am losing interest in the whole thing. I have always paid for the things that made a real difference to my health, like eyeglasses, running shoes, good books, good music, movies, food. I know how to go to Mediquik and get shots. Not to mention the dentist, which you do not cover either.

Good luck with your lawsuit.

Yours sincerely,
Rhoda Manning

December 5, 1993

Dear John Alden Jali-Care,

Here is the letter from my psychiatrist which you requested. From it you will see that the only reason I have been going to him all these years is because I am a writer. It has nothing whatsoever to do with health problems. It is preventive medicine, and besides, I'm cutting down on my sessions and you won't be responsible for them anyway as they are a preexisting condition. Hope everything is clear now.

Yours most sincerely,
Rhoda K. Manning

December 15, 1993

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

I received your offer to continue to provide me with health insurance for $567.69 a month with a three-thousand-dollar deductible and a fifty-thousand-dollar stop-loss. I have decided to decline this offer. It's been nice doing business with you but I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Stay well,
Rhoda Manning

January 1, 1994

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

This is my first day of being uninsured. It feels great. I have had the snow shoveled from my sidewalk, am wearing my seat belt at all times, and have invested two thousand, three hundred dollars in a new Exercycle from the Stairmaster people.

If I subtract the one thousand, seven hundred and three dollars quarterly payment I would have sent you that is only about seven hundred dollars for the Exercycle.

Looking ahead to the second quarterly payment I have bought a new fur jacket to keep me from catching cold. With the two hundred dollars I saved by having all my prescriptions filled in 1993 I bought a matching hat and muff.

Yours for a happy and healthy new year,
Rhoda Manning

February 1, 1994

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

Now that a month has passed and all is well I have decided to look ahead to the money I would be paying you the next few years and put in a lap pool. The pool people don't have much to do this time of year and have given me a twenty percent discount.

February 27, 1994 Sorry I didn't get this off sooner but they came and started digging the hole for the pool and it's been chaos around here. All is well now. The pool is nine feet wide and sixty-nine feet long. It has an electric cover that can be opened or closed from a switch in the kitchen. Talk about high technology.

Do you remember Sharon Cane, who came to draw blood for the John Alden Jali-Care Evaluation? Well, she is swimming with me three days a week. She starts at one end and I start at the other to make waves for each other to swim against. We usually bet five dollars on who can swim the most laps in an hour. A lot of times we lose count because we are having so much fun. I am down to seeing my analyst three times a month now that I have to pay for it. No ill effects so far, only I can tell I am not working as hard as I was when I had him to drive me to it. Why should I work seven days a week? It's almost spring. The long winter is over and I didn't catch the flu. That five-dollar flu shot may be the best money I spent all year.

Yours for a healthy America,
Rhoda Manning

March 19, 1994

Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

I had a long talk with my ninety-year-old neighbor, Kassie Martin, yesterday. She praised me for letting my insurance run out. She said that if I have a stroke or a heart attack it is best to arrive at the hospital uninsured as that might lower the chances of them putting you on a life support machine. She has seen many unpleasant things happen to older people who arrive at the hospital fully insured. Greed is nothing new in the world but why should we be victims of it?

On another note I have only had one prescription filled since I left you. I drove around town doing some comparison shopping. That pharmacy that used to fill my prescriptions is twice as high as the one at Wal-Mart. You should look into this.