The Virtues of Oxygen (12 page)

CHAPTER 12

Vivian’s Unaired
Podcast #4

A
s the country awoke to a wave of radical thinking about civil rights in the early 1960s, I had a revelation myself: I decided that I didn’t have to spend my entire life in the same room. With my mother’s help, I had enrolled in the community college and attended classes once a week. It was still a huge production to move my iron lung, but the college assisted by paying for a van and staff to move me around and by scheduling classes in places that were accessible to my
bulk
y machine.

Professor Margolis had increased my hours in the computer lab, so with my classes I managed to get out of the house twice a week. My mother fussed and fretted about the jarring trips to and from the van and into the buildings, but that didn’t bother me at all. It was freedom, and freedom was all
the rage.

The computer lab work I had started at seventeen had tripped some wire in my brain that allowed me to process vast amounts of information and to help the technicians see where the computer—which filled a room on campus—had gone wrong. The machine, of course, was never actually wrong. Programming errors were always to blame, but these could be difficult to spot. My job was to scan hundreds of punch cards—which my mother would place before me in batches of ten—and try to identify the mistake. I loved it. It was like an elaborate game to me, and finding a mistake that could set the computer back on the right path was like winning a prize. I found these only once a month or so, but when I did, Professor Margolis would shout for joy, and the programmers woul
d applaud.

It was exciting work, and I only wished that I could be in the lab every day, but my mother grew weary of the dull job of placing the punch cards in front of my face and moving them when I told her I was ready for another batch. The college couldn’t afford to use one of their own employees to watch over me, so my “job” was not much more than an excuse to engage my brain in something greater than
self-pity.

At first the college sent a teacher to our house to work with me on my business courses. My mother would listen and take notes and then review them with me before tests and quizzes. She also took dictation if I had to write a paper. But it was taking too long for me to complete just one or two courses, and I wanted more, so I finally convinced my mother to let me line up my classes during one long day of lectures. She still sat with me and took occasional notes, but I had become adept at memorizing information after hearing it only once. It was during this time that my mother took up needlepoint and made elaborate Christmas stockings for every relati
ve we had.

On the first day of my on-campus classes, I brought the entire place to a standstill as my van wheeled up to the door and some college custodians arrived to place a temporary ramp across the stairs to the building. My machine and I were wheeled in through double doors, and I was positioned so that I could see the professor through my angled mirror. My portable generator made a lot of noise, so they parked me toward the back of the lecture hall, which meant that I had very little interaction with students—until one finally approached me in Macroeconom
ics class.

Her name was Sandy. She was a petite, brown-haired sophomore with glasses that seemed too large for her delicate features. She came up to my mother after class one day and aske
d my name.

“How kind,” my mother said. “This i
s Vivian.”

I smiled at Sandy, but only politely. It had been my experience that curiosity seekers or dare takers would approach me for a lark—let’s see if she can talk like a normal person—but they never returned once their curiosity had been satisfied or the dare met. But Sandy wasn’t one
of those.

“Hi, Vivian,” she said to me. “I’m Sandy. Are you enjoying the class? What do you think of Professor
Simpson?”

“I’m glad I’m not sitting in the front row,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I can see him spitting from b
ack here.”

Sandy laughed and looked at my mother as if she needed her permission to keep talking. My moth
er nodded.

“He’s definitely a sprayer,” Sandy said. “I have one of those for Shakespe
are, too.”

“Are you an Engli
sh major?”

“I think so. I’m still deciding between English and history, but I know I should take some business classes, too. Most of my friends are sec
retaries.”

“I thought about that, too,” I said, giving my genuine smile so that she knew I could joke about my own condition. “But I’m a terribl
e typist.”

She laughed again, and I felt triumphant, as I always did when I managed to make someone reasonably comfortable in my shocking presence. But just as quickly, I found myself wishing once again that I could behave like a normal college student—maybe go out for coffee or dinner with people my own age instead of having my mother stuck to my iron lung like a human-sized magnet. The resentment I felt toward her at seventeen had not completely
subsided.

“Mother,” I said, and I never called her “mother.” “Would you get me some co
ld water?”

My mother hesitated but finally went off to fill up my cup from a water
fountain.

“So what’s this really like?” Sandy said, tapping the iron lung. “Can you feel anything in there? Your arms? Y
our toes?”

“Nada. Crazy, huh? But this happened when I was six, so I’m us
ed to it.”

“It’s such a trip. You’re s
o normal.”

“Most of what makes a person a person is upstairs anyway. It took me a long time to underst
and that.”

“Hey, a bunch of us are going to form a study group for this class. Want
to come?”

I hesitated. I couldn’t ask my mother to cart me to the college more than twice a week; my travel days were taxing her a
s it was.

“What day do y
ou meet?”

“We’ll start next week. Right after thi
s class.”

“That could work. But it depends on where you’re meeting, too. I don’t fit through mo
st doors.”

“I’ll see what we can work out. We’ll talk again n
ext week.”

“Sounds good,” I said, almost unable to believe that a college student could be so kind as to include me—the horizontal freak—in any kind of group. But when my mother returned with my water, I didn’t mention Sandy’s invitation. Better to let it slip when she couldn’t do much
about it.

A week later, I could barely listen to the professor in Macroeconomics as I schemed about how I could get my mother to leave me with a group of strangers. I knew she would want to go home right after class, but I also knew she would cave if I pressed her hard enough. On top of that, I worried that Sandy would forget her offer or that the other study group members would object to having
me along.

But when the class was over, Sandy came straight over and said the group had decided to meet right in the lecture hall. Four other students came up behind her and took seats near my iron lung. My mother looked at me with concern, but I gave her my prepar
ed speech.

“Mom, Sandy just offered to let me join her study group. Why don’t you go to the cafeteria and relax while we study? You can come back for me in an hour, and we’ll h
ead home.”

I had expected resistance, but my mother clearly couldn’t believe that these students would see past my machine and allow me to mix w
ith them.

She leaned down, her lips to my ear. “Vivian, are y
ou sure?”

“I’m sure, Mom,” I said. “Le
t me try.”

So she left me that first day, and I became a valuable member of the study group—valuable mostly because I understood the material without even looking at it twice, and some in the group seemed to be math-challenged. I would often clarify points for them that the professor had “sprayed” in a particularly confusing way. By the end of the semester, we had all become familiar enough to know each other’s stories on top of knowing a little more about
economics.

After the final, we had a little party in the lecture hall, and my mother left as usual to drink her Coke and do needlepoint in the cafeteria. Ian, one of the study group members, pulled out a bottle of vodka half a second after my mother left the room. He also had some plastic cups and a couple bags
of chips.

The study group members dug into the chips and passed around the bottle of vodka until each had a small plastic cup about half
way full.

“What about me?” I said. “Don’t I
get any?”

I don’t know what made me say it except that I so badly wanted them to keep thinking of me as a friend. I had never had alcohol before; a normal teenager would have found a way to test the waters, but I couldn’t even drink water wit
hout help.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Vivian,” Sandy said. “What would your mo
ther say?”

“It’s fine,” I lied. “I drink all the time. They give me vodka to help
me sleep.”

They bought it, and someone ran to the cafeteria for a straw. Sandy put a small amount of vodka in a glass and put the straw into my mouth. I pulled on it a little too quickly and flooded my mouth with what tasted like turpentine to my virginal taste buds. I coughed a
nd choked.

“Oh my God, Vivian,” Sandy said. “Should we get you
r mother?”

I shook my head and through sheer force of will stopped
coughing.

“I’m fine. I want another sip,” I said, now that I could feel a sudden warmth traveling down my esophagus and radiating, or so I imagined, through my internal organs. It seemed like a miracle that alcohol—which my parents didn’t allow in their home—could connect me to my inert body in such a pro
found way.

Sandy held the straw to my lips, and I took a smaller drink this time, feeling the chemical rush as it rose through the top of my head. I thought I might never have the chance to drink again, so I nodded toward the glass, and Sandy held it up again, though re
luctantly.

“Be careful, Vivian,” she said. “This stuff will get you looped in
no time.”

“I don’t care,” I said as the vodka gave me courage and bent my perception of time. The consequences seemed far away, which made them appea
r smaller.

An hour later, my mother returned to load me back into the van. As soon as she walked in the door, all the other students scattered, with the exception of Sandy, who, even in an inebriated state, wouldn’t have left me to face the mu
sic alone.

“Hel-lo, muvver
,” I said.

My mother knew instantly what had happened and gave Sandy a look that might have stopped a frei
ght train.

“Young lady,” she said, her voice shaking. “I counted on you to look after Vivian. What could you have been
thinking?”

Sandy could have told her how I lied about my drinking habits, but she was too nice for that. She simply hung her head and apologized before slinking off behind her friends. She never spoke to
me again.

After that, I wasn’t allowed to meet with other students without my mother present, which meant that no student ever approached me again. I went to my classes, did my job, and eventually graduated with an associate’s degree in business. For what, I had
no idea.

CHAPTER 13

T
he
Chronicle
hit mailboxes each Thursday, which meant that Fridays were usually a light day, but Holly didn’t have time to visit the gold shop. She had to pick up Desdemona at the train station before meeting Henderson at the rehab hospital. They all needed to sit down together to review their mother’s situation, since the hospital had determined that her progress had p
lateaued.

Holly arrived at the station a few minutes early, so she called home to make sure Connor had remembered to take the bus home. He sometimes forgot what day of the we
ek it was.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Connor, it’s Mom. Just wanted to make sure you got h
ome okay.”

“Yeah, I’m here. Hey, what did we have for dinner last night? I can’t remember, and I have to write it down fo
r Health.”

Holly hated these assignments, which felt expressly designed to make her feel like a bad mother. They always seemed to fall on weeks when she couldn’t get to the grocery store and resorted to cheese quesadillas or spaghetti with sauce from a jar. She imagined that the mothers of her sons’ friends cooked only grass-fed beef, quinoa, and organic vegetables, or soy-based imitations of real food: tofurkey and veggie burgers. These were the mothers who shopped at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and frowned at the cupcakes at school events as if they we
re poison.

“Write down that we had chicken, brown rice, and broccoli,” Ho
lly said.

“But we—”

“Just write that down. I’ll cook tonight, so it won’t be fibbing. I’ll be back after I see Grand
ma, okay?”

“Sure, but I don’t think I li
ke brown—”

“Bye, hon,” Holly said as the train pulled into the
station.

Desdemona was invisible in the rush of people who got off the train, until they dispersed like gas molecules and she emerged, a waifish figure holding an oversized tote bag and blinking in the fading light. Holly, who had been circling the no-parking zone, opened the window and waved until Desdemona noticed her and came towar
d the car.

“Hi,” Desdemona said, climbing in. Neither one spoke much on the way to the rehab hospital. Holly quietly wondered if Henderson, who had taken it upon himself to retrieve Celia’s checkbook and bank statements, would be upset that their mother had been helping Holly with her mortgage for the past year. The well-off version of Henderson she had always known wouldn’t have begrudged her, but she didn’t know how the bankrupt Henderson mig
ht react.

When Holly and Desdemona arrived, Henderson was already waiting in the lobby. He led them to a small conference room that had surely been used many times for the same conversation among siblings. Henderson said little as he laid out several folders and a spreadsheet on
the table.

“So here’s the bottom line,” he said, adjusting the papers and folders so they were at right angles with the edge of the table. “Mom qualifies to move to a nursing home after the rehab stint, but she’ll have to pay out of pocket until she empties her savings. But once she’s in, she’ll be covered until
she dies.”

It wasn’t that Holly was surprised by this news, because she knew from her friends how the insurance system worked. But she was startled to hear Henderson—the momma’s boy—say “until she dies” in such a flat and unemoti
onal way.

“Oh,” Desdemona said, putting a hand over h
er mouth.

“Is there anything else we can do?” Holly asked. Her neck felt stiff, and her finger joints ached, as if she had become elderly that instant, taking her mother’s place in
the world.

“Unless one of us wants to care for her at home—and that would mean paying for outside nursing care—we really don’t have a choice,” Hende
rson said.

“So there’s nothing?” Desdemona said. “Noth
ing left?”

Holly knew what she meant. Their parents had been wealthy, but unless their mother died before the funds were depleted, none of them would see a dime. It was another step in acknowledging that she alone was responsible for keeping her small famil
y afloat.

“What’s left will go to Mom’s care in all likelihood,” Henderson said, his voice growing thick. “Dad built a business and worked like crazy for forty years, all so a bunch of strangers can keep Mom’s body functioning for the next ten while her brain barely registers that she’s alive. It doesn’t ma
ke sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Desdemona said, swallowing audibly. “I guess I always thought I’d be able to move out of that dinky apartment someday. Not that I was waiting for an inheritance, but it seemed like they had plen
ty saved.”

“They did, although some of us took a little inheritance before all this happened,” Henderson said, giving Holly a look. She felt the recrimination right down to
her core.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it,” Holly said. “I never thought we’d be in this s
ituation.”

It had never occurred to her that her siblings would one day resent her mother’s ge
nerosity.

“I get that you must have needed it, Holly, but Des and I won’t get the same kind of help, even though we both
need it.”

“I know that now, but you didn’t need it until recently,” Holly said, feeling sick to her stomach. “And as far as I knew, neither did Desdemona. I just assumed she was happy with her small a
partment.”

“Well, now you know,” Desdemona said, her voice even smaller than usual. “I wake up every night when my upstairs neighbor flushes his toilet. Think about where we grew u
p, Holly.”

Silence flooded the space around them as Holly remembered her parents’ formal dining room and circular driveway, their father’s paneled den, and the family playroom. It all seemed impossibly posh and warm and out of reach. She was now the same age as her father when he bought his first Mercedes, and she couldn’t even keep up with the mortgage on a small, rundo
wn house.

Then again she had few friends who lived the kind of life she had once known. Financial security seemed like something that existed for a few decades after World War II and then evaporated even as people continued to believe they could attain it. She dated her disillusionment to the second year after Chris’s death, when his life insurance was dwindling and she realized she would always be just one step ahead of the debt collectors and might remain there until the lid closed on her, just as it had on Aunt Muriel in her unpaid-for casket. She had applied for countless better-paying jobs and never got anywhere. Her chosen profession had been slashed and burned until it was unrecognizable, and yet she had no other skills or experience, so she held on like a polar bear clinging to a shrinking ice floe. She realized, too, that she had reached that stage of maturity where she knew she could survive on very little. But her boys and their future were a differ
ent story.

“It sucks, girls,” Henderson said finally, putting his spreadsheet back into one of the folders. “We are the victims of an economic rout and some very ba
d timing.”

“How are you holding up?” Desdemona asked him. “How’
s Phoebe?”

“She asked me if I was poor the other day,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a small smile. “Not if ‘we’ were poor, but if ‘I’ was poor, because she knows her mother has fami
ly money.”

“What did you say?” Holly asked. “I’ve been dreading that same conversation with
the boys.”

“I told her that I had hit a rough patch, but that I would bounce back as soon as I could. And she told me she appreciated my candor. A twelve-year-old used the word
‘candor.’”

“She’s always had a big vocabulary,” Desde
mona said.

“Then she asked me if she could still take private trombone lessons. That killed me right there, I’m not gonna lie. It’s like forty bucks
an hour.”

“So what did you say?” Hol
ly asked.

“I told her we’d find a way to pay for her
lessons.”

Desdemona and Holly both nodded in sympathy, knowing that was what he
would say.

“Then I had to call my ex-father-in-law and practically beg for the money,” Henderson said, his chin quivering. “I
hate
this. And I hate that Mom is in that bed. That she can’t talk to us. That she can’t keep living
her life.”

“We know you do, Hen,” Holly said. “And if I could pay back that money I borrowed from Mom, you know I would
. Right?”

Desdemona nodded. Henderson sighed and ran his fingers hard across his eyebrows, then rubbed hi
s temples.

“I’ll sign the papers,” Henderson said, standing up to go. “They’re moving her n
ext week.”