The Virtues of Oxygen (8 page)

Just then their first customer walked through the door. Holly recognized her as a Stop & Shop cashier, though she didn’t know the woman’s name. She was in her late sixties, small boned and slightly stooped, and she wore the kind of putty-colored orthopedic shoes that Holly associated with giving up
on life.

Racine gave her the full force of his smile. “Hello, ma’am. So glad you could come in on opening day,” he said. “How may we
help you?”

The woman opened the clasp on her purse and took out a plastic sandwich bag with some tangled jewelry in it. “I thought I’d come in and see what this is worth,” she said with a self-conscious smile. “I never wear it
anymore.”

“Right this way,” Racine said, leading her to a chair at one of th
e cubbies.

The store was small enough that Holly couldn’t help but witness the transaction. The visored man sitting on the opposite side of the table took the baggy and emptied it into a tray lined with bla
ck velvet.

“Thanks for coming in today,” he said, looking at the jewelry and not at the woman in front of him. He sorted it quickly, viewing some of the items through an eyepiece. He examined a small pocket watch several times, turning it over and opening its engraved cover. He weighed each broken hoop and each bracelet fragment, adding numbers on a calculator. The appraiser looked up briefly, and Holly turned away so that she wouldn’t appear to be eavesdropping, though she could hear everything
he said.

“These two aren’t real gold,” he said, handing the woman a thin bracelet and one of the earrings. “And the pocket watch is an amalgam, so we can’t take that, except for resale. The clasp is broken, so that would be fifteen
dollars.”

The woman shook her head slowly and took back the pocket watch. The appraiser piled the small handful of jewelry left onto a tiny scale and wrote down a number on a small white pad, which he then turned toward the woman, who nodded meekly. The appraiser swept the tokens of her past into a plastic bowl and counted out the cash. He placed the money in a white paper envelope, and the woman took it without changing her expression. She walked slowly past the glass cases, pretending to look inside them, as if she might spend the cash she had just received on someone else’s discarded
trinkets.

When she passed Racine, he gave her another smile, to which she responded with a smile of her own that said,
At least a nice-looking man acknowledged my presen
ce today
.

“Thank you for your business,” Racine said, bowing slightly. “Co
me again.”

The woman nodded vaguely and left, which was Holly’s cue to leave as well. She glanced at the men in the back, then turned
to Racine.

“Looks like you have everything under control,” Ho
lly said.

“Business will pick up in a few days. It takes a while for the word to get out. Actually, I was thinking about putting out som
e flyers.”

“My boys could help you with the flyers,” Holly said, brightening at the thought of being helpful in a con
crete way.

“Sure. Have them
come by.”

“I will. T
ake care.”

She hurried out the door and walked right into the path of the Sister Sisters—the town’s elderly sibling nuns—who were strolling down the street in the long black habits they wore long after the Catholic church stopped requiring nuns to be identifiable from a block away. They were carrying a basket bet
ween them.

“Is that Holly?” one of them said. Their names were Sister Eileen and Sister Eleanor, but no one ever knew which was which. The sister closest to the door of the gold shop looked up at
the sign.

“Are you investigating?” she said, raising her
eyebrows.

“Investigat
ing what?”

“These gold places. They take your treasures and give you a fraction of what they’re worth,” the nun said. “It’s all over the I
nterwebs.”

“You two have a computer?” Holly asked the sister
who spoke.

“Vivian gave us very good instructions about how to use one at the library,” she said. “We check our e-mail ev
ery week.”

“What are you up to today?” Holly asked them, intent on changing the subject. Talking them out of their misconceptions about the gold business would have taken too
much time.

“We’re on our way to . . . where are we going
, Sister?”

The other sister put a hand in the pocket of her habit and pulled out a small scrap of paper ripped from a
notebook.

“Ellen Crandall,” the other sister said. “She tore her ACL playing basketball, so we’re bringing
muffins.”

“How wonderful,” Holly said. “Well, have a good day,
Sisters.”

Halfway down the sidewalk, Holly looked back to see the sisters still standing in front of the gold shop. One of them was peering in, her nose right to t
he glass.

CHAPTER 9

Vivian’s Unaired
Podcast #3

T
he placid acceptance I had displayed at twelve eventually morphed into a simmering rage that I wasn’t a) dead and glorified as a martyr, or b) the beneficiary of some amazing medical breakthrough that made it possible for me to escape the iron lung. I had given up worrying about my body—I was so detached from it that I felt no shame or embarrassment when doctors and nurses fussed around it. I couldn’t feel it anyway. I just let them take care of the business end of things. But I knew from watching television that people in wheelchairs could travel just about anywhere. If I could breathe on my own or even use a portable apparatus, I would be able to attend movies, concerts, plays, or just sit in the park on a sunny afternoon feeling the wind caress my face. I missed being outside, where I felt closest t
o Darlene.

My parents tried their best to take me out as often as possible, but it was such a production. Several grown men were needed to set up the ramp, take the door off the hinges, and wheel me into a special medical van with restraints to prevent my lung from banging around. Other than two or three hospital visits each year, I saw the outdoors maybe once a mo
nth or so.

By seventeen I was old enough to realize that the doctors had been completely wrong about my prognosis—which was discussed in whispers and asides that I had no trouble overhearing—and clearly had miscalculated my parents’ ability to survive without sleep. I became aware that I could live for a very long time. That revelation made me all the more furious that I couldn’t be a part of the world—couldn’t visit other places, couldn’t go to college, couldn’t see much of anything outside the room that was my prison. I was about to graduate from high school—I took all my tests orally or dictated to my mother—and I had excelled. I was near the top of my class, and yet I couldn’t contemplate a career or anything besides lying in the same room as my parents wore themselves frail and thin cari
ng for me.

Just before graduation, my mother’s friend dropped off some cookies for the high school picnic that followed the ceremony. My parents had gone to a lot of trouble to get the school to accommodate my iron lung. They had moved the graduation outside so that I could be wheeled on a gurney behind my classmates and could receive my diploma w
ith them.

“Are you excited about graduating, Vivian?” my mother’s friend said in a voice more appropriate for a five
-year-old.

“Thrilled,” I said deadpan. “I can’t wait to see what life has
in store.”

“Vivian,” my mother said.
“Please.”

“Please what?” I said, oblivious to her friend or to her feelings. “Am I supposed to be grateful for whatever you call this? Because it’s not a life. I’m like some weird science experiment. I shouldn’t even
be alive.”

“Don’t say that,” my mother said. “You are an amazing person, and you have so much to co
ntribute.”

“How do I contribute when I can’t do anything for myself? I can’t even blow my own nose. Do you know how humiliating
that is?”

My mother turned to her friend with a look of apology and showed her to the door. After the wretched woman left, I finally said what I had wanted to say f
or months.

“I can’t take it anymore. Just turn off the machine and le
t me die.”

My mother looked distraught. “You’re in a phase. Everyone goes through it at your age. You want to get away from your parents and make your own decisions, and you will someday, but this is not
the day.”

The misplaced anger I felt at that moment would have taken my breath away if the iron lung didn’t force my re
spiration.

“You can’t possibly understand,” I said, yelling loud enough now to bring my father on the run. “I am trapped in this goddamned machine forever. How could you let this happen to me? Why didn’t you keep me inside that summer? I was only six. I didn’t even know what p
olio was.”

My father stepped into the room just as I said th
ose words.

“That’s enough, Vivian,” he said in a tone I had never heard him use with me before. “That is more tha
n enough.”

He came and put an arm around my mother, who was trembling and crying in the chair next to my iron lung. I knew it was wrong, but I thought I would explode if I couldn’t blame someone for my misery, and my parents were the easiest targets. I began to turn my head rapidly from side to side, which was one of the few ways I could release frustration. When I had exhausted myself, my mother rose from her chair and put her hands on either side of my head, squeezing just a little
too hard.

“You are not done yet,” she said through clenched teeth. “I won’t let you be done . . . Just tell me what you want, and if it’s in my power, I will try my best to get it
for you.”

“That’s the problem,” I said, turning my head away, out of her grasp. “It’s not in your powe
r at all.”

After graduation, I sank into a depression that seemed to have no bottom. I spent many of my waking hours trying to figure out how to sabotage my own medical care. I couldn’t hold my breath, because the lung forced me to breathe. I couldn’t choke on food, because someone was always there to clear my airway. I began to fantasize about death and about how it would release me from Shakespeare’s “mortal coil,” which I pictured literally as a giant metal spring wrapped around my inert body inside the
machine.

I knew that if I stopped eating altogether the doctors would insert a feeding tube in my abdomen, so I saw only one path. I would eat less and less until I wasted away. I thought if I did it gradually enough, it might be too late for anyone to
intervene.

Naturally, my mother noticed almost immediately, but instead of coaxing me to eat my peas like a toddler, she tried a different approach. She brought in Professor Harold Margolis from the community college in Albany, which I looked down on because my grades would have qualified me to go to a much better school. The professor knew that. He knew so much about me that I suspected my mother had been badgering him f
or months.

“So Vivian,” he said, “I’ve been asking your mother if she would consider loaning you out to us on an occasion
al basis.”

“Spare parts for your heatin
g system?”

Professor Margolis laughed and looked at me with either appreciation or bemusement—I couldn’t te
ll which.

“Not exactly,” he said. “We’re developing a computer program, and we need good minds to help us see the patterns—connect the dots, as it were. You’d visit us once a month to work in the computer lab, and in exchange we’d offer you some classes at home. You could get your associate’s degree, and it won’t cost your parent
s a dime.”

I’m embarrassed to say that I thought too highly of myself—even as I wallowed in depression—to want an associate’s degree from Albany Community College, but I was intrigued by the idea of working in a computer lab, even just se
eing one.

“Who would teach me?” I
asked him.

“That depends on what courses you’d like
to take.”

On the spot, it occurred to me that I wanted to learn about business. I had always been a math whiz, probably because I couldn’t use a slide rule, or even a pencil and paper, and had to do all my calculations in my head. I loved listening to news reports about the economy and about the new businesses cropping up as the world remade itself into a modern and interconnec
ted place.

“Business,” I said. “Economics and
business.”

“Then business it shall be,” the professor said, nodding at my mother. “I’ll work something out with our business department. You’ll be hearing from
us soon.”

My mother walked Professor Margolis to the door, and I could hear them speaking in low voices, something that infuriated me, which my mother well knew. When the professor left, I turned my venomous tong
ue on her.

“So you think you can buy me off with a few days outside this godforsaken house? Do you think I don’t know he just feels sorr
y for me?”

My mother, normally quick to placate me, instead kicked the ottoman my father used to put his feet up after dinner and tipped
it over.

“I’ve had it, Vivian,” she said, tears streaming. “It took me three months to get him to come out here. Well, here’s how I see it: you can either drown in your misery, or you can decide to live your life. Not the one you wish you had, but the one God
gave you.”

With that, maybe the longest speech my mother had ever made to me, she left the room. A minute went by, then two. I wondered if she had finally given up on me. As two minutes ticked into three, I realized that I truly did want to learn about business and spend time in a computer lab, if only to get out from under the same ceiling I had been staring at for years and years. Just as I began to panic that my mother had left the house, I heard her from th
e kitchen.

“Mar-co,” she said, her voice stil
l shaking.

“Po-lo,” I called without h
esitation.