Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

The narrow path winds against the mountain. It is surrounded by thick, dripping vegetation, and the foliage seems hostile, gluey, weblike, and humming. I remember my mother reading to us, her arms warm and glowing in their fragile nimbus of hair; the jaws of the nature-show lion; the cub’s helpless paws. The camera crew filmed the lion eating the cub’s guts, then scared him away. Or shot him. They let him eat one for the TV show, then scooped up the others.

I don’t know what I said when I danced. Probably nothing. Probably “I’m a pretty girl, I’m a pretty girl, I’m—”

Veronica began to cough. She ran a low fever. She fell during an aerobics class and began to pour cold sweat. I yelled at her about seeing a doctor.

“My main problems are yeast, perpetual herpes, and hemorrhoids,” she said. “The first I can take care of at the drugstore, the second they can’t do anything about, and the third I’m not going to some swinish doctor about.”

“Why not if you can get them removed?”

“Hon, don’t be naïve. I’m not going to some clinic on Broadway with a red neon arrow that reads ‘Hemorrhoid Removal — Strictly Confidential,’ where they’ll core me like an apple and I’ll be expelling bloody rags for a week. I know I’m going to die soon, but I’d rather it not be like that.”

“Then get your lungs looked at,” I said sulkily. “Or get something for the fever.”

Eventually, she did see a doctor, but she pronounced him a bastard and wouldn’t go back.

“I had to wait for hours in a roomful of men with sores on their faces, and there was this one dreadful woman who sat on the edge of the couch like she had a boil on her ass. She went in before me and came flying out like a witch on a broom. Then I went in, and the doctor, who, of course, was a heterosexual with the face of a drunk pig, went on this self-congratulatory rant about how she’d complained about being in a room with AIDS patients. ‘I told her to get the fuck out,’ he said. ‘I don’t need her; nobody needs her.’ Like I’m supposed to think he’s so great.”

“Don’t you agree with him?”

“Not really. Of course she doesn’t want to be in a room with AIDS patients. Who would? I told him — I said, ‘Sir, I have AIDS, and I don’t want to be in a room full of—’ ”

“You don’t have AIDS yet. And I thought you said she was dreadful.”

“They were both dreadful,” she snapped.

I sighed. “Look,” I said. “I know it’s shit. But you’ve got to decide if you want to live or not. Because if you do, you’re going to have to start fighting for your life.”

“Yes, I know, hon. I’m just not sure it’s worth it.”

“Okay. Maybe it’s not. Probably it’s not. You’ve got insane parents and your sister is useless to you. You’re lonely and you have a crummy job. And you’re not going to beat the disease whatever you do.”

Veronica stared like I’d slapped her out of a crying jag. At least I’d refrained from telling her she looked like shit.

“But even if you live only five more years, even if you live only two more years or one year, if you use that time to really … to really …” I fumbled, embarrassed.

She looked at me, sorry for me.

“To really find out who you are and care for yourself and … and forgive yourself — I mean — I don’t mean—”

“I’ll let that pass,” she said softly.

“I don’t mean forgive yourself for getting sick. I mean caring for yourself.” My words were wooden and trite. I had gotten them out of articles in health-food magazines. I did not know what they meant any more than she did. Still I said them: “I mean loving yourself.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Alison.” Veronica spoke gently. “I think it’s lovely. But it’s just that it’s … it’s not my personality.”

“Okay. But then there’s the physical stuff. If you don’t like that doctor, there’s others. There’s herbs, there’s acupuncture, there’s yoga. There’s GMHC, there’s Shanti, there’s support groups — women’s groups, too. Medicine won’t cure you, but it’ll ease the pain. It’ll let your body know you’re caring for it, loving it. I know it’s corny, but—”

“I don’t have insurance.”

I stared. “But I thought you got insurance a while ago.”

“I did, but it lapsed. It was lousy insurance anyway.”

I was speechless.

“I tried an acupuncturist a year ago. I can’t say it did much for me, though he was awfully nice. He talked about the organs and how they relate to different emotions. Lungs are sadness; liver is anger. He said my main weakness was my small intestine. Would you like to guess what emotion that’s related to? Deep unrequited love. The small intestine! Who knew?”

Sometimes I had contempt and disgust for Veronica. It would come on me as I lay alone in bed, drowsy but unable to sleep. I would picture her with one of her false smiles or arranging her cat coasters or adjusting her jaunty bow tie, and I would fill with scorn. I didn’t try to fight it. I let it snort and root. Why had she been involved with someone like Duncan anyway? Someone who let her be called an old fish in public and then went off holding hands with the guy who’d said it. She wanted to be a victim. Probably she even wanted to die — she’d said so herself. Most people, when something like that happens, they run . Of course they did. It was horrible. People like Veronica dragged everyone down; it was paralyzing to be confronted with such pain. Especially since she’d chosen it for herself. How could anyone respect a person like that? She’d made choices. She’d made choices!

“You made choices,” my mother said to my father. “If you’re not happy with your life, you can choose to make it different. That’s what I did. I chose to come back to you, and I can choose differently.”

A Jazz Age band was on loud and jumping. The TV was on, too, and Sara was hunched up in front of it, doing a crossword puzzle with one hand pressed against her ear to shut out the jazz.

“Choices! Choices! What choices do you make when you’re fifty years old? What choice did I have then with a baby to feed and another one coming and another one after that? I had to take what they gave me!”

His voice was pleading, but his rumpusing music mocked us all. Sara made a fist of her ear-blocking hand, muttering curses and gripping her hair as if to tear it out.

“She also means choices inside yourself about how you handle things,” I said. “Like you can let the people at work upset you or you can—”

“Fuck!” shouted Sara, and stormed up the stairs.

“Sara, you do not talk that way!” shouted my mother.

“I do too and so do you!”

“Choices inside you! Do you think a human being’s a fun house with something behind every door?”

“Yes!” I said, laughing.

“Maybe in the New York City fashion world they are! But not here. Not here. Oh, Lordy.”

When I came back the next month, he was reading aloud from a book about queers and the awful things they did. According to this book, all men had the potential to be gay, to fuck anything, all the time, and they got better only with the influence of women. “These guys don’t have to be that way!” he cried. “They have a choice!”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that.”

“I’m not talking about ‘inner choices’! I’m talking about behavior! I’m talking about reality!”

Sara quietly ate her dish of ice cream. My mother rolled her eyes.

Veronica quit temping and took a full-time job with excellent insurance. She joined a support group for women with HIV. She quit smoking. She found a doctor she could tolerate. She double-shifted for a year and bought a large and expensive co-op. She filled it with heavy furniture and blinds, which made her rooms quiet and dim as an aquarium.