Lorrie Moore - Anagrams

Gerard has seemed in good spirits except for today. He’s no longer in traction, and they had taken him off the tubes, but he complained about the food (“the spit-pee soup”) and then threw up, so they put him back on. He has gotten thin, even in just the past few days. Today he’s griping more than usual about the ineptitudes and barbarisms of the medical staff. “What a medieval place this is,” he says. “I’m telling you, it’s like the nineteenth century in here.” I wonder if this is one of Gerard’s big problems, that he has a confused sense of history.

Gerard’s head hurts worse. He feels feverish and nauseated.

“Merrilee’s gone to California for Christmas,” says Gerard. He looks gray like a prisoner of war, like mangled grade-school clay. I worry that something’s wrong. He should be looking better than this. “And Maple phoned and wasn’t able to come today. My back is mush from lying here. Sometimes I think I’m going to die.” His eyes are off doing independent things. One eye is fixed on me, like something snapped to attention, and the other is lost and fatigued, floating toward the outside of his face like a crazy moon. He blinks, and the eyes switch, trade places.

“Shut up, Gerard. You’re not going to die. Everyone says you’ll be out of here soon.” Though something, it’s true, is wrong. I sit on the edge of the bed. Life is sad; here is someone. “I’ll take care of you,” I say. “I mean, Gerard, you’re like a brother to me. You’re like the closest brother I ever had.” Gerard closes his eyes and begins to cry. I lean over and he presses his face into my breasts, the chenille of his eyebrows against my blouse. I kiss his wet eyelids and his lips shift into a sad smile. “Oh, well,” he says. “Thank you, my carpenter aunt, toppler of buildings.”

I don’t say anything.

“You’re okay, Benna,” Gerard continues tiredly, though opening his eyes. “Look at you. There you are. You’re okay.” He is making amends. I can see him begin to drift off but fight it, the P.O.W. shadows deepening. I want to hold him, tight, but I don’t. Instead, not thinking he’ll hear me, I murmur to myself, “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” and suddenly one of his puppeted arms flies upward in the air, finger pointing. “ That , my dear,” he says, “is a supreme compliment.” His eyes are still closed and his arm begins to drop back down, slow like a ballet of a dead bird. He smiles feebly. “That is a Diana Ross and the Supremes compliment.”

And that’s the last thing he says. He has fallen asleep with his mouth open. The nurse comes in and, worried, I ask her if Gerard’s all right, that he just sort of drifted off, and she smiles and says he’s only taking a nap, not to worry, just come back tomorrow, he might be more rested. Then she gives him an injection, and I just stand there with my coat in my arms and squeak out “ ’Bye,” like a mouse in a movie.

The next day is December eighteenth, a week before Christmas, and I’ve bought Gerard a beautiful new bathrobe from an import store. It has indecipherable Oriental lettering on the back, and I will tell him that it says “Howard Johnson’s” in Korean, which is probably what it does say. I’ve also brought him Christmas candy, little sugar stockings and bells, in case he’s off the tubes. I’m trying to feel hopeful, but today for some reason it seems hard, like a song you don’t really know but fake by coming in on the last word of every line.

Maple’s in the lobby by the elevator, sitting on a vinyl padded bench. He rises, walks toward me, dangerously slow, the swim of a nightmare. Something’s wrong. I’ve done something wrong. Maple stops about four feet from me. The corridor slows down. I stop too. He glares at me. He hates me, why does he hate me?

“He was in love with you, you know. You should know that. He told me that once.”

“Maple, what the hell are you talking about?” Maple’s face is wincing and withering and looking away.

“The fucking bastards! They were killing him!” And here Maple’s face crumples from hate to grief and rain pours out of his eyes.

“What? Maple, what do you mean?” Gerard! Gerard! I have candies! “Where is Gerard?”

Maple steps toward me, puts his arms around me, around my packages, his albino face trying to find my shoulder, the faint smell of patchouli everywhere on his clothes. I kick him, step backward, jerk away from him, almost lose my balance. The corridor flies up and down, deserted, undulating, a roller coaster in Lebanon. “Dammit, Maple, what are you saying?” I try to swallow, but I choke. “I mean, hold on here. Where is Gerard?” I’ve brought candies for him! I bought Christmas candy for him! and I step further away and begin digging, all alone, through one of the bags.

“There’s going to be an investigation,” says Maple quietly, standing off to one side, all leotard and amethyst; part Horatio, part swizzle stick; and then he brings his hands to his face, turns toward the wall, and sobs.

The teacher’s packages slip, and her boots stumble, twisting her ankle. Little stockings and bells have spilled to the floor and are rolling around there. She grabs hold of a table, of a sofa arm — hold on here, hold on here — anything could fly away now. Where on earth does everybody go?

Maple is harder and harder to see; he is bleeding into the wall. “Maple,” she cries out. “We’ll sue!” This is finally all she can speak: the words of a lawyer’s widow. “We’ll sue for everything …” but then she is at some door, brow against glass, a small friendless girl, standing in candy and vomiting into an ashtray with sand in it.

IV

Sometimes all life felt like this: a choice between Greyhound and Rent-A-Wreck. It reminded her of a joke she’d heard once about two shipwrecked sailors who land on an island of heartless primitives. “You have a choice,” says the island king to the first sailor. “Instantaneous Death or Chee-Chee.” The first sailor gulps. “I guess I’ll go with Chee-Chee,” he says. There is a loud gong. “You have chosen Chee-Chee,” announces the king, and two huge men appear and cut off the sailor’s arms and legs, disembowel him, skin him, then leave him in a steaming heap to die. “ You have a choice,” says the king turning to the second sailor. “Instantaneous Death or Chee-Chee.” The second sailor is pale and sweating. “I guess I’ll take Instantaneous Death,” he says. There is another loud gong. “You have chosen Instantaneous Death,” says the king like a Las Vegas emcee. “But first — Chee-Chee!”

Benna opted for the bus, and found herself staring out the film of the window, at houses, trees, signs, as if she were starving for something. Perhaps it was all that motion within the single frame of the window, or the desire to be out and beyond the odors here, the smokey, not quite disinfected smell from the bus’s hindquarters, but her eyes felt lidless, unquenchable. She pulled things in, as she had her whole life, and then didn’t know quite what to do with them: the jagged eczema of snow along the river; the parsley-fur of tamaracks and pines; the clouds, which, without the anchoring ache of their dark bellies, looked as if they would wisp away. A Holiday Inn signboard on the highway read RELAX ETHEL AND DRESSER: YOU’VE MADE IT! The parking lot was full. Benna wondered if Ethel and Dresser were happy or whether they even thought about it. In a town called Bluewaters she misread a billboard that said CARPENTER’S: YOUR OWN PERSONAL WAREHOUSE, thinking at first that it said “whorehouse,” which broke her stare, turned her attention inward for a moment to her knees, to her magazine, to the empty seat beside her spread with someone else’s Times , to the old woman across the aisle who had just taken out a nectarine from a paper bag and bit and slurped and, napkinless, dabbed at the corners of her mouth with the edge of the paper bag. Benna looked back at her knees feeling that she’d been made, forever and for now, like her marriage vows, stupid with loneliness, bereft of any truth or wisdom or flicker of poetry, possessed only of the wild glaze of a person who spends entire days making things up.