Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

“The new Kevin is going to be a little late,” Fletcher said. “The intern wound up pulling all the tape off the floor, including the blocking cues for a Halloween pageant. Kev is trying to fix things.”

“Why would anyone bother pulling tape?” Aisha asked.

“Because he’s the worst intern ever,” said Brucie.

Fletcher said, “Let’s not fault the guy for showing initiative.”

“He’s lucky Kev is a fucking communalist,” Brucie said. “She’s okay.”

Aisha said, “Someday it’s going to dawn on that girl that she’s no longer surrounded by French-Canadian acrobats and she’s going to need a shoulder to cry on.”

“And then you’re going to scissor her raw,” said Brucie.

“Speaking of,” said Fletcher.

A stocky woman, the sides of her head shaved, her yellow hair in dreadlocks, climbed onboard. Tattooed along her carotid artery: Focus . She smiled at Peter. “You’re the doctor.” She leaned over and hugged him. “In the circus, I knew a juggler who was a doctor.”

Peter noted that she hadn’t said “a doctor who juggled.”

“Somebody fetch the doctor a clean blanket and a pillow,” instructed Aisha. “We want him to make himself comfortable.”

“Can’t he crash in your berth?” asked Kev.

“Indeed he cannot,” said Aisha.

AS SOON AS the intern boarded (despite the fact that he appeared to be in his middle forties, he wore cargo shorts and a Chicago Bulls game jersey), Aisha got them on the road.

Curled up on the bench seat, Peter’s mind hummed along with the tires. By his calculation, Cross and the band were already in their hotel rooms. He’d forfeited the comfort of the hospital, the comfort of his condo, of routine and habit, for what? To be forgotten in a basement. To be shoehorned on a bus.

Peter had assumed, as the only doctor, he’d have some power, but the only power he’d ever had was the power to practice medicine and no one seemed especially interested in medicine. What they wanted was medication.

He quit pretending to sleep and sat up.

In the opposite lane, the rising sun glared in the windshields of oncoming semis

“Are you some sort of hotshot?” Aisha flipped a switch and a map light illuminated half her face. “I mean, how come it’s you here and not somebody else?”

Peter found her eyes in a mirror mounted above the stairwell. “He and my mother used to be friends a long time ago.”

Aisha chewed on this for a second. “As a rule, his friends don’t usually end up on the bus.”

Peter moved across the aisle, so he could see her more directly. “I’m not his friend — I’m his doctor.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“It must be serious if it caused Alistair to fly out.”

The bus’s shadow stretched so far ahead Peter couldn’t tell where it ended, but in another hour the sun would rise high enough that things would again resemble what they were.

“So, this is Ohio?”

“It better be.”

I will say a few things about women of a certain age and their breakfasts.

They can function all day on a single hard-boiled egg speckled with cracked pepper, but they prefer Greek yogurt and granola. They like blueberries. They will eat half a grapefruit, but they would never eat a whole grapefruit. When they eat a banana in front of a stranger, they use a knife and fork. A package of toaster waffles might last them a month.

They drink coffee from oversized earthenware mugs.

If there is a glass of water in the sink, it’s to aid them in swallowing their Fosamax pill — I’ve learned to recognize the stylized bone embossed on each white tablet.

Patricia, my ex, is one of these women. I’ve met a few more over the years. These women of a certain age are the same whether they live in Tokyo (despite Aunt Liddy’s largesse, I couldn’t bear to pay $500 a night for a room) or Seattle or Lyon (in Europe, the toaster waffle is replaced with a croissant or sweet roll; they tear the bread to pieces before brushing the crumbs into the sink — these women of a certain age have meager appetites and unyielding wills).

On their kitchen table, the local paper occupies a place of honor — when these women die they will take newspapers with them, meaning newspapers have no hope beyond these women. If their husbands are gone, to death, to younger women, they may pass the Sports section to the man sharing their breakfast, but if they are living in the same town where they raised children they will check the high school scores first.

These women appreciate it when you to carry your dishes to the sink, but do not try to load their dishwashers. Never load their dishwashers.

When breakfast is done, they will look at your empty plate and say, “I should have given you more” or “I guess you liked it” or (if they don’t trust their English) “Good. Good.” They will ask where you have to be — and they will generate enthusiasm for your answer (“Dearborn is very nice” or “Lucky you”). It is time to go. They have no patience for dawdling. They will watch you carry your bags out to your car, or a cab, or the subway, T, Metro, Tube, BART, Transit Authority, etc.

Do I think I understand these women of a certain age? I have never understood women of any age, and these women have had their entire lives to make themselves unfathomable.

Take Rosalyn: last night she seemed on the verge of sleeping with me, a complete stranger, but when I find her this morning she has already dressed in slacks, a modest blouse, and a cardigan. She is arranged so neatly that any fantasy I might have nurtured goes right out the window.

She says, “I said I would feed you,” making it sound like the fine print of a contract.

I tell her it’s no trouble, that I’m happy to get out of her hair.

She leads me to her breakfast bar. Side by side: two plates with half-moons of cantaloupe, currant scones. She lifts a thermal carafe and spills coffee into thick, homely mugs.

Shoulders nearly touching, we sip our coffees.

Her right leg jiggles like a sewing machine. Is she nervous? Impatient? Ashamed?

I say, “I’m sure you have to be somewhere.”

I receive a demure smile. No, I read it as demure, but it is guarded.

“Are you familiar with The Holy Screw ?”

For a moment I wonder if she’s not trying to stump me with an obscure lyric.

“It’s a book.”

I tell her I can’t keep up with the publishing world. 36

“It’s about a woman’s midlife crisis.”

I say I wasn’t aware that women had midlife crises.

“We do. We do, Arthur. In the book the woman goes on an adventure in search of the divine inside her. She doesn’t necessarily believe there is anything divine inside her, but she remembers feeling there was when she was a girl. The book is about returning to her girlhood. She embarks on a trip to a place she’s never visited and, on the way, she meets her soul mate. The book is about how the journey is more important than the destination. It’s an incredibly powerful book. They’re adapting it for Broadway because the only way to convey that sort of emotion to an audience is with music — even though there’s almost no music in the book because she spends so much of her time in silent meditation.”

Rosalyn has my attention.

She continues, “Music emanates from our bodies and it also passes through our bodies. If you look at a great painting you experience it in your eyes and in your brain. Your body is cut off at the neck. The ancient peoples who taught us to locate the soul in the chest weren’t being naïve. Our bodies are important. The book is about that, our sacred bodies.