Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

Cross stood up. “Don’t smile when you tell a person about earthquakes in his head. You think I want my memories trapped beneath mud walls? Tony isn’t perfect, but he never gives me a shot without telling me it’s going to sting.”

Peter raised his palms as high as his shoulders, patted the air.

“I’m just trying to help you,” Peter said.

“Then get Cyril off my back. He and Bluto look at me like I’m about to whisper ‘Rosebud.’”

“I can’t do that until we know everything is okay. It’ll only take an hour. You can spare an hour.”

“Listen. Right now I’m going back to my room to work on a libretto. After that, I’m taking Allie out for an early dinner and try my best to make him happy. Finally, tonight, I’m playing a show for a bunch of hardworking people who’ve scrimped and saved, swapped shifts, arranged babysitters, all so I can have the privilege of performing songs written by a young man I barely remember. So, what makes you think you know what I can and can’t spare?”

Would Peter ever utter a sentence with that much conviction?

“I thought I was your doctor.”

“Sure you are, but I never asked you to save my life.” Cross stuffed his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. “You’ll have to get the bill. I don’t have any money on me, or cards.”

Before Peter could find the words to respond, the singer walked out.

THE WAITRESS SET the bill facedown on the table. “He’s famous, yes, your friend?”

Peter said he was.

A man wearing a white paper hat and a damp, short-sleeved shirt joined them. “I told her. That was Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor secretary.”

Peter corrected them.

The couple exchanged a look.

“‘Long Gone,’” Peter said. “‘Absolutely Nowhere.’”

“What’s he doing in Columbus?” the waitress asked.

“He’s playing here tonight.”

“He still plays?” the man asked.

Even though we are divorced and not on the best of terms , Patricia and I have continued to sleep together from time to time. This is not something that happens monthly, or even yearly, but every so often we’ll find ourselves together and sometimes when we’re together we have sex — it’s nothing I’m proud of. When we have sex, part of me is with the young woman she was when we met. And I feel like she is with the young man I was. It’s not that I want to be that person again, but I also don’t want to turn my back on that person, who, after all, was me.

If Patricia’s husband, Mike, ever found out, he’d probably put me in the hospital. He calls Patricia his “partner in crime” and his “songbird.” Last year, on their fifteenth anniversary, he took her to Tahoe for a week and gave her a fox coat — her “foxy coat.” He calls Gabby “Abba-Gabba.” He calls me “A.P.,” which are my initials, though Mike likes to claim they stand for Absent Parent.

Mike wears Hawaiian shirts, never takes off his sunglasses, and he addresses strangers as “Bud-O.” He’s a Jimmy Buffett fan.

WHEN I TELL Rosalyn she’s welcome to join me, she tilts her head toward a small roller bag waiting by the back door. She’d packed the night before.

“I’m not usually an impulsive person,” she says.

Since the Corolla was sort of my bachelor pad, I ask Rosalyn if I should vacuum it first. She says, “In for a penny, in for a pound.” 37

I move my executive organizer into the back and stow her bag.

As we buckle in, I feel a twinge of dread. What if the adventure I can offer isn’t what she’s seeking? The nicest thing about traveling alone is not having to worry about witnesses. “Here we go,” I say, as much for my benefit as for hers.

She reaches over and cups the back of my skull. “Thank you, Arthur.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

I drive.

BILLBOARDS LORDED OVER empty fields, advertising mortgage refinancing and worship services. America, like a tree’s canopy or a balloon, is a thing composed mostly of nothing. We sail along.

“Do whatever you usually do,” Rosalyn says. “Pretend I’m not here.”

I reach behind my seat and fish out my collection of books on tape. 38I’d been listening to a Ken Follett for the second or third time, but it seemed impolite to ask Rosalyn to pick up halfway through a book. I pop in Pride and Prejudice , a book I’ve always intended to read, but never gotten around to — Gabby gave it to me years ago.

A guy announces that we’re about to hear some famous actress read Jane Austen’s “classic novel of manners.” Then the woman begins, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Rosalyn reaches over and pokes me in the arm.

“I assure you, I don’t have a good fortune.”

I can’t pay attention to the book — my mind is clouded with feeling. There’s the irony that on the best night of the tour — maybe the best show in a decade — I spent a third of the time indisposed. There’s the fact that my daughter, it appears, is poised to embark on her own remarkable journey — Patricia sort of tipped her hand when she called. If Gabby asks me to give her away, it won’t mean that everything is okay between us; and if she doesn’t want me to give her away, then I’ll have to pretend that doesn’t hurt (it would hurt).

Rosalyn swings her head left and right, as though she expects to see a sign from God.

And then a sign appears before us: Ohio Welcomes You.

In Peter’s mind, Columbus was four-story redbrick halls, a football stadium, and a marching band. Craning his neck, he found himself surrounded by glass-skinned office towers. Where had they come from?

Instead of getting tangled up with that question, he called Martin and told him about Cross’s accident.

“Please tell me you’ve scanned him.”

“We’re negotiating.”

“This isn’t negotiable. You’re in Columbus; their medical center just picked up a new Siemens machine. I’ll call the head of imaging and have him meet you there.”

Peter knew all of this; he’d called Martin for reinforcement. “I’ll go find Cross.”

“Find him? Don’t tell me you let him walk off, a guy who’d reported cognitive lapses, a guy who recently fell down a flight of stairs.”

An image played in Peter’s mind: Cross sprawled on the damp cement of the hotel’s garage, drumming his heels between the parked cars, and when Peter pried open the singer’s eyelids, staring up, two empty black pupils.

“I’ll take care of this.”

“Hear me out, Peter. All you’re asking is for him to lie still in a bed. Too bad if he doesn’t like it. It’s his fault he’s got a doctor tagging along. If he tries to stonewall us, we’ll make him sign a release so cold-blooded he’ll beg you to pack him in bubble wrap. Cooper would love to put something like that together, as payback for that Perry Mason stunt.”

At their core, hospitals had more in common with a police station than with a university. To a hospital, health wasn’t an ideal to be pursued, but a law to be enforced. If Peter wasn’t the bully, he was the bully’s flunky.

“I can’t scare him into a hospital,” Peter said. “He isn’t some guy with a couple college-age kids and a second mortgage.”

“In the end, it doesn’t matter if you scare him or seduce him or trick him. What matters is that you examine him.” Martin said, “Wait until his generation dies off. Medicine is going to get much easier.”

At least Cross’s generation didn’t show up for their appointments with printouts from WebMD, with questions compiled by the know-it-alls at the Mayo Clinic. Peter’s older patients never asked to consult with homeopaths or herbalists or Reiki healers. They didn’t expect him to forward their X-rays to their phones or ask Peter to wait while they completed a text message. His older patients never invited him to “join” them on LinkedIn.