John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

Juan Diego was making an effort to be normal again — not to mention that he was trying, albeit belatedly, to follow his doctor’s orders. (Dr. Rosemary Stein was often on his mind, if not always as his doctor.)

“Dear Dr. Rosemary,” he began his text to her — once again sitting with his hard-to-understand cell phone on the bathroom toilet. Juan Diego wanted to tell her he’d taken some liberties with his Lopressor prescription; he wanted to explain about the unusual circumstances, the two interesting (or at least interested) women. Yet Juan Diego wanted to assure Rosemary that he wasn’t lonely, or pathetic; he also wanted to promise her that he would stop fooling around with the required dose of his beta-blockers, but it seemed to take him hours just to write “Dear Dr. Rosemary”—the stupid cell phone was an insult to any writer! Juan Diego could never remember which stupid key you pushed to capitalize a letter.

That was when a simpler solution occurred to Juan Diego: he could send Rosemary the photograph of him with Miriam and Dorothy at Kowloon Station; that way, his message could be both shorter and funnier. “I met these two women, who caused me to diddle around with my Lopressor prescription. Fear not! Am back on track and abstinent again. Love—”

That would be the briefest way to confess to Dr. Rosemary, wouldn’t it? And the tone wasn’t self-pitying — no hint of the longing or lost opportunity attached to that night in the car on Dubuque Street, when Rosemary had seized Juan Diego’s face and said, “I would have asked you to marry me.”

Poor Pete was driving. Poor Rosemary tried to revise what she’d said; “I just meant I might have asked you,” was the way Rosemary said it. And, without looking at her, Juan Diego had known she was crying.

Ah, well — it was best for Juan Diego and his dear Dr. Rosemary not to dwell on that night in the car on Dubuque Street. And how could he send her that photo taken at Kowloon Station? Juan Diego didn’t know how to find the photo on his stupid cell phone — not to mention how to attach the photo to a text. On the infuriating keypad of his little phone, even the key for “clear” wasn’t spelled out. The correct key for “clear” was marked CLR — there was room on the keypad for two more letters, in Juan Diego’s opinion. He angrily cleared his text message to Rosemary, one letter at a time.

Clark French would know how to find the photo that young Chinese man took at Kowloon Station; he could show Juan Diego how to send the photo with a text message to Dr. Rosemary. Clark knew how to do everything, except what to do with poor Leslie, Juan Diego was thinking as he limped to bed.

No dogs were barking, no gamecocks were crowing, but — not unlike New Year’s Eve at the Encantador — Juan Diego could discern no detectable breathing from Miriam.

Miriam was asleep on her left side, with her back turned toward him. Juan Diego thought he could lie on his left side and put his arm around her; he wanted to put his hand on her heart, not on her breast. He wanted to feel if her heart was beating or not.

Dr. Rosemary Stein could have told him that you can feel a pulse better in other places. Naturally, Juan Diego felt Miriam — all over her chest! — but he couldn’t feel her heartbeat.

While he was groping all around, his feet touched her feet; if Miriam was alive, and not a spectral presence, surely she must have felt him touching her. Nevertheless, Juan Diego was bravely trying to assert his familiarity with the spiritual world.

The boy who’d been born in Guerrero was no stranger to spirits; Oaxaca was a town full of holy virgins. Even that Christmas-parties place, the virgin shop on Independencia — even one of those sex-doll replicas of the city’s famous virgins — was a little holy. And Juan Diego was a Lost Children kid; surely the nuns, and the two old priests at the Temple of the Society of Jesus, had exposed the dump reader to the spiritual world. Even the dump boss was a believer; Rivera had been a Mary worshiper. Juan Diego wasn’t afraid of Miriam or Dorothy — whoever, or whatever, they were. As el jefe had said: “We don’t need to declare what a miracle is or isn’t — we saw it.”

It didn’t matter who or what Miriam was. If Miriam and Dorothy were Juan Diego’s personal angels of death, he was unimpressed. They wouldn’t be his first or his only miracle. As Lupe had told him: “We’re the miraculous ones.” All this was what Juan Diego believed, or what he tried to believe — what he sincerely wanted to believe — while he went on touching Miriam.

The sudden, sharp intake of Miriam’s breath nonetheless startled him. “It’s a Lopressor night, I’m guessing,” she said to him in her low, husky voice.

He tried to reply to her nonchalantly. “How did you know?” Juan Diego asked her.

“Your hands and feet, darling,” Miriam told him. “Your extremities are already turning colder.”

It’s true that beta-blockers reduce blood circulation to the extremities. Juan Diego didn’t wake up until noon on Sunday, and his hands and feet were freezing. He wasn’t surprised that Miriam was gone, or that she hadn’t left him a note.

Women know when men don’t desire them: ghosts and witches, deities and demons, angels of death — even virgins, even ordinary women. They always know; women can tell when you have stopped desiring them.

Juan Diego felt so diminished; he wouldn’t remember how that Sunday, and Sunday night, slipped away. Even that extra half of a Lopressor tablet had been too much. On Sunday night, he flushed the unused half of the pill down the toilet; he took only the required dose of his Lopressor prescription. Juan Diego would still sleep till noon on Monday. If there was any news that weekend, he missed it.

The writing students at Iowa had called Clark French a “do-gooder Catholic,” an “übernerd,” and Clark had been busy with Leslie while Juan Diego slept. “I believe poor Leslie’s foremost concern is your well-being,” Clark’s first text message to Juan Diego began. There were more messages from Clark, of course — mostly to do with their onstage interview. “Don’t worry: I won’t ask you who wrote Shakespeare, and we’ll skirt the issue of autobiographical fiction as best we can!”

There was more about poor Leslie, too. “Leslie says she’s NOT jealous — she wants nothing to do with D.,” Clark’s text message declared. “I’m sure that Leslie is strictly concerned with what witchcraft, what violent sorcery, D. may unleash on you. Werner told his mom the water buffalo was INCITED to charge and trample — Werner said D. stuck a caterpillar up the buffalo’s nose!”

Someone is lying, Juan Diego was thinking. He didn’t put it past Dorothy to have stuck the caterpillar all the way up one nostril, as far as it would go. Juan Diego didn’t put it past young Werner, either.

“Was it a green and yellow caterpillar, with dark-brown eyebrows?” Juan Diego texted Clark.

“It WAS!” Clark answered him. I guess Werner got a good look at the caterpillar, Juan Diego was thinking.

“Definitely witchcraft,” Juan Diego texted Clark. “I’m not sleeping with Dorothy or her mother anymore,” he added.

“Poor Leslie will be at our onstage event tonight,” was Clark’s reply. “Will D. be there? With her MOTHER? Leslie says she’s surprised D. has a mother, living.”

“Yes, Dorothy and her mother will be there,” was Juan Diego’s last text message to Clark. It gave him some small pleasure to send it. Juan Diego was noticing it was less stressful to do mindless things when you were a little low on adrenaline.

Was this why retired men were content to putter around their backyards, or play golf, or do shit like that — like sending text messages, one tedious letter at a time? Juan Diego was wondering. Was trivia more tolerable when you were already feeling diminished?