John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

Lupe had liked Dr. Gomez — even while the doctor was having a look at Lupe’s larynx, with Vargas hovering uncomfortably nearby. Dr. Gomez had a daughter Lupe’s age; the ENT specialist knew how to talk to young girls.

“Do you know what’s different about a duck’s feet?” Dr. Gomez, whose first name was Marisol, asked Lupe.

“Ducks swim better than they walk,” Lupe answered. “A flat thing grows over their toes, uniting them.”

When Juan Diego translated what Lupe had said, Dr. Gomez replied: “Ducks are web-footed. A membrane grows over their toes — it’s called a web. You have a web, Lupe — it’s called a congenital laryngeal web. Congenital means you were born with it; you have a web, a kind of membrane, across your larynx. It’s pretty rare, which means special, ” Dr. Gomez told Lupe. “Only one in ten thousand births — that’s how special you are, Lupe.”

Lupe shrugged. “That web isn’t what’s special about me,” Lupe said, untranslatably. “I know stuff I’m not supposed to know.”

“Lupe can be psychic about things. She’s usually right about the past,” Juan Diego tried to explain to Dr. Gomez. “She doesn’t do the future as accurately.”

“What does Juan Diego mean?” Dr. Gomez asked Dr. Vargas.

“Don’t ask Vargas —he wants to have sex with you!” Lupe cried. “He knows you’re married, he knows you have kids — and you’re much too old for him — but he still thinks about doing it with you. Vargas is always thinking about having sex with you!” Lupe said.

“Tell me what that’s about, Juan Diego,” Dr. Gomez said. What the hell, Juan Diego thought. He told her — every word.

“The girl is a mind reader,” Vargas said, when Juan Diego had finished. “I was thinking of a way to tell you, Marisol, but more privately than this way — that is, if I ever got up the nerve to tell you.”

“Lupe knew what happened to his dog!” Brother Pepe said to Marisol Gomez, pointing at Edward Bonshaw. (Obviously, Pepe was trying to change the subject.)

“Lupe knows what’s happened to almost everyone, and what almost everybody is thinking,” Juan Diego told Dr. Gomez.

“Even if Lupe is asleep when you’re thinking it,” Vargas said. “I don’t think the laryngeal web has anything to do with this,” he added.

“The child is completely incomprehensible,” Dr. Gomez said. “A laryngeal web explains the pitch of her voice — her hoarseness, and the strain in her voice — but not that no one can understand her. Except you, ” Dr. Gomez added to Juan Diego.

“Marisol is a nice name — tell her about our retarded mother,” Lupe said to Juan Diego. “Tell Dr. Gomez to have a look at our mother’s throat; there’s more wrong with her than there is with me!” Lupe said. “ Tell Dr. Gomez!” Juan Diego did.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Lupe,” Dr. Gomez said to the girl, after Juan Diego had told the doctor about Esperanza. “A congenital laryngeal web isn’t retarded —it’s special. ”

“Some of the things I know aren’t good things to know,” Lupe said, but Juan Diego left that untranslated.

“Ten percent of children with webs have associated congenital anomalies,” Dr. Gomez said to Dr. Vargas, but she wouldn’t look in his eyes when she spoke to him.

“Explain the anomalies word,” Lupe said.

“Lupe wants to know what anomalies are,” Juan Diego translated.

“Deviating from a general rule — irregularities,” Dr. Gomez said.

“Abnormalities,” Dr. Vargas said to Lupe.

“I’m not as abnormal as you are!” Lupe told him.

“I’m guessing I don’t need to know what that’s about,” Vargas said to Juan Diego.

“I’ll have a look at the mother’s throat,” Dr. Gomez said, not to Vargas but to Brother Pepe. “I should talk to the mother anyway. There are some options concerning Lupe’s web—”

Marisol Gomez, a pretty and young-looking mother, got no further; Lupe interrupted her. “It’s my web!” the girl cried. “Nobody touches my abnormalities, ” Lupe said, glaring at Vargas.

When Juan Diego repeated this verbatim, Dr. Gomez said: “That’s one option. And I’ll have a look at the mother’s throat,” she repeated. “I’m not expecting her to have a web,” Dr. Gomez added.

Brother Pepe left Dr. Vargas’s office to look for Esperanza. Vargas had said he would also need to talk to Juan Diego’s mother about the boy’s situation. As the X-rays would confirm, there weren’t many options for Juan Diego’s foot, which was inoperable. It would heal as it was: crushed, but with a sufficient supply of blood, and twisted to one side. That was how it would be forever. No weight-bearing for a while, was how Vargas put it. First a wheelchair, then the crutches — last, the limp. (A cripple’s life is one of watching others do what he can’t do, not the worst option for a future novelist.)

As for Esperanza’s throat — well, that was a different story. Esperanza didn’t have a laryngeal web, but a throat culture tested positive for gonorrhea. Dr. Gomez explained to her that 90 percent of pharyngeal gonorrhea infections were undetectable — no symptoms.

Esperanza had wondered where and what her pharynx was. “The space, way back in your mouth, into which your nostrils, your esophagus, and your trachea open,” Dr. Gomez had told her.

Lupe was not present for this conversation, but Brother Pepe had permitted Juan Diego to be there; Pepe knew that if Esperanza became agitated or hysterical, only Juan Diego could understand her. But, in the beginning, Esperanza had been blasé about it; she’d had gonorrhea before, though she hadn’t known she had it in her throat. “Señor Clap,” Esperanza called it, shrugging; it was easy to see where Lupe’s shrug came from, though there was little else of Esperanza in Lupe — or so Brother Pepe hoped.

“Here’s the thing about fellatio,” Dr. Gomez said to Esperanza. “The tip of the urethra comes in contact with the pharynx; that’s asking for trouble.”

“Fellatio? Urethra?” Juan Diego asked Dr. Gomez, who shook her head.

“A blow job, the stupid hole in your penis,” Esperanza impatiently explained to her son. Brother Pepe was glad Lupe wasn’t there; the girl and the new missionary were waiting in another room. Pepe was also relieved that Edward Bonshaw wasn’t hearing this conversation, even in Spanish, though both Brother Pepe and Juan Diego would make sure that Señor Eduardo had a complete account of the details pertaining to Esperanza’s throat.

“ You try getting a guy to wear a condom for a blow job,” Esperanza was saying to Dr. Gomez.

“A condom?” Juan Diego asked.

“A rubber!” Esperanza cried in exasperation. “What can your nuns possibly teach him?” she asked Pepe. “The kid knows nothing!”

“He can read, Esperanza. He’ll soon know everything,” Brother Pepe told her. Pepe knew that Esperanza couldn’t read.

“I can give you an antibiotic,” Dr. Gomez told Juan Diego’s mother, “but you’ll be infected again in no time.”

“Just give me the antibiotic,” Esperanza said. “Of course I’ll be infected again ! I’m a prostitute.”

“Does Lupe read your mind?” Dr. Gomez asked Esperanza, who became agitated and hysterical, but Juan Diego said nothing. The boy liked Dr. Gomez; he wouldn’t tell her what unintelligible filth and vilification his mother was spewing.

“Tell the cunt doctor what I said!” Esperanza was screaming at her son.

“I’m sorry,” Juan Diego said to Dr. Gomez, “but I can’t understand my mom — she’s a raving, foul-mouthed lunatic.”