Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

All this is necessary for survival. I am a visitor from another planet, and the natives are not friendly.

I open my mail myself. Then it disappears. Whisked away. Today, pleas for help to save the whales, save the pandas, free Tibet.

My bank statement shows that I have $3,567.89 in a Bank of America checking account. There is another statement from a stockbroker, Michael Brownstein. My name is on the top. My assets have declined 19 percent in the last six months. They apparently now total $2.56 million. He includes a note: It is not as bad as it could have been due to your conservative investment choices and a broad portfolio diversification strategy.

Is $2.56 million a lot of money? Is it enough? I stare at the letters on the page until they blur. AAPL, IBM, CVR, ASF, SFR. The secret language of money.

James is sly. James has secrets. Some I am privy to, more I am not. Where is he today? The children are at school. The house is empty except for a woman who seems to be a sort of housekeeper. She is straightening the books in the den, humming a tune I don’t recognize. Did James hire her? Likely. Someone must be keeping things in order, for the house looks well tended, and I have always been hostile to housework, and James, although a compulsive tidier, is too busy. Always out and about. On undercover missions. Like now. Amanda doesn’t approve. Marriages should be transparent, she says. They must withstand the glare of full sunlight. But James is a shadowy man. He needs cover, flourishes in the dark. James himself explained it long ago, concocted the perfect metaphor. Or rather, he plucked it from nature. And although I am suspicious of too-neat categorizations, this one rang true. It was a hot humid day in summer, at James’s boyhood home in North Carolina. Before we were married. We’d gone for an after-dinner walk in the waning light and just two hundred yards away from his parents’ back porch found ourselves deep in a primeval forest, dark with trees that dripped white moss, our footsteps muffled by the dead leaves that blanketed the ground. Pockets of ferns unfurled through the debris and the occasional mushroom gleamed. James gestured. Poisonous, he said. As he spoke, a bird called. Otherwise, silence. If there was a path, I couldn’t see it, but James steadily moved ahead and magically a way forward appeared in front of us. We’d gone perhaps a quarter of a mile, the light diminishing minute by minute, when James stopped. He pointed. At the foot of a tree, amid a mass of yellow green moss, something glowed a ghostly white. A flower, a single flower on a long white stalk. James let out a breath. We’re lucky, he said. Sometimes you can search for days and not find one.

And what is it? I asked. The flower emitted its own light, so strong that several small insects were circling around it, as if attracted by the glare.

A ghost plant, James said. Monotropa uniflora. He stooped down and cupped the flower in his hand, being careful not to disengage it from its stalk. It’s one of the few plants that doesn’t need light. It actually grows in the dark.

How is that possible? I asked.

It’s a parasite—it doesn’t photosynthesize but feeds off the fungus and the trees around it, lets others do the hard work. I’ve always felt a kinship to it. Admiration, even. Because it’s not easy—that’s why they don’t propagate widely. The plant has to find the right host, and conditions must be exactly right for it to flourish. But when it does flourish, it is truly spectacular. He let go of the flower and stood up.

Yes, I can see that, I said.

Can you? James asked. Can you really?

Yes, I repeated, and the word hung in the heavy moist air between us, like a promise. A vow.

Shortly after this trip, we quietly got married at the Evanston courthouse. We didn’t invite anyone, it would have felt like an intrusion. The clerk was a witness, and it was over in five minutes. On the whole, a good decision. But on days like today, when I feel James’s absence like a wound, I long to be back in those woods, which somehow remain as fresh and strong in my mind as the day we were there. I could reach out and pluck that flower, present it to James when he comes back. A dark trophy.

I am in the office of a Carl Tsien. A doctor. My doctor, it seems. A slight, balding man. Pale, in the way that only someone who spends his time indoors under artificial light can be. A benevolent face. We apparently know each other well.

He speaks about former students. He uses the word our . Our students. He says I should be proud. That I have left the university and the hospital an invaluable legacy. I shake my head. I am too tired to pretend, having had a bad night. A pacing night. Back and forth, back and forth, from bathroom to bedroom to bathroom and back again. Counting footsteps, beating a steady rhythm against the tile, the hardwood flooring. Pacing until the soles of my feet ached.

But this office tickles my memory. Although I don’t know this doctor, somehow I am intimate with his possessions. A model of a human skull on his desk. Someone has painted lipstick on its bony maxilla to approximate lips, and a crude label underneath it reads simply, mad carlotta. I know that skull. I know that handwriting. He sees me looking. Your jokes were always a little obscure, he says.

On the wall above the desk, a vintage skiing poster proclaims Chamonix in bright red letters . Des conditions de neige excellentes, des terrasses ensoleillées, des hors-pistes mythiques. A man and a woman, dressed in the voluminous clothing of the early 1900s, poised on skis in midair above a steep white hill dotted with pine trees. A fanciful drawing, not a photograph, although there are photographs, too, hanging to the right and left of the poster. Black-and-white. To the right, one of a young girl, not clean, squatting in front of a dilapidated shack. To the left, one of a barren field with the sun just visible above the flat horizon and a woman, naked, lying on her belly with her hands propping up her chin. She looks directly into the camera. I feel distaste and turn away.

The doctor laughs and pats me on the arm. You never did approve of my artistic vision, he says. You called it precious. Ansel Adams meets the Discovery Channel. I shrug. I let his hand linger on my arm as he guides me to a chair.

I am going to ask you some questions, he says. Just answer to the best of your ability.

I don’t even bother to respond.

What day is it?

Going-to-the-doctor day.

Clever reply. What month is it?

Winter.

Can you be more specific?

March?

Close. Late February.

What is this?

A pencil.

What is this?

A watch.

What is your name?

Don’t insult me.

What are your children’s names?

Fiona and Mark.

What was your husband’s name?

James.

Where is your husband?

He is dead. Heart attack.

What do you remember about that?

He was driving and lost control of his car.

Did he die of the heart attack or the car accident?

Clinically it was impossible to tell. He may have died of cardiomyopathy caused by a leaky mitral valve or from head trauma. It was a close call. The coroner went with cardiac arrest. I would have gone the other way, myself.