Final Stroke (39 page)

The windows were lit brightly, inviting him inside. As he made his way through the door, he felt a sense of accomplishment, having made it this far. He had practiced his dialogue during the bus ride, but as soon as he got inside the small warm office and saw the woman standing behind the counter, everything he’d practiced floated away.

She wore a blue blazer with the agency insignia on the left breast pocket. Her white blouse was open at the neck. She had sandy brown hair and smiled at him as he paused across the small waiting area from the counter. There was no one else in the office and the only word he could think to say was … Jan.

But he said nothing. Although he knew this was not Jan, the
woman reminded him of Jan. True, this woman was only in her twen ties and Jan was in her forties. But something Jan had said recently made this woman into Jan in a way he could not explain. It was the last time he’d seen Jan, just before she said goodnight to him the day of the funeral, just after they had returned to Hell in the Woods from Szabo’s Restaurant. Jan had said she wanted to confess something. She said she had paid too much attention to the relatively recent past. She said she had avoided telling him about her life before they met. She’d been a stripper while in college to pay her tuition. She’d been drawn into the life of having and spending money. She’d worked at massage parlors when massage parlors were allowed in Chicago. She came close to becoming a prostitute and had some scrapes with drugs and wanted him to know all this. She said the only reason she mar ried her first husband was because he was the first guy who treated her like a normal woman. Then she cried when she told him that he had been the second.

He recalled it vividly. It was the first time he could remember re
calling something so vividly. The warmth of her, the touch of her wet cheek, the smell of Szabo’s Restaurant in her clothes mixed with the smell of her hair. He had wept, too. He could feel it, the two of them holding onto one another as if they were the last two souls on earth. Holding onto one another in the television lounge on the third floor of Hell in the Woods.

The young woman in the blue blazer was a guardian angel. She sprouted wings and flew around the counter, landing beside his chair, stooping down, one hand on his shoulder. She wore a blue skirt to match her blazer, her knees like Jan’s knees, so close he could touch them.

A box of tissues appeared. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. She stared at him with a look of great concern on her face. He wanted to say,
“I don’t care about your past. All I care about is that I have you.”

But to have any chance of Jan being part of his life again, he’d have to say other things. He’d have to say things to save time and get him out of here driving a car. And so, even though the young women’s hair was sandy brown like Jan’s hair, he imagined her hair brunette and closely cropped. He made the young woman in the blazer into Georgiana. Georgiana understanding these brief outbursts of weeping because it was common in speech therapy with strokers. Georgiana waiting for his response to the drill.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You remind me of … you remind me … my wife. Just landed and need a car. She … she’s in … having sur
gery at … at Saint Mel’s.”

And then another drill from Georgiana. This time explaining to someone that you want to rent a car. “A big car,” he said. He pointed to the wheelchair. “Easier with this.”

The guardian angel in the blue blazer suggested a Lincoln Town Car because it had a huge front seat with a center armrest that lifted up for three-across seating and it would easily accommodate his wheelchair.

The Town Car was white. Steve watched through the office window as it zigzagged its way from the back of the lot toward the building. When it approached the brighter lights of the rental agency portico, the car seemed as if it should have the remnants of wedding decorations hanging from it. The boy who delivered the Lincoln to the portico looked too young to drive. But when the boy opened the door his legs swung out long as telephone poles. Young face, but well over six-feet-six and he wore a Chicago Bulls jacket. The future Michael Jordan jumped out and held the door for him, but Steve wheeled around to the passenger side. As he rounded the back end of the Lincoln, he recalled having imagined him and his wheelchair
found shot full of holes in the trunk of a Lincoln.

After the future Michael Jordan followed and opened the passen
ger door for him, he watched as Steve did a quick transfer in. Then Steve lifted the Lincoln’s center armrest, folded the wheelchair, and slid over to the driver’s side as he pulled the chair in onto the floor. Steve pulled his right leg up out of the way, put his left foot alternately on the brake and gas, waved to the guardian angel in the blue blazer who stood watching at the office window—the guardian angel who determined that one of his credit cards had not expired and who had been patient as he signed the forms with his left hand trying his best to match the signature on his driver’s license—and drove slowly and carefully out of the lot, feeling an intense rush of adrenaline and free
dom along with the weird sensation of driving with his left foot on the pedals. Because he had not fastened his seatbelt, the warning sounded for a time, but then it finally stopped.

He wished he had a steering wheel spinner like he’d seen in an equipment catalog at the rehab center. To drive using only his left hand he had to keep shifting the position of his hand on the wheel and, therefore, had to take corners slowly. Using his left foot on the gas and brake felt much more awkward than steering with his left hand, but he got used to it. Although it was slow going on city streets, because of his awkward steering, he was able to drive faster once he got on the expressway and only had to make minor steering adjustments. The rain had let up, changing to a light mist, and somehow this seemed a positive sign. As he drove, he recalled the words of Tadashi, his occu
pational therapist when he was still in the hospital.

“You will be able do many things, Mr. Babe. After you get out of hospital and go to rehab place, you will learn more than dressing and eat
ing and taking shower. Some day you will even learn to drive again.”

Tadashi had been right. He was driving. He was driving.

Although he hadn’t remembered having owned a gun or a portable police scanner radio during the days following his stroke, Jan had used both to help him recall who he was. She had insisted that back in their apartment under lock and key was a semi-automatic pistol nicknamed Attila. The nicknamed pistol made him question what kind of nut he had been before his stroke. The radio she had brought into the hos
pital to demonstrate its use. During those early days after his stroke, remembering he owned a gun and a police scanner, and for that matter recalling he had been a detective, remained vague and distant.

What he recalled immediately after the stroke was nothing. The initial memories that dug themselves out during the first few days had to do with Jan. And as time went on, more and more things dropped by for a visit. Of course most of this had been Jan’s doing, Jan helping him relearn the things he should recall. Jan did everything she could to bring him back, to love him, to nurture him, including sneaking Attila, unloaded, into his hospital room one day so he could feel the heft of it in his left hand.

Once he got his left hand on his pistol again, he knew he wouldn’t be a very good shot. But he was convinced it wouldn’t matter. He’d get close to whoever was responsible for taking Jan away. He’d get very close and do what he had to do.

It felt strange driving back into the neighborhood in Brookfield. When he saw the signs for the zoo he felt he could almost recall hav ing seen them before. Maybe he did recall having seen them before. Maybe he recalled all of it. Or maybe, because of the details Jan al ways used when describing anything, he had simply relearned it. He did recall the apartment, however, because one afternoon last winter,
just after the New Year, Jan received permission from his doctor to bring him home for a visit. They spent the afternoon sitting in the liv ing room, just sitting. No television or radio, not even much talking. Jan understood that this was what he needed back then. To see where they lived, to absorb it into his skull. The visit to the apartment had been before Jan got the landlord to move them to the ground floor apartment when the downstairs people moved out. During the visit to the old apartment he’d been carried up to it and back down again by two hospital volunteers. According to Jan the new downstairs apart ment was identical to the one upstairs.

“Same layout exactly,” she had said. “And I placed the furniture and filled the cupboards the exact same way. I even had it painted the same color so you won’t know the difference. The cabinet where you keep your gun and other stuff is in the spare bedroom exactly where it belongs. And I hid the key in the same place in the bathroom.”

“Key?”

“Yes, don’t you remember? You keep the key hidden in the bottom of the band-aide box in the medicine cabinet.”

Something about keys. Marjorie’s keys. The keys to the kingdom.

“And what kingdom would that be?” Georgiana had asked Marjo
rie one day in speech rehab.

“Bridal suite,” Marjorie had said, then correcting herself, “I mean, Presidential suite.”

“Like for the President of the United States?” asked Georgiana.

“Yes,” said Marjorie. “The Carter smarter suite. No. Not him. Highway robbery. Oh, never you mind. Never you mind your own dirty laundry.”

“Keep talking, Marjorie. It’s interesting.”

“Not interesting. Not anything. Bridge under the water. Oh, fuck the Pope.”

The small parking lot for the apartment building had a single over
head light near the sidewalk to the front entrance. He parked directly beneath the overhead light in one of the handicapped spots. When he shut off the Lincoln he slid over as far as he could so he could open the passenger door with his good left hand. It was quite a struggle to lift the wheelchair from the floor, shove it outside, drag his feet toward the door, and, at the same time, unfold the wheelchair. As he attempted the transfer from the Lincoln to the chair, his right leg caught the edge of the chair and the chair traveled backward. He almost fell to the pavement and caught the wheelchair before it rolled out of reach. On the next try he put both wheel brakes on before doing the transfer.

After he slammed the Lincoln’s door, and finished swearing at the wheelchair, it was very quiet and still in the parking lot. He could see one car parked in a dark corner of the lot and wondered why someone would park so far away. Yes, he was certainly feeling his limitations now, the few hundred feet across a parking lot looking like the length of a football field.

In the distance, coming from the darkness beyond the parking lot, he heard an elephant shriek. Although he wasn’t sure if he had ever heard the sound before, the elephant’s shriek brought back memories of Jan telling him about being able to hear the elephant house from the parking lot. He sat there for a moment, wondering what an ele
phant might be thinking on a cold and drizzly night like this, and also wondering if elephants ever had strokes. If elephants did have strokes, what kinds of memories would they lose? Would they forget that el
ephants are never supposed to forget?

Another memory of Marjorie in rehab assaulted him. Something
about pinning the tail on the donkey, only Marjorie wanted to pin the tail on an elephant. They were in group rehab and the blond recreational therapist everyone called Charming Charmaine was up front and Marjorie was going on about elephants until Charmaine said maybe Marjorie was referring to the two major political parties and that because they had a donkey up front maybe Marjorie wanted to give equal time and they should get an elephant. This upset Marjorie, so much so she did not utter another word, not even her usual “Fuck the Pope” for the rest of the day.