Kevin Kling's Holiday Inn (7 page)

She then said she needed some time alone, and left for a bit.

I sat with Zeus.

And wondered if this was it. “What do you think, Zeus?”

And he stood up.

The vet screamed, “Keep him standing. Keep him standing, every minute standing increases his chances of survival.” Mary and I fed him apples, danced, sang, “The sun will come out tomorrow,” anything for distraction. He stood for two hours.

The vet couldn’t believe it. “If he gets back up, keep him up.”

The next two days, he stood for longer periods.

The vet told us he had never seen a horse come back from that far. He said he thought it was due to Zeus’s old blood, that immune system from ancient times. He said a modern horse would never have made it.

I wondered what genes we carry from our ancients, mechanisms for saving our lives, hidden immunities, inner fight, the knowledge of when to take flight.

There are clearly survivors in this world. I saw them time and again on the trauma floor at the hospital, as I recovered from a motorcycle accident in 2001. I never knew who would be a survivor. A tiny frail girl hit by a car on prom night amazed the doctors by fighting back to life, time and again; a tough guy from the streets, screaming in the night for his mother; and those who step from this world quietly, without a struggle. We don’t know which one we are until we need it.

When he’s stronger, we bring Zeus back to the pasture, now cleared of snake root. He’s so excited, he runs toward Ben. “Hey, Ben, it’s me.” Ben is not amused. As Zeus runs to Fritha, his legs suddenly give out, and he tumbles head over teakettle. He gets up fast, freezes, and looks at me. Then he runs to me, I’m sure remembering I am the “apple man.”

I say, “You’re all right, Zeus,” and he whirls around and almost kicks my head off. I watch him head back to Ben. No way is this pony leaving this world. Fight and flight all in one.

This summer Zeus turned five.

I’ve finished the second Foster’s, and I’m on the tiny stage at the hotel. The hall is packed. I’d never held a microphone before, always used a clip-on, and I’m trying to figure out the mic. I stand uncomfortably in front of everyone and wonder what I’ll do. For many this would be a nightmare, but something profoundly sick in me kind of enjoys these moments. I am terrified at the same time, though, and the audience is clearly getting restless. Maybe I’ll do a character from a play.

I ask if I can sit. “We don’t care.” Clearly, they’re turning on me. And I know an audience can smell fear. I’ll be gutted shortly.

When I sit down, about half of the heads disappear from view. “No, stand up, can’t see you.” I stand and move forward but the mic cord is caught on something. I pull it, no luck. I’m so terrified, I give it one great heave. The cord, wrapped around a chair’s leg, flips the chair high into the air, and it then lands perfectly on its four legs. The audience, believing I did this on purpose, bursts into applause.

The rest of the night is magic. I can do no wrong. I can see Dietz looking around at people and thinking, “Don’t you know he has no idea what he’s doing?”

The next week I am asked to run a workshop on standup comedy at the Sydney Town Hall. “Of course,” I say. Dietz just stares at me.

God bless Grandma O’Brien, I’m going in.

BIRTHDAY  

When I was three years old, my two-year-old brother hardly ever talked. His vocabulary consisted of one word: “Not.” That was what he called me. My mother figures it’s because every time I asked for something, she said, “Absolutely not.” So I became “Not.” We were never apart, and I knew at a glance what he wanted. All he had to do was turn to me and say, “Not.”

My mom would ask, “Steven, are you hungry?”

He’d look at me and say, “Not.”

I would say, “Yes, Mommy, he’s hungry.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“Not.”

“He’d like a sandwich and a doughnut.”

“Not.”

“Two doughnuts.”

He was finally forced into learning the English language the year I went away from home to the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. My left arm is quite a bit shorter than my right. Curled up tight and tucked in my armpit were four tiny fingers, no thumb, little and pink like a nest of baby marsupials. Most new neurological procedures, alas, have come from war, and thanks to technological advances during the Korean War, there were surgeries in the early 1960s that could not only straighten my arm but also untangle the muscles and possibly give some use of my fingers. So when I was three years old, I got in the car with my mom and dad—my brother and sister had to stay at home, so I was clearly the chosen one—and they took me to Shriners Hospital.

Now, thinking of Shriners brings to mind either the Shrine Circus, with clowns in helicopter go-carts, or the little, round, jolly, fez-pated men who come to your town parade, trash your Quality Inns, make you want to lock up your daughters, and then disappear. In reality, they’re businessmen, part of the Masonic tradition, who provide a wonderful service. At their hospitals, children can receive free care, regardless of need, and the latest in surgical technology and rehabilitation.

All I knew was it was just me and Mom and Dad in the car, driving from Kansas City to St. Louis. I’m wearing a brand new powder-blue suit and my sister and brother have to stay at home. We arrive at Shriners and find Dr. Tippy in the lobby. Good old Dr. Tippy. I had met him on many occasions. Once, in an examination room, he had turned to my mother and said, “Interesting.” Anyone who found me “interesting” was A-OK by me.

We’re standing around in the lobby of Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, me, Mom, Dad, Dr. Tippy, just us four grown-ups gabbing away the day, when I look at my mom and she turns away. Until this moment, my mom had never turned away from me—I could roller-skate down the stairs with scissors and she wouldn’t turn away. As I look to my dad, he turns away. Then I hear Dr. Tippy quietly saying, “It’s all right, Kevin, it’s all right, Kevin,” and when you’re a kid, and an adult is saying, “It’s all right,” you know it is not.

Now my mother is crying, and I know it has to do with me, but I don’t know why. I feel fine—in fact, good. Weren’t we just having a good time here? I say, “I’m all right, Mom,” because I am. This makes her cry even more. My dad helps her to the front door. I move to follow, but Dr. Tippy takes me by the arm. I would normally let out a wail here, but Mom is going through enough, and it deflates any chance for making a scene. Dr. Tippy then leads me into room with benches and closets. It smells like our cedar chest at home, where Mom keeps our baby clothes. A nurse takes me out of my new suit and hangs it in a closet.

“When you leave, it will be right in here.”

“Okay.”

She then leads me into a room with a metal table. I’m in my underwear, but nobody seems to care, and I certainly don’t.

The nurse picks me up and puts me on the cold metal table. There’s a low humming in the room. Dr. Tippy enters with some other doctors. Dr. Tippy says “Kevin!” like he’s surprised to see me, even though I just saw him in the lobby. “How are you today?”

“Good.”

The other doctors don’t speak to me. They’re very interested in my arm. I’m used to this. People in grocery stores, kids at the Old Woman in the Shoe babysitter service, a lot of people comment about my arm, but they don’t usually touch it without my permission like these doctors do. After they squeeze and poke and prod to their satisfaction, they smile and tell Dr. Tippy good luck and pat him on the back. I’m happy for Dr. Tippy, and he seems very pleased.

Then the nurse takes some x-rays. There is nothing to fear. Perfectly harmless, I already know. Just pictures you don’t have to smile for.

I’m led into a room full of very, very, very clean-smelling clothing. Everything smells the same, the-walls-the-sheets-the-clothes-the-food-the-people.

Soon me. I will smell like Shriners. When people visit or a new kid arrives, the smells are what get me first. We all gather around for that hit of new-kid smell. Mmmmm.

“You can wear whatever you want.”

I look at the clothes. All the pants and shirts are clean, so clean there is a hardness to them, and it’s apparent that many other kids have worn them.

“I want to wear my new suit.”

“That’s for when you leave us.”

“When is that?”

“Hurry up.”

The nurse is nice but not weak. I decide to carry the front of bravery a little longer.

“Here, try this.”

With her help I choose a brown flannel shirt and blue jeans. They feel good in the hospital. With all of the pastel tiling and metal equipment, the flannel and jeans seem out of place in a very comforting way.

The nurse leads me into a large room with beds full of children with missing pieces. That’s when the wave of acknowledgment wrestles through me. My arm, Mom crying, “It’s all right,” the prodding and poking, the whole morning comes into focus as I observe the room of incomplete children. This is a drop-off center for children with missing pieces. Dr. Tippy calls them my new brothers. Then he shows me a baby bed and says it’s my new bed while I stay with my new brothers. A baby bed, with iron bars and a rubber mattress pad. I have my own real bed at home with a Lone Ranger blanket, and now I’m back in a baby bed? My brothers stare at me from their baby beds with expressionless faces. My voice trembling, I explain to Dr. Tippy, urgently but coolly, that this is all very nice, but I have to go home because you see I can’t sleep in a baby bed anymore, and besides my brother, my real brother, can’t talk, and he’ll starve to death, and he’ll scream bloody murder at night, and he won’t be able to sleep unless I sing, “It’s nighty-night to brother.”

I start crying.

Dr. Tippy says, “It’s all right, Kevin. We’re going to fix your arm.”

“Fix my arm? But that’s what makes me special!”

Before I can convince Dr. Tippy I have been doing just fine with my arm, one brother, and real bed, a nurse takes me into another room. As I cry, she tells me that everyone is scared at first, but after a while this will feel like home.

“Not my home.”

“And on the weekends your parents will visit you.”

No, that’s backwards, your mother doesn’t visit you, other people visit you while you’re with your mother, that’s how that works. I can see that logic will not work with these people, and as the futility of the situation sets in, my crying subsides. I decide as long as I’m wearing someone else’s clothes, I can pretend to be somebody who belongs here. But as soon as I get a chance, I’m grabbing my suit and I’m getting out of here.

Then I remember. I also have to get my name back. When we arrived, a man asked me to give him my name. I said, “No, I want to keep my name.” He lost further ground with me by thinking that was funny.

Mom thought it was funny, too—no, “cute”—and proceeded to hand over my full name: first, middle, last. The name Dad uses when something is broken, or there’s bubble gum in his pipe and he’s somehow figured out it was me. I knew at the time giving over my name was a mistake. When I escape, I’ll try to get it back. If not, I’ll just have to leave it here where it will probably be cleaned and end up on a rack like all of the clothing.

The nurse takes me back into the room of children with missing pieces and sets me on the baby bed. On the BED, in CLOTHES. If Dad sees this, there better be a “Good Explanation” that includes a very high fever. I look over at the kid next to me. He is in a full body cast, covered in plaster from his toes to his fingers to his neck. He looks like an albino turtle.

“Hi.”

The turtle can’t move his head, so his eyes strain to see me. When he does, he smiles with his eyes looking at me from their corners. The indirectness of the gaze and his smile give him the face of someone who has happily done something wrong, is guilty and loving it. I smile back. This face is the first thing I’ve liked about this place. The kid’s name is Gary.

“I’m Sandy,” I tell him. As long as my other name is locked away, I figure I can choose any name I want, and Sandy has always appealed to me. “Why are you in there?”

“My spine is crooked.”

“Oh.”

“When I get out I can walk.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not that bad.”

It looks bad, but I can tell he’s not lying. I think it’s not bad for him, but it would be for everybody else I know. It would be for my brother. I rolled him up in a carpet once. It was his idea. He said “Not,” so I did it. Then he started screaming. All rolled up in that carpet with a screaming head, he looked like an insane Pez dispenser. He wanted to kill me. “Not,” “
Not, not
,” “NOT, NOT, NOT.” (“Unroll me,” “
Unroll me,
” “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”) I was confused and still weighing my options when my mother ran in. “What have you done to your brother?”

But Gary seems at peace all rolled up.

“You’ll get a cast, too,” he says. “Maybe not as big as mine, but everybody gets one sooner or later.”

“Not me.”

I can tell he knows something more about my future than I do and it worries me into the night. During nighttime at Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, nobody cries in their baby beds, nobody talks, but I can tell we’re all still awake. The breathing sounds are of awake people. I try to talk with Gary some more, but the night nurse says, “Shhhh,” and it’s quiet. What’s so good about having all these brothers if you can’t go to sleep talking about the day?