Pat Boone Fan Club (17 page)

[
Crow, butting in: “Honey, why can’t you just once let me take over the world?”
]

“Still, you’re moving all the way to Michigan just for him,” Randy says.

The next morning Rich phones to tell us that the house on Howard Avenue is twenty thousand dollars less than the one in Spring Lake. M. and I discuss the two houses while eating breakfast in the hotel dining room.

“That settles it,” I say. “It makes financial sense to buy the Victorian.”

“But we’ll spend that much fixing it up. And the Spring Lake house is a better investment.”

I glance down at my plate, at the untouched food, shaking my head.

“Fine, then,” M. says. “But you’re going to have to earn more money to fix it up.”

[
“It’s after the apocalypse, dickweed,” Crow notes. “No one’s hiring.”
]

SUE
AS
THE
GODDESS
OF
EXPOSITION
: We return home to Georgia from the weekend in Michigan. I’m resigned to the fact that we are definitely moving. In preparation, I videotape every episode of
MST
3
K
. I need to possess every movie, even though we buy the house on Howard Avenue with Comedy Central. [
“Sad, really,” Crow says, sadly.
] At some point, after all, the show might be canceled. It might go off the air. A freak storm might knock out the cable. Besides, you can never tell when you might need a Crow fix—night or day. I must be prepared with a stockpile of
MST
3
K
tapes for all emergencies, all contingencies. [
“In case there’s no Supreme Being,” Crow confirms.
]

By moving day I have about fifty tapes of
MST
3
K
, with two or three movies per tape, for a grand total of 132 episodes. I, of course, am pleased to possess probably the largest private collection of bad movies in the history of the universe. While I allow the movers to take the artwork, my best shoes, the set of china in their van, I, myself, carefully place all the
MST
3
K
tapes in a
special suitcase that will accompany me in my car. I refuse to let Crow out of my sight. I can’t bear to be separated from him for a minute.

STAGE
DIRECTIONS
: The pages of a calendar flip through a year. The trees outside the windows change from green to red to bare branches to green once again.

ADDITIONAL
STAGE
DIRECTIONS
: A wide-angle shot of the Victorian house on Howard Avenue in Grand Haven.
INTERIOR
: Some rooms are empty or sparsely furnished. The camera moves in for a close-up of Sue sitting alone on the couch in the living room. It’s clear she’s totally alone, that M. is gone [
“Don’t worry,” Crow reassures. “We had him put down.”
], that they’ve divorced. [
“We can’t have a plot twist this late in the movie!” Crow grouses.
] The only light in the house comes from the television. She watches the end of
It Conquered the World
, tears streaming down her face.

SKIT
OF
JOEL
AND
THE
’
BOTS
IMMEDIATELY
FOLLOWING
THE
END
OF
IT
CONQUERED
THE
WORLD
,
STARRING
ROBERT
GRAVES
: Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo have left the theater and are now in the living room of the Satellite of Love. Crow wears a plaid bathrobe, Tom Servo a red one. Joel, holding a dinner plate, feeds them. He slides a spoonful of food into Crow’s open mouth before turning to Tom Servo. A nurturing mood is conveyed. Background music from
It Conquered the World
plays, while the camera remains on Joel and the ’bots.

They, themselves, are now watching a television set while listening, for a second time, to the voice-over of Robert Graves as the final credits roll: “He learned almost too late that Man is a feeling creature. And because of it, the greatest in the universe.” Music soars. “There can’t be any gift of perfection outside themselves. And when men seek such perfection they find only death, fire, loss, disillusionment. Men have always sought an end to
toil and misery. It can’t be given. It has to be achieved. There is hope, but it has to come from inside.”

“Talk about it,” Joel says. “You’ll feel better.”

[
“We’re all going to die,” Crow points out.
]

I want to be in my bathrobe. I want to sit beside Crow. I want Joel to offer
me
a spoonful of food. I see no irony that this moment between a human and two robots—with a sentimental voice-over from a B movie—is the most loving moment I’ve witnessed on television. This is the true American family. Not the Cleavers on
Leave It to Beaver
, not the Nelsons on
Ozzie and Harriet
, not the Andersons on
Father Knows Best
. [
“Shallow stereotypes of midfifties sociopaths,” Crow dictates.
] And certainly this family on the
SOL
is more real, more loving than families like mine, where parents hurt their children while pretending to be perfect. More real than my marriage, where we thought a new job, a new home, a new state would make us whole.

EPILOGUE
: [
“The gathering gloom,” Crow predicts.
] I carry my dinner plate into the living room. I insert one of the prerecorded
MST
3
K
movies into the
VCR
and sit on the couch.
“In the not too distant future . . .”
the theme song begins as I place a forkful of food in my mouth. I don’t want to eat alone, so this is my nightly ritual. I want to believe I’ll eat dinner for the rest of my life with Joel and the ’bots on the
SOL
. [
“Something unspeakably horrible!” Crow warns.
] When I can’t fall asleep and am awake at three in the morning, I watch one of the tapes. Instant comfort. Instant family.
This
family is always here—just inside the
TV
—fighting the evil of bad movies that tries to destroy civilization. [
“Oh, the humanity,” Crow cries.
]

One evening I tape a new movie,
Mitchell
. It becomes increasingly clear that this is Joel’s last episode. I later learn that “creative differences” force Joel to leave the show, even though
MST
3
K
was his idea. But now, during each skit between breaks in the film, an escape route is planned for Joel’s return to Minnesota.

Toward the end of the movie, Crow has a meltdown over Joel’s departure. I rush from the room. I continue to tape the episode to watch at a later date, but I can’t bear to witness it now. [
“Oh, Lord, let it be quick,” Crow pleads.
]

What’ll I do without
MST
3
K
as I know it, without Joel? Does this mean Crow and the show might soon go off the air as well? I’ve been lulled into thinking we’ll all grow old together. So what’ll I do? [
“Please remain seated until the movie grinds to a complete halt,” Crow advises.
]

Sure, I could return to Georgia, return to Atlanta Braves logos, southern drawls, loblolly pines. Or, maybe there
is
robot life in outer space! [
“Yeah, and there could be dogs and light-rail and tofu. What’s your point?” Crow asks, characteristically.
] But if I were a character in
It Conquered the World
, I would say, unironically, “It doesn’t matter where you live—outer space, Georgia, Michigan. ‘Man
is
a feeling creature.’ So home, after all, is where the heart is.
Isn’t
it?
” [
“Is the pope Catholic?”
Crow queries.
]

Months later I finally watch the end of
Mitchell
. I have to. I must. If I don’t face the reality of Joel’s departure, as well as feel the loss suffered by the ’bots, won’t
I
be living with my own denial—that all is fine when it’s not? [
“You can’t handle the truth,” Crow challenges.
] Wanting to grow old with Joel and the ’bots won’t make it happen.

“Hey, what about us?” Crow calls out, as he and Tom Servo watch Joel floating away from the
SOL
in a launch pod. “What’re we supposed to do without you? Who’s going to teach us about what it is to be human and stuff?”

“Listen, you guys,” Joel says, his voice growing faint. “At this point, you guys know as much about it as I do.” The ’bots watch the pod fading from view. “Be strong,” Joel adds. “Be true. I love you!”

I love you, too,
I think.

I turn off the television. I stare at the blank screen. No, I stare at the image, the afterimage, of my husband driving away from
me. [
You can’t walk out on me, I’m Charles Foster Kane,” Crow asserts.
] After all, as much as I have to watch the truth of the final episode with Joel, I must also watch the final episode starring M. . . .

I’m relaxing on the couch after dinner when my husband comes to sit beside me. With no preliminaries, this husband of eighteen years announces he wants a divorce. He’s seen an attorney, found an apartment, is moving out. Tomorrow—on the Fourth of July.

He met Cheryl from Akron in an Internet chat room.
She understands me
, he says. [
“I know how much you love your turtle, but there are other things in the world just as important,” Crow says, categorically.
]

I lie awake all night imagining him in his downstairs study, night after night, face lit by the glow from his computer screen.

The following morning, before he moves out, as previously planned, we arrive in Allendale, about twenty minutes from home. We’re in his 1963 Ford Galaxie convertible to participate in the Fourth of July parade. A friend, running for re-election to the Michigan House of Representatives, asked if he could sit on the rear boot of the car, wave to the crowd, toss candy. [
“Oh, and who died and made you president of the capsule?” Crow challenges.
]

My husband slowly cruises the main drag, amid high school marching bands, Ronald McDonald clowns, Masons in fezzes, homecoming queens, and cheerleaders. [
“It’s so painful being a crappy special effect,” Crow grumbles.
] I sit beside him. The state rep smiles to the sparse crowd strung along the sidewalk. A warm breeze gusts small American flags held on sticks. [
“Rampant jingoism,” Crow smirks.
]

After the parade, back at the house, my husband throws a suitcase of clothes in the backseat. He says he’ll return for his other things later.

I wonder if Cheryl from Akron is visiting him in his new apartment for the holiday weekend. I don’t ask.

I stand in the driveway watching him leave. My first thought is that I must drive to Home Depot to buy a fire extinguisher. I am now solely responsible for this wood-frame Victorian house with questionable wiring. [
“You close the hatch, I’m bitter,” Crow says, a grin on his metal beak.
]

But I
can
survive alone, even with questionable wiring, can’t I? [
I want to decide who gets to live and who dies,” Crow proclaims.
]

But now, staring at the blank television screen, I realize that I miss him, miss
them
. Joel floating off into the galaxy . . . M. floating away in
his
Galaxie. I miss something. Maybe I miss the idea of Home, a home I’ve never found, or found only long enough for it to qualify as one of those temp jobs. [
“Maybe you should have brought this up in group,” Crow says, helpfully.
]

I must also watch the truth about myself: I was a bad wife. I was an invisible wife. Too many selves, or none.

Joel seeks his new identity back on planet Earth. Crow will seek his with a new human on the
SOL
. M. seeks his with Cheryl from Akron . . . or with someone, anyone, who will be a better wife than I. [
“There’s more action in the wallpaper,” Crow points out.
]

And what about me? Isn’t
this
what Joel and Crow have really taught me: how best to survive—and triumph over—the losses, the bitterness of it all?

Joel speaks to me as well as to the ’bots when he says he’s taught us all he can about being human. Human
and
spiritual,
without
hypocrisy. [
“Heavy!” Crow exaggerates.
] But more than this, I now finally realize that Crow no longer lives inside a television. As sappy as it sounds, he lives here with me, inside my heart, me, behind the wheel of my own galaxy, celestial and bright. [
“In real life, of course, your roommate is a stinky high school
dropout who fills your life with head lice, crusty laundry, and furry cans of SpaghettiOs,” Crow snorts.
]

Good-bye Joel. Good-bye M.

[
“Goodnight, sweet crustacean,” Crow bows, “wherever you are.”
]

See the Difference

After the death of my therapist in May, followed by that of my cat in August, I wait. Not that I’m overly superstitious—but
don’t
bad things happen in threes? So when amorphous, ghostly pains whisper through my lower abdomen, I fear I’m entering my own deadly portal. I schedule an appointment with my doctor for October 19, her practice only ten minutes from my house in Grand Haven. Dr. Sharon Fields pokes my stomach. She shakes her head: no grapefruit-sized tumor. She performs a Pap smear since I’m due for one anyway. “
Here’s
the problem,” she says, diagnosing a vaginal infection on the spot, without awaiting lab results. She prescribes an antibiotic, clindamycin, 300 mg capsules to be taken twice daily for a week. I leave her office, vaguely satisfied I’ll survive this relatively mild diagnosis, that
I
won’t be the third in a fateful series. I stop at the pharmacy to fill the prescription at 10:30 in the morning.

I swallow the first turquoise pill, the color of a chlorinated, antiseptic pool of water. I’m convinced a pill wearing such a delectable, albeit chemically colored, jacket will cure me. I don’t read the warning label. I rarely do, since pharmaceutical companies tend to list every conceivable side effect from hangnail to death. How can you tell? I simply trust my physician. I don’t notice, therefore, that clindamycin “should be used only for serious in
fections because infrequently there are severe, rarely fatal, intestinal problems (pseudomembranous colitis) that can occur.”

And then I get sick.

Ten days after starting the antibiotic regimen, on October 29, I awake to a warm west Michigan morning. I also awake to mild intestinal distress. But since the evening before my partner, Marc, and I celebrated his birthday by dining out, perhaps I have a touch of food poisoning. Or maybe a spice disagreed with me. Since I don’t feel too poorly, Marc and I go for a walk, enjoying one of the final days of sunshine before the veil of a midwestern winter descends. We stroll the quiet streets of Grand Haven before heading to the library. But here, amid the stacks, I weaken. I rest on a chair while Marc carries our books to the checkout desk. As I walk home, the muscles in my legs soften. They feel unmanageable, wayward, drunk. My black clogs, which usually clomp on pavement, now listlessly drag. I’m too tired to lift my feet. Exhaustion flares behind my eyes. I want to be in bed. Asleep.

Community Hospital, October 30

“What’re your symptoms?” Dr. Larson asks, after I’m admitted to the emergency room.

I consider mentioning Randy, my therapist, who died of heart failure in his early fifties, and Quizzle, my cat, dead at eighteen of lung cancer. I consider mentioning fate—that I’m ill simply because bad luck occurs in groups of three—whether the catastrophes are plane crashes or mysterious illnesses.

In fact, I wasn’t the least surprised to find myself bundled into the car at 6:00 a.m. Marc drove us the five blocks to the
emergency room along deserted Sunday streets. Last evening, collapsed in bed, wearing a sweatshirt and kneesocks to protect my diminishing body, I made trip after trip to the bathroom. I counted nineteen strides from bed to toilet. One way. I was afraid to sleep, convinced I’d die if I let down my guard. At any rate, I
couldn’t
sleep, egesting what seemed at least a month’s worth of food. At times I drifted in an opaque haze, gazing at—if not actively watching—the Turner Classic Movie cable channel all night, beginning with
South Pacific
. After that, I time-traveled through a midnight film noir stupor, movies reeling one into the next, indistinguishable.

Between movies, I self-diagnosed various ailments with which I might be afflicted. The litany began when I (belatedly) read the warning label on the phial of clindamycin: “pseudomembranous colitis.” The list expanded when I Googled “diarrhea” on my laptop, an instant link to a World Wide Web of infection, disease, plague, and disorders.

“I took this antibiotic,” I now say to Dr. Larson. I hand him the clindamycin warning label.

He nods. “I’ve seen this before.” He explains that a pseudomembranous colitis infection is caused by
C. diff.
bacteria, short for
Clostridium difficile
. “It’s nasty stuff,” he adds. “We’ll run some tests. Start an
IV
. You’re probably dehydrated.”

I lie on the hospital bed in the emergency room, watching transparent yellow fluid drip into my vein. Still early, it’s relatively quiet. Small bleeps in the distance, perhaps a machine breathing life into a body. . . . Randy suffered a heart attack in his office, but I don’t know if he died immediately or if an ambulance rushed him to the hospital. With Quizzle, I asked the vet to come to my house to put her to sleep. She was already thin with cancer. I thought she’d be more comfortable fading away on her kitty condo beside her favorite window. Now I want to doze, but the emergency room’s searchlight-voltage fluorescent lights preclude rest. Also, I must roll the
IV
pole back and forth across
the corridor to the bathroom. My body has a will of its own. It desires to be lighter, more deficient.

“The test is negative for
C. diff.
,” Dr. Larson says about an hour later. “But that doesn’t mean a whole lot. This is one of those tests that frequently shows a false negative.”

He prescribes fourteen antibiotic metronidazole pills, 500 mg each, plus dicyclomine for cramping. “Stay on the
BRAT
diet—bananas, rice, applesauce, toast—for a week. Come back if you have additional symptoms.”

Community Hospital, November 2

“What’re your symptoms?” Dr. Harkness, another
ER
doctor, asks, peering at me.

I explain that for the past three days I have nibbled only bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. Small sips of Gatorade. But my body feels threatened even by bland food, impolitely rejecting it. “I’m exhausted,” I add.

“We’ll hook up an
IV
and run more lab tests,” he says, glancing at my chart.

“What if it’s
not
a
C. diff.
infection?” I ask.

“That’ll be good.”

“But what’re the other options?” I ask.

“Maybe Crohn’s disease,” he says.

“But isn’t that bad? Worse?” He disappears before the question is fully asked, much less answered. From the little I know, Crohn’s disease is chronic, possibly life threatening, whereas a
C. diff.
infection can be cured . . . I think. But now I’m distracted by a man in the next bed, a curtain separating us. He moans every fifteen seconds as if on schedule. A nurse is telling him he probably has diverticulitis.

“What’s that?” he asks her.

“Usually a bit of nut or seed gets trapped in the intestine,” she answers. “We need to run a
CAT
scan.”

I try to remember the last time I ate a nut or a seed. Yes! I
did
eat canned nuts about a week or so ago. I want to make sure I don’t have diverticulitis. I want the doctor to order a
CAT
scan for me—a full-body x-ray. But then I remember the x-ray of Quizzle’s lungs, pinpoints of white, multiplying spots. The vet carefully reviewed all her symptoms. At the time, I told the vet that I wished she were my doctor. She spent more time with Quizzle than any doctor ever spent with me and was gentle, patient, smart.

“The tests are negative for
C. diff.
,” Dr. Harkness says. He adds that I should continue taking that
second
antibiotic to counteract the effects of the
first
antibiotic, clindamycin, just in case. That’s all he can do. “There’s no way to know for sure without a colonoscopy,” he says.

“Then why can’t I have one?” I ask.

“The gastroenterologist wouldn’t order one yet. You have to wait and see if the metronidazole takes effect.”

“You can’t order it?” I ask.

“There’s a procedure to be followed.”

Community Hospital, November 3

I awake with blurred vision. I stare at a line of text on my computer. Each letter possesses a shadow. I try another pair of reading glasses. The shadowed letters remain.
I am going blind.
Frightened, I return to the hospital, to learn that I’m only severely dehydrated.

“Please, can’t you order a colonoscopy?” I plead from the bed where I’m again hooked up to an
IV
. Dr. Harkness is once again on
ER
duty. “Can’t
you
do it?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not a gastroenterologist.”

“Then could I call the doctor, schedule an appointment myself?”

“He wouldn’t see you. The order has to come from me or Dr. Fields. It’s still too soon. You have to wait.”

Wait. For what? What he must mean, I think, is that I’m not sick enough, not frail enough, not emaciated enough. Why can’t he see I need help now?

County Hospital, November 23

Marc drops me off at what we think is the emergency room as he drives off to park the car. It’s not the right entrance, however. Through slushy snow and bitter wind, I wander down the street, around the corner. After feeling better for close to ten days, able to eat small doses of food—convinced the
C. diff.
infection, or whatever it was, is cured—I awoke this morning with a tem
perature and severe bouts of diarrhea. Of course, I’m unable to schedule an appointment with Dr. Fields, this day before Thanksgiving. When I spoke by phone with her earlier, she suggested I go to County Hospital in Muskegon, about twenty minutes away, a hospital with better diagnostic services than Community Hospital. She returned the emergency page from her home, pots and pans clanking in the background. Small pellets of anger pinged behind my eyes, although I’d never let her know. Sick, I have lost control of my body. I am entirely dependent upon her.

Who is she?

I know nothing about her, not even where she attended medical school. After my previous doctor retired, I sought out Dr. Fields simply because she was a woman practicing at an all-women’s clinic. I was sure that a woman doctor would be more nurturing, empathetic, understanding of my concerns. Is this lack of research on my part as irresponsible as not reading the warning labels on medication?

Today, on the phone, Dr. Fields told me to take aspirin for fever, Imodium for diarrhea.

I’d read on the Internet it was harmful to take Imodium, that it encourages
C. diff.
to bloom. But what do I know? I’m too scared and weak to think straight. I took an aspirin. I swallowed an Imodium caplet.

I’m a good patient.

The clerk who admits me at County Hospital is not interested in the fact that this is my fourth trip to an emergency room or that this mysterious infection vanished before recurring.
Just the symptoms, ma’am.
She writes up her form and points me down a corridor through a set of double doors that magically opens, as if I’m entering hell or Xanadu. Maybe both. By now, Marc has parked the car and caught up with me. We enter my curtained
ER
cubicle. I curl up under the covers, Marc on a plastic chair beside me.

“I’m Dr. Jones.” A friendly young man in a white lab coat pulls back the curtain. “What seems to be the trouble?”

I give him the blow-by-blow with as many lurid details as I can remember. I make it sound as bad as possible. I want the works: every high-tech test performed
now
. I will refuse to leave the hospital without a diagnosis, a cure.

“We’ll run some blood tests,” he says, upbeat. “And a
CAT
scan, just to make sure.”

A
CAT
scan! I’m thrilled. I want this superhuman machine peering beneath layers of skin, muscle, tissue, bone, into the core of every organ. Is my kidney acting as a kidney? Liver, a liver? Stomach? Intestines? Pancreas? Bladder? I barely know what else gently throbs beneath my skin’s surface. I don’t understand the purpose of a pancreas, I realize. I don’t question my body. Who wants to know how a body functions? To visualize the inner workings is horrifying. I just assume that every part knows its job and performs dutifully in order to keep this organism known as “me” functioning.

But who am I, really? I always imagined myself in terms of my mind, what I think, as well as how I appear, on the outside. I have reddish hair and hazel eyes. I’m five feet, three inches. Before I got sick, I weighed about 115 pounds. I’m a liberal Democrat. I vote in every election. I teach. Isn’t
this
me? Who wants to know more?

But this doctor could care less how I voted in the last election. He doesn’t care whether I struggle with being Jewish or not. He wants to know when I last went to the bathroom, what I ate for dinner. “Does this hurt?” He probes my stomach. “This?” So now, wheeled into a giant doughnut of a
CAT
-scan machine, I imagine “me,” who I am, differently. All of who I am is simply contained in a sack of skin. Without this body in some semblance of working order does the rest of me matter?