Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (7 page)

“What do you mean I have to leave you alone?”

“Dare you to stay, honey-bunny.
Ciao!
”

Doing a barrel roll like one of Sol's radio-controlled fighters, Selma flew stomach down in a nosedive toward the square, pulling out at the last second and then rising, rising, that hefty nose cutting the air like a rocket, banking around the green copper dome of the courthouse and away. Gone.

Orville ran downstairs and out into the town.

It was a hot, hazy summer night. The particular
NOW
on his watch was where the three might have been. He walked along Washington Street, the spine of the town, the spine of a humpbacked whale whose ribs were the eight ruler-straight cross-streets numbered First through Eighth, each curling down into the South Swamp through which he'd walked into town, and down into the North Swamp stretching toward Albany. Why the meticulous grid? Bizarre, in this town where breakage rules.

He found himself facing the General Worth Hotel. In the dead quiet on the deserted street, he stared at the condemned hotel's sagging front portico, the whole right side flaccid—like his mother's half-paralyzed face. It was almost as if it, too, were talking to him, talking awkwardly, slurring its words the way she, with the half-dead lip and tongue, often slurred hers:
“Save me! I'm half-dead. They wanna blow me up and finish me off. You're a doctor, save me! I'm ‘Worth Saving,' aren't I?”

Orville blinked in astonishment. Now a building is talking to me? He listened more closely. Nothing.

He ran home. Drank some more bourbon, lit a Parodi, and turned on the
TV
.

Nuns were dancing, interrupted by The Man With the Vegematic.

The phone rang. His heart raced.

“Hello?”

“
Caro?
”

“Thank God!”

“I was so worried when you didn't call.”

“I lost the number, forgot the name of the place.”

“Tell me
tutto
—everything!”

“I love you!” Orville said, choking up.

“And I love you, too!”

“I love you so!”

“And I you. I was so afraid, not hearing anything, maybe you fell out of our love.”

“Never! I've got my flight back.”

“And now I am glowing all over my body with your words, your spirit. In my very toes,
mio dito del piede!
When do you arrive and where?” He told her. “
Bene.
I will meet you in Milano. Now, tell me
tutto, pronto.
”

He told her about Selma's will, although, taking heed of her warning never to talk to her about money, merely said that there was possibility of some money if he stayed. “But the reason she demanded that I—”

“How much money?” Celestina asked.

“But you said never to—”

“
Sì, sì,
but this is
fatto,
the fact. It is okay to tell me.”

“Just under a million dollars. And the house and the Chrysler.”

Silence on the line.

“Hello?” Orville said. “Celestina? Hello?
Hello?
”

“I am here,
caro.
Tell me everything else.”

He told her some things but couldn't tell her about his desperate sense of barrenness, about the chilling letter and the flights of Selma Rose, or of the Worth Hotel seeming to talk to him. Feeling again the desolation, he hid it. He chatted cheerily about Amy and Penny and Milt and Bill.

“I'm so happy to be coming back to you,” he said. “Less than two days! I'm counting the hours.”

“Me, too. But what is wrong?” There was alarm in her voice.

“Nothing.”

“No, no, tell me. I am picking up
oscurità.
Dark.”

“It's okay.”

“I sense it like iron. Tell me at once.”

How does she do it? he wondered, pick up these things? Still, he couldn't tell her.

“I love you,” she said, “and you love me. Tell me.”

“I, uh, well, I've seen my dead mother flying around outside the house. Twice.”

“
Avemaria!
Go on.”

He told her, and even told her about his creepy feeling that the Worth almost seemed to be talking to him. He didn't mention Selma's lying about his real birthday, unwilling to spoil the magic of their joint celebrations the past July.

“
Caro,
listen to me. You must stay there.”

“
What?
I can't stay here!”

“You must stay. Do not come back here.”

“I've got my ticket—”

“Cancel it. I will not see you. Do not attempt to see me.”

“Because I've gone crazy?” he joked. Half-joked.

“Because,
caro,
this is a gift. Her gift to you.”

“Come
on!
This place is a shit hole! I'll die here!”

“And come to life! In the compost pile the seed comes to life. In the shit the flower blooms. Do not forget—
Jesus
flew.”

“Jesus
flew?
”

“
Sì, l'Ascensione,
” she said. “Jesus flew for us all. On a Thursday, Ascension Thursday. Forty days after Easter. Your suffering among the Columbians will bring the healing
essenza
of sorrow.”

“No chance of that.”

“If your mother is not flying around, I agree. With her flying around, with the very buildings of your home town talking to you, your chances are good.”

“I'll come to Europe. She can fly around Europe. She and Sol always loved their trips to Europe.”

“I doubt she has the fuel for this. I will bet she flies only there.”

“I can't stay here. I'm coming back.”

“I will not see you.”

“I'll bang down your door.”

“You cannot bang down my heart.”

“It's the money, isn't it?”

“Do not talk to me about money! Never!”

“But you were the one who—”

“If you come, I will not see you. But if you stay, I will come.”

“For how long?”

“How the hell do I know? Jesus!”

“Promise?”

“
Sì, sì,
promise. You will be the rich American doctor, I will be the sensation of the shit hole, teaching them to breathe. Do they have there
mozzarella di bufala?
”

“Bring some. When will you come?”

“I check my book.” Orville could hear the flutter of pages being turned. “
Allora.
Starting next week, I am teaching in Rome for six weeks. A yoga and meditation retreat on the
Piazza Navona
.
Students from seven countries. Then I come.”

“For sure?”

“
Sì, sì, certo.
Send me the ticket.”

“Seven weeks?” His heart fell. “It seems like forever.”

“Forever is now. And as long as you do not come here, I am loving you with all my heart and breasts and nipples and toes.”

With kisses into receivers and promises to stay in the most intimate touch, they hung up.

Later that morning Orville walked over to Bill Starbuck's ranch house and rang the bell. Babette led him into their breakfast nook, where Bill was reading
The Columbia Crier
and smoking a cigarette.

“Bill,” Orville said, “I've decided to stay and help you out.”

“You're crazy!”

“Bill!” cried Babette. “We can go back to Boca!”

“No, no,” Orville said. “I'm not taking over. I'm helping out. Part-time. Some days, some nights, some weekends. We do it together.”

“Wait a second,” Bill said, his fingers drumming what sounded like a foxtrot on the yellow formica, clearly upset at this news. “You doin' this under duress?”

“Yup. A lot of duress. You bet.”

“So it ain't your choice?”

“Nope. Like you said, I'm crazy.”

“Well, that makes sense.” He smiled. “One thing I've learned is, is that whenever you think you're choosin' things based on the facts, ten years later you look back and see you didn't know shit from Shinola about what was really going on in the world and in your life to push you to think
you
were choosin' things one way or another.” He took a deep drag on the Camel and blew it back out contentedly. “Stay, leave, what the hell difference does it make anyway? You get that nice Chrysler, though, and a helluva lotta cash.”

“And the house.”

“Y'know, Orvy, they say that house has ghosts.”

“Ghosts would be an improvement.”

Bill laughed. “Maybe we'll have a little fun. Like we used to?”

“Maybe,” Orville said glumly, “and maybe not.”

“Hear that, Babs? Same old card. A joker.” He chuckled. “Okay, partner, you've got yourself a deal.”

The two shook hands. Orville started walking away.

“Dr. Rose?”

“Dr. Starbuck?”

“Son,” he said, choked up. “For me, this is a dream come true.”

· 6 ·

Seven weeks later, Orville was in the emergency room tending to a Columbian garbageman who had fallen into the business end of his truck and had seen the bottom half of his body compacted to the thinness of a door. The man was going to die and, horribly, knew it. His screams and curses filled the small circle of cubicles. No one wanted to go near him. The only way Orville could deal with it was to shift into “Distanced Doctor” mode and go into the room periodically to push morphine.

It was the morning of October 12, a day of singular importance to Columbians—Columbus Day. The parade, filled with pomp and trepidation, was to start soon. Orville had promised Amy that he would take her. He was trying to finish up fast and make a smooth handoff of patients to Bill so he could run up to Penny's ranch to pick up his niece.

He was coming out of the garbageman's room for what he hoped was the last time when he got an urgent call at the nursing station.

“
Caro!
”

“Celestina?”

“
Sì, sì,
Celestina.”

“
Cara!
” Screams interrupted. “I'm in the emergency. You have to shout.”

“What?”

“Shout!” he shouted.

In the six weeks that she had been on retreat, they had spoken often. Their love was still intense. More intense, even, for their physical absence and their passionate phone calls.

“The retreat was
fantastico
and I have one favor to ask,
caro.
”

“What is that?”

“I need two more weeks.”

“
What?
” His heart did a flip-flop and started to sink. “Why?”

As best he could hear, she was saying that the retreat had gone so well that the participants were revved up to try and set up an all-European
sangha,
or Buddhist community. Something about a Swiss banker from Zug who owned half an elephant in Nepal and had wandered into the
Piazza Navona
retreat by mistake (the banker not the elephant), stayed, had his eyes opened, and, now in a kind of dazed philanthropic state, was talking about helping finance the ongoing endeavor, and would Orville mind terribly if she delayed her arrival in Columbia for two weeks?

“Give me a firm date,” he shouted.

She said something he couldn't hear.

“What? I can't hear you.”

“What?”

“Keep shouting!” he yelled over the dying man's screams. “You've got to shout!”

“
Ottobre
30,” she shouted. Just two more weeks.”

“Okay. October 30.”

“October 30,
sì, sì.
I love you!”

“I love you, too!” he shouted back, but suddenly was embarrassed because everything had gone silent. The garbageman had died.

“And have you seen your mother flying around?” she screamed.

Orville spoke normally. “You don't have to shout anymore.”

“Okay.”

“No, I haven't.”

“And no buildings are talking to you?”

“The hotel never actually
talked
to me. It was just a—I don't know, but nothing since, no.”

“This is the bad sign,” she said, sounding worried. “Something's fishy.”

“After my mother's third letter the other day, if I never hear from her again it'll be too soon. I still don't know who's mailing her letters.”

“Poor Orvio,” she said, “to have to deal with these
pazzi
Columbians.”

They said how much they missed each other and how they longed for the feel of their toes intertwined. With shared avowals of their love and the sheer impossibility of waiting two more weeks with such yearning, they hung up.

Orville pronounced the garbageman dead and changed out of his green surgical scrubs. He was hustling out the door to get down to the office and Bill when an ambulance rushed up screaming, and out of the back came a small body with tubes going in and blood coming out.

“Eleven-year-old girl,” said the emergency tech. “Shot by a nine-year-old boy.”

Orville turned around and followed the stretcher in. A little older than Amy. A sweet girl, shot in the chest, looking like she was about to die. Her color was turning from healthy pink to cyanotic blue—soon it would be deathly white. Everything in Orville clicked in to save her. He did the usual things, but nothing was working. It was puzzling. Her heart didn't seem to have been hit by the bullet, nor had the aorta or vena cava, but her heart was straining, as if drowning, beating but not pumping out much blood. The girl was going under.

Her parents were there on the other side of the curtain, waiting.

What the hell's going on? He felt a flicker of panic—of missing something that might save her, of failing. The nurses went silent, avoiding his eyes, waiting for him to come up with something else to try. One nurse, a friend of the parents, was sitting with them. The mother prayed. The father paced. Orville realized that the thread of the whole thing—the girl, the parents, the nurses—was unraveling fast.

He stood over the little girl, watching and waiting. He'd been in situations like this often before, in various hellholes all over the world, with someone who was dying, often from a bullet. If he were lucky, now, something else might happen.

Time slowed.

And then, as if a hand were on his shoulder, Orville felt himself pulled back—it was, he realized, a kind of Celestina moment—pulled back in order to truly
see,
seeing the girl, seeing the chest, seeing the heart, seeing—yes!
Not
the heart. The sac
around
the heart. The bullet must have nicked the pericardium. Blood was leaking into the pericardial sac and, trapped there between the heart and the sac, was compressing the heart—like a swimmer held under. Cardiac tamponade.

Quickly he jerry-rigged a large-bore needle to a lead of the
EKG
machine and pushed it between the ribs gently until the current of the heart showed him to be in contact with the pericardium, and then he popped it through the sac and with a whoosh, like the rush of air out of the mozzarella Pappa's windpipe, bright red blood and tiny raisins of clots blew out of the open end of the needle and the heart, like a swimmer surfacing, expanded fully and contracted fully, and he watched as the girl turned from white to blue to pink. He waited, monitoring her for a while until he was sure. She would live.

He went out to face her parents. In their eyes was the question.

“She's going to be okay,” he said.

They collapsed into each other's arms.

“You can go in and see her.”

“Thank God, thank God!” they cried and rushed to her.

He arranged for the medevac helicopter to fly the girl up to Albany Medical to have a cardiac surgeon remove the bullet. Walking out of the hospital, he realized how lucky she'd been—there wasn't even much of a risk of infection, since bullets, going in hot, are sterile. It wasn't until he sat behind the wheel of the Chrysler that he started to shake.

Hey, wait a second, he thought.
Why
did a nine-year-old boy shoot her?

Getting no answer, he floated the car down to Bill's office and walked through the full waiting room and in the
IN
door. Bill, cigarette in hand, had already taken over his shift and was listening to a woman named Tracy Liebowski. Orville had known her in high school, she a junior to his senior. Cute, and in the band—flute. Bill and Tracy were discussing Tracy's five-year-old boy, Wally, who had become unmanageable. She was confused and unsure how to handle him.

“Wally has behavior problems. He bites other kids, he won't read, he flies into rages, and he
never
sleeps through the night.” She sounded fed up, bitter. “Worst is the pooping. He won't poop in the potty or the toilet. He poops in his bed at night, and it wakes him up and he wakes us
up. He poops all over the house—under the dining room table, behind the Lay-Z-Boy, yesterday in my husband's motorcycle helmet.” She turned to Orville. “Which he didn't notice 'til he put it on.”

Despite himself, Orville smiled.

“I'm exhausted,” she said to Bill. “Jeffrey is threatening divorce. Wally's killin' us. Like he's from another planet or somethin'. He's in the waitin' room.”

“Bring him on in,” Bill said.

Orville braced himself for the encounter with the little alien.

In walked an angel, a beautiful boy all silken blond hair and cowlick and clear blue eyes and freckled nose. Orville wondered what Bill would do.

“Hi there, little tyke,” Bill started, handing the boy a lollipop. “How 'bout we talk about your poopin'?”

The boy said nothing. Bill started talking. The boy seemed to listen. Bill kept talking. Soon, to Orville and Tracy's surprise, the boy started to talk, too.

“Wally,” Bill explained, “it's about having a job. Your mom's job is at Columbia Cold Storage, right?” Wally nodded. “And your dad's job is at Scomparza Demolition and Upholstery, right?” Another nod. “Well, son,
your
job is to poop in the potty. And I'm gonna give you your very own poop-juice, to help you.” He handed him a bottle. “Take a drink every night—
every
night, got it?” Wally nodded. “And take a drink of this every morning.” Bill handed him a cute little bottle with a label that read “Elixir of Starbusol.” “And whenever you poop in the potty, you get a star!” He handed him a packet of stars. Little Wally had trouble holding all these gifts. “Okay?” He nodded. “You do your job, and I'll see you again next week and you can show me your stars
.
”

Wally jumped up, eager to start, and scampered out the
OUT
.

In the doorway, Orville said to Tracy, “He's beautiful.”

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes brightening for the first time. With a sudden sureness she went on, “There's a reason for that.”

Startled, again Orville felt the feathery touch of whatever Celestina was talking about, say the spirit—why not? He smiled at Tracy, seeing once again the cheery high school girl, playing her flute. Placing a Starbuckian hand on her shoulder, he ushered her
OUT
.

Handing off the practice to Bill, Orville told him about the patients he had an ongoing concern about, ending with the girl shot by the boy.

“Good work,” Bill said. “Jeez, that's a tough diagnosis to make, especially when you're on the spot like that. Damn good work, Orvy.”

“Why all the guns, Bill?”

“What's that?”

“Why all the guns? Last week that migrant worker got shot right in the hospital parking lot, today this girl. It's like the Wild West around here, Bill.”

“Yep, it is. Only here they're not as good an aim, heh heh. Hell, did you see that the First Lady announced on
TV
the other day that she's even packin' a gun now. They say that soon there'll be a gun for every American—250 million guns.”

“But a
nine
-year-old with a gun?”

“Wasn't his, of course. Probably his dad's. But that age is unusual. That ain't a trend, nope, nope.”

“Not yet,” Orville said.

Between contempt and compassion doctors run their course. Years ago in New Jersey, the trauma of Orville's failing marriage to Lily Wolf had affected his work with his patients, tilting the balance toward contempt. He had been trained to keep his practice walled off from his marriage, but the wall began to crumble. His heightened contempt at work—and his self-loathing—had spilled back into his marriage. He would come home a sulking, snarling bear. After a while everything about Lily seemed mean-spirited, tight, and too neat and clean. As did suburban New Jersey. Infertility brought him to his knees. His desperation seeped into his doctoring. To protect his patients from his contempt, the doctor had run.

But shy men carry a secret daring. At sixteen, afraid of heights, Orville had taken a job 158 feet up over the Hudson River on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. At thirty-six, afraid of leaving his wife and suburban medicine, he'd run straight toward the worst medical situations imaginable. Whether in atonement for failing Lily or in nihilistic rage to destroy himself, or in some Hemingwayesque macho-shit testing of himself, or maybe even just wanting—after all those clean guest towels for clean guests—to feel the poverty of dirt, he'd run full blast toward pain and suffering. Black bag in hand,
Médecins Sans Frontières
as his umbrella, he worked in hellholes like Haiti, Madagascar, Rwanda, Somalia, Lebanon, and East Timor. He'd ended up in sight of Bikini Atoll, in the post–H-bomb test islands in the Pacific, where frogs lacked testicles and lizards had bird wings and birds laid eggs with shells thin as glass and humans had too few fingers or too many or cleft palates or spina bifida, and sat around wondering why a lot of their kids were strabismic or leukemic or dead.

He figured he'd done his part. Nothing much had improved.