Choke

Chapter 43

FOR MY NEXT MIRACLE, I BUY PUDDING. This is chocolate pudding, vanilla and pistachio pudding, butterscotch pudding, all of it loaded with fat and sugar and preservatives and sealed inside little plastic tubs. You just peel off the paper top and spoon it up.

Preservatives is what she needs. The more preservatives, I figure, the better.

A whole shopping bag full of puddings in my arms, I go to St. Anthonys.

It's so early the girl isn't at her desk in the lobby.

Sunk in her bed, my mom looks up from inside her eyes and says, "Who?"

It's me, I say.

And she says, "Victor? Is it you?"

And I say, "Yeah, I think so."

Paige isn't around. Nobody's around, it's so early on a Saturday morning. The sun's just coming in through the blinds. Even the television in the dayroom is quiet. Mom's roommate, Mrs. Novak the undresser, is curled on her side in the next bed, asleep, so I whisper.

I peel the top off the first chocolate pudding and find a plastic spoon in the shopping bag. With a chair pulled up beside her bed, I lift the first spoonful of pudding and tell her, "I'm here to save you."

I tell her I finally know the truth about myself. That I was born a good person. A manifestation of perfect love. That I can be good, again, but I have to start small. The spoon slips between her lips and leaves the first fifty calories inside.

With the next spoonful, I tell her, "I know what you had to do to get me."

The pudding just sits there, brown and glistening on her tongue. Her eyes blink, fast, and her tongue sweeps the pudding into her cheeks so she can say, "Oh, Victor, you know?"

Spooning the next fifty calories into her mouth, I say, "Don't be embarrassed. Just swallow."

Through the muck of chocolate, she says, "I can't stop thinking what I did is terrible."

"You gave me life," I say.

And turning her head away from the next spoonful, away from me, she says, "I needed United States citizenship."

The stolen foreskin. The relic.

I say that doesn't matter.

Reaching around, I spoon more into her mouth.

What Denny says is that maybe the second coming of Christ isn't something God will decide. Maybe God left it up to people to develop the ability to bring back Christ into their lives. Maybe God wanted us to invent our own savior when we were ready. When we need it most. Denny says maybe it's up to us to create our own messiah.

To save ourselves.

Another fifty calories go into her mouth.

Maybe with every little effort, we can work up to performing miracles.

Another spoonful of brown goes into her mouth.

She turns back to me, her wrinkles squeezing her eyes narrow. Her tongue sweeps pudding into her cheeks. Chocolate pudding wells out the corners of her mouth. And she says, "What the hell are you talking about?"

And I say, "I know that I'm Jesus Christ."

Her eyes fall open wide, and I spoon in more pudding.

"I know you came from Italy already impregnated with the sacred foreskin."

More pudding into her mouth.

"I know you wrote this all in Italian in your diary so I wouldn't read it."

More pudding into her mouth.

And I say, "Now I know my true nature. That I'm a loving caring person."

More pudding goes into her mouth.

"And I know I can save you," I say.

My mom, she just looks at me. Her eyes filled with total infinite understanding and compassion, she says, "What the fuck are you getting at?"

She says, "I stole you out of a stroller in Waterloo, Iowa. I wanted to save you from the kind of life you'd get."

Parenthood being the opiate of the masses.

See also: Denny with his baby stroller full of stolen sandstone.

She says, "I kidnapped you."

The poor deluded, demented thing, she doesn't know what she's saying.

I spoon in another fifty calories.

"It's okay," I tell her. "Dr. Marshall read your diary and told me the truth."

I spoon in more brown pudding.

Her mouth stretches open to speak, and I spoon in more pudding.

Her eyes bulge and tears slide down the sides of her face.

"It's okay. I forgive you," I tell her. "I love you, and I'm here to save you."

With another spoonful halfway to her mouth, I say, "All you have to do is swallow this."

Her chest heaves, and brown pudding bubbles out her nose. Her eyes roll back. Her skin, it's getting bluish. Her chest heaves again.

And I say, "Mom?"

Her hands and arms tremble, and her head arches back deeper into her pillow. Her chest heaves, and the mouthful of brown muck sucks back into her throat.

Her face and hands are more blue. Her eyes rolled over white. Everything smells like chocolate.

I press the nurse call button.

I tell her, "Don't panic."

I tell her, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."

Heaving and flopping, her hands clawing at her throat. This is how I must look choking in public.

Then Dr. Marshall's standing on the other side of her bed, with one hand tilting my mom's head back. With her other hand, she scoops pudding out of her mouth. To me, Paige says, "What's happened?"

I was trying to save her. She was delusional. She doesn't remember I'm the messiah. I'm here to save her.

Paige leans over and breathes into my mom. She stands again. She breathes into my mom's mouth again, and each time she stands there's more brown pudding smeared around Paige's mouth. More chocolate. The smell is everything we breathe.

Still holding a cup of pudding in one hand and the spoon in the other, I say, "It's okay. I can do this. Just like with Lazarus," I say. "I've done this before."

And I spread my hands open against her heaving chest.

I say, "Ida Mancini. I command you to live."

Paige looks up at me between breaths, her face smeared with brown. She says,

"There's been a little misunderstanding."

And I say, "Ida Mancini, you are whole and well."

Paige leans over the bed and spreads her hands next to mine. She presses with all her strength, again and again and again. Heart massage.

And I say, "That's really not necessary." I say, "I am the Christ."

And Paige whispers, "Breathe! Breathe, damn it!"

And from somewhere higher up on Paige's forearm, somewhere tucked high up her sleeve, a plastic patient bracelet falls down to around Paige's hand.

It's then all the heaving, the flopping, the clawing and gasping, everything, it's right then when everything stops.

"Widower" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.