Ghost of a Flea

Chapter Thirty-One

As we stood by the front door saying final things that morning, a youngish man in watch cap and sweater had come to the window outside. In the moment before the frost of his breath obscured it, his face showed, and when the frost cleared, he was gone. For that moment I could have sworn it was my son’s face pressed there against the glass, looking in.

Two hours later, at home trying to piece back together with coffee what brandy had torn down, I was still remembering that face outside when the phone rang.

“Lewis, haven’t seen you down to the park of late.”

“Lester. How are you?”

“Fit, thank you. Yourself?”

“I’m good…. The boy’s okay?”

“Never better. That boy and Mr. Blue are inseparable. Just sit there looking out the window for hours at a time, the both of them content as can be. Boy gets a bath, Mr. Blue has to be in there too. I fix the boy lunch, I got to fix somethin’ for Mr. Blue. Beats all I’ve seen. That was a good thing you did, Lewis.”

“I’m glad it worked out.”

“You ought to get on down to the park soon and have you a look. Bring along a good coat though, that wind’ll slice meat right off your bones. And you won’t believe it when you see it. Pigeons came sweeping back in all at the same time, like they knew. Like they were coming home. That park’s a little corner of my heart’s country-you know that. Seeing those birds again did my heart some righteous good.”

“Tell the boy I said hello?”

“I’ll surely do that. And will I be seeing you?”

“Soon. I promise.”

Hanging up, I thought for a moment how lonely Lester must be. How lonely we all are, all of us like Ulysses just trying to find our way home. And I thought about my son. Maybe there is something to this notion of karma. Maybe the good things we do-Guidry’s sponsorship of the school, Alouette’s community work, even Terence Braly’s efforts in their own way-maybe somehow these can make up for all the rest.

I’d gone out to the kitchen to pour the rest of the coffee down the sink, a healthy dram or two of Scotch into my cup, when the phone rang again. Carried cup towards the hall and dipped into it as I lifted the phone. Cast down your bucket where you are, as Booker T. Washington advised us.

“Good morning, Lew. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Not at all. Up and working.”

A pause, then: “Working?”

I filled her in on the past few days, Alouette, Terence Braly, these latest brambles and snags. “How are you?”

“Fine, just fine…. We opened last night. It went well. Extraordinarily well, I think…. I hoped you might be there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t think you would, I just hoped.” She was quiet a moment. “Am I never going to see you again, Lew? I’d hate that. I’m not sure I could stand it.”

“You’ll see me.”

“Good.”

Doors, I thought. Their hearts do business like their doors. Apollinaire. LaVerne telling me how as a child she’d look out the back of train windows at all the people and places she passed, these lives she’d never see again, every passage a chain of good-byes. Alouette at the door when I’d ferried her home from the hospital: Our lives are an apocalypse served in a very small cup.

“I’m glad to hear things went well.”

“The place was packed, Lew. Packed. I couldn’t believe it. Blue-haired little old ladies, students lugging backpacks, even a couple of families with kids in strollers. White-faced young women in all black, bangs, clunky shoes. Others in evening dresses complete with mouth-watering show of thigh and breast. Most of one whole row was all Willie’s friends. Remember Willie? I told you about him.”

“Rap version of Greek choruses.”

“That’s the one. Calls himself Bad Dog Number Fifteen-which is how he insisted we list him on the program. And these guys, his posse he calls them, were having more fun than anyone else. Slumped down in seats with their big-legged droopy pants and oversize shirts, talking low among themselves. Willie’s a talent, Lew. A natural who came out of nowhere. He gave me a copy of this play he wrote, British Knights. It’s so good that after I read it I wanted to just go off somewhere and cry. I knew I could never write anything like that.”

Moments pulled themselves like discarded newspapers across the floor towards sunlight.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you this, Lew. When I was researching early theatre, I found an article on what seems to be the first real civilization. Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, 2500 B.C. The Sumerians kept extensive records, etched them in a script they’d devised onto damp clay tablets which were then baked. Eventually, like all others, their civilization declined. The great libraries and record houses where they stored these tablets, these documents of what they’d been personally and collectively, of how they’d lived their lives and the more they’d envisioned-all this fell into ruin or burned to the ground. Walls crumbled back to stone, but the tablets remained. Fires that consumed libraries and whole cities simply turned the clay tablets brick-red, baked them to a new durability.”

“The city falls, the pillars stay.” Apollinaire again. Or stretching further back: All Pergamum is covered with thorn bushes, even its ruins have perished.

“I knew you’d like it.”

“That I’d steal it, you mean. And I will, first chance I get.”

She laughed. “I’ve got to go, Lew. The production’s been extended, it’s on through the end of the month, Tuesdays through Saturdays. Maybe longer, who knows? And maybe you’ll come some night.” Getting no response, she said, “I miss you.”

Then I stood with the phone’s black anvil in my hand, dial tone in my ear.

That morning, as we stood outside Hoppin Jon’s, me looking around to see if by any chance I could spot the youngish man who’d just been looking in, Don and I had parted.

“I know, I know. You’ll walk. Damn, I forgot to lock the thing again.” He pulled the door open and stood there in the notch. “Few more years, we’re both in those motorized wheelchairs, you’ll probably still cut out on your own. Hitch a ride behind a garbage truck, way kids do on bikes.”

“Surely it won’t come to that.”

It didn’t.

Shaking his head and grinning, Don worked the gearshift, with a moment’s maneuvering slipped into gear, and pulled away from the curb. He looked into the rearview mirror: a mask from which his eyes peered out. I waved.

Six or eight blocks down and more or less homeward, a battered Buick Regal pulled up, rocking, alongside me and a man leapt out from the driver’s seat. Sweat poured off him. He shook.

“Can you help me, man? My wife’s having a baby.”

I bent down to look through a back window permanently at half mast with a square of cardboard bracing it in place, floor an undergrowth of fast-food wrappers and sacks, throwaway cups with lids and straws still in them, beer cans. Terrified round eyes peered back out at me.

“I came home from work and found her like this,” he said. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it to the hospital. Something’s wrong.”

“Help me,” she said. “Please. It hurts. Hurts bad.”

She was white. Might be well along in the race’s evolution, but it was still the South. I knew what could happen if I got in the back of that car.

Moments later, I had a different kind of trouble from the kind I’d anticipated.

Back in Paris, Vicky worked as an OB nurse. She’d told me about those years, how dullingly routine the work was mostly, how reaffirming it could be occasionally, how horrible it might suddenly turn without warning. I knew enough to recognize a bad delivery. Contractions were strong but the baby didn’t seem to be moving along the birth canal. I thought I saw something up there, a head, a shoulder, but couldn’t be sure. My mind ground and spun like Don’s transmission, searching Vicky’s stories for the appropriate word.

Breech.

“It’s going to be all right,” I told her. “Don’t be afraid.” I was sufficiently afraid for us all.

Pain goosestepped over her face as the puppeteer worked fingers and strings. She clamped down on directives of pain just long enough to meet my eyes. She nodded. Then another wave hit and she passed out.

I stood bent over, half in and half out of the car, thinking of Deborah’s earrings: mouthdown sharks swallowing swimmers. I was in way over my head. As was this child.

Knuckles rapped on the window. I backed out expecting the husband and father. Police. Cavalry. Please.

“You got a license for that, boy?”

Doc stood there looking in, cup of coffee in his hand. Streaks of brown down the side where it’d spilled from his tremors. Layers of clothing, greasy thin hair, traces of this morning’s fast food, possibly yesterday’s, in his beard.

I shook my head.

“Neither do I,” he said. “Used to, though. Looks like you all could use some help.”

I told him what I thought. He nodded, considering.

“You’re probly right. K amp;B right across the street there. Get me a bottle of rubbing alcohol, whatever’s the cheapest.”

“But-”

“Now,” he said.

When I returned, he took the bottle from me, poured its contents carefully over his hands, and wiped them on his shirttail. “Do what we can,” he said as he ducked into the backseat.

“Okay, she’s fully dilated … I see … Not the head, though … You’re right, it’s a breech … And the cord’s … Damn … Ain’t seen this for a long time … If I can’t … Can’t seem to … Wait, I think … Okay, I’ve got it … You’re gonna be fine, honey … Yeah, I do … Almost there, ma’am … Sorry if I was a little rough … It’s a boy.”

Enveloped with mucus, smeared with blood, the newborn lay nestled in Doc’s arms. He held it out to me, and as he did, the tremors, which had stopped when he bent over the young woman, started up again. Hands trembling, he tore strips of cloth from the woman’s slip and tied off the cord, cut between ties with a pocket knife. Tears streamed down his face.

“You never quite get over it,” he said.

When I went in for the alcohol, I’d asked the store clerk to call an ambulance, which now arrived.

“Heart rate’s 160 or thereabouts,” Doc told the paramedics. “Color good, good capillary fill, good cry. Apgar, I’d put at about 9/9.”

“You a doctor, sir?” one of them, a stocky woman of thirty or so with flyaway blond hair, name tag Cherenski, asked.

“Me? No, I’m a drunk. Speaking of which, I sure could use one right now. A drink, that is.”

Shaking her head, Cherenski set to work, checking vitals, wrapping the baby in sterile batting, starting IVs.

“You did good here, sir,” she told Doc.

“Let’s get that drink,” I said.

We found a bar half a block down, where Doc sat beside me through four double whiskeys. His tears never let up the whole time, and I made no effort to talk. When we parted outside he nodded thanks, starting off in one direction then abruptly reversing. I don’t suppose it made much difference, finally.

Drop by drop at the heart, the pain of the pain remembered comes again, Aeschylus wrote in Agamemnon.

It sure as hell does. And the gods did no better than we’ve done ourselves. They never knew how to care for us, either.