Honored Guest

THE VISITING PRIVILEGE

DONNA CAME AS a visitor in her long black coat. It was spring but still cool, and she never wore light colors, she was no buttercup. She was visiting her friend Cynthia, who was in Pond House for depression. Donna never had a drink before she visited Cynthia. She shunned her habitual excesses and arrived sober and aware, with an exquisite sinking feeling. She thought that Pond House was an unfortunate name, ponds being stagnant, artificial and small. This wasn’t just her opinion. A pond was indeed an artificially confined body of water, she argued, but Cynthia thought Pond was probably the name of the hospital wing’s benefactor. Cynthia had three roommates, a woman in her sixties and two obese teenagers. Donna liked to pretend that the old woman was her mother. Hi, she’d say, you look great today, what a pretty sweatshirt.

Donna had been visiting Cynthia for about a week now. She could scarcely imagine what she had done with herself before Cynthia had the grace to get herself committed to Pond House. She liked everything about it but she particularly liked sitting in Cynthia’s room, speaking quietly with her while the others listened. They didn’t even pretend not to listen, the others. But sometimes she and Cynthia would stroll down to the lounge and get a snack from the fridge. In the lounge, goofy helium balloons in the shape of objects or food but with human features were tied to the furniture with ribbon. They bobbed there opposite the nurse’s station, and people would bat them as they passed by. Cynthia thought the balloons would be deeply disturbing to anyone who was already disturbed, yet in fact everyone considered them amusing. None of the people at Pond House were supposed to be seriously ill, at least on Floor Three. On Floor Four it was another matter. But here they were supposed to be sort of ruefully aware of their situations, and were encouraged to believe that they could possibly be helped. Cynthia had come here because she had picked up the habit of committing destructive and selfish acts, the most recent being the torching of her boyfriend’s car, a black Corvette. The boyfriend was married but Cynthia strongly suspected he was gay. He drove her crazy. “He’s a taker and not a giver, Donna,” she told Donna earnestly.

She said that she was so discouraged that everything seemed vaguely yellow to her, that she saw everything through a veil of yellow.

“That was in an article I read,” Donna said excitedly. “The yellow part.”

“You know, Donna,” Cynthia said, “you’re part of my problem.”

When Cynthia got like this, Donna would excuse herself and go away for a while. Or she would go back to the room and talk with the old woman. She got a kick out of being extraordinarily friendly to her. Once she brought her gum, another time a jar of night cream. She ignored the obese teenagers, but one afternoon one of them deliberately bumped into her as she walked down the hall. The girl’s flesh was hard and she smelled of coconut. She thrust her face close to Donna’s. Her pores were large and clean and Donna could see the contacts resting on the corneas of her eyes.

“I’m passionate, intense and filled with private reverie, and so is my friend,” the girl said, “so don’t slime us like you do.” Then she punched Donna viciously on the arm. Donna felt like crying but she was only a visitor. She didn’t have to come here so frequently; she was really coming here too much, sometimes two and three times a day.

There were group meetings twice a week and Donna always tried to be present for these, although she was not permitted to attend them. Sometimes, however, if she stood just outside the door, the nurses and psychologists didn’t notice her right away. Cynthia and the fat teenagers and the old lady and a half dozen others would sit around a large table and say anything they wanted to.

“I dreamed that I threw up a fox,” one of the fat girls said. Really, Donna couldn’t tell them apart.

“I shit something that looked like an onion once,” a man said. “It just kept coming out of me. I pulled it out of myself with my own hands. I thought it was the Devil, but it was a worm. A gift from Central America.”

“That is so disgusting,” the other fat girl said, “That is the most—”

“Hey!” the man said. “Get yourself a life, woman.”

The worm thing caused the old lady to request to be excused. Donna walked back to the room with her, and they sat down on her bed.

“Feel my heart,” the old lady said. “It’s pounding. I wasn’t brought up that way.”

The old lady liked to play cards, and she and Donna would often play with an old soiled deck that had pictures of colorful fish on it. Donna pretended she was in the cabin of a boat on a short, safe trip to a lovely island. The old woman was a mysterious opponent, not at all what she seemed. Donna had, in fact, been told by the nurses that she was considerably more impaired than she appeared to be. Beyond the window of the cabin were high waves, pursuing and accompanying them. The waves were an essential part of the world the boat required, but they bore malice toward the boat, that much was obvious.

“What kind of fish are these?” Donna asked.

“These are reef residents,” the old lady said.

They played a variation of Spit in the Ocean. Donna had had no idea that there were so many variations of this humble game.

The two fat girls came in and lay down on their beds. The old lady was really opening up to Donna. She was telling her about her husband and her little house.

“After my husband died, I was afraid someone might come in and …” She passed her finger across her throat. “I bought one of those men. Safe-T-Man II, the New Generation. You know, the ones that look as though they’re six feet tall but can be folded up and put in a little tote bag? I put him in the car or I put him in my husband’s easy chair right in front of the window. He had all kinds of clothes. He had a leather coat. He had a baseball cap.”

“Where is he now?” Donna asked.

“He’s in his little tote bag. Actually, he frightened me a little, Safe-T-Man. I think I ordered him too dark or something. I never did get used to him.”

“That’s racist,” one of the fat girls said.

“Yeah, what a racist remark,” the other one said.

“I bet he wonders what happened to me,” the old lady said. “I bet my car does too. One minute you’re on the open road, one excitement after another, the next you’re in a dark garage. I’m not afraid of dying, but I don’t want to die old.”

She was quite old already, of course, but the fat girls did not challenge her on this. Cynthia came into the room, eating a piece of fruit, a nectarine or something.

“The first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is go home and make Festive Chicken,” the old woman said. “I hope you’ll all be my guests for dinner.”

The fat girls and Cynthia stared at her.

“I’d love to,” Donna said. “What is Festive Chicken? Can I bring anything? Wine? A salad?”

“It requires toothpicks,” the old woman said. “You bake it with toothpicks but then you take the toothpicks out.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Donna said.

Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Would you give it a rest,” she said to Donna.

“I’m tired now,” the old woman said sweetly. “I’m tired of playing cards.” She put the cards back in the box but it didn’t have reef residents on it. It had a picture of a drab, many-spired European city, the very opposite of a reef resident.

“These don’t belong in this box!” she cried. “It’s the first time I’ve noticed this. Would you go to my house and bring back the other deck of cards?” she asked Donna.

“Sure,” Donna said.

“My house is a little strange,” the old woman said.

“What do you mean?”

“I bet it is,” one of the fat girls said.

“I love my little house,” the old woman said anxiously. “I want to get back to it as soon as I can.”

She gave Donna the address and a key from her pocket-book. That evening, when visiting hours were over, Donna drove to the house, which was boxy and tidy with a crushed-rock yard and a dead nestling in the driveway. The house didn’t seem that strange to Donna. One would be desperate to get out of it, certainly. There were lots of things that were meant to be plugged into wall outlets but none of them were plugged in. She found the cards almost immediately, in the kitchen. There were the colorful fish on the cover of the box and the deck inside had the image of the foreign city. Idly, she opened the refrigerator, which was full of ketchup, nothing but bottles of ketchup, each one partially used. Donna had an urge to top the bottles up from others, to reduce the unseemly number, but with not much effort she resisted this.

On the way back to her apartment she stopped at a restaurant and had several drinks in the bar. The bartender’s name was Lucy. She had just come back from a vacation. She had spent forty-five minutes swimming with dolphins. The dolphin that had persisted in keeping Lucy company had an immense boner.

“He kept gliding past me, gliding past,” Lucy said, moving her hand through the air. “I kept worrying about the little kids. They’re always bringing in these little kids who have only weeks to live due to one thing or another. I would think it would be pretty undesirable for them to experience a dolphin with a boner.”

“But the dolphins know better than that, don’t they?” Donna said.

“It’s not all that relaxing to swim with them, actually,” the bartender said. “They like some people better than others, and the ones that get ignored feel like shit. You know, out of the Gaia loop.”

People in the restaurant kept requesting exotic drinks that Lucy had to look up in her Bartender’s Bible. After a while, Donna went home.

The next afternoon she swept into Pond House in her long black coat bearing a bunch of daffodils as a gift in general.

Cynthia was in the lounge in a big chintz slipcovered chair reading Anna Karenina.

“Should you be reading that?” Donna asked.

Cynthia wouldn’t talk to her.

Donna found the old lady and gave her the deck of cards.

“I’m so relieved,” the old lady said. “That could have been such a problem, such a problem. Would you do me another favor? Would you get my dog and bring him to me here?”

Donna was enthusiastic about this. “Do you have a dog? Where is he?”

“He’s in my house.”

“Is anyone feeding him?” Donna said. “Does he have water?” She had found her vocation, she was sure of it. She could do this forever. She felt like a long-distance swimmer in that place long-distance swimmers go in their heads when they’re good.

“Nooooooo,” the old woman said. “He doesn’t need water.” She, too, looked delighted. She and Donna beamed at each other. “He’s a good dog, a watchdog.”

“I didn’t see him when I was there,” Donna admitted.

“He wasn’t watching you,” the old lady said.

“What breed of dog is he?” Donna asked.

She suddenly looked concerned. “He’s something you plug in.”

“Oh,” Donna said, disappointed. “I think I did notice him.” He looked like a stereo speaker. She thought they’d been talking more along the lines of Cerberus, the dog that guarded the gates of hell. Those Greeks! It wasn’t that you couldn’t get in, it was that you couldn’t get out. And that honey-cake business … Actually, she had never grasped the honey-cake business.

“He detects intruders up to thirty feet and he barks. He can detect them through glass, brick, wood and cement. The closer they get, the louder and faster he barks. He’s just a little individual but he sounds ferocious. I always liked him better than Safe-T-Man. I got them at the same time.”

“But he’d be barking all the time here,” Donna said. “You have to consider that,” she added.

“He can be quiet,” the woman said. “He can be good.”

“I’ll get him for you then,” Donna said as though she had just made a difficult decision.

As she was leaving Pond House she passed a man dressed all in red yelling into the telephone. There was a pay phone at the very heart of Floor Three and it was always in use. “What were you born with, an ax in your hand?” he shouted. “You’re so destructive.”

Donna returned the next day with the old lady’s dog, which she carried in a smart brown and white Bendel’s shopping bag she’d been saving. She arrived just about the time the group meeting was coming to a close. Lingering near the door, she saw the fat teenagers and Cynthia’s round neat head with its fashionable haircut. A male patient she had not seen before was saying, “Hey, if it looks, walks, talks, smells and feels like the anima, then it is the anima.” Donna thought this very funny and somewhat obscene. “Miss!” someone called to her. “You are not allowed in these meetings!” She went back to Cynthia’s room and sat on her bed. The old woman’s bed was stripped down to the ticking. She sat and looked at it vacantly.

When Cynthia came in, she said, “Donna, that old lady died, honest to God. We were all sitting around after dinner eating our goddamn Jell-O and she just tipped over.”

“I have something she wanted here,” Donna said, raising the bag. “This is hers, it’s from her house.”

“Get rid of it,” Cynthia said. “Listen, act quickly and positively.” She began to cry.

Donna thought her friend’s response somewhat peculiar, but that was probably why she was in Pond House.

As the day wore on, it was disclosed that the woman had no family. There was no one.

“There wouldn’t have been any Festive Chicken either,” Cynthia said, “that’s for sure.” She had her old mouth back on her, Donna noticed.

There was discussion in the room about what had happened. The old lady had been eating the Jell-O. She hadn’t said a word. She’d expressed no dismay.

“She was clueless,” one of the fat girls said.

“Were you friends before you came here or did you become friends here?” Donna asked them.

They looked at her with hatred. “She’s a nut fucker, I think,” one of them said.

They looked so much alike Donna couldn’t be sure which of them had struck her in the hallway. She thought of them as Dum and Dee. She pretended she was a docent leading tours. The neuroses of these two, Dum and Dee, are so normal they’re of little concern to us, she would say, indicating the fat girls. Then she pretended they were her jailers over whom she held indisputable moral sway.

The barking-dog alarm had not worked at the old lady’s house. It was a simple enough thing, with few adjustments that could be made to it; its function would either be realized or it wouldn’t, and it wasn’t. Donna had gone outside into the street and walked slowly back toward the house, avoiding the nestling. Then she had run, waving her arms. There had been no barking at all, only the sound of her own feet on the crushed-rock yard. It had not worked in her own apartment either. It had not even felt warm.

Poor old soul, Donna thought.

Night was flickering at the corners of the hospital. There was the smell of potatoes, the sound of wheels bringing the supper trays. They always made the visitors leave around this time.

“Cynthia,” Donna said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Why?” Cynthia said.

At home, Donna pretended she was on a train with no ticket, eluding the conductor as it sped toward some destination on gleaming rails. She made herself a drink. She almost finished it, then freshened it a bit. The phone rang and it was Cynthia. She was delighted it was Cynthia.

“You will not believe this, Donna,” Cynthia said. “You know that new guy, the really annoying one? Well, at dinner he was saying that when women attempt suicide they often don’t succeed, but with men they do it on the first go-round. He said that simple statistic says it all about the difference between men and women. He said that men are doers and that women are deceivers and flirts, and Holly just threw back her chair and—”

“Who’s Holly?” Donna asked.

“My roommate, for godssakes, the one who hates you. She attacked this guy. She gouged out one of his eyes with a spoon.”

“She gouged it out?”

“I didn’t think it could be done, but boy, she knew how to do it.”

“I wonder if that could have been me,” Donna said.

“Oh, I think so. It’s bedlam in here.” Cynthia laughed wildly. “I want to leave, Donna, but I don’t feel better. But I could leave, you know. I could just walk right out of here.”

“Really?” Donna said. She thought, When I get out of here, I’m going to be gone.

“But I think I should feel better. I lack goals. I need goals.”

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, Cynthia using the phone. Donna preferred sitting quietly with her in Pond House, offering to get her little things she had expressed no desire for, reflecting about Dennis, her married man who had not come by to see her once. Of course he was probably still annoyed about his car, although he had filed no charges.

Cynthia kept talking, pretty much about her life, the details of which Donna had heard before and which were no more riveting this time. She’d had a difficult time of it, starting in childhood. She had been an intense little thing but was thwarted, thwarted. Donna walked around with the phone to her ear, making another drink, crushing an ant or two that ventured onto the countertop, staring out the window at the dark only to realize that she wasn’t seeing the dark, merely a darkened image of herself and the objects behind her. She sipped her drink and turned toward some picture postcards she’d taped to one of the cupboards. Some of them had been up for years. One was of a city, a cheerless and civilized city similar to the one on the old woman’s playing cards.

Cynthia was saying, “I just can’t accept so much, you know, Donna, and I feel, I really feel this, that my capacity to adapt to what is has been exceeded. I—”

“Cynthia,” Donna said. “We’re all alone in a meaningless world. That’s it. OK?”

“That’s so easy for you to say!” Cynthia screamed.

There was a loud crack as the connection was broken.

Donna had no recollection who had sent her the postcard or from where. She couldn’t think what had prompted her to display it, either. The city held no allure for her. She had no intention of taking it down and looking at it more closely.

Later, she lay in bed trying to find sleep by recounting the rank of poker hands. Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House … A voice kept saying in her head, Out or In. Huh? Which will it be? Then it was dawn. She had not slept but she felt alert, glassy even. She showered and dressed and hurried to Pond House, where she had coffee in the cafeteria. Her eyes darted about, falling on everything, glittering. There was her coat, hanging on a hook next to her table. The coat seemed preposterous to her suddenly. Honestly, what must she look like in that coat?

Up on Floor Three, Cynthia wasn’t in her room but one fat girl was, her face red and her eyes swollen from crying.

“I just lost my friend,” the fat girl said.

“You’re not Holly then,” Donna said.

“I wish I was,” the fat girl said. “I wish I was Holly.” She lay on her bed, crying loudly.

Donna looked out the window at the street below. You couldn’t open the windows. A tree outside was struggling to burst into bloom but had been compromised heavily by the parking area. Big chunks of its bark had been torn away by poorly parked cars. When she was a child, visiting Florida, she’d seen a palm tree burst into flames. It was beautiful! Then rats as long as her downy child’s arm had rushed down the trunk. Later, she learned that it was not unusual for a palm tree to do this on occasion, given the proper circumstances. This tree didn’t want to do anything like that, though. It couldn’t. It struggled along quietly.

She turned from the window and left the room where the fat girl continued sobbing. She walked down the corridor, humming a little. She pretended she was a virus, wandering without aim through someone’s body. She found Cynthia in the lounge, painting her long and perfect nails.

Cynthia regarded her sourly. “I really wish you wouldn’t visit me anymore,” she said.

A nurse appeared from nowhere like they did, a new one. “Who are you visiting?” she said to Donna.

Cynthia looked at her little bottle of nail polish and tightened the cap.

“You have to be visiting someone,” the nurse said.

“She’s not visiting me,” Cynthia muttered.

“What?” the nurse said.

“She’s not visiting me,” Cynthia said loudly.

After some remonstrance, Donna found herself being steered away from Cynthia and down the hallway to the elevator. “That’s it,” the nurse said. “You’ve lost your privileges here.” Donna was alone in the elevator as it went down. On the ground floor some people got on and the elevator went up again. On Floor Three they got off. Donna went back down. She walked through the parking lot to her car.

She would come back tomorrow and avoid Cynthia and the nurse, too. For now, she had to decide which route to take home. It was how they made roads these days; there were five or six ways to get to the same place. On the highway she ran into construction almost immediately. There was always construction. Cans and cones, those bright orange arrows blinking, and she had to merge. She inched over, trying to merge. They wouldn’t let her in! She pushed her way in. Then she realized she was part of a funeral procession. Their lights were on. She was part of a cortège, of an anguished throng. Should she turn on her lights to show sympathy, to apologize? She put on her sunglasses. People didn’t turn their lights on in broad daylight just for funerals, though. They turned them on for all sorts of things. Remembering somebody or something. Actually, showing you remembered somebody or something, which was different. People were urged to put them on for safety too. Lights on for Safety. But this was a funeral, no doubt about it.

After what seemed an eternity, the road opened up again and Donna turned the car sharply into the other lane. In quick moments she had left the procession far behind.

On her own street she parked and walked quickly toward her door. She felt an unpleasant excitement. It was midmorning, and as always the neighborhood was quiet. Who knew what people did here? She never saw anyone on this street.

Then a dog began to bark, quite alarmingly. As she walked on, the rapid cry grew louder, more frantic. It was the poor old soul’s dog, Donna thought, the gray machine, somehow operative again, resuming its purpose. She knew. But it sounded so real, so remarkably real, and the disorder she felt was so remarkably real as well that she hesitated. She could not go forward. Then, she couldn’t go back.