A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (61 page)

No, no, I know I won
’
t find their bodies—they were cremated, of course, eventually—but I have long dreamed, because I am misshapen and think it might be an interesting story to tell, of coming closer to finding them, at least seeing the building where they were brought, the medical school—you know what I really want to see? I want to see the face of the doctor or doctoral student or nurse or whoever it was who used my parents as cadavers. I have
pictures of them, not real pictures but images in my mind of them, in a great, armory-sized room, its floors shiny, dotted with stainless steel tables, all with tools, small machines for picking and drilling and extracting, with long thin cords, and there are medical students, five to a table, the tables spread out in a way that is perhaps too spread out, not cozy but overly spacious, gridlike, eerie by way of rigidity. God knows what they do with two cancer-ridden bodies like that—if they
’
re used as tumor case studies or examined for their parts, like rusted cars on blocks, stripped, their colonized areas ignored in favor of their comparatively benign legs, arms, hands—oh God, my dad used to do a trick at Halloween, with a hand. We had a realistic-looking rubber hand, had had it for ten years, it was always around, and at Halloween he would scrinch his own arm into his sleeve, then put the rubber hand where his own hand should be. When a trick-or-treater would come to the door, he would open the child
’
s sack and drop first candy, and then the hand, into the bag. It was great.

Oh my gosh!
he would bellow, waving around his handless arm.
Oh my gosh!
The child would be terrified, speechless. Then my dad would compose himself, and calmly reach into the bag.
Let me get that.
..

So I plan to find out which medical school received them, and then I will go to the medical school, and will find the teacher who at the time was in charge of the use of cadavers, and I will knock on his door. I will. I have no courage for such things but in this case I will, I will surmount my— This is what I will say, brightly, when he opens the door, the doctor, when he cracks his door to see who has knocked:

I don
’
t know what I
’
ll say. Something scary. But I won
’
t be angry about it. I want only to take a look at the man. Offer greetings. I want him to be shorter than me, in his late thirties, forties, fifties, frail, bald, with glasses. He will be dumbstruck by my
introduction, afraid for his life, my shadow darkening him, and then I will close in on him, all casual confidence, and will ask something, something like:

“
So tell me. What did it look like?
”

“
Excuse me?
”
he
’
ll say.

“
Was it like caviar? Was it like a little city, with one big gleaming eye? A thousand little eyes? Or was it empty, like a dried gourd? See, I have a feeling it might have been like a dried gourd, empty and light, because when I carried her, she was so light, much lighter than I expected. When you
’
re carrying a person, I just thought of this, when you
’
re carrying a person, why is it easier to carry them when they hold tight around your neck? Like, you
’
re supporting their full weight no matter what, correct? But then they grab you around the neck and suddenly it
’
s easier, like they
’
re pulling up on you, but either way you
’
re still carrying them, right? Why should it make a difference that they
’
re holding you, too— The point is that at the time, before when I was carrying her, when she was reclining on the couch and watching TV, in general I was kind of thinking that the thing in her stomach might be terribly heavy. And then I lifted her, and the weird thing was that she was so light! Which would mean that it was something hollow maybe, not the writhing nest of worms, the churning caviar, but just something dry, empty. So which was it? Was it the dried gourd, or the festering cabal of tiny gleaming pods?
”

“
Well—
“

“
I have been wondering for many years.
”

He will tell me. And I will know.

And then I will be at peace.

Oh I
’
m kidding. I kid you. About being at peace. This trip is about the fact that things have been much too calm in San Francisco— I am making enough money, Toph is doing well at
school—and thus completely intolerable. I will return home and look for ugly things and chaos. I want to be shot at, want to fall into a hole, want to be dragged from my car and beaten. Also, I have a wedding to go to.

I stay in Lincoln Park with two grade-school friends, Eric and Grant. The night I get in we go to the place on the corner.

Grant is still working at his father
’
s halogen light factory, in the shipping department. We talk about when his dad, who we think is perhaps unnecessarily holding him down, will promote him. He is not sure. Eric, our high school valedictorian, is a management consultant. His last assignment involved a month at a pig farm in Kentucky.

“
What do you know about pig farming?
”
I ask.

“
Nothing,
”
he says.

He makes gobs of money. He owns the condominium they live in; Grant pays rent for a room in the hideous red brick thing, imposing and square, three stories.

I note how ugly their building is.

“
Yeah,
”
Eric says,
“
but look at it this way: If you
’
ve got the ugliest house on the street, you never have to look at it.
”

Eric is good at these sayings. It
’
s unclear where he gets them, but he and Grant now talk like this, full of salty wisdom, the lessons of the Plains. Grant, for a long time our only friend whose parents were divorced, has long been sage-like, the old soul among us. His walk was slow; he sighed before he spoke. He grew up in the apartment complex near the high school, and when we
’
d drop him off he
’
d say,
“
Roll up the windows, lock the doors—we
’
re entering the ghetto.
”
And this made us laugh.

We play pool. After updates on Moodie, et al., the usual subjects are touched upon:

1)  Vince Vaughn, who we
’
ve all known since fifth grade, who everyone from home now watches closely, vicariously, fingers crossed, second-guessing his career choices from afar.

“
You see him in
The Lost World?
”

“
Yeah, he was okay.
”

“
They didn
’
t give him much to do.
”

“
No.
”

“
He needs another
Swingers
”

“
Right. Something ha-ha.
”

2)  Their hair: They both have interesting hair news. Grant continues to lose his, unabated, and Eric has finally abandoned the hairspray he
’
d been using since high school that made him, though fully coiffed, look like he was wearing a hairpiece.

“
It
’
s nice,
”
I say, looking at it.

“
Thanks,
”
he says.

“
No, really, the way it
’
s kind of feathered like that, all natural, kind of floaty. It
’
s nice.
”

“
Yes. Thank you.
”

They are also going to the wedding, the next day, the wedding of Marny
’
s sister Polly, who is marrying someone we do not know. We have all been invited, about fifteen of us, the friends of Polly
’
s sister, and so we
’
re using the wedding as a sort of reunion. Everyone will be there; most are coming tomorrow, the day after. Grant and Eric are curious why I am here for five days, and I tell them enough so that they understand but not so much that they will worry.

We leave the lights off when we get home. They have moved the weight bench to make room for a futon for me.

“
Thanks,
”
I say, getting under the comforter.

I am afraid Grant will tuck me in.

“
Good to have you,
”
he says, and pats my head.

In the dark I hear Grant in the next room, his dresser drawer squeaking, and Eric upstairs, in the bathroom, water running.

I sleep like I have not slept in years.

In the morning I begin. I have borrowed a coat from Grant, and have brought along a tape recorder, a notebook, and a list of things I want to do while here. The list consists of about fifty items, was typed out and laser printed and then added to on the plane. The list starts with the things mentioned above:

Wenban [the funeral home}

924 [the street address of my old house]

Stuart [my father
’
s friend]

Haid [Dr. Haid, their oncologist]

Sarah [in whose bed I woke up all those years ago]

Bar [the bar, in the next town, I know where it is but not its name, which my dad frequented]

Beach [a sandy area abutting Lake Michigan, where people gather to meet, sunbathe, play in the water]

The list goes on. The idea, I suppose, is the emotional equivalent of a drug binge, the tossing together of as much disparate and presumably incompatible stimuli as possible, in a short span, five days, together constituting a sort of socio-familial archaeological bender, to see what comes of it, how much can be dredged up, brought back, remembered, exploited, excused, pitied, made known, made permanent. In the interest of overload, I
’
ve continued, on the plane, in bed, to add to the list, tangential or random things—phone calls and unexpected visits to people I haven
’
t seen in five, ten years, people I never talk to—wanting to throw anything potentially provocative or brutal into the mess. For instance, handwritten in the margin there is:

Wooden [a grade school friend who was sent to military school for reasons unexplained to me, but who wrote a very nice condolence note that winter of ours, though we hadn
’
t spoken in easily seven years; I
’
m thinking I
’
ll maybe pop by his house, because I never wrote back to him, and would like to see what he
looks like, how he talks, maybe say hello to his mother, who, one night when I slept over and could not sleep because we had watched
Grizzly
—sort of like
Jaws
with fur—had heated milk in a pan for me, had whispered kindnesses in the kitchen}; Aunt Jane [who lives in Cape Cod; a phone call?}; Fox [Jim Fox, of Abramson & Fox, my dad
’
s old pinstriped boss, a bent-over and sour man, who, as Beth and I were cleaning out our father
’
s desk a few weeks after, came into the office and said this, in an unkind way, the way one would talk about a child who was found masturbating too often:
“
Well, we all
knew
he was dying
”
}; Donation place [organization that picks up and then distributes cadavers to medical schools}; Medical school [the one most likely to have used the cadavers}

The list continues. Other friends, friends of my parents, the few college friends who made it to either funeral; grade school and high school teachers; the park at the end of our street, with the tiny frozen lake; Mrs. Iwert, whose lawn I used to cut and whose gardening I used to do (to see if she
’
s still alive); my mother
’
s friends, coworkers, on and on.

And: On the side of the page, the page with the list, is this

word, written in large letters, crooked though, scrawled left-handed.

It stands large, in all caps, next to the computer printout portion

and all the handwritten additions. I added it at a pay phone at

O
’
Hare, while talking to Toph in L.A. right after my flight landed.

The word is:

DRUNK?

Which is my question to myself regarding just what state I would best be in while doing this business in and around Chicago. As I was talking to Toph about what he and Bill were doing in L.A.— that day they had gone to a batting cage and seen a movie (Bill gets to be the fun one)—it occurred to me, with great clarity, that I should be drunk the entire time. The drunkenness, I guessed, would add to the whole endeavor a haze of mystery, not to mention
a romantic fluidity that I could not otherwise count on. I should be desperate, raggedy, semi-coherent, stumbling from place to place. It seemed much more fitting than being calculating and sober, would strip things to their core, would eliminate a layer or two of self-conscious white noise, would allow me to do more asinine things.