Body and Bread (27 page)

Fistfight? I wondered. “What now?” I asked, annoyed, thinking Sam had to change jobs, do something to get out of this cycle of bad luck.

“About four this morning,” Terezie said, “he dropped a fare at the airport then drove off the second story ramp.”

“Are you saying he was in an accident?”

“His spine’s fractured.” Heavy breathing became a cough.

“Who was driving?”

Terezie cleared her throat. “The doctor says he won’t ever walk again.”

“What?” I moved the phone closer, set it in my lap. “Sam’s passenger’s in the hospital?”

While Terezie patiently made me understand, I stayed calm. “Can you come?” she asked, whimpering. “Please?”

Saul insisted on driving, and during the next six hours, I tried to imagine what I’d find in intensive care: Terezie, of course; my parents; maybe Kurt and Hugh; and Sam. I wondered what he knew about his condition, and how much pain he felt. I pictured him on a gurney, his speckled eyes incredulous, his pouty lips strained.

When Terezie saw me, she blinked twice then wept on Cyril’s chest. His arms hung, clubs. Saul stepped forward, and she shifted her embrace to him. Mumbled consolations began as I shoved my way toward Kurt, who stood, reading stapled sheets of paper.

“Any update?” He’d have heard the doctors explain Sam’s condition to our father, and now he could translate that for me.

“It’s a T4-6 spinal cord injury. The prognosis is incontrovertible.”

“How did it happen?”

“That’s what nobody can figure out.” He handed me the paper. “His accident report says at 3:53 a.m., he crashed through the rail and sailed off the ramp like it was an exit.” He turned a page, pointing. “Dry pavement. No faulty lighting. He either fell asleep or somebody screwed up the lane markings. Apparently, a number of accidents have happened in that exact spot.” He took the report back, checking. “I think we should sue.”

“Did Sam say anything?”

“Yeah, it’s in the report.” He squinted, shuffled the pages. “Here,” he said, sighing, shaking his head. In the section marked, “Investigator’s Narrative Opinion of What Happened,” someone had written: “Driver says he dropped off a fare. He then moved to the ramp’s outer lane, but as he proceeded, the moon, being smarter than he was, told him to make a sharp left.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Why would he say that?”

“You know Sam,” he said, folding the paper, pretending to straighten his glasses as he wiped his eyes. Our father walked around the corner. Kurt joined him.

Terezie’s parents arrived, ushering her to the family waiting room. When I moved toward Sam’s bed, Saul approached, while my father sprinted after two doctors down the hall. He’d only taken a few steps before he stumbled, then fell, landing prostrate in the passageway. Before I could move, one of the men trotted over just as Kurt bent down. Dad began talking, rising to his knees, so Saul and I instead slipped past the curtained doorway into Sam’s room.

My mother sat in a chair next to the bed, holding Sam’s hand. She stood when we walked in. “He’s sleeping,” she whispered.

“Are you all right?”

“No.” Her eyes watered. “He’s my child. It’s tough.” She faced the window, blew her nose. “I’m glad you’re here, though,” she said. “You’re better at this.”

“But Mama, I’m not.” I’d never seen her cry.

She turned around, straightened. “You and Sam have always been close.”

I walked to the bed. A metal device fit over his head with posts drilled into his temples. Tubes hooked to his wrists. His eyes were closed; one hand lay palm-open. A starched sheet and blanket covered his body, but his feet made a bulge. He can’t feel them, I thought. Sam’s trapped inside his body like that mouse inside the bass. I leaned, needing to hear breathing, and smelled antiseptic, sweat, something like glue.

“I’m going to check on your father. He’s not as strong as you think,” my mother said, patting my back.

“Daddy fell.” She blanched. “Don’t worry. He’s okay.”

“We’ll be right outside,” she said.

Sam’s eyes opened; he blinked. I tried to smile. “Hey,” he said.

Does he need a nurse? I thought. Pain killer? Does he know it’s me? I remembered Mary Jo sprawled across the train tracks; again, I hated myself for not knowing what to do. “Can I get you anything?”

“Terezie,” he said, “she’s tired. She needs something to eat.”

“Don’t worry. Her parents are here.”

“Hey,” he said to Saul, who stood in the corner, my sweater over his arm.

“Sam,” Saul said, stepping to the bed, “what exactly have you heard?”

Saul’s take-charge manner, his lean, mobile body suddenly made me furious. “We don’t need you right now,” I said.

“Excuse me?” he said.

“Leave.” I pushed him. “Out.”

“All right, all right,” he said, nodding, passing me the sweater then stumbling through the door. I lay the sweater and my purse on my mother’s chair.

Sam said, “Sar, touch them.”

I moved to the foot of the bed, reaching toward the cover.

“No, underneath,” he said, his hooded eyes darting. He lifted his arm, rattling the tubes. The icy air smelled of alcohol, adhesive tape. The blinds lay flat, a plastic plank.

“Let me get a nurse.” I turned toward the doorway.

“Don’t be scared, not of me.”

“No, I just—”

“I want you to do it, just us.” He motioned with his hand.

Slowly, I folded back the quilt, then the sheet. Wrapped in a hospital gown, his body lay limp, his feet turned out. I recognized his shape, his muscled calves, but his joints and limbs seemed tacked on, slabs of clay, cadaver-like.

“Pinch something,” he said. His breath was spoiled fruit, warm, turning.

I remembered him smoothing the cadaver’s mouth, his relaxed talk about the genitals. “You know what?” I said, unfolding the cover, pulling it into place. “This isn’t a good idea.”

His eyebrows lowered beneath the metal band at his forehead.

“You’re not supposed to feel anything the first few days.” I patted his hand. “Sleep is what you need.” I leaned in close, scowling. “And you better not give me any trouble.”

While Saul drove us back to Palestine, I told him I needed to be alone.

“That’s to be expected,” he said. Cows lounged at a manmade lake under an elm grove. “You have a great deal on your mind.”

“You’re right. But that’s not what I mean.” That morning, Sam had been moved to his own hospital room. Surrounded by our mother, Terezie, a nurse, and vases of flowers, he’d watched glumly as I walked out the door.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m moving to Baylor. I can’t see you anymore.”

At first, I wondered if he’d heard me. Then he squeezed the steering wheel, his fists a clinched nerve. “I understand,” he finally said.

“No you don’t. Don’t say that,” I snapped.

He gazed, his thin, mustached face no longer familiar. “This is a particularly difficult time—”

“Stop. You’ve got to listen.” I turned, leaning against the door. “Our relationship is over. I’m moving out tomorrow, and I want you to leave me alone.”

“Now is not the correct time—”

“I don’t think I can be any clearer.” Was I shouting? “Sam needs me. I don’t have room for anybody else.”

After he pulled the car over, he reached toward me.

“Saul,” I said, jerking away. “Please. I don’t love you anymore.”

He leaned on the wheel, burying his face in his arms.

C
HAPTER 17

1969

T
HE REHAB HOSPITAL:
cellblock rooms off endless shiny hallways, averted eyes, limp bodies in wheelchairs, on gurneys; moaning, repeated shouting of a name (
Betsy, Betsy, Betsy...goddammit, Betsy
), an odor of Pine-Sol, lime Jell-O, piss. These impressions are clear now, but their implications didn’t register then. I believed Sam dutifully inhabited this inferno, but only temporarily, that he would endure rigors of rehab then somehow be transported home where his life would be altered, of course, but because he was Sam, it would resume normal definitions, that his mangled body, like Antonín Cervenka’s, would be transformed. Sam would become the exemplary paraplegic.

I sat next to his bed, which was one of twelve in the room, a scene straight off a World War II movie set. “Goddamn nurse won’t come turn me,” he said, his face already thinner, his lips chapped, crust at the corners. “Sores will cover my ass. They don’t give a fuck.”

I scampered toward the doorway, frightened by his language, his mood, the place. “Should I go get her?” Now I was sure that his accident had been my fault. His appeal for help that day in the restaurant had carried larger implications, suggestions I’d been too self-absorbed to notice.

“No. Won’t do any good.” He flinched, shifted his beefy shoulders. “Smell anything? I think I’ve gone and crapped again. You smell it?”

I shook my head, not knowing then about the rubber pants he probably was wearing, his urethral catheter, his loss of bowel control, fear of infection.

“Can’t use a toilet, and they won’t fucking tell me if I ever will again.” His eyes reddened; he exhaled, slowly. “A goddamn eunuch.”

I didn’t allow myself to think about his bowel/sex connection. Anthropology was my reference point. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing. They’ll teach you. It’ll be like learning a new language.”

His hand slid under the covers. “Smell anything?”

“What you need is a road trip. Can you leave to get something to eat?”

He stared, his arm making a tunnel in the sheets. “It’s funny, going off the ramp—can’t remember. But I had some french fries—salty, greasy so a little came off on your fingers, and cut skinny, you know, so they crunched. If I had some now, I’d lick the goddamn sack.”

“Want to? I’ll take you.”

He laughed. The sheet quivered, bulging below his waist. “How about that—a fucking boner. Hey, Betsy,” he shouted, “supper’s ready.” He laughed. “Come and get it.”

“Sam, don’t,” I said.

His arms slapped the top of the covers. He turned his back, reached for a glass of water, sipped. “There’s only one thing scares me,” he said, staring ahead again. “That’s falling. I’m lying here, flopped like a goddamn channel cat, and all I think about is rolling off this fucking bed.” He shoved the glass back onto the table. “Pitiful. Nothing but a shit-faced organism. Protoplasm on a plate.”

“No wonder,” I said, panicked, “it’s this place. You’ll be all right once you get home.”

“I’m not leaving,” he said, frowning. “And I’ll slug anybody who tries to make me.”

My mother told me to answer the phone. Sam now lived with Terezie in an apartment one block from my parents, and every couple of weekends I drove the half-hour from Baylor so I could visit him. Sometimes we’d go out to eat, and once at a pub just across the county line, he’d insisted that we dance. “’Scuse me, sugar. Make way for the gimp,” he shouted, and people stumbled, clearing a space. A lousy band was playing—a horn, two guitars, drums, a singer who thought he was Bobby Darin. He wasn’t. Sam requested “Do You Wanna Dance?” and at first, the guy thought it was a bad joke. It was, but the group honked the tune anyway. Sam jimmied his wheels back and forth to the rhythm while I swayed. We even did the hand jive. Yanking on the pushrim, he’d twirled his chair, and a woman at a nearby table had clapped.

I expected the call to be from Terezie. She’d already talked earlier to my mother, wanting to know if Sam was at the house. Apparently, he’d been gone overnight again, and she couldn’t find him anywhere. This morning while she railed, my mother had made excuses for him, then gradually grew peeved, her chin the familiar rubber patch. Now two hours later, she shrugged, handing me the phone.

“Hello,” I said.

“Is this Sarah?” a woman said, husky as a blues singer.

“Yes.”

“Just a minute.”

Then Sam said, “Sar, I need a favor.”

Since my mother was watching, I pretended it was somebody else. “Sure. What’s up?”

“I’m with someone. Can you drive your car down the block and meet us? I need you to take me home.”

“No problem. See you there,” I said, hanging up. Here we go again, I thought, nervous, relieved. Sam was bouncing back.

“Who was that?” my mother said, her glare a scalpel.

“Someone from high school. You never knew her. We’re going to meet for a Coke.” I grabbed my purse, pulled out my keys. “I won’t be long, about an hour, I guess.”

A block away, Sam sat in a red Triumph convertible with a girl it turned out I did remember. Petite, with black, unratted hair, she’d had a comic’s wit, Elizabeth Taylor eyebrows, and an unforced smile. Not seductive, more like Natalie Wood. When a group of us stood together, she looked like the grown-up. Weeks before graduation, someone convinced her to play Mrs. Waters in
Tom Jones
. In one scene, she and Tom stood behind a screen while we heard smacking, moaning, groans. When they appeared, we saw lipstick dotting Tom’s face, and we cheered. Unfazed, Mrs. Waters shaded her eyes from the stage lights and gazed into the audience, studying us.