Dog on the Cross (7 page)

It was out of respect for this calling that she'd flatly refused her pastor's prompting to think toward secular venues. She sang, she informed him, as a type of ministry, and a performance of Wagner or Strauss would jeopardize the one gift she could offer. Her husband and daughter had argued against this, but now, as the bright forms encircling her grew clearer, she knew she had acted properly: her compensation would be great and the next face she saw, that of her Savior. Even as the notion suggested itself, a set of kindly features emerged from the radiance and drew close, a voice speaking in calm and measured tones, telling her not to worry, that everything would be okay.

“Mrs. Olaf,” it said, “you shouldn't try and talk.”

But Kathy tried regardless, the smile stretching the right half of her face beginning gradually to lower, the nurse providing details of her stroke.

W
HAT, UPON AWAKENING,
had seemed five hours was in truth a monthlong coma. During the
laminectomy, Kathy's blood pressure had risen, and there was clotting just below her knee. The doctors had not understood what was happening until the anesthesia wore away and their patient lay unresponsive, her face vacant, eyes fixed to the wall. Through the years to follow, she would gather only the vaguest impressions of this time—a stretch in which dream bled to waking, color to speech, one afternoon a figure standing at the foot of the bed grasping her shin, asking could she feel this, and what about
now?

But when Kathy did awaken, she did so fully, and the doctors were pleased to find that there was no damage to the brain, none to liver or kidney function, very little to the CNS. The left side of her body had been affected, but her recovery in this regard was just short of miraculous. A few days and she was drafting letters; within a week she was walking; after a month she was released from the hospital altogether. The stroke seemed now to involve only her larynx, her tongue and esophagus, most notably, her voice.

For the most, Kathy was able to suppress the terror such an affliction might have caused. The doctors said, given her progress in other areas, she could expect the complete return of vocal ability and in the meantime encouraged her to consult a speech therapist, which she did several times a week. Each morning she would awaken to find something else restored to her, another skill recovered. The left side
of her face grew taut; she ceased to drag her foot; her penmanship continued to develop, then attained, almost, the precision of type. She kept pen and legal paper with her at all times, conversing, in this way, with her daughter and husband. Strangely, she found relationships with her family were strengthened, and viewing it as a temporary state of affairs, Kathy began to experiment. She left mischievous notes on her husband's pillow, scribbled reminders to her daughter, scolding her for a chore left undone, sneaking Post-its into her cereal box or bag of chips. On weekends, she would sit at her desk and write long letters to her mother and sisters, receive replies just as lengthy, speaking of matters they had not been able to discuss. In many ways, the silence that she viewed as a thing to be overcome had fostered a peculiar kind of intimacy. Driving home from the market one day, she realized that the anxiety attacks that had once forced her to carry Valium seemed to have vanished.

And yet there were nights she went to bed and an apprehension would vibrate in her chest, a flow of acid to her stomach, shortness of breath—the thought she might never again form words, let alone perform. She pushed this away, for the idea held a taint of blasphemy: she was chosen to bring song to the world, and this is what she would do; as long as she was alive, this is what she would offer. How could it even be otherwise?

Time passed. Eight months. Nine. Kathy awoke on a Monday morning with feeling in her tongue and throat. Her doctor removed the tube from her stomach through which she took food and put her on a liquid diet, then on solids. She was able for the first time to swallow and chew. At the table one evening, just before dessert, Kathy suddenly cleared her throat. There were a few moments of absolute silence, daughter and husband staring. They blinked several times, began slowly to clap.

Then came the one-year anniversary of her stroke, and in a weekly meeting with her therapist, the man informed Kathy that her speech might not return. She sat for a while, then nodded, went to her car and drove home. Walking inside, she stood a few minutes in the hallway, scanning the room—dining table and ottoman, recliner and venetian blinds, slats of sunlight dividing the carpet into a checkerwork of shadow. Her husband and daughter were not yet home, and there was, she noticed, a palpable silence, an absence that seemed to vacuum sound into it, to become, in some way, its negative. Blood rushed in her ears. Motes swirled in the afternoon light. When her husband pulled into the drive, Kathy was aware she had begun, after a fashion, to scream—hands clenched, nails cutting into her palms, no sound but the force of air across her teeth, the quiet hum of the refrigerator, the scarcely perceptible ticking of an antique clock.

S
HE BEGAN TO FLOOD
her environment with sound. There were the gospel tapes she played on her morning drive, the headphones in her office at work. She had a radio installed in the shower, a waterproof component that on most days was capable of nothing but static. Kathy listened to it regardless, steam beading the shower door, the water turned hot, aimed at her throat.

She became a compulsive watcher of television, she became a lover of malls. Even the Pentecostal church she had attended for the last twenty-seven years seemed far too quiet, the prayer service close to unbearable, and one night, unable to sleep, she saw a program wherein charismatics pranced in the aisles while a preacher stood singing above them, accompanied by an electric band. Kathy observed this with great attention. She fetched the remote from between two cushions, turned up the volume.

One afternoon, her husband—a squat man with thinning hair and glasses that slid incessantly down the bridge of his nose—arrived home late and, with a self-congratulatory smile, sat a cage in front of her, wrapped in silver paper, tied with a bow. Beside it was a smaller, rectangular package, likewise wrapped. Halfheartedly, Kathy reached from where she lay and undid the ribbon. Behind chrome bars, she saw a parrot—green and yellow—shifting from one leg to the other.

Kathy picked up her pen, scratched quickly at the tablet, held it toward Chris.

What the hell is that?

“Parrot,” her husband told her. “You can teach it to talk.”

Kathy stared at him a moment. She wrote the word
how.

Chris smiled. Pointed. “Open the other,” he said.

She did so and discovered, inside a padded cardboard box, a device roughly the size and shape of a book, though not nearly as thick. It was dark gray and had a speaker at one end. On its surface was a keypad, a small digital screen. Instinctively, Kathy moved a hand along its side, flipped a switch, and brought the screen to life, bright green letters asking her to enter a name.

“I got it at that store we went to over in Shawnee,” Chris said. “The one with the wheelchairs?”

Kathy sat staring at the mechanism. She looked up at her husband.

“It's called a
talker
. They make them for people who lose their voice.” Chris sank both hands in his pockets, began to rattle change. “I know you're going to get everything back, but for right now I thought it'd be nice not to have to write all the time.”

Kathy forced her mouth into half a smile.

“Wouldn't it?”

She shrugged.

“Well,” Chris said, sitting on the couch beside her, “they told me I could take it back if you don't want it. You might at least give it a shot.”

Kathy looked back to the apparatus on her lap. She typed her name into the keypad, pressed firmly the button marked
ENTER
.

Ello, Kathy,
the machine welcomed, metallic and harsh, a voice she'd almost come to expect.

S
HE HAD HESITATED
at first to even turn it on, to hear the device pronounce again those words and syllables that ought to have been coming from her. It found a place on the kitchen table beneath a stack of bills and flyers. One morning, she saw her daughter employing it as a coaster. There was a permanent ring on its display from her glass of orange juice.

It was the parrot that occasioned the machine's initial use. Kathy, after taking the week off, was lying on the couch watching television and, from the corner of her eye, the bird rocking nervously on its perch. When the program went to commercial, Kathy hit
MUTE
and turned her full attention to the parrot. She thought it peculiar the way the bird's eyes—glassy and dark—did not permit the expressiveness one associates with the eyes of a dog or cat. There was a vacancy to them, as if someone had taken a drill and bored holes in the creature's face.

Still watching the bird, she got up, walked quickly
over, and retrieved the machine out from under the catalogs and issues of
The Perser Chronicle.
She brought it to the couch, sat down, flipped the switch at its side. When the screen came up, she typed a phrase and pressed
ENTER
.

The bird stared at her blankly, shifting its feet. It cocked its head to one side and let out a brief croak.

Kathy retyped her message; did so again; was still doing this when Chris entered from the garage, stood next to the piano, and quietly observed the proceedings. He had just opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, when the bird, in guttural replication of the machine, uttered one of the words she'd been typing for close to an hour now. Kathy jerked her head toward her husband and smiled. She once again entered the phrase, and this time the bird repeated it in full.

Over the next week, Kathy would work with the parrot an hour each day. It was the first progress she'd enjoyed in quite some time, and though she pondered the reasons God would bestow such a gift on the bird and not on her, she hoped to make a good showing. Perhaps, she thought, it was a test. Maybe she would be rewarded for her selflessness, for considering God's grandeur and not her own. It was with this in mind that she sat down one afternoon when her husband and daughter were out shopping, pulled the machine onto her lap, and typed
Jesus is Lord.

The parrot did not hesitate. In a voice that resembled, to an alarming degree, the machine's, the bird spoke loudly back to her the name Jesus.

It was harsher-sounding than she would have liked, but Kathy was pleased with her success. Nodding excitedly to her pupil, she retyped the message.

The bird looked at her, craning its neck. “Jesus,” it shrieked.

Kathy continued typing and the bird continued repeating the name. She had been able to accomplish “pretty bird” and “who's that” and even “Chris and Kathy,” but for some reason the parrot would not consent to follow “Jesus” with anything but the slight shuffling of its feet.

Kathy tried for a few more hours but could get nothing else from the bird, and by the time her husband and daughter arrived, she was weary to the point of tears. She stood, walked over to Chris, and put her arms around him.

“Hey,” her husband asked, “are you all right?”

“Jesus,” the bird interrupted.

Chris turned to look at the cage. The parrot rocked on its perch. “Jesus,” it screeched.

“When you teach it to do that?” said Chris.

Kathy shook her head, made several indecipherable gestures.

Her husband laughed nervously. “Sounds like it's cussing. Like it dropped a hammer on its foot.”

Their daughter, a pale-skinned teenager with a shapeless body and eyes that resembled in many ways the bird's, went to the cage, stuck a finger in between the bars, and attempted to stroke the creature's head. The bird inched to the far side of its perch, flapped several times its wings. “Jesus,” it said, and with that sank its beak into the young woman's hand.

The parrot continued its blasphemous monologue through dinner and intermittently over the course of the evening, and that night even when they put the sheet over its cage and turned out the lights, its metallic voice would cry out, muffled a bit but piercing nonetheless. The bird had just seemed to calm itself, and Chris was on the edge of dozing when his wife broke down and began to cry hysterically. He eased over, took her head on his shoulder, and held her against his chest, beginning to whisper. But try as he might, his wife did not seem receptive to comfort, and eventually he began to grow upset himself. He scooted slowly back to his side of the bed and lay there, listening to her weep.

“Kathy,” he said, after a while, “you need get a hold of yourself.”

The suggestion only caused her to sob louder. Chris closed his eyes and tried to sleep. The bed began to tremble. Without the use of her voice, the noise sounded as if someone were attempting to strangle her.

“Really, now,” he told his wife. “That's not going to help.”

“Jesus,” said the bird.

S
HE DECIDED, IN
the days following, she would have to make a stand. No more lying on the sofa cradling the remote, calling work at the last minute, telling them she'd not be able to make it. She had the impression she was beginning to sink, that if she closed her eyes, the recliner would make its way gradually through the floor. It was time, she thought, to stop feeling sorry for herself. It was time to engage with life. She felt like the curator of a forgotten museum, walking corridors and silent halls, occasionally dusting a sculpture, stooping to polish a fingerprint from glass, quiet caretaker scanning obsessively her collection, waiting for the day she would be replaced.

She started by returning to the gym, two hours a day, three on weekends. She did treadmill and weights, swam and tried step aerobics. Her back had begun to ache once more, but the exercise seemed to help this, and her mood improved greatly as a result of being on fewer pain pills. In the evenings, she and her husband would go to the park—something she'd rarely done since her daughter had been born. She had gone back to using the tablet, and it seemed more natural somehow, allowing her to articulate herself with precision. In support, her husband bought
a notebook as well, and most of the time they would conduct their exchanges purely in writing. He claimed he felt guilty speaking.