The Doctor's Wife (13 page)

Then my mother is next to me. “Come with me,” she says, hustling me back to Bob's room. Looking down at his body I can tell he isn't there.

“Thank you,” we say to the harpist.

The woman gives us her card as she leaves. Under her name is printed her profession, “Thanatologist.”

“What's a thanatologist?” my mom asks when the woman leaves.

“I think thanatos is another kind of time,” I answer. “There's thanatos and chronos. Chronos is regular time, chronological time, and thanatos is something else—I'm not sure what.”

“You're so smart,” my mom says, but she's wrong. What I'm good at is sounding like I know what I'm talking about. I've only got it partially right. The counterpart to the earthly time of Chronos is Kairos, the time of the gods. Thanatos is the personification of death in Greek myth and, linguistically anyway, has nothing to do with time.

“What part of the bible did you talk to Bob about?” I ask my brother.

“We read the Book of Luke together.”

“For any particular reason?”

“According to tradition, Luke was a physician. The text of Luke is often concerned with healing and reconciliation. You can tell it has that emphasis because of how it differs from Mark and Matthew.”

“What do you mean?”

“These three gospels have the same parables, but they don't quite match up either chronologically or in the details.”

“What's an example?” I ask. Details and emphasis always change with the storyteller.

“In Matthew, Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke, he preaches the Sermon on the
Plain
because he hasn't reached the mountain yet.”

“What's going on here?” I ask my grandmother, pointing at a close-up picture of my grandfather and his twin brother. They're both wearing fedoras, suits and ties, but they also look a little drunk. The inscription in the album is in white ink on black paper and reads, “Union Station—Early one Sunday morning after med. school party—Taggie and D. slept at Normie's.”

“Are you D?” I ask. The Doctor's Wife's name is Doris.

“Yes.”

Who were Taggie and Normie?”

“They were sorority sisters, good friends. True blue Kansas characters.”

“What kinds of names are those?”

“Taggie was Joanne Taggart and Normie was Norma Jean Faulkner. But we also had nicknames.”

“Nicknames for the nicknames?”

“Norm the Form, Tag the Bag, Dor the—well, you know.”

My family accuses me of leaving out a lot of the best stories.

“What else would I put in?” I ask my mom. “There's the story about Bob sticking his tongue out and the snapping turtle grabbed hold of it. I could put that in.”

“Oh yeah. Here's something. I remember when Dad was really sick with Parkinson's and he told me that the one thing he regretted was saying ‘Swim goddamn it!' to Bob when he fell in that water that time. I think dad thought it may have had something to do with why they couldn't see eye to eye.”

“What did you say to Grandpa Bob when he told you that?”

“I was speechless, but then I said, ‘It's OK, Dad,' or something like that. Oh, and then there was the time that Bob got a shotgun out of the gun closet in the basement.”

“What happened exactly?”

“Bob joined the mountain rescue squad. One day we had a big storm and Bob got a call to do a rescue up on Mount Pilchuck. He called the office to ask Dad if he could go and Dad said no. Bob got really mad and he went down the basement for a gun. Mom called Dad and the office and then Dad came home.”

“And then what happened? What did Grandpa Bob do?”

“And then it's hazy. That's all I remember.”

“Anything else?”

“You have to put in the story about John's urine sample.”

But this is a story my grandmother just let out, it's not a family story. Once when John was really sick he had to be strapped to a hospital bed for twenty-four hours to collect urine samples. My grandparents left him overnight and then in the morning, when John was almost ready to be released a nurse knocked the sample to the floor.

I press my grandmother for details.

“So the samples were in glass bottles?”

“I don't remember.”

“Did you take him back to do the tests over?”

“No, I think your grandfather decided that John shouldn't have to go through that again.”

“Were you mad at the nurse?”

“I wanted to kill her. But she must have felt awful too.”

“It's all dumb luck,” the Doctor's Wife says, explaining her new theory to my mother. I've already heard the theory.

“What's dumb luck?” asks my mom.

“Life. It's all dumb luck.”

“Don't you think that genetics has something to do with it?”

“Genetics is dumb luck.”

“What about education?”

“Dumb luck.”

“That's not what you thought when you were younger.”

“Of course I did,” the Doctor's Wife snorts.

“It was not dumb luck whether or not I got good grades. I was expected to study. Is it dumb luck if you study and then get good grades?”

“Well,” the Doctor's Wife says. “It's dumb luck that you had the sort of parents who made you study.”

They work quietly for a while, cutting up the pieces of apple, getting ready for the others to come.

“Aren't we lucky?” the Doctor's Wife asks.

I'd like to thank the editors of
Tin House
, where “The Pacific War” first appeared. Thank you to the editors of
HOW Journal
, where slightly different versions of several stories appeared including, “The Bone Table”; “Table Manners”; “A Nurse Doll”; “Afraid of the Dark”; “A Sense of Humor”; “More Tests”; “Home”; “Seizures”; and “There's Nothing Bad That Can't Get Worse.”

Thank you to my dear writing friends Alison Hart, Heather Abel, and the incomparable Abigail Thomas. Thank you to Rebecca Reilly, Lisa Freedman, Leah Iannone, Kathryne Squilla, Lori Lynn Turner, and Laura Cronk. Thanks also to Catherine Luttinger, Mira Jacob, Shelley Salamensky, Sarah Bardin, John Pappas and Sufjan Stevens. Thank you to Sara Lamm, Jon Raymond, John Reed, and Andrew Zornoza.

Thank you to Robert Polito, Hilton Als and Zia Jaffrey for your mentorship. Thank you to Helen Schulman, Tiphanie Yanique, and all the rest of my inspiring and supportive friends and colleagues at The New School. Thank you to the many students over the years who have taught me so much.

Thank you to Ira Silverberg for his support. Thank you to Dan Wickett and Matt Bell for their thoughtful edits and for being such good friends to writers. Thank you to Ethan Bassoff for his sharp eye and sharper mind. Thank you to Eve Turow for her tireless efforts.

Thank you to Nancy Mitchell, Darwin Smith, the Volpones, and the people of Lake Stevens. Thank you to my family—the Jaramillos, the Hagens, and Gildens—for their help with this book, and to Matthew Brookshire, who makes everything possible.

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