The Spectator Bird (23 page)

What happens to young flesh to make it old? I pinched the skin on the back of my hand, and it stayed up like a ridge in putty, only slowly flattening out. Loss of elastin. But what's elastin? Why do we lose it? What chemical breakdown or slowdown occurs, what little manufacturing plant fails or goes on strike?

Inside the inelastic skin, within the still hard muscles, the joints go bad, grow knobs and spurs of calcium (removing it, according to my dentist, from my teeth and jawbone). The rough edges grate when they move together, and agitate the little nerves of pain.

But though we all deteriorate, we are given the privilege of deteriorating according to some poetic justice. We ourselves help establish the places and extent of our wearing out. My right shoulder and elbow are worse than my left because I was once a right-handed tennis player with a severe service and overhead. (Breaking my neck to beat Eigil Rødding when I was out of shape, I probably laid down an imperative that I will feel for life, even if I live to a Vilcabamba old age.) My right big toe is worse than my left because when I was ten years old, on an afternoon that I remember clearly, on the shore of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, I kicked Ole Sieverud in the backside and hurt myself worse than I hurt him. Disorder and early sorrow, and the consequences concentrated because I happened to be born right-handed and right-footed. If I had been born ambidextrous at both ends, my ills would be better distributed.

I ran my hand over the top of my head, slick and bumpy. For that I take not even partial responsibility. Baldness is inherited and sex-linked, they say. I was getting there by the time I was forty. How does
that
work? Somebody must have examined the process, down to exactly what happens in each hair follicle when the appointed gene flips the switch at the appointed time and turns off the lights in one more little chemical plant. If he had been set to it, could old Count Rødding, with his facility in remodeling nature, have bred baldness out? Probably, just the way he'd have bred furnishings into a terrier. A pity he didn't attempt it, for he and his son both bred for trophies, and a bald head mounted in the billiard room wouldn't be half so decorative as one with a senatorial mane. Suppose Karen Blixen's improvising had been true. If my mother had stayed in Bregninge and been subverted by the old count instead of coming to America and marrying an alcoholic skinhead on the C.M. and St. P., I might now be running my hand through hyacinthine locks instead of over a naked skull.

The chances we take, getting born so accidentally.

I turned the stopper handle and let the water start running out, and while the Jacuzzi roared on—it runs as long as the water level is above a certain mark—I put my distorted feet back into the jet.
Halex rigidus,
the X-ray man says, looking at my toe joints. Pretty soon
Homo rigidus.
Toes, ankles, knees, hips, fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders. And bald head, eroded stomach wall, numb-white finger ends. I am a God damned museum exhibit of deteriorations.

The Jacuzzi, as the water dropped to the critical level, cut off, revived when my sloshing sent a wave against it, gave one suggestive ejaculation, and quit. That too. Hail and farewell.

I stood up in the tub and toweled off, looking out the window. Linnets and golden-crowned sparrows were chasing one another off the bird feeder. The morning was crystalline and inviting, but I could see from the way the trees and shrubs blew that the wind was from the north, which meant it was cold.

Dressed and sweatered, but in slippers, I wandered into the living room and dug out the
Britannica
and looked up rheumatoid arthritis. The unexamined disease is not worth having.

It turns out to be a disease characterized by destructive changes in the joints, its origin unknown but presumed to be either micro-organisms attacking the joints directly or the absorption of toxins of other micro-organisms in other sites such as mouth or intestines. Injury often appears to be a determining factor, and any condition tending to lower the general health may be a predisposing cause.

The acute or periarticular type, more common in women than in men, and making its onset between the ages of twenty and forty, appears not to concern me.

The chronic or osteoarthritic type, whose onset comes between the ages of forty and sixty, and whose causes seem to be injury, general ill-health, and exposure to cold and wet (chalk one up for Césare), has features that I recognize. Pyorrhea alveolaris or decayed or deficient teeth practically always present. (Yes.) Onset chronic and generally polyarticular. (Yes.) Pain variable and may be slight throughout. (Speak for yourself, John.) Swelling of joints nodular in shape and practically confined to the joint itself. (Don't know, have to look.) When the condition is polyarticular, usually a few large joints are affected, but none is immune. (That's the thing to remember, none is immune.) When monoarticular the hip or knee most likely to be affected. (No monoarticulate I. Since injury seems to be Fate in these matters, it's just as well I didn't knee Ole Sieverud instead of kicking him.) The formation of new bone occurs and may cause great limitation or even ankylosis; when this occurs in the spine the condition known as “pokerback” results. (Be patient-that's for later.) In the later stages the limitation of movement and muscular wasting may render the patient absolutely helpless but the condition is then often quiescent and painless. (God is kind.)

Now about treatment: Early diagnosis essential, etc. General health, etc. In the acute stage the joints should be given complete rest in a good position and oil of wintergreen applied. (What's a good position? What's oil of wintergreen?) In the chronic forms and as the acute stage passes off, the joints should not be kept completely at rest, massage and passive movement followed later by active movement up to a moderate amount of exercise being desirable to counteract muscular wasting and contractures. Spa treatment, radiant heat, hot air baths, and electric treatment sometimes effective. Adhesions may have to be broken down forcibly under an anesthetic.

Having no impulse to have any adhesions of mine broken down, with or without anesthetic, I resolved to accept counsel, submit to Ruth's management, and earn gold stars. She would come home to find me taking care of myself.

I found her infrared lamp in a closet and set it up so that as I sat reading with my feet on a hassock it would shine on my knees, ankles, and feet. The encyclopedia did not mention bourbon as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, either because the learned man who wrote the article did not deal in the obvious or because he wasn't that learned after all. The
Britannica
used to be a British publication, and perhaps did not know about bourbon, an American invention. It probably spelled whiskey without an e. When treatment is indicated, I say pile it on. So I got a tall drink and set it at my side outside the radiance of the lamp, and sat down to a spell of healing, a man safely and comfortably in out of the cold.

I had just about begun to enjoy looking after myself when the telephone rang.

It was Edith Patterson, calling for Tom as she always does. He has trouble making his unvoiced whisper heard over the wire. She wanted to know if I had a shredder for making compost.

Literally, I felt a thrill of pride for Tom. If you know the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree, that sort of thing. If he was going to garden, he wasn't giving up. But I couldn't help.

“Damn,” I said. “I don't. I've been going to get one for the last two years. If Tom wants one right away, I think he can rent one. But if he'll wait a day till I can get around to buying one, he can break it in for me.”

I had it wrong. “He doesn't want one,” Edith said. “He's got one. He won't be using it for a while, and he thought a demon gardener like you might get some good out of it, with spring coming on. It grinds up everything, even good-sized twigs, and spits it out as the most perfect mulch. Could you use it?”

Her voice over the telephone is extremely soft and pleasant. She sounded like a friendly neighbor trying to give away surplus zucchini. But my initial thrill of pride had already chilled, and I was uncertain. Should I accept the shredder as a gift, and thus make it clear I knew why he was giving it away, or did I pretend it was a loan that he would eventually want back? I said, hearty and cautious, “I certainly could use it, but I wouldn't want to deprive Tom.”

“It would just sit in the shed,” Edith said.

“All right,” I said. “I'll take it, and gladly, on condition Tom will call me the minute he needs it, or the day before he needs it, so I can load it up and bring it back.”

“It doesn't need to be loaded. It's got its own little trailer. If you're going to be home, we'll drop it off.”

“That's a lot of trouble. I can come for it as soon as Ruth gets back with the car.”

“It's no trouble. We'll be coming right by.”

She hung up, and I went back to the living room. The infrared lamp was shining on the hassock, where I had left it, and right in the middle of the cone of heat, practically smoking, was Catarrh. When I lifted him off it was like taking something out of the oven.

“You poor old bugger,” I said. “Here, make yourself at home down here.” I put my feet up onto the hassock and folded Catarrh down on the rug close to it. But warm as the rug was, he didn't like it. He sat up and eyed the hassock, and I could see in his mind, sluggish as an earthworm in adobe, the idea of jumping up on top of my feet. So I took him in my lap, and he settled down. He was bony, and his coat was dry and thin. Patting his scrawny shape, and thinking about Tom, I couldn't get out of my mind certain words like “relinquish” and “divest.”

In about twenty minutes I heard the car door slam, and hobbled into the bedroom and got into my shoes and put on a windbreaker over my sweater. The wind outside was cutting. The grass flattened under it, the globulous eucalyptus trees around the water tank turned inside out in a gust. Edith and Tom were both out of their car, working at the trailer hitch. She was as usual imperturbable in her shades and a vicuña coat. Tom shocked me, he had grown so thin in the three or four weeks since I had last seen him. He was pale, too, and slow in his movements as if afraid he might break something. And one odd touch. He was wearing an old baggy tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, but in its lapel buttonhole was the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. On the way to the scaffold, decorations will be worn.

He straightened up between the car and the fire-red shredder on its trailer. “H‘morning ... H'Joe.” Having no vocal cords, he has to shape each word or short phrase separately and force it out on a hoarse blast of breath. “Where do you... h‘want this... h'rig?”

“Let's unhitch it right there. The
yard kid comes tomorrow,
he can deal with it.”

I saw Edith's eyes focused on Tom's hands,
long,
thin, and strengthless, trying to unscrew the lock knob on the hitch. “Here,” I said, “let me get that.”

He paid no attention. After a good minute, using both hands, he got the knob loosened, and together we
lifted
the trailer's tongue and pushed trailer and shredder back against the bank.

“I'm going to enjoy that machine,” I said. “I've been wanting to try one.”

“H‘it's a ... hell of a good... h'machine,” Tom said. “H‘like a ... h'mechanized ... h‘mouth. But don't put your... h'foot in it.”

We laughed, standing in the chilly wind. He had none of the look around the eyes, at once purified and overeager and desperately attentive, that I have seen around the eyes of some who have got the word. He is my age, maybe a little younger. With his bony face and his elegant lankiness and his short haircut, he belongs to that type, academics and professionals generally, ectomorphs, who never cease to look boyish no matter how old or sick they get. Mystery. If I felt an uneasy adolescent peeking from behind my old-age make-up, as if I were a sixteen-year-old playing Uncle Vanya in the high school play, what did a Tom Patterson feel, knowing the play was almost over? Was the boyishness simply appearance, physiology, bony structure, or did some unknown boy or young man still operate in the internationally famous architect behind the death mask and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor?

He stood in the wind regarding me mildly, a friendly and helpful neighbor. Behind him Edith's dark glasses were watching him, not me. He said, “H‘Minnie says you had a ... h'distinguished guest the... h'other day.”

“Yeah. Césare Rulli. Right in the middle of the downpour.”

“Is he fun?” Edith said. “His books are pretty saucy.”

“Saucy is the word. Yeah, I suppose he's fun. If he hadn't just popped out at us we might have had you over to meet him. Just as well not, though. He sort of complicated crisis for poor Ruthie.”

“That's what Minnie said. It must have been an Event.” The eyes moved obscurely behind the dark glasses, and were on Tom again. “Is Ruth down at the home now?”

“Yes. Leading the lamentations at your absence.”

“She doesn't need me. She's great, they love her.”

“Her story is that they love
you.”

“I hope so. That's one of the things I'm most pleased to have done in my whole life. Well. We've got things to do. Ready, Tommy?”

“H'set.”

“Oh, come in!” I said.
“Have something to warm
you up.”

“Really, we've got to run. Give us a rain check?”

“I'll give you a season ticket. I guess we'll see you tomorrow at Ben's.”

Tom was kinking himself into the car. Edith, opening the other door, turned her full face toward me, the lips still, the eyes hidden. They waved, smiling, from inside.