The War On Emily Dickinson
By Anna Scott Graham
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Anna Scott Graham
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
The ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters, incidents, and places are either products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
For Frank and Ruby, Robin, and especially my siblings, with much love.
“Souza, you got a minute?”
Marthe Souza was summoned by her last name, the floor in chaos. This ward had been busy since its inception fourteen years ago, where Marthe had been walking the tiles, feet pounding this level of the city hospital in a groove that with eyes closed she could negotiate.
No one here called her Marthe. Nor did they ask for Martha, that formal name having been dropped when Marthe was a little girl. All her siblings had nicknames; in a family of eight children, it became easier for Aurora Souza to commandeer her brood with shortened monikers. Marthe’s was actually the longest, only losing the A, one small syllable, but from the time she was no more than two years old, Martha Catherine Souza was simply known as Marthe.
But here in one of the busiest medical facilities on the West Coast, in a city by the bay, she was Souza. Souza to co-workers, to her superiors. Souza to the patients for whom she cared on a semi-permanent basis until they beat their current maladies, eventually returning as those bizarre complaints overtook immune systems ravaged and failing. In the early days of the epidemic, Marthe had been resolute, not allowing herself to go further than the best nursing care she could offer. After time, her resistance cracked. As patients slipped under her skin, Marthe lost that edge, one as the daughter of a doctor she had known all her life. All her life had led her to this point as she took slow, halting steps to Ash Denton’s room.
Marthe poked her head around the corner, found the same people who’d been there for the last four days. Her entire shift, this day her last, probably Ash’s too. Marthe had known that as early as Tuesday; now on Friday his battle with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, better known as PCP, was ending. A once-rare form of pneumonia, PCP was synonymous with this illness, one of the more ordinary causes of death Marthe had witnessed over the last fifteen years. Before that time, only few individuals contracted this virulent strain, which after settling in the lungs, refused to leave. Holding firm, strangling its victim deep within the warm, spongy tissues rendered helpless; in the end pneumocystis pneumonia always won.
A face met Marthe’s, that of Ash’s sister Wendy. She resembled her older brother, the way Ash used to look; blonde hair, chiseled features, wide blue eyes. The few times Marthe had seen Wendy Denton’s smile, it was Ash all over. Teasing, acidic, but warm underneath, deep and abiding. Deep and hidden from most, yet not from Marthe. With her, Ash had always been a love.
The summons had been to this room not because Marthe needed to check an IV or pulse. Those procedures weren’t necessary and even if Marthe had wanted to perform those duties, she wasn’t his nurse, Ash’s care not her job. This day, the final one of Marthe’s work week, was going to be Ash’s last.
Wendy crossed her arms. “He’s getting close.”
Marthe passed Ash’s mother, sitting with knitting on her lap. The yarn’s lively colors hit Marthe as she stood next to Wendy whose tanned, toned body seemed incongruous with her brother’s wasted form lying so still. His spotty breathing rattled in his chest, reverberating around the room. Next to Ash’s mother sat his aunt, her husband, their son. This was Ash’s blood family, but Marthe was too.
Blood through who they had lost and what they had seen. Ash had continued to work long after his diagnosis, standing alongside Marthe in a battle entered with great enthusiasm. Owning no fear, they’d been young, undaunted. Now as Marthe was thirty-nine, Ash only a year older, they were wily veterans having escaped so many previous skirmishes. Yet, Marthe would be alone at the end of this day.
She kissed Ash’s sunken left cheek, then reached for his hand, so small, holding it within hers. “Honey, I’m here.”
“I think he’s ready,” Wendy whispered.
Marthe only nodded, then glanced at Ash’s mother Helen. Ash’s father wasn’t present. Marthe had only met him once, back in the 1980s at some Denton family gathering in which Marthe had accompanied Ash, but not as his date. Nor as his beard, only a friend. They’d been friends since 1982, over fifteen years, and Marthe wondered if Conrad Denton would attend the funeral.
The only sounds were of knitting needles, a strange, metallic click click that struggled to mask a man drowning. Ash was drowning in his own lungs, drowning from PCP and so many moments he and Marthe had shared. Moments exactly like this with other fading figures, families and lovers, but this time the knocking on Marthe’s heart was for one well known, one for whom she took a deep breath, then exhaled. As though she could breathe for him, Marthe sucked in again, held it. Holding more than oxygen; Marthe Souza absorbed the last of Bryce Ashley Denton.
He didn’t look up, didn’t move. No one else did either, the aunt and uncle stilled, their son staring at the floor. Only Ash’s mother stirred, her needles tapping, then hands pulled teal yarn from a bag on her lap. Taking the chair Wendy had vacated, Marthe gazed at the door. She was waiting for one more, hoping another figure would step into the room.
“Ash, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” All Marthe had of him was a bony, limp hand, that and what she had stolen in the air, what bit of him remained in the atmosphere, all there was left to a person other than what she held within her head. Memories and recollections were now solely hers, no longer theirs. How it went when people died and as that passed through her mind, one more body entered the room.
Marthe cried watching that one approach the bed. Wendy didn’t see him, neither did Ash’s mother, who only continued knitting. Helen Denton didn’t consider her son’s last breath, didn’t witness his entry into death. Only Marthe and Wendy saw it, but Wendy missed the quiet, careful figure reaching for her brother’s hand, helping Ash to stand. Marthe smiled as he moved away, looking again like his sister, healthy and gorgeous with a smile that had broken so many hearts. Ash gave one to Marthe, a cynical grin also conceding defeat.
Only conquest there in that room to one woman who knew better. As Jesus Christ led him away, Ash only shrugged his shoulders, offering Marthe a smile as though she knew his destination all along. Ash chuckled as he exited the room, a silent You told me so uttered from his now hushed body no longer clamoring for air.
Three hours later Ash’s room was stripped, Marthe on a break. She had embraced Wendy and Helen, the aunt, uncle, and cousin too. Walking them to the elevator, she’d wiped a few tears, then checked on another man suffering from pneumocystis pneumonia. Dying, but on a far different schedule, one that might see him discharged in another few days. Marthe would return after her break and Bill Simmons would be departed, but not dead.
Not yet, maybe next year. Maybe in eighteen months. Marthe’s work life revolved around that notion; they left, but always returned. Once that had been realized, Marthe, Ash, and their compatriots accepted this deployment. Where on other wards the idea was to nurse patients to a permanent dismissal, here on Ward 5B, they always came back.
Unless they chose hospice or had enough support to die at home, this was it, a floor of the city hospital that exuded an air of belonging. Marthe was one with her patients, unafraid and understanding. Ash had been too and it was odd to think of him in the past tense. Odd but necessary, for no one survived, not for long. Antiretrovirals had made inroads, but were eventually overwhelmed by a virus that was sneaky, mean and enduring, stunning the medical profession with its boundless, energetic, and inventive methods of destruction. PCP was one manner, Kaposi’s sarcoma another, a cancer usually found in old men. Abrasions of a purplish hue had covered Ash’s body, inside too, Marthe assumed. In the early days she’d seen one patient unable to lie down, a lesion dangling from the back of his throat, obstructing his airway.
Pouring a cup of coffee, Marthe clutched a book from her locker and sat near a table, placing her mug on the edge. Taking occasional sips, she was engrossed with the novel, one she hadn’t wanted to read, as if Dave Kedayis was still alive, pushing it into her hands, his weak grin teasing. “I know you know this guy,” he would have smiled. “Souza, you HAVE TO read it!”
The Monkey Retrieval System was the book earlier that summer and if it had been written by any other author, Marthe would have devoured it immediately. Yet, she’d hesitated, just as she had avoided 1988’s The War On Emily Dickinson until Dave shoved it down her throat. He’d dropped that writer’s name, no secret in this small circle to Kell Vander Kellen’s proclivities. Also not hard to ascertain the Martha to whom most of Vander Kellen’s novels were dedicated was indeed Marthe Souza, sitting in the dingy nurses’ lounge. Her dark, curly hair sported random grays, brown eyes pouring through the words, her small feet propped on a chair. She was short with wide hips shared by most of her sisters, received from their mother. At five foot three, Marthe looked just like Aurora Souza with big eyes and a small bust, but unlike her mother and sisters, Marthe had no children.
There had never been the desire or time, not with the work so consuming. Not as bodies dropped like flies, Marthe with a plethora of nieces and nephews. Most of her siblings, save Frank and Annie, had reproduced, but Marthe wasn’t a traditional Catholic daughter. Kell hadn’t been the standard Catholic son, yet reading his latest book she found their upbringings as well as her work within the pages; notions of guilt, absolution, horror, and custom. His were Dutch, hers a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, Kell’s Midwestern background also in evidence. Some characters spoke in a Wisconsin dialect and Marthe stifled giggles, imagining voices so distinctive, much like that of the author before he’d lost his accent.
Ash had only been dead a few hours, but would have appreciated Marthe’s sense of continuation. Until he could no longer reason, Ash hadn’t wanted that one guest to appear. That Christ had also stood in Ash’s room made Marthe smile. For years she’d been telling Ash that Jesus would come for him and damnit if she hadn’t been correct!
Finishing a chapter, she glanced at her watch. Then her pager buzzed and Marthe headed for a phone on the wall.
“Souza here.” Her thoughts were still on Ash, hand in hand with a deity of whom he’d never believed. Never given the time of day, yet Marthe had been right. If some way existed to collect their ten dollar bet, Marthe would have instead demanded a pound of flesh. Ash would have groused, unbelieving except that the proof had been leading him away. Marthe had no idea what heaven was like, but couldn’t help her giggles, aware Ash was finding out at that very minute.
With two hours remaining on shift, Marthe wished to leave. Those cheery thoughts of Ash meeting Jesus had been dimmed, another patient reaching the end, then a recent admission falling into convulsions. Nothing she hadn’t seen before, but cyclical; as Ash died that day, sooner or later so would these men. No one left this ward healed, only reprieves, temporary and fleeting. Not as in days of old when hope reigned, a cure just around the corner. What they had assumed in 1983, 1984. The government must be developing a vaccine, some treatment, the alternative too awful to contemplate. Yet, there hadn’t been one free moment to think as 1984 turned into 1985, ‘86, ‘87. Marthe stopped at that year, again hearing her name.
“Souza, phone. It’s Jan.”
Marthe took the receiver from Aggie Walsh, a nurse who spoke with a crisp tone. What they all used, for while they were caretakers, this was a job, the only way Marthe had lasted this long. Some nurses simply couldn’t cope with agonizing demises in such immense doses, illnesses ravaging and therapies so trivial. How did you make anything better when it was so bleak? Marthe cared, caressed, then went home and ate dinner, made love with her boyfriend Robert Fuller, took vacations, saw movies. Spent hours with her siblings and it was her sister Janine Theresa, or Jan, to whom she spoke. A family large and prolific, one that Marthe bumped into at work, what with Jan downstairs in administration, Marthe’s eldest sister Lynn and their father Louis both cardiac surgeons. At times Marthe’s eldest brother Rick, a fireman, loitered there too. Yet, outside this hospital, work rarely intruded. It was those siblings and ones younger surrounding Marthe with love and affection, easing an ache that nursing the dying left within her. Marthe departed her job every day, but it never completely dissipated.
“Hey, what’s up?” Marthe had already informed her family of Ash’s demise, this call probably an inquiry as to plans during her break. Maybe Jan’s daughters wanted an afternoon with Aunt Marthe, perhaps a trip to the zoo might be in order. Time with her nieces would be a salve, easing Ash’s absence. Marthe conjured a girls’ day out with no boys allowed, living or only a memory.
“Marthe, listen. When you’re off shift, can you come down to the ER?”
“Uh, yeah. What it is?”
“Honey, Kell’s been admitted. Rick brought him in. It’s nothing serious, I mean, you can wait, but yeah. It’d be nice if you could come down when you’re done.”
The phone felt big and clunky in Marthe’s small hands. Kell had been a boyfriend, now he was in the ER. The receiver seemed to weigh as much as a body and Marthe gripped it, trying to keep it to her ear. “Does, I mean, should I come down there right now?”
“No, he’s unconscious and they’re still running tests. Mom and Dad are here, so’s Rick and Lynn. It’s okay, but just when you’re done, that’d be fine.”
Those people constituted half the family and while Patrick Souza would return to the fire station, that he was still there tripped Marthe’s brain. That and her mother’s presence.
The ward was busy, the floor packed with rushing bodies. One wouldn’t be missed, but Marthe heard the ease in Jan’s voice. Only tests for now, nothing requiring her immediate attendance. Handing the phone back to Aggie, Marthe viewed with new eyes this place so resolute, familiar. Eyes that suddenly saw through people and walls, not only their solid natures.
She never left work from the elevators, always using the back stairs. Exercise to keep those hips from spreading, yet that short ride felt to take as much effort as five flights’ of steps. Others stood between Marthe and the door and she had to push to exit before it shut. Still in her work clothes, she edged her way through the crowded hall, voices speaking various languages, none of which she knew. Both Aurora and Louis had desired their children to speak English, raising them with a deep love for God and their Catholic faith with little practical regard to their Iberian Peninsula heritage.
Marthe didn’t know Spanish or Portuguese, but sometimes she spoke Wisconsin, employing the accent of Kell’s childhood, one slower in speech with pronounced yah’s, his negative answers an elongated no-ah as though he was speaking of the biblical figure. When they met in the late 1970s, Kell’s accent was thick, but over the years it had waned until almost untraceable. The last time they’d been together, in 1993, Marthe had teased when he called home, his tone merging with his parents and siblings, settling on that unmistakable Midwestern tenor. For days Marthe would offer that inflection, driving Kell crazy.
That was all she considered, approaching the emergency room doors. Offering her badge, she went through, finding her father near the end of the room tapping his foot, arms tight around his long white coat.
“Daddy?” Marthe called.
She hadn’t meant to yell, but the room was a cacophony of shouts and low whispers. By her father’s relieved face, Marthe saw even before she reached Kell’s cubicle his condition was serious.
“Honey, thank God. He’s been asking for you.”
Louis’s arms fell loose, then surrounded Marthe, unspoken anxiety pouring through their embrace. Ash’s dad hadn’t been there to see him die that morning, but Louis Souza stood near a man not even his son-in-law. His surrogate son, Marthe accepted. She had always suspected it and noting concern in her mother’s eyes, it was confirmed. Kell was as much their child as Frank had been.
Kell lay unconscious, an IV in his left arm, tubes in his nostrils. His breathing wasn’t as arduous as Ash’s, but not smooth, and Marthe stared at the set-up. Kell was surrounded by Souza women who would be hard pressed to surrender him to any ailment, but Marthe’s brother was missing.
“Where’s Rick? What’s going on?” Marthe asked no one in particular.
“Someone called 911, might have been Kell. They were just the ones to get there first. Rick came with him in the ambulance. Seems he has…”
“Jan, what?” Marthe asked.
“Pneumonia,” Louis finished. “He’s got pneumonia.”
As when learning of Kell’s presence, Marthe felt empowered. Instead of supply cupboards, she observed the next cubicle, a patient treated for stab wounds. She could see him encircled by police officers, a young Vietnamese man thrashing about, not lying still like Kell. Kell’s face was flushed and Marthe stroked his bearded cheek out of habit. His skin was hot, probably running a temperature of at least one hundred degrees. But if he’d been here a few hours, he would have been warmer, more like one hundred four. One hundred four and drugs coursed through his system to offset the heat within his body, warmth to conquer a virus. Some virus, and tests had been run.
“What kind?” Marthe stared at her father. “What kind is it?”
“Lynn went to check, see if they know yet.” Jan’s voice was low.
Marthe looked to the curtain separating them from the other cubicle. Through thick fabric she saw an older Hispanic man with chest pains. The Souzas could be considered Hispanic, but Louis would sigh; European, from the Iberian Peninsula. From Marthe’s earliest childhood she knew that word and here they sat on the tip of another peninsula, Kell with pneumonia, but the subtype eluded her.
“Does he know?” Marthe took his hand. Kell began to stir, then again succumbed to the drugs in his system.
Louis shook his head as Marthe’s mother trembled. Aurora’s hands twisted in her lap and Marthe knelt down, grasping those digits, still with Kell’s hand in her own.
A conduit, how it had been with Frank, and Marthe wondered if her mother recalled that moment, held that in her memories. It never left Marthe, one small speck of history withstanding so many other details, so many other deaths.
“Mom, it’ll be okay. He’s in the best place.” Marthe’s voice was that of duty, her nurse’s accent spoken with ease. Yet, they never were. She had said the same to Wendy days ago, warning of Ash’s impending demise with a tone smooth, not detached but aware. Then Marthe discerned her eldest sibling far down the emergency room hallway. Through all the curtains and obstacles, Marthe observed Lynn’s arms stiff at her sides, deep in conversation with another doctor, one Marthe knew only by sight.
This man looked stern, or maybe it was the news he relayed. As Kell’s grip strengthened, Marthe released her mother’s fingers, then stood to blue eyes rising her way. Eyes feverish, in a daze, and Marthe gave him a smile. “Hey there. You could’ve just called me or come by the house if you wanted to talk.”
Her tone was light, which made him grin. She could tell he wanted to laugh, but was too debilitated. “You know me, Mr. Big Entrance.”
Marthe heard her mother’s small sigh, saw Jan gaze to the floor. “Oh yeah, asshole. It’s all about you.”
“Martha,” Aurora scolded.
That did make Kell chuckle, then he began to cough. Marthe helped him sit up, Jan on his other side.
“You stupid bastard,” Marthe continued in a cheery vein. “You better not expect me at your beck and call.”
His choking subsided, then Marthe laid him down, adjusting the bed, tipping him forward.
He tried to catch his breath. “You think they’ll mind if I have a cigarette?”
Jan tapped his arm as Marthe smiled. “Probably. Maybe you should switch to chew.”
“Shit, might as well shoot me.”
“Kell,” Aurora groaned.
It was white noise, chatter to which Marthe half-listened, the rest of her focus on this man; a writer, ex-lover, her friend. Her friend from ages ago, like Ash but not. Marthe wouldn’t ponder that; instead she noted Lynn’s three-inch heels, much like the knitting needles of earlier, marking off time. Those heels approaching, Marthe sensed something beyond what she could see, what she could feel. Kell’s hand rested in hers and as the stabbing victim calmed, the heart patient settled, Marthe knew. She knew and hated it.
“He’ll be down here for the night, at least till we can get him into ICU.” Lynnette Elizabeth was another wide-hipped, short Souza, always using her nickname of Lynn but never the last name of her philandering husband. Within the hospital she was known as Dr. Souza, as her father was also addressed, causing some confusion. There in the ER, Lynn was a rarely seen figure, but took no prisoners. “I want him up there as soon as there’s space,” she barked.
After the news had been spoken, Marthe hadn’t left Kell’s side. He had PCP, a serious case. Once this infection was cleared, then he would begin a regimen of antiretrovirals, a cocktail of drugs far advanced from ones Ash had originally been prescribed a decade ago. No longer was this illness a death sentence, which Marthe kept repeating to herself and to her mother. Like a diabetic, Kell would retain his life through the marvels of chemistry.
But those were only words. Kell was still, his large hands grasped by Marthe and Aurora as Jan stepped out to call Rick and their younger siblings, telling them their brother of sorts was in need of at least a prayer, more like a rosary. Aurora carried those beads in her Louis Vuitton purse and once Kell was asleep, they’d be retrieved, fingered gently, words murmured with love and reverence. Marthe never said a rosary for anyone, hadn’t since she was fifteen years old. Maybe that night she might mutter one Hail Mary.
“Marthe, you there?” Kell’s voice was losing ground.
“Yeah baby, I’m here. Listen, I’m gonna stay till they get you upstairs. Then I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“You gotta work?” he asked, sounding groggy.
Marthe saw her mother fumbling through her bag. “No, lucky you. I’m off until Tuesday.”
“What’s today?”
“It’s Friday, Kell. Friday.”
“Uh-huh.” His speech was labored and Marthe only wanted him to sleep. She would wait in the ER until he was moved, then spend another hour in intensive care, confirming he was settled. For her own peace of mind, Marthe wouldn’t leave until she was assured of his place within the hospital. For how long was unknown; a week, maybe two, depending on how he responded to treatment. He’d be treated, like another patient.
“Marthe?” he whispered.
As her mother began the intercession, Marthe noted her father and Lynn looking over a chart. Kell’s chart was only a few hours old. It would be with him to the end of his life.
The end of his life starts now. “What Kell, what is it honey?”
“Marthe, don’t leave, I mean, not until I’m really under the influence.”
“I won’t.” She stroked his beard, then his hand, her body strangely itching for an ancient cadence of beads handled and words mumbled.
Wiping a few drops of sweat from his brow, she leaned down, setting her lips along his forehead. “Kell, I’m here. I love you and I’m here.”
“For good?” he asked.
She smiled. They’d been together, then parted, how many times? How many times had she known this man, but now, as with Ash, it was different.
Christ was nowhere in the room except in the words Aurora Souza offered. Marthe gave Kell’s hands another squeeze, then lay beside him, curling her small body along his robust frame. Brushing strawberry blond hairs from his face, she settled against him. “For as long as you need baby. As long as you need.”
Wrapping her brown muffler tight against her neck, Marthe inhaled a cool, foggy October day. Often autumn was warmer than summer, but the chill made Marthe glad for her scarf, crocheted by her mother. Marthe had a dozen scattered throughout her room, used by her various flat mates, all nursing students like herself. Used as much in the summer as now, fall in the city a reprieve from the mild, damp weather Marthe had known her entire life. This city was her birthplace, also that of her parents, third generation immigrants calling California home. Marthe grew up here, on the northeast side, but now lived in a more western location near the university, sharing an apartment with three other women, all twenty years old and of a similar nature; young, Catholic, and so glad to be out from under their parents’ roofs.
It made sleeping with Stewart so much easier, no sneaking around, although he never spent the night. That was asking too much of her roommates, a line all respected. They would borrow scarves and money, skirts and shoes, but no man shared their domicile, not even for one evening, a pact made to maintain harmony, self-respect, and the ability to leave bed dressed only in underwear. Yet some sensibilities were changing; while all shared the same faith, none of them were really good Catholic girls.
They all attended mass, received communion, three of the four dating other Catholics. Only Sherry Canfield was seeing a man outside the faith, but Bobby Crosby was a Lutheran. They alternated churches on Sundays, but Bobby complained. Sherry never took communion at his church while he always went up with her for the bread and wine at St. Mary’s.
Humming to herself, Marthe waited for Stewart. They would have an early dinner, then meet with her family for mass. Marthe loved that continuity and hoped all her siblings would attend. Frank was the only question and Marthe had considered calling him, reminding him how much their mother would appreciate his presence. Not owning a car, Marthe had left her apartment at two thirty, catching the bus. Now she stood, feeling chilled. Where was Stewart?
Marthe stepped into a bookstore that had been attracting customers before her birth. Her parents had brought the family here when the children were small, hands held with younger siblings. Eight Souza children and Marthe, the fourth, usually stood with Annie, nine and a half years Marthe’s junior. It was Marthe’s job to prevent her youngest sibling from grabbing everything her active hands could reach, but usually Marthe and older sister Jan traded, Jan better with Annie while Marthe preferred their brother Chris. He was quiet, would do what Marthe told him. He was still like that, so unlike Frank.
Loosening her scarf, Marthe draped it over her shoulders. Frank had also moved out, was living on the south side, a good twenty minutes by bus. When not busy with class, Marthe made that journey, finding him either sacked out in bed or on the rare day at his job. He worked at an Italian restaurant, his arms a swirled pattern of burn marks from the pizza oven. She had noticed those scars masking others, ones that truly frightened her, his needle tracks more visible over the last year. Marthe had scolded in jest, her fears cloaked in medically appropriate warnings. He needed to use clean needles to stay clear of hepatitis B, but Frank had only laughed, then kissed her, rolling from his single bed in a dank room smelling of urine. Marthe was the only Souza to brave that seedy, drug-infested neighborhood, Rick and Lynn not stepping foot on those streets, only Jan sometimes accompanying Marthe on those missions. Mercy missions Jan would sniff, yet, Marthe was undaunted. She didn’t go there at night, only during the day, trying to reach into that brother, one of two younger than her.
There were five sisters and three brothers, Jan, Marthe, and Frank, short for Francis, right in the middle, each a year apart. That forged a bond, yet, Marthe adored them all, why she wanted to attend mass that night, one event since the beginning of the semester in which everyone met. Marthe’s junior year of nursing school was proving her worth and busy with homework, Sundays weren’t for church anymore, why her parents had switched to Saturday nights. Easier for all ten Souzas to gather, but usually it was only nine, Frank rarely making an appearance.
Looking at a book, Marthe considered taking a bus, finding Frank, but Stewart had said he would meet her at three. Marthe’s watch read three fifteen and she scowled. Stewart was sometimes late, but Marthe forgave his tardiness, thinking what would happen after church. Nothing altogether Godly and she smiled. They would go to his apartment, not far from hers. He’d promised they wouldn’t encounter any of his roommates, but Marthe wasn’t bothered as long as no one actually barged in on them.
She turned, feeling eyes on her. That happened on occasion, usually Marthe catching an errant younger sibling with a hand in the cookie jar, maybe Chris trying to sneak up on her. He was quiet but mischievous, like all the Souza boys.
Seeing no one she knew, Marthe returned to her book, trying not to be irritated. Maybe traffic was bad, maybe Stewart had gotten a late start. She would dismiss small indiscretions, aware he would make up for it later. Physically he was her type; tall, burly, and blonde with a laughing smile and eager hands, hands for which Marthe ached, standing alone in the shop. Hands that had been intimate with her skin for months and she looked again, finding vaguely familiar blue eyes staring her way.
She squinted, not having worn her glasses. She only needed them for distance and they would have been a hindrance, gathering moisture from the dismal weather. But without them, the figure was hazy. Except for the beard and his blue eyes, which seemed to light from his face, it could be Stewart; the same large build, similar strawberry blonde hue to the shaggy hair. Except for those eyes; Stewart’s were gray. This man’s were water-blue.
She dropped her book as his voice rang in her ears, the tone so dissimilar, yet known. “You want I should get that for you?” he asked, picking up the novel.
Marthe stopped squinting, taking it from his hands. “Oh my God! How are you?”
His name was on the tip of her tongue, but he rescued her. “Kell, Kell Vander Kellen. From the uh…”
From the clinic, she considered. It had been a year, over a year, but she hadn’t forgotten those eyes, that smile, or most importantly, his voice. Not a California ring but from the Midwest; hadn’t he said he was from the Midwest?
“How are you?” His handshake wasn’t typical but gracious, nearly intimate. Like Stewart’s hands, warm and easy, so easy Marthe had slept with him on their first date. Slept with him, but Kell had only been a patient of sorts, accompanying a girlfriend for a pregnancy test. Marthe looked around; he seemed alone.
They made small talk, Marthe taken in by that accent, one that played in her brain, lyrical in a folksy way, setting him apart from all others in the store. It had eased some, the vowels not quite as rounded, but every time he said no it came out as no-ah, and she found herself smiling. Innocent was this bear of a man, out of place with his surroundings.
Moving to a quiet corner, they took two chairs. She no longer held anything in her hand, only Kell in her view, and Marthe listened with rapt attention. He’d written a book and by sheer luck had found an agent. The novel, entitled 1955 Rainbow Chessboard, was being published, and Kell’s enthusiasm spilled in colloquial words, oh wow’s and yah know’s.
“That’s fantastic!” Taking his hands, again she felt a familiar vein. His fingers were large, encompassing hers, as was his smile. “So what’s it about?”
He stared down, then into the room. “Uh well, yah know it’s about this woman, and she’s uh, had a baby. Well, she’s pregnant. For a long time.”
Marthe nodded as he continued, Kell unable to suppress a chuckle. “A really long time, yah know. Like,” and he laughed.
“What?” her smile encouraging.
“Forty-four years. She’s been pregnant most of her life. It’s not literal, I mean, it’s literary fiction, but certainly not real.”
“Why was she pregnant for so long? Or should I not ask?”
Marthe’s giggle eased Kell’s and he removed his hands from hers, running one through his hair. “Hey, you mind if we step outside? I need a smoke.”
Nodding her head, they left the shop, standing in the cool breeze. While Kell lit a cigarette, Marthe adjusted her coat and scarf, and they walked from the door. She was curious as to why he hadn’t lit it inside, but didn’t ask.
“I don’t like to smoke in stores,” he muttered as if reading her mind, blowing a white puff into the air. “Especially not in bookstores. Can you imagine buying a book that smelled like an ashtray?”
“Then why do you smoke?” No one in her family used tobacco, incongruous with her father’s occupation as a heart surgeon. A dirty habit, Louis Francis Souza always remarked, especially in front of Frank, who had started with pot as a young teenager. He’d abandoned that custom last year, in spring, around the time he started work at the restaurant.
“Oh something to do, actually, my parents smoke, God, just something, yah know?”
“My brother used to smoke.” Marthe stared to the concrete. Abandoned butts, some an inch past the filter, littered the ground.
“He quit?”
“No, just switched habits.”
A cold wind blew against her face. Kell held his cigarette low, but she smelled that odor, not of pot, only tobacco.
“The one I met, I mean, the one from last year?”
Kell’s voice had softened, losing that distinctive tone, becoming more like Marthe’s, at one with their location. He took a long drag, then dropped the butt to the ground, smashing it with his shoe.
Marthe nodded. Last year Frank had been edging toward something stronger and while she’d tried to dissuade him, her words and pleas had gone nowhere. Now he was strung out. She struggled to cover it with phrases less harsh, but burn scars on his arms couldn’t disguise what she knew as fact. Her brother, only nineteen years old, was a junkie.
Freed from his vice, Kell’s arm linked through hers, and Marthe was led into a cafe. She didn’t know if Stewart would find her or if he was still meeting her. Maybe he’d forgotten.
“I’m waiting for a friend, but God it was getting cold out here, yah know-ah?”
An ah-sound was slapped on the end of some of Kell’s words, his voice having returned to its native tone, making Marthe smile. “I’m waiting for someone too, but he’s late. Really late.”
“In the doghouse eh?”
She smiled again, his eyes twinkling. “Maybe. We’ll see how the rest of the night goes.”
Kell laughed, ordering them each a coffee and they only spoke of their plans, Kell seeing a film with a friend, Marthe’s uncertain afternoon staring at her. As they shared two cups each, Stewart Campbell faded from her thoughts, Kell revealing more of the plot from his novel. Marthe wasn’t really listening, only engaged by the sing-song nature of his inflection. Then one sentence almost made her drop her cup. “What’d you say?”
Kell wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I said it’s for you. You and your brother.”
Looking to the window, Marthe had to escape his eyes. So blue, maybe like the lakes from his hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, one fact settled in her brain. She placed her cup in the center of the table. “For us? Are you kidding?”
Kell stared into his cup, then looked at her. “I never forgot that day, how you were with him. Maybe this sounds weird. It was like you were his mother, but he was older than you.”
Marthe tried to recall Kell’s story. The mother had given birth at the age of sixty-six, but by the time she was eighty, her child was nearly one hundred. “Was her baby a boy or a girl?”
“You know-ah, I didn’t make it clear. It’s up to the reader.”
Marthe felt tears, never considering the future and Frank in the same thought. Was that deliberate? “My brother’s a heroin addict,” she whispered. “No one in my family wants to talk about it, but it’s the truth. He’s a mess, just a goddamned mess!”
She crossed herself, tears falling on the table, Marthe afraid to brush them away. Stewart would probably find her if she did, but he didn’t know about Frank, only that one of Marthe’s brothers wasn’t well. A euphemism as though Frank had a birth defect, some problem of which no one spoke, how her family dealt with him, though her father was a doctor, her oldest sister in medical school, her brother Rick a fireman. Might he find Frank one day, OD’d in the rat-infested hole he called home?
“Tell me what happens, I mean, at the end of the story.” Marthe stared out, hoping to God Stewart wouldn’t arrive that minute. She said a small prayer, would say a rosary if her boyfriend would only give her time to recover. She hadn’t said a rosary in years, but if Marthe could just let this pass from her.
“Marthe, maybe not now.”
She nodded. “Don’t want to give away the ending?”
A smile came to her face, but Kell’s eyes stole it. Eyes that seemed aware and wary, eyes not like her boyfriend. Stewart’s were gray, cold, like Frank’s.
“She buries her child.”
“Uh-huh.” Marthe wiped her face, then finished her coffee, clasping her hands together.
“I had no idea it had gotten so bad,” Kell said. “I’m sorry.”
He pulled out his cigarettes and after a few deep puffs, tapped pale remnants into the ashtray. Marthe inhaled it, wondering what her parents would say. They knew Stewart didn’t smoke; would they ask where she had been?
“No one wants to admit it.” Then Marthe smiled. “Next time I see him I’ll tell him he’s in a book. He’ll like that.”
“When will that be?”
“Maybe tonight. Well, probably not, but maybe.” Her voice faded. “Maybe. When does it come out?”
Kell held another cigarette in his hand. “Next summer.”
“You must be thrilled.”
Marthe wanted to move away. Not from Kell, but from her brother. Suddenly she hoped he wouldn’t be there, wouldn’t manage to drag himself to church. It would be like that, Frank hauling himself as if a corpse, straggling and wretched. All she could picture were his burn marks as if sacrificing himself over a fire, hiding and hoping, waiting for salvation.
She prayed for him, but not as she had her maternal grandmother, Nana Garcia to her descendents, many of them living in that city. Marthe had said her last rosary over her dying maternal grandmother, leaving it to huge Catholic clans of Spanish and Portuguese extraction to continue that specific litany of prayer. Marthe only prayed that Frank wouldn’t lead her family to another funeral, but it wouldn’t be like in Kell’s novel, a woman burying a child so much older and younger at the same time.
“You’re not Catholic are you?”
Marthe’s question came without warning and Kell chuckled. “Uh, yah I am. Why?”
“I’m going to church tonight and it looks like my boyfriend’s standing me up. You wanna come? Maybe he’ll be there, Frank. You can tell him about your book.”
She didn’t want to be alone in meeting her family. Didn’t want to find some way to spend the next few hours, Stewart having forgotten their plans. Marthe didn’t want to step into the cold by herself, instead preferring this lug of a man to shield her, even if he had stripped her naked. Kell had removed Marthe’s invisible cloak, but maybe he could be the one to find it, set her right again.
“Well, I’d love to but I uh…”
“Oh, right. I forgot. You’re meeting someone.”
“Only a friend, a guy I work with. We’re going to see Midnight Express. You can join us.”
Marthe had read about the film, the true story of a man stuck in Turkey after trying to smuggle drugs into America.
Kell realized the plot as she did. “Oh Christ, I’m sorry!”
Marthe giggled. “God, maybe that’s a sign. At least Frank’s not in some Turkish prison.”
Kell’s chuckles began and Marthe’s boyfriend approached a table caught in rapturous laughter. Marthe spotted Stewart first, tears pouring making it hard to see. Even before she said hello, she glanced at her watch; four thirty.
“Stewart, oh my God. Stewart Campbell, this is Kell, Kell Vander Kellen.”
Neither Kell nor Marthe had stopped laughing, but Kell managed to extend his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Marthe scooted over, the men sitting across from each other. Looking at them, she wondered if they saw what she did; mirror images except for Kell’s beard and the color of their eyes.
Turning to Marthe, Stewart seemed not to notice. “God honey, I am so sorry! I can’t begin to tell you all that happened.” He rattled off plausible excuses. Under the table Marthe felt his hand reach for her knee.
The squeeze was welcome and instead of an early dinner Marthe wanted to catch a bus, reach his room. Strip herself literally after all that figurative shedding, let this man inside her body. Let Stewart slip on a condom, then make love to her, erasing all her thoughts.
Maybe they would use two rubbers, Marthe with four in her purse. A careful woman if nothing else, but she hadn’t been prepared for Kell’s assault, one for which all the prophylactics in the world wouldn’t have protected.
“Listen, I should be going. Jaime’s never gonna find me in here.” Kell stood, again shaking Stewart’s hand.
“Oh, we should be leaving too.” Urging her boyfriend from the bench seat, Marthe then pressed her body close to him.
Her overtures weren’t missed. “Oh yeah. We’re never gonna make church and dinner both.”
Marthe smiled, Stewart’s voice one of worry. He was a better Catholic than she, for if Marthe had to choose, she would skip mass, have sex instead. If she missed this one Saturday, perhaps she wouldn’t have to explain the cigarette smoke that encompassed her body, nor think about her brother.
“Well, it was so good to see you,” Kell began, reaching for Marthe’s hand.
From behind her boyfriend, she offered her right arm, felt a warm squeeze of her fingers. It only made her move closer to Stewart as they exited the cafe.
In the breeze, the sun peeked through, Kell waving at someone down the street. A figure approached and Marthe squinted. He was dark-haired, not tall, with a friendly smile. Upon closer inspection, he had brown eyes, a voice familiar, local. Kind, effeminate.
Stewart excluded himself from saying hello, Marthe offering their introductions. Jaime Schuler was a waiter at the same restaurant where Kell bussed tables and for a few minutes those three exchanged pleasantries. Only once Kell and his friend walked away did Marthe notice Stewart’s silence.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked as they caught the next bus.
Taking their seats, she slipped a hand under her boyfriend’s right leg, warming her fingers. The bus was crowded and Stewart remained quiet. Marthe signaled for the next stop, the closest to Stewart’s apartment.
“Why are we getting off here?” he asked.
She smiled. “I’m not hungry for dinner.” Stepping from the bus, they walked up the small hill. Marthe’s fast pace was matched by her lover and upon reaching his room, it was only minutes until they were naked, a condom placed where it belonged.
Both were near an orgasm but Marthe’s earlier question rankled. “Stewart, why didn’t you say anything to Kell and his friend?”
Marthe felt him shrink again, this time from within. She moved her hips, trying to retain what was being lost. Her attempts failing, Marthe watched Stewart’s eyes close tight, then felt him pull from her.
“What is it?” Marthe ran her hands along his chest but nipples were flaccid, as smooth as the small organ in his groin. The rubber hung and Marthe kissed his neck.
“Why’d you ask that? I was nearly there!”
She moved back, wrapping the sheet across her chest, though there wasn’t much to hide. “Stewart, what?”
No words followed, nor any further intimacy. They dressed, arriving early at St. Anne’s, saving seats for Marthe’s family. Frank never did show and with her youngest brother on her left, a boyfriend on her right, Marthe Souza repeated the liturgy, chanted the Lord’s Prayer, then joined the rest of her clan for communion. She and Stewart parted with only a peck on the other’s cheek, Marthe getting a ride home with her older brother.
After waiting two weeks with nary a phone call, Marthe returned Stewart Campbell’s few belongings, a couple of t-shirts and one Beatles album, and didn’t hear from him again.
“Hey, I gotta go. I love you and I’m sorry about yesterday.”
Marthe kissed Kell’s cheek, half wanting him to wake, half hoping he’d subconsciously note her apology.
“Oh Marthe, you really gotta leave?”
She sat next to him, feeling him press against her. He was hard and if there was any extra time… “Yeah. Someone’ll have my hide if I’m late.”
Kell’s smile teased. “Shit. Gloria’s a…”
“Don’t say it,” Marthe whispered, a giggle escaping.
As Kell rolled to his back, Marthe didn’t mistake his erection, but the bus was due in ten minutes, and even with all their disagreements of the last week, this day would end her shift. A long day, sixteen hours, but Marthe owed Aggie Walsh, a debt having been claimed.
“Baby I’m sorry, really.” Kell’s voice was soft, loving, taking all the self control Marthe possessed to not slip under the sheet.
Instead she leaned over, kissed his mouth, gnawing on his lower lip. “I’ll be back a little after eleven. Don’t wait up, okay?”
He nodded and Marthe felt tears, right at the surface. Leaving the room, she gathered keys from the table, hearing him stir. As she reached their door, Kell staggered toward her, and she waited for him. It would have been so easy to just leave, not say goodbye or I’m sorry, but Marthe would be gone all day. All day she would have him on her mind and better for it to be missing him instead of anger.
“I love you, God, I love you.” Kell’s arms enveloped her.
“I know. I love you too.”
He caressed her face, then her chest. Over her tiny breasts, further past her waist. Then he stopped, rubbing his fingertips along her hipbones.
“Find something?” she giggled.
“I’ll be waiting,” Kell said. “Just come home.”
He stared to the floor, but Marthe felt his tears in the tenderness of his touch. She kissed his cheek, then opened the door, saying nothing more.
Kell made a mental list; noodles, hamburger, parmesan cheese, a jar of spaghetti sauce. Red wine chilled in their fridge, but they were out of bread. He needed to buy a loaf of sourdough too.
Nate’s warm body was pleasant, but Kell knew Nate was annoyed. He hated using rubbers, but Kell insisted. It was the condom and the reason for it; sometimes Kell wondered which pissed Nate more, the prophylactic or Marthe.
Lying on his stomach, Kell rubbed his erection against Nate’s mattress. After this, he would stop at the store and pick up things for dinner. Maybe a half-gallon of milk too; in the morning Kell could make pancakes for breakfast, one of Marthe’s favorites. Who knew when they would wake? The double shift wouldn’t see her home until almost eleven thirty, plenty of time for the store, cleaning their apartment, Nate. Nate Green had called not long after Marthe was out the door, not even six thirty that morning. That hadn’t gone unnoticed, Nate so mindful of Marthe’s schedule.
Some unfair notion was perpetrated as Kell accepted Nate’s orgasm. Wrong in that here he was having sex with someone else and Marthe was working two straight shifts. She was the main breadwinner, but Kell’s second novel, An Opaque Ocean, still sold. He bought their groceries, she paid the rent. The rent, PG&E, water and garbage, but he picked up the cable, newspaper, and shopping. His own climax hovering, Kell moved against the bed, Nate’s pudgy body still lying right on top of him.
“God, come for Chrissakes!” Nate hissed.
“You want me to?”
“Yes!”
Kell did so, thinking not only of the man over him, but dreaming of Marthe underneath. Wishing for them both, but that had only happened once. Kell’s release staggered, emotions building all week. He and Marthe hadn’t had sex for days, too busy fighting about, well, about this. About Kell’s infidelities and a few of Marthe’s own.
Nate moved from Kell, but Kell didn’t budge, couldn’t really. It had been four days since he’d had sex with another person, four long days of arguments, accusations, loneliness. He missed Marthe so much, this day an age until she returned. Then he would feed her, make love to her. Cook her favorite dinner, then lay her on their bed and… Kell smiled, glad he was face down. He would share many things with Nate, had for years, but Kell’s satisfaction with Marthe only made Nate irritable.
Kell heard Nate use the toilet, imagined the condom being disposed with disdain. Too unsafe not to use them, the only way Kell would let Nate have him. How many deaths had he witnessed through Marthe’s work stories, and he’d known some of those men, one a good friend. Knew them, had slept with a few. Only a couple, but always with condoms. For years that fact had been hammered home to prevent rectal gonorrhea, avoid unwanted pregnancies, and Frank. Because of Frank, more than anything or anyone, Kell never screwed around unprotected.
Not Kell, nor the men with whom he slept. Marthe always insisting her flings use rubbers. A drawer in her bedside table was stuffed with condoms and she carried several in her bag, sometimes handing them out, along with a couple of quarters, to panhandlers they encountered. Two bits and a rubber would emerge to a face at first grateful, then amazed, then embarrassed. Marthe was never caught out, always a smile, even if she was tired, angry, hurting. Even if Kell had hurt her again, Marthe always turned the other cheek.
Rolling to his left, Kell sighed, Marthe Souza the strangest Catholic he’d ever met. Between sleeping around and her visions of Jesus, Kell had never encountered anyone so free yet bound, her liberal views about sex and love tied into some mystical reverence for the Son of God. She believed in a woman’s right to choose, never said a rosary, but tried to attend mass as often as her schedule allowed. Half the time Marthe received communion on the run, either on her way to work or in the hospital chapel where Kell sometimes found her kneeling, deep in meditation. She rarely prayed at home, only there, in that building, a shrine of sorts to the multitudes now dying every day.
People died daily in Ward 5B, Marthe with either another brave tale of some young man struggling with his last breath surrounded by a generous helping of family, lovers past and present, and friends. Or a more somber account of one lonely soul out of his head, covered in lesions, foaming at the mouth or simply unresponsive. Maybe he’d been given a near lobotomy to ease the incredible pain, holes drilled into a skull pounded by intense agony. Kell had seen some of those men, most older than he. Kell and Marthe were twenty-seven, yet her patients were usually in their mid-thirties, more often closer to forty. Only the drug addicts were young, like Frank.
Kell heard Nate in the shower. Nate Green and Frank Souza were both born in 1959. Sometimes Kell remembered that detail, a question Marthe had asked Nate the one time they’d all been together: How old are you? Kell recalled her face, hearing Nate’s voice, Marthe having only smiled, but Kell knew what else she’d heard. A man still living after Frank had gone.
“Hey, you look rested. What’d you do last night?”
Marthe’s voice was light, standing next to Ash, looking over charts. Dark circles framed his blue eyes, a tired pallor on his face.
“Spent all night at the Borehead. Got so much Crisco up my ass, shit’s gonna be sliding outta me for weeks.”
His smile shone as he kissed her cheek, then strode in the direction of a patient Marthe knew would die that day. People died every day now, one, maybe two between Marthe’s coming and goings. Yet, five hours into her double shift, it had been busy day for Jesus, Marthe already witnessing his presence twice. A third was due, probably before she broke for lunch.
Jennifer Reynolds approached Marthe, glancing over her shoulder. It wasn’t hard as Jennifer was nearly six foot, Marthe one of the shortest nurses on the ward. “How is he?” Jennifer asked.
Marthe looked down the hall, watching Ash disappear into a room. “He’s a crappy liar.”
“What’s it been, a month, six weeks?”
“Eight.” It had been two months since Greg’s death and Ash was compensating, untruths covering his pain. He looked like hell and Marthe knew he still wasn’t sleeping.
“I don’t know how he does it,” Jennifer sighed. “Coming in here every day, seeing the same thing.”
Marthe smiled. “How do we do it?”
Jennifer chuckled. “God, I don’t have a clue. You really here till eleven?”
“Gotta pay the piper. Aggie’s in LA.”
“Yeah, I think that’s what she said.”
They chatted for another minute, then Marthe saw jittery, jerking motions, bodies heading toward the room Ash had entered.
“Souza!”
Marthe passed Jennifer and other personnel, her small stature quick in moments like these. Moments where a life ended and as Marthe reached the door she stopped, allowing someone else before her.
She followed Christ into the room as Ash stood near the bedside of Tommy Wallace. A housepainter, Tommy had been in and out of the ward over the last year with PCP, persistent diarrhea, and thrush. Blackouts followed, due to crushing headaches, then another round of pneumonia. Now death had found Tommy, a thirty-eight-year-old native of Tacoma, Washington, having moved to California when he was twenty-two. He lived in a neighborhood blighted by this epidemic, but his hospital room was empty save the medical staff and a khaki-clad Jesus Christ. Tommy’s partner Gene had died six months earlier, both men with no family close. No family that would travel to see their sons, brothers, nephews, or grandchildren die of this agonizing, mutilating, embarrassing disease.
Ash stared at the clock, waiting to record the time of death. No resuscitation was performed, Tommy having insisted. Sitting at Gene’s side, he’d made Marthe, Ash, and Jennifer swear that when his time came, they would let him go. Let him be with Gene and while Ash had sneered, Marthe had nodded, holding Tommy’s hand while Tommy gripped his beloved. Marthe had seen God come for Gene and there, as Thomas Brian Wallace breathed his last, she witnessed a resurrection. Tommy stepped from a gaunt, wasted body healthy, happy, if not a bit surprised. His green eyes caught Marthe’s and they shared a smile. Then Tommy left the room, his hand grasped by a man Marthe had come to know intimately.
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