The Inelegant Universe Read online

  Chapter 2. Baking Day

  Cutting school with a head cold, his voice swerving from honk to whisper, Chuck decided to bake. Sick days were always a mixed experience: there was the pleasure of snuggling back into the covers while his wife trudged off down the stairs to work, with her purse and knitting bag, and the relief of having lifted unexpectedly the nominal attention of 35 pairs of glazed eyes. But there was also, when he woke up after half an hour (he was a lousy sleeper), the slick tongue of guilt licking behind his ears in the quiet of the apartment, whose walls and windows were too thin to keep out the sounds of the working world, the mutter of traffic on Market Street slashed by hostile farting of motorcycles, the tapping of hammers at some local construction project, electronic piddling of telephones in surrounding apartments, all the little tinkerings of people with busy lives. The warmth of sanctuary warred with a sense of cheating, remembered from his earliest school days, lying to his mother about having a sore throat. In his eyelids’ semidarkness were images of his poor substitute, handing out xeroxes or stabbing at buttons on the DVD player. Chuck would look at the alarm clock and think, “Now first period is starting. Now homeroom. . .” Later he would imagine the melancholy afternoon classes, where, with blood sunk to their abdomens to process pizza, peanut butter, packaged oreos, the students would be staring blankly at the unfamiliar face trying to rob them of their day off. Not to mention the sub’s contempt as he gradually discovered all of Chuck’s dirty secrets: the disorganization of his classes, the sloppy attendance-taking, girls putting on makeup in class, boys reading the sports pages during lectures. . .

  The laundromat was the first line of defense against the feelings of isolation and uselessness. There he could toss the clothes in the machines, clang the lids down, and read for an hour without shame while his underwear frolicked with soft, puppy thumps in the dark windows of the dryers. But after that, and after rolling his clean socks, and after the vacuuming and another half-hour nap and washing out the bathtub, the thought of baking something radiated a great light. In fact, he’d promised the homeroom kids, who’d lately created the tradition that someone had to bring in home-baked goodies once a week to treat the class, that he would take his turn this week. That meant that baking wasn’t merely a stopgap to produce the illusion of productivity, but that most desirable of activities, an actual obligation, whose fulfillment could shut off all superfluous rumination for at least an hour or two. He’d been planning to do it the following evening, but being home now with nothing to do, he could use it to improve this wasted hour.

  However, while drying the big broad blue ceramic salad bowl that he liked to use for mixing, he dropped it. It fell to the edge of the counter, where it separated into large shards, then continued to the floor and smashed to tiny bits. He knew the worst as it left his hands, and was already vocalizing, something between a curse and a moan, even before he felt the patter of glassy chips on the tops of his bare feet, followed by the slower settling of powder. There were also slicing sensations on one finger and the side of his hand that sent little vortices curling, for some reason, along his buttocks. “Shit,” he said, finding the broken honking of his voice inadequate for the situation.

  There seemed to be too much blood for the modest wounds on his hands, big dark saucers of it on the white floor, first sharp-edged, then creeping and blurring amongst the scattered debris. He watched this display for a second or two, then traced the flow back to his wrist, where red was curtaining out from a neat diagonal slash, running into his cupped palm, and then spilling to the floor. Instinctively he squeezed his forearm with his other hand, which slowed the red river to a trickle; then released it long enough to wrap the dishtowel around the wound. After a moment’s contemplation, he walked to the phone and dialed 911. “I’ve cut myself and I’m bleeding quite a lot,” he whispered to the operator. “What?” “Please repeat yourself, sir.” Though clearly annoyed at his failure to speak up, she seemed willing to send an ambulance. He hung up and stared for awhile at his red fingerprints on the phone buttons, trying to recall what he knew about shock, then dialed Marnie’s work number.

  “I broke the salad bowl,” he told her.

  “What? I can’t HEAR you.”

  “I broke the salad bowl. You know, the big blue one with the feathers on it, or leaves. The one we got at that Rhinebeck crafts fair.”

  “My mother’s bowl?”

  “Did she give us that one? Oh yeah, I guess she did.”

  “Yes she did. It was her wedding present to us.” She paused meaningfully. He was silent, thinking. “Can you fix it?” she asked.

  I’m sorry dear,” he whispered. “It’s in smithereens on the floor. I would have tried, but it’s really hopeless. We’ll get another one, a nice one. Let’s have a date.”

  “If we can find something we like,” she said. “Oh well.”

  He darted into the seam of her philosophical tone. “It cut me when it was falling,” he said. “I think it needs to be stitched up. I’m actually going to Kaiser.”

  “Are you all right?? How are you getting there?” He wondered if she was sufficiently alarmed. She promised to meet him at the hospital, and he hung up, planning to go downstairs to wait for the ambulance. But then he didn’t like the thought of sitting on the steps wrapped in his bloody dishtowel, with passersby flicking their eyes away or, worse, asking him if he needed help. He sat down in the kitchen and waited, drifting and strangely relaxed, looking out the window at the sharp outlines of the distant east bay hills and thinking idly about cleaning up the mess on the floor.

  Eventually the defective door buzzer croaked, and two paramedics came thumping up the stairs, looking like twins in their medical greens. They wore chain bracelets on tanned, hairy forearms and had bands of beard clinging to the sculptured lines of their jaws. Both of them affected the showy physicality and slow calm of young men trained to deal with other people’s catastrophes. One of them examined the wound on Chuck’s wrist, then, instructing him to continue squeezing with the dish towel, wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his other arm with a great ripping of velcro. “Let’s have a look at the scene of the crime” said #2. They went into the kitchen and looked at the floor sprinkled with blood and chips. “I dropped the salad bowl,” said Chuck, “and one of the pieces must have cut my arm on the way down.” The two medics glanced at each other, then at the slash on his wrist, which was about to disappear under white gauze. #2 gazed at the splatters of blood on the refrigerator door. “Riddle my murdered digit and cut bait,” he said. Chuck thought, I really must have lost a lot of blood. “How often we turn liquid glamorous star,” replied #1. Chuck realized they were reading the random fragments of poetry magnetized to the refrigerator. #1 said to him, “You hold this.

  The two paras handed Chuck off to the Emergency Room receptionist and took their competent, hairy forearms off to the next call. Chuck sat next to a desk with his white-swathed cut wrist raised above his head while a green nurse took his blood pressure again. “They already did that,” he told her. “I still have some.”

  “How are you feeling right now,” she asked him.

  “OK.” He examined his perceptions. “Amid twenty snowy mountains the only moving thing is the eye of the blackbird.” In truth the world, this room, the fragmenting bowl all did seem rather remote. The nurse made notations on cream-colored paper and led him past gossiping medical staff to an examining room. “A doctor will be in to fix you up in a few minutes,” she said, drawing a curtain halfway across the door. He sat staring at the trouty pages of Outdoor Life. Nurses kept strolling by and glancing sharply at him behind his curtain. Some of them smiled, others nodded, still others merely noted his continued existence and passed on. After half an hour a youngish doctor appeared, dark-haired and female, smiling reassuringly. “Let’s have a look,” she said, moving him to the paper-covered examining table and unwinding the red-spotted bandage from his wrist. She began c
leaning the gash and tossing bloody disinfectant pads into a tray. “It’s a nice clean cut. Very professional.” She laughed. “I don’t even have to snip off any skin. You were . . .” “Baking,” he said. “The mixing bowl broke...” “and did this to your wrist?” She finished swabbing and rummaged in a stainless steel toolbox. “Help me visualize this.”

  “It broke on the edge of the counter, into big pieces,” he said. “One of them must have sliced my wrist.” “A very nice cut,” she repeated, holding the edges of the wound together with her left hand and beginning to stitch with her right. He preferred women doctors. Their hands were more aware than male doctors’. This one had a child’s stubby fingers, with bitten nails. “How do you feel right now,” she asked him. “A little detached? Distant? We sometimes worry about shock in cases like this, especially if you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “I’m all right,” he said. She glanced up at him, looking his face over like a building inspector scanning for earthquake damage.

  Marnie peeked around the curtain, then came in red-cheeked and out of breath. She looked at the wound, nearly closed up now, and at his face, and seemed reassured. “Armstrong,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “have you been cooking again?” She and the doctor began chatting immediately about embroidery, the antiquity of needlework, the bacteriocidal properties of bone needles. Chuck sat quietly, watching the needle puncturing his skin, wondering why he felt no pain. The doctor finished sewing, tied off the last knot, and rebandaged the wrist.

  “This magnitude of cut, along with the blood loss, can be very traumatic,” she said, all casualness. “People sometimes go through mood swings or get depressed after one of these and do strange things. I’d like to have you talk to a psychiatrist for a few minutes, just as a precaution.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just feeling a little vague. I think I need to go home and lie down for awhile.” They were both staring at him, the doctor from her little stool, stubby hands on her green thighs, Marnie with her purse and knitting bag clutched against her chest. “It’s such a big cut,” she said, “and you look kind of pale. It’s probably not a bad idea.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t want to wait here for another hour for a psychiatrist. That’ll really depress me.”

  “It’ll only take a few minutes,” said the doctor, standing up and heading for the door. “Just a precaution, and then we’ll get you a cab to go home.” She vanished behind the curtain.

  “OK, I get it,” he said. “They think I did it deliberately. For Christ’s sake, it was an accident. The goddamn shards slashed me on the way down.”

  “I know, I know. But people do get post-traumatic shock syndrome. Remember John, with that fat nodule on his neck?”

  “JOHN thought it was neck cancer or something. I’m not going to die from this. I’ll have a nice scar to show the kids at school. They like that kind of stuff. It’ll be very useful. The best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “You look very pale,” she said. “I just think it’s a good idea to talk to someone.”

  “I’ll talk to YOU!” He was trying not to yell, not wanting to agitate the ladies outside in wrinkled green hospital gowns, wheeling their IV stands toward the restroom.

  “I’m not a professional, and I can’t be objective about this.” Her tone was turning admonitory. “I’d feel better if you talked to someone else.”

  “Shit,” he whispered. But the smashed day of solitude, the hospital, the green attendants, the intermittency of his voice, perhaps the draining of his blood, had sapped his will to argue. “This is not how I planned to spend my sick day. It’s not exactly a restful experience.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. I don’t think you should go in tomorrow. You really need time to recover physically and emotionally from something like this.”

  “It’s a damn cut. Do you know how many times I’ve cut myself in this lifetime? I really don’t want to spend another day at home. I’ve got things to do.”

  “It’s not just a little cut, and you’ve lost a significant amount of blood. I wish you wouldn’t always downplay these things. I’m surprised you even called the ambulance.”

  “We don’t have any bandaids big enough,” he said. She dragged her chair over and put her arm around his shoulders.

  This helped, until the psychiatrist finally arrived. He was at least 25 years younger than Chuck, with an alert and professionally expressionless face. He straddled the stool vacated by the previous doctor and gazed searchingly at Chuck. “So what’s the story,” he said.

  “Just your standard salad bowl suicide attempt,” Chuck answered. “Just STOP it!” said Marnie, removing her arm from his shoulders. The doctor glanced at her, then back at Chuck, antennae all atremble. “Well, what did happen?”

  “I’ve got this cold,” said Chuck, “so I stayed home from school today. I got so depressed from being home all alone that I had to drop a salad bowl and deliberately let the pieces slash my wrist. But then I changed my mind when I saw all the blood and called an ambulance.” He leered clownishly. The doctor didn’t smile back. Marnie was silent and angry.

  “I need to understand how you’re really feeling about this before I can send you home,” said the doctor. His voice hinted at the possibility of hours of “observation” in one of these rooms, and probably a number of little talks like this one. Chuck thought about the annoyance of calling another sub from a pay phone, setting up more lesson plans, the prospect of a couple of more days hanging out in a room at Kaiser with green shrinks circling around him on sneakered feet, determined to make him vocalize his mental state. Words like Thorazine and Prozac marqueed in his imagination. Marnie had distanced herself to the other side of the room and sat avoiding his eyes.

  “It was an accident, for god’s sake,” he said, disgusted by the whine he heard in his voice, the gas of capitulation that filled the room. “I was washing a big bowl and it fell and broke. My arm was apparently in the way.” He held up the bandaged wrist. “I’m perfectly fine. I’d like to go home now, wipe the blood off the kitchen floor, and get on with my life.”

  The doctor rubbed his thighs, which were green like everyone else’s in the hospital. “We may not always be aware of the source of our actions,” he said. “Or even if we are quite self-aware, events like this one can sometimes bring up unexpected perceptions and behaviors. Some of them can be negative. You need to be aware of that.” He paused. “Do you find yourself brooding a lot when you’re alone?”

  “The unexamined life is not worth living,” replied Chuck. “It’s possible for us to over-examine our lives,” said the doctor. “Like everything, there’s a healthy balance.” He looked at Marnie. “Will you be staying home the rest of the day?” “Yes,” she said firmly, as though Chuck might object.

  He sprawled silently in the corner of the cab all the way home, sullen as a boy caught smashing windows in abandoned houses, letting Marnie deal with the cab driver. Wasn’t he supposed to be getting concern, sympathy, mothering? At home Marnie made him lie down and impatiently cleaned up the blood and shattered pottery herself, but she did a lousy job, of course, and he knew he’d have to finish it up in the morning after she’d gone to work. “I loved that bowl,” she said. “Why did you have to use that one?” He wasn’t sure whether she meant for baking or for something else, less legitimate. He had to lie on his left side all night because of the bandaged wrist, which throbbed and seemed, during his episodes of half-dream, to be swelling to two or three times its normal size. He was surprised to find no obvious change in its appearance when he got up in the middle of the night to pee. Marnie maintained a large punitive gap between their bodies all night.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be OK, all alone here?” she said on the way out in the morning, looking hard at him. He wanted to ask her why she was going off to work and leaving him alone, if she was so worried. Wasn
’t she afraid he’d try it again, maybe with a coffee cup or some Fiestaware? In the kitchen, after she left, he could feel and hear little grains of crockery grinding under his shoes, and there were faint brown smears under the overhang of the counter, the part that never got washed. There was dried blood on the bedroom rug, on the telephone, on the chair where he’d sat contemplating the blue distant hills. With a damp paper towel he wiped bloodstains off the refrigerator. “he play hot shot” read the little magnets on the door, and “honey recall still lake.” After sweeping carefully, he stood the broom in its corner. The laundry and the vacuuming were done; the kids would have to eat cookies from Safeway. He sat down in the bright light of the kitchen window and unrolled the bandage to look at his wound. It wasn’t much, really, five or six neat little black insects tying up a pinkish slit about an inch long. He rubbed off some powdery dried blood left by the casual seamstress, remembering with a slight, almost pornographic quickening how it had looked the day before, the drooling red grin and pitter-patter of drops raining to the floor. He let the sunlight fall on it, illuminating blue veins, one of which twitched rhythmically, tirelessly. Like yesterday, he could hear the sounds of busy people all around him, but there was no one in sight.