The Imbecile

The Imbecile

A NOVEL

S.A. Traina

For Loron,

for always

You’re all I am… can’t you see?

Declivity

She said to remember how much she loved Don and me, and all the trips we took together. To be there for you. To watch over you. Sal . . . , Carol’s voice gives out, nothing left but a whispering cry, . . . I’m really afraid. I thank her in a strangled fury, trying not to sound panicked, then put down my work phone to disconnect and dial 911.

I leave everything behind but my cell, remembering to lock the door as I race out of my office and down the hall, then down the stairs and out the main entrance, nearly knocking one of the enormous sliding glass doors off its suspended track as I barrel ahead, quietly cursing the slow-moving transparency long after banging into it, already up and out of the switchback wheelchair ramp that leads to the parking lot, my hiking boots making their way to the car as if storming down the dozens of mountainsides ingrained in their leathery souls.

I dial my wife’s number for the hundredth time as I approach my car, getting nothing but the same damn recording.

How did I not see this coming? I say to the jury in my skull, the defense already prosecuting its own witness, the car executing its own egress, memory lining up the last several months front and center, innocence receding as fast as reality is intruding.

This morning she’d left for work before the sun came up, something she’d never, ever done, but I’d long been banished to the daybed, so by the time I’d groggily realized she was out of the house, I didn’t stop myself from falling back to sleep. We’d gone from man and wife of thirty years, the most intimate of roommates, to the strangest of cellmates, each somehow unable, unwilling to talk to the other, so I’d still been trying to figure out what the new rules were.

No excuse.

Li Qin’s doctor recently added an anti-depressant to her burgeoning daily drug cocktail, yet another pill with my name on it, as our failing marriage was rejuvenating me and disintegrating her. Failing? Failure is what it felt like, the longest coming asunder of any matrimony under the sun.

Am I supposed to run these red lights I wonder as I alternate between slamming the brakes and the accelerator, agonizing my way through the town standing between me and the parkway, knowing paramedics are on the way to our tenth floor apartment, and that they’ll get there long before I can negotiate the sixteen miles from my job to my wife.

My hands twist and torque the steering wheel, equally opposing force simultaneously applied, manually straining manfully to physically focus my fear as best I can in this confined space at its restrained pace. Seconds count down on the crosswalk at the next light, designed for pedestrians but utilized by drivers seeking to sneak in under the wire and the web and the camera and the radar and the all-seeing eyes of village cops with little to do but dunking donuts and writing tickets that on this night would make me lose time I do not have, and so I check that I’m not getting tailgated, push the pedal to snatch that extra second and then immediately slow down, nerve-wrackingly making my way through block after block until at long last I get to the entrance to the parkway.

Two days ago she’d said don’t be surprised if one day I decide to swallow this bottle of pills, and I’d tried to embrace her and she shoved me with such force I nearly lost my balance. Get out of my bedroom! she’d shouted in the most terrifying hiss, and while I was still regaining my equilibrium she struck me flush on the side of my head with her hand, blasting my eardrum and bringing on pain I’d’ve thought impossible except from a gunshot.

Rather than some sort of ringing it seemed as if broken glass was swirling around in my ear canal and I remember thinking for a moment that my eardrum had been punctured, but the moment passed because she hadn’t finished.

I read the emails that whore sent you, you bastard, she’d said robotically, already sitting on the bed, just staring straight ahead, looking so lost I knew there was nothing I could say, nothing I could do, that could possibly reach her. So I said nothing, did nothing, just went to my room and shut the door.

However platonic the friendship may have been, certainly the emails with Natalie had crossed a line, but before I even had a chance to reflect on what Li Qin was going through, it struck me that she had been going through my correspondence, and so on that night I’m ashamed to admit I was more unsettled about that small betrayal than any betrayal she’d imagined me guilty of.

The commute is a blur as my exit appears and I’m on the off ramp and hurtling through the service road, knowing that if I catch that first light I can make the next three, and then it’s a hard right and another series of semaphores sequenced to sequester speeding cars and save lives but I get through them all precisely because there is a life to be saved that I’ve thrown in harm’s way, and then it’s a hard left and a few more blocks and as I make for the garage an ambulance and a police car are double-parked outside and my heart isn’t sure whether to take a break or skip a beat, but as it pumps an ocean of plasma I nosedive into my space, catapult out of the car, run up eight flights of stairs and stagger up the last two before finally getting to Li Qin.

The door is open and four strangers surround my wife. Two paramedics, one male, one female, and two police officers, also one male, one female. She is standing but looking ready to fall, wearing her favorite silk robe, her flashing eyes looking through me in a way they never have.

Just then I see the blanket on the floor, the bottle of pills and her cell phone next to it, and maybe for the first time in our lives I truly am one soul with her as I feel my insides freeze and the floor drop out from under me. I will find out later that she’d been trying to reach Isabella before swallowing the pills but our daughter hasn’t spoken to either of us in years. She may not even have recognized the number when she saw it on her screen.

Why are all of you here?! she softly screams to the quartet of first responders, and I can no longer hold the tears back as my wife’s pain storms and swarms with nothing I can do to make it stop. How could I not have known what is obvious to all present?

Can you make him love me? she asks, and now I can no longer keep it together, and the male officer takes my arm and directs me out to the hallway. Then why are you here? she sobs, somewhere over the brink, past suicidal, to this godforsaken place I’ve landed her.

For months I drifted further away from her than ever before, spending more time at work, more time with dying patients and their families, more time with my singing teacher, more time hiking, more time with anyone and anything but her, secretly and not so secretly blaming her for everything - our long estrangement from our daughter, her alternating bouts of depression and delusion, my own failures as a father, as a husband, as a man. Everything I ascribed to her, even if I never said it out loud. Nothing but regret and recrimination, when what she needed was love.

This is all my fault.

The officer now puts his arm around my shoulder and leads me to the elevator. She’s in good hands, Mr. Chisciotte. They’re taking care of her. Let’s get you some fresh air.

We ride down to the first floor and walk out to the courtyard, and I see the ambulance has driven around to the main entrance of the complex, which is where he’s cautiously but deliberately guiding me. I don’t even know what I’m saying to him as I confess aloud, talking more to myself than anything else as we walk along the path through the meticulously manicured gardens, artificial arrangements mocking the mangled and tangled chaos as she and I privately and publicly unravel.

I can’t speak to what came before, Mr. Chisciotte, but tonight you did exactly the right thing, he reassures, but I’m listening less to what he says and more to how he’s listening, and I give a silent thanks for his compassion.

They’ll be taking her in for an evaluation, he says, letting the words sink in, knowing not only that I’m not thinking clearly right now but that I’m capable of doing little right, right now.

We’re near the ambulance and the driver is leaning on the side of the van filling out paperwork that is likely Li Qin’s. I approach him and ask where they’ll be taking her though I already know.

I ask if I can ride with her but I know the answer to that as well. That’s not a good idea, sir. After we leave, you should go right back to your apartment. Take an hour or two, clear your head, make some calls, and then get yourself over to the ward. It’s right by the emergency room entrance, and when you give them your wife’s name they’ll tell you what to do next.

Of course I know the protocol as well as he does, having maybe helped more people through it indirectly than he has. He can’t be even half my age. But his eyes tell me he’s already seen more than any person should have to.

You’re disappointed, aren’t you, you bastard, she taunts, and I’m jolted because she’d said not a word until she was almost right behind me. I thought she was still upstairs. The medics on either side of her have no need to react for she’s not struggling. Her lifeless words fill me with terror.

As they bring her into the compartment and have her sit on the gurney, the officer again takes me by the arm but I don’t move. Where are you taking me? she says to everyone and no one. Why are you letting them do this? she says just as the doors close, and I have no answer to that.

After I watch them drive away I ask the officer if there’s anything else he needs from me and he says no, just that I need to be strong now for both our sakes, and I nod, thinking that what I need is to forget myself and be everything Li Qin needs me to be for as long as she needs me to be it, and then I turn away from him and head back to my building.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The waiting area is squirrelled away at the end of a maze where a guard lets you in through one otherwise impenetrable door to a dingy and dank room filled with immovable chairs and blinding fluorescent lights with another impenetrable door that obviously opens only when someone on the other side opens it.

An ancient intercom looks scotch taped to the wall, but as I debate using it the door is buzzed open and a tiny woman introducing herself as Doctor Rahman asks for a Mister KISS-chai-AH-tee and I’m nearly tempted to smile at the monumental mispronunciation of my name.

That’s me, I say, though I’m the only one here, and I start to stand, but she pats me on the shoulder and sits beside me.

I’ve spoken with your wife, and I am most inclined to keep her here for a few days. Is there anything you believe I need to know about what has happened, or anything, anything at all you may wish to tell me?

I tell everything I can think to tell her but over and above and behind and beneath every word I say is the subtle subliminal subservient pleading that Li Qin need not spend a single night alone in this dungeon, that she be released to my care, so that I can take her in my arms, from this place, through that door, to our home, to our bed, where I will hold her and love her and cherish her till every last doubt and demon I cast in is cast out, and while every wave of words is drowned out by the monsoon in my mind, something I’ve said somehow convinces Rahman that my wife is better off with me than with her, and so after two more hours each in our respective cage, the impenetrable door opens once more, and I reunite with the other half of my troubled soul, and we walk in silence to where I’ve parked our car.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Three days go by without incident until a call comes in that this time is from a stranger. And this time there will be no mad dash, no intervention, no reprieve. This time she took a different bottle of pills, checked into a hotel, wrote her farewell letter, and left this world without interruption.

Alone. Adrift. Afraid. Without hope. Without me. And this time without even trying to call our only child.

I

Pastor Chisciotte stands in the hollow of the loading dock, in front of wooden pallets stacked up against the wall, surrounded by empty milk crates and grease barrels and a bent-up corrugated garbage can, staring out at the dark clouds, and his voice fills the concrete stage, waves of resonating notes pouring out into the parking lot, a dank and dingy corner of the world suddenly an amphitheater of acoustic grace, his song riding higher and more powerfully with each verse as he transforms his instructor’s dictums into twirling threads of inspired intonation.

Be ruthless about finding places to take a breath. Quick breaths. Deep breaths. Steal every last one you can. Then find one more. Air is the fuel of the voice. Round out the vowels. Clip the consonants. Stay within your range. If you must stray for a note or two, take it soft, go falsetto, whatever works, but keep the pitch. And never too loud. The song will let you know when to open up and where to bring it down to a whisper.

His arms are up and his hands trace the sky as he launches the next to last line with a flourish, but before he can close out the song a nurse walking back to her car bursts into applause and he nearly falls off the edge of the dock. Too engrossed to notice her approach, so now he whips around while muttering an apology, and before she can say another word he disappears back into the building to the booming sound of a seriously slamming door.

He walks quickly through the hospital’s kitchen, taking his usual shortcut to the cafeteria, diligently staying out of everyone’s way, snaking through a maze of metal carts and pan racks and workers rushing back and forth, nodding his head and smiling each time someone recognizes him, and before he makes his way out to the left the executive chef shouts Pastor Sal! and takes his hand in both of his and pushguides him to the right towards the pastry cook slicing up some new creation just out of the oven.

Joe, he says while grabbing a styrofoam plate and a napkin, give Pastor Sal a slice of heaven to go with his coffee, and Joe does it with a smile, doling out a thick slab of pizza rustica, then going right back to his routine before the smile has a chance to leave his face.

He thanks them both but chef’s already elsewhere and Joe’s disappeared in plain sight, his ever-sharp flashing knife leading his hands and his ever-present iPod kneading his brain, so Sal heads off to his original destination, his appreciation depreciated and deleted almost prior to its arrival.

The cafeteria hasn’t actually opened its doors yet for lunch, which he well knows, and after half-filling a cup with coffee, he fills the rest with cream and sugar and takes his usual place way in the back in the solarium section minus any sunlight on this day but surrounded by gigantic plants and a rainbow of flowers, the section gifted to the hospital by a grateful patient turned patron long dead, meticulously maintained, cultivated, and marked by a bronze plaque commemorating the donation and the donor.

Martin Hendrickson. Sal had performed last rites for him. It was early in his career and he wasn’t working for the hospital and he hadn’t left the priesthood yet. Martin was a parishioner, and Sal had gotten a call from his wife. She’d said to please come to his room here at St. Rosalie’s. Quickly.

Martin’s heart surgeries had been performed before he developed diabetes, but his heart hadn’t done him the courtesy of staying fixed once his new condition made any additional surgery all but impossible.

The complications that followed as he grew worse brought his mind and body to a near standstill and he’d lapsed into a coma soon after being admitted. For days it looked like any moment might be his last.

Then one morning he awoke and pulled off all the tubes attached to his face in one sudden sweeping lurching motion and was instantly and inexplicably as lucid as he’d ever been, and Helen hugged him and kissed him and then called everyone she could think of starting with Father Salvius, and after everyone including Helen had finally left, Sal stayed behind, ready to stand vigil.

He knew these moments of lucidity were not uncommon, and that death invariably followed such moments, and followed them fast. Still, there was another reason Sal was anxious, aside from the time factor or the matter of last rites or the prospect of a final confession, and the reason could not possibly be a more selfish one.

There’d been several frightening episodes during his coma, the worst of which ended with his physician declaring Martin brain dead with Helen right by his bedside. Nearly three minutes passed without either person saying a word, the wife alone with her tears, the doctor off by the window pretending to read Martin’s file, when all at once the flatlines became lifelines again, as if death had been just a passing fancy.

The young priest would have been mortified to admit it, but he desperately wanted to know what if anything Martin had experienced in those precious otherworldly minutes spent somewhere between this life and the next, yet there was no way he could ask directly, so he prayed to keep from making a sacrilege of sacred duty and to find the words that might yield bedrock for his sometimes shifting faith.

He needn’t have worried, because after the penitent confessed a litany of trifling transgressions all related one way or another to his lifetime of real estate dealings, it was clear that what troubled him most was precisely what Salvius wanted most to know.

Father, I saw nothing.

The big bald man with the twinkling puffy eyes and the loving heart and the laugh you could hear a block away and friends who came from all over to visit him as he lay dying had tears streaming down his face, and the priest had taken his hand in both of his and said So because of this now you believe there is only this life? and really he had also been posing the question to himself. Martin was devout, and would easily have convinced himself he’d seen evidence of the hereafter if there had been anything at all to suggest it.

"Father Sal, it’s not a matter of belief. There was nothing. I was switched off and then I was switched back on, and there was nothing in between. Life left my body and nothing took its place until somehow I woke up again." The tears were now a torrent and Salvius saw there was nothing he could say to a man whose faith had been vaporized.

He had stayed for a time and recited the Ave Maria, first in English, then Italian, finally in Latin, kissed the still sobbing man on his brow, and left the room. The consoled had lost his consolation, and the consoler had lost his conviction.

One

"Why exactly, and I mean exactly, are you convinced that your father’s death was anything other than - and excuse me for saying this – a rather foreseeable accident? Dr. Harris deliberately looks away as she makes a motion as if to wave off a pesky fly, Moreover, why ask me to look into this nearly a year after the fact?"

Isabella sits across from the not quite famous forensic psychologist saying not a word, her arms folded, unblinking, her momentary optimism about coming to the right person quickly fading, her dad’s frequent invocation of Marcus Aurelius’s admonition