The Convalescent Read online

  I met Dr. Monica on one of the hovering days.

  I was standing next to a pyramid of canned vegetables, keeping an eye on my display, when a short woman with blond hair turned the corner from dairy. She was shorter than most Virginians, almost as short as I am, but with large, appealing thighs. As she walked, her thighs shifted quickly back and forth underneath her doctor’s coat in a professional, off-pace manner. She was headed straight for the Pfliegman meat. Her eyes were low, and she blinked more often than I’d ever seen another person blink before. (This is Dr. Monica’s single imperfection. An eye condition that makes her blink a lot. If only one of my dozens of diseases was so endearing.) As she came closer, I smelled her: a scintillating combination of tuna fish and Kaopectate. She tossed her hair over her shoulders, leaned one thick hip against the display case, and inspected the meat. She pressed her fingers to it and it swelled from the pressure. It was pork. She lifted the pork and inspected it from all angles.

  I began shivering. It was cool by the display, but I wasn’t shivering from the temperature. It was the first beautiful thing I’d seen in years: Dr. Monica, next to my meat! Iridescent lights buzzed above us. A slight mist hovered about the display case, and when she reached in the mist wrapped itself around her. Mister Bis’s radio yawked out an advertisement for a universal bathroom cleanser.

  She put the pork loin back on the shelf and coolly inspected another.

  I wanted to tell her everything about meat. I wanted to show her which shanks and loins were the freshest. I wanted to explain the subtle differences between April meat and October meat. I wanted to reach up and put my arms around her narrow shoulders and rub them and do what I had seen other men do to the women they adore: the rub. The kiss on the neck. “Darling,” I wanted to say, “we need to fatten you up!” I wanted to stroke her back, tousle her hair. But I was not then, nor will I ever be, in a position to do those things. Instead, I coughed. A real loud one. A wracker. My lungs sounded like they were being gutted with a sharp-edged spoon. A kernel of phlegm flew from my mouth like a tiny bullet, landing smack on the sleeve of my Disneyland sweatshirt.

  Dr. Monica turned to look at me. Me, the dark little creature looming by canned goods—

  “Why, hello there,” she said.

  Her voice sounded so sweet, so lovely, it beckoned for me to say something civilized and gentlemanly, like “Ma’am,” or “Fine morning, isn’t it,” but I am a Pfliegman. A primordial pre-being. Homunculus. I’m nowhere near that evolved. I grasped the front of my sweatshirt and held it. My face flushed, my eyes burned. I tried to hold back and contain it, but it was no use: a half-dozen sharp coughs exploded from my lungs like bats from a cave.

  Dr. Monica wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.

  Miserably, I leaned away from her and, in five retching howls, finished the job.

  She dug into her purse and pulled out a cough drop wrapped in a bright yellow wrapper. On it was a picture of a Dutch person dancing on a mountainside. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman dancing, but the person looked joyful. Three birds hovered above, and the birds also looked joyful. The brand was called “Evermore.” She held it out to me.

  I hesitated, uncertain what the woman might expect in return.

  “Go on,” she whispered. “Take it.”

  I grabbed the sucker from her hand and shoved it in my mouth. Lemon and sugar coated my tongue. I bit into it greedily, and was rewarded with a mouthful of honey. I had never in my life tasted anything so wonderful. Dr. Monica removed a thermometer from a breast pocket of her white coat, and gestured to ask if she could take my temperature.

  “I’m a pediatrician,” she explained. The thermometer was yellow with a picture of a frog at the tip. It had been resting on her breast. “May I?” she asked.

  I opened so wide, I gagged a little.

  “Now close,” she said. “Keep it under your tongue.”

  The thermometer was warm, and bitter with disinfectant. “Muh,” I said.

  I hadn’t meant to speak—it just slipped out. My throat vibrated and tickled, making me grin for the first time in weeks. None of my former doctors had ever gotten me to speak before, and it wasn’t a beautiful sound, but even if I sounded like gravel being poured from a bucket, I didn’t care. Adorable Darling! I wanted to cry. Aphrodite! My perfectly stout Pediatrician!

  Then Mister Bis came over. Sometimes Mister Bis gets nervous about having me hanging out in his store. I can’t say I blame him. He’s a nice man with a nice family that lives in a nice house with a tight peaked roof. Mister Bis is very protective of all his nice things. Which is fine. I’d be nervous too if I had a real store, perishable items to worry about, and me as a customer.

  “What’s all this?” he said.

  Dr. Monica removed the thermometer. “A hundred and one,” she said, and placed her palm on my forehead. “What’s your name?”

  “That’s Rovar,” Mister Bis said. “Rovar Pfliegman. He’s a butcher. Sells us our meat.”

  “Can you speak, Mr. Pfliegman?” Dr. Monica asked.

  Hearing my name unfold on her tongue, I grinned. I stared at her rosy lips, and the bottom lip suddenly looked so sweet, I suffered a very real and pressing urge to nibble on it.

  “Actually, Rovar is a—” Mister Bis said, but then he stopped himself. “Sick. He’s always sick. He’s just here to pick up his prescriptions.”

  The pharmacist at the G&P is Mister Bis’s son, Anil. Anil Bis is a pale seventeen-year-old with all-season allergies. He prefers to be called Richie because “everyone always gets it wrong,” he says. That day, Dr. Monica followed me to the pharmaceuticals counter, where Richie had arranged my medicines in a row. She leaned over the counter and began reading them off.

  Richie appeared upset about someone reading his prescriptions. He sneezed, and then looked over Dr. Monica’s cherubic head to mine. “That will be ninety-seven dollars,” he said.

  “Wait,” said Dr. Monica. “You don’t need all this.” She selected two of the little brown bottles and nipped a packet of Tylenol from the shelf. “You’ve just got a small fever. You should go home and rest.”

  Richie blew his nose. “He doesn’t have a home,” he said.

  Dr. Monica looked up. “No?”

  “He lives in a bus.”

  “A bus?”

  “That old school bus,” said Richie. “The one by the river.”

  That’s when Dr. Monica looked at me—really looked at me—for the first time. My brow went hot and my chest burned. I wanted to hold her and absorb the tuna fish scent in her hair. I wanted to lie on a long verdant stretch of grass and listen to her read Darwin and eat Evermores, but instead she reached into her jacket and gave me her business card: DR. MONICA, PEDIATRICIAN. Next to her name was a picture of a small blue butterfly.

  I brought out my writing tablet. I think you can help me, I wrote.

  She read it and smiled. “A body,” she said, “cannot fight itself and expect to win.”

  VI

  WRITE HOW YOU FEEL

  The following Tuesday, I take my seat in Dr. Monica’s Waiting Area and flip through women’s magazines (none of which give me even the most benevolent of Benevolent Erections) and wait to see her. It is your typical doctor’s Waiting Area. The walls are square and white. A border of wildflowers is pasted around the center of the walls in a garish floral belt. Above the border hang a few unframed pastel paintings of bucolic farmyards, and beneath it, wooden chairs line the walls. The chairs have rounded edges and bulbous legs so the Sick or Diseased children who crawl about the Berber carpeting all day cannot injure themselves. The Sick or Diseased children and their mothers are always looking at me funny: why would a tiny bearded man who always wears an oversize pink Disneyland sweatshirt be coming to see a pediatrician?

  No doubt it is a relevant, probing question.

  I’m not allowed to schedule an appointment with Dr. Monica because I am over the age of eighteen. Dr. Monica says it’s ill
egal in Virginia for me to schedule appointments to see her. But she also says there are exceptions to every rule. I’m allowed to see her only when there’s a cancellation, so every Tuesday I come to her office and wait.

  Right now the receptionist, Mrs. Himmel, is glaring at me. It’s perfectly understandable. Dr. Monica’s office is small, and I take up a valuable seat.

  I’m not exactly sure what Mrs. Himmel’s responsibilities are other than to answer the telephone and shift folders. Sometimes she looks at her computer monitor. She lives in a subdivision behind the park called Whispering Acres. I don’t understand how an acre, a unit of area, can whisper anything, but Mrs. Himmel says that Whispering Acres is the best place to live in the entire state of Virginia. Everyone’s subdivision, she says, is cared for by a management company, so there aren’t any worries. “Your drain clogged?” she says. “Call management. Want your lawn mowed? Your hedges trimmed? Call management.” Mrs. Himmel thinks that everyone should want to live in Whispering Acres, and gets angry when people do not.

  “Maybe it’s about originality,” says Dr. Monica.

  “Originality?” she balks. “They won’t think it’s so original when the plumbing fails!”

  Then she goes back to shifting folders.

  Mrs. Himmel doesn’t think a full-grown person needs a checkup once a week, however small he might be, however weak or sick, and definitely not by a pediatrician. She frequently lowers her horn-rimmed glasses and cautions Dr. Monica about certain safety issues regarding certain little bearded men who live out of a bus and the Sick or Diseased children.

  “It’s criminal,” she whispers, shooting me glances. “Someone will sue you if you keep him around.”

  I may be unappealing-looking. I may not speak. I may suffer from a hundred debilitating and unidentifiable illnesses, but I can hear just fine, so whenever Mrs. Himmel says something hurtful I remember that Mrs. Himmel has an ass the size of two sleepy, domesticated pigs. I’m not being judgmental of Mrs. Himmel by saying this—to be honest, I’m quite admiring of it: I wake up in the morning sometimes, picking at the skin that clings to my bones, and wonder how convenient it must be to have an ass like that. It’s a perpetual cushion. A portable sofa.

  Think of the space an ass like that would save on a bus.

  “Adrian!” Mrs. Himmel shouts. “I need folders!”

  Adrian, Dr. Monica’s intern, walks into the Waiting Area carrying a tower of heavy medical folders on one arm. Adrian only works here part-time, and is tall and fit in the exact same way that Mrs. Himmel isn’t. She wears shoes made entirely of brightly colored rubber, and clothes made of things with names like Gore-Tex and Windstopper and Polarguard. Adrian has climbed the fourth-highest mountain in the Lower 48 and is training for the third highest, called Mount Massive.

  I can’t imagine what it must be like to climb mountains. I can barely make the walk from the bus to Dr. Monica’s and back.

  To get here, I have to cross Back Lick Road and walk through the forest. Then I follow a highway for a mile or so, and this takes awhile. My bad leg gives me trouble. Most people don’t notice the hairy little man limping along the highway, but sometimes they’ll pull over. They’ll ask if I want a ride. Usually the drivers are large men in business suits with kind faces, but I always decline. It’s not that I don’t want them to feel good; I just prefer to walk.

  This is hard for them to understand. After all, they’re Virginians. They’re part of the community, the general populace. That’s when they become angry. “Suit yourself,” they say. Or occasionally, “Whatever you say, midget.”

  The first time I walked to Dr. Monica’s office, a Ford Escort stopped in front of me and a Virginian climbed out. He looked sharp and neat, like he’d just stepped out of a catalogue. The man’s face was evenly tanned, and the sleeves of his shirt hugged his considerable biceps. “Need a lift?” he said.

  I shook my head, but he walked over anyway. He linked an arm around my neck. “C’mon,” he said. “You look like you need a lift.” He ushered me into the car, and smiled at me with two rectangles of clean white teeth. He asked where I was going.

  Of course I didn’t say.

  “I’m Ted,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  I brought out my writing tablet.

  He read it and his eyes lifted. “Ro-Var,” he said. “What are you, a Muppet?”

  I stared at my feet. On the floor of the passenger’s side was a book called The Complete Book of Water Polo, With Pictures. Ted saw me looking. “That’s my team,” he said, and plopped the book on my lap. On the cover was a glossy photograph of fifteen evenly tanned white men who all looked exactly like Ted. They all had the same round muscles. Skin so greasy it shone off the page. They were standing in a semicircle with their arms crossed over their glistening pectorals, and they all wore the same black swimming trunks—except for one. One was holding a yellow water-polo ball under one arm and had a funny mustache. It looked like a caterpillar had crawled across his face and stopped.

  “That’s our captain,” said Ted. He revved the engine and the little car took off down the highway. He reached beneath his seat and offered me a white triangle wrapped in plastic. “You hungry? It’s bologna. You look like you could use it.”

  I shook my head.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, and wolfed the sandwich down in two bites. He looked impatiently around the car, like he didn’t know what to say next. His fingers galloped over the steering wheel. “How about sports? You do any sports?”

  As soon as he said it, he realized the absurdity of the question. He pointed at the book. “All those guys there? Those wetnecks? You might not think it to look at them, but they’re real jerks.” Ted fussed with the knob to the radio station again. “I’m the worst, though,” he said. “I’m the worst jerk.” He looked at me and grinned. “I’ve got two wives.”

  I didn’t know what Ted wanted me to do after he said that. So I just grinned back. I showed him my own teeth, which are not white and impressive, but yellowed, sharp, and crooked. Barnacles of the mouth.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he said. “I just told you, I’ve got two wives.” He took his hands off the wheel and rolled down the window, threw an arm in the air, and shouted, “I have two wives!”

  His voice disappeared into the wind.

  “You can’t imagine how good it feels to say that,” he said. “To be honest, that’s kind of why I picked you up today. To get it off my chest. If I didn’t tell someone, I’d lose it, I swear.”

  Then Ted shifted gears, and the car stopped, right in the middle of the highway.

  “So that’s it,” he said. “You can get out.”

  I looked at him. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “Get the fuck out of the car.”

  I scrambled out and shut the door. Ted roared off. I didn’t realize until he was gone, dust spiraling behind the Escort in two long cones, that I was still holding his book. So now I am the owner of The Complete Book of Water Polo, With Pictures. I keep the book on my bookshelf with the others because despite Ted’s marital failings, these men on the cover are the best physical specimens of men that I’ve ever seen. Men with two beefy legs.

  The most enviable biceps.

  Sitting here in Dr. Monica’s office, my eyes tripping along the pattern of the floral wallpaper border, the television murmuring hypnotically, I think to myself, “If I weren’t sick, I’d have a shot at looking like one of those men.” I’d stand up straight and shave my beard and stick out my chin. The dark holes in my face would illuminate, the lumps on my head would disappear, and my hair would fill out thick and smooth. My eyes would clear up, and I would impress people by how far away I could read roadsigns. My shoulders would right themselves, my ankles would turn from in to out, and my bad leg would heal. I’d be able to walk in a straight line with my head up, not conspicuously studying the ground for any crack or split in the pavement, holes where my foot might catch and send me catapulting to the ground— N
o! I’d smile with a frown and shake my head good-naturedly and talk about sporting events and the rising price of gasoline. I’d have friends with man-names like Joe or Jack or even the Captain.

  Here we are, the Captain and the Creature, standing waist-deep in the waters of the Queeconococheecook! Our shirts are off. I’ve shed my pink sweatshirt and my stylish woolen cap on the embankment. We’re both in Speedos. My body is somehow bigger today: swollen, bronzed. Rippling with meat. My face is shaved clean and my eyes are functioning so well I don’t need eyeglasses. I’m almost good-looking. The rapids are strong and the wind blows our hair back and we’re cold. A shimmering white net appears out of nowhere. The Captain looks at me and silently puts on his helmet. A yellow ball floats down river. He grabs it and tosses it high in the air and punches it. It hurtles toward me. I jump high, as though lifted by the water itself.

  “Spike it!” the Captain cries.

  I raise my arm and the ball crashes into the river. The Captain claps and laughs. “Well done, Pfliegman!” he shouts. “Woo hoo!”

  I’d do all of these things if given the chance to be anything other than what I am now: this withered cretin, this gimp, this half-finished mold. This golem.

  He who has never been woo-hooed by anyone.

  I summon some Manliness to feel less feeble than I really am. “Rrrr,” I say.

  Mrs. Himmel looks up from her computer monitor. She stares at me. Then she picks up the phone and begins urgently whispering: “I’m sorry, but I don’t like the way he just sits here all day, looking at me. It’s unnerving.”

  Moments later, Dr. Monica appears in the doorway of the Waiting Area. She’s holding an enormous baby in her arms. It’s one of the biggest I have ever seen. Its head is nearly as large as her own. Even the limbs look adult. She struggles to move it from one hip to the other as she walks to Mrs. Himmel’s desk. She grabs a long yellow writing tablet and then comes over to me. She hands me the tablet. A pen. “It’s just something to keep you occupied while you wait,” she says, and shifts her weight.