Читать книгу Joseph Levy Escapes Death - Rick Strassman - Страница 9

TWO

LEVY PACKS LIGHTLY so he can get by with carry-on alone. Waiting for his flight in the Southwest waiting area, he riffles through his bag and takes inventory. He left behind his Cialis intentionally. He doesn’t want his penis to play an inordinate role at this point in their relationship, not that it could in his condition. But he hadn’t intended to leave behind powdered psyllium fiber, crucial for his regularity. And he sees only a day or two’s worth of Tylenol in their bottle. Lastly, he forgot his vitamins. Boarding the plane, he feels riddled with holes.

Karen is mainland Chinese-born with advanced degrees in English language education. Married twice, she has two sons from her first marriage. Levy and she met on Match, emailed off the site, and had several Skype visits. She’s intelligent and her good English skills have made their conversations easy. Levy decides her temperament is withdrawn.

There have been warning signs, like her not appearing twice in two days for scheduled Skype calls.

“What happened?” he asks, after she no-shows for the second time. She says nothing, just looks at him over Skype. His feelings are hurt, but he decides to ignore them. If he ignores them, they—the signs and his feelings—don’t mean anything.

He understands. Chinese women lack empathy. She doesn’t consider how others feel about what she does. Nothing to do about it, really. It’ll work out. He does resent her not asking about his tooth.

Levy’s brother asks, “Does she even know about it?”

“I’ve told her a couple of times.” Maybe not enough. Or he’s not asked her directly enough to talk about it with him.

He doesn’t know Karen, but hopes he’ll feel better around her. Actually, he expects it and sees it as a test. If he doesn’t feel better, she will have failed. He’ll resent her for not being a panacea. More ominously and less conscious, he realizes that if he doesn’t feel better, he’s in for a long dark spell.

As the plane makes its way west, Levy is struck by the intensity and depth of his need to be healed. At this moment, it’s by Karen, a woman he’s never met, and someone he’s not sure is trustworthy. He wants her to be trustworthy so much that he’ll overlook that she’s not. He’s scared and recites under his breath Jeremiah’s plaint (Jeremiah 17:14): “Heal me Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for You are my praise.” Pray for healing when bereft. Pray for salvation when overwhelmed. That’s what he’ll do in Santa Barbara.

It’s a test of Levy’s faith. Will he accept unremitting omnipresent pain if that’s how God decides to heal him? Or to save him? God is his praise; not his health, his salvation, nor even his life. Jeremiah’s words are the only defense against madness, what feels like an encroaching psychosis. Maybe it’s the steroids, he thinks. He’s reassured some by the prospect that Santa Barbara has comfortable psychiatric hospitals. I’m glad I’m off the steroids, he tells himself. On them, I’d be worse.

Jeremiah provides some relief of his anxiety. That’s what he needs—a woman as an anti-anxiety agent. Love cures anxiety. Or maybe just the woman herself. He’d already given himself away when they spoke one evening. “I’ll be relieved when we met,” he said.

Puzzled, she had asked, “Are you?” She noted “relieved,” not “happy.” He noted her odd use of the present tense—“Are you?”—instead of “Will you be?” in the future tense that he’d used.

He replied, “I mean, we’ve been waiting so long to meet. It will be a relief to no longer be waiting.” Which wasn’t true. She recognized, but couldn’t articulate, that she’d be a Xanax tablet for Joseph Levy at the end of a long day.

Life with Karen in California could be the answer, he decides. Who else does he know in Santa Barbara? There’s a friend in Santa Cruz, not that far. There’s also a colleague he’s never met who lives in the Santa Cruz suburbs.

Levy’s feet get chilled through the airplane’s thin metal floor, and his arthritic big toes begin to ache sharply. When he lets go of everything, the pain dissolves. He feels well and whole for a few seconds. Those moments recede as the dread from last night reasserts itself. Look at what I’ve become, he mourns. I’m in chronic diffuse pain, shifting locations and intensities. I can’t keep track. Why am I traveling? Why aren’t I staying home? I’m supposed to engage Karen in a courtship? Do I have an autoimmune disease? Maybe it’s lupus. Or rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe it’s my diet. Now I must really stop coffee.

As the plane descends into Santa Barbara, Levy remembers Karen’s silence when he asked about the missed Skype calls. She’s preoccupied, he decides, maybe depressed. What’s most important is that she’s kind, something he concludes from not hearing her speak ill of anyone. She is mostly good.

This is a spiritual test, and therefore has very little to do with Karen. Except as a character, a category of thing—an object to interact with. It’s a chapter in Joseph Levy’s case study. An examination of the vastness of his need and how objects never satisfy. And his reactions to that lack, reactions which his prayers and his God will pacify.

Here he is now in Santa Barbara. His right groin, another low-grade pain site, flared up on the flight, and he limps through the terminal. In slow motion, he pushes himself across the shiny linoleum floor toward the greeting area. All he wants is to lie in bed with Karen and be healed. She will save him from himself. Magic. It would have to be magic, since for Karen to save him, she would have told him not to come.

Levy is surprised at how appealing Karen is. Personable, attentive, funny, competent, and smart. Interchangeably pretty and homely. The rabbis say that the husband of a beautiful woman is cursed. He can’t recall if the husband of a homely woman is blessed. Attending to her distracts him, but his mind is unsteady. Sometimes he’s overwhelmed around her; at others, deprived. Jeremiah’s prayer pulls him up from descending too far into this hallucinatory pit. She’s safe, Levy tells himself. She won’t hurt me. As the day progresses, it’s clear that she’s a blunt person, but not an angry one.

It’s difficult to keep his needs to himself. He wants to blurt: “Tend to me!” in a way that would anger her. He resists the urge to tell her everything about Joseph Levy as quickly as possible. The more she knows, the more she can help, tell him what to do, and give meaning to his life. He vows to keep his head. No matter how awful the tumult in his mind and the pain in his body, it’s less than four days, less than 100 hours. Thursday 3:30 p.m. to Monday noon. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. He won’t lose it.

It’s late and Levy gets the couch ready for sleeping. Karen steps out of the bedroom wearing a sheer nightie and invites him in. Her bed is a California king. He’s not been on one of those since high school when he would spend hours lying on his parents’, talking on the phone with his friends. Karen and he lie together in the dark, and she says, “I’d like to sleep in each other’s arms. Can we try?” As she drifts off to sleep, she twitches violently and awakens. This happens another five or six times. After a half-hour, she gets up and goes into the bathroom where she takes 5 mg melatonin. This is a massive dose, Levy recognizes, since he performed original research with this pineal gland hormone. Soon after, she adds 75 mg Benadryl, a near deliriant dose. Sniffle, cough, sniffle, cough, for another hour. If ever Levy needs sleep, it is tonight. Her movements are torture.

Desperate, he asks, “Could I take 25 mg of your Benadryl?”

When she does finally fall asleep, she rocks back and forth.

Karen doesn’t ask him questions, and he wishes she would. But if he wants to tell her something, she listens. Family, marriage. His late step-daughter, work, religion.

“Do you believe in God?” he asks.

“I pray to God,” she answers. “And God is in the world.” He’s surprised to hear this, and happy about it. She wants to be with a man. He wonders if that’s one of her prayers.

The air in her apartment is saturated with chemical odors. Her refrigerator is small, cramped, dirty, and smells from stale food, maybe even rotten. Her pantry holds a half-dozen bottles of rancid oils.

It’s also noisy. In the morning, in the bathroom, Karen spends nearly a half-hour in a strange ritual: making long, loud, intense throat-clearing sounds after brushing her teeth. Hip-hop base thumps and penetrates from the tenants below off and on throughout the day and night.

Her home is ghoulish, but her office at school is neat, spare, and fresh. I’m too judgmental, Levy tells himself. For me to be with her, he adds hopefully, I’ll become a better person. I have to.

Levy’s tooth gnaws more than aches. It’s as if a sharp, but not too sharp, object exerts constant pressure on it. It’s an improvement, and he’s slightly encouraged. Karen and he make several embarrassing Walgreens runs, embarrassing for him anyway. Is this where Joseph Levy hangs out? Lacking psyllium, he buys Colace. Out of Tylenol, he picks up a bottle.

I could marry Karen, he tells himself. Why not? She’s not mean. She may not be as attentive as he might need, but she understands what he’s talking about. A line from S. Y. Agnon floats through his head. “He is attached to his wife and he is attached to his own thoughts. He knows to keep them separate.” And “Karen”—a perfect name, really, for his stammer. A “k” sound—the easiest of the 26. That’s why Levy orders club soda or coffee on planes and not 7-Up. He prefers the sweeter drink, but he struggles with the “s.”

He sits at the kitchen table while Karen and the younger son talk on the phone. He hears the boy’s voice—it’s a clingy whine and it complains about failing a course. He thinks it best to not offer advice but does anyway. “Tell him to take an incomplete,” he whispers loudly to Karen.

Later, they talk about unfaithful spouses: Mike and Olivia. Or partners with no interest in sex: Curt and Renee. Well, in Renee’s case, get her drunk enough. Karen finds guys that put her “#74” in priority. Levy finds women who want to live off his good graces and who need fixing.

During a late lunch, Levy bites down on the tooth. It sets off a burst of shooting pain and he sees stars. He acts and is in fact unfazed. Why shouldn’t he reinjure the tooth? Who says he’s over it? But he does regret having left behind the Cialis. Who doesn’t choose better sex over worse? Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, she declaims her affection.

“You’re my man,” she murmurs in bed that night. “I love you.”

Things murmured in bed, during sex, Levy doesn’t believe or trust. I’m not ready to say that, he thinks, while pulling back. We just met. He hopes she won’t say it again. He’s happy to say, but doesn’t—at least not now—“I like you a lot,” or “I’ll miss you when I leave.” He’d rather share his love for her face, her body, how she touches him. Parts of her, not the whole thing. But “I love you”…? The person? He’d rather not say he loves anything right now. It’s a promise, a contract, a commitment. Well, what’s the problem with that? One reason is that he’s filled with pain, and in deep steroid withdrawal.

As they say good night, he whispers, “Good night, Pearl.”

In bed the next morning Levy tells her about his erogenous zones. She’s uncertain. Manual penis stimulation goes nowhere. He self-stimulates and gets a little harder. She goes down “oral.” That’s slightly better. He decides to enter her. She gets out lubricant but is already wet. He’s never seen such nooked and crannied labia or nipples—like living coral. Sex is okay, not like with Cialis but good enough. Maybe she comes quickly, at least once. He doesn’t. He’d feel like hell if he did. His stores are nearly depleted already.

They drive to the shore. She doesn’t use her turn signals when weaving through dense fast-moving traffic. Nothing new here, Levy tells himself. I’ve driven with worse Chinese women drivers. He prays.

The wind is terrible—brutally cold, sharp, and unrelenting. They walk to the end of a rocky promontory, overlooking the water. It’s called Lover’s Point. He wraps her in his arms to protect her from the wind.

“What’s your Chinese horoscope?” he asks. “I’m a Dragon.”

“I’m a Pig,” she answers, and looks up at him lovingly. It’s a lucky match.

They talk about plans for the future. As usual, for him, it’s theoretical. He doesn’t know how real it is for her. She’s easy to hang out with. He doesn’t feel obligated. And he goes home in a couple of days. He gets a deep chill and they head back to her car. She’s a strong walker. Later in the day, they run into some of her Chinese friends while hiking along a more protected stretch of coastline. Her friends and she chatter in Chinese and giggle while frequently glancing in Levy’s direction.

He introduces her to Shabbat on Friday evening. They share bread, sip wine. “I like Shabbat,” she says. “The candles are romantic.”

They occupy different worlds. She’s got her job, he’s got whatever it is he does. She knows nothing about drugs, Judaism, or Buddhism. She’s a good cook. They play ping-pong and he’s only slightly better than she is. She has a nice butt. He thinks that she smells good, but it’s hard to tell in her apartment.

He imagines their married life together. He compares it to other marriages. They would have their individual lives, as well as shared experiences. They would not share livelihoods. He feels more pain in his body than affection for Karen. There is a silver lining to this: His primary emotional attachment in their life together won’t be to her, but rather to his pain.

They have frequent sex. It’s not cosmic but consider Levy’s state. His lower back cracks and grinds with pelvic thrusting. He tries to compensate and thinks, I must see an orthopedist. Do more research online. I’ll have to investigate ablating the nerves supplying that part of my lower back. Then he realizes that would have no effect on the bone rubbing against bone.

“I want you to be here,” she says one night.

He accedes to her wishes, and says, “I like you. A lot.” An improvement over “Good night, Pearl.”

A dream. Olivia’s first husband, Troy, is in town, along with other Canadians, mostly men. Maybe Olivia, too. Levy cracks wise about Canadians. They’re simple, gullible, passive, and mediocre socialists. Canadians begin coming out of the dream woodwork, overwhelm him. There’s a flood of them. Doing bad things; not exactly to him, but to his space. The ill-treatment peaks when he walks into his office and everything is gone, including his external hard drive. And everything from his neighbor’s office is gone. It is flagrantly unfair to involve Morales. It is part of the Canadians’ studious methodical rampage.

Karen had said to Levy that night, “God is fair.”

Troy is gleeful. He and his friends point at Levy, implying these are his just desserts. Levy’s wearing only a T-shirt, or jeans, or boxer shorts. He looks in his closet—it’s empty. This is too much, the final straw. He finds Troy. They are standing on a balcony. Levy is bereft. Troy looks remorseful when he learns the details. Maybe it’s Levy’s clothes, or the hard drive, or his neighbor’s things. He anticipates a beleaguered recoup. The dream continues through several awakenings, but it’s the same dream.

If God is fair, Levy’s punishment is just. But what is his sin? Ridiculing Canadians? That seems unlikely. Maybe it’s a case of the evil tongue, building oneself up by putting others down. How does that relate to being with Karen in Santa Barbara?

Karen makes the unnhh sound. The nonverbal whine that starts off low, climbs high, and ends lower. It lasts about 3-5 seconds. Her son made that sound the other day during the phone call he’d overhead. Levy used to think it was a cute noise. Childlike. Renee made it often, too, and he learned most of what he knows about it from her.

While he tells himself it’s fine, it is instead his nightmare sound, a psychic fingernail on the blackboard. It’s regressed, childish, petulant, and emotionally retarded. It always bodes ill—if not immediately, then soon enough. The worst is that you don’t really know what’s the problem. It’s impossible to formulate a solution because it originates in the same inchoate place—brimming with primitive emotions and void of thought. It’s anti-verbal as much as non-verbal. It usually means, “I don’t like it”; however, there is a lot of latitude. You have to guess, because they won’t or can’t say. If you’re wrong, you’ll hear more of the sound, slightly modified. The high second note is higher and louder. At this point, it usually means “Now I’m mad,” but not always, and additional exegesis may be required. Failing to read her mind, her resentment lingers. If you really love her, you’d know what she means.

Could I tell Karen to stop uttering the unnhh? Levy wonders. Maybe “ask” her instead. She could take it. She seems tough. Note how he put “ask” in quotes. Think about it: Stop a habit she’s had for decades, which she’s probably unaware of? And which serves valuable psychic functions? Karen is less confounded by mucus when she’s relaxed; perhaps likewise, the unnhh will also fade with time.

He grades their sex. B- for him. Impotent three times out of eight. That’s a success rate of 62%. Then he realizes that’s a C. Or less.

Karen and Levy drive to the airport in an amiable silence. They find a bench set against a wall in a corner of the terminal building. They lean against the wall and each other, hold hands, and wait for the public address system to announce his flight’s boarding. They look at their calendars and set a date for her trip to Wheaton.