Listening

by Gabrielle Selz

He takes me down through the declivity in the hills, down through the canyon, down so fast I can see my cheeks in the review mirror of his motorcycle, I can see my cheeks flap back in the wind. At ninety-five miles per hour the skin on my face is stretched and pulling behind me, pulling behind the bones and cartilage of me. I lean forward and lay my cheek against his back.

I can't speak.

Once I fell asleep sitting behind him, but we were going maybe only eighty miles per hour then.

When I get home I check my face in the mirror. Pinch the flesh of my cheeks, rub my ears and press everything back into place.

Chris just smiles and leaves. He leaves me, my blood all warm, my skin cold, wet and red. I stand by the window and watch him ride away. It's his favorite hour, twilight, the boogeyman hour.

Right after he leaves I walk into the kitchen and raid the refrigerator. I scoop pickled herring in sour-cream sauce and smear it between two halves of a baguette. I devour my sandwich as I stand by the open door of the refrigerator, taking inventory of the shelves. Next I grab a jar of honey-roasted peanuts and shovel a handful into my mouth. Still chewing on the peanuts, I open the freezer and rummage for the mint-chip ice cream. The container found, I bang the refrigerator door shut with my foot and sink down onto the floor to finish my ice cream. My stomach aches from the food inside. It is so full it presses against my jeans and I have to unbutton the top. If Chris were here we would have a glass of white wine and maybe I would have just one bite of his chicken sandwich. I hardly ever eat when I'm with him, or when I'm in public. Standing up I take one last look inside the refrigerator. I decide I need something healthy so I make myself a Caesar salad.

I carry the salad with me into my room and beach myself on the bed with the telephone beside me.

By midnight I am still trying to fall asleep and Chris hasn't called. I lean over and slide a box out from underneath my bed. Inside is my toy collection, mostly toy monsters and motorized robots my father has sent me from his travels on business for his shipping firm. From every country he visits he sends me a toy. I have a green Godzilla from Germany that marches around spitting fire from its mouth. I have a bunny from Paris that rides around on a bicycle, pirouetting on the seat of its bike. And once, from New York, my father sent me a mechanical hand in a brown paper bag. When switched on, the fingers would crawl out from the top of the bag, curling and uncurling, reaching like a corpse from the grave.

When I was little, after my parents were divorced, my father would fly me for brief visits to the port cities where he worked. He would buy me lots of presents, and I would steal toys from the children who lived in the homes he sublet. In the last few years, my father has formed the habit of stopping off for an hour or two in my home city of San Francisco. He sends me a telegram and I drive out to the airport to meet him and his newest girlfriend over a glass of champagne in the Service-Plus lounge. On his last visit here my father gave me Ralph.

Ralph is a square robot man with extremely long arms, arms that reach apelike to his feet. I wind the key in Ralph's back and squat down on the floor with him. Ralph takes four giant steps forward and falls down. He pushes himself up with his long arms, balances on his hands and flips back onto his feet again. Then he starts walking and in four more steps he's down. At first I thought Ralph was broken, but he wasn't, he's really designed to fall down. My father loves Ralph. "How's Ralph the Robot?" he writes. "Has he learned to walk yet?"

Three nights later, in the middle of the night Chris calls. "Hi," he says. "This is Chris. What are you up to?"

"Where have you been?" I ask. "I was worried."

"I've been busy," he says. "Well, feel like some company tonight?"

I was asleep, but I say, "Yes."

The sound of his bike on the hill draws me to the window. I can hear him coming from a block away. I hear the bike stop at the top of the hill; then I hear the rev of his engine before he throws it into gear and roars down the last slope to my door.

I lean out my bedroom window and dangle my keys above him. He dismounts, raises his face and lifts his hands up to me--and I let those keys fall. For a moment my keys are caught and fixed by the light from the street lamp, then they reach Chris and are snatched from the air by his outstretched hands.

Inside my room Chris pulls off his clothes and somersaults into bed. I press my hands into the muscles on his arms and shoulders. I run them over his back and down his legs. I love his body; he's so at ease in it. He kneels above me, circles his hands around my ankle and lifts it up to his mouth.

"Strong ankles," he says kissing my thick ankles. "They're like dancer's feet."

"Not on me they're not. I hate them."

I open my arms and legs and wrap around him and like water Chris is inside and around me all at once. "I want to got where you go when you're not here," I say. "I want to go there too."

"You can't," he whispers in my ear. "I'm just alone then."

When Chris is in my bed I can never sleep. Afraid he will disappear in the middle of the night, I lie awake. Chris sleeps with his palms open, lying on his back, his arms bent at the elbows, his hands raised, thumb and index finger barely touching. He sleeps with his palms open as if he were waiting for dreams.

Sometimes I talk to him while he sleeps, the way my mother once talked to me, reciting the Greek alphabet while I slept. She wanted me to learn Greek in my sleep. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta . . . .Now, I imagine my words lying open in Chris's palms. I tell him stories while he sleeps, odd facts that I hope will impress him: Infinity is infinitely divisible, sharks never sleep, and all plants in the rose family are edible.

In the morning I keep a piece of his clothing hidden. He leave a little confused, sure that he had come with both of his socks. He gives me a puzzled look at the door, his eyebrows raised, his mouth twitching at the corners, and then half his face slides into a smile.

"I'll talk to you soon," he always says. And he brushes my lips with a light formal good-bye kiss and slips out my door.

When the accident happens Chris is driving only five miles per hour. But we're not in the hills, we're in the city. A car pulls out in front of us and cuts us off. The drunk driver makes an illegal left-hand turn and hits us as we're crossing the intersection. I don't learn any of this till later. Later I learn that I flipped up into the air, bounced off Chris, bounced off the hood of the car and landed in the splits. But all I know at that moment is that I am lying on the pavement with my legs splayed out on either side of me. I point uptown and my left leg points downtown. Chris is running toward me. I force myself to reach up and touch my face anyway. It fools me, it feels the same as it always has, so I think I am okay and try to stand up. That's when I start to cry--I can't make my legs move. The paramedics arrive and tell me they'll have to cut through my clothes to reach my legs. "Not my new suit," I beg. "It's the first time I've ever worn it, it's tailored." They pull out their scissors and quickly slice down my pants legs, then they snip off my Italian boots. I am sprawled across Hyde Street in my underpants. I tell Chris to make the gawkers go away, but he doesn't move, he just sits beside me in the intersection with his arms around my shoulders.

One of the paramedics has his hand wrapped around my back leg, the leg I can't see. "Now, this is going to hurt," he warns, and he wrenches my leg forward and aligns it with the rest of my body. I press my mouth up against Chris's ear and I scream, I scream to burst his eardrum. I think I scream pretty much continuously for twelve hours. The paramedics keep shooting morphine into my arm, trying to shut me up. They tell me I'll wake up the rest of the hospital. But I've been waiting to scream like this, I've been waiting years, maybe all my life to scream like this.

In the hospital I become a thin, flat, horizontal object. Everybody is up above me, pointing at or poking down into me. They wrap and unwrap my bandages; they fill out my chars. They drip liquids into me. Finally I tell the nurse I'm bleeding and need a Kotex. Startled, she looks into my face. I see her register: Room 304, girl with period. She brings me the Kotex, but she won't wash my hair. People have to come in from the outside to wash your hair for you here. I sweat a lot in the hospital bed, because they've put plastic lining under all my sheets. They're afraid of floods, of seepage, of permanent bloodstains.

Two days later Chris limps in to visit me. He brings me lilies. "I can't believe you brought me lilies," I say. "My father always said lilies were for funerals."

"Sorry," Chris says. "It's the week before Easter and it's all they had that's decent, everything else looked wilted." He holds them up to my nose. "Besides, they smell so good."

I push them away; they make me want to throw up. His lilies smell so sweet, they smell like poison, and I give them to the nurse to take away.

"It's the morphine," I explain. "On morphine, smells and food make me want to throw up. Even sitting up makes me dizzy and I vomit. I feel like a pair of eyes flat on a bed."

Chris talks to me. I hear his voice a split second after I see his lips form the words. "I'll never ride a motorcycle again," he says. "When I saw you lying there I knew I was through."

I ask, "How long will I be here?"

"Awhile, but not long."

"Are you okay? Where were you hurt?"
He tells me his bruises are in deep and won't show until later. He went to see a doctor who told him he may be in some discomfort for a while. He may have complications from the bruises. He may have bruised his bones.

"My legs are so swollen." I pull off my sheet to show him. "They have to wait another day for the swelling to go down before they can operate, they're putting a pin in my knee and a rod down my femur."

Chris leans over and strokes my ankle where it is held straight out in front of me in traction.

"They drilled a hole through my ankle to secure it."

"I have to go," he says abruptly. "I'll be back soon." He almost trips as he heads for the door, but he doesn't. I have never seen Chris fall.

The next morning a doctor comes in with forms for me to sign. He introduces himself as my anesthesiologist. He tells me they are going to operate in a few hours. I am to sign the release forms.

"Will I die?" I ask.

He smiles faintly at me and taps the papers with his pen. "Of course that's always a possibility," he says. "But we don't expect it."

I sign the forms. But I refuse to sign the consent form that allows them to give me blood.

"Give me sugar water," I say. "Give me morphine, but no blood."

My mother's plane doesn't arrive until after the operation. I hear her voice while my eyes are still closed.

"It took me three days to get a plane out of Athens." She's explaining to someone.

"Athens?" the other voice asks. "Do you live there?"

I drag my eyes open slowly. She is standing by the foot of my bed talking to my nurse. I try to focus on her but she keeps blending into my nurse.

"I was there for the holidays," my mother continues, and she launches into her description of Greek Easter. Her words float over to me. She is talking about rituals, about chanting in ancient languages in dark churches.

I stare hard at her until she stops flickering. Then I start to laugh; she is dressed in my clothes--my jacket, my skirt--but her own blouse.

"What did you do, raid my closet?"

"I had no clothes," she tells me. "I was so mixed up, I packed all the wrong clothes and had nothing to wear when I got off the plane."

She offers me candy, divinity fudge. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I've eaten half the box while I waited for you to wake up."

"Mom, they smell sweet." I push the candies away before I'm sick.

I ask her if she wants to see my wounds. It's the most important thing that's happened to me in a long time, but she warns me not to unwrap. She makes a list of all the things I'm going to need.

"Kotex," she mutters.

"Birth control pills," I say. "And lotion, Mom, lots of lotion."

"Soft socks," she goes on muttering. "Booties (I tell her I want pink booties). Hypoallergenic bandages. Hypoallergenic tape. Shampoo." She looks up at me. "A book?"
I shake my head no. I wave to her. I am going to pass out now. I've learned now when I'm going to pass out.

When I open my eyes again my mother is scrubbing my bathroom.

"I've also bought some Ajax and rubber gloves," she tells me.

"Mom," I say, "I'm catheterized."

"What?" she asks.

"There's a tube up my thing."

"Well, I need to use the bathroom and so will you sooner or later." And she begins to polish the mirror.

A few days later Chris comes to visit again. My mother is painting her nails, sitting off to the side of my bed so the smell won't reach me. Chris nods hello to my mother and she just barely inclines her head in return. Then Chris hands me some papers. "This is to hire a lawyer so we can file suit against that drunk driver. We're suing his insurance company together," he explains. "And I'm suing my own insurance company to collect on damages for the bike."

"Hunh?" I'm trying to read the legal forms but I can't connect any of the letters. I look up at Chris. "What?" I say. "What about your bike?"

"I went down to look at it and it's totaled." He is speaking so fast I can hardly catch his words. "But my insurance company will cover it so I've been looking at a new bike. Only problem is, they don't make that model motorcycle anymore." He is looking straight into my eyes as he says this, his face tight and controlled.

I see the word "motorcycle" leave his mouth and fly across my hospital room. I'm afraid it will disappear before I grasp it. Next to me my mother is blowing hard on her nails. She stands up, glares at Chris. "You bastard," she says, and she slams out into the hall.

Chris looks after my mother, and then turns back to me. "She never liked me," he says, leaning against the wall, waiting for me to answer. Instead, the nurse comes in and interrupts us. She shoots another shot of morphine into my arm. After a few minutes I start to gag and throw up over the front of my hospital gown. Chris wipes my face with a warm cloth. He pulls out a clean gown from the drawer, slips it around me and ties it at the back of my neck. Then he goes to the door and beckons my mother. I gargle and spit into a pan by my bed, and then reach for the pen. I'm getting good at signing forms.

After Chris leaves my mother says, "You know, you're wasting your youth and beauty on that man. He'll kill you if he gets the chance."

"Mom, don't start now."

"I will too start now." She paces by the foot of my bed, her hands on her hips. "For once you just have to lie there and listen to me. That man almost killed you."

"But it wasn't his fault, even the police report said it was the other driver's fault."

"Yes," she says. "But you remember what you told your father when he called, that you'd been drinking shots and chasers and Chris was drunk. It's just the sort of thing your father would do too, get behind the wheel drunk."

"Mom! Chris didn't mean to hurt me!"
She stops pacing and stares at me with her fierce eyes. "He won't mean to hurt you the next time either," she says.

"I'm tired," I tell her. "I'm fading now."

She reaches for my hand and pats it, and I close my eyes and slip under the morphine.

That night I dream I am lying in my bed at home and my legs rise up out of the bed without me. My legs begin to dance slowly about my room but I am not with them. They dance out my bedroom door and down my hall. From my bed, I watch the backs of my legs waltzing away. Soon all I can see are my ankles and heels. Then only the soles of my feet are left. They wave at me and disappear.

After I've been at the hospital three weeks they let me go home. My mother picks me up and spreads me carefully across the backseat of a rent-a-car. She drives ten miles per hour all the way home. The world is so bright outside. The light bounces off the buildings, assaulting us as we pass. I squint my eyes, I have not seen any natural light in almost a month.

In the evening when Chris comes over, he brings me an orchid plant and sets it by my bed. "I checked it," he says. "Smell for yourself, it has no scent."

"I'm not on morphine anymore." I laugh a little. "They don't think I'm in pain."

Down the hall my mother slams a drawer shut. She's been cleaning my kitchen, banging around the room muttering to herself. Suddenly she is quiet, and I think maybe she is listening too.

Chris leans over and kisses me. I pull him into my bed and press against him. He licks my lips open and I can taste him again. His mouth is cool to my tongue and he tastes like a night ride. Like the wet leather from his motorcycle jacket and everything he passes in the night, the insects, the tress, the houses, the streets. He absorbs everything in the air and it flavors him. I want to cry; more than that, I want to pretend. We try to make love, but a few of the stitches on my leg break open and my blood spatters the sheets like a virgin's. We can't finish; the muscle spasms from the sex spread down into my legs, down into the bones, and even feel as if they're spreading into the metal inside my bones. When the twitching and shaking in my legs stop, when the pain subsides, I say to Chris, "How could you buy another bike? You said you would never ride again."

"Why should I give up motorcycling?" he asks.

I try to answer but I only suck in air. If I cry out, my mother will hear me. In my leg the pain is beating, another life, swallowing me. Now I want it to swallow Chris.

"Hey," Chris says. "Are you all right? Don't worry, I'm careful."

"Careful," I repeat. I hold onto his word, sink into it. I let it cradle me like my pain.

Chris rolls over and swings his legs to the floor. We both look down and stare at his bare feet.

"I'm not you," he finally says. He stands up and walks over to the window where he's left his clothes. He reaches for his jeans, but what I see is his sideways glance out to the street, where his gleaming new bike waits.

I push myself up into a sitting position and wrap the blankets around me. "You're leaving?" I ask.

He nods, already zipping up his jeans.

From my bed I watch him dress. All his clothes are there in a pile where he left them. I haven't hidden anything. He moves quickly. He slips his white shirt over his head, the sleeves flapping out like wings before his arms thread through them. Then he loops his belt around his waist and pulls his socks on.

"Wait," I say. "How can you just leave as if everything was just the same?"

"I'll come back," Chris says, stepping into his boots. "When you're feeling better." When he crosses the room to me his heels crack hard against my wood floor.

"I am feeling better," I say, pushing away from his embrace.

Chris gives me a hard look. "Good night," he says, his face closing down around the words. He sinks into his motorcycle jacket and strides out my door. I watch his back moving away from me and his feet vanishing down the hall.

The last sounds I hear that night are the roar and then the hum of his bike disappearing over the hill.

In the morning, when I wake up, my mother is leaning over my bed. She's been talking to me.

"What?" I say. "What were you telling me?"

Print Issue:

Volume 09 Number 3

In The Print Issue:

Listening

by Gabrielle Selz