One Station Away Page 7

  I was surprised by how spontaneous she was in conversation, how she seemingly had no need to ask me anything or to explain anything about herself to me. She was frank, without being blunt, and her bright laughter rang in my ears. Even so, I found out that she was from Buenos Aires and had come to New York to study dance before she started teaching herself. She made fun of her own accent, insisting it must be the reason why the waiter brought her chicken when she had ordered fish. When I was going to wave him over and point out his mistake she told me not to bother.

  “I’m sure the chicken will be fine, too,” she said.

  She tucked into her meal, and I couldn’t help remembering an incident I thought I had long forgotten. I hated the fact that this memory should come back to haunt me at that precise moment, and yet I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

  I was twelve or thirteen at the time and the occasion was my mother’s birthday. Vincent had reserved a table at a restaurant in Cambridge and we drove there through the misty darkness. I remember Vincent taking off his glasses and trying to polish them with his tie. He isn’t a good driver and I had a bad feeling about this, but kept quiet. Margaret had been silent the whole way, and saw no reason why she should help him with his spectacles.

  The restaurant was half empty and we were shown to a table by the window. Outside, a streetlamp glinted in the mist, but apart from that everything was dark. The place reeked of damp and had seen better days, the carpet was threadbare, and the blue wallpaper had been patched. The waiters wore black suits with white shirts and black ties, but their clothes were old and baggy.

  “Well,” said Vincent, once they had brought the menus, “let’s see. You can order anything you like from the left-hand side of the menu, Magnus, anything at all.”

  On the left were the house specials, a choice of three first courses, three main courses, and ice cream for dessert. I forget what I ate, but my mother ordered the salmon. Or so she maintained, after the waiter brought her lamb chops.

  “Well,” said Vincent, leaning over his plate to smell the food, “this looks delicious.”

  I started eating, but Margaret sat still, without moving a finger. Vincent didn’t notice at first. When he finally caught on, he asked whether everything was all right, as he raised his fork to his mouth and began to chew.

  “I ordered the salmon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He ought to have known better than to question her. Which he wasn’t doing, since his tone was innocent, as one might say, “Really?” or “Is that so?” when something unexpected happens.

  She didn’t answer, but stopped him when he was about to call the waiter over.

  “No,” she said.

  “What?” he replied.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Margaret.”

  “You’re probably right. I just imagined that I ordered salmon.”

  “I didn’t say that. Of course I believe you. I was deciding what I wanted when you ordered and I didn’t hear you, that’s all.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll ask the waiter to bring you salmon.”

  “No!”

  Vincent gave a start. As for me, I had stopped eating and was staring into my lap. I could see out of the corner of my eye that the people at the next table were looking at us.

  We left before the dessert. Margaret didn’t touch her lamb chops, and when the waiter came to take the plates away he asked whether the food hadn’t been to her liking.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied. “It was delicious.”

  Why did these memories assail me at that precise moment when I had never felt happier? Why did I think about the lamb chops on my mother’s plate when Malena picked up her knife and fork and laughed about the time when she found herself in a cab bound for Brooklyn before she realized the driver had misunderstood her directions?

  “I was going home,” she said. “It must have been my accent.”

  “Spain?” I asked.

  “Argentina. England?”

  “Yes. But half Icelandic.”

  She smiled.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You believe in elves, don’t you?”

  “I wasn’t brought up there,” I replied, not seeing a reason to mention the time we’d spent in Reykjavík. I hadn’t thought about those days for a long time, and had no desire to dredge them up.

  “Of course elves exist,” she said. “They have to.”

  “Forgive me,” Simone repeated after a lengthy silence.

  “Do you remember when Malena and I went to Iceland?” I asked. “She was always on the lookout for elves. She assumed that being Icelandic I would be able to see them. Can you picture her?”

  I must have smiled because Simone’s face relaxed and all at once she looked relieved.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I can picture her.”

  “How could I not have realized she was dying?”

  Chapter 12

  We are expecting a new patient. I told Hofsinger this morning and didn’t hesitate to say yes when he asked me whether I saw a reason to be optimistic. I probably should have been more circumspect, but in the light of recent events, I felt I had no choice. I don’t blame him for losing faith in me. And yet I am genuinely more optimistic than I have been for a long time, because what I have read about the patient bodes well. Admittedly, the report isn’t all that detailed. The woman is coming to us from a local hospital in New Mexico, where the facilities are quite basic: for example, she hasn’t yet been given a CT or an MRI scan and is unlikely to receive one until she gets here. All things considered, the information looks promising, although she has yet to be examined by a neurologist.

  Our last two patients were a disappointment. Although initial examinations suggested otherwise, neither ended up showing signs of consciousness. They came to us from a hospital in Boston, with whom we enjoyed good relations, but since then Hofsinger has decided to break those off. He doesn’t know that on both occasions I was to blame.

  As a rule, we visit and examine the patients before taking them on, so we can judge their condition for ourselves. Of course the process isn’t infallible, but since the research we do is both costly and involved, it has been deemed necessary. I have been the one to carry it out from the beginning, and I can’t deny it has often proven useful.

  I never visited the two patients in Boston. I tried, but couldn’t. The first time, I managed to leave my apartment, descend the stairs, and open the door to the street, determined not to give in. It was raining, a light but continuous drizzle, and I paused on the stoop, staring out into the grayness. It seemed to have swallowed everything up, leaving no sign of life, and the silence which rarely makes its presence felt here in the city was oddly profound. I thought about the train ride ahead, the thoughts I would carry with me, the grayness that would envelop me during the journey, and I felt utterly deflated. I turned around and walked slowly back up the stairs.

  The second time I didn’t even make it out of bed. Outside the sun was shining.

  As I was responsible for all communications with the hospital and the head doctor, who has always been gracious toward me, my colleagues never discovered my failure. I managed to avoid having to lie about my movements, because no one would ever have thought to question my honesty. But of course, I was deceiving them by omission; of course, I was not only betraying them but myself as well. I never imagined myself capable of that.

  But that’s in the past. I look ahead to the future now, and all of a sudden I feel in control of myself. Without exaggerating the progress I have made, there has been a definite change. I notice it, for example, in my attitude toward my job. Not long ago, I would simply have shrugged if Hofsinger had told me my services at the hospital were no longer needed. I might even have felt relieved, said good-bye the same day, scarcely bothering to remove my belongings from my office. But things are different now. I feel as if my job is all I have, and I’m almost certain we can help this patient who is on her way to us.r />
  It was Anthony who went to examine her. I suggested he do this, and he was delighted. I am sure Simone was a little offended, but she soon got over it, and besides, she isn’t fond of flying. I reminded her of that, implying that I had taken it into account. Hofsinger asked whether I trusted Anthony with the task, and I told him it was time we put him to the test. Naturally I felt like a fraud as I listened to myself speak, but I brushed those thoughts aside.

  The woman is about thirty years old, five foot seven, currently weighs ninety-two pounds, though she was probably twenty or thirty pounds heavier prior to the accident. She was found at the side of the road close to Las Cruces, the southernmost part of the state, twenty yards from a ruined motorcycle. She wasn’t carrying any identification. There were skid marks on the road, and wreckage from the motorcycle and another vehicle, an automobile, suggested a collision. The police are no closer to discovering what happened, although they assume the woman was a passenger. She wasn’t wearing a helmet.

  The accident happened two months ago, and the police still don’t know the woman’s identity. Anthony says the nursing staff at the hospital assume she is Mexican, here illegally. In any case, despite announcements in the media, no one has inquired about her, and the police have given up or perhaps lost interest in trying to find the driver of the motorcycle or the automobile which left the scene of the accident. The motorcycle had been stolen.

  “What surprises me most is that they didn’t pull the plug on her,” Anthony said, handing me his report after he returned from his trip. “I expect the doctor who looked after her prevented it. He is still young and idealistic.”

  The young doctor’s remarks were a testament to his keen sense of observation and conscientiousness. He noticed that the patient started blinking five weeks after the accident and concluded she was emerging from her coma. He also noticed that she had moved her eyes up and down, and knew enough to assume this meant she was conscious. He must have researched the subject, for he writes as if he is explaining it to himself: “I imagine she awoke from a deep sleep yesterday. The first time I saw her blink was when I looked in on her late in the afternoon. It was fleeting, and she soon fell asleep again. Yesterday evening, one of the nurses saw her not only blink but also move her eyes. I witnessed this myself this morning. She moved her right eye, I couldn’t see her left . . . It’s possible she is fully conscious, able to hear us, to smell, to feel the sheet brushing against her skin as we spread it over her . . .

  “This morning I stroked her brow and then her cheek, and asked her to blink if she could feel it. At first I saw no change, but then the right eye opened—slowly and with difficulty—before closing again. I called the nurse and repeated the procedure but this time she didn’t respond. I assumed that sleep had claimed her once more . . .”

  I asked Anthony if the doctor had added anything when they met.

  “He wasn’t there,” he said. “A well-deserved break, I was told. Works hard, takes good care of his patients.”

  I wondered whether the young doctor’s reflections had found their way into the report by accident; they are handwritten on a folded sheet of lined, yellow paper in the middle of the file, unrelated to the rest of the report. I have the feeling he slipped them in deliberately.

  Just as I was about to walk out of his office with the sheaf of papers under my arm, Anthony cleared his throat.

  “I listened to that CD you gave me,” he said. “Three times. Congratulations.”

  Chapter 13

  Although I had been living on West Seventy-Fifth Street for about four years when Malena and I met, I can’t say I knew my neighbors. On the floor below me lived an elderly lady in a rent-controlled apartment, and above me was a French couple, Monsieur Chaumont and his wife, who corrected me the first time I said good morning to her:

  “Not Chaumont,” she said. “Roullard. Estelle Roullard.”

  She gave me an offended look, and from then on I was careful to have as little to do with her as possible, at most nodding if we met on the stairs. Monsieur Chaumont taught French at a nearby high school; he was small and dapper, always wore a pocket handkerchief and elegant brown shoes with his gray slacks or blue suit. They had a lapdog which they walked daily around the neighborhood, dressing it in a woolen sweater in winter.

  Monsieur Chaumont had once knocked on my door to ask whether I, too, was without hot water, but that was the extent of our relationship. They moved about quietly and never disturbed me, and the dog mostly refrained from barking, or couldn’t be bothered to.

  I was therefore taken aback when one evening I came across Malena merrily chatting to my French neighbors out on the sidewalk. I was coming from work and looking forward to seeing her; she had moved in with me that week, having brought over some of her clothes the weekend before. I had plenty of space in my wardrobes, but used the opportunity anyway to donate some of my old clothes to the Salvation Army, as I wanted her to bring as much as she could, everything if possible. They were speaking in French, and they all said, “Bonsoir!” when they saw me, Malena, too. I don’t speak any French and felt unable to respond in kind, so I simply nodded. I stood next to them in silence until the conversation ended, and the couple walked off down the street, the dog on a leash between them, and Malena and I went inside.

  “What a nice couple,” she said.

  “Glad to hear it,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “They said they don’t know you.”

  “They’re quite right.”

  “What a curmudgeon you are.”

  “Me?”

  I told her about my exchange with Madame Roullard.

  “She’s a poet,” she replied, as if that explained everything.

  First she brought her clothes, then a few books, her kettle (she found mine hopeless), her family photographs, a painting of dancers by an Argentine artist, a friend. Then more clothes. Her father had passed away, but she spoke regularly with her mother and sister, sometimes on the telephone but more often on Skype. They both lived in Buenos Aires. She had so many friends I couldn’t keep track of them all, and I would occasionally forget who was who.

  “You remember Edelmira, we met her at that Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn with Gustavo and Mia.”

  Sometimes I remembered, sometimes I didn’t.

  “Short?”

  “No, tall.”

  “Dark-haired?”

  “No, blond.”

  She rolled her eyes, laughing, and said she had never met anyone who had such a bad memory for people.

  There was never a harsh word between us and we never had to refrain from speaking our minds to avoid having a quarrel. Not once. We engaged in frequent, affectionate banter, and knew how to appreciate each other’s idiosyncrasies.

  “How could I be so dumb?” she would say to herself at the slightest provocation, for example when she forgot her keys or her MetroCard, which happened often. She would invariably respond by resolving to take herself in hand—“This can’t go on!”—and asking me if I could help her. “No,” I would say, “it amuses me too much, seeing your expression when you’re angry with yourself.”

  She was in the habit of talking to herself, always in Spanish. I enjoyed listening to her, although I could understand only the occasional word. I felt I was seeing her in another light, as if a side of her was being revealed that would otherwise have remained hidden. I saw it, too, when she spoke with her mother or her sister and, of course, even more so when we made love/had sex. I don’t know whether she realized, but at those moments she always spoke in Spanish, sometimes with her eyes closed, though more often gazing into mine. I won’t deny that I was curious to know what she was saying, although, to begin with at least, I found it more arousing trying to imagine.

  In the end, I felt I had no choice but to learn Spanish. We had known each other for almost six months, and I was bothered by not knowing her language, especially when we were with her Spanish-speaking friends. They often made an effort to speak English f
or my sake, but that made me uncomfortable. I would encourage them to carry on talking in their language, saying that I liked listening to them and I could understand enough. I was exaggerating, of course, but they, and above all Malena, were grateful.

  I am almost embarrassed to admit that something Simone said probably spurred me on. I tried to make light of it at the time, but the memory of it haunted me longer than I would have wished.

  It was a Monday morning. I was telling her about my weekend, an afternoon with Malena in Williamsburg and the purchase of a new sofa for the living room and an oriental rug to go with it.

  “Has she moved in with you completely?” asked Simone.

  “No, she’s keeping her apartment, although she is hardly ever there.”

  “Why?”

  “Her rent is low.”

  Simone said nothing, but I could tell she didn’t find the explanation convincing.

  “She says people should move house in spring. Not in fall or winter. She’s superstitious.”

  “Pardon?”

  I smiled.

  “Superstition is part of her culture. I find it rather amusing.”

  That was when Simone looked at me and said in her solemn way:

  “How much do you know about her?”

  She quickly added that she didn’t mean to imply anything, only that I should be careful. I thought I knew what was behind this: she had once lived with a doctor who had a drug problem, which he managed to hide from her for several months. This experience had obviously had a profound effect on her, made her overly skeptical, and yet her words preyed on my mind. I reproached myself for entertaining suspicious thoughts—and Simone for putting them in my head. I don’t intend to make too much of them, but I suspect they partly explained why soon afterward I resolved to try to learn Spanish.