And Again Page 9

  “How’s David Jr.?” I ask.

  “Well, he got into an argument with one of the other boys at school the other day,” Beth says, as she pulls a bottle of Perrier out of the fridge with perfectly manicured hands. “I guess he saw some cartoon of you on the Internet or something.”

  “An argument or a fight?”

  “His teacher called it an argument. She says he’s been volatile lately, and it was only a matter of time. But don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”

  “No,” I say, leaning on the counter to give my legs a break. “Tell him I’ll Skype him this weekend and we’ll talk about it. I don’t want him getting pushed around.”

  “Sweetie, I’ve got it,” she says, her perfect rows of teeth showing under red lips. “It’s kid stuff. Don’t bother with it.”

  Time was, I would’ve been more than happy to let Beth deal with our son’s problems. After all, how could they compare with what I had to deal with at his age? I had work on the farm and a part-time job and a grandmother who would forget to eat if I let her stare out the window for too long. It’s been a concern of mine for a while that my son has it too easy, the child of a congressman with his private school and our big house and the best of everything. How on earth will he be prepared for the world with that kind of an upbringing? It’s been easy to blame Beth for coddling him, for giving him the sort of posh lifestyle she grew up in. But now I think it’s my own failing, not being around enough to insure he’s got his feet on the ground. It’s just one of the things I intend to address now, with my second chance.

  “No,” I say to Beth. “No, I’ll handle it. I’ll make it a priority.”

  “All right,” she says, her mouth quirking up at the corners, as if she is afraid to smile too wide just yet, when my reform is still so new. I’m beginning to feel like everything is a test, to show her proof that I am truly changed, that she made the right decision in tearing up the divorce papers and taking care of me when I got sick. She rounds the counter to me, smoothing out the shirt I’m wearing, her hands brushing down my chest. “I’m happy you’re home, you know,” she says, sniffing a bit, batting at the corner of her eye with her fingertips.

  This is such an uncharacteristic turn from my wife, such a strange show of emotion for a woman who is so deft and elegant and remote, that I’m caught off guard. Even more so when she takes my face in her hands and kisses me, full-on, in a way I remember from when we were first together. It takes me a moment to get the hang of it, this suddenly fervent kissing thing, because I would have been out of practice kissing Beth even if I wasn’t in an entirely new body. Just when I’m really finding my footing, she pops the button on my jeans with her fingers, and my fortress of concentration collapses in on itself as if it were made of toothpicks. She slips her hand into my boxers and it feels soft and cool and my hips lurch forward of their own accord.

  The disaster begins slowly, as disasters usually do. I begin to think of Hannah. Hannah, on the roof, pressing her mouth to mine. And I have to stop it, to stop all of it, because I can’t allow myself to think of some girl while my wife has her hand down my pants. I try and think of Beth, perfect Beth, with her bubblegum pink mouth and perfect breasts and blonde hair. But it is like a switch has been flipped inside of me, everything shutting down from the inside out. I grab her wrist.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks into my throat.

  “I can’t right now, baby,” I say, extracting her hand.

  “Can’t? Oh . . .” She drops a step back. “Is it something about . . . your SUB?” She says it like it’s some sort of fungus. Not the thing that’s saved my life.

  “I have work to do, Beth,” I snap. “I can’t just drop everything in the middle of the day.”

  “Oh. Of course,” she says, running a finger below her bottom lip, fixing the line of lipstick there. Perfect, my wife. “I just thought . . . Never mind.”

  I let out a breath, wishing I had something to offer her. “Everything is still so new,” I say, because it’s all I can muster. She nods, though I can tell her impassive veneer is back in place, impenetrable. It doesn’t matter what I say now. “I’m gonna call the office. Are you making dinner or are we ordering in?”

  “I was going to make us a couple of steaks for your first night of freedom,” she says. The idea of red meat conjures images of my other body, lying in a refrigerated drawer somewhere. I start to feel sick.

  “Not steak,” I say. “Something else. Pasta, maybe?”

  She nods, looking at me like she’s sprung me from a psych ward instead of the hospital. I feel that way, a little. Shifty, like something disastrous is about to happen. I have to prove to Beth, somehow, that I’ve turned a corner. I have to forget what happened on that rooftop.

  “All right. Whatever you want,” she replies, as if nothing in the world has ever mattered less to her. I want to linger, want to try to explain how everything feels now, how everything in my mind seems to be wired wrong. But Beth doesn’t want explanations. She wants her husband back, and there’s nothing I can do to convince her that things will go back to normal. That things will be better than normal. I go in the bedroom to call Jackson. He picks up on the first ring and begins talking without any introduction.

  “I want you to do a phone interview with the New York Times,” he says. “Prove to your constituents that you’ve still got your wits about you. They’re skewering you over the whole rehab story.”

  “Fine, what else?” I walk the perimeter of the room as I talk, opening drawers and flipping lamps on and off. My hotel room procedure, checking everything out. But this isn’t a hotel, this is home for the better part of the next year. I slide open the closet. It’s mostly full of casual clothes. A dozen polos and my favorite Yale sweatshirts. Jeans and track pants and basketball shorts. There are a couple of suits hanging toward the back, and I pull out one of the jackets, holding the hanger up to my shoulders and looking at myself in the mirror.

  “Burt Leeland wants to get on a call sometime next week,” Jackson says, as I study my reflection. The jacket dwarfs me. I toss it onto the bed as I head through the master suite to the hallway. The gym is two doors down, with its mirrored wall and its black and white exercise machines. I run my palm over the rows of hand weights sitting on their rack against one wall.

  “Think it’s possible he’s calling in that favor already?” I ask, lifting a twenty-pound barbell off the rack and pumping my bicep experimentally against the resistance. It feels like it weighs about triple what it should. I set it down with a clang of metal on metal.

  “I think it’s doubtful that he’s calling to wish you a speedy recovery,” Jackson replies, and I know he’s right. Burt is the CEO of S&J Holdings, a conglomerate that deals in everything from airplane parts to media outlets to pharmaceuticals. And he was the first call after my diagnosis because he’s the only man I know with enough pull to break a double blind in an FDA trial. Or rig a lottery, in my case.

  “Tell him I can speak to him at his earliest convenience,” I say, sitting down on one of the leg machines and pumping out a few reps on a sickeningly light weight. My muscles sear inside me as I count in my head. The weight crashes back into place on my last rep, and I sag a little in the hard cushion of the seat. I have such a long way to go. “I guess I was never going to be able to avoid paying the piper, huh?”

  “Doubtful, sir,” Jackson replies.

  “Well, let’s see what we can do about mitigating the fallout from this. I don’t care what he wants, I’m not selling the whole fucking farm, all right?” I reply, wiping the slight sheen of sweat from my forehead onto my sleeve. Beth won’t be happy if I show up for dinner smelling like a construction worker. I decide to forego any more leg presses for the evening.

  “Of course, sir,” Jackson replies, though his voice has no conviction in it. Everyone is placating me these days. Everyone, of course, except for Hannah, who challenges me at every turn. I can almost hear the scheming that must be going on in Jackson’s head. I’m sure h
e’s already planning ten ways to reign me in on this. He doesn’t have the conviction to go up against S&J, risking exposure and their sizeable contributions to my campaign in one fell swoop. If Burt Leeland asked me for nuclear launch codes, Jackson would find a way of delivering them. But he doesn’t know what I know, what I’ve always known. He doesn’t know struggle, or the feeling of true power. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be me.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I say, not waiting for an answer, clicking the phone off and going to change my shirt before dinner.

  Later I find Beth in the study that Jackson set up as a temporary office, leaning over the desk, reading something by the light of the small lamp beside her, the intensity of her focus almost startling. I watch her for a few moments from the doorway, unnoticed, as she closes a folder and puts it back into one of the drawers. I duck back into the hallway as she flicks off the light, pretending I haven’t caught her going through my things. She starts as she sees me, shutting the office door behind her. Then she smiles, her perfect veneer pulled back into place.

  “You coming to bed?” she asks.

  “In a bit. I have a few ends to tie up first.”

  “Of course.” She presses a hand against my chest, her wedding ring glimmering there like an accusation. She kisses me on the cheek this time, an admonishment of my earlier mistake, and then heads for the stairs.

  I go back to my study after Beth has gone to bed, opening the drawer from which she’d pulled the folder. There are four files in the drawer. One for me, one for Hannah, one for Connie, one for Linda. Our SUBlife profiles, the background information collected on us before the transfer, the ones Jackson had to call in a few favors to get. Something in me prickles with displeasure, that my wife would be snooping into this part of my life. I put the files away, trying to ignore the quiet instinct inside of me that says something awful has happened, though I’m not quite sure what it is.

  Connie

  I knock softly on Dr. Grath’s door, four short raps, the way I always do, so he knows it’s me.

  “It’s open,” he calls from inside, and I enter. His apartment is dim. The amber glow of evening sunlight cuts through the shut blinds on his window; it’s the only other light in the little room besides the flicker of the TV. He sits in his armchair with a mug of tea next to him on the side table and a joint balanced in his thick-knuckled hand. He’s surrounded by bookshelves stuffed with books he can’t read anymore. His plants are dying, their leaves curling on yellow stems. I tried to overwater them a bit before I left, but apparently it wasn’t enough. I wonder if he remembers they’re even there. “Your vacation is over just in time. I Confess is on.” He motions toward the TV. I smile because Dr. Grath knows Montgomery Clift has always been a favorite of mine.

  “Perfect,” I reply and then stop short when Dr. Grath stands up so quickly he drops the joint. It trails hot sparks down the front of his dark green cardigan and lands on the carpet, still glowing. I’m about to rush to stomp it out when Dr. Grath’s voice stops me.

  “Who are you?” he says, his face trained on me, as if he could conjure some saved-up stores of sight, if only he concentrates hard enough. He’s a small man when he stands, probably about my height, with a thin nose and wisps of white hair on his head. He paints a sweet, feeble picture, standing there in his rumpled clothes. Like a baby chick before it opens its eyes, all damp, downy feathers and shriveled legs. Only his mind remains sharp, in a body that has failed him a hundred times over by now.

  “It’s me,” I say, laughing a little, as if this is a game I don’t quite understand. “I haven’t been gone for that long, have I?”

  “Your voice,” Dr. Grath says, his own voice wavering with fear. Then he recovers himself a bit, because his next words are stronger, more resolved. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Dr. Grath, it’s me,” I say, taking another step toward him. He shrinks back a bit. “Jesus, what do I have to say to prove it to you?”

  He seems to consider the question for a minute. “Did you happen to get new vocal chords on your vacation? Because the Connie I knew smoked a pack a day since she was a teenager, and you could hear every single one of those cigarettes when she talked.”

  I’m unprepared for this. I hadn’t considered that he’d be able to tell I’ve changed. I hadn’t even decided if I should tell him anything at all. I want one place in the world to be just how I remembered it. I want there to be one place where it doesn’t matter if I had been changed or not. “And what if I did?” I say.

  “Impossible, my dear,” Dr. Grath replies. I shrug, though he can’t see me, not with the apartment this dark. He can barely see me in full sunlight, as it is. Just variations of shadow, he said to me once. Just figures moving around in a dark room.

  “Your wife’s name was Maureen. Like my mother’s.” I leave it at that. The one thing we have in common. Dr. Grath frowns, and I can tell I’ve won him over, because he drops back into his chair. “You sound like a different person.” His tone is gruff, as if I’ve done it intentionally to inconvenience him.

  “It’s a long story.” I step forward and pat him on the arm, reaching down to pick the joint up from the carpet at his feet. It’s too late; there’s a charred little hole where the fibers of the rug have been singed away. He’ll never know, though, so I don’t mention it. I hand the unfinished joint back to him. “Be more careful, old man. You don’t want to be the one to burn the building down.”

  Dr. Grath chuckles, turning back to the TV. “Yes, because if someone is going to burn down the Chelsea Hotel, it had better be its resident Edie Sedgwick.” He pats my hand, accepting the joint and bringing it to his lips. The light flickers off his cloudy eyes; nothing is absorbed. “Was it a good vacation?”

  “Not bad,” I say, settling into my usual spot on his tiny couch, watching Montgomery Clift cross the screen dressed in black priest’s robes. “I’m glad I’m back in time for this. Monty dressed as a priest is even better than watching him in Red River. There’s something much more alluring in the forbidden, don’t you think?”

  “You are lucky you live when you do, my dear,” he says, and I can almost feel the lapsed Catholic in him stepping up to his lectern. “It wasn’t so many decades ago that a woman like you would be branded a Jezebel.”

  “Oh please,” I reply. “It wasn’t so many decades ago when women like me were burned at the stake.”

  He laughs then, but his eyes hover in middle space, so I can’t tell if he’s trying to look at me or the television.

  “Tell me what’s different,” he says.

  “Everything,” I reply. “Everything is different.”

  “Is it a man?”

  I’m the one to laugh now, and it’s a clear sound. It’s the first time I notice what he means, that the husky scrape is gone from my throat. I sound younger, less world-weary. I hadn’t even noticed before. “You give your gender a lot of credit, as if all it took was a few months with a new beau to fix me right up, huh?”

  “I’ve seen whole worlds turn upside down in less time than that,” Dr. Grath replies.

  “Yes, but not lately.”

  “Careful now. You can’t tease me anymore if it turns out you’re cured and I’m not.”

  I don’t say anything for a long time. He waits, remaining silent, letting me figure out what to say next. Old bastard, I think.

  “How did you know?” I ask, finally, blinking hard to keep the sting in my eyes at bay.

  “Val’s caller ID. He said the call came from Northwestern Memorial. And here I thought you weren’t coming back at all, after he gave me that message. I thought that was your good-bye. I had a good cry over it, actually. But then you show up smelling like fresh milk, with that voice of yours. It’s like you’ve been scrubbed clean.”

  “What did I smell like before?” I ask, a little taken aback.

  “Vinegar. And damp hair. Like you were dying.”

  “I was dying.”

  “And now?” he asks
. I look at the TV. Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter are having a tense, passion-filled exchange. It occurs to me that he looks a bit like David.

  “I guess I’m not anymore.”

  “And how does that happen, exactly? I mean, I’ve heard of remissions, but never cures. Not with your strain. Believe me, I’ve asked around.”

  “Trying to fix me, doctor?” I ask, flirting a little, because it’s the only way I know how to repay men who are kind to me. But he’s having none of it, as usual.

  “I’m not keen on the idea of outliving anyone I know,” he says.

  I let a long stream of air out through my nose, as if I’ve just taken a long drag on his joint. “Well your plants are going to die.”

  “Maybe not,” he replies, “now that you’re back.”

  Dr. Grath falls asleep in his armchair, and I leave him there. He spends most nights there now, with the TV flickering over his well-lined face, his vacant eyes moving beneath his eyelids. I wonder what he sees when he dreams, if he ever wakes up forgetting that he’s blind until he opens his eyes. That was how it was for me for a long time. I’d wake up and for one dizzying moment I’d forget that I was sick, as if I were suspended mid-fall. Then the world would rush up to meet me.

  I wash out his teacup in the sink. Killing time, mostly, before I have to go back to my apartment. I turn down the volume on the TV, though not all the way, not to the point where he won’t realize it’s still on when he wakes up in the morning. And then I venture back across the hall, with its thin felt carpeting and musty smell, into the apartment I didn’t bother locking while I was gone.

  I don’t like it anymore. Not that I ever particularly loved it, but I feel now an active repulsion when I flick on the lights and shut the door behind me. It’s nothing like the apartments I had in L.A., even the little place I’d shared with another model when I first moved into the city. That place had been cramped and hot, with foggy windows and a communal pool that was always overrun with algae and dead leaves. We’d slept on mattresses on the floor, she and I, with a curtain hung on a wire between us to divide the room. But it had a view of the Hollywood sign and it had been unfailingly sunny, like everything in California. And after growing up in a trailer, it might as well have been Buckingham Palace.