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We did just that. We rode out the ringing.
Biggie said, 'Oh, can't you just see him? Breathing into the phone!'
'I'll bet he's just livid,' I said. 'The prick.'
But later, after Colm had fallen out of bed and bawled - and needed trundling to Biggie's broad chest, and some reassurance about a peculiar nightmare involving a zoo - I said, 'I'll bet that was just Ralph Packer, Big. My father wouldn't call us. He'd write us - he'd write a fucking opus.'
'No,' Biggie said. 'It was your father. And he'll never call again.' She sounded glad.
That night Biggie rolled back against me and said, 'Let it ring.'
But I just dreamed. I dreamed that Iowa was playing out of town and took me with them. They used me for the opening kickoff. From yards deep in my own end zone, I ran all the way upfield for a miraculous touchdown. Of course I was horribly jarred along the route, even chopped, quartered, halved, ground, gouged and swiped; but somehow I emerged, severely crippled but upright, churning into the enemy's virgin end zone.
Then there's the aftermath: I am carried off the field by the Iowa cheerleaders and toted along the sidelines, past the seething, jeering enemy fans. Little sweatered nymphs bear me along; my near-limp and bloodied arm brushes one of their cold, pink legs; somehow I sense both the smoothness and the prickle. I look giddily up at their young, tear-streaked faces; one brushes my cheek with her hair, perhaps trying to remove the grass stain on my nose or dislodge the cleat embedded in my chin. I am light to carry. These strong young girls bear me under the stadium, through a bowel-like tunnel. Their high voices echo, their shrill concern for me pierces me more than my pain. To some linen-covered table, then, where they spread me out, remove my encrusted armor, marvel and wail over my wounds. Above us the stadium throws down its muted din. The girls sponge me off. I go into shock; I shiver; the girls lie across me, fearing that I'll chill.
I am so cold that I have another dream; I'm in a duck blind in the New Hampshire salt marshes with my father. I am wondering how old I am; I don't have a gun, and when I stand on tiptoe, I can just reach my father's throat.
He says, 'Be quiet.' And, 'Jesus, see if I ever bring you with me again.'
I am thinking: See if I come!
Which I must have dreamed aloud, because Biggie said, 'Who asked you?'
'What, Big?'
'Let it ring,' she said, asleep again.
But I lay awake contemplating the horror of having to look for a real job. The notion of earning a living ... The phrase itself was like those other obscene propositions offered on a men's-room wall.
17
Reflections on the Failure of
the Water Method
THE PROCEDURE FOR making an appointment with Dr Jean Claude Vigneron is unpleasant. The nurse who answers his phone does not care to hear a description of what ails you: she only wants to know if this is a convenient time for your appointment. Well, no. Well, she's sorry. So you tell her you'll find the time.
The waiting room at Vigneron's office is comfy. A former Norman Rockwell cover for The Saturday Evening Post is framed on the wall; also, a Bob Dylan poster. Also, you can read McCall's, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Reader's Digest or Ramparts - but no one reads
. They watch Vigneron's nurse, whose thigh, rump and swivel chair protrude into the waiting room from her typing alcove. They also listen when the nurse asks for a description of what ails you. A certain pattern is evident.
'What are you seeing the doctor for?'
Incoherent whispers.
'What?'
Louder incoherent whispers.
'How long has your urine been this way?'
What way? everyone pretending to read is dying to ask.
Urology is so awesomely foul and debilitating a speciality that I took Tulpen with me for support. The office presented its usual puzzle. A child the color of urine sat cramped beside her mother; perhaps she had not peed for weeks. A stunning young girl, dressed entirely in leather, sat aloof with The Village Voice. No doubt, she was infected. And an old man quaked by the door, his tubes and valves and spigots so ancient and malfunctioning that he probably pissed through his navel into a plastic bag.
'What are you seeing the doctor for?'
'The water method has failed.' Intense curiosity is provoked in the waiting room.
