“FOUR MORE COUNTS ON THE out breath,” Ingrid said, nodding yes in response to Becky’s wild-eyed no, I can’t. “Carbon dioxide is what’s making you feel like that, so—No, don’t gulp in, you need to breathe it out.”
“I—can’t—” Becky sat on her office couch surrounded by flyers that read Planting for the Future, knees clamped together, shoulders hunched. Tiny specks flared in her darkening vision and she felt like a vise was clamped on her lungs. Only Ingrid’s warm hand on her back kept her from losing her mind. That, and the awareness of Mrs. Fletcher right outside the closed door.
“Heart attack,” she gasped. Hot tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes.
“You know it’s not,” Ingrid said. She put two fingers on the inside of Becky’s wrist. “Better already. Now ten more breath cycles. Four on the in breath, eight on the out breath. Go.”
The first two times this had happened, Becky had promptly driven herself to the ER, convinced the unbearable tightness in her chest had to mean a cardiac implosion. But the tests all came back negative, which then led to an unendurable encounter with a doctor who gently introduced concepts of “life’s general stressors” and “taking it easy, day by day.” When’s the last time she took a vacation? What about a relaxing hobby? Did she have anyone with whom she could talk about difficult feelings?
So now Becky just called Ingrid when the warning signs started up: buzzing deep within her ear canals, and then a dry-heaving sensation as if her innards needed to forcefully expel something. If she was lucky, Ingrid would arrive before this, the worst part: chest locked up so tight Becky felt like she was breathing through a straw. A spitball-plugged straw.
Now, as before, Ingrid blithely ran through everything that was happening physiologically, spiking heart rate, over-oxygenation, irregular muscle freeze. “Textbook anxiety attack.”
“But I’m not”—breathe out—“anxious.” It was true. Never were these “anxiety attacks” prompted by thoughts or fears about her Activity. Hadn’t one of the worst, for example, kicked off in the middle of the night? Waking her out of a perfectly deep sleep? Ingrid could throw around “stress reaction” and “panic symptom” all she wanted, sounding all too similar to the on-call dopes in the ER, but those were for chumps who couldn’t handle their business. Not Becky. No one had the slightest clue how much she had to cope with, the entire art market still going ass over teakettle. Newspapers had trotted out the bursting-bubble metaphor in every article this year, like stuck robots. Meanwhile she dealt with it day and night, constantly on the phone to antsy collectors and dealers, fielding calls from her artists themselves, who only now poked a head out of the clouds to survey the shit-strewn apocalypse and ask, “Wait, prices are down?”
Becky had it handled, though: the art plunge, the losses she held on pieces worth a fraction of their cost, the new filing system in the office making it hard for her to keep track of Activity invoices, the incoming day’s mail she had to get to first before some eager-beaver junior accountant asked, “What’s the RF Capital account connected to?” And she wouldn’t think about Mac. How she’d called him yet again, just before this lung-squeezing attack. Was he ducking her? And could it be true, the rumor going around that he had somehow engineered a coup for the ages, buying up all of an unknown’s early work and parlaying it into a future show at the Gagosian? That the name of this unknown soon-to-be supernova was Peter Wand, the artist whose pastel brick paintings had entranced her years ago in New York? Which was worse, the anxiety of the rumor or the idea of confronting Mac with it?
“You didn’t make an appointment,” Ingrid observed, dropping Becky’s wrist.
“Like I have time to rehash my childhood for some cut-rate Dr. Freud. Especially when he’s not even a doctor.”
“Social workers are perfectly—”
“Unable to write prescriptions. All I need is this.” Becky shook the bottle she’d been clutching in her lap like a talisman. But frankly the Valium did little, even at a double dose, once a surge erupted.
“Have it your way.” Ingrid stood up and strolled around the office, rubbing her lower back. She was pregnant again, and happy about it, even in the midst of taking care of all that TJ required. Becky fell back against the couch, lungs loosened, grinning. Ingrid picked up a Pol Bury cylinder, chromium-plated brass, 1969, worth eight to nine thousand (in a normal market). “I hate being your dealer.” Although Ingrid now worked catering at the Golf Club in Lincoln Heights she still had enough connections to get prescriptions. Which she’d agreed to only because Becky refused to see a medical professional.
“You love me, though.” Pleasantly sleepy now, Becky curled her legs underneath her. “Want to go to a matinee? No one’ll miss me for a few hours.”
Ingrid thunked the Pol Bury back on Becky’s desk. “I can’t.”
“Not even for T2?” They’d already seen it once. Becky put on her best Austrian Arnold cyborg voice: “‘I know now.’”
“‘Why you cry,’” Ingrid finished, her accent much better. She sighed. “No, I got to pick up TJ. Hey, did I tell you our exploratory committee finally met?”
Becky flinched. “You don’t want to take on the bureaucracy, trust me. What’s wrong with what’s-her-face?” Ingrid had a mild obsession with bringing a special-needs program to Pierson Public Schools. She’d gotten other parents hyped up and they were reaching out to other area schools, attending conferences.
“She’s costing you a fortune, is what’s wrong!”
“Pssht.” It was true the woman’s rates seemed astronomical, but if that’s what it took to have a retired child specialist, MD PhD, come to your house three times a week, Becky was happy to pay it. Happy to put it on her credit card, that is.
“No, it’s insane and we never should have let it go on so long.” Ingrid hugged one of Becky’s expandable folders to her chest. “If we get matching state funds, by the time TJ is in first grade—okay, maybe second or third—this program could—”
Becky sighed, chest still aching. “You say that like you haven’t heard me place a hundred hexes on every Springfield official! Besides, it’ll never equal what TJ gets from Dr. . . . Whoever.” But Ingrid was off and running about community and public investment and studies showing that mixed classrooms benefited all kids, those with and without special needs. Becky kept quiet, wishing Ingrid would stop worrying about the bigger picture and just focus on TJ. Who was getting the Cadillac of private therapy!
To distract herself, she thought about resale. It was all anyone talked about right now, how to unload pieces and where and who might be buying. Becky had run through all her contacts and started over again in widening circles that went nowhere. With the Activity stalled because of Pierson’s dire straits she needed income from art. But this shit market meant no big or steady sales. Without funds from either she’d end up losing the apartment, and that would be that.
Or she would get caught, she reminded herself. She thought of Phil Mannetone’s horsey wheeze-laugh, the wiry black hairs thickly covering his pale arms and the back of his neck, and repressed a shudder. She chose her moments with Phil carefully, effectively. Lingering with him out in the parking lot next to her car, having called him over on the pretext of a quick question about one of his “masterful” press releases. Lightly touching his forearm and tossing her head back with a laugh. Deliberately lowering her voice so he’d need to lean down, closer to her.
Last Friday she’d called him late in the afternoon, asked him to drive her to the county office of the Illinois waterfront historic society. She could really use his communication magic to convince them to rebuild the site of Pierson’s primary visual appeal. The office turned out to be closed when they arrived at 5:04, oh shoot. Well, how about a friendly beer at this out-of-the-way pub on their way back into town? Phil’s uncertain face, the way Becky’d had to coo over wallet photos of his mousy wife and bucktoothed kids. Her foot under the sticky bar table, lightly brushing his calf, once, twice.
Bile pumped up her throat and she shook her head, willing it back down. Nope, she told her own train of thought, the sense-memories of Phil Mannetone, the aftershock of panic. Nope, nope, nope.
Out loud she said to Ingrid, “I wish you’d stay with the doctor. For TJ.”
“Just wait until you see our proposal,” Ingrid said. “We’ve got this pro bono education lawyer, it’s going to be airtight.”
“Fine, sure. But what TJ gets from—”
“Becky! I am not an idiot, okay?” Ingrid stamped her foot, though it fell muffled onto the carpet. “You think if there was any other way I’d take all this help from you? You think I don’t know it’s not right, how you can pay for all this and how much I need it? Neil says don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but Jesus.”
“It’s fine, Beanie, you don’t have to worry.” Under the Valium swirl, a pinch of throat tightness. “How much have you been . . .” How to ask this. “Talking to Neil? About stuff?”
There was a long cold minute while the question hung in the room.
“Because it’s no one else’s business, all right?”
“I’ll see if I can get you some Xanax.” Ingrid put her hand on the door. “They say it’s better than Valium, for long term.”
“Don’t go yet.”
“I have to run.”
“Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?” Becky couldn’t let Ingrid go without seeing her smile again. If that meant breaking into one of their favorite cheesiest movie songs, so be it.
“Becky.”
But she got louder, swooping her voice up to match lyrics about soaring like an eagle. Hitting some but not all of the high notes.
“Oh my god.” There it was, one glimpse amid Ingrid’s exasperation as she left.
Becky’s chest eased even more. Now that was real relief.