HOUSTON, TEXAS, 1960
In the weeks of testing in Texas, following interchangeable men in scrubs down reflective hallways, Vincent did not often think of Fay. The examinations came as a relief, for there were very few decisions to be made, only instructions to be followed. Missing was his compulsion to map out an area as soon as he entered it, determine north and south, imagine the crossings of roads or the meetings of hallways. He needed only to do as he was asked, albeit the asks were tremendous.
On a robin’s-egg-blue vinyl stool he sat while a spectacled, wordless man squeezed syringeful after syringeful of ice-cold water into his left ear. There were no guidelines given, no questions asked as the liquid found the canal, just the shock and the understanding that it would keep coming. At no point was he confused about his obligation. It was to do nothing, to remain still as a houseplant, to not shift on the paltry surface area of the stool, to not look around the room at the cabinets or the clock or the door. To not wipe at the excess running down your face, down the neckline of the clothes they dressed you in, to not flinch when it reached your torso. When the experiment was over, when the door opened and another man appeared, and Vincent stood. “Thank you,” he said to the blank man in the blank room—of all things, he said thank you.
How could he have thought of her, when. This time he followed the man up a set of stairs, and he placed each foot at a ninety-degree angle with the next step—the oldest part of him believed that was lucky, important. He had tried to say goodbye but her sister had been waiting outside instead.
Sleeping, she said.
Can I wait.
She’s very tired.
Within the next room was a chamber almost as big, all glass with a backless wooden bench he could barely make out for all the steam. He knew without being told that he was going in alone, and again he thanked the man who opened the door to his next discomfort. Thank you, sir. They had included a thermometer, a cartoonish one the size of a baseball bat, had welded it to the wall he faced. He did not think of Fay there, because he knew it would raise his heartbeats per minute, and they would take note of that as a sign of frailty, and besides, he could not afford the one-degree rise in internal temperature her image would incite. One hundred forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. The sweat, he felt, was not something his body had produced for the occasion but a feature of his physiology, something he’d lived with always. The only picture he admitted to his mind was that of a walk he’d taken along the canyon of the Rio Grande. It comforted him, the thought of those curving walls of stone, the river, not so wide, that divided ways of life completely. The water like some kind of decision being made, over and over for miles, steady and green between the cliffs of peach stone. When the door opened—how much later he didn’t know—it was not relief he felt, just an awareness of conclusion, a town he was driving away from, a belonging he had decided to give away.
She could be sleeping for months, Charlie had said.
They greeted him with a towel and led him to a long line of shower stalls, where he brought his arms over his head and curled his toes and watched the cold water run down the slant of the tile into the drain. A fresh set of clothes, identical to those he had saturated with sweat. Shortly after another man, this one older, his clipboard thicker with paper. The man made a gesture, a pointer that went back, and Vincent followed him out.
The next three feet of hallway terminated in double doors, which opened onto a wider stretch of linoleum. Through glass on either side he could see people working, carrying stacks of paper or typing alone, but he did not turn to observe them. At the entrance to the next room the man cleared his throat to speak, a thick wrist already on the knob. “Come out,” he said, “in two hours.”
When the latch took, the sound short and minor, the room was without light. Vincent heel-toed to what he believed was the center and he lowered himself, slow inch by slow inch, into a squat, from there into what Ernie had called Indian-style. His hands on his knees, he began to sing, his sight unavailable but his grandmother’s Scottish tremor there with him. All choruses and verses included, he knew, ate five minutes, for she had insisted on singing it precisely at midnight on the nights they were awake and together, and he had dreaded it, her gaudy tremolo, and learned to diminish this by knowing when it would be over.
You’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore you
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond
Twenty-four fives. He did not think of the concept of two hours, of what that could fill, a matinee in Technicolor or the drive from Edwards to Los Angeles he’d sometimes taken with Fay. A meal at Canter’s, why not, just her perfect teeth around a soup spoon an occasion. He tapped the floor at each conclusion, briefly, to remind himself of the advancing count. Aware he had taken fifteen seconds to get settled, he left the last chorus unsung, and when he felt for the door it was exactly where he thought it would be.
The light was surgical, examining him from every direction, and he heard the click of a stopwatch. He saw the scientist in the chair, the positions of his brow and jaw in clinical gravitas, saw him break part. The grin was wide and toothy, directed at the timepiece, gone in a blink.
She could be asleep the rest of her life, the sister had said.
Two hours, he learned later, and two seconds.