Fleur
AS A CHILD I’d seen abusive welts and bruises on the skin of my ailing grandfather, been pinched to the point of fainting by a Father who hated having children underfoot, and heard the hollow sound of my own small fists banging on the locked door of my intoxicated mother’s bedroom. More recently I’d been flattened to the point of despair by photos of pelicans transformed by the Gulf oil spill into beasts slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. But this was an entirely new kind of horror.
Stanley H. Fiske was like a madman. In a living room crowded with leaden-limbed people who were mute with shock and sadness, he couldn’t stay still. Gwennie, Mother, Aadita, Sammie, Jacob, Amir, and I watched with red-rimmed eyes as he flitted like a firefly out of the room and back, stopping only to pound his head against a wall or cry out some version of, “God, it should have been me, instead!”
I had never seen anyone else cause themselves pain, but right now it struck me as something strange and awful for a human being to turn against himself as Stanley was doing. As I liked to do.
As Assefa had done.
At some point—I can’t tell when, it all blended into itself like a pulsing moiré—I slid down to the carpet from my perch on a sofa littered with crumpled tissues and sunflower seed shells. I wanted to scrape my fingernails across the insides of my arms, twist the skin of my inner thighs, hit my head against the floor, but I couldn’t.
Mother landed like a sack of coal beside me and pulled my head to her breast. Someone, I don’t know who, was at my other side, stroking my back. And still, I knew Stanley was flitting. I could hear him, an uncomforted ghost seeking penance for the unforgivable—and unforgiven—thing he’d said.
I have no idea how I got through that day. How any of us did. Our own lives had been hijacked by Assefa’s attempt to leave this world. We’d heard nothing since Dr. Sitota’s call to Mother, so we sat together for comfort. Except for Stanley, who could not. At least some of us shared with him a similar torment. Assefa was in the ICU. Would he live or would he die? Would he suffer permanent paralysis or brain damage? What could we have done to prevent this? Was it our fault?
Make no mistake, John Donne was right. If I’d had any previous delusion that I was alone on this earth, I’d been wrong. As a physicist, I should have realized how much we matter to each other. Our deaths (or, please God, our near-deaths) don’t just ripple outward like stones thrown across a river; they shake and splinter the ground for those standing at the shore.
If Assefa had been seeking revenge, he’d gotten it. But somehow, I didn’t think he’d been seeking revenge. It was something far worse than that, but I didn’t know what. Even though I hated what he’d done to his family, to me, to Stanley H. Fiske, I ached for him. I knew his act spoke of an intolerable confrontation with the void. But still, why?
I kept adding up everything I knew that might have led to him trying to take his own life. Gwennie had called what had happened between us “rape.” It had been awful, but the word still felt too strong. What about the vicious appellation, “black son of a bitch?” Words associated with humiliation, lynching, dehumanization. What Stanley had said was astonishingly ugly, but Assefa was not a weak man, nor a stupid one. Surely he wouldn’t have taken in what Stanley had said as true.
I’d heard that suicide attempts were often cries for help. Had he counted on being saved? I’d also heard that taking one’s life was a hostile act. If so, why take his rage out on his parents, who, as much as I ached all the way to my bones, would surely be destroyed if their only child died by his own hand? In my feeble attempts to understand, I was like a fish flapping frantically on the deck of a ship. And the ship was at risk of going down.
By midnight, there was still no word from the hospital, where Assefa’s family was keeping their own vigil. Dhani had brought over an aromatic array of paneer tikka masala, aloo gobi, mushroom mutter, and kerala shrimp curry. To avoid offending her, I’d pushed my food around my plate, but really, who among us had an appetite? Eventually, she and Ignacio, then Amir, Sammie, Jacob, and Aadita had peeled away with promises all around to call one another if we heard anything during the night. It was down to the Fiskes, Mother, and me. Stanley’s body finally registered the ten milligrams of Ativan Gwennie had made him swallow; we could hear him snoring like a bear from his bedroom. Mother offered to sleep with me in my bed, but I so visibly shuddered that Gwennie gave her an afghan to cover herself on the couch.
My body felt like a pincushion, with sharp little electric jabs pricking my skin. Thoughts paced my mind like pent-up animals. How could such a blissful connection between two people go so irreparably out of whack? Assefa had become a mystery to me as soon as I’d succeeded in cajoling the name “Makeda” from his lips.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up crying. I ran out to the kitchen to be greeted by Gwennie shaking her head. “No word so far.” A spatula in one hand, she came over and pulled me to her bosom. Repositioning my head so that I could hear her heartbeat, I counted along with it.
A toilet flushed; I presumed it was Mother, since I’d seen through the arched doorway that the living room was empty, a bed pillow and Gwennie’s afghan flung carelessly on the floor.
I pulled away from Gwennie’s embrace and went out to the living room. I lifted the blanket from the floor and began to fold it. Stanley shuffled past like a blind man. He wore plaid blue and green pajama bottoms and, improbably, a red Caltech Beaver hoodie over his head. He was pacing again, albeit much slower this morning, as if some hyped up inner clock was winding down. Mother appeared, running a hand through her tousled, graying hair. We hugged, and then she and Gwennie and I struggled to do at least partial justice to Gwennie’s spinach and mushroom frittata.
After a few minutes, Gwennie called out, “Stan, come on and get some breakfast. It’ll help settle you,” but he kept moving. At one point, she had to physically restrain him from calling the Berhanus and “confessing.” She got him to sit at the table with us, though he pushed away his plate and tapped the edge of the table frenetically. “Stanley,” Gwennie said, “if you tell the Berhanus what you saw when you went into Fleur’s room, you’ll kill them. I want you to promise never to tell them. Ever.”
I saw Mother turn sheet-white, but Stanley merely looked bewildered. “But I—I have to make—how are they ever going to understand why he—”
“Stop it!” Gwennie abruptly pushed herself out of her chair and stood over Stanley like a storm cloud. “How dare you presume you’re important enough to make Assefa want to die!” I pinched my thigh to stop myself from fainting. I could barely see through my tears. “Yes, what you said was astoundingly disgusting. Someday, you’re going to have to figure that one out. But none of us know what was going on inside that poor boy. Right now, we have to focus all our energy on hoping he survives this thing. And helping Fleur get through it.”
Stanley stared up at her, open-mouthed. I think I did, too. I realized that Mother had taken my hand. She squeezed it unusually hard, and I felt a rush of gratitude toward her. But—I don’t know why, probably sheer habit—I loosened my hand from hers and reached for a napkin to blow my nose.
Stanley skewed in his chair to face me. “Sweetheart,” he pled, a thin gob of snot dangling from his left nostril. “I can’t bear that you had to go through what you did and now this.” I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying, fascinated by how the snot ball trembled with each syllable. He continued, “Don’t you remember South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation do dahs? I just think—”
“Don’t think,” Gwennie horned in, and I nearly laughed. Telling a physicist not to think was pretty funny. Gwennie went on. “This is one case where less truth is best for those who are suffering the most.”
Me, I wasn’t so sure. Even debating the question felt a little like playing God. But if God in any of His, Her, or Its manifold incarnations hadn’t managed to stop Assefa from trying to kill himself, maybe it was foolish to think of God as a useful concept.
I escaped across the street to Sammie’s as soon as I could. Seeing Stanley struggle to inhabit his own body again was simply too much to bear. After offering to stay, Mother had seemed only too happy to accept my solemn vow to call her if I needed her.
But it was she who phoned me a little after 3:00. I discovered I’d missed her call when I checked my messages in the Schwartz’s bathroom. Mr. Heavyflow was rubbing it in that I wasn’t pregnant. I’d soaked through a tampon and a Maxi pad. I ran back to Sammie’s room, shouting to her and Jacob, “He’s alive! And awake! Dr. Sitota called Mother about five minutes ago. Of course, he’s in no end of pain. He’s been on transfusions of—hell, I can’t remember, something like vecuronium and midazolen. He’s got a cervical collar, but he’s not paralyzed. They managed to take a chest CT and a cervical spine X-ray with him in a seated position, and Dr. Sitota told her that the results look clear. He’s still kind of out of it, though. We won’t know for a while if he’s suffered brain damage.”
All three of us fell silent at that one, and I realized the enormity of what I’d said. Sammie and Jacob were sitting shoulder to shoulder on her bed with their backs pillowed against the wall. They’d grown closer over the past twenty-four hours, holding hands and exchanging meaningful looks. Would it last? Probably not, but I was awfully glad she had him right now.
I sat on the edge of the bed, realizing at some point that tears were rolling down my face. I’d never known before that you could weep without even knowing you were crying. As if sensing my distress, Midge waddled over and collapsed onto my lap. Actually, my lap was too small to contain him, but he did a good job of melting his large body across my folded legs, with his head dangling over one knee and his eyes heavy-lidded in ecstasy.
“Fleur Beurre,” Sammie said.
“Don’t,” I replied. “I really don’t have the strength to fall apart again.”
It was then that Jacob interjected, “Has anybody actually spoken to Assefa’s parents?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sure they’ve been by his side ever since they found out.”
“So we don’t know exactly how they heard? Or who found him?”
Sammie jumped in, shooting Jacob a warning look, “Do we really need to be talking about this right now?”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s okay. I’ve been wondering myself. Since it was a ... hanging, I’d presume someone cut him down almost immediately.”
The room went quiet enough to hear Sammie’s alarm clock ticking. The ghastly reality of what Assefa had done thrummed inside my head.
Sammie murmured, “It’s a blessing he’s been spared.”
“I hope so,” Jacob responded. “What if he’s brain damaged?” This time, Sammie looked as if she could hang him.
But Jacob seemed oblivious. “Do you think his folks know what he did to you? What Stanley said to him?”
“Oh, God, I hope not. Stanley actually wanted to tell them everything. To ‘confess.’ Gwennie convinced him not to, at least for now, but what if Assefa told them himself?” I could hear a gathering hysteria in my voice. “Will they even want to speak to us? What could we say that would possibly ...?” Howling, I flipped over onto my belly, displacing Midge, whose claws left a track of blood across my arm. I barely noticed. I wanted to join Assefa in whatever bottomless pit had claimed him.
As if she could read my mind, Sammie slid down and aligned her body next to mine, stroking my head and whispering comfortingly, “My poor Fleur Beurre. It’s too much, isn’t it, my darling dear?”
I turned my head toward her so that we were nearly nose-to-nose. A long worry line was bisecting her forehead. Her breath on my face was like warm milk. God, I loved her. I tried to smile. “It’s a little redundant, isn’t it? ‘Darling dear’?”
We both sat up, and I kissed her forehead.
I heard Jacob’s voice as if from a long distance. “It makes me think about the wisdom of Solomon.”
Sammie looked as puzzled as I felt. “Huh?”
Jacob raised his eyebrows. “Hell-oh. Solomon, the Jewish epitome of wisdom?”
I knew the Book of Wisdom well, having read it on my own at the age of four. Instinctively, the words flew out of my mouth: “The breath in our nostrils is like smoke, and conversation sends out sparks from the stirring of our heart ....”
Jacob muttered, “Actually, I was thinking of ‘The Judgment of Solomon.’” Sammie and I stared at him. “You know, King Solomon being asked to judge which of two women claiming a certain baby was hers was actually its mother. Have you ever heard of the bat kol?” I shook my head. “It translates from Hebrew as ‘the daughter of the voice.’ It’s not quite ‘the voice of God,’ which we wouldn’t be able to hear, anyway, but of God’s wisdom. It’s what came to King Solomon when he was asked to rule in favor of one of the women. Jewish scholars agree it was bat kol that suggested he propose that a sword be brought to him so that he could divide the child in half. The true mother revealed herself when she begged Solomon to give the baby to the other woman rather than cut him in half.”
I knew it well, of course. “Pretty clever,” I commented.
“No,” objected Jacob, sliding off the bed to stand in the middle of the room, gesticulating. “It wasn’t just cleverness. In one of the few, but significant, dreams in the Old Testament, Solomon had already asked God to give him ‘a hearing heart.’ One that would listen to God.”
I frowned. “But what does that have to do with what we say to the Berhanus?”
“I’m not sure,” Jacob said, “but we all love Assefa.” I opened my mouth to respond, but Jacob waved a hand in the air. “I know, I know. He’s treated you like crap lately; Stanley called him something really shitty; Sammie was ready to kill him for breaking up with you—” The three of us exchanged a shocked glance. “Sorry. But no. Listen. Bascially, he’s a bright, decent guy. We all love him. Hell, I’m an asshole, and I love him.”
Did all assholes know they were assholes?
Jacob continued, “Whatever any of us say to the Berhanus, that’s really all that matters. We’re never going to fathom why he did what he did. Hell, for all we know, he has a brain tumor.”
You had to hand it to Jacob. He was absolutely right. He was an asshole.
I had to get out of there. I felt certain Sammie knew why I had to go. I also knew they were going to have a hell of a fight once I’d gone. But there was simply no more room in my head to worry about it.
I ran across the street and let myself in the front door to find Stanley sitting on the living room couch. The drapes were drawn. I sat down close to him, my eyes still adjusting to the lack of light. I could tell he’d barely registered my presence. “Stanley, I don’t care what you said, anymore. You weren’t in your right mind when you said those things, and Assefa wasn’t in his right mind when you came in. Honestly, I wasn’t in my right mind, either.” Was that true? “I keep hoping I’ll wake up and this will all have been a bad dream. There’s a part of me that still can’t believe that Assefa’s fighting for his life, or at least his beautiful mind. Well, I hope he’s fighting. It’s as if we’re all puppets in some play, manipulated by invisible strings.” And then, like some idiot, I added, “A new kind of string theory.” Stanley didn’t laugh. I didn’t blame him.
In the dim light emanating from the hallway, it looked as if Stanley was wearing an oddly positioned skull cap over the top right quadrant of his salt-and-pepper head. First the hoodie, now this? Was his guilt driving him to Judaism? I turned on the coffee table lamp and did a double take. What I’d assumed was a cap was actually an oddly-shaped, five-inch island of bare scalp where hair had most definitely been the day before.
I knew his hair had been thinning; just a few days earlier Gwen had complained that he was leaving it to her to clean out strands of his hair from the shower. But this? My first thought was that he’d pulled it out as some sort of penance, but then I remembered that stress could sometimes exacerbate an out of whack immune system condition called alopecia areata. This I knew from a bored moment at Mother’s, when I’d read a confession by Viola Davis in Elle magazine that she’d suffered from the disorder. “Oh, Stanley,” I whispered. I leaned over and pulled him to me.
Eventually he spoke, his voice muffled against my chest. “All my life I’ve wanted to help young people. I actually took pride that I did. Now, I’ve failed all of you. Especially Assefa, but you, too, Fleur. I’ve never loved anyone on this earth as much as you, and now—what must you think of me?”
That one stopped me in my tracks. I shoved it to the back of my mind for later contemplation. It was odd to be sitting with him like this, both of us blubbering, and his nose butted up sharply against my collarbone.
Only a few days ago, the bored-as-hell God with his immense void had spoken to Assefa through the fiercely protective lips of my mentor. Not as a calming “daughter of the voice” pronouncement from the lips of a bearded Jewish patriarch, but a smiting eruption of primitive rage from a man who looked like a frog.
As much as I wanted to reassure him, I had no words for Stanley. Instead, I rocked him, rocked myself, as we both continued to cry.
