Chapter Three #2
She’d just gotten a call from the clinic telling her she’d missed her infusion. He was puzzled for a moment—why the joy?—before he understood that briefly she’d forgotten she was sick.
And yet the memory of her incapacitations never left for long, nor did the realization that what others had dismissed as stress in high school were early symptoms. Was this the reason for her ambition, then?
That to be ignored, for her, was life-threatening?
A pulled muscle, a doctor had told her when she was seventeen, in the ER, a band of pain crushing her chest. Or maybe just her imagination.
Heart completely normal. Panic probably. Without thinking of MS.
Or did she work so hard, as a therapist later suggested, because she never knew when she would suffer another incapacitating attack?
Sure, sure, said Kate. For that was obvious, wasn’t it? But what it missed, modesty allowed her to admit only to Miles: the joy, the play, the utter pleasure of such a mind that did what others couldn’t.
And he understood. Once, during the Olympics, watching a gymnast perform a routine of damascene complexity, he’d turned to Kate and said: That’s you. And she: A gymnast, sorry? Twice she’d been confined to wheelchairs. And he: It’s what it’s like to watch you think.
By then, she’d taken Paradise Lost as her dissertation, first drawn to Milton’s blindness after her own remitting bout, then never leaving.
Milton was the perfect fit, his precision like a puzzle to be solved, a knot untangled, the pleasures of each voluptuary sentence mounting as she read.
It wasn’t lost on Miles that, whereas his dissertation had drifted to stories told to children, Kate hadn’t flinched before a giant.
Before they met, Miles had mostly read the poet as a sleep aid.
Now he understood; Kate helped him understand.
Had justified Milton to Miles. The teeming hells, the gardens.
These two / Imparadised in one another’s arms—she showed him.
Wanton ringlets, silver lining, thunderbolts—she showed him, too.
She even flushed a little when she spoke of Paradise. When he watched her teach, it occurred to him that the way she slowly revealed the beauty of each line was like watching her undress. And he was jealous of the others present, who saw her fingers turn each page, who heard her quickening breath.
—
That they had gone, as a couple, from worrying about her to worrying about him had happened quietly, as her symptoms retreated before yet another magical treatment, this one given every six months.
The truth was that his path had always been haphazard.
After college he had knocked about—bicycle shop, a stint teaching English as a second language in Thailand, unfinished law and med school applications.
In books, he’d often read of characters coming of age, discovering bit by bit, or in a flash of insight, who they were and what their lives were meant for.
This had yet to happen to him. His mother and father were both physicians, and his father’s father before him, a great surgeon who had begun at a field hospital in World War I and finished at Johns Hopkins.
That was purpose. Never did Miles wish to return to the days of watching his beautiful, twenty-nine-year-old wife, face puffy from the steroids, descend from a campus golf cart with a walker.
But even then, in the hell through which she’d crossed, he’d felt that he was here, on earth, for something.
When the infusions came and the daily needles were forgotten, he’d felt not just relieved, but also a little bit afraid.
For he’d been necessary.
As he felt necessary when he was with Wesley, and Olive. But not when he was with himself.
Once, after he had filled out a career questionnaire he’d found online, it told him that it wasn’t able to make a suggestion, and recommended repeating the survey, reconsidering some of his answers.
Be honest, it told him. So he went back and changed his answer to I like being with other people from 7 to 8, and his answer to I am a dreamer from 9 to 8, and tried again.
Schoolteacher, replied the algorithm. Schoolteacher?
Okay, at least that was something. But didn’t that require organizational skills and lots of energy?
He went back and checked his answers, and saw that he had apparently answered 8 for the statement I rule with an iron fist, a statement he didn’t remember answering, but the website was a little janky; this was 2003.
He didn’t know what kind of fist he ruled with, but 8 seemed a little high, a little dictatorial.
Maybe 2? This time the website recommended graduate school, in literature, which seemed highly specific, even suspiciously so.
But, in justification, it highlighted his agreement with the statements I like to read, My friends say I have arcane interests, and There is no need to hurry.
And why not? he’d thought. Some of his favorite college classes had been in Folklore, and Comparative Literature. He did like to read. And he liked talking and telling stories. What he didn’t really like to do was sit and write.
Well, he told himself, stopping for a drink of water (for he had reached the maples), there was no use worrying about these things, and on such a day, birds high in the trees, the water rustling, choosing trails by eenie-meenie.
Nonetheless, his mood had darkened. Why, lately, did it seem that every time he thought about his work, he felt as if more was at stake than just a degree that his committee would award him simply out of pity?
He wasn’t exactly proud when Olive asked him why he always changed his dissertation topic.
But what bothered him more was the sense that Kate had begun to look at his indirection not with compassion, or concern, but disappointment.
It seemed unfair, he thought, though he never said this.
He’d been unwavering, even before their marriage, when his parents, both doctors who had seen the ravages of multiple sclerosis, had gently warned him about what he “was getting into.” That was before Kate’s sustained remission, before natalizumab, before rituximab, those drugs with names like Milton’s angels.
And, later, both his folks had made a point to share their newfound optimism.
But Miles had stuck by her, always. And it seemed impossible to think the dedication wouldn’t be returned.
A slight disappointment, he told himself.
Until the slight disappointment had become a Slight Disappointment, a kind of spectral member of their family, who whispered what he was and wasn’t.
Once, when he was an undergrad, one of his professors had told him that people’s lives could be divided into Histories, Tragedies, and Comedies. Most lives were Histories, and sometimes Tragedies; but it was the truly fortunate who found themselves in Comedies.
But how to recognize which one I’m in? he sometimes wondered. And if he did, how would it help?
Behind him came a friendly rustling in the underbrush, and Giuseppe reappeared, river-wet, dirt-spackled.
Miles fished through his pockets for the kibble.
The dog was so joyful; it was hard for it not to be infectious.
And why not look on the bright side? Miles thought.
Milton himself was famously long choosing and beginning late, and Kate didn’t hold this against him.
Vermont was—as she herself had said back home in California—a chance, an opportunity, to finish something he’d begun, and then move forward with his life.
Above, the clouds parted for the sun. The dog jumped up; Miles crouched down.
A string of small blue flowers were tangled in his collar.
From his fur came the smell of earth and mushrooms. Yes, it was hard to stay worried.
And it was time to get Olive. Everything would work out for the best, he thought, his stride lengthening, water from his shirt-turban dripping coolly down his chest.
—
Good afternoon, it’s two o’clock, and welcome to The Miscellaneous Minute, or, as we like to say, the only Minute that’s actually an Hour. This is Tuesday, August 24, and I’m your host, Don Martel.
Today we welcome back Tom Franks from Franks’ Nursery in Brattleboro, who’s here to talk to us about your garden.
It’s summertime, you have your hopes up, but the slugs got your celery, your corn has one edible kernel, and when you tallied it up, you spent $357 to get that beet.
But don’t go mixing the malathion in your martini yet.
Tom Franks is going to set things right and help you make the most of what’s left of the summer.
The number is 1-800-555-9225, 1-800-555-YAAK, with two “A”s and a “K.”
Hi, Tom. How are we doing today?
Doing great, Don, always great to be on the show. Barrels of fun. Love the questions.
Well, I’m sure we’ll have a lot of them for you today. Lots to learn. Just because some people can grow anything doesn’t mean there isn’t suffering out there.
Yeah, Don. That’s the thing about gardening. We all have that neighbor who can grow everything.
Got one myself. The only thing greener than her thumb is my envy, Tom. Cauliflower, cabbage, melons…
Seems like someone has been looking at his neighbor’s melons, Don.
I’m talking cantaloupe, Tom. Jeez, this guy! But, seriously, this is a tough time of year for some folks, right?
Yeah, that’s an important place to start.
Here we are, we spend all winter waiting and planning and dreaming, and then spring rolls around and we’re filled with optimism, the seed packets arrive, the soil is fresh and weedless, the birds are singing, this year is gonna be the one, this year you’re living off the land.
And then reality sets in.
That’s right, Don. Frankly, down at the nursery this time of year, I’m not seeing much joy. I’m seeing a lot of disappointment, a lot of mourning.