The New Yorker – May 13, 2019

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inside and see the lump of her mother

on the couch lit by the shivering televi-

sion glow, in red, then orange, then blue,

and finally green. Even through the door

she could hear the mechanical hum and

over it the sound of the program, a man’s

voice narrating something infinitely wea-

risome. She held the Popsicle’s wrapper

between her teeth, took her shoes off

and left them outside, put her slippers

on, and unlocked the door.

The smell crashed into her, sweet rot

and her mother’s eucalyptus rub. The

dehumidifiers were on, the air-condi-

tioners in the windows were on, and

even the ozone generator, which the girl

felt sure was slowly poisoning her, was

on. She turned all the machines off, save

for one air-conditioner, and in the new

quiet the television narrator’s voice was

painfully loud. A cheetah chased across

the screen in gorgeous slow motion. She

turned the volume down to a murmur.

Her mother’s eyes were closed, and she

was in her white cotton pajamas, with

her white cotton sheet and pillow cov-

ering the couch, keeping her from con-

taminants. The goblet of pills she was

supposed to have taken that morning

stood on the coffee table, beside the glass

of vodka she used to wash them down,

but neither had been touched. Her

mother drank nothing but vodka now;

it killed the germs, she said. She no lon-

ger trusted water, certainly not tap, which

had lead and fluoride and bacteria in it,

but not bottled, either; who knew where

bottled water came from? All she ate

were her pills and sometimes a Popsi-

cle, but only mango. Mango, she said, is

the cleanest kind of fruit.

Mom, Sara said, but her mother only

moaned and opened her eyes, then closed

them again. Sara took the Popsicle out

of the wrapper and put it to her moth-

er’s dry lips. She breathed a curl of frosty

vapor off the Popsicle, but turned her

head away from the taste.

Months ago, her mother had passed

out, freeing Sara to call an ambulance.

They had spent all night in the E.R.,

the girl insisting on test after test until

there were no more tests to take and

her mother wept weakly and begged to

go home. In the morning, the young

doctor at the end of his shift looked at

the girl’s devastated face in the waiting

room, and while the nurses were help-

ing Sara’s mother to get dressed he took

her to get a hot chocolate from the caf-

eteria and then showed her the medi-

tation room. They raked the sand at a

tabletop Zen garden side by side for a

while until at last Sara said, So, what’s

wrong with her?

And the doctor said, carefully, Hard

to say. How long has this been going on?

I don’t know, Sara said. It’s always

changing. It was cell phones at first,

then it was mold, now it’s something

else, extreme sensitivity to a bunch of

things. It’s a mixture, I think.

Huh, the doctor said. And she’s not

eating?

She can’t, Sara said. She takes eighty-

something pills a day and they fill her up.

But they’re not prescribed? the doc-

tor said.

Oh, yes, they are, Sara said. She has

a naturopath and a homeopath and a

Chinese-medicine lady, too.

Ah, the doctor said. But none of these

people are making it better?

No, the girl said. Actually, she keeps

getting worse. She’s real skinny.

Yes, the doctor said slowly, she’s mal-

nourished. And she was dehydrated

when she got here.

Sara listened hard, but there was no

judgment in the doctor’s voice, so she

said, Can you make her stay?

The doctor rubbed his tired face. Oh,

honey, he said. Not until she makes an

attempt to hurt herself or someone else.

But she is hurting herself, Sara said.

Or someone else. That’s exactly what

she’s doing.

But not to the point of hospitaliza-

tion yet. It’s delicate, the doctor said.

Then they were silent until Sara put

down the little rake and, looking away

from the doctor, said so quickly that

she seemed angry, But maybe she’s not

sick? Maybe she’s just pretending? And

the doctor regarded her fully and his

eyes felt so heavy on her face that she

glanced up at him and saw his thick

black eyebrows that bunched behind

his glasses and the kindness there, and

these things together, absurdly, made

her want to kiss him.

Listen, he said. We don’t know what’s

causing your mother’s pain. But you

need to know that wherever it comes

from, whether from her body or from

her brain, it is real.

O.K., she said. But that was the mo-

ment when she knew he would lie to

her, and everything in her spun away

fr

as she walked out the door

the plate beneath the ful

and w

and c

pajamas.

blea

of the outside w

T

v

do

str

in the heap of things beside the tele

sio

of her as a bab

the c

shining

B

ther—he was lo

r

mother bar

she wanted to fil

self

co

On the

p

VISITING SAN FRANCISCO

I wanted to curl up

in the comfortable cosmic melancholy of my past,

in the sadness of my past being passed.

I wanted to tour the museum of my antiquities

and look at the sarcophagi there.

I wanted to wallow like a water buffalo in the cool,

sagacious mud of my past,

so I wrote you and said I’d be in town and could we meet.

But you think my past is your present.

You wouldn’t relent, you wouldn’t agree

to dinner or a cup of coffee or even a bag of peanuts

on a bench in North Beach.

You didn’t want to curl up or tour or wallow with me.

You’re still mad, long after the days

have turned into decades, about the ways I let you down.

The four hundred thousand ways.

Maybe I would be, too.

But people have done worse to me.

I don’t think I’m being grotesque when I tell you

I’ve been flayed and slayed and force-fed anguish.

I’ve been a human cataract

plunging through a noose and going to pieces on the rocks.

I’ve been a seagull tethered to Alcatraz.

Fiction Groff Brawler 05_13_19.L [Print]_9452025.indd 58 5/2/19 11:18 AM