The Body Farm, page 13
She has lost her ability to read for pleasure. The words on the page have become a barrier, not a window; she cannot find her way inside. She has lost her love of fine cuisine, subsisting instead on bread and chocolate. Occasionally, upon trying healthier fare, a salad or piece of fruit, she has found herself gagging, unable to get it down. She has lost weight. She has lost friends. Social outings are something to be endured or avoided. She has lost her wit and sparkle.
She never used to be aware of the passage of time, but now she feels every tick of the clock. She checks her watch throughout the day, tallying up exactly how many hours and minutes remain before she can go back to bed. She has lost her joy in her wife. She has lost her carnal desire for Simone, her lean torso and long hands. Lila no longer feels a rush of glad warmth upon seeing her wife for the first time after a day apart. She no longer feels much of anything on the positive end of the emotional spectrum. She has lost her capacity to make decisions, both large and little. Whether to brush her hair. Whether she and Simone should move to a smaller apartment. Whether the knives in the kitchen might be a reasonable solution to her problems.
Each loss, on its own, has been manageable. But together, they have amounted to nightfall. The sun dipping beneath the horizon. The blue wrung from the sky like paint from a rag.
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At three in the morning, Lila is still awake. Beside her, Simone snores, one of her lanky legs crisscrossing Lila’s side of the bed. Lila gazes at the ceiling. Her medicine is a blender, whipping day and night into a frothy, undistinguished concoction. She has no semblance of a schedule at the moment. At last she hefts herself out of bed. Trailing a blanket over her shoulders, she shuffles down the hall. She will find something to read. Maybe she is medicated enough now to reclaim her love of literature.
The cabin is stocked with nature books about the local flora and fauna. As Lila touches the dusty spines, her wrists ache. She ignores this. She tugs a book about mammals off the shelf and settles in an armchair. Outside the window, the trees surge like kelp in a current, the sound of leaves as rhythmic as the sea.
Lila flips to a page about porcupines. With interest, she scans the image of the animal: Erethizon dorsatum. It is the second-largest rodent in North America. Only beavers are bigger. There is a drawing of a quill, scaly and sharp. The porcupine cannot throw these darts—as Lila feared—but they are deadly nonetheless, tipped with minuscule barbs to lodge in an enemy’s flesh.
From there, it only gets worse. The quills are designed to work their way into the body. Each contraction of the muscles tugs the weapon deeper. A coyote might try its luck with a porcupine, take a few quills in the shoulder, and die days later, its heart pierced by tiny swords. According to the book, a hunter in Idaho once cooked and ate a porcupine. Two weeks later, he perished in the hospital. One lone quill had perforated his large intestine, with slow but inexorable malice, from the inside out.
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Lila wakes to the sound of Simone’s voice. There is a crick in her neck. She appears to have dropped off while reading about porcupines. The room brims with the ochre glow of sunrise.
Simone is in the kitchen, pacing and yelling into her cell phone. It is a work call; Lila can tell by her wife’s stentorian tone. Simone is an accountant, specializing in numbers and irritability. Lila pushes the hair out of her eyes, watching as Simone gestures to no one, her footsteps unceasing. She cannot talk on the phone without motion. The person on the other end of the line would never know that she is wearing flannel pajama pants, a ratty tank top, and an open robe that flaps with each stride.
Lila herself is retired. She spent forty years as a court reporter, lugging around a stenotype, sitting in overheated rooms, and warping her spine into an achy coil. On her last day, she left the office with a skip in her step, feeling like she’d shed fifty pounds. Simone could have retired too but chose not to. She claims to need her work. As much as it aggravates her, it organizes her life.
Lila gets to her feet. At the counter, she reaches for her pills, the bottles lined up in order, waiting. She is aware of her wife’s gaze on her back. Simone has stopped in her tracks, counting silently but palpably as Lila swallows. Two red. One yellow. Two blue. One purple. As soon as she is done, Simone resumes pacing again, bellowing into the phone.
Lila brews herself a cup of tea, thinking about Dr. Conroe. Since her hospitalization, she has spoken with him every day. He explained that she has been through a major depressive episode. He explained that the disease is part biological, part environmental. The likelihood of pain was coded into Lila’s genetic makeup, present from birth. All that was needed was the right trigger. The wrong trigger. Dr. Conroe has talked about catalysts and causes. So many things might have contributed to Lila’s downward spiral. Her retirement, one year ago. The illness of a good friend, five years ago. The onset of her menopause, ten years ago. The death of her mother, fifteen years ago. The fact that she and Simone decided not to have children, thirty years ago. All change is stressful, according to Dr. Conroe. Even events that seem positive in the moment can have a negative impact on brain chemistry. Depression is cumulative. It builds over time. It hides inside its slowness.
Lila returns to the couch and picks up the book she began reading last night, still open to the page about porcupines. She glances through it idly, sipping her tea. These animals, it seems, rely completely on their arsenal of quills. They do not have a potent sense of smell or hearing. They are not nocturnal, like other rodents, moving under the cover of darkness. Porcupines have put all their eggs in one basket—all their arrows in one quiver. Many inexperienced predators find themselves drawn to that plump, vulnerable shape, the slow shuffle. The porcupine looks like it couldn’t run more than a few feet without stopping to catch its breath. They are routinely stalked by young foxes, coyotes, and mountain lions. One bite, however, is all it takes. If the predator is lucky enough to survive those quills, it will never risk another encounter.
There is more, but Lila is already yawning. Endothermic. Bilateral symmetry. Sexual dimorphism. Omnivorous diet. She lays the book aside and curls up beneath her blanket, sedated, lulled, belly full of warm tea, eyes closed.
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That afternoon, she calls Dr. Conroe. She has promised to call him every day without fail. He might as well be her parole officer.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
Lila sighs, sitting at the kitchen counter, swiveling her stool back and forth. This question is too complicated to answer. “Fine,” she says.
“I’m not asking as a formality, Lila. I want details. How’s the pain?”
“Mental or physical?”
He laughs, a genuine chuckle, ripe and warm. Lila finds herself grinning in response. It has been a while since she smiled.
“Let’s start with physical,” he says. “How are the cuts? The stitches should be coming out in two days, is that right?”
“Yes.”
Simone enters the kitchen and pours herself a bowl of cereal as a snack. Her pigtails seem unfinished, one side sleek, the other unkempt and crooked. She must have heard Lila’s voice and rushed out of the bathroom in the middle of doing her hair to snoop.
Dr. Conroe, meanwhile, is talking about dosage and milligrams.
“You’re at a hundred now,” he says. “That’s what’s making you feel sleepy. I might drop you down to seventy-five or even fifty, in time. But not yet. I want to make sure those compulsions keep their distance.”
“I see,” Lila says.
“How are you feeling about the kitchen knives?”
She glances at Simone again, standing at the sink to eat, facing the window, as though unaware that Lila is on the phone. On the kitchen counter sits a wooden knife holder. It is empty. The first thing Simone did upon their arrival was to gather up all the sharp objects in the cabin and hide them. Lila wonders how her wife managed this. Perhaps she dunked them in the tank of the toilet. Perhaps she buried them outside in the cold ground.
“Lila?” Dr. Conroe says.
She shivers a little. “Simone hid the knives.”
“Ah,” he says. “Good woman. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Lila runs her fingers down the line of her stitches. They are arranged like braille, a message printed on her flesh in a language she cannot understand. Soon they will be gone. In two days, she will return to the hospital. The doctors will inspect her wounds one last time, and then her recovery will begin in earnest. She will no longer have to wear uncomfortable splints at night to keep her wrists from bending. She will be able to type again. She will be able to carry grocery bags. She will be able to wash her own hair, instead of being shampooed like a child by Simone.
Eventually her mind will recover too. Dr. Conroe has promised this. The medication will take effect. The depression will subside.
But Lila cannot imagine it. She has been in the darkness too long. She pictures herself as a fish in a cave, sealed away from the sun. Over the years, the absence of light has altered her physiology. Her vibrant color has paled to an apathetic white. Her eyes have atrophied, leaving her bewildered and slow. Her skin has cooled. Her senses have dulled. She has become a still, pale shape, floating in the black.
On cue, Dr. Conroe says, “You should be feeling better any day now. Mentally, I mean. It’ll happen gradually. Mood is a funny thing.”
For a moment, Lila is almost too tired to breathe.
“I don’t believe you,” she says.
“It’s medicine,” he says. “It works whether you believe in it or not.”
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Even now, she does not know why it was the kitchen knives. The steak knives, in particular. Some people choose poison, some jump off bridges, and some prefer a noose. But Lila never considered any other options. There was something so homey about the kitchen knives. Almost friendly. They had served her well, slicing cucumbers and opening recalcitrant packages of lunch meat. She was intimately familiar with their sculpted handles. They had been with her for years.
At first, the thought of suicide was vague. It came every so often, usually late at night—a gleam at the end of a long, dim tunnel. A sweet release. She would picture the knives, consider the idea, argue with it, and ultimately dismiss it. No, she could not do that to Simone. No, she did not want to die; she only wanted a measure of relief. Surely she would feel better in the morning.
But the notion was like a mosquito. It would drift off, only to return a while later. Buzzing in her ear. Irritating and persistent. Not worrisome—not yet. She would brush it away, and it would come back, away and back, over and over.
Then something changed. One morning, perhaps a month ago, she was doing the dishes. Simone was at work. The radio played as sunlight trickled through the curtains. Lila was washing the silverware, elbow-deep in foam, when she felt a shift in her perception. The air seemed to thicken. She lifted a knife and ran it down her wrist. A light tickle. She did not open the skin. She did not even leave a mark.
As soon as she had done it, her head cleared. She came back to herself as though waking from a dream. Shaken, she set the knife aside. She backed away from the sink. She left the apartment and did not return for hours.
After that, the knives were often on her mind. She visited them regularly in the kitchen. She picked them up and played with them. The compulsions came in surges. If she ran a blade down her wrist—tenderly, softly—it would relieve the desire. Afterward, she could detach. She could walk down to the bagel place. She could watch TV. She could think of something other than the knives.
She did not tell Simone. She did not tell anyone.
She was aware, even at the time, that she was in danger. But it was hard to see the situation clearly. Perhaps if she just waited, the ship would right itself on its own. Perhaps, if she did not speak of it, the whole thing would go away as mysteriously as it had come. Intellectually she knew that knives were not a pleasant thing, a joyful thing. Yet the compulsion itself was delicious, like the urge to eat an entire birthday cake or run outside in a thunderstorm. Wicked and wonderful.
As the days passed, she began to leave lines on her wrists, puffy and pink, like the innocent scratch of a fingernail. Sometimes there were scabs, flashes of festive red. The yearning increased. Lila grew weary of resisting it. She had never before needed to sift through her own urges, discerning which were rational and which were not. She wanted to nap. She wanted to eat chocolate. She wanted the knives. It was difficult to remember which of these ideas were acceptable and sane.
She has little memory of the incident itself. There was a sense of freedom, like dashing down a slope, out of control, unable to stop. The bright triangle of the blade. Blood on her shirt. Blood on the countertop. A high-pitched hum. Someone sobbing. A blare of lights and sirens. A cold, sterile room.
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On their last day in the mountains, Simone puts her foot down.
“It’s a perfect morning,” she says. “Come with me.”
Lila is sprawled in the embrace of an armchair. Even in normal times, she is not outdoorsy. She dislikes the chaos of bushes and brambles. She finds the expanse of open sky alarming—too much air, too much light. She treats the natural world with the same dubious, dutiful attention that she might give an exhibit of unpleasant abstract art at MoMA. But Simone is holding out a second fanny pack, smiling her eager smile. With a sigh, Lila climbs to her feet.
The morning is chilly. The path winds downhill through dappled shade. Simone points out a hawk circling in the distance. She points out deer droppings, neat piles of black pellets. She offers Lila a chivalrous arm to help her over a fallen log. Her face is aglow with hope. This, Lila knows, is what Simone wanted all along. The two of them together. Hale and hearty. Clean air in their lungs. Blue sky overhead.
Lila grits her teeth. She is already dizzy from her medication, and it’s a struggle to keep her footing. Simone’s words slide past her on the slick breeze.
“I’m going to sit for a minute,” she says.
“Oh, come on. We’re so close to the lake. You can make it.”
“You go. Go without me.”
Simone meets her gaze, and they engage in the sort of silent argument that is the special province of long-married couples.
“I’ll wait here,” Lila says.
“Fine. Holler if you need me.”
As Simone crunches off down the trail, Lila sits on a stone. She can smell the lake, murky and deep. She has no desire to approach that gelid body of water. Simone hops over a tree root and disappears down the hill. Lila closes her eyes.
Someday she will have to deal with the devastation the past few weeks have wreaked in her marriage. It was Simone who found her. Prone on the kitchen floor. She had lost too much blood, lost consciousness. Her wrists were canyons of pulp and sinew. A crimson puddle gleamed on the tile. It had soaked her clothes and matted her hair. Simone was unable to wake her. She called 911 and sobbed all the way to the hospital.
Lila leans back against the rough bark of a tree. The branches sway in the wind, and she can feel the movement deep in the trunk. In recent days, Simone has looked at her without recognition. Lila understands this. To her wife, she has become two people in one body. The victim and the attacker. Simone’s dear, familiar partner and a dangerous stranger. Simone is old-fashioned, protective, quixotic. She would defend Lila with her life against any exterior threat. But there is nothing more interior than mental illness—in the bloodstream, in the brain. Simone cannot intervene between Lila and herself. Instead, she has been hovering. Eavesdropping on Lila’s phone calls. Keeping track of her pills. Watching her every move.
A crackling in the bushes catches Lila’s attention. She wonders if her porcupine has returned one final time. The leaves shimmy and dance, and she waits, holding her breath. But the underbrush is empty. It is the wind, nothing more.
Her fingers drift automatically to her stitches. She taps each one in succession, counting them like the beads in a rosary.
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That night, on the highway, Simone drums her thumbs on the steering wheel in time with the music on the radio. She always goes into another world when she drives. To Lila, it seems to be a pleasant, hypnotic state, Simone’s foot pulsing in rhythm on the pedal, her brain busy with the stream of headlights. Lila herself is a nervous driver, happy to cede the wheel.
The moon rises, a dry curve of bone. Lila fumbles in her purse. Before leaving the cabin, in a fit of mischief, she stole the book about porcupines. Now, penlight in hand, she flips to the right page. As the miles slip past, the engine shuddering, Simone drumming, Lila reads. She learns that porcupines mate back to belly—not face-to-face, as scientists once believed. The old joke is true: How do porcupines have sex? Very carefully. The females give birth to small litters, between one and four porcupettes. For obvious reasons, the infants emerge with soft quills, more like modeling clay than fired ceramic. These usually harden by the second day of life.
The quills, as it turns out, are minor marvels. They are unique, in fact, in the animal kingdom. Each porcupine carries thirty thousand spikes on its back. Each spike is coated with an antibiotic substance, as potent as penicillin. When scientists first discovered this, they could not figure it out. Nature is rarely benevolent and never altruistic. It makes no sense to bundle a weapon in the same package as its cure. According to the book, a woman in Tennessee was stabbed in the arm during an encounter with a porcupine. The quill dug itself into her bicep. Two weeks later, it emerged from her palm. By that point, she had almost forgotten about it. The spikes are a strange mixture, at once harmful and harmless. As long as they avoid vital organs, they can pass through living tissue without damage.
Eventually, a biologist solved the riddle. He postulated that porcupines must climb trees. No one had ever witnessed them doing this, but it was the only way the situation made sense. If porcupines climbed trees, they might fall. If they fell, they could end up impaled on their own armament of spikes. Lila catches her breath, imagining it. The slip of a paw. The shock of empty air. The earth lurching upward. The collision. She pictures the animal on the ground, sprawled among the tree roots, bruised and battered and pierced like a pincushion.
