Ironhead
2005 / Aimee Bender
For the record, everything new is not worse than everything old.
Parents with heads made from pumpkins have a baby with a head made from iron. I have, for what I assume will be very obvious reasons, been thinking about this one a lot lately.
—A.J.F.
P.S. I also find myself thinking of “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff. You might give that a read, too.
Christmas brings A.J.’s mother, who looks nothing like him. Paula is a tiny white woman with long gray hair that has not been cut since she retired from her job at a computer company a decade ago. She has made the most of her retirement in Arizona. She makes jewelry out of rocks that she paints. She teaches literacy to inmates. She rescues Siberian huskies. She tries to go to a different restaurant every week. She dates some—women and men. She has slipped into bisexuality without needing to make a big thing about it. She is seventy, and she believes you try new things or you may as well die. She comes bearing three identically wrapped and shaped presents for the family and a promise that it isn’t thoughtlessness that has led her to pick the same gift for the three of them. “It’s something I thought the whole family would appreciate and use,” she says.
Maya knows what it is before she’s even through the paper.
She’s seen them at school. Almost everyone seems to have one these days, but her dad doesn’t approve. She slows down her unwrapping speed to allow herself time to figure out the response that will least offend both her grandmother and her father.
“An e-reader! I’ve wanted one for a really long time.” She shoots a quick look over to her father. He nods, though his eyebrow is twitching slightly. “Thanks, Nana.” Maya kisses her grandmother on the cheek.
“Thank you, Mother Fikry,” says Amelia. She already has an e-reader for work, but she keeps this information to herself.
As soon as he sees what it is, A.J. decides to stop unwrapping the present. If he keeps it in the paper, perhaps it can be given to someone else. “Thank you, Mother,” A.J. says, and then he bites his tongue.
“A.J., you have a moue,” his mother notes.
“I don’t,” he insists.
“You must keep up with the times,” she continues.
“Why must I? What is so great about the times?” A.J. has often reflected that, bit by bit, all the best things in the world are being carved away like fat from meat. First, it had been the record stores, and then the video stores, and then newspapers and magazines, and now even the big chain bookstores were disappearing everywhere you looked. From his point of view, the only thing worse than a world with big chain bookstores was a world with NO big chain bookstores. At least the big stores sell books and not pharmaceuticals or lumber! At least some of the people who work at those stores have degrees in English literature and know how to read and curate books for people! At least the big stores can sell ten thousand units of publisher’s dreck so that Island gets to sell one hundred units of literary fiction!
“The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind, A.J.” After twenty-five years in computers, his mother had come away with a respectable pension and this one opinion, A.J. thinks uncharitably.
A.J. takes a deep breath, a long drink of water, another deep breath. His brain feels tight against his skull. His mother visits rarely, and he doesn’t want to spoil their time together.
“Dad, you’re turning a bit red,” Maya says.
“A.J., are you unwell?” his mother asks.
He puts his fist down on the coffee table. “Mother, do you even understand that that infernal device is not only going to single-handedly destroy my business but, worse than that, send centuries of a vibrant literary culture into what will surely be an unceremonious and rapid decline?” A.J. asks.
“You’re being dramatic,” Amelia says. “Calm down.”
“Why should I calm down? I do not like the present. I do not like that thing and certainly not three of that thing in my house. I would rather you have bought my daughter something less destructive like a crack pipe.”
Maya giggles.
A.J.’s mother looks like she might cry. “Well, I certainly didn’t want to make anyone upset.”
“It’s fine,” Amelia says. “It’s a lovely gift. We all love to read, and I’m sure we’ll enjoy using them very much. Besides, A.J. really is being dramatic.”
“I’m sorry, A.J.,” his mother says. “I didn’t know you’d have such strong feelings about the matter.”
“You could have asked!”
“Shut up, A.J. Stop apologizing, Mother Fikry,” Amelia says. “It’s the perfect gift for a family of readers. Lots of bookstores are figuring out ways to sell e-books along with conventional paper books. A.J. just doesn’t want to—”
A.J. interrupts. “You know that’s bullshit, Amy!”
“You are being so rude,” Amelia says. “You can’t put your head in the sand and act like e-readers don’t exist. That’s no way to deal with anything.”
“Do you smell smoke?” Maya asks.
A second later, the fire alarm goes off.
“Oh hell!” Amelia says. “The brisket!” She runs into the kitchen, and A.J. follows her. “I had my phone set to go off, but it didn’t.”
“I put your phone on silent so that it wouldn’t ruin Christmas!” A.J. says.
“You what? Stop touching my phone.”
“Why not use the timer that came with the oven?”
“Because I DO NOT TRUST IT! That oven is about one hundred years old like everything else in this house if you haven’t noticed.” Amelia yells as she removes the flaming brisket from the oven.
AS THE BRISKET is ruined, Christmas dinner consists entirely of side dishes.
“I like the sides the best,” A.J.’s mother says.
“Me too,” Maya says.
“No substance,” A.J. mutters. “They leave you hungry.” He has a headache, which he does no favors by drinking several glasses of red wine.
“Would someone ask A.J. to pass the wine?” Amelia says. “And would someone tell A.J. he is hogging the bottle?”
“Very mature,” A.J. says. He pours her another glass.
“I honestly can’t wait to try it out, Nana,” Maya whispers to her stricken grandmother. “I’m going to wait until I go to bed.” She darts her eyes toward A.J. “You know.”
“I think that’s a very good idea,” A.J.’s mother whispers back.
THAT NIGHT IN BED, A.J. is still talking about the e-reader. “Do you know the real problem with that contraption?”
“I suppose you are about to tell me,” Amelia says without looking up from her paper book.
“Everyone thinks they have good taste, but most people do not have good taste. In fact, I’d argue that most people have terrible taste. When left to their own devices— literally their own devices—they read crap and they don’t know the difference.”
“Do you know what the good thing about e-readers is?” Amelia asks.
“No, Madame Bright Side,” A.J. says. “And I don’t want to.”
“Well, for those of us with husbands who are growing farsighted, and I’m not going to mention any names here. For those of us with husbands who are rapidly becoming middle-aged and losing their vision. For those of us burdened by pathetic half men for spouses—”
“Get to it, Amy!”
“An e-reader allows these cursed creatures to enlarge the text as much as they’d like.”
A.J. says nothing.
Amelia sets down her book to smile smugly at her husband, but when she looks over the man is frozen. A.J. is having one of his episodes. The episodes trouble Amelia, though she reminds herself not to be worried.
A minute and a half later, A.J. comes to. “I’ve always been a bit farsighted,” he says. “It’s not about being middle-aged.”
She wipes the spittle from the corners of his mouth with a Kleenex.
“Christ, did I just black out?” A.J. asks.
“You did.”
He grabs the tissue from Amelia. He is not the type of man who likes being tended to in this way. “How long?”
“About ninety seconds, I’d guess.” Amelia pauses. “Is that long or average?”
“Maybe a bit long but basically average.”
“Do you think you should go in for a checkup?”
“No,” A.J. says. “You know I’ve had these since I was a chive.”
“A chive?” she asks.
“A child. What did I say?” A.J. gets out of bed and heads to the bathroom, and Amelia follows him. “Please, Amy. A little space.”
“I don’t want to give you space,” she says.
“Fine.”
“I want you to go to the doctor. That’s three of these since Thanksgiving.”
A.J. shakes his head. “My health insurance is crap, Amy darling. And Dr. Rosen will say it’s the same thing I’ve had for years anyway. I’ll go see the doctor in March for my annual like I always do.”
Amelia goes into the bathroom. “Maybe Dr. Rosen can give you a new medication?” She squeezes between him and the bathroom mirror, resting her generous bum on the new double-sink counter that they installed last month. “You are very important, A.J.”
“I’m not exactly the president,” he retorts.
“You are the father of Maya. And the love of my life. And a purveyor of culture to this community.”
A.J. rolls his eyes, then he kisses Amelia the bright-sider on the mouth.
CHRISTMAS AND NEW Year’s are over; his mother is happily returned to Arizona; Maya is back to school and Amelia to work. The real gift of the holiday season, A.J. thinks, is that it ends. He likes the routine. He likes making breakfast in the morning. He likes running to work.
He puts on his running clothes, does a few halfhearted stretches, throws a headband over his ears, straps on his backpack, and prepares to run to the store. Now that he no longer lives above the store, his route takes him in the opposite direction of the one he used to take when Nic was alive, when Maya was a baby, in the first years of his marriage to Amelia.
He runs past Ismay’s house, which she once shared with Daniel and now shares improbably with Lambiase. He runs past the spot where Daniel died, too. He runs past the old dance studio. What was the dance teacher’s name? He knows she moved to California not too long ago, and the dance studio is empty. He wonders who will teach the little girls of Alice Island to dance? He runs past Maya’s elementary school and past her junior high and past her high school. High school. She has a boyfriend. The Furness boy is a writer. He hears them arguing all the time. He takes a shortcut through a field, and is almost through it to Captain Wiggins Street when he blacks out.
It is twenty-two degrees out, and when he wakes his hand is blue where it had rested on the ice.
He stands and warms his hands on his jacket. He has never passed out in the middle of a run before.
“Madame Olenska,” he says.
DR. ROSEN GIVES him a full examination. A.J. is in good health for his age, but there’s something strange about his eyes that gives the doctor pause.
“Have you had any other problems?” she asks.
“Well . . . Perhaps it’s just growing older, but lately I seem to have a verbal glitch every now and again.”
“Glitch?” she says.
“I catch myself. It’s not that bad. But I occasionally switch a word with another word. Child for chive, for example. Or last week I called The Grapes of Wrath “The Grapefruit Rag.” Obviously, this poses a problem in my line of work. I felt quite convinced that I was saying the right thing. My wife thought there might be an antiseizure medication that could help?”
“Aphasia,” she says. “I don’t like the sound of that.” Given A.J.’s history of seizures, the doctor decides to send him to a brain specialist in Boston.
“How’s Molly doing?” A.J. asks by way of changing the subject. The surly salesgirl hasn’t worked for him for six or seven years now.
“She’s just been accepted to . . .” And the doctor names a writing program, but A.J. isn’t paying attention. He is thinking about his brain. It strikes him that it is odd to have to use the thing that may not be working to consider the thing that isn’t working. “. . . thinks she’s going to write the Great American Novel. I suppose I have you and Nicole to blame,” the doctor says.
“Full responsibility,” A.J. says.
GLIOBLASTOMA MULTIFORME.
“Would you mind spelling that for me?” A.J. asks. He has not brought anyone to this appointment with him. He has not wanted anyone to know until he was certain. “I’d like to Google it later.”
The cancer is so rare that the oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital has never seen a case other than in a scholarly publication and once on the television show Grey’s Anatomy.
“What happened to the case in the publication?” A.J. asks.
“Death. Two years,” the oncologist says.
“Two good years?”
“One pretty good year, I’d say.”
A.J. goes for the second opinion. “And on the TV show?”
The oncologist laughs, a noisy chain saw of a laugh designed to be the loudest sound in the room. See, cancer is hilarious. “I don’t think we should be making prognoses based on nighttime soap operas, Mr. Fikry.”
“What happened?”
“I believe the patient had the surgery, lived for an episode or two, thought he was in the clear, proposed to his doctor girlfriend, had a heart attack that was, apparently, unrelated to the brain cancer, and died the next episode.”
“Oh.”
“My sister writes for television, and I believe television writers call this a three-episode arc.”
“So I should expect to live somewhere between three episodes and two years.”
The oncologist chain saw laughs again. “Good. A sense of humor is key. I should say that estimate sounds about right.” The oncologist wants to schedule surgery immediately.
“Immediately?”
“Your symptoms were masked by your seizures, Mr. Fikry. And the scans show that this tumor is quite far advanced. I wouldn’t wait if I were you.”
The surgery will cost nearly as much as the down payment on their house. It is unclear how much A.J.’s meager small-businessperson insurance will cover. “If I have the surgery, how much time does it buy me?” A.J. asks.
“Depends on how much we’re able to get out. Ten years, if we manage clean margins. Two years, maybe, if not. The kind of tumor you have has the annoying tendency to grow back.”
“And if you’re successful removing the thing, am I left a vegetable?”
“We don’t like to use terms like vegetable, Mr. Fikry. But it’s in your left frontal lobe. You’ll likely experience the occasional verbal deficit. Increased aphasia, et cetera. But we won’t take out so much that you aren’t left mostly yourself. Of course, if left untreated, the tumor will grow until the language center of your brain is pretty much gone. Whether we treat or not, this will, in all likelihood, happen eventually anyway.”
Weirdly, A.J. thinks of Proust. Though he pretends to have read the whole thing, A.J. has only ever read the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. It had been a struggle to read that much, and now what he thinks is, At least I will never have to read the rest. “I have to discuss this with my wife and my daughter,” he says.
“Yes, of course,” the oncologist says, “but don’t delay too long.”
ON THE TRAIN then the ferry back to Alice, he thinks about Maya’s college and Amelia’s ability to pay the mortgage on the house they bought less than a year ago. By the time he is walking down Captain Wiggins Street, he decides that he cannot undertake such a surgery if it means leaving his nearest and dearest broke.
A.J. does not yet want to face his family at home so he calls Lambiase, and the two of them meet at the bar.
“Tell me a good cop story,” A.J. says.
“Like a story about a good cop or a story that is interesting involving police officers?”
“Either one. It’s up to you. I want to hear something amusing that will distract me from my problems.”
“What problems do you have? Perfect wife. Perfect kid. Good business.”
“I’ll tell you after.”
Lambiase nods. “Okay. Let me think. Maybe fifteen years ago, there was this kid, goes to Alicetown. He hasn’t been to school for a month. Every day, he tells his parents he’ll go and every day, he doesn’t show up. Even if they leave him there, he sneaks out and goes somewhere else.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Right. The parents think he must be in some serious trouble. He’s a tough kid, hangs with a tough crowd. They all get bad grades and wear low pants. His parents run a food stand at the beach, so there isn’t much money. Anyhow, the parents are at their wit’s end, so I decide to follow the kid the whole day. The kid goes to school, and then between period one and two, he just leaves. I’m trailing behind him, and finally we get to a building I’ve never been into before. I’m on Main and Parker. You know where I am?”
“That’s the library.”
“Bingo. You know I never read much back then. So I follow him up the stairs and into a library carrel in the back and I’m thinking, he’s probably going to do drugs or something there. Perfect place, right? Isolated. But you know what he’s got?”
“Books, I’d imagine. That’s the obvious thing, right?”
“He’s got one thick book. He’s in the middle of Infinite Jest. You ever heard of it?”
“Now you’re making this up.”
“The boy is reading Infinite Jest. He says he can’t do it at home because he has five siblings to babysit and he can’t do it at school because his buddies will make fun of him. So he skips school to go read in peace. The book takes a lot of concentration. ‘Listen, hombre,’ he says, ‘there’s nothing for me at school. Everything’s in this book.’ ”
“I take it, he’s Latino, by your use of the word hombre. A lot of Hispanic people on Alice Island?”
“A few.”
“So what do you do?”
“I haul his ass back to school. The principal asks me how the kid should be punished. I ask the kid how long he thinks it’ll take him to finish the book. He says, ’About two weeks.’ And so I recommend they give him a two-week suspension for delinquency.”
“You’re definitely making this up,” A.J. says. “Admit it. The troubled youth was not skipping school to read Infinite Jest.”
“He was, A.J. I swear to God.” But then Lambiase bursts out laughing. “You seemed depressed. I wanted to tell you a story with a little uplift.”
“Thanks. Thanks very much.”
A.J. orders another beer.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“It’s funny that you should mention Infinite Jest. Why did you choose that particular title, by the way?” A.J. says.
“I always see it in the store. It takes up a lot of space on the shelf.”
A.J. nods. “I once had this huge argument with a friend of mine about it. He loved it. I hated it. But the funniest thing about this dispute, the thing I will confess to you now is . . .”
“Yes?”
“That I never finished reading it.” A.J. laughs. “That and Proust can both go on my list of unfinished works, thank God. My brain is broken, by the way.” He takes out the slip of paper and reads, “Glioblastoma multiforme. It turns you into a vegetable and then you die. But at least it’s quick.”
Lambiase sets down his beer. “There must be a surgery or something,” he says.
“There is, but it costs a billion dollars. And it only delays things anyway. I won’t leave Amy and Maya broke just to prolong my life by a couple of months.”
Lambiase finishes his beer. He signals the bartender for another one. “I think you should let them decide for themselves,” Lambiase says.
“They’ll be sentimental,” A.J. says.
“Let them be.”
“The right thing for me to do is blow my stupid brains out, I’d say.”
Lambiase shakes his head. “You’d do that to Maya?”
“How is it better for her to have a brain-dead father and no money for college?”
THAT NIGHT IN bed, after the lights are off, Lambiase pulls Ismay close to him. “I love you,” he tells her. “And I want you to know that I don’t judge you for anything you might have done in the past.”
“Okay,” Ismay says. “I’m half asleep and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know about the bag in the closet,” Lambiase whispers. “I know that the book’s in there. I don’t know how it got there and I don’t need to know either. But it’s only right that it be returned to its rightful owner.”
After a long pause, Ismay says, “The book’s ruined.”
“But even a damaged Tamerlane might still be worth something,” Lambiase says. “I searched the Christie’s website and the last copy on the market sold for five hundred sixty thousand dollars. So I figure maybe a damaged one is worth fifty thousand or something. And A.J. and Amy need the money.”
“Why do they need the money?”
He tells her about A.J.’s cancer, and Ismay covers her face with her hands.
“The way I see it,” Lambiase says, “we wipe the book down of fingerprints, put it in an envelope, and return it. No one has to know where or who it came from.”
Ismay turns on the bedside lamp. “How long have you known about this?”
“Since the first night I spent at your house.”
“And you didn’t care? Why didn’t you turn me in?” Ismay’s eyes are sharp.
“Because it wasn’t my business, Izzie. I wasn’t invited in your home as an officer of the law. And I didn’t have a right to be looking through your stuff. And I figured there must be a story. You’re a good woman, Ismay, and you haven’t had it easy.”
Ismay sits up. Her hands are shaking. She walks over to the closet and pulls down the bag. “I want you to know what happened,” she says.
“I don’t need to,” Lambiase says.
“Please, I want to tell you. And don’t interrupt. If you interrupt me, I won’t be able to get it all out.”
“Okay, Izzie,” he says.
“The first time Marian Wallace came to see me, I was five months pregnant. She had Maya with her, and the baby was about two. Marian Wallace was very young, very pretty, very tall with tired, golden-brown eyes. She said, ‘Maya is Daniel’s daughter.’ And I said—and I’m not proud of this—‘How do I know you aren’t lying?’ I could see perfectly well that she wasn’t lying. I knew my husband after all. I knew his type. He had cheated on me from the day we were married and probably before that, too. But I loved his books or at least that first one. And I felt like somewhere down deep inside him the person who wrote it must be there. That you couldn’t write such beautiful things and have such an ugly heart. But that is the truth. He was a beautiful writer and a terrible person.
“I can’t blame Daniel for all of this, though. I can’t blame him for my part in it. I screamed at Marian Wallace. She was twenty-two, but she looked like a kid. ‘Do you think you’re the first slut to show up here, claiming to have had Daniel’s baby?’
“She apologized, kept apologizing. She said, ‘The baby doesn’t have to be in Daniel Parish’s life’—she kept calling him by his first and last name. She was a fan, you see. She respected him. ‘The baby doesn’t have to be in Daniel Parish’s life. We won’t bother you ever again, I swear to God. We just need a little money to get started. To move on. He said he would help, and now I can’t find him anywhere.’ This made sense to me. Daniel was always traveling a lot—visiting writer at a school in Switzerland, trips to Los Angeles that never resulted in anything.
“ ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to get in touch with him and see what I can do. If he acknowledges that your story is true—’ But I already knew that it was, Lambiase! ‘If he acknowledges that your story is true, maybe we can do something.’ The girl wanted to know how she could best contact me. I told her I’d be in touch.
“I talked to Daniel that night on the phone. It was a good talk, and I didn’t bring up Marian Wallace. He was solicitous of me, started making plans for our own baby’s arrival. ‘Ismay,’ he said, ‘once the baby’s here, I’m going to be a changed man.’ I had heard that before. ‘No, I’m serious,’ he insisted, ‘I’m definitely going to travel less. I’m going to stay at home, write more, take care of you and the potato.’ He was always a good talker and I wanted to believe that this was the night everything was going to change in my marriage. I decided right then and there that I would take care of the problem with Marian Wallace. I would find a way to buy her off.
“People in this town have always thought my family had more money than we actually did. Nic and I did have small trust funds, but it wasn’t a ton. She used hers to buy the store, and I used mine to buy this house. What was left over from my side, my husband spent quickly. His first book sold well, but the ones after less so, and he always had champagne tastes and an inconsistent income. I’m only a schoolteacher. Daniel and I always looked rich, but we were poor.
“Down the hill, my sister had been dead for over a year, and her husband was steadily drinking himself to death. Out of obligation to her, I would check on A.J. some nights. I’d let myself in, wipe the vomit off his face, and drag him to bed. One night, I go in. A.J. is passed out as usual. And Tamerlane is sitting on the table. I should say here that I was with him the day he found Tamerlane. Not that he ever offered to split the money with me, which probably would have been the decent thing to do. Cheap bastard never would have been at that estate sale if not for me. So I put A.J. to bed, and I go out to the living room to clean up the mess, and I wipe everything down, and the last thing I do, without even really thinking about it, is I slip the book into my bag.
“The next day, everyone is looking for Tamerlane, but I’m out of town. I’ve gone into Cambridge for the day. I go to Marian Wallace’s dorm room, and I throw the book on her bed. I tell her, ‘Look, you can sell this. It’s worth a lot of money.’ And she looks at the book dubiously, and she says, ‘Is it hot?’ And I say, ‘No, it belongs to Daniel, and he wants you to have it, but you can never say where it came from. Bring it to an auction house or a rare-books dealer. Claim you found it in a used-books bin somewhere.’ I don’t hear from Marian Wallace again for a while, and I think maybe that’s the end of it.” Ismay’s voice trails off.
“But it isn’t?” Lambiase asks.
“No. She shows up at the house with Maya and the book just before Christmas. She says she’s gone to every auction house and dealer in the Boston area, and none of them want to deal with the book because it doesn’t have a provenance, and the cops have been calling about a stolen copy of Tamerlane. She takes the book from her bag and hands it to me. I throw it back at her. ‘What am I going to do with this?’ Marian Wallace just shakes her head. The book lands on the floor, and the little girl picks it up and starts flipping through it, but no one’s paying any attention to her. Marian Wallace’s huge amber eyes fill with tears, and she says, ‘Have you read “Tamerlane,” Mrs. Parish? It’s so sad.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s a poem about this Turkish conqueror who trades the love of his life, this poor peasant girl, for power.’ I roll my eyes at her, and I say, ‘Is that what you think is happening here? Do you fancy yourself some poor peasant girl, and I’m the mean wife who is keeping you from the love of your life?’