The Narrow Door by Paul Lisicky Read Free Book Online Page B

research. The faces in the images look miserable; it’s as if each of them has been exposed to a chemical blast. In one picture a man’s forehead is scabbed from the middle of his cheek to his hairline. The swelling is so extreme that he can’t open his left eye. We can’t even look without screwing up our faces. I make a loud sound of disgust and close the laptop with a snap.
    “You have to go to the doctor,” M says. “I’m calling Dr. Steve.”
    I shake my head brusquely. I tell him there’s no reason to go to Dr. Steve when I’ve already made an accurate diagnosis. I don’t want to go to Dr. Steve. He is simply going to tell me to stay home and rest as there is no treatment for shingles, just some medication to prevent it from getting worse, and I’m clearly past the initial stage where it could still be of use.
    “If you’re sick,” he says, minutes later, “I don’t think I’m going to be strong enough to take care of you.”
    M’s voice is quiet now, thick with suppressed tears in his throat. Then he starts to cry. By sick, he means HIV-sick. It hadn’t even occurred to me that shingles could be a sign of HIV. In three months I’ll find out from Dr. Steve that I’ve tested negative, but right now I want to say, you could take care of me, I promise. I wouldn’t be that much work.
    I just want to be held. That is the one and only thing I need right now. But I don’t know how to ask for his arms around me, even though we’ve been together fifteen years. I might just be afraid that he’ll hug me for two minutes out of obligation and get on with his day.
    Later that afternoon, I turn on the Weather Channel to see Washington’s Mount Rainier practically filling up the screen. Then another view of the mountain from the street of a featureless subdivision, another from the waters of Puget Sound, then one more from a tourist town with a coffee shop, a fruit stand, a gas pump, an organic food store. Boys skateboard through the haze of an unseasonably hot day. Haze against snow: it’s all a little nauseating. The voice-over says, Not if It Will Happen , but When. Then footage of a young couple walking briskly to a hillside to avoid the onslaught. Then a chart graphing the buildup of roiling matter beneath the poised, boreal mountain.
    I get a kick out of the visual dramatizations, which is probably the unspoken wish of the producers and directors: they don’t really want to scare us. Pieces of rock belt the air, the atmosphere is impenetrable. But I’m especially mesmerized by the sluice of melted snow, lava swamping the streets to the eaves of the houses. You could say it’s the color of chocolate milk or mocha, but it’s not so appealing as that.
    Bury it, I think. The whole fucking lot of it. Ugly houses and their vain yearnings.
    I walk back to the bathroom, pull up my shirt, and study myself again. Shingles. What am I, old now? For the next month I’ll check myself every few minutes just to make sure I’m not leaking lava.

Sometimes Relationships That Didn’t Happen Are Worse Than the Ones That Did
    1985 |  It must be nearly eleven when Denise calls me one Tuesday night, in spring. “I’ll take it in the den,” I say to my father after he’s already answered the phone. My father’s voice always turns gruff once he figures out Denise is calling. The truth is she calls a lot, two times a day, sometimes for two or three hours at a time. Calls to our house are met with a busy signal, a harsh warning sound. Do I like being on the phone so much? The question doesn’t occur to me. Denise is in my life, and this is part of the pact. And what must my father think when he walks into his den to see me lying on the bare floor, drawing air pictures with my finger? My face might seem to be a little blissed, as if Joni is singing her newest song only for me. I’m not speaking at all. There isn’t space for me to speak, which must prompt my father to think: what could this divorced woman, this