Beating, Like a Drum
by Kathi Hansen
As the yoga teacher whispers us back from Savasana, I sense that she’s disappeared the grim reaper; even, apparently, from the dark recesses of the elderly woman softly snoring in the corner. But when I open my eyes I catch the glint of his scythe. He’s there, though moving backward, away from me, bending into Utkatasana—chair pose. He turns and fades behind a billowing curtain. Gone, but not.
The following morning when I turn my head to look at the clock, the whooshing sound pulsates rhythmically in my ear—whoosh…whoosh…whoosh—and I catch sight of him, lounging in the corner chaise. When I sit up, the blood pushing past the damaged artery in my brain quiets, and I hear morning rush-hour traffic outside my window instead. I rub my eyes and GR’s gone. Hitching a ride with one of the passing commuters perhaps? Maybe he’s taken a post in the back seat of a car driven by a child molester who for years abused his own niece, or is hanging with a Mexican drug lord responsible for countless murders. If he’s cruising the streets with a homegrown terrorist plotting to slaughter innocents, or anyone else who earned his visit, unlike me, all the better. Whatever, I’m glad he’s gone.
The lab where I have my blood drawn is busier than usual, there’s only one open chair in the waiting area. I’ve forgotten my book, and the magazines in the rack dangling from the wall near the empty water cooler are not worth risking my seat over. I berate myself for my stupid forgetfulness, and there he is—GR—standing in the doorway, peering at me from under his black cloak. If I’d remembered my fucking book maybe I could disappear him by distraction, just like in yoga. I pretend I don’t see him, look around instead. Everyone here is elderly. All but one: a miserable-looking middle-aged Latina accompanying a wheelchair-bound woman who looks to be at least a thousand years old. The ancient witch barks an order about her footrest to the woman, who glumly replies with a whisper in her ear. “Speak up, goddamn it—and fix my goddamn chair,” the lady yells. Go visit that bat shit crazy bitch, I suggest to GR, but he laughs in response. I’m afraid to tell him to go fuck himself.
As I rummage for nothing in particular in the purse at my feet, my face comes alarmingly close to the legs of the old man sitting next to me. My eyes ascend, from his gleaming white Nikes, past his too-high white socks, to the sallow skin hanging in wrinkly rivulets from the bony leg he’s crossed over the other. Queasiness warms my stomach as I trace the miniature rivers that snake up and over his knee. Maps of purple spider vein-streets litter his crinkly skin and I fight the urge to trace the route home with my pen. Seems to me he might be ready, I tell GR, but when I sit up and see him in full repose on the old man’s head, I see someone’s grandfather, solemnly reading his newspaper, and feel sort of bad for having suggested it. OK, not him—her, I implore, jerking my head toward the cranky one. He swoops to the Latina’s shoulder and shakes his scythe at her head. Wrong one, I think, though dying might be better than caring for that horrible woman.
In that moment it dawns on me that perhaps GR’s mission is benign. Well-intentioned, even. Maybe his goal is to rescue people suffering some horrible fate. Like granny-flabbed arms, desert-parched wrinkled-skin legs, loose-jowled chin, rheumy eyes, gooseneck-fleshed droopiness. That irreversible decomposition that could make anyone—me—perennially ornery. Okay, so I feel bad for the centenarian. Of course she’s crabby. I swat at GR, now on my knee. His chortles send me back to doubting his mission. Go fuck yourself, I say, and fuck the horse you rode in on too.
That night, as I fix dinner for my husband, my son, and his girlfriend, Lindsey, I marvel over my bravado in the waiting room that morning. How unlike me. I’d earned my smug self-righteousness, though, since GR disappeared in a pouf of air and hasn’t been back since. I absentmindedly slice into the onion while considering my theretofore-untested power to disappear GR at will, and inadvertently offer up my thumb to the freshly sharpened knife. The clean white slice below the top joint slowly darkens red. My blood, thinned by anticoagulants intended to keep it flowing smoothly through my bad artery, does as advertised and gushes freely, pooling on the cutting board and mixing with the chopped onion, ingredients in a psycho’s recipe. I grab a paper towel and goddamn it—with outstretched scythe GR tries to snatch it before I can snug it to my wound. I ignore him, lean in to examine the cut more closely, and hear the whooshing in my ear. I square my shoulders and stare into GR’s darkened hood, at the spot where I suspect his eyes must be. As if I needed a fucking reminder, I say, aloud this time, pushing the blood-soaked paper towel into the cut. What? The blood and the whooshing aren’t enough? You have to remind me?
“Mom?”
I jump. “Honey! I didn’t hear you come in.”
My handsome boy stares at me. His eyes dart, from my face to my thumb—now dripping blood on the kitchen floor—to a jerky survey of the room. “Are you OK?” he asks.
I haven’t told him about the blood thinners, because then I’d have to tell him about the dissection in my carotid artery. There’s nothing he can do, nothing anyone can do, so why worry him? He takes the paper towel and looks, but the cut hides behind fresh blood. He grabs a kitchen towel, wraps it around my thumb and pushes me into a chair. Over his shoulder I see GR, his bobbing head, his body wracked with laughter.
“Jesus—how deep is this?”
Lindsey’s heels tap across the kitchen floor, her face fills with concern. “What happened?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I say, trying to modulate my voice. “I take baby aspirin—the new fountain of youth; it thins the blood a little. Nothing a Band-Aid can’t handle.”
Trevor asks Lindsey to get the first-aid kit from under the sink. As he winds gauze around my thumb, he casually asks whom I was talking to when he walked in. I glance at GR, who shrugs. Dare you, he seems to say, tell him. I refuse to give him the satisfaction.
“That woman—what’s her name?” I say. “You know, that right-wing pundit on the news —Ann something-or-other. I hate her.”
GR nods approvingly, applauding my quick-thinking deceit. I don’t want him in the same room as my kids. I’d try to disappear him with ugly words, but something tells me it’d only encourage him, so I implore him, nicely, to go visit someone else for a while. Not in front of the kids. Please? Why don’t you go torment that sex offender who killed the teenage jogger last fall?
It isn’t until I get back to dinner prep and nonsensical banter with Lindsey that I realize he’s gone. By the time my husband, Matt, comes in, my relief is palpable. I’m a little giddy even, and by the end of dinner, magnifying my relief are the three glasses of wine that because of the blood thinners I wasn’t supposed to have. So relaxed am I that as I gaze at Trevor and Lindsey snuggled together across the table, I say:
“So, what about some grandbabies?”
Lindsey shoots a mouthful of wine into her napkin and feigns a bout of choking to disguise her giggles. I feel Matt staring at me. Soon all eyes are on Trevor, who looks slowly around at us all before boring his blue-green eyes into mine.
“Jeez, mom,” he says, and stands to clear the table. They’ve been dating only a few months, but they’re 22, a year older than Matt and I were when we got married.
Lindsey winks at me, and with that gesture we’re joined—co-conspirators, partners in crime. I wink in return, just as GR settles onto the kitchen counter. I glare at him. I’m suddenly in a bit of a hurry, aren’t I? He takes again to fits of laughter. Oh, come on, I say, even you must have a soft spot for grandbabies.
I linger over coffee and the newspaper the next morning, happy that GR didn’t pay me a visit during the night, even though I’d awakened several times to the whooshing in my ear. The headlines explain his absence. He’d had his hands full: first attending to a rookie cop on patrol in a sketchy neighborhood, then to a car full of teenagers, going way too fast to negotiate a hairpin curve. I do the math—four dead in the course of 45 minutes. I’m reminded, as I sometimes am when skimming the paper, how lucky I am that both my kids safely negotiated their teenage years, and seem on the path to sane and safe careers. It’s weird, just last month—pre-whooshing—when a local high school boy suddenly keeled over and died during football practice, I’d thought: “How sad”; now I think: “For God’s sake, GR have you no fucking heart?”
I worry that thoughts such as these might, like a magnetic field, attract GR, so I seek a humdrum distraction that couldn’t possibly interest him: my horoscope. It says: “Your heart is beating like a drum, but it’s not such a bad thing. Let your emotions be your guide today. Feel your way through it!” Bad move. GR’s back, making himself at home in one of the kitchen chairs. Was it the bit about the beating heart? I decide to “feel my way through” disappearing him. I start by pretending I don’t see him but the whooshing in my ear becomes noticeable in the silence, so I close my eyes and try to concentrate on nothing.
The phone interrupts our stalemate.
“Hi, Mom.” It’s Piper, my perennially upbeat daughter who never calls her mother.
“Baby!” I say. “Everything OK?” GR leans in, straining to hear both ends of the conversation.
“I’m great! It’s been soooooo pretty here—spring in San Francisco is the best. You and Dad should come up. Or just you—we could do the spa thing and have some girl time.”
I immediately envision my chock-full-of-scribbles calendar: CPA/taxes, Max/groomer, ins. broker/life ins., Cindy/toes + fingers, Dr. Rice/test results. As lovely as this idea is, I simply don’t have time to go to San Francisco. A fragment of my horoscope replays in my mind: “Let your emotions be your guide.” I cast a glance at GR, who is casually wiping his scythe with a sleeve of his robe.
“That’s a fantastic idea. When? Tomorrow?”
I hear Piper whispering. “Hold on a sec.” More whispers. “Why not today?”
“Why not?” I say. “How about you set up the spa, and I’ll see about dinner reservations and plane tickets?”
GR follows me into my office. I glare over my shoulder, energized by my new ability to do spur-of-the-moment, and say: Oh no you don’t. I’m traveling solo, buster. The whooshing in my head, which isn’t usually present when I’m upright, starts up again. I stop so suddenly that GR nearly bumps into me. It’s not such a bad thing, fuckhead—it’s only my heart, beating like a drum.
I walk right past Piper as I head to an empty barstool at the restaurant. When I settle in, I see her, two stools away, grinning at me. No wonder I didn’t recognize her—she’s shorn her hair into a little boy’s cut. I nearly tip over in my haste to get to her. She hugs me tighter than she ever has and I wonder if she knows something’s up. I run my hand over the back of her head.
“Oh, Piper! You had such gorgeous hair. What have you done?”
“Locks of Love, Ma—I donated it. I had enough for three wigs!”
My save-the-world girl.
“Couldn’t they have spared a little for you?”
“Julie loves it.”
She puts her arm around the pretty girl sitting next to her. “Right, babe?” she says. “Mom, this is Julie. Julie, Ma.”
She’d told me about her new girlfriend, but hadn’t mentioned she’d be tagging along for our girl time. As soon as I set eyes on her I know. This is the girl with whom Piper will have the boatload of babies she’s always talked about. I order a round of martinis for the three of us. During round two the cut on my thumb starts throbbing. Piper notices me playing with the gauze. I tell her the whole thing—blood thinners, damaged artery, and all. I even lift my shirt to show her the solar system I’ve created with the blood thinner I nightly inject into the flesh of my belly.
“See,” I say, “my belly button is the sun and all these red dots are planets.”
I look past the astonished face of my daughter and see GR standing behind her. I bat at him and nearly fall off my stool. Piper catches my elbow and stares at me.
“Are you going to be all right, Ma?”
He’s shaking his head, the hood of his cloak floating from side to side. He thumps his chest with his free hand, the scythe swaying with the rhythm in the other.
“Of course I am,” I say. “There’s nothing to worry about. So long as there are Band-Aids, I’ll be fine.”
As I lie on Piper’s sofa the next morning, through the haze of my hangover I vaguely remember urging her and Julie to get on with the baby making. GR’s practicing headstand pose when I eye him in the corner of the room. I wonder how his black cloak stays in place while he’s on his head. I mean to tell him that he’s wasting his time, that before too long there’ll be a boatload of babies cooing at me. Instead I say: It’s okay that she’s gay, you know, but who’ll watch out for her when I’m gone? GR rights himself, grabs his scythe, and sits down on the arm of the sofa. I almost forget that he’s not my friend.
Matt suggests we stop at my favorite breakfast spot on the way to the doctor. I allow myself the indulgence of things involving bacon and syrup only on my birthday and Mother’s Day, but Matt must figure—well, I don’t want to know what he figures. I jump on the idea, and when I spot GR lounging in the booth next to us, I order an extra piece of French toast and put cream and sugar in my coffee in homage to my nascent devil-may-care attitude. I swirl forkfuls of toast through the river of syrup on my plate before I notice my sweet Matt’s worried grin.
“I’ve never seen you eat like this,” he says.
GR has fastened himself to the top of the booth behind Matt, and rakes his scythe so close to Matt’s head that a cowlick springs free of his hair gel. Matt looks around as if trying to find the source of the breeze. No, I think, not my Matt—he’s the best guy ever, and fit; runs miles every day, and, hey, his grandparents are still alive. I squint at GR in as threatening a manner as I can muster without raising suspicion, but realize I’ve failed when Matt glances over his shoulder. We’re the only patrons on this side of the restaurant.
“You can use a couple of pounds—or five—please, eat!”
I’m actually able to relax a little when GR flits over to sit beside me. He exists only in my peripheral vision, which I can avoid by maintaining eye contact with Matt. I steer the conversation to the vet’s latest suggestions for our dog’s food allergies.
“She said it’d help a lot,” I say, “if you stopped giving him table scraps.”
When I glance sideways, I see the tail of GR’s cloak trailing behind him as he sweeps out the door. Perfect! I’ve disappeared him with boredom.
GR beats us to the doctor’s office. Matt sits and opens a video game on his iPhone. I watch GR survey the waiting room. It’s composed of patients not unlike those outside the lab a few days earlier: old folks, primarily men, overweight and with bulging veins creeping up their crepey legs. A vascular surgeon’s paradise—all these lower limbs eager for an opportune deep-vein thrombus to take up residence. I try to guess which poor soul GR will choose to torment. The priest in the corner? His round face flushed, his nose covered in so many tiny blue capillaries that connect to form a giant purple bulb. His fat ankles squish over the top of his black Prada Sport loafers. He’s not just some random priest, but Father Joe, a local hero and frequent television personality. GR takes up residence on the toe of Father’s Joe left shoe—see, I’m getting good at this—and bends over to get a closer look at the fine Italian craftsmanship.
The nurse calls me. Matt jumps up, nearly bowls me over to get to the door she holds open. GR trails us. We’re led past the examining rooms, straight to the doctor’s office, where Dr. Rice sits at a polished-to-glass cherry wood desk. He smiles at Matt, shakes his hand, introduces himself by his first name. His exuberant bedside manner unsettles me. GR glides in and balances on the armrest of my chair. I try to elbow him off, but he doesn’t budge. Bored with the padre and his footwear so soon?
“Well,” says Dr. Rice, “in all my years of practice, I’ve never seen anything like this.” He pauses. “This type of arterial damage is seen on autopsy, not on films from someone sitting across my desk.”
Matt gasps.
GR leans in closer.
Dr. Rice’s eyes lock mine.
“You really should play the lottery,” he says, “you will win.”
GR shakes his head and chuckles. I’m too stunned to say anything, other than to GR, and the best that I can manage is: dickwad—a word I’ve never uttered in my entire life.
The doctor tells us that I’ve been the object of much hand wringing in vascular surgery offices across the country. The experts, he says, can only guess about my prognosis. It is then that the doctor delivers the stunning news: my biggest risk is not sudden death, as I’d assumed. It’s that I’ll suffer a massive stroke. You could survive it, he says, almost cheerily. The air that Matt earlier gulped is released in a giant wave that gushes out his mouth. GR falls off my chair. He hesitates for the briefest of moments before skulking out the door.
At home that night I notice today’s news reflected on Matt; the crease in his forehead softer, his steps lighter, his eyes brighter. It’s sweet in a way: he’s encouraged by the revelation. A stroke? That he can handle. Me dropping dead on the driveway? That he cannot. A million thoughts crowd my head and the whooshing takes on a new, more ominous tone. My brain flashes to the formerly vibrant grocery store checkout clerk, reduced via stroke to a leg-dragging, face-sagging, word-slurring mess. A Google search of “stroke” reveals: “psychopaths behave like stroke victims,” “friends and family of stroke victims suffer life-changing turns,” “emotional lability is prevalent among stroke survivors and many become tearful, express anger, or laugh at inappropriate moments.” But it’s when I see “complete memory loss,” “aphasia,” “incontinence,” and “long-term care facilities,” that I realize I’ve not seen GR since he crept out of the doctor’s office.
Matt’s relief worries me. That he’d be okay dressing me in my platform pumps, repositioning my legs in the wheelchair, tucking a bib over the cashmere crew neck under my chin, and wiping drool from my face terrifies me. I call our estate-planning lawyers and change my medical power of attorney to Piper, who’s like my mother was, strong, determined, and decidedly unsentimental when necessary. She could pull the plug. I run to the drugstore and buy a medical alert bracelet and ask the clerk to inscribe it with a giant DNR!!! Instead of educating my kids on the fine art of identifying stroke symptoms, as Dr. Rice suggested “out of an abundance of caution,” I write notes to tell them that I. Do. Not. Want. To. Be. A. Burden. I tuck a note to Matt in my medicine cabinet. “Please,” it says, “please leave my care to others.” It’s not that I’m noble, altruistic, vain, selfless, melodramatic, or selfish. I am and I’m not. I’m just petrified. And now I’ve done what I can do.
I search for GR everywhere. My closet, the back seat of my car, the front deck, behind the backdoor. I move my lab appointment up a day, since I know I can find him there. Only he’s nowhere. When I bend over to set down Max’s bowl of kibble, the whooshing pounds my ear—louder than it’s ever been. It’s unrelenting: whoosh…whoosh…whoosh. Encouraged, I scan the kitchen, but Max and I are alone. I rush outside and circle the house, step into the street and survey all directions. I walk the block and look behind shrubs and telephone poles. I duck behind parallel-parked cars outside the post office and poke my head from behind their fenders. I pay a visit to the old folks’ home attached to the local hospital and quietly roam the halls, sticking my head into every room. Nothing.
GR, I call. Come on! I know you’re there. Please, you maudlin little asshole, at least let me see you. Remember me, GR? What about this: whoosh…whoosh…whoosh? Come on, you love the sound of a time bomb ticking. Remember, GR? GR?
Damn you, GR. You’re nothing but a fair-weather friend.
Kathi Hansen, a San Diego author, holds an MFA from NYU. Her short stories appear in numerous literary journals, including Contrary, Meridian, and Gettysburg Review, and one, chosen in the Bellevue Literary Review Goldenberg Prize for Fiction Contest, will appear in its Spring 2020 issue. As a former medical malpractice lawyer she’s long been interested in the intersection between illness, injury, caregiving and story telling. She’s presently at work on a novel set in the early days of the AIDS crisis. Kathi may be found at www.kathi-hansen.com and occasionally on Twitter @KathiOHansen.