Mdellert-dot-com

Amputation
by
Michael Dellert

I just want to scream HELLO
my god, it's been so long
never dreamed you'd return
but now here you are
and here I am
hearts and thoughts they fade. . .
— Pearl Jam

Caitlin walks down the dormitory hallway with her throat tight, watching the numbers on the doors as they pass her by. She thinks Nick told her he was in C102 when he called her at the bookstore a month ago to ask her if the books were in yet, the two books now in her left hand that are so heavy her arm doesn't swing right when she walks. She should bring him the books, he paid for them after all, wrote out of $50 check in her name, even though the books don't cost $50. She has his change, seven-twenty, in the pocket of her coat, even though she knows he won't take it (but he might), because he knew there would be change and wanted her to keep it, because she's poor and he's not, not really, not anymore, and he'd want her to keep it.

She finds the room at the far end of the hall, across from a fire door. There's a WB logo sticker under the numbers and a brass plate that reads "Athletic Representative," and she wonders if she's got the right room. Nick's idea of athletic was weight lifting beer bottles. Did he say C102?

She straightens her shoulders and raps on the door. There's a porcelain white water fountain on the wall beside her. Is the light on? she wonders.

A voice says come in, and it sounds like his voice, so she opens the door. The light from the hallway stabs into the darkness and she sees him lying on a twin bed with his brown blanket over him, propped up on his left elbow, squinting at her as if wondering who she is.

No contacts, she thinks. He can't see me. God, this is a bad idea. She apologizes for the hour and he snarls at the sound of her voice and suddenly he's thrown back the blanket and he's standing naked, fearful and defiant on the tile floor like a cornered wolf.

God, this is all wrong, she thinks, and says, "This is a bad time," and turns to go, pulling on the door, those books so heavy in her left hand.

"Wait!?" he tells her, and she freezes, and he says, "What is it?" Not sympathetic the way he used to be, but suspicious.

She turns back a little, but she shouldn't look at him like that, and she says, "I brought the books you wanted," and then, "I called," she says, "but the phone was busy; I wouldn't have come but Jake and I had a fight, he walked out; I was alone and scared and I needed... I just needed someone, Nick," and she can feel the rage bleeding off him like heat, and she feels as naked as he is.

A door opens down the hall and she jumps. Two girls come out of a room and start toward her, giggling and talking in low tones.

"Come in," he says bitterly, "close the door for Christ's sake, turn on the light;" and she does, fumbling in the dark for the switch. The light, on the left wall over the bed, flutters several times like a moth burned by a candle, then comes on. His pale, beautiful skin shines like whalebone, balanced by the cross of black hair on his chest and belly and the dark curls of his head. He's grown a goatee since she saw him last, and it is black and streaked with red. She wants to press against him, but around his neck, the silver Celtic knot medallion shines in the fluorescence, and she realizes she doesn't have hers with her. Jake called it "The Demon Talisman" and after Christmas there wasn't must point in wearing it and upsetting Jake and now she's not even sure where it is and she knows Nick's going to ask after it — those things are so important to him.

He steps sideways from the bed, his hands are open but he's ready to fight, she thinks, if he has to, and he tells her to put the books on the bed. She does, laying them on the blue fitted sheet, and she is standing there, half turned away from him, and so—

"Stay there," he tells her, "I'll get dressed," he says, and she stands there, listening to him behind her, pulling on pants and shirts, and she realizes there isn't another bed, he's got the room to himself. "Let me get my eyes in," he says, and she senses a light come on and hears the hum of a fan. He's got his own bathroom, she realizes. She hears him open a medicine cabinet, and she looks around the room. He's got two desks, one behind the head of the bed, with a desklamp, a Joe Camel pencil cup, and a digital alarm dock, the one she gave him when he helped her and the family sort out Grandma's things after the memorial service in Connecticut. His word processor sits on the other desk against the opposite corner, like a steel trap with its screen folded down on the keyboard, and his coffeemaker is beside it. He's got lots of books packed onto the shelves, anthologies of poetry and short fiction, Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Swift, Johnson, Pope, Marquez. On top of the shelves is a teak statuette of a South Pacific Islander. She notices that the right foot has broken off jaggedly and lies nearby.

She looks down at the books lying on the baby blue sheet, at the pillow with the Peanuts pillowcase, Linus on the far left of the tableau, arms outstretched, saying "To Know Me Is To Love Me." She looks at the old brown blanket they shared on so many nights, stained now with —

Suddenly she realizes he's had a woman tonight and her stomach clenches violently as if in a fist or a vice.

She hears the light switch off behind her and he's right there and she jumps right and forward, turning around, as he flips the brown blanket over the stain. She steps backward and feels the corner of the typing desk press into her.

He sits down on the bed, not looking at her, and pulls on white socks and heavy leather boots with thick black soles, tying them viciously. He is wearing loose jeans and a navy blue canvas button-down over a white T-shirt. He sits a moment when he's finished, then stands and looks at her. His eyes are green and hard. He gestures to something and she turns to see the stereo on the shelf over the typing desk. "I want to turn the radio on," he says. She steps away as he walks through where she was, pressing a button. She recognizes the song, "Elderly Woman behind the Counter in a Small Town," and he looks at her suddenly, frightened and angry.

It's the song he said he'd play for her when she came back to him.

He turns it off, unexpectedly shaken.

"Let's go for coffee," he says, crossing the room to the varsity swimming jacket hanging from the headboard of the bed while her head nods stiffly.

They step from the Conover dormitory and Nick stops and licks a cigarette with Zippo flame. The night is windy and chill, and the diffused glow of the moon struggles against a thick hedge of clouds.

"My car's in the commuter lot," says Caitlin.

"Mine's in east Jabib," says Nick. "We'll take yours." He walks away from her, leaving a trail of smoke, and hunches his shoulders into wind.

She follows after him with her head down, eyes fixed on the road between the dormitories. He is walking fast, stretching his long legs, eating the ground voraciously. He doesn't seem to care if she can keep up, and she knows he must be as scared as she is.

He steps off the road onto the sidewalk that slants across the Quad, and she wonders how it got like this. It all started out so well.

They'd met in a creative writing class. He was a dangerous poet, an angry young man, fond of wine and song, coming back to school after a three year break. She was just starting her second year, community college was a cheap way to begin. She'd planned to go on to Rider with an associate's in English. He volunteered her for a poetry reading one night, and afterwards, they'd gone out for coffee and talked into the late hours. Later, they measured their time from that night, October 8th, counting off the months, considering it their first date.

He'd been afraid of commitment, of trusting anyone, because (as he said) he'd been hurt too many times. But she fell for his green eyes and his laugh and the way he touched her that sent fire thrilling across her skin, and she'd wanted him to love her. And one night, a month after their "date," they'd been kissing on her couch, and she was lying back and he was hovering over her, and the lamplight framed his beautiful face with a halo. "I want to be your wife," she'd said, "I want to have your children," and he'd wept, sobbing that he never thought he'd hear that, it was all he'd ever wanted. He was so happy and so scared. "Trust me to love you," she said, and he melted into her arms. They made love for the first time that night, and when he came he roared like a bear until she thought the whole world could hear him.

They were engaged by Christmas, not three months after their "first date," and he slipped a golden claddagh on her finger, and she swore herself to him, flesh and soul, forever.

She looks at him now, marching ahead of her, stepping onto the Campus Mall, angling across the turf toward the road between the gymnasium and the dining hall. His head is down and clouds of smoke drift from him as if their cancer could never touch him.

"I'm sorry, Nick;" she says suddenly.

He stops in mid-stride, stands stock still.

"Fat lot of good that does me," he says. She can see his shoulders tremble. "It's as hollow now as it's ever been."

"I didn't mean to hurt you," she says quietly.

"What the hell, Cait? Did you think sleeping with Jake made me feel good? Did you think it made up for sleeping with Michael before him? With my ring on you? Is that what you thought?"

She walks up even with him. "I don't know what I thought. I was stupid."

He looks at her. Tears are running down his face. "You weren't stupid," he says, "You were scared. But instead of working it out, you ran like hell. You didn't make a mistake, Cait. You made a choice, and Jake's arms and your legs were conveniently open." He turns and walks away toward the parking lots.

She follows after him slowly. She can feel the knot in her throat. I won't cry, she thinks.

But she remembers the day she had to make the choice. It was a brilliant, high-spring day, and they were in her car with the windows down and the wind rifled through his hair, and she loved him, but she was so scared. Scared of her commitment to him, scared that she couldn't live up to it, scared of being trapped. Trapped and out of control, trapped into trusting him, hoping he wouldn't hurt her. She was afraid of getting hurt, she was afraid of letting him near her. She didn't worry about that with Jake. Jake didn't want a lifetime, or kids, he didn't push her to open up. She wanted children, sure, but she didn't want to give up control, to give anyone power to hurt her again. She'd trusted all the wrong people before. So she chose Jake.

Then she and Nick pulled over at the side of the road and he bolted from the car and out into a field of tall grass that hid his legs and she thought he'd gone crazy. And then he dropped into the grass and all she could see were his arms raised to the blue sky. Then he screamed, and the sound of it hit her in the chest like a spear and he kept screaming and screaming like a dying thing. She'd never heard anything scream like that before. He filled the sky with his pain, and a flock of crows burst from the grass and winged away.

And she remembers that, seven months later, when her grandmother slipped into a coma, it was Nick who was there every weekend with her. He'd drive the four hours to Hartford on Saturday mornings, straight from his overnight shift at the plastics factory, and stand beside her all day until she went to sleep in the nurses' dormitories. Once, he stayed awake thirty straight hours, to be there for her.

Jake never came to Hartford. It would have made him uncomfortable, he wouldn't have known what to do. But Nick was there, tall and strong, no matter how much it must have hurt. And he was there when her family pulled the plug, and he held Cait when the line went flat, and he sat beside Jake at the memorial service and kept his peace.

But it was too much. By Christmas, it had eaten him up, and he made sure she knew it. He'd done so much, and she would give him so little. They exchanged gifts anyway and tried to be civil, but she mentioned Jake, and he swore viciously that he'd kill the sonuvabitch. He felt he'd earned the right, and maybe he had. She spent weeks terrified, praying every night that Jake would come home from work. And he always did, but it didn't matter. She was so afraid of losing him that she curled her feelings up inside herself. She couldn't tell Jake she loved him anymore, she couldn't trust herself to believe it, to live up to it. She didn't want to hurt him with unkept promises, too.

Then Nick came to the same small college she'd transferred to. He'd been in one of her classes. She tried to be friendly, but he ignored her. She dropped the class. Then she got sick and tired all the time and the doctors told her it was depression, because of her grandmother. She withdrew from school. She was supposed to be seeing a counselor.

She and Jake argued all the time. She started spending time with her friend, Tom, to take her mind off things, and she'd talk with him into the dark hours, and Jake hated that and they fought.

Then Tom had kissed her. She'd had to tell Jake. He was furious, and suddenly she had the choice again. Jake had to know if she loved him. She couldn't say, she didn't know what was true anymore. Jake threw a book, one of Nick's, across the room. It hit the picture of her grandmother and shattered the frame. Then Jake walked out, and Cait knelt on the floor and tried to pick up the pieces, and Nick's book was lying there, and then she was crying and she just couldn't stop.

"Where's your car?" says Nick. He is standing at the top of the commuter lot, waiting for her.

"This way," she whispers and he follows her to the old maroon Dodge Aspen. They'd made love in the front seat a hundred times. She unlocks the door for him and he gets in. He doesn't unlock the door for her. She lets herself in and starts the car.

"New radio?" he says.

"Yes," she says. "Jake put it in."

He turns away from her, looking out the window.

She puts the Aspen in gear and pulls out of the lot, past the security booth, turning north onto 206. His silence is like a wall against her. The Aspen's headlights hardly pierce the darkness. At the first light, she turns off, heading east, away from the harsh lights of the city where she and Jake tried to live, into the woods and the soft, fat suburbs. Out here, she thinks, they don't think about pepper spray, or drug shootings, or gangs, out here they feel safe, wrapped in the security money can buy. She understands the loathing Nick had for money and class now that she's lived without either. She understands now the pride he took in knowing he could live for months on oriental noodle soup and crackers...

Caitlin sees the flash of something chrome in the headlights and swerves, feels the bump of the tires going over it anyway. "What was that?" She feels the hiss of the tire and the wheel goes heavy and she slows down. The tire is making a wet, rhythmic thumpthump. Nick tells her to pull over, and she limps the old Aspen to the shoulder of Franklin Corner Road. Raindrops smatter on the windshield in little liquid novas.

He gets out of the car and walks toward the front, looking down. The road stretches on in front of them, pink white street lamps burning spheres of light into the dark.

Please Please Please don't be flat, she thinks. The sky opens up and rain beats against the windshield mercilessly.

The passenger door opens and he hurries back inside, slamming the door behind him. "Your right front tire," he says, laying a cigarette between his lips, "looks like a dead black balloon." His Zippo flares and burns in the dark.

She drops her head against the wheel and curses.

"Did I hear a fuck from your lips," he says mockingly.

"Yes," she says. "Fuck me, fuck you, fuck the damn fucking tire, alright! Fuck, fuck, fuck!" She used to hate that word, but she has changed.

He is quiet. He cracks the window open and blows cigarette smoke out. She'd forgotten how good his Camels could smell. She missed that smell, his smell. The wheel is hard and unforgiving against her forehead. She fumbles and turns on the hazards and they flash on, flash on, flash on, clicking greenly in the darkness. Her throat seizes up and she misses Nick and she misses Jake and how could she screw everything up so badly?

"Have you got a spare?" he says, and he sounds old and weary too.

She nods her head against the wheel. "Yes," she chokes, and the tears start running.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"Why!" she snaps, angry at him.

"I don't know what else to say," he says. "There's just nothing left to say."

He is quiet again. Does he hate me? she thinks. I tried so hard to make things alright, to be his friend, so I wouldn't take it all from him. I care about him so much, I want him to love me again, just not like that.

"Remember the first time I met your grandmother?" he says. "We blew a tire on the way out of Cromwell? Same tire, too. And it was raining then, too, and we pulled off behind a bank to change it."

She nods against the wheel, then laughs and looks up at him sheepishly. "You were jumping up and down on the lug wrench," she says.

He smiles, a good smile, and laughs. "Damned lug nuts were too damn tight," he says. He puts the cigarette to his smiling lips.

"And you just kept jumping up and down on the lug wrench in the rain. Like a dog humping someone's leg," she laughs.

He looks at her angrily. "Thanks," he mutters dryly. He shakes his head, giving up. "Give me the keys," he says, "I'll get the spare and change the tire."

"I can do it," she says quickly. "You don't have to." She doesn't like him doing things for her, she did too much to hurt him.

"You know where that's gonna get you. Give me the keys."

"Do you want help?" She pulls the keys from the ignition and they jingle-jangle in her hand.

"No," he says, "Stay here. No sense both of us getting drenched. Do you have a jack this time?" He takes the keys from her.

She nods. "Yeah. Jake—" She looks at him, scared. "Jake bought me one."

"Great," he mutters. "What a guy," and opens the door and gets out, slamming it behind him.

She hears the trunk open up, and her head drops back down on the wheel. What a nightmare, what a miserable nightmare, how could I have done this? Nick was so good to me, Jake was so good to me, why couldn't I be happy?

There is a thump and she looks up. Nick has laid the wrench and jack on the hood and is walking back toward the trunk. She pulls up the big fleece hood or her jacket, opens the door, steps out into the rain. The door slams shut under its own weight.

"Cait!" he calls out from behind the lid of the trunk, "get back in the car!"

She walks around the front of the Aspen as he rolls the spare along the side of it. The rain is soaking into her hood and it's heavy and drooping down over her face.

"I want to help," she says, pulling the hood back from her face. "You shouldn't have to do this."

"Get back in the car, Obi-Wan," he says.

"Damn it, Nick! Let me help you for once! You always try to do everything for me!"

He picks up the lug wrench from the hood of the car and turns to her. "I was supposed to," he says. The rain is coming down hard. She can see he's shivering, and his hair has fallen into his face. The black glistening trees look like clawed hands pushing from the grave, a thousand lost souls clawing back to the blue sky. "You were my fiancée. I had responsibilities."

He holds the lug wrench out to her. "But go ahead," he says. "You can look like you're humping someone's leg this time."

"Thanks, sailor," she sneers, taking the wrench.

She crouches down and fits the end of the wrench around the lug and twists at it, but it won't budge. Nick has taken the jack and is working it under the front bumper. She stands and steps up onto an arm of the wrench and starts bouncing on it. Down the street, she sees a white-lit sign with black letters, standing on a lawn across the road. HARRY J. LAWELL & SON, ARTIFICIAL LIMBS, PROSTHETICS. The lug gives and twists, and she crouches to unscrew it and drop it in her pocket. She can hear the jack groaning and the car begins to rise. She finds the next lug and bounces on the wrench, twists it off, and goes on to the next, then the next. The car is rising higher and higher. She steps up on the wrench again, bouncing.

A car flashes by in a burst of white light and red, honking at them in the night and speeding on.

"Assholes," she mutters.

The wrench twists out from under her and she drops to the ground and stumbles backwards. Nick stands up.

"You ok?" he says.

"Right as rain," she mutters, crouching to finish off the last lug nut. The Aspen is off the ground.

"I'm done," she says and looks up at him, holding her sodden hood up with the back of her hand. He is looking at something down the road. "Do you want me to pull this one off and you get the spare?"

"No," he says. He looks a moment longer, then turns back to her. "I'd rather that jacket didn't get filthy. I'll do it, if that's alright."

She stands and looks down at the jacket. It's hunter green with brown leather trim, lined with fleece, with the big grey hood pulled from a pocket in the collar. He gave it to her for Christmas, despite everything. "I never told you, but I really love this jacket," she says. "Thank you."

"Well, that's good," he says. "It really loves you. I really—" He stops, looks down at the ground. Then he looks at her again. "It really looks good on you," he says.

He bends down and tugs at the flat until it comes free and rolls aside. His wet hair is dangling in wide, heavy spirals before his eyes. She remembers the time he took her swimming at the pool where he coached. He'd turned off the lights, and they could only see by the light that shafted through the windows from the hallways, and his hair had hung down before his shining eyes then too. "My unruly forelock," he'd called it, and she thought it looked cute then, like a little boy. I miss those times, she thinks. We were so happy and I loved him so much. How could I have been so wrong about myself?

He's driven the spare tire home on the rim and he looks up at her, holding out his hand for the lug nuts. She passes them to him one at a time as he spins them by hand as far as he can.

"Tighten them up?" he asks, looking down the road again, pondering something.

"Sure," she says. She crouches beside the car with the wrench and twists at the lugs. She hears him drag the flat away and feels it land in the trunk. He passes behind her as she finishes the second nut. The car begins descending. She finishes the last nut as he pulls the jack free. He comes over and tests the lugs, then kicks the tire approvingly. "Fit as a fiddle and ready for love," he pronounces the Aspen, smiling at her. She smiles back, handing him the wrench. He walks past her toward the trunk, and she walks around the hood to the driver's side. He slams the trunk shut.

The rain slacks up, and they get back into the Aspen. "Do you still want coffee?" she asks, accepting the keys from him and sliding them into the ignition.

He shakes his head and his unruly forelock slaps him wetly on the nose. They laugh as he tries to push it back without using his greasy hands. "No," he says, "I think I'd like some warm, dry clothes. You?"

"Sounds good," she says. "I'll drop you off." She turns the Aspen over.

"You can stay awhile," he says. "Wash up. Dry off. Get warm. You can borrow some clothes and we'll dry yours downstairs. I'll make hot chocolate. We can chat." He looks for a cigarette, puts one between his lips.

She nods, considering. "Are you sure?" she says. "We don't have to do this, I can go home. I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

The Zippo flares and he draws a long breath on the Camel. "I know. We've gotten too good at that lately. But it's alright."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," he says. "I'm sure. I'm sure we can sit down and maybe chat over cocoa without killing each other. Hell, we've done it before. I still have some faith in us."

She sits at the wheel of the car, hearing the silent challenge. Do I have some faith in us? In him? In myself? She looks down the street at that white-lit sign. Isn't that really why I came to him tonight? The windshield wipers squeak against dry glass.

"Thank you, Nick," she says. "For fixing the tire. For being here."

"I couldn't be anywhere else;" he says. "You know that."

She smiles at him, puts the Aspen in gear, and swings the behemoth through a wide U-turn, heading back toward the school. She looks at him, but he's looking in his sideview mirror. "They can't ever be the same as the original," he says suddenly. She looks in the rearview, but all she can see is the backwards, white-lit sign with black letters, ARTIFICIAL LIMBS, PROSTHETICS, receding into the night.

–33–