The Radiant City. Lauren B. Davis
from a Styrofoam cup. Petting him. Sometimes she clasps her hands under her chin and he thinks she might be praying. They do not talk about what happened. He’s grateful for that. Talking is exhausting. Breathing is exhausting, but try as he might, he cannot get himself to stop. He cannot keep track of such things as days and nights. Everything is measured out in nightmares.
The phone rings. Far too often. People want to talk to him, interview him.
“Vivisectionists!” he yells.
They take the phone out of his room. There is some sort of a ruckus in the hall. Men with cameras. A security guard is posted at the door for a while. A big fellow who wears a skullcap. When he looks in on Matthew, he sneers as though he needs to spit.
From time to time, the older nurse, the one with the broken blood vessels in her cheeks, brings a plug-in phone into his room. Colleagues ask how he is. They say they are sorry, but it is clear they want to get off the phone. Events like these make everyone uncomfortable. He pictures the way they take a deep breath before they call him. The way they gird themselves with concern. They are afraid of him. He can hear it in their voices. Then one evening the nurse comes in with the phone and says, “This is your father calling.”
“Tell him I’m not here.” He turns to the wall and pokes at a patch of peeling paint.
The nurse puts the phone on the bed and rests the handset on his ear. Matthew shrugs it off.
“Matthew! Goddamn it! Matthew Bowles!” His father was always loud.
Even at thirty-nine, his father’s voice still makes him feel like a defenceless boy. Matthew lets him yell for a few more seconds. Then sighs and picks up the phone. “Hello, Dad.”
“That you?”
“Yes.”
“I heard,” the old man says.
“Oh? How?”
“You kidding? You’re all over the news.”
Matthew’s gut churns, as though another bullet slices through him.
“Sure, you’re on CNN, CBC, ATV, even seeing you up here in Truro.
People in town are all talking about it.”
“I see.”
“I had a hell of a time tracking you down. You’re a big fucking hero, eh?”
“Hero?”
“‘Journalist tries to save father and child.’” His father snorts.
“I have to go, Dad.”
“Yeah, well. This call’s costing me a fucking fortune anyway. You should have called me. Just wanted to see if you were all right.”
“Sure. I’m just great. Thanks for the call.” Matthew hangs up the phone.
“You want me to see if we can get a television in here, so you can see?” says the nurse.
“Hell, no!” He wonders if he can manage to swallow his pillowcase and choke to death before anyone gets to him.
Bandages are changed. Drainage tubes are adjusted. Urine and fecal output is monitored. Pain medication is still administered, but they are stingy, and so pain, of all kinds, in unimaginable doses, reappears. It takes root. It grows.
An army man visits. He is a slight, stiff man, younger than Matthew, maybe thirty, but very full of his authority; razor creases on trouser legs and sleeves. Matthew tries to keep track of things like name and rank, but gives up. It takes too much energy. The army is angry with him, this much he gleans. He is responsible for events. As if he didn’t know that. As if he didn’t know his own damnation. They understand, says the army man, that he has had some sort of a breakdown. They sympathise. Of course, even so, even so, even in his damaged mental state, he must see that the Israeli army is in no way culpable. Does he see that? He does. Certainly. Whatever. No. Not whatever. It must be crystal clear. Fine. Crystal clear. They also feel it would be best if he did not stay in Israel longer than is necessary.
“He’ll be leaving as soon as he can. And don’t worry. He won’t be coming back.” Kate’s voice, and her conclusions, surprise him.
The army man leaves. Matthew regards Kate. He will not be working as a journalist any time in the near future, at least not as he has been. Not in the conflict zones. That requires being trustworthy. It is a job best done at least in pairs. You go somewhere ‘hot’. You find someone you know, or arrange it in advance. Someone you trust. You stick together. Better that way. Unless, of course, you cannot be trusted. Then no one will work with you. Too dangerous. I would not work with me, he thinks.
Kate seems to read his mind. “You’ll come home with me. We’ll have a life,” she says. “No more war zones. No more of this. You have had enough, haven’t you? Because I sure as hell have. I can’t take anymore, Matthew.”
Part of him wishes he could say what she wants him to. She is beautiful, loyal and she is a tough woman. A defence lawyer—she has to be. She believes in Matthew and things like the future and children and all that. He’s supposed to want a woman like that.
“No. You shouldn’t have to,” he says.
“So you’re done then?”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t what? You can’t what, Matthew?” Her head twitches. Her neck is full of tendons.
Washington. Life in that sun-drenched apartment. Kids and carpools and friends round for drinks and a nice steady job somewhere. A kitchen with a big steel fridge and an ice-maker in the door. Scented candles. Fluffy duvet on the bed. Everywhere softness, cleanliness, calm. He would go crazy from the smell of disinfectant. He would go crazy in the quiet order, with nothing to listen to except the sound of his memories scraping along the imported Italian tiles like a broom made out of bones.
It had all been fine when he had come and gone. All been undemanding and sweet when he had landed like a tattered carrier pigeon for a short rest stop. But as a permanent solution? He never intended the relationship to be forever. I’m an asshole. Yes, well, that’s not news. He would last a year at most. Then he would break whatever promise she wanted him to make now. Break his word. Break her heart. Better to do it now. Get it over with.
In her eyes, he sees a tiny projection of what she thinks he is, this good heroic man. He cannot help himself. Wants to feel his hands squeezing the life out of his own false image.
In his head, there is the thing; that glinting something, like the after-glare from a flash bulb. The burn of horror. The ghost-flare of images. What he knows is that he cannot go back to any where, since there is no purpose to any thing.
How to explain?
How to explain he may not be alive a year from now?
He leaves out the last bit. He looks her straight in the eyes and then says, “I just don’t love you, Kate.”
“You’re lying,” she says.
He shakes his head.
“You’re just saying that because you’re sick. Because you’re depressed.”
He shakes his head.
It takes three days for her to believe him.
“If I go,” she says on the third, “this is it, Matthew. I’m not going to sit waiting for the phone to ring. I’ve done enough fucking waiting. Enough sitting around. Wasted enough time on you. You’re a real bastard, you know that?”
He does.
“Fine. You’re a fool. You have no idea what you’re turning down.”
But he does.
“My life’s been on hold, waiting for you. The number of times I’ve run to some fleabag dump in some godforsaken corner of the earth so we could have a couple of days together. The number of times I’ve