The Portable Veblen: Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016. Elizabeth McKenzie
light up a terrific new day for him. His muscles relaxed. He brought air down to the bottom of his sternum. He visualized himself not as a weakling but as a dense little torpedo penetrating the bullshit of the world, and that always made him smile.
Good-bye to all he’d escaped. He’d never have fucking duck eggs again, with those bright yellow yolks, he’d have the regular, white, chicken kind, clean on the outside, not caked with green guano. He’d never have smelly beanbag chairs, or any kind of lumpy free-form thing splayed on the ground like a carcass. He’d have heat in his bathroom. He’d never run out of toilet paper, by god, and have to use fucking leaves. He’d have toilet paper stacked to the ceiling. He’d keep his place clean, without smoke or the creeping reek of bong juice. Unlike his parents, he’d never throw open-house parties in which guests could arrive any time of the day or night and stay for the rest of their lives. He wouldn’t have a guest room, period! He’d make barbed jokes about guests smelling like fish, so any potential guest would get paranoid. He’d never wear anything ethnic as long as he lived, he’d shop strictly at Brooks Brothers, down to his shorts. He’d invest in stocks and bonds and have a portfolio statement, not some sticky tie-dyed bag full of limp, resinous cash!
LATER IN THE DAY, there was a knock on his office door.
“Come in!”
Through the door came a short young guy with a goatee and heavily framed glasses. He wore baggy shorts revealing thick, shapeless legs.
“James Shalev,” he said, shaking Paul’s hand. He had a nickel slot between his incisors, which gave him the uncanny appearance of vulnerability and viciousness combined. “Welcome to Greenslopes. I do the VA newsletter and PR, and when you’ve had a chance to settle in, I’d like to do a profile. Mind if I take a quick shot now?”
Paul blinked in the flash.
Shalev took the extra chair and opened his satchel, to present Paul with a short stack of past newsletters. “Here’s what I do. It’s actually considered one of the best hospital newsletters in the country.”
“Yes, it’s impressive,” Paul said.
“We’ve won the Aster four times in the last seven years, honoring excellence in medical marketing. Look, each issue has a theme and variations, but it takes a careful reading to detect it.”
“News is marketing?”
Shalev blinked, as if Paul had just emerged from an ancient pod. “Yes, it is.”
The cover story was about the art exhibition in the lobby, and went on to list the names of the local artists who had contributed. On the inside page was an article on the free shuttle bus that operated continuously between Greenslopes and the Palo Alto Caltrain station. There was a picture of the little shuttle bus. The next page had a continuing feature called “Meet Our Specialists.” This month’s specialist was Dr. Burt Wallman, a psychiatrist who specialized in suicide prevention. Paul restlessly flipped through the pages, not able to detect a theme.
He noted the headline WIDOWS, WIDOWERS HONORED WITH DAFFODILS. It seemed the Daffodil Society of Greenslopes gave symbolic daffodils to the families of vets.
“Did you see it?” asked Shalev.
“See what?”
“You’re picking something up. Try to say what it is.”
“Man’s inhumanity to man?”
“Close. This month’s theme is regeneration, starting over, springtime.”
Paul said, “Why did you write this? As one of the leading clinical trials hospitals for veterans, Greenslopes is proud of the wonderful relationship it has forged with widows …?”
“Nothing wrong with it, is there? Here’s your dependent clause headed by your subordinating conjunction—”
“It implies that the clinical trials create widows.”
Shalev said, “The people in your trial, they’re either brain damaged or brain dead, aren’t they? But nobody stops hoping.”
“Nobody ever said this was about a cure.”
“Have you talked to any of the families?” Shalev prodded.
“What do they think?”
Shalev gathered the pile into his case. “Someone they love is laid out before them, trapped in an endless sleep. You ever loved someone in a coma?”
Paul shook his head.
“From what I’ve seen, when someone you love is in a coma, you simply want to believe. As long as they’re alive, there’s hope.” He snapped the latches on his satchel, and adjusted his glasses. “We had a trial in here last year with big funding, they extracted the essence of a tumor, gave it a whirl in a centrifuge, then injected a concentrated dose back into the patient.”
“Immune therapy, very cutting edge,” Paul said.
“The volunteers went extinct in a matter of weeks. But research-wise, hey, it was a big success. Doctors high-fiving each other all over the place.”
To extract more of Paul’s essence, they made plans to meet again. And after Shalev left him, Paul gauged he’d been spending too much time in the lab. Bedside manners had never been his strong suit. Maybe he could delegate them.
But the greats knew how to handle their patients. Look at the superstar neurologist Oliver Sacks. Patients adored him, stayed in touch for the rest of their lives. Paul recalled an interview in which Sacks said he loved to find the potential in people who “weren’t thought to have any.” That noble sentiment had haunted him since. Surely his commitment to medicine showed that he cared in his own way. Was it his job to deal with magical thinking too?
AND THEN TO TASSO STREET. Veblen had that tendency to try to coax some desired outcome from anything he told her, her face as bright as a daffodil, overpowering him with good cheer. She met him at the door and gave him a kiss. “So, how’d it go?”
“We’ll see,” he said.
“How’s your assistant? What’s she like?”
“Seems efficient.” He went to wash his hands in the sink. His lifelong habit, on the hour. Wash hands. Wash off the world.
“Everything all right?”
Paul grabbed a dish towel and twisted it. “It’s probably not fair to hate her for saying ‘in clinic,’ is it? ‘I’ll see you in clinic.’”
“She dropped the article? What a bitch.”
“Yeah. It sounds clammy and invasive, like she’s breathing on my genitals.”
Veblen backed off, took two beers from the refrigerator, popped the caps. “She’d better not.”
“Thanks.” Bottoms up. The beer tasted bitter, and landed heavily in his gut. “It’s a lot to absorb. They’ve had a big response to our call for volunteers.”
“That’s great, Paul. See? You deserve it.”
“The question remains, what ‘it’ is I deserve.” He sighed. “All these caring families are hanging around. It feels like a lot of pressure. I hope I know what I’m doing.”
“That must be unnerving. Take one day at a time,” Veblen said. “No one expects you to undo the damage of the military industrial complex overnight.”
“Ha!” He snorted. “Are you sure?” He finished his bottle. The foam bubbled on his lips, tickling like root beer and first kisses.
And