different life. If she would change anything about herself, given a magic bottle of pills. What if the hair could come growing in like everyone else’s hair, in stalks and clumps, pushing its way out of her skin to stick up into the air, be pulled and teased. Would she welcome this hair? What would Maxon say if he came home from space and found that she had grown in a full head of hair? What would he say when he came home from space and found she had abandoned her wigs?
Bubber was now playing wild horse and calm horse in the swimming pool. When Maxon was here, Bubber had played this game with his father. Bubber sat astride his swimming noodle and his father holding both ends propelled the horse boldly up and down and all around (wild horse) or in a smooth circle (calm horse). Now Bubber played a more sedate version alone. A child playing with its father screams louder, laughs harder, jumps more eagerly, puts more faith in everything. A child playing by himself is hearing an internal dialogue, and has a listening look, even when shrieking.
“I’m playing wild horse and calm horse,” said Bubber loudly to a nearby child who didn’t understand what he was saying. That’s what it’s like to be Bubber, thought Sunny. No one understands him. He needs more drugs. Or less. Maybe he needs a whole lot less.
With Maxon there, things would be different. They would be playing games on their computers, side by side. They would be going out to dinner to the only place where Bubber could sit still in public. He would pilot them around the city in the car. He would take off the wig, put on the wig, turn the wig into a swan, put the wig on a fence post and pretend to address it. But Maxon was up in space, floating like a man underwater, his limbs loose and swirling. Maybe she would plunge into eight feet of water and turn somersaults, somersaults, eight, nine, ten of them, until she was surging to the surface, her head emerging like a melon. And maybe he would circle around her, like a watchful pike. Everything about them smooth and slick, no growths waving about, no drag on their skin. They would ring each other, slide in and out of each other, all without touching the ground. This is how she pictured Maxon in his spaceship, and herself in the deep end of the pool.
Looking down on the tiles of the wheelchair ramp, she noted a little blob of something. The little blob was red and gelatinous and it drifted around at the brink of the water on the slope of the wheelchair ramp, within easy reach of anyone’s baby. Sunny imagined that just today some other mother, standing here guarding her other toddler, had expelled a lump of something from her before it could become another baby. It had stayed there on the blue cold tiles, like a corpse on a lonely beach, and that other mother walked away from it because she didn’t want to spend any more afternoons standing cold ankle-deep in water, and she hadn’t even cleaned it up, because she was that mad.
10
When Sunny got to the hospital to visit her mother that day, she saw things differently than she had the day before. Yesterday, it had been all beautiful, where her mother was sleeping. Now it was not beautiful at all. She parked in the visitor lot, next to the familiar red brick building. It had looked like a castle before; now it looked like a prison. The day burned around her as she walked down the hallways of the hospital with Bubber clutched firmly by one hand. Her hips swiveled around her pregnant belly and everything inside it. The halls smelled of chicken broth, urine, and disinfectant. Doors opened and closed with a hissing sound. Humans walked like androids in purple scrubs. They shuffled around in booties. They rotted on their walkers, on their gurneys. Everything happens in a hospital: the birth, the life, the death. But no one wants to be in a hospital, where everything happens. They just want to get out.
On the way into the ICU, Sunny had to pass a lot of
Bubber was now playing wild horse and calm horse in the swimming pool. When Maxon was here, Bubber had played this game with his father. Bubber sat astride his swimming noodle and his father holding both ends propelled the horse boldly up and down and all around (wild horse) or in a smooth circle (calm horse). Now Bubber played a more sedate version alone. A child playing with its father screams louder, laughs harder, jumps more eagerly, puts more faith in everything. A child playing by himself is hearing an internal dialogue, and has a listening look, even when shrieking.
“I’m playing wild horse and calm horse,” said Bubber loudly to a nearby child who didn’t understand what he was saying. That’s what it’s like to be Bubber, thought Sunny. No one understands him. He needs more drugs. Or less. Maybe he needs a whole lot less.
With Maxon there, things would be different. They would be playing games on their computers, side by side. They would be going out to dinner to the only place where Bubber could sit still in public. He would pilot them around the city in the car. He would take off the wig, put on the wig, turn the wig into a swan, put the wig on a fence post and pretend to address it. But Maxon was up in space, floating like a man underwater, his limbs loose and swirling. Maybe she would plunge into eight feet of water and turn somersaults, somersaults, eight, nine, ten of them, until she was surging to the surface, her head emerging like a melon. And maybe he would circle around her, like a watchful pike. Everything about them smooth and slick, no growths waving about, no drag on their skin. They would ring each other, slide in and out of each other, all without touching the ground. This is how she pictured Maxon in his spaceship, and herself in the deep end of the pool.
Looking down on the tiles of the wheelchair ramp, she noted a little blob of something. The little blob was red and gelatinous and it drifted around at the brink of the water on the slope of the wheelchair ramp, within easy reach of anyone’s baby. Sunny imagined that just today some other mother, standing here guarding her other toddler, had expelled a lump of something from her before it could become another baby. It had stayed there on the blue cold tiles, like a corpse on a lonely beach, and that other mother walked away from it because she didn’t want to spend any more afternoons standing cold ankle-deep in water, and she hadn’t even cleaned it up, because she was that mad.
10
When Sunny got to the hospital to visit her mother that day, she saw things differently than she had the day before. Yesterday, it had been all beautiful, where her mother was sleeping. Now it was not beautiful at all. She parked in the visitor lot, next to the familiar red brick building. It had looked like a castle before; now it looked like a prison. The day burned around her as she walked down the hallways of the hospital with Bubber clutched firmly by one hand. Her hips swiveled around her pregnant belly and everything inside it. The halls smelled of chicken broth, urine, and disinfectant. Doors opened and closed with a hissing sound. Humans walked like androids in purple scrubs. They shuffled around in booties. They rotted on their walkers, on their gurneys. Everything happens in a hospital: the birth, the life, the death. But no one wants to be in a hospital, where everything happens. They just want to get out.
On the way into the ICU, Sunny had to pass a lot of
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