Blaze

Pam came in with my lunch and I could see her steeling herself for an outburst. But even though I’d forgotten the name of the fluffy blond rage-doll, I remembered how I was supposed to use it in this situation.

“Pam,” I said, “I need five minutes to get myself under control. I can do this.”

“Are you sure—”

“Yes, just get that hamhock out of here and stick it up your face-powder. I can do this.”

I didn’t know if I could or not, but that was what I was supposed to say — I can do this. I couldn’t remember the fucking doll’s name, but I could remember I can do this. That is clear about the convalescent part of my other life, how I kept saying I can do this even when I knew I was fucked, double-fucked, I was dead-ass-fucked in the pouring rain.

“I can do this,” I said, and she backed out without a word, the tray still in her hands and the cup chattering against the plate.

When she was gone, I held the doll up in front of my face, staring into its stupid blue eyes as my thumbs disappeared into its stupid yielding body. “What’s your name, you bat-faced bitch?” I shouted at it. It never once occurred to me that Pam was listening on the kitchen intercom, her and the day-nurse both. But if the intercom had been broken they could have heard me through the door. I was in good voice that day.

I shook the doll back and forth. Its head flopped and its dumb hair flew. Its blue cartoon eyes seemed to be saying Oouuu, you nasty man!

“What’s your name, bitch? What’s your name, you cunt? What’s your name, you cheap plastic toe-rag? Tell me your name or I’ll kill you! Tell me your name or I’ll kill you! Tell me your name or I’ll cut out your eyes and chop off your nose and rip off your — ”

My mind cross-connected then, a thing that still happens now, four years later, although far less often. For a moment I was in my pickup truck, clipboard rattling against my old steel lunchbucket in the passenger footwell (I doubt if I was the only working millionaire in America to carry a lunchbucket, but you probably could have counted us in the dozens), my PowerBook beside me on the seat. And from the radio a woman’s voice cried “It was RED!” with evangelical fervor. Only three words, but three was enough. It was the song about the poor woman who turns out her pretty daughter as a prostitute. It was “Fancy,” by Reba McIntire.

I hugged the doll against me. “You’re Reba. Reba-Reba-Reba. I’ll never forget again.” I did, but I didn’t get angry next time. No. I held her against me like a little love, closed my eyes, and visualized the pickup that had been demolished in the accident. I visualized my steel lunchbucket rattling against the steel clip on my clipboard, and the woman’s voice came from the radio once more, exulting with that same evangelical fervor: “It was RED!”

Dr. Kamen called it a breakthrough. My wife seemed a good deal less excited, and the kiss she put on my cheek was of the dutiful variety. It was about two months later that she told me she wanted a divorce.

By then the pain had either lessened considerably or my mind had made certain crucial adjustments when it came to dealing with it. The headaches still came, but less often and rarely with the same violence. I was always more than ready for Vicodin at five and OxyContin at eight — could hardly hobble on my bright red Canadian crutch until I’d had them — but my rebuilt hip was starting to mend.

Kathi Green the Rehab Queen came to Casa Freemantle on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I was allowed an extra Vicodin before our sessions, and still my screams filled the house by the time we finished the leg- bends that were our grand finale. Our basement rec room had been converted into a therapy suite, complete with a hot tub I could get in and out of on my own. After two months of physical therapy — this would have been almost six months after the accident — I started to go down there on my own in the evenings. Kathi said working out a couple of hours before bed would release endorphins and I’d sleep better. I don’t know about the endorphins, but I did start getting a little more sleep.

It was during one of these evening workouts that my wife of a quarter-century came downstairs and told me she wanted a divorce.

I stopped what I was doing — crunches — and looked at her. I was sitting on a floor-pad. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, prudently across the room. I could have asked her if she was serious, but the light down there was very good — those racked fluorescents — and I didn’t have to. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing women joke about six months after their husbands have almost died in accidents, anyway. I could have asked her why, but I knew. I could see the small white scar on her arm where I had stabbed her with the plastic knife from my hospital tray, and that was really the least of it. I thought of telling her, not so long ago, to get the hamhock out of here and stick it up her face-powder. I thought of asking her to think about it, but the anger came back. In those days what Dr. Kamen called the inappropriate anger often did. And what I was feeling right then did not seem all that inappropriate.

My shirt was off. My right arm ended three and a half inches below the shoulder. I twitched it at her — a twitch was the best I could do with the muscle that was left. “This is me,” I said, “giving you the finger. Get out of here if that’s how you feel. Get out, you quitting birch.”

The first tears had started rolling down her face, but she tried to smile. “Bitch, Edgar,” she said. “You mean bitch.”

“The word is what I say it is,” I said, and began to do crunches again. It’s harder than hell to do them with an arm gone; your body wants to pull and corkscrew to that side. “I wouldn’t have left you, that’s the point. I wouldn’t have left you. I would have gone on through the mud and the blood and the piss and the spilled beer.”

“It’s different,” she said. She made no effort to wipe her face. “It’s different and you know it. I couldn’t break you in two if I got into a rage.”

“I’d have a hell of a job breaking you in two with only one amp,” I said, doing crunches faster.

“You stuck me with a knife.” As if that were the point.

“A plastic fife is all it was, I was half out of my mind, and it’ll be your last words on your fucking beth-dead, ?Eddie staffed me with a plastic fife, goodbye cruel world.’”

“You choked me,” she said in a voice I could barely hear.

I stopped doing crunches and gaped at her. “I choked you? I never choked you!”

“I know you don’t remember, but you did.”

“Shut up,” I said. “You want a divorce, you can have a divorce. Only go do the alligator somewhere else. Get out of here.”

She went up the stairs and closed the door without looking back. And it wasn’t until she was gone that I realized what I’d meant to say: crocodile tears. Go cry your crocodile tears somewhere else.

Oh, well. Close enough for rock and roll. That’s what Kamen says. And I was the one who ended up getting out.

Except for the former Pamela Gustafson, I never had a partner in my other life. I did have an accountant I trusted, however, and it was Tom Riley who helped me move the few things I needed from the house in Mendota Heights to the smaller place we kept on Lake Phalen, twenty miles away. Tom, who had been divorced twice, worried at me all the way out. “You don’t give up the house in a situation like this,” he said. “Not unless the judge kicks you out. It’s like giving up home field advantage in a playoff game.”

Kathi Green the Rehab Queen only had one divorce under her belt, but she and Tom were on the same wavelength. She thought I was crazy to move out. She sat cross-legged on the lakeporch in her leotard, holding my feet and looking at me with grim outrage.

“What, because you poked her with a plastic hospital knife when you could barely remember your own name? Mood-swings and short-term memory loss following accident trauma are common. You suffered three subdural hematomas, for God’s sake!”

“Are you sure that’s not hematomae?” I asked her.

“Blow me,” she said. “And if you’ve got a good lawyer, you can make her pay for being such a wimp.” Some hair had escaped from her Rehab Gestapo ponytail and she blew it back from her forehead. “She ought to pay for it. Read my lips, Edgar, none of this is your fault.”

“She says I tried to choke her.”

“And if so, being choked by a one-armed invalid must have been very upsetting. Come on, Eddie, make her pay. I’m sure I’m stepping way out of my place, but I don’t care. She should not be doing what she’s doing. Make