WHAT I DO: I make meringues. I can bring Sam the meringues. You use four egg whites, a cup of sugar, and cocoa if desired. I desire the cocoa.
WHAT THE MERINGUES ARE LIKE: Chocolate-flavored air. I need them to live. I can already feel my levels going down. The meringues will wake up Sam.
WHAT SARAH CALLS THEM: Remingues.
WHAT I DO WITH THE MERINGUES: Drive with them on my lap on a plate covered with plastic wrap to the hospital and put them by Sam’s head, next to the chicken heart. I tell the night nurse to give Ulysses a rest and try one of them, that they’re light as clouds and so she tries one, the crumbs falling down her white front and onto Ulysses.
WHO EATS ALL THE MERINGUES: The night nurse and I. Between bites she tells me I’m right, they are like clouds.
WHAT SARAH IS READING NOW THAT SHE’S FINISHED WITH JANE EYRE: Heidi.
WHAT THE CROWS SAY IN THE BACK FIELD WHEN I TAKE THE DOGS FOR A WALK: Call, Call, Call.
WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Moose steaks a hunter gave me because I let him hunt on my land.
WHAT THE WIFE ATE FOR DINNER: Not moose steaks.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Oh, no, I’m not getting that disease, that crazy brain disease. Why do you think that hunter gave you the moose? It was infected, she said.
WHAT SARAH SAID: Here’s a joke. Two cows were talking. One said, “What do you think about this mad cow disease?”
WHAT THE OTHER COW SAID: “Why should I care? I’m a helicopter.”
CALL: No call, just the one who doesn’t answer back when I say hello. If it’s a scammer, hang up, Jen says, who’s sick of it not being the hospital. I shake my head, to tell her it’s not a scammer. I make up answers to questions of a survey never being asked of me. Yes, I own my own house, I say. No. Yes. No. Yes, we have pets, I say. Two dogs, I say. A rabbit, fish, I say. Oh, it’s one of those surveys, just hang up on them, Jen says, but I don’t. I want the caller to have enough time to change his mind; maybe he’ll talk to me after all. Then I’m quiet, listening for the sound of his seashell breathing again.
WHAT SARAH GETS FROM HER TEACHER: Six baby chicks. The day we get them we put them in a box with a heat lamp shining down on them. We put them in a room separated by a gate so the dogs will not get to them.
WHAT WE HEAR AT NIGHT: Gentle peeping.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE MORNING: No chicks, not even a sign of feathers, and the gate we put up to separate the dogs from the chicks is knocked down. Bruce and Nelly lower their eyes. Have they eaten them whole? Even the claws? Jen says.
WHAT I FIND IN THE CORNER OF THE ROOM: One claw, but that is it.
WHAT SARAH DOES: Cry.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: What did we expect from the dogs? We put these yummy morsels in a big tray for them and even heated them to the perfect temperature with a heat lamp. It was just a nice Newfoundland hot lunch we prepared for them.
WHAT SARAH DOES: Continue to cry.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: It’s just as well. There was no place to put those chicks. Your father had not built a chicken coop even. The next time we get chicks, we will be ready for them. We will have their coop built.
WHAT I LEARN AND WHAT I TELL SAM IN THE HOSPITAL: You can make a chicken coop out of bales of hay. You can make one called an “eggloo.”
WHAT THE NIGHT NURSE SAYS: I had a pet chicken I used to swing in a swing when I was a girl.
WHAT THE HOUSE SAYS AT NIGHT: David, check your levels. I woke up and turned to my sleeping wife again. It was not she who had said it this time, either. It was still the house talking to me. I whispered back to it. Check my levels? Is that what you said? The house did not answer. I could hear the rabbit far away in the other room scratching at her newspaper. Maybe it was the rabbit who was talking to me.
WHAT JANE EYRE DOESN’T DO: Marry the young, handsome missionary.
WHAT SHE DOES DO: Marry Rochester, the invalid, blind old man.
WHAT THE RABBIT IS: Maybe lonely because we have just one. I have heard budgerigars are good pets for rabbits. The budgerigar sits on the back of the rabbit and keeps it company, and the rabbit is not afraid of the budgerigar because the rabbit knows the budgerigar is too small to hurt the rabbit.
WHAT THE LAST HUNDRED PAGES OF JANE EYRE IS: A lot of talk.
WHAT I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO: Collect sperm from Bruce and inseminate Nelly.
NUMBER OF DAYS UNTIL PUPPIES MAY BE BORN: 72.
WHAT SARAH THINKS IS DISGUSTING: That I collected sperm from Bruce and inseminated Nelly.
WHAT I TOLD SARAH: Every living thing you see was created by an act of sex.
WHAT SARAH DOES: Covers her ears.
CALL: No call. I will substitute-teach to put food on the table.
WHAT A STUDENT SAYS: You cannot hand test grades back like that. You have to hand them back so that we can’t see each other’s grades. We are not supposed to know each other’s grades. That is not how it is done. You cannot do that.
WHAT I SAY: It’s okay. I can do that.
WHAT ANOTHER STUDENT SAYS: I have to see the counselor.
WHAT I SAY: Not right now. We are in the middle of algebra right now. See this quadratic equation?
WHAT THE STUDENT SAYS: No, you don’t understand, I really have to see the counselor. I want to see the counselor. I need to see the counselor.
WHAT I SAY: No, you are going to be fine. Take a deep breath. Look at the numbers on the board.
WHAT THE STUDENT SAYS: I can’t do this. I have to see the counselor. Can I please see the counselor?
WHAT I SAY: Go, go and see the counselor.
WHAT I DO AFTER CLASS: Stop and see the counselor to see if the student ever made it to see the counselor. The counselor wasn’t in. I noticed how the waiting room was huge. It had paintings on the walls and carpeting, and enough cushioned chairs for thirty kids. It was nicer than my doctor’s office. I remembered my own counselor’s office in school. It was next to the closet where the buckets and mops were kept. It was a tiny room, with no window. There was only one counselor at my school, but this school had four counselors, all with their own offices, and they all had their names on the doors. I felt like I was inside a hospital instead of a school. And maybe, I thought, this is what schools have become, hospitals, and the teachers are really just hospital staff, making sure the students with problems are taking their meds. And maybe, if I just see one of these counselors they can help me with my levels. Maybe that’s all I need is a little Ritalin, a little fix for my ADHD, my ADD, my IEP status. And maybe they’ve got something for Sam in one of their esk drawers, a smooth coated pink or robin’s egg blue pill that will make his eyes flash open and his foot start jumping.
Part Three
Still Winter
WHAT I TELL SAM THAT I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT: Gravity. I’m not sure it’s a constant. I think it changes. I’m reading books about it, but I’m not any closer to knowing. I think it’s like light. You don’t see light bend. What you’re seeing is space bending around light. I’d like to see gravity. I’d like to try, I said, and then I looked out the hospital window at the moon rising yellow over the mountains.