by Medicaid. The woman’s fingers fly across a calculator keypad and she tells me I will definitely qualify for the hospital’s financial assistance program. The federal government may be in debt until the year two million, but at least the state’s keeping aboveboard. I mean, if an unemployed mother and child aren’t eligible for Medicaid, then who is?
“Please,” says the woman, “we’ve got a guy here with multiple sclerosis. He’s thirty years old. Hasn’t gotten out of bed since January, but because he’s under sixty-five he doesn’t qualify for Medicaid because under the current guidelines he’s considered ‘able to work.’ Reagan raised the cutoff, Bush raised it some more, and Clinton’s done nothing to change things. It was better under Reagan.”
Better under Reagan.
“You need your parking validated?” she asks, tearing a blue-green stamp out of a booklet.
“Sure.”
“Here, I’ll staple it.”
“Oh, I was going to lick it.”
“Girl, let me tell you something: Don’t you ever lick anything in this building.”
I drive south. Did you know you can’t qualify for a driver’s license on Long Island without taking a three-hour class in mind reading? Because that’s the only way to predict what some of these crazies are going to do next. “Signal? I don’t need to signal—I know where I’m going!”
Trapped at an eternally red light, I think about the alien living inside my chest. And how it got there. Leaving no obvious bruises on me. The folks who put the Bible together knew a thing or two about people. We’ve all heard about the commandments against inflicting physical harm, you know, “If a man shall smite his neighbor’s eye,” and all that, but it also commands against inflicting psychological harm. What, after all, are the tangible results of lying, dishonoring, coveting, and screwing around? Those crimes produce emotional suffering, which the Bible seems to take quite seriously (four out of ten commandments, at last count). Extortion laws criminalize the perceived threat of physical harm, but there is generally no legal recourse for the crippling mental anguish caused by, say, being given a disease that takes ten or twenty years to kill you. If Morse had just shot me in the back of the head a few years ago he’d be in jail. But cancer? Anything could have caused that.
I get home, make dinner for Antonia. I don’t eat anything myself because I’ve got to get ready for my “date” with Jim Stella. Not that I could keep anything down after that bronchoscopy. I take her upstairs to read, and rearrange the framed photos in what has become my altar to Antonia. I take her hands in mine and pray, God, please, don’t let my shrine become a memorial.
It’s interesting. Unexpected. To feel your priorities shift from self-preservation to species preservation. I’m much more concerned that the kid should carry on than I am about myself at this point. Is that instinct? Parental hormones? Or am I just going nuts?
I’ve got to stay focused here. I can’t let anger blind me this time, but I can’t let myself go soft either. What should I do?
What do I say to you?
Lord—why am I dying?
I come downstairs ready to go out. I wasn’t kidding before. There really are shock absorbers on the main altar. Brand new Monroes, absorbing cosmic energy before use. Who am I to doubt?
It takes twenty minutes to drive to the spot where the restaurant is supposed to be, and another twenty minutes to find it. These Long Island commercial stretches are just mile after endless mile of McDonald’s, gas station, Friendly’s, gas station, record store, gas station, Burger King, gas station, Kentucky Fried Chicken, gas station, all indistinguishable from each other. I pass a law firm, a bowling alley and a real estate office three times before I realize that the real estate office is the restaurant.
Jim Stella pushes his second martini away and stops working the sweet young thing two bar
“Please,” says the woman, “we’ve got a guy here with multiple sclerosis. He’s thirty years old. Hasn’t gotten out of bed since January, but because he’s under sixty-five he doesn’t qualify for Medicaid because under the current guidelines he’s considered ‘able to work.’ Reagan raised the cutoff, Bush raised it some more, and Clinton’s done nothing to change things. It was better under Reagan.”
Better under Reagan.
“You need your parking validated?” she asks, tearing a blue-green stamp out of a booklet.
“Sure.”
“Here, I’ll staple it.”
“Oh, I was going to lick it.”
“Girl, let me tell you something: Don’t you ever lick anything in this building.”
I drive south. Did you know you can’t qualify for a driver’s license on Long Island without taking a three-hour class in mind reading? Because that’s the only way to predict what some of these crazies are going to do next. “Signal? I don’t need to signal—I know where I’m going!”
Trapped at an eternally red light, I think about the alien living inside my chest. And how it got there. Leaving no obvious bruises on me. The folks who put the Bible together knew a thing or two about people. We’ve all heard about the commandments against inflicting physical harm, you know, “If a man shall smite his neighbor’s eye,” and all that, but it also commands against inflicting psychological harm. What, after all, are the tangible results of lying, dishonoring, coveting, and screwing around? Those crimes produce emotional suffering, which the Bible seems to take quite seriously (four out of ten commandments, at last count). Extortion laws criminalize the perceived threat of physical harm, but there is generally no legal recourse for the crippling mental anguish caused by, say, being given a disease that takes ten or twenty years to kill you. If Morse had just shot me in the back of the head a few years ago he’d be in jail. But cancer? Anything could have caused that.
I get home, make dinner for Antonia. I don’t eat anything myself because I’ve got to get ready for my “date” with Jim Stella. Not that I could keep anything down after that bronchoscopy. I take her upstairs to read, and rearrange the framed photos in what has become my altar to Antonia. I take her hands in mine and pray, God, please, don’t let my shrine become a memorial.
It’s interesting. Unexpected. To feel your priorities shift from self-preservation to species preservation. I’m much more concerned that the kid should carry on than I am about myself at this point. Is that instinct? Parental hormones? Or am I just going nuts?
I’ve got to stay focused here. I can’t let anger blind me this time, but I can’t let myself go soft either. What should I do?
What do I say to you?
Lord—why am I dying?
I come downstairs ready to go out. I wasn’t kidding before. There really are shock absorbers on the main altar. Brand new Monroes, absorbing cosmic energy before use. Who am I to doubt?
It takes twenty minutes to drive to the spot where the restaurant is supposed to be, and another twenty minutes to find it. These Long Island commercial stretches are just mile after endless mile of McDonald’s, gas station, Friendly’s, gas station, record store, gas station, Burger King, gas station, Kentucky Fried Chicken, gas station, all indistinguishable from each other. I pass a law firm, a bowling alley and a real estate office three times before I realize that the real estate office is the restaurant.
Jim Stella pushes his second martini away and stops working the sweet young thing two bar
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