I was conscious and reset her facial expression, staring at me with what I still stupidly read as concern.
She leaned over me. I thought, for a deranged half second, that she was going to kiss me on the lips.
“You poor thing,” Madame Ackermann whispered, mouth inches from mine, fingers raking her neck. “You look like you’ve seen a wolf.”
The rumor that made the rounds claimed I’d had a seizure at Madame Ackermann’s house, brought on by my attempts to catch as a novice. I’d strained something, or broken something, or disturbed some precious equilibrium by exhorting my brain to perform an activity it was not trained to perform.
I believed this, too.
I remained at the Workshop through the end of the semester even though I spent most of my waking hours in bed, too ill to attend class. Madame Ackermann released me from my stenographer/archivist duties and replaced me, “only until you feel well enough to resume your position,” with an initiate named Pam. At the behest of Madame Ackermann, Pam became my unofficial nursemaid, appearing at my apartment with tin-pan strudels and liter containers of broth. Because I was too weak to drive, Pam took me to my appointments at the hospital in the next town. There I was administered blood tests, screened for Lyme disease, lymphoma,mono, lupus, and MS, prescribed antibiotics, anti-seizure meds, SSRIs. By winter break, I had been diagnosed with seven different diseases, fetal medical hunches that never survived the subsequent rounds of testing.
The very worst of my symptoms, however, was this: a chronic insomnia unhelped by the winking pricks of light I saw on the backsides of my eyelids. To close my eyes was akin to being flashed by a car’s high beams.
Before the Workshop closed for winter break, I received a letter from Professor Yuen suggesting that I take a leave of absence. She followed her suggestion with a citation of policy, something to the effect that new semesters could not be embarked upon until the incompletes issued the previous semester had been resolved.
On December 12, I packed my suitcases and broke my lease. I e-mailed Madame Ackermann to thank her for all she’d done, and two days later got an auto-response from her that said, “This message has no content.” Soon I began receiving regular spam from an online dating service whose e-mail handle was “aconcernedfriend”; their motto was “Anything Is Possible.” When I clicked the video attachment, all I saw was a blob of clockwise-spinning fog, inside of which I could occasionally discern the shape of a woman lying motionless on a bed.
Madame Ackermann, at least via the usual channels, never contacted me again.
The first time I met Alwyn I mistook her for a Lydia.
It was just past lunchtime on a broody day in December, the sky issuing over Manhattan a slushy gruel. A girl hurried through the electronic glass doors of the Belgian Natural Fiber Flooring Company Showroom balancing, on one upturned palm, a molded takeout tray plugged with four coffee cups.
In the twelve months since I’d left the Workshop and assumed my position at the flooring company—literally, I’d been hired to assume a position , to sit for eight hours a day in a chair whose name, if it even had one, I never bothered to learn—I’d ascertained that the majority of our customers weren’t customers at all, but tourists who mistook me for an art installation. Despite its name the showroom showed very little save a clear Lucite desk, a jute rug—a barbed and unkempt thing, woven of coconut shell fibers and resembling, because of its swirled weave, the hair that collects over a shower drain—a red dial telephone, and me; as pedestrians walked by the plate glass that faced Park Avenue, I’d been instructed to hold the phone against my ear and move my lips. Because wires would have been visible behind the clear desk, the phone wasn’t connected; nonetheless, when a person entered the showroom I was to speak
She leaned over me. I thought, for a deranged half second, that she was going to kiss me on the lips.
“You poor thing,” Madame Ackermann whispered, mouth inches from mine, fingers raking her neck. “You look like you’ve seen a wolf.”
The rumor that made the rounds claimed I’d had a seizure at Madame Ackermann’s house, brought on by my attempts to catch as a novice. I’d strained something, or broken something, or disturbed some precious equilibrium by exhorting my brain to perform an activity it was not trained to perform.
I believed this, too.
I remained at the Workshop through the end of the semester even though I spent most of my waking hours in bed, too ill to attend class. Madame Ackermann released me from my stenographer/archivist duties and replaced me, “only until you feel well enough to resume your position,” with an initiate named Pam. At the behest of Madame Ackermann, Pam became my unofficial nursemaid, appearing at my apartment with tin-pan strudels and liter containers of broth. Because I was too weak to drive, Pam took me to my appointments at the hospital in the next town. There I was administered blood tests, screened for Lyme disease, lymphoma,mono, lupus, and MS, prescribed antibiotics, anti-seizure meds, SSRIs. By winter break, I had been diagnosed with seven different diseases, fetal medical hunches that never survived the subsequent rounds of testing.
The very worst of my symptoms, however, was this: a chronic insomnia unhelped by the winking pricks of light I saw on the backsides of my eyelids. To close my eyes was akin to being flashed by a car’s high beams.
Before the Workshop closed for winter break, I received a letter from Professor Yuen suggesting that I take a leave of absence. She followed her suggestion with a citation of policy, something to the effect that new semesters could not be embarked upon until the incompletes issued the previous semester had been resolved.
On December 12, I packed my suitcases and broke my lease. I e-mailed Madame Ackermann to thank her for all she’d done, and two days later got an auto-response from her that said, “This message has no content.” Soon I began receiving regular spam from an online dating service whose e-mail handle was “aconcernedfriend”; their motto was “Anything Is Possible.” When I clicked the video attachment, all I saw was a blob of clockwise-spinning fog, inside of which I could occasionally discern the shape of a woman lying motionless on a bed.
Madame Ackermann, at least via the usual channels, never contacted me again.
The first time I met Alwyn I mistook her for a Lydia.
It was just past lunchtime on a broody day in December, the sky issuing over Manhattan a slushy gruel. A girl hurried through the electronic glass doors of the Belgian Natural Fiber Flooring Company Showroom balancing, on one upturned palm, a molded takeout tray plugged with four coffee cups.
In the twelve months since I’d left the Workshop and assumed my position at the flooring company—literally, I’d been hired to assume a position , to sit for eight hours a day in a chair whose name, if it even had one, I never bothered to learn—I’d ascertained that the majority of our customers weren’t customers at all, but tourists who mistook me for an art installation. Despite its name the showroom showed very little save a clear Lucite desk, a jute rug—a barbed and unkempt thing, woven of coconut shell fibers and resembling, because of its swirled weave, the hair that collects over a shower drain—a red dial telephone, and me; as pedestrians walked by the plate glass that faced Park Avenue, I’d been instructed to hold the phone against my ear and move my lips. Because wires would have been visible behind the clear desk, the phone wasn’t connected; nonetheless, when a person entered the showroom I was to speak
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