“Bummer,” Danielle said.
She had not pulled away from Helen’s desperate grip on her hand, and they now sat calmly, holding hands, Helen’s hiccups beginning to escape.
The screen said: THYROID: OBSELETE DEFINITION: SHAPED LIKE A DOOR.
THAT NIGHT IN their little cabin, Joanne said to Helen, “Maybe it was a mistake, you coming here?”
Helen still had the hiccups. She was remembering how someone had once told her that a man in Scotland had the hiccups for thirteen years and then he finally killed himself.
“I mean,” Joanne said, “why were you holding hands with the nanny?”
Helen couldn’t think of a reasonable answer. “She has the softest hands in the world,” she said finally.
Even though they were in the woods, it was noisy outside. People seemed to be running about, laughing loudly. Doors slammed. In the distance, Helen heard salsa music.
“I’m not sorry you came,” Joanne said, which meant of course that she was, “but you have to respect people’s work here.”
“I do,” Helen said quickly, afraid that Joanne was going to make her leave, send her back to the apartment in Providence, where Scott’s clothes still hung in her closet, where the photograph of them sailing last summer—smiling, sunburned, arms thrown intimately around each other’s bodies—would stare out at her as soon as she walked in.
“Leila is a very well respected artist,” Joanne began.
Helen hiccuped loudly.
Joanne sighed, rolled over in her creaky cot.
The salsa music grew louder.
“I’ve got this strange urge to have a child,” Helen said. “A baby.”
Joanne didn’t answer, but her bedsprings twanged some more, reminding Helen of the sad notes of a country-western song.
AT THE COCKTAIL party before the slide show the next night, Helen told Leila that her work had moved her immensely. Helen was afraid that everyone was going to gang up on her, force her to go. Joanne was right: she had to make more of an effort. Leila had pink skin and pale hair and the overall appearance of a rabbit. As Helen talked she was aware of her own nose twitching.
“Yes,” Leila said to Helen, “I noticed you reacting.”
Leila sounded like Greta Garbo. Everything about her was unnerving.
“Because,” Helen said, pretending to have a bit of a cold so as to hide the twitching, “I lost my spleen in a tragic accident.”
The words were true, but they seemed grandiose, embellished. But it had been tragic. Even now she could exactly recall the particular way the sunlight bounced through the windshield that morning, the smooth-shaven planes of Scott’s face, his jaw chewing Dentyne fast. She remembered for the first time that he’d had two dots of blood from shaving on his neck. “Vampire bite,” she’d said, poking him with two fingers.
“The spleen,” Leila was telling her, “is a contradictory organ, don’t you think? Merriment. Melancholy.” She moved her hands like a scale to demonstrate.
“Melancholy?” Helen asked, trying not to twitch.
“You paid attention, no?” Leila said sharply.
“Yes, of course,” Helen said. She downed her chablis and tried to find the table with the cheese log.
Had she missed something important? she wondered as she nibbled the sharp cheddar rolled in walnuts that she’d hastily smeared on a water cracker. Melancholy and merriment? Did that mean that she would lose all emotion now that she’d lost her spleen? She thought of Scott again. Before that inexplicable thing went wrong, they used to laugh together. It was what they’d had, she decided. What they’d lost. Merriment. Both of them could watch Some Like It Hot any time, any place. They played a word game that went like this: she’d say center violin and he’d say middle fiddle. Bird ghost. Robin goblin. Northern tissue. Yankee hanky. Helen started to cry.
That soft, doughy hand found hers again.
“I’ve been thinking about your spleen and stuff,” Danielle said. “Once, when I was really bummed out, I dyed my hair red. It felt so good. Like, I was a redhead.”
Helen looked at Danielle’s honey-blond hair. It was straight and fine, parted in the middle, tucked behind her ears.
“There’s this woman here? In town,” Danielle continued. “Ashley? She does a good job. Everyone who comes up here at least gets highlights from her.”
Helen’s hand twisted a piece of her own brown hair. She had always liked that her hair was a good, solid medium brown. Not auburn or chestnut or mahogany.
“You don’t have to go ballistic,” Danielle told her. “But you’d be surprised.”
“Ashley?” Helen said.
“Everyone goes to her.” Danielle smiled. She had the sweet, innocent smile of a child.