“You must have wondered why he picked you of all the women he met every day. Given his profession, I mean. He must have met tons of women.”
I dismiss her suggestion. “John didn’t do cosmetic surgery. Only his partners did. He never would have fallen for someone who came to his clinic for that. If anything, it would have turned him off.”
“And he died of what . . . a heart attack? In a way, don’t you think that’s appropriate? For a man with three wives?” asks the girl. “His heart overloaded? Stressed to the limit?”
“Perhaps,” I say. “That indispensable motor, broken.” And mine, in sympathy, aching. Occupying such a tender position in my chest. I had an Egyptian professor during my cardiology internship. He said that in his home country it was sometimes said of the dead that their hearts had departed, and that it was the heart that was weighed against the feather of truth in the hall of Ma’at during the divine judgment of the deceased. A heart unburdened with the weight of sin and corruption would balance with the feather and its possessor would enjoy the eternal afterlife. But I know my heart is not light as a feather. The afterlife I am fated for is not one that will be enjoyed.
I often encourage my patients to describe their symptoms using metaphors. They are incredibly illuminating. Once a child said, “I’m being pecked by a tiny bird with a very sharp beak. His beak must be bloody.” I looked, and sure enough, there were the telltale petechiae, the flat pinpoint dark-red spots under the skin that are one of the signs of childhood leukemia.
What are my metaphors? All clichés. Heavy heart. Burdened heart. Gandhi, my hero, saying, It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. What about neither words nor heart? I have nothing more to say. And it’s this that saves me. Because suddenly it becomes clear, this young woman’s constant fiddling with her phone, her probing questions, even her so-called profession. “You’re a reporter,” I say. She only hesitates a moment before nodding. “The Star,” she says. “They promised me fifty grand for an exclusive. I bribed your neighbor to go out for the evening.”
“You lured me over here with the cigarette smoke?” I ask, incredulous. Then I start laughing at her ingenuousness.
“I can’t stand to smoke myself,” the young woman says, “but it works nearly every time here on the West Coast. People who would be suspicious of a knock on the door are incredibly protective of their turf when it comes to secondhand smoke.”
I point to the cell phone she’s holding. “Have you been recording this?” and she nods.
“You gave me some good stuff, but not enough for you to feel embarrassed,” she says. “You’ll come across as heartbroken but dignified.” Heartbroken. Metaphors again.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I could persuade you to respect my privacy?” I ask. She shakes her head. But I seem to detect some true regret in the gesture.
“I don’t like my job very much sometimes, but I’d like unemployment worse,” she says. “But, like I said, it wasn’t too bad. You didn’t spill your sex secrets.”
“That’s because I don’t have any,” I say. And for a moment that seems true, that I have lived my life out in the open, with nothing to hide and few regrets. Then I remember, and am quiet.
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know,” says the girl. I must look startled because she says, “Macbeth. I studied English literature in college.” I don’t think I’m imagining that she appears slightly ashamed. “We all end up in places we didn’t expect,” she says.
“That we do,” I say, and somehow find the door and leave.
15
Helen