The girls come home, and the night before the operation, the Christensens gather for dinner at a high-end Spanish restaurant. This is Carol’s idea. She’s been wanting to try the place for years, she says, but no occasion has ever seemed special enough. It’s as if she expects this dinner to be her last. She orders paella and a pitcher of sangria for the table, but there is a weight in her eyes, as if she can’t bear to look at her family. Even the girls are subdued as they take turns filling their glasses.
“Listen, kids. Carol,” Harold speaks with conviction. “I’m just as nervous about this as you are. But you have to look at the facts here. Modern science is more precise than you realize. Operations like this happen hundreds of times a day, all over the world.”
His daughters nod and force smiles. Carol looks down at her plate.
“It’s more dangerous to cross a busy street than to have surgery nowadays. And these surgeons are experts, remember. They wouldn’t operate if they weren’t very, very confident of their success. Their own careers are on the line, after all. Think of all the lawsuits. They wouldn’t do it unless they were sure.”
The more Harold speaks, the more certain he feels about the truth of these words. He looks at his younger daughter, only nineteen. She is on her second glass of sangria, but nobody stops her. Tonight is beyond such trivialities as underage drinking. Harold watches her chew a wine-soaked orange rind and feels a rising apprehension. She is too young to be motherless.
Later that night, as he watches his wife cleanse her face with a tissue and cream, the apprehension returns. He feels it as a push inside his chest. His wife drops a used tissue into the trash, draws a new one out of its box, and pats her face in the mirror. For a moment, he questions his plan.
As Carol lies in bed beside him in her yellow nightgown, Harold tries to sort the problem out logically. He is not a man accustomed to second-guessing himself. He lies still and tries to shepherd his thoughts into a rational row. They will all make perfect sense together, he is sure, even if they are disjointed and unruly now.
He remembers dissecting a cow’s heart in school. He feels keenly again the thrill of encountering on the outside those secrets that belonged on the inside. He hadn’t been brought up with religion, but he felt he was touching a machine manufactured by God. He stood at the front of the class and explained what he knew about ventricles and valves and the unknown motor that made the pump run. A girl wrinkled her face as he put a finger in the aortic artery. Harold squeezed the heart. He stood holding the heart, memorizing the cool smooth feel of it, until the teacher asked him to give it back and sit down.
His wife rustles in the bed. She wants to talk, he can tell.
“What is it, honey?”
Carol is quiet for a moment.
“I’m afraid,” she says softly into Harold’s arm.
“Oh, you know there’s nothing to be afraid of, sweetheart. It’s a safe operation.”
“It’s brain surgery. What if I die, or end up brain damaged?”
“Yes, it’s brain surgery. But they do it all the time. You won’t die, and you won’t be brain damaged, I promise. You’ll be much better when it’s over.”
“I think I’d rather have the fits.”
Carol’s face is still pressed against his arm. He looks down at the top of her head, the waves of meandering hair that he’s looked down upon for years. Just a single prod to the correct fold of her motor cortex, he knows, could cause her knee to bend or fingers to curl. The thought brings a sense of almost excruciating intimacy.
“Trust me, honey. You’ll be fine.”
She whimpers slightly and pushes her face harder against him. He wraps her in his arms and squeezes. He will never know anyone so fully, that much is certain. He keeps her tightly in his arms until her breathing slows and she sleeps. He relaxes his hold then and takes a long look at her, the slackened mouth and crinkled eyelids. He lies beside her, feeling his worries wash out in a pool of tenderness.
He can still feel the dinner stir in his stomach, the rice and wine and spices breaking down to a pool of sharp juice. The echo of garlic rises into his mouth as he silently belches. It is the taste of Spain, of their courtship in its early days. All at once he remembers Seville, remembers the restaurant, the dancer. Carol had cried that night, he remembers. She had sat at the table with trembling lips. It was a white frilled top that she wore, that she’d bought at an outdoor market that day. He remembers how it had made her look like a young girl, like a peasant’s daughter. The trip had been perfect until then. Carol’s face had colored in the sun despite her straw hats. Her skin had been smooth and youthful, and she’d been eager to disrobe in the hotel, with the shades drawn or apart. She had been his then, unquestioningly, and exalted to be far from home.
Why he’d chosen that moment, he’ll never know. He understands now that every man keeps a detail or two in a neutral place inside his own brain, and the wise ones never enter that particular cabinet. To speak at that moment must have been a decision brought on by a young man’s misguided idea of honor, or an obscure brand of perversity.
“Her name was Jacqueline,” he said.