HAVOC by Christopher Bollen

Author:Christopher Bollen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2024-10-09T15:45:53+00:00

17.

* * *

For a long time, I only saw a monster. Tiny blood-black spots dappling my arms, putrid-green bruises dotting my stomach and breasts.

When did these symptoms first appear? Was it right after Peter died? Or did it wait until Julia passed? I truly don’t know the answer. In that year of traumatic losses, I spent so much time inside my house, alone with the lights off and the curtains drawn, a prisoner to other people’s shadows, I barely paid attention to my own body. My lungs went on breathing, that much I knew, and my heart continued to beat. But this affliction of my nerves and skin? Maybe it was due to losing Julia so soon after Peter. The erasure of your entire family can induce any number of unexpected side effects.

I probably didn’t notice the first blotches. You bump your shin against a bed corner or knock your elbow on the refrigerator, and voilà, a bruise. You develop a chest rash from a discount laundry detergent. Your burlap skin decides to add a few showier age spots to its ample collection. After age seventy, you develop a businesslike relationship with your body, a chilly nod at the mirror in the morning will suffice. Thus, my condition could have been developing unchecked for some time.

First it was a series of purple marks running along my hips. I assumed it was a reaction to my heating pad, and sure enough, they soon faded. Then I noticed five bluish quarter-size spots along my rib cage. After that, blotches on my breasts appeared, such a vibrant green they looked biohazardous, like a comic-book humanoid post–nuclear meltdown. They disappeared, only for the purple marks on my inner thighs to return en masse. To stand naked at the mirror with the overhead lights on was to behold a torso speckled in the colors of violent injury. The blotches weren’t painful. They came with no fever or cough. In fact, I felt as physically hearty as I always had, my appetite even coming back. But I looked like I had been beaten, attacked, thrown from a car, maybe even dropped from a plane. Dressed, I appeared the same old Maggie, the daughterless widow haunting the windows of her blue Tudor Revival, the one house on the block no longer decorated in Christmas lights. I’m not ashamed to admit that a part of me hoped these strange marks were the early warning signs of a terminal disease. Standing naked at the mirror, I often thought, Yes, of course, it’s my turn. How perfect. First my husband, then my daughter, now me. I wanted to lie in bed and accept whatever death was coming. Instead, I made an appointment with my doctor.

Dr. Reiselman examined me from hairline to toenail with the care of a jeweler appraising a gemstone. “I see a few irregularities, one or two bruises, some minor blotching for sure. But that’s to be expected at your age, and it’s nothing to worry too much about.

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