Prodrome
J. Morris
I always make sure to have a last cigarette going as I drive up the hill, coming home from classes. I try to time it so it’s finished with maybe a half-mile still to go. I stub it out in my pick-up’s overflowing ashtray and take a few breaths, deep ones to cleanse and perhaps cheer up —why not? —my stunned bronchia.
Today the radio is rubbing it in: Jazz 90 offers Cleo Laine singing "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." I reach over into my purse and extract the pack of Lifesavers I keep there, my traveling Lifesavers, always replenished. When I put one in my mouth, hoping for cherry, Phyllis gets excited, all tail-wagging and chummy grins. She takes a professional interest in the act of my eating, loves to observe and approve. She displays no interest whatsoever when I place a cigarette in my mouth. Evidently she knows by now it’s not for nourishment. She snorts and turns away. I’d hate it too, if I were her. The cherry Lifesavers I give her when I light up must be small recompense for all that eye-watering foulness.
My own Lifesaver this afternoon is pineapple, my least favorite flavor: bad omen. My prodrome arrived too, as of this morning. I itched during 19th Century Lit. Emily D. couldn’t stop for Death, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I left in the middle of the discussion and examined myself in the restroom of the Student Union building: yep, labia red as a beet. Stress, poor diet, frequent intercourse: the three factors that bring it on. I can claim two out of three. How unfair, only two out of three.
I hope I don’t taste too awful when I get home and kiss him hello.
I never smoke around him, even though he says he doesn’t mind, baby. How can he not mind? Sometimes he’s asleep anyway when I get home. His band is getting more and more jobs so he’s doing less and less graphic-layout work during the days, relying on the tax-free cash from playing at night, going ahead and sleeping in till three or four in the afternoon and then returning calls. He doesn’t officially live with me but he tells most of his clients to call him at my house. He turns my answering machine on to take their calls while he sleeps the day away. Once when I came home from classes he was talking to a client, or I suppose now an ex-client. "No, I don’t need your ‘project,’" I heard him say, in that enunciated way of his that cuts and makes you feel worthless (me feel worthless, I should say me when I mean me; it would make me feel worthless and stupid if he ever spoke to me that way —but he doesn’t, I’m not a client with a project, thank God). "I’m busy doing what I want to do, peculiar as that may sound to you." He paused, then said, "Fuck you," and nearly yanked the phone off the wall when he slammed the receiver back in the cradle. Phyllis barked. "Fuck you as well," he said to her, but I made him apologize, which he wasn’t loath to do. He is, no question about it, a basically wonderful person, with problems.
We’ve been together for almost half a year, since right before I quit waitressing. What a month. Everything happened: I met him, I got a scholarship from the university to finish my long-lost B.A., I moved to this sleepy Virginia hill from the wired Washington suburbs, he told me he wanted me and I told him I’d loved him ever since the night I met him, and I went to my doctor about a puzzling itch and she told me I had herpes.
He hadn’t given it to me. We’d only been sleeping together for a week and that was too fast for symptoms, Dr. Everett said. Besides, I knew that anyway. I’d felt this same itch before, before him, but it always went away and never led to anything worse, so I denied its reality. I wasn’t even sure it could be diagnosed—what was there to test? But this time I went to my doctor when I felt it. Being in love with him meant I had to know. My jeans chafed me and my nether lips were too red. It turned out Dr. Everett could diagnose it all right, even without blisters. I think I know who I got it from. He’s long ago and far away and I see no need to recall him.
Dr. Everett said that this was possible, that I might not have noticed, or thought much of, the first eruption of the virus, and that it can then lie dormant for years, or only display this itchy "prodrome," never the characteristic blisters. What brings it on? Stress is a factor, as is poor diet, as is frequent intercourse. Three out of three, for me, that month.
Smoking, I would imagine, is no help either. Surely it batters the immune system? Distracts my brave antibodies from their herpes-simplex duties and forces them to fight on another front? Something here inside, Cleo observes, cannot be denied —we pull up to the porch and I kill the engine. I hate it when a song on the radio seems apt. It means I’m no deeper, here inside, than a pat rhyme.
I like this house I’m renting, except there’s no indoor plumbing, which is why I can afford to rent it. Actually that’s convenient in a sense, because I can smoke when I’m using the outhouse. It’s a courtesy; I’m not fooling him. Baby, I used to smoke myself and love it, he says. And I can picture that. He’d look good with a Marlboro raised up to his lips. But still, I’d just rather not remind him.
I get out of my pick-up and shut the door softly, in case he’s asleep. Phyllis has followed me, and woofs with pleasure, gives me a dog-grin, then flops down in the gravel to lick her private parts. I have to pee. Habit takes over, and I find myself lighting up again in the outhouse. Hunched on the cracked plastic seat, I expel smoke. I wipe—gingerly, resisting the urge to examine myself again—hoist my jeans, zip up, then tip a gout of white powder down the hole from the tattered bag of quicklime to kill the smell. Toss my ciggy down, too. Pop a Lifesaver.
It was a bright autumn afternoon when I left Dr. Everett’s office. I went down to the parking lot and just sat in my pick-up, staring out at the leaves skittering across the street. Phyllis woke up to pant at me and then curled back to sleep. I felt like I’d never known autumn before, everything was new—sunlight, wind, love, the house an obstacle-course of unpacked boxes and scarcely a home yet, nothing on the walls, classes every day now and all the young students looking at me in that guarded, overpolite way that said, You can’t be serious, you’re too old, you must be thirty if you’re a day—all new, but newest of all was him. Suddenly there was this body in my life, and of course a person that came with it. A person who showed up with suitcases, saying Well, baby, can I stay? And on top of it all, I had this fucking disease, no pun intended but there it was. I had the prodrome, Dr. Everett told me. Syndrome to follow, theoretically (except it never has): blisters, pain, horrible feelings of guilt and punishment. Gee, I can’t wait. I told myself, What do I care about a few blisters? Pain?—shit, my mother died of pancreatic cancer when I was sixteen. That’s pain. But why does it have to be contagious through love? Can there be anything more disgusting and unfair than that? I’ll suffer any pain, big deal, but God, why must you make me unacceptable and hideous to this new guy in my life? Forever. There’s no cure.
I read all the pamphlets Dr. Everett gave me, spreading them out on the sun-dappled dashboard (smoking my Marlboros, you bet) with sleeping Phyllis beside me. Now I knew more about herpes simplex than I ever wanted to. In my purse was a prescription for acyclovir. "Remember," said my condescending "Advice for the Patient" handout, "acyclovir will not keep you from spreading herpes to others. It is best to avoid any sexual activity if you have any signs of herpes. The use of a condom (rubber) probably will help prevent the spread of herpes. A diaphragm will probably not help." Like I was wondering about that.
Driving home, I knew I should get the prescription filled but I told myself I didn’t have enough money with me. Actually, I wanted to get home and tell him, fast and plain, so if he’s leaving, let him leave. I imagined it: he would say it was all right, that he didn’t blame me or hate me, I’d shyly describe what I’d learned from Dr. Everett, how and when we might continue safely to make love, and he’d nod and hold me. But, somewhere inside him he’d be packing his suitcases. This herpes thing was too much, much worse than cigarettes. He didn’t trust me or love me enough. I would be able to look into his eyes and see the suitcases all packed, with his duffel bag and gym bag and guitars leaning against them. Soon—in a matter of days—they’d materialize as imagined, weighing down my kitchen, pointed at the screen door and the driveway beyond. Sooner is better. If he’s leaving, let him leave.
He was home, mostly awake, and when I told him, a lot of it was just as I’d pictured it. He did say it was all right, and that he in no way blamed me. He was comforting and supportive in the extreme. Two things I hadn’t anticipated in my homeward fantasy: the very first words he spoke were, "I swear I didn’t give it to you"; and then later, he looked at me, stern parent to possibly mendacious child, and wanted to know was it absolutely true that I’d had no idea I had it, that it was all news to me. Of course, I assured him haughtily, feeling my throat choke with tears, of course, I wouldn’t have slept with you without telling you. You have a right to know. That’s why I’m telling you now. Absolutely true, except what I didn’t say: I’ve known for years that every now and then I get this funny itch, which never amounted to anything and which I’ve never done anything about. Should I have said that to him? "No, Keith, I am appalled to learn I have herpes, but I’ve long suspected there was something wrong with me down there, something bad and awful. . . but I never knew what." Sorry, I have my limits. I did not trust him enough to be so stupid in front of him.
And he didn’t leave. I don’t think he even wanted to. If there was a moment when he did commence packing those suitcases, I missed it. My gratitude stretched for months. I treasured him, gave thought to what he liked, gave him space. I allowed myself two occasions per week to tell him I loved him—more than two and he wouldn’t say it back. I stayed up later than I wanted to, holding hands, feeling his guitar-calluses stroke my palm as we watched Letterman in bed. Midnight was early afternoon for him, and I could always sleep through Western Civ. He helped with the rent. He shoveled out my driveway after the Blizzard of ‘96. He wrote three songs. One of them was a love song called "The Trouble With Becky" about a sad hopeless affair. Is that about us? I asked him. "Course not," he said, "it’s about my ex-girlfriend Becky, which is why I used her name." Who broke up with who? I wanted to ask, but instead I told him I loved him, knowing it was the third time that week. He glared at Phyllis. His band added the song to their set and I grew used to it. Blisters, agony, etc., did not appear. The prodrome seems to be my syndrome. Unusual but not unprecedented, according to Dr. Everett. I take acyclovir faithfully. We make love when I’m not itchy or red; I am scrupulous to forbid it if I think I’m feeling even the slightest tingle or displaying a too-bright hue. He says he doesn’t mind.
The weak late-February sun has nearly disappeared behind the hills as I leave the outhouse. Preceded by Phyllis, I walk into the kitchen, the current Lifesaver saving my breath if not my life, and throw my keys down on the table. I guess I want to startle him. He’s sitting there in his bathrobe, hair mussed, eating scrambled eggs, with a magazine in front of him. There’s a salt shaker perched astride the valley between the pages to keep the breeze from turning them. I notice all of this as the keys clatter down on the formica and I tell him. The telling has never gotten easier. We’ve adopted a cute code-phrase—the itch—and a whimsical way with it. And I always tell him as soon as I feel it, not waiting until we kiss, or he looks at me with longing.
For the last month the kisses and longing looks haven’t been coming reliably. Neither have I. Our schedules are so off, such a bad fit. Twice after band jobs he slept in the room he still pays for in Charlottesville, in the band’s house, claiming he was too tired to make it back here. I said I didn’t mind. There’s not a chance in hell he believed me. He’s leaving, he’s leaving, he’s leaving, over and over I’ve been saying it to myself, matter-of-factly, getting my heart used to it.
So—after hellos, I say brightly, "And I’ve got the itch, whoopee," and I can never take my eyes from his eyes when I tell him. I need to see what’s there. The Lifesaver has melted to a rough particle. It hurts the roof of my mouth.
This time I see something new, some cruel calculation, as if he’s weighing the pluses and minuses. Or else it’s only a furrow between the eyebrows, the beginning of a thought—call it a prodrome. I whip away from him and stand leaning against the screen door. I feel the little wire squares imprinting their pattern on my temple and cheek. Behind me he says, "You get it more often now. That must be a drag." I go to where he’s sitting and press his head into my stomach. "Don’t worry about it," I tell him. "It doesn’t hurt, you know that, it’s only a drag because we can’t make love." I’m wearing a sweater. It must reek of smoke. Yet I press him tightly into it, denying him air. He frees his face and looks up at me. I see the suitcases. He says nothing. I make my eyes leave his, look lower, at the odious plate of eggs, the salt shaker, his shirt pocket. In which is a pack of Marlboros. "Keith, are you smoking?" He exhales, a short, disgusted snort. "Yeah, a little," he murmurs.
"Oh, sweetheart, that’s terrible. Is it because of me, I mean the smell and everything? I know you said you don’t mind but—" He gets to his feet in a rush, looks at the chair he’s been sitting on, and kicks it across the kitchen. Phyllis starts barking. I feel him sharpening his anger like a scalpel, getting ready to cut me precisely. He says, "Not everything is about you, baby. Peculiar as it may sound, I sometimes go for hours without thinking a single thought about what you mean to me or what I mean to you. When I earn my living, for instance. I earn my living in smoky places and recently I’ve been smoking in them too because I’m surrounded by smokers and it’s very tempting. And that is the end of the fucking story." His eyes slice into me even deeper than his words but I suffer them, I won’t look away. I too can cut—only I use my grief. I take the hard choking millstone of tears and use it to grind sharp words out. "Fine. End of story. You can leave now. I don’t want you here."
In the bedroom with the door shut, I lie on the unmade bed and listen for him to go. He doesn’t. He can’t. He’s wearing a bathrobe. His clothes and his suitcases are in here with me. I listen. My analysis of each small sound is superb: scrape of chair legs (he’s placing it upright); slight creaky squeak (sitting back down on it now); a woof, a murmur (conversation with Phyllis); a small rasping explosion.
Soon the smell of smoke drifts under the door. I turn over onto my side and as I shift my hips I cry out at the lance of pain between my legs. I’ve never felt it before, but of course I know what it is; I don’t even need to look.
I’ll have to be so careful from now on, so careful.
Tables of Content
Seventeen (Fall 2003)
Sixteen (Spring 2003)
Fifteen (Fall 2002) Fourteen (Spring 2002)
Thirteen
(Fall 2001) Twelve (Spring 2001)
Eleven (Fall 2000)
Ten (Spring 2000)
Nine (Fall 1999) Eight (Spring 1999)
Seven, (Fall 1998) Six, (Spring 1998)
Five (Fall 1997) Four (Winter/Spring 1997)