Is she in charge of Mrs. Mancini, I ask.
The doctor looks at the clipboard. She unfolds the glasses and slips them on and looks again, the whole time saying, "Mrs. Mancini, Mrs. Mancini, Mrs. Mancini ..."
She keeps clicking and unclicking a ballpoint pen in one hand.
I ask, "Why is she still losing weight?"
The skin along the parts in her hair, the skin above and behind the doctor's ears, is as clear and white as the skin inside her other tan lines must look. If women knew how their ears come across, the firm fleshy edge, the little dark hood at the top, all the smooth contours coiled and channeling you to the tight darkness inside, well, more women would wear their hair down.
"Mrs. Mancini," she says, "needs a feeding tube. She feels hunger, but she's forgotten what the feeling means. Consequently, she doesn't eat."
I say, "How much is this tube going to cost?"
A nurse down the hall calls, "Paige?"
This doctor looks at me in my britches and waistcoat, my powdered wig and buckle shoes, and she says, "What are you supposed to be?"
The nurse calls, "Miss Marshall?"
My job, it's too hard to explain here. "I just happen to be the backbone of early colonial America."
"Which is?" she says.
"An Irish indentured servant."
She just looks at me, nodding her head. Then she looks down at the chart. "It's either we put a tube into her stomach," the doctor says. "Or she'll starve to death."
I look into the dark secret insides of her ear and ask if we could maybe explore some other options.
Down the hall, the nurse stands with her fists planted on her hips and shouts, "Miss Marshall!"
And the doctor winces. She holds up an index finger to stop me talking, and she says, "Listen." She says, "I really do have to finish rounds. Let's talk more on your next visit."
Then she turns and walks the ten or twelve steps to where the nurse is waiting and says, "Nurse Gilman." She says, her voice rushed and the words crushed together, "You can at least pay me the respect of calling me Dr. Marshall." She says, "Especially in front of a visitor." She says, "Especially if you're going to shout down the length of a hallway. It's a small courtesy, Nurse Gilman, but I think I've earned that, and I think if you start behaving like a professional yourself, you'll find everyone around you will be a great deal more cooperative... ."
By the time I get the newspaper from the dayroom, my mom's asleep. Her terrible yellow hands are crossed on her chest, a plastic hospital bracelet heat-sealed around one wrist.
Chapter 4
THE MOMENT DENNY BENDS OVER, his wig falls off and lands in the mud and horse poop and about two hundred Japanese tourists giggle and crowd forward to get his shaved head on videotape.
I go, "Sorry," and go to pick up the wig. It's not very white anymore, and it smells bad since, for sure, about a million dogs and chickens take a leak here every day.
Since he's bent over, his cravat hangs in his face, blinding him. "Dude," Denny says, "tell me what's happening."
Here I am, the backbone of early colonial America.
The stupid shit we do for money.
From the edge of the town square, His Lord High Charlie, the colonial governor, is watching us, standing with his arms crossed, his feet planted about ten feet apart. Milkmaids carry around buckets of milk. Cobblers hammer on shoes. The blacksmith bangs away on the same piece of metal, pretending the same as everybody else not to be watching Denny bent over in the middle of the town square, getting locked in the stocks again.
"They caught me chewing gum, dude," Denny says to my feet.
Being bent over, his nose starts to run, and he sniffs. "For sure," he says and sniffs, "His Highness is going to blab to the town council this time."
The wooden top half of the stocks swings closed to hold him around the neck, and I snug it down, careful not to pinch his skin. I say, "Sorry, dude, that's got to be way cold." Then I do the padlock. Then I fish a rag out of my waistcoat pocket.
A clear little drop of snot dangles off the tip of Denny's nose, so I hold the rag against it and say, "Blow, dude."
Denny blows a long rattling goob I feel slam into the rag.
The rag's pretty nasty and full already, but all I'd have to do is offer him a nice clean facial tissue and I'd be next in line for a disciplinary action. There's about countless ways you can screw up around here.
On the back of his head, somebody's felt-penned "Eat me" in bright red, so I shake out his shitty wig and try to cover the writing, except the wig's soaked full of nasty brown water that trickles around the shaved sides of his head and drips off the tip of his nose.
"I'm banished for sure," he says and sniffs.
Cold and starting to shake, Denny says, "Dude, I feel air... . I think my shirt's pulled out of my breeches in back."
He's right, and tourists are shooting his butt crack from every angle. The colonial governor is eyeballing this, and the tourists keep right on taping as I grab Denny's waistband in both hands and tug it back up.
Denny says, "The good part about being in the stocks is I've racked up three weeks of sobriety." He says, "At least this way I can't go in the privy every half hour and, you know, beat off."
And I say, "Careful with that recovery stuff, dude. You're liable to explode."
I take his left hand and lock it in place, then his right hand. Denny's spent so much of this past summer in the stocks he has white rings around his wrists and neck where he never gets any sun.
"Monday," he says, "I forgot and wore my wristwatch."
The wig slides off again, landing smack wet in the mud. His cravat, soaked in snot and crap, flaps in his face. The Japanese all giggle as if this is a gag we'd rehearsed.
The colonial governor keeps staring at Denny and me for signs of us being historically inappropriate so he can lobby the town council to banish us to the wilderness, just boot us out the town gate and let the savages shoot arrows and massacre our unem- ployed butts.
"Tuesday," Denny tells my shoes, "His Highness saw I had Chap Stick on my lips."
Every time I pick up the stupid wig, it weighs more. This time I slap it against the side of my boot before spreading it over the "Eat me" words.
"This morning," Denny says and sniffs. He spits some brown gunk that got in his mouth. "Before lunch, Goodwife Landson caught me smoking a cigarette behind the meetinghouse. Then, while I'm bent over here, somebody's little shitface fourth-grader grabs my wig off and writes that shit on my head."
With my snot rag I wipe the worst of the mess away from his eyes and mouth.
Some black-and-white chickens, chickens with no eyes or only one leg, these deformed chickens wander over to peck at the shiny buckles on my boots. The black- smith keeps beating his metal, two fast and then three slow beats, again and again, that you know is the bass line to an old Radiohead song he likes. Of course, he's ripped out of his mind on ecstasy.
A little milkmaid I know named Ursula catches my eye, and I shake my fist in front of my crotch, giving her the universal sign language for hand job. Blushing under her starchy white hat, Ursula slips a dainty pale hand out of her apron pocket and gives me the finger. Then she goes to jerk off some lucky cow all afternoon. That, and I know she lets the king's constable feel her up because one time he let me sniff his fingers.
Even from here, even over the horse shit, you can smell the reefer coming off her in a fog.
Milking cows, churning butter, for sure you know milkmaids must give great hand jobs.
"Goodwife Landson's a bitch," I tell Denny. "The minister guy says she gave him a scorching case of herpes."