The Thanatos Syndrome

spindrift of the waves being like the spindrift of the heart, etc.
    Now, admittedly there is still some cause for alarm here: Ella setting too much store by walking on a winter beach and writing a poem about spindrift. There are at least a thousand women poets in America, mostly in California and New England, who walk on beaches and write poems about spindrift, spindrift of the waves, spindrift of the heart. Beware of women poets who write about spindrift. There is a certain peril in this enterprise. She could easily shoot herself down. The winter beach and the spindrift, relied on too much, could let you down. But at least I understood her and she me. We transmit on the same wavelength. She was functioning, living, not trembling, taking herself less seriously, had come to terms with failure. Her children were doing well in school, were happy, had not yet fallen prey to the miseries of adulthood.
    Cure? No. What’s a cure in this day and age? Maybe a cure is knowing there is no cure. But I helped her and she me. She gave me a gift which I liked. I still have her two volumes of Feliciana Farewell on my shelf.
    So here she is two years later.
    She had called earlier, saying she needed my testimony in an industrial liability case, that it meant big bucks.
    Big bucks? That didn’t sound like Ella.
    I am waiting on the porch when she shows up. She arrives in a Nissan pickup with gun racks in the rear window. She’s wearing an elbow cast. The driver stays in the truck, a fellow in a yellow hardhat. I ask her if he’s going to wait for her.
    She laughs. “Don’t worry about Mel. Let’s go inside.”
    I follow her in. The change in her is startling. Her hair is cut short, dyed pinkish-blond, as crimped and stiff as steel wool. She’s wearing long shorts, the kind that pull up over the stomach, and she’s got a stomach, but the bottoms are rolled up high on her thigh. Her clear plastic shoes have openwork over the toes. Jellies, I think they’re called. About two dollars a pair from K-Mart. She looks like a Westwego bingo player.
    It seems she has returned to Louisiana, gotten a job with Mitsy, the local nuclear utility at Grand Mer.
    Now I’ve got nothing against Westwego types—they can be, often are, canny, shrewd, generous women, good folks. But there’s something about the way she plays the part—yes, that’s it, she’s playing it and not too well, somewhat absentmindedly.
    But I’m fond of her. When she makes as if to give me a hug, I give her a hug. She’s bigger.
    â€œHow you doing, Doc?”
    â€œI’m fine. I’m glad to see you.”
    â€œI hear you been having trouble.”
    â€œYes. But I’m all right now. Do you have trouble?”
    â€œOld Doc. You always been my bud.”
    â€œThanks, Ella.” It’s time she let go, but she hugs me tight, a jolly, nonsexual hug, like a good old Westwego girl.
    â€œDear old Doc. Tell me something.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œYou getting much, Doc?”
    â€œWhat? Oh.” Well, so much for the spindrift of the heart. “What happened to your arm, Ella?” I ask, holding her off to take a look.
    â€œYou’re not going to believe this, Doc.”
    Maybe I won’t, but it’s a relief to get her into a chair, aggrieved and telling me her troubles.
    I am wondering about Mel out in the truck.
    She goes into a long rigmarole about getting abused by her superior at Mitsy, a person named Fat Alice, who beat her up and broke her arm—and then getting fired. She wants to sue Mitsy for a million dollars and wants me to testify about her mental health.
    â€œThe real boss, who is also her boss, says he knows you,” she concludes.
    â€œWho is that?”
    â€œMr. Beck. Albert J. Beck.”
    â€œBubba Beck? Yes, we went to high school together. Don’t you remember him? He was all-state quarterback.”
    â€œWill you call him?”
    â€œYes. What is it you really want, Ella?”
    â€œI want my old job back and I want him to tell Fat Alice to leave me alone.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œTell him also that thanks to Fat Alice I was also exposed to radioactive sodium and have been rendered sterile.”
    â€œAll right.”
    I reach Bubba at home. Although I haven’t spoken to him for twenty years he doesn’t seem surprised.
    â€œHow you doing, Ace?” asks Bubba.
    â€œI’m fine. I have a patient