FEET DREAMS October/November, 2006 (Henry is 43)

FEET DREAMS


October/November, 2006 (Henry is 43)

HENRY: I dream that I am at the Newberry, giving a Show and Tell to some graduate
students from Columbia College. I’m showing them incunabula, early printed books.
I show them the Gutenberg Fragment, Caxton’s Game and Play of Chess, the Jensen
Eusebius. It’s going well, they are asking good questions. I rummage around on the
cart, looking for this special book I just found in the stacks, something I never knew
we had. It’s in a heavy red box. There’s no title, just the call number, CASE WING f


ZX 983.D 453, stamped in gold under the Newberry insignia. I place the box on the
table and set out the pads. I open the box, and there, pink and perfect, are my feet.
They are surprisingly heavy. As I set them on the pads the toes all wiggle, to say Hi,
to show me they can still do it. I begin to speak about them, explaining the relevance
of my feet to fifteenth century Venetian printing. The students are taking notes. One
of them, a pretty blonde in a shiny sequined tank top, points at my feet, and says,
“Look, they’re all white!” And it’s true, the skin has gone dead white, the feet are
lifeless and putrid. I sadly make a note to myself to send them up to Conservation
first thing tomorrow.

In my dream I am running. Everything is fine. I run along the lake, from Oak
Street Beach, heading north. I feel my heart pumping, my lungs smoothly rising and
falling. I am moving right along. What a relief, I think. I was afraid I’d never run
again, but here I am, running. It’s great.

But things begin to go wrong. Parts of my body are falling off. First my left arm
goes. I stop and pick it up off the sand and brush it off and put it back on, but it isn’t
very securely attached and it comes off again after only half a mile. So I carry it in
my other arm, thinking maybe when I get it back home I can attach it more tightly.
But then the other arm goes, and I have no arms at all to even pick up the arms I’ve
lost. So I continue running. It’s not too bad; it doesn’t hurt. Soon I realize that my
cock has dislodged and fallen into the right leg of my sweatpants, where it is banging
around in an annoying manner, trapped by the elastic at the bottom. But I can’t do
anything about it, so I ignore it. And then I can feel that my feet are all broken up like
pavement inside my shoes, and then both of my feet break off at the ankles and I fall
face-first onto the path. I know that if I stay there I will be trampled by other runners,
so I begin to roll. I roll and roll until I roll into the lake, and the waves roll me under,
and I wake up gasping.

I dream that I am in a ballet. I am the star ballerina, I am in my dressing room
being swathed in pink tulle by Barbara, who was my mom’s dresser. Barbara is a
tough cookie, so even though my feet hurt like hell I don’t complain as she tenderly
encases the stumps in long pink satin toe shoes. When she finishes I stagger up from
my chair and cry out. “Don’t be a sissy,” says Barbara, but then she relents and gives
me a shot of morphine. Uncle Ish appears at the door of the dressing room and we
hurry down endless backstage hallways. I know that my feet hurt even though I
cannot see them or feel them. We rush on, and suddenly I am in the wings and
looking onto the stage I realize that the ballet is The Nutcracker, and I am the Sugar
Plum Fairy. For some reason this really bugs me. This isn’t what I was expecting. But
someone gives me a little shove, and I totter on stage. And I dance. I am blinded by


the lights, I dance without thinking, without knowing the steps, in an ecstasy of pain.
Finally I fall to my knees, sobbing, and the audience rises to their feet, and applauds.

Friday, November 3, 2006 (Clare is 35, Henry is 43)

CLARE: Henry holds up an onion and looks at me gravely and says, “ This...is an
onion.”

I nod. “Yes. I’ve read about them.”

He raises one eyebrow. “Very good. Now, to peel an onion, you take a sharp knife,
lay the aforementioned onion sideways on a cutting board, and remove each end, like
so. Then you can peel the onion, like so. Okay. Now, slice it into cross-sections. If
you’re making onion rings, you just pull apart each slice, but if you’re making soup
or spaghetti sauce or something you dice it, like this..”

Henry has decided to teach me to cook. All the kitchen counters and cabinets are
too high for him in his wheelchair. We sit at the kitchen table, surrounded by bowls
and knives and cans of tomato sauce. Henry pushes the cutting board and knife across
the table to me, and I stand up and awkwardly dice the onion. Henry watches
patiently. “Okay, great. Now, green peppers: you run the knife around here, then pull
out the stem...”

We make marinara sauce, pesto, lasagna. Another day it’s chocolate chip cookies,
brownies, creme brulee. Alba is in heaven. “More dessert,” she begs. We poach eggs
and salmon, make pizza from scratch. I have to admit that it’s kind of fun. But I’m
terrified the first night I cook dinner by myself. I’m standing in the kitchen
surrounded by pots and pans, the asparagus is overcooked and I burn myself taking
the monkfish out of the oven. I put everything on plates and bring it into the dining
room where Henry and Alba are sitting at their places. Henry smiles, encouragingly. I
sit down; Henry raises his glass of milk in the air: “To the new cook!” Alba clinks her
cup against his, and we begin to eat. I sneak glances at Henry, eating. And as I’m
eating, I realize that everything tastes fine. “It’s good, Mama!” Alba says, and Henry
nods. “It’s terrific, Clare,” Henry says, and we stare at each other and I think, Don’t
leave me.