The Circle (10 page)

This went on for an hour, and by the end, Mae was wrecked. The MS, her helplessness
to slow it, her inability to bring back the life her father had known—it tortured
her, but the insurance situation was something else, was an unnecessary crime, a piling-on.
Didn’t the insurance companies realize that the cost of their obfuscation, denial,
all the frustration they caused, only made her father’s health worse, and threatened
that of her mother? If nothing else, it was inefficient. The time spent denying coverage,
arguing, dismissing, thwarting—surely it was more trouble than simply granting her
parents access to the right care.

“Enough of this,” her mother said. “We brought you a surprise. Where is it? You have
it, Vinnie?”

They gathered on the high bed covered with a threadbare patchwork quilt, and her father
presented Mae with a small wrapped gift. The size and shape of the box suggested a
necklace, but Mae knew it couldn’t be that. When she got the wrapping off, she opened
the velvet box and laughed. It was a pen, one of the rarefied kind that’s silver and
strangely heavy, requiring care and filling and mostly for show.

“Don’t worry, we didn’t buy it,” Mae’s father said.

“Vinnie!” her mother wailed.

“Seriously,” he said, “we didn’t. A friend of mine gave it to me last year. He felt
bad I couldn’t work. I don’t know what kind of use he thought I’d have for a pen when
I can barely type. But this guy was never so bright.”

“We thought it would look good on your desk,” her mother added.

“Are we the best or what?” her father said.

Mae’s mother laughed, and most crucially, Mae’s father laughed. He laughed a big belly
laugh. In the second, calmer phase of their lives as parents, he’d become a laugher,
a constant laugher, a man who laughed at everything. It was the primary sound of Mae’s
teenage years. He laughed at things that were clearly funny, and at things that would
provoke just a smile in most, and he laughed when he should have been upset. When
Mae misbehaved, he thought it was hilarious. He’d caught her sneaking out of her bedroom
window one night, to see Mercer, and he’d practically keeled over. Everything was
comical, everything about her adolescence cracked him up. “You should have seen your
face when you saw me! Priceless!”

But then the MS diagnosis arrived and most of that was gone. The pain was constant.
The spells where he couldn’t get up, didn’t trust his legs to carry him, were too
frequent, too dangerous. He was in the emergency room weekly. And finally, with some
heroic efforts from Mae’s mom, he saw a few doctors who cared, and he was put on the
right drugs and stabilized, at least for a while. And then the insurance debacles,
the descent into this health care purgatory.

This night, though, he was buoyant, and her mother was feeling good, having found
some sherry in the B&B’s tiny kitchen, which she
shared with Mae. Her father was soon enough asleep in his clothes, over the covers,
with all the lights on, with Mae and her mother still talking at full volume. When
they noticed he was out cold Mae arranged a bed for herself at the foot of theirs.

In the morning they slept late and drove to a diner for lunch. Her father ate well,
and Mae watched her mother feign nonchalance, the two of them talking about a wayward
uncle’s latest bizarre business venture, something about raising lobsters in rice
paddies. Mae knew her mother was nervous, every moment, about her father, having him
out for two meals in a row, and watched him closely. He looked cheerful but his strength
faded quickly.

“You guys settle up,” he said. “I’m going to the car to recline for a moment.”

“We can help,” Mae said, but her mother hushed her. Her father was already up and
headed for the door.

“He gets tired. It’s fine,” her mother said. “It’s just a different routine now. He
rests. He does things, he walks and eats and is animated for a while, then he rests.
It’s very regular and very calming, to tell you the truth.”

They paid the bill and walked out to the parking lot. Mae saw the white wisps of her
father’s hair through the car window. Most of his head was below the windowframe,
reclined so far he was in the back seat. When they arrived at the car, they saw that
he was awake, looking up into the interlocking boughs of an unremarkable tree. He
rolled down the window.

“Well, this has been wonderful,” he said.

Mae made her goodbyes and left, happy to have the afternoon free. She drove west,
the day sunny and calm, the colors of the passing landscape simple and clear, blues
and yellows and greens. As she approached the coast, she turned toward the bay. She
could get a few hours of kayaking in if she hurried.

Mercer had introduced her to kayaking, an activity that until then she’d considered
awkward and dull. Sitting at the waterline, struggling to move that strange ice-cream-spoon
paddle. The constant twisting looked painful, and the pace seemed far too slow. But
then she’d tried it, with Mercer, using not professional-grade models but something
more basic, the kind the rider sits on top of, legs and feet exposed. They’d paddled
around the bay, moving far quicker than she’d expected, and they’d seen harbor seals,
and pelicans, and Mae was convinced this was a criminally underappreciated sport,
and the bay a body of water woefully underused.

They’d launched from a tiny beach, the outfitter requiring no training or equipment
or fuss; you just paid your fifteen dollars an hour and in minutes were on the bay,
cold and clear.

Today, she pulled off the highway and made her way to the beach, and there she found
the water placid, glassine.

“Hey you,” said a voice.

Mae turned to find an older woman, bowlegged and frizzy-haired. This was Marion, owner
of Maiden’s Voyages. She was the maiden, and had been for fifteen years, since she’d
opened the business, after striking it rich in stationery. She’d told Mae this during
her first rental, and told everyone this story, which Marion assumed was amusing,
that she’d made money selling stationery and opened a kayak and paddle-board rental
operation. Why Marion thought this was funny
Mae never knew. But Marion was warm and accommodating, even when Mae was asking to
take out a kayak a few hours before closing, as she was this day.

“Gorgeous out there,” Marion said. “Just don’t go far.”

Marion helped her pull the kayak across the sand and rocks and into the tiny waves.
She clicked on Mae’s life preserver. “And remember, don’t bother any of the houseboat
people. Their living rooms are at your eye level, so no snooping. You want footies
or a windbreaker today?” she asked. “Might get choppy.”

Mae declined and got into the kayak, barefoot and wearing the cardigan and jeans she
wore to brunch. In seconds she had paddled beyond the fishing boats, past the breakers
and paddle-boarders and was in the open water of the bay.

She saw no one. That this body of water was so seldom used had confounded her for
months. There were no jetskis here. Few casual fishermen, no waterskiers, the occasional
motorboat. There were sailboats, but not nearly as many as one would expect. The frigid
water was only part of it. Maybe there were simply too many other things to do outdoors
in Northern California? It was mysterious, but Mae had no complaint. It left more
water to her.

She paddled into the belly of the bay. The water did indeed get choppier, and cold
water washed over her feet. It felt good, so good she reached her hand down and scooped
a handful and drenched her face and the back of her neck. When she opened her eyes
she saw a harbor seal, twenty feet in front of her, staring at her as would a calm
dog whose yard she’d walked into. His head was rounded, grey, with the glossy sheen
of polished marble.

She kept her paddle on her lap, watching the seal as it watched
her. Its eyes were black buttons, unreflective. She didn’t move, and the seal didn’t
move. They were locked in mutual regard, and the moment, the way it stretched and
luxuriated in itself, asked for continuation. Why move?

A gust of wind came her way, and with it the pungent smell of the seal. She had noticed
this the last time she had kayaked, the strong smell of these animals, a cross between
tuna and unwashed dog. It was better to be upwind. As if suddenly embarrassed, the
seal ducked underwater.

Mae continued on, away from shore. She set a goal to make it to a red buoy she spotted,
near the bend of a peninsula, deep in the bay. Getting to it would take thirty minutes
or so, and en route, she would pass a few dozen anchored barges and sailboats. Many
had been made into homes of one kind or another, and she knew not to look into the
windows, but she couldn’t help it; there were mysteries aboard. Why was there a motorcycle
on this barge? Why a Confederate flag on that yacht? Far off, she saw a seaplane circling.

The wind picked up behind her, sending her quickly past the red buoy and closer to
the farther shore. She hadn’t planned to land there, and had never made it across
the bay, but soon it was in sight and coming quickly upon her, eelgrass visible beneath
her as the water went shallow.

She jumped out of the kayak, her feet landing on the stones, all rounded and smooth.
As she was pulling the kayak up, the bay rose up and engulfed her legs. It wasn’t
a wave; it was more of a sudden uniform rising of the water level. One second she
was standing on a dry shore and the next the water was at her shins and she was soaked.

When the water fell again, it left a wide swath of bizarre, bejeweled
seaweed—blue, and green, and, in a certain light, iridescent. She held it in her hands,
and it was smooth, rubbery, its edges ruffled extravagantly. Mae’s feet were wet,
and the water was snow cold but she didn’t mind. She sat on the rocky beach, picked
up a stick and drew with it, clicking through the smooth stones. Tiny crabs, unearthed
and annoyed, scurried to find new shelters. A pelican landed downshore, on the trunk
of a dead tree, which had been bleached white and leaned diagonally, rising from the
steel-grey water, pointing lazily to the sky.

And then Mae found herself sobbing. Her father was a mess. No, he wasn’t a mess. He
was managing it all with great dignity. But there had been something very tired about
him that morning, something defeated, accepting, as if he knew that he couldn’t fight
both what was happening in his body and the companies managing his care. And there
was nothing she could do for him. No, there was too much to do for him. She could
quit her job. She could quit and help make the phone calls, fight the many fights
to keep him well. This is what a good daughter would do. What a good child, an only
child, would do. A good only child would spend the next three to five years, which
might be his last years of mobility, of full capability, with him, helping him, helping
her mother, being part of the family machinery. But she knew her parents wouldn’t
let her do all that. They wouldn’t allow it. And so she would be caught between the
job she needed and loved, and her parents, whom she couldn’t help.

But it felt good to cry, to let her shoulders shake, to feel the hot tears on her
face, to taste their baby salt, to wipe snot all over the underside of her shirt.
And when she was done, she pushed the kayak out again and she found herself paddling
at a brisk pace. Once in the
middle of the bay, she stopped. Her tears were dry now, her breathing steady. She
was calm and felt strong, but instead of reaching the red buoy, which she no longer
had any interest in, she sat, her paddle on her lap, letting the waves tilt her gently,
feeling the warm sun dry her hands and feet. She often did this when she was far from
any shore—she just sat still, feeling the vast volume of the ocean beneath her. There
were leopard sharks in this part of the bay, and bat rays, and jellyfish, and the
occasional harbor porpoise, but she could see none of them. They were hidden in the
dark water, in their black parallel world, and knowing they were there, but not knowing
where, or really anything else, felt, at that moment, strangely right. Far beyond,
she could see where the mouth of the bay led to the ocean and there, making its way
through a band of light fog, she saw an enormous container ship heading into open
water. She thought about moving, but saw no point. There seemed no reason to go anywhere.
Being here, in the middle of the bay, nothing to do or see, was plenty. She stayed
there, drifting slowly, for the better part of an hour. Occasionally she would smell
that dog-and-tuna smell again, and turn to find another curious seal, and they would
watch each other, and she would wonder if the seal knew, as she did, how good this
was, how lucky they were to have all this to themselves.

By the late afternoon, the winds coming from the Pacific picked up, and getting back
to shore was trying. When she got home her limbs were leaden and her head was slow.
She made herself a salad and ate half a bag of chips, staring out the window. She
fell asleep at eight and slept for eleven hours.

The morning was busy, as Dan had warned her it would be. He’d gathered her and the
hundred-odd other CE reps at eight a.m., reminding them all that opening the chute
on Monday morning was always a hazardous thing. All the customers who wanted answers
over the weekend certainly expected them on Monday morning.

He was right. The chute opened, the deluge arrived, and Mae worked against the flood
until eleven or so, when there was something like respite. She’d handled forty-nine
queries and her score was at 91, her lowest aggregate yet.

Don’t worry
, Jared messaged.
Par for the course on Monday. Just go after as many follow-ups as you can
.

Mae had been following up all morning, with limited results. The clients were grumpy.
The only good news that morning came from the intra-company feed, when a message from
Francis appeared, asking her to lunch. Officially she and the other CE staff were
given an hour for the meal, but she hadn’t seen anyone else leave their desk for more
than twenty minutes. She gave herself that much time, though her mother’s words, equating
lunch with a monumental breach of duty, rattled in her mind.