Listen to a podcast of Patrick Allen Carberry’s “A Happier Tree”
The man knows almost nothing about trees. He tries to picture an Oak as the doctor speaks at length about his new condition. The doctor uses doctor-talk, sees that most of it goes over his patient’s head. The man isn’t sure what started him thinking about trees. Linden and Birch and Sycamore. Do their leaves turn orange or yellow or red? The doctor takes a deep breath then gives the simplified, layman’s explanation: “It’s petrified.” The “it” is the small Abductor Pollicis Brevis muscle at the base of the man’s right thumb. The man thinks That’s funny, I was just thinking about trees.
“Petrified?” the man asks.
“Petrified,” says the doctor.
“Like a tree?”
“Almost exactly like a tree.”
“What makes it different?”
“Well, you’re not a tree.”
“Alright. What can we do?”
“As it turns out, not a whole lot.”
“What?”
“If we cut the muscle out, that’s just as good as it being petrified.”
“That’s all you can do? Cut it out?”
“There aren’t a lot of treatment options.”
“What are the options? Are there options?”
“We can cut it out or we can leave it in. Those are our options”
“There’s no option that makes it unpetrified?”
“No. That’s not an option.”
“I hate our options.”
“Really it’s your option. What we do is entirely up to you.”
The man looks at the thumb. He didn’t think this was going to be a big deal. The only reason he went to the doctor was because news anchors with painted hair and cellophane eyes have been talking about the uninsured. They contort their paper faces to convey how awful it must be to not have health insurance. Poor poor people, their faces say. The man has health insurance through his mother and was planning on getting her money’s worth. The gravity of his situation surpasses his expectation. He thought that the sensation might have been carpel tunnel. He thought he was going to need to re-learn how to use the home row keys when typing or stop masturbating for a while.
Petrifaction hadn’t entered his mind. The grey skin, the stiffness, the sound it makes when he flicks it, the fact that he can’t bend it certain ways—his thumb is petrified.
“If I leave it in, will it spread?” the man asks. He doesn’t look up.
The doctor takes another deep breath, holds his lungs as full as they can go; he smiles through clenched teeth and shakes his head. The doctor doesn’t know. The man doesn’t look up to see the doctor’s unsure face. He assumes that the absence of an answer means that there is no medical consensus.
“No medical consensus?”
“No.”
“I need to think about it,” the man says. “But I’m pretty sure that I’m going to want to keep it. I want to see where it’s going.” The man has a pretty good feeling that he knows where it’s going.
He says nothing else.
“Nothing wrong with that decision at all,” says the doctor. “But let’s schedule a follow up appointment for next week, next Thursday—just to see how you’re holding up? Sound good?”
“That sounds fine.”
Out in the waiting room, the man’s roommate sits in a bright orange chair that’s connected to a row of other bright orange chairs. Warning cones. The roommate is the only person in the waiting room.
“What’s the verdict?” the man’s roommate asks.
“It’s a weird one.”
The roommate grunts and raises his eyebrows, “Weird,” he says, “is a broad word.”
“My thumb is petrified.”
“That is weird.” Both men stand, not sure of what to say. A thoughtful roommate may have offered a consoling touch or a tilted head. A decent person may have asked “are you alright?” The actual roommate asks “Do you want to stop at IHOP on the way home?”
“IHOP?”
“You know—to get over the thumb thing.”
“uh—”
“Pancakes,” says the roommate, as if this is an answer to a previously asked and very important question.
“I haven’t been to an IHOP in years,” the man says.
“Right.”
“Yeah, let’s. I’ve never been more in the mood for a Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity.” Fir, Cypress, Larch, he thinks.
When they get to the IHOP, the man orders a Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity and the waitress smiles at him. “I know it’s corny, but I never don’t not think that’s funny,” she says.
“I never don’t not think?” the man says. He forgets his thumb and picks up his water glass with his four non-opposable fingers. It slides out his hand like one of those bank teller’s tubes. The glass shatters on the table. Ice and water mingle with shards of glass. It’s a dangerous cocktail party. Everyone has dressed too similar to be comfortable.
“Are you okay?” the waitress blurts.
“Fine. I just— ”
“Don’t move. Don’t move. Let me get a towel.”
The man pockets one of the larger glass pieces.
She returns and scoops up the shattered glass. “It’s not a big deal. Someone breaks a glass or a plate like every day. It feels like I’m constantly at some Jewish wedding.”
“What?” says the man.
“Oh, that’s so embarrassing. I’m not, like, Jew-racist.”
“Jew-racist?” the man’s roommate asks.
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean—I’m not. You’re not—oh. No. I’ll be right back.”
A new waitress brings their food and doesn’t crack a smile when she says “Who got the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity?” The man raises his good hand, makes a promise.
The two men eat their meals and leave cash on the table. No one says goodbye as they exit the building. No one says anything.
While his roommate parks, the man walks up the flight of stairs to their apartment. He uses his index finger to scroll through his phone. He’s used this finger before, and it’s possible he would have anyway. The thumb is missed but not mourned. He finds “Mom” and dials.
“Hey, mom,” the man says. The hallway echoes silence back at him.
“Yeah, we just left.” The man tells his first lie.
“It’s petrified,” he says.
“I don’t think— ” Conscious of the care needed, he switches the phone to his good hand, waits, takes his keys out of his pocket, switches back, opens the door without difficulty. “Mom, no. Mom—”
The apartment doesn’t talk or move or change; it’s still. He throws his keys on the kitchen counter. Everything he owns is exactly where he left it.
“No, it doesn’t really—”
He boiled pasta yesterday and left the pot on the stove, the extra noodles in a colander next to the sink. The gas bill hangs on the refrigerator. His roommate left a half eaten cheese sandwich on the coffee table in the living room. If the man and his roommate never came back to this apartment, these things would fall apart, mold, turn beige and brittle with time.
“It’s not cancer,” the man says. “Because it’s not.”
“Mom, you haven’t let me—” he says.
“I tried telling you. The doctor— ” he says.
“You’re right. That is what’s important,” he says
“I’m healthy.” The man lies for a second time. He lies out of pity and obligation.
“I love you too, mom,” the man says. He doesn’t return the favor of telling a god to bless her. He pretends that there’s no reason for her to burn her casserole, to worry. The man hangs up and takes the shard of glass out of his pocket.
It’s wet and sharp. Spruce, he thinks, pine.
He considers stabbing the stone muscle, digging it out. The man walks around with the shard in hand, squeezing it, pinching it between flesh and rock. The carpet makes a squeaking noise that he’s never noticed before. He could cut the muscle out; it is possible to cut it out. An airplane outside sounds like someone is constantly exhaling, and the roommate’s footsteps send the man into his bedroom. He puts the shard on the top ridge of his headboard. He won’t touch it again. No one will. It will gather dust and lose its edge.
The man’s room is clean which makes it seem empty, in want of a more lived life. He stands in front of his window, projects a man shaped shadow on the white closet door. He raises his arms, stretches his legs, moves all the muscles he can find. Human gears bend inside; it’s a good feeling.
In spite of the daylight, the man sleeps. He curls up under his sheets, sleeps for hours and hours, lets his body dissolve or the opposite of dissolve—turn to stone. His sleep is passive compliance.
When he wakes up, his left leg is stiff.
The day after, the man can’t bend the second toe on his left foot, touch his ear to either shoulder, fully arch his back. He can’t make a fist with his left hand. It’s a while before he finds it all, a while to take full inventory. Standing in front of his closet door, the man inspects his body by sliding a hand over it like a blind sculptor trying to learn the shape of someone else’s life. The man tries to learn the shape of his own life. He doesn’t know it anymore. He’s never known it. That’s obvious now.
The man does very little. He microwaves the soups and boxed foods that have collected in his cabinets like dust bunnies. He sleeps, wanders around the apartment, looks out windows.
His roommate asks “Hey, are you alright man?”
The man smiles. “Yeah, just tired.”
“Cool, if you need to go back to the doctor or whatever—”
“Appointment for this Thursday.”
“Want me to drive again?”
“Sure.”
The man sits at his desk. He tries not to think about moving—what it used to feel like. He breathes. The man looks at a pen and then his hand, considers trying to write his name—considers what that ink would mean. He doesn’t write his name, doesn’t write anything. Nothing told is nothing known. It’s always a choice.
By Thursday the man is ashen and inflexible. He lumbers. It takes fifteen minutes to walk to his roommate’s car, and when he gets in, the rims creak. The man tries to get his phone out of his pocket to do something unnecessary like check the time, but struggles. His frozen thumb is looped on the side of his jeans and he can’t unwedge it.
“Help,” the man says.
“Help? How?” the roommate asks.
“Jesus,” says the man. Something hardens, he can’t move his leg. “You’re going to need to call my mom and tell her I said love her and that I asked for her and that I was happy and not afraid, and that whole thing. Just make stuff up.”
“I can’t—”
“Just tell her I was happy.” His Flexor Hallucis Longus fails.
“Okay.”
“Happy.”
“Okay.”
“That matters. Say that.”
The car stops at a red. There’s a fountain with woodland creatures and children frolicking. The man’s chest strains and his Rhomboid Minor tenses. It will not untense. He needs to plan the position he’s going to die in—he will not allow chance positions to claim him.
He says,“We’re not going to the hospital.”
“What!”
“There’s nothing they can do.”
“They can—”
“There are no options.”
“What am I suppose to do?”
“Find a forest.”
“A forest?”
“Please,” says the man. “Happy and forest.” His last words—the Masseter muscle has failed.
His roommate repeats the words.
“Happy and forest.”
It’s not a forest, but there are trees. The roommate pulls over—over a curb, over some grass. He runs around to the passenger side and opens the door. The man raises both arms. He won’t be able to lower them again. The roommate pulls him from the car and stands him in front of the tree line. The man is upright, arms overhead, fingers wrenched at the sky.
The last four muscles go together: Orbicularis Oculi and Levator Palpebrae Superioris—his eyelids—freeze. The man’s eyes do what all eyes do when left open; they water. They send streams down his face, down his neck, into the crook of his collarbone, under his shirt. He can’t feel anything.
The roommate calls the mother.
The man’s clothes wear away. His fingernails fall off, and his skin sags and melts to expose—where his stomach and spleen and heart and yards and yards of intestine should be—moss.
About the author:
Patrick Allen Carberry lives in Chicago and teaches English at the College of Lake County. His fiction has appeared in decomP magazinE, Fiction at Work, and in the Chicago reading series The Encyclopedia Show. He likes chocolate milkshakes made with chocolate ice cream.
