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Authors: Rufi Thorpe
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amount of sympathy for the Jim-Army decision.
Purportedly, he had done it so that they could have insurance for Zach, whose CP, it turned out, was diagnosed as more severe almost every time he was taken to the doctor. By the time he was two, Lorrie Ann and Jim were several hundred thousand in debt. Jim earned too much for them to qualify for Medicaid, but no private insurance would take them. I’m not saying their premiums would have been inhumanly high, I mean the insurance companies were actually saying no. Jim’s restaurant, being privately owned, didn’t offer any insurance to their employees. So he and Lorrie Ann were up shit creek, until Jim got the brilliant idea of joining the army.
If you asked Lorrie Ann, he’d practically martyred himself on behalf of their miserable little family, but, truthfully, he could have just gotten a full-time job with a corporate restaurant that offered its employees insurance. Hell, he could have gotten a job at Starbucks! (Lorrie Ann became so violently upset with me when I suggested this that I could hear the spittle flying from her mouth even over the phone, as she went on and on about how good the army insurance was and how the army was taking care of them and how cheap food was on base and their free housing and how naive it was of me to compare it to working at Starbucks. Yes, I wanted to say, but Starbucks doesn’t ask you to kill people. But I didn’t say that—how could I?)
In the end, I suspected, Jim joined the army because it seemed like it would be exciting, noble, violent, and also get him away from their claustrophobic little house, where Zach was refusing more and more to live up to Jim’s hopes for him, and where Lorrie Ann was slowly transforming into some kind of dim-witted saint. She had begun blogging. I’m not kidding. Lorrie Ann had begun blogging a terrifying admixture of casserole recipes, updates on Zach’s surgeries, and weird poems thatalleged that Zach was an angel sent from the Lord to teach her and Jim about the beauty of sacrifice. Some days it was just a creepy one-liner:
Zach’s life is more important for those around him than it is for himself
.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Lorrie Ann. “I just really needed someone to talk to.” Space’s body was on my balcony. What to do with it? In the morning I supposed I would call the vet and see if they did cremations or if I needed to call Animal Control. I had never dealt with an animal’s dead body in a legitimate way. When our pets died when I was a child, my mom would have us put the body in a cardboard box and drive around until we found a construction site with a Dumpster.
“I know,” she said, “I know, it’s hard when a pet dies.”
“But if you don’t have time …” I trailed off, shamelessly trying to guilt her into talking to me. She was my only friend! Actually, I had made many friends at Yale, even at UMich, but they were have-a-drink-at-the-pub friends, not my-dog-is-dead-on-the-balcony friends.
Lorrie Ann sighed. “Mia,” she said. “I know you really don’t want to hear this, but … it’s just a dog. I know it feels like this big profound thing right now, the nature of mortality and all that, but it only feels big and profound because it just happened, like just now. It won’t feel like such a big deal tomorrow, and in a couple of months it won’t seem like a big deal at all. So, just, you know, like, have a drink and rent a movie or something.”
I am sure that my eyes bugged cartoonishly out of my head. Lorrie Ann had never, not ever, said anything so cold to me before. Lorrie Ann was always nice—that was her role, to be caring and sweet and kind and call me Mia-Bear. What was even worse was that what she said reverberated with the chilling, metallic ring of truth. I would remember forever what Space’s dead body felt like in my arms, but eventually the experience would shrink until it fit in line with the other events in my life.
“I’ve gotta
Purportedly, he had done it so that they could have insurance for Zach, whose CP, it turned out, was diagnosed as more severe almost every time he was taken to the doctor. By the time he was two, Lorrie Ann and Jim were several hundred thousand in debt. Jim earned too much for them to qualify for Medicaid, but no private insurance would take them. I’m not saying their premiums would have been inhumanly high, I mean the insurance companies were actually saying no. Jim’s restaurant, being privately owned, didn’t offer any insurance to their employees. So he and Lorrie Ann were up shit creek, until Jim got the brilliant idea of joining the army.
If you asked Lorrie Ann, he’d practically martyred himself on behalf of their miserable little family, but, truthfully, he could have just gotten a full-time job with a corporate restaurant that offered its employees insurance. Hell, he could have gotten a job at Starbucks! (Lorrie Ann became so violently upset with me when I suggested this that I could hear the spittle flying from her mouth even over the phone, as she went on and on about how good the army insurance was and how the army was taking care of them and how cheap food was on base and their free housing and how naive it was of me to compare it to working at Starbucks. Yes, I wanted to say, but Starbucks doesn’t ask you to kill people. But I didn’t say that—how could I?)
In the end, I suspected, Jim joined the army because it seemed like it would be exciting, noble, violent, and also get him away from their claustrophobic little house, where Zach was refusing more and more to live up to Jim’s hopes for him, and where Lorrie Ann was slowly transforming into some kind of dim-witted saint. She had begun blogging. I’m not kidding. Lorrie Ann had begun blogging a terrifying admixture of casserole recipes, updates on Zach’s surgeries, and weird poems thatalleged that Zach was an angel sent from the Lord to teach her and Jim about the beauty of sacrifice. Some days it was just a creepy one-liner:
Zach’s life is more important for those around him than it is for himself
.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Lorrie Ann. “I just really needed someone to talk to.” Space’s body was on my balcony. What to do with it? In the morning I supposed I would call the vet and see if they did cremations or if I needed to call Animal Control. I had never dealt with an animal’s dead body in a legitimate way. When our pets died when I was a child, my mom would have us put the body in a cardboard box and drive around until we found a construction site with a Dumpster.
“I know,” she said, “I know, it’s hard when a pet dies.”
“But if you don’t have time …” I trailed off, shamelessly trying to guilt her into talking to me. She was my only friend! Actually, I had made many friends at Yale, even at UMich, but they were have-a-drink-at-the-pub friends, not my-dog-is-dead-on-the-balcony friends.
Lorrie Ann sighed. “Mia,” she said. “I know you really don’t want to hear this, but … it’s just a dog. I know it feels like this big profound thing right now, the nature of mortality and all that, but it only feels big and profound because it just happened, like just now. It won’t feel like such a big deal tomorrow, and in a couple of months it won’t seem like a big deal at all. So, just, you know, like, have a drink and rent a movie or something.”
I am sure that my eyes bugged cartoonishly out of my head. Lorrie Ann had never, not ever, said anything so cold to me before. Lorrie Ann was always nice—that was her role, to be caring and sweet and kind and call me Mia-Bear. What was even worse was that what she said reverberated with the chilling, metallic ring of truth. I would remember forever what Space’s dead body felt like in my arms, but eventually the experience would shrink until it fit in line with the other events in my life.
“I’ve gotta
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