Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,84

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America is America again, I said to myself the night Obama was elected. I said it not by mistake, but certainly without thinking—without, as Mandelstam wrote of God, having thought to speak. A little more than one month earlier, Eid had fallen on the second of October, the same evening Joe Biden braved Sarah Palin in the vice-presidential debate—the night Palin quoted Ronald Reagan as having said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. We have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them, so that they shall do the same, or we’re gonna find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free. But Reagan hadn’t been talking about national security. He’d been speaking, in 1961, on behalf of the Women’s Auxiliary of the American Medical Association, about the perils of socialized medicine—specifically, Medicare.

I was alone on Eid, in my apartment in West Hollywood, breaking the fast with some klaicha my mother had sent me, and as my dissertation was due to my advisor the following morning I was struggling to install a new ink cartridge with which to finish printing its forty-three pages of tables and notes. Meanwhile, listening to Governor Palin fire off her arsenal of errata, I began to wonder whether I hadn’t left it too late to go into politics after all. If you don’t like the way things are, change them. No use sitting around rolling your eyes. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, etc. But then Obama won and suddenly I did like the way things were, or were going to be, provided the damage done by his predecessors didn’t prove too tenacious or even irreparable. The political depression I’d suffered for nigh on eight years had lifted, and I even dared to imagine that the apparently superior qualities of our president-elect would ingratiate us anew beyond our shores. Or: Do those who hate us even care whom we vote into office? Or does our having elected someone who would seem to be intelligent and well-spoken, charming and prudent, farsighted and diplomatic—an altogether enviable leader—only make them hate us more?

The socialized medic examining me now was a pleasant man—gentle, efficient, and studiously indifferent to my crimes, whatever they were—but it was nonetheless a peculiar experience, this undergoing a checkup when I didn’t need one, when I hadn’t the mildest complaint other than the agony of my helplessness, when the physical well-being I wanted most to have confirmed was not my own but that of my now twice vanished brother. Dr. Lalwani had a strong Indian accent but otherwise flawless English and no fewer than four university certificates displayed on his wall, prompting me to wonder what level of success a British doctor must achieve in order to avoid working the Boxing Day night shift in the windowless innards of Terminal Five. Height: Five nine. Weight: Sixty-seven kilos—about ten and a half stone. Is that normal for you? Yes? Good. Now say Ahhhhhh. Now touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Now raise your arms. Now make two fists. Now push them against me. Good. Good. Touch your finger to your nose? Touch my finger? Now alternate as fast as you can. Bladder problems? Trouble ejaculating? Good. Now bend over. Now stand up, vertebra by vertebra. Now walk over there. Now come back to me. Good.

I’m just going to take some blood. Do you want to know if you test positive for HIV?

Well, I said, it’s extremely unlikely. But yes, I guess I would like to know.

He picked up a metal file and held it between us like a tiny orchestral baton. Now I want you to close your eyes, and each time you feel me touching this to one of your cheeks say now.

. . . Now.

Now.

Now.

Now.

Now.

Now.

Now.

Now.

Good. Now, still keeping your eyes closed, tell me: Does this feel sharp or dull?

Sharp.

Dull.

Sharp.

Dull.

Sharp.

Sharp.

Dull.

Dull.

Sharp.

Dull.

Good. Now, still keeping your eyes closed, tell me what each of these objects is, that I place in your hand.

A paper clip.

A key.

A pencil.

A dime.

He laughed. It was a five-pence piece. Trick question.

I watched him ride his swivel chair across the room to collect an ophthalmoscope from a mirrored tray before wheeling back and bringing his face so close to mine we could have