the brain
It began with an itch. A mild, passing itch on my left thigh. I felt it again, in the exact same spot, the next day. It was August and I was prone to mosquito bites, so I sprayed it with a sting relief concoction and let it be. Within the week, the discomfort intensified. On the way home from campus, the itching grew so unbearable that I pulled over on the side of the road to tend to myself. I could not sleep through nights without madly scratching at the spot. Still, when I inspected the locale, I found only the red streaks left behind by my fingers. Two weeks after the initial sensation, I noticed a protuberance beginning to form. I asked Levi, my husband, to look at it.
“It looks like a vein,” he said, peering at my inner thigh. I propped my leg on the brim of the bathtub for better viewing. “A big, pink vein.”
When I asked for his insight, he suggested I daub it with calamine and wait for an improvement. Satisfied with his diagnosis, he returned to the garage. In his spare time, he hand-carved marionettes and staged miniature adaptations of well-known texts. He put on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis to a sold-out crowd at our local theatre. The New Hope Gazette called it “an inspired triumph of craftsmanship and a refreshing interpretation.”
For a brief time, Levi’s solution seemed to help.
One morning, while reading my students’ short stories, my head started to throb. The clack of the keys and the patter of rain on the window echoed in my ears, like screeching orchestral strings. The noise dizzied me. I reclined in my chair and massaged my temples. My mind raced to the inevitable conclusion that the source of the pulsating pain was a tumor, lodged somewhere in my frontal lobe. Without my knowledge, it had been sitting and growing there for months, maybe years, ready to reduce me to a vegetable. A lump of flesh, fed a blend of liquid vitamins through a rubber tube, scrubbed weekly to prevent bedsores and the stench of rot. After two pills of Advil, the headache subsided and I forgot all about my imminent debilitation.
In another week, the rash had spread down the entirety of my leg. Before stepping into the shower, I noticed it as I sauntered past the mirror: a salmon-colored strip of skin that protruded like a cyst and resembled the braids of a challah. I poked it with my finger. It absorbed the pressure and when I retracted my digit, I found it coated with a gloopy substance. A young woman of 33, my skin had been sans blemishes since I conquered puberty. Sunscreen, moisturizers infused with aloe and charcoal root, monthly spa peels and facials—I had taken every protective and preventative measure to maintain my healthy skin and avoid such a blotch.
I stepped into the shower and turned the knob to its left-most limit. I hoped that the heat might boil away the unwelcome breakout. Instead, the water angered the pulpy patch of tissue. I vigorously scrubbed the area with my loofah, creating an almost electrical friction, until the locale of the irritation grew numb. I would have kept going if my hand didn’t cramp. Wiping away the froth of soap bubbles, I anticipated the sight of normal skin. Once again, though, I saw the palpitating splotch.
Could the rash and headache have been symptoms from the same culprit? Had I contracted some novel disease, ferried over to my secluded hometown of New Hope, Pennsylvania—population 2,513, including livestock—by a stowaway arachnid who nipped me in the night and imprecated me as patient zero? I toweled off and wriggled into a loose-fitting pair of sweatpants. Soap still foamed in my hair as I sped to my dermatologist.
* * *
“Frankly, Catherine, I’ve never seen anything like this.” Dr. Pinkus stood with his arms crossed in his ironed, starched white coat. Too white for a doctor who specialized in pimples and puss.
“Well, can’t you take a guess?”
“There’s absolutely nothing that it compares to. Believe me, I’m always up to date on the recent literature. I’d surely have heard about it.”
“That’s it, you’re stumped? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to walk around with this thing on my thigh?”
“I can give you some topical cream,” he said, “but, truthfully, I doubt you’ll experience any positive effect.”
Doctors are meant to be rational and realistic in their diagnoses, but just that once, I wanted a soothing “We’ll get to the bottom of this” or a reassurance in the exactness and problem-solving capacities of science.
I put my hand over my eyes. My heartbeat turned arrhythmic. Nausea spread from my core to the rest of my body. I sensed my skin pale. Before I lost my bearings or fainted, Dr. Pinkus guided me to a chair. He told me to wait while he fetched a glass of water. If I could have opened my eyes without seeing the room shift, I would have argued. Demanded answers, gotten my money’s worth. I took the prescription for the ointment and skulked home.
The next morning, I woke up feeling soft. It was as though my mattress—a delightful memory-foam model that molded around my shape—and I morphed into one plush being. I removed my sleep mask and glared at my arms. The dermatitis (since there is, of yet, no agreed upon medical term for my condition, I will classify it generally) on my leg had spread further. I was now covered in a pink, braided epidermis. Like two links of kielbasa, my arms lie stretched atop the comforter. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them, again and again, but the sausages in front of me remained, in their three-dimensional cured-ness.
I bounded out of bed and looked down at the site of my slumber. On our 400 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, a treacly puddle outlined my body’s silhouette. That’s when the shrieking started. Levi rolled over and stretched his arm into the empty space. Instead of touching the warm, supple body of his wife, he submerged his palm into an opaque goo. It took several moments for him to register my screams and the substance on his hand.
“Oh my God,” he said. When he caught sight of me, he shuddered and yelped. “Catherine, what the hell is this?”
“I don’t know, how could I know? I woke up and here I was. Is this a dream, are we dreaming? Pinch me. No, never mind, don’t pinch me. Fuck. Levi, I don’t know what to do. You have to calm me down. You have to sedate me. Something. Say something.”
He stammered and stumbled over his words. Maybe he was having a stroke, but I could only think of myself and the rash, the eruption, the scourge that swathed me like a bacterial blanket.
“Doctor. You need to see a doctor.” He scrambled for the phone with his right hand and kept his left hand, coated with my dribble, raised.
“I’ve already been to Dr. Pinkus. He couldn’t help me. He didn’t even know what this… condition is.”
“Okay, okay, well, what about the emergency room? Or—no, the Mayo Clinic?”
“The Mayo Clinic? You want to pack up and drive to Minnesota? And, in case you’ve forgotten, the Mayo Clinic isn’t just some local hospital. I can’t stroll in there and demand treatment.”
“Maybe if they see you, they’ll help you,” he said and stopped dialing. “These aren’t normal circumstances.”
Three years. Only three years that Levi and I had been married after a rocky relationship through most of our twenties. Amid the arguments and broken glass, we adored one another. Our wedding was an intimate gathering, at our friend’s summer home in Connecticut. The weather was sublime. We danced under the pavilion until midnight.
I’ll admit, I began to have doubts when he took up puppetry as a hobby. Puppets are one tier above Disney-obsessed adults and doll collectors on the scale of unsettling interests. He said he liked building something with his hands. Made him feel more virile. His improved carpentry skills certainly helped with little fixes around the house. Leaky faucets or tangled electrical wires that required dexterous fingers. The marionettes filled him with joy, so I decided to forgive my first hesitations. Besides, when it came to work, we kept to ourselves. I retired to my office to write and prepare lectures for my MFA students and Levi holed up in his workshop, whittling away at his newest wooden character. There was a certain freedom to our marriage that both of us benefitted from. Not like those torturously twee, joined-at-the-hip couples who secretly served as cautionary tales among their peers. Thankfully, Levi and I were individuals, of two brains.
What happened to me next is unclear. My memory of the incident itself and its duration is missing. This sounds like blatant subterfuge, yes, but nevertheless, it is the truth. Really, I am grateful to have suffered an amnesiac episode. I would not have liked to know what my body underwent that night. I imagine pain and terror were prominent factors, as well as squalling and panicking. In the interest of sustaining your interest, I will skip to what you have been waiting to read, what is the tantalizing substance of this narrative. What is the cerebral backbone, if you will.
* * *
I am a brain. A 140-pound, human-sized brain. My composition is mostly fat—approximately 60%, I have been informed by the gaggle of researchers who flocked to examine my condition. Exactly as you might imagine, I am just a brain, detached from the spinal column. The last nub of my anatomy, what was once my ass, is the walnut-like cerebellum. My complexion is pale, not unlike a cow’s snout. I speak through a fold in my temporal lobe and see through a sliver in my occipital lobe. My anatomical structure adds to the already complex task of communication. In conversation, I am unable to both speak to and see my interlocutor. My sight is as clear as peering through a swollen eye. Speech, too, is muffled by flabs of fat. People must hide their disgust and lean in close to hear me speak.
Scientists probed my wrinkles—sulci, the official term. They labored for days and weeks in their high-tech, high-funded laboratories, deciphering the source of the phenomenon that befell me, Catherine Herman, a respectable author residing in a tiny southeastern Pennsylvania town. The phenomenon did not take place on Mars, and it did not affect an interesting individual like a Tibetan monk. It happened to an ordinary woman, someone you might run into at the local market or while filling your tank at the gas station.
An EEG revealed no abnormal readings. The boffins found no suspicious lumps or indications of impaired judgment. The MRI came back crystal clear. I had maintained a positive circadian rhythm, clocked in an average of eight hours a night. With tennis, jogging, and Pilates, I overshot the weekly exercise suggestions. Every morning, I solved the New York Times crossword and did sudoku for fun. My blood pressure hovered at 120/80, my LDL cholesterol read well below the 100 mg/dL optimal limit, and likewise for my blood glucose levels. On paper, one could not argue about the healthfulness of my lifestyle. Boasting such optimal numbers, combined with my favorable genetics, I was destined to reach, and even surpass, triple digits in age. Those habits transformed me into the paragon of a brain. When they tested my memory, I recalled the names of our presidents and vice presidents in chronological order after hearing them recited only once. In similar fashion, I memorized and performed Poe’s “The Raven.”
The first several days in the hospital, I drifted in and out of consciousness, waking in seizure. I begged the doctors to tell me this was all a nightmare, or that I was experiencing the hallucinatory side effects of heavy sedation. Each time I awoke, I relived the horror of my experience. Every day, the doctors repeated what had happened to me: “You seem to have transformed into a brain. We’re not sure what caused it, but we’re doing our best to find out. Stay calm and be patient.” “Calm” and “patient” were no longer part of my vernacular. How I wanted to protest and sob and jerk my limbs in a tantrum. But I was weak and delirious, and, apparently, quadriplegic. What they didn’t want to tell me, I suspect, were my chances of dying. They didn’t want to scare me. At that point, death seemed like the least terrifying notion.
In between those resurrections, I remember seeing Levi’s face hover in my sightline. He tried to smile. Or grimace. It was hard to tell. Once, he brought in a puppet. Taupe-colored yarn for hair, a sweater (he had learned how to knit, too), and bright blue eyes. He said it was me. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
“What are you going to do with that?”
“Maybe I’ll write a play,” he said. “About us, our marriage.”
I fell out of consciousness again.
I didn’t know what day it was or how much time had passed. Skipped classes and worried students. When I was strong enough to speak, I told Levi to send an explanatory email with some prompts and story assignments. As far as I knew, they didn’t know about my transformation and I was prepared to lead the course online.
“Just tell them I’m sick,” I said. “I’ll figure out the details later.”
“How? How are you going to explain?”
“It’s not necessary that they see me,” I said. “I can do everything on the computer. We’re in the 21st century.”
I had never read the Bible, so I started to fear whether this was not some plague. Others assured me that nothing of the sort existed in scripture. I later asked about the ten plagues: “Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.’”
“What if these are those boils? What if this a divine form of wrath? I’m not a terrible person, but I’ve done bad things. Haven’t we all?”
“Could be,” the doctors said and hurried off.
No one ever gave it to me straight. They danced around the subject or pretended not to hear my blubbering inquiries. I still believed that my ailment might subside, that I might again be my human self.
When all their sophisticated tests yielded no answers, I convinced them to discharge me. I wanted to go home. Even if my chances of survival plummeted outside the sterile hospital conditions, I didn’t care. It was also the better option financially. All the doctors’ investigations ate through half of our savings. I didn’t want to be a brain and broke. Besides, some of my strength had been restored and I felt that I could endure what would be a strenuous transportation.
As there was no way (or desire) to grip my slimy soma, the doctors and hospital staff arranged for a crane. Once they hoisted me up and out of the hospital, they transferred me into the trailer of a U-Haul. Initially, they considered a flat bed of a pickup, but decided against exposing me to the elements and the shocked stares of other drivers. After all, the sight of me might have induced several traffic incidents. Levi taped the whole process on video. I declined to watch it and demanded he delete the footage, though I’m unsure he ever did.
In a brisk half-an-hour, we arrived back in New Hope. When I felt the truck rattle atop our gravelly driveway, I relaxed. My dopamine and serotonin spiked with the sensation of home. The front entrance would not fit my hips, so we came in through the patio doors. I left a snail-like trail of goo. Once everyone saw that I was safely indoors, Levi shooed them all away. For several weeks, we had no more than two consecutive minutes of alone time. In the unusual quiet of our home, Levi raised his arms. Neither of us knew what to do.
News of my condition spread with remarkable haste. The human race, when reduced to its most primeval state, is nothing more than a species of yentas: Homo yentaseus. A cesspool of reporters from tabloids and reputable newspapers swarmed on the front lawn of our once-sequestered home. Tramping across the viridescent grass that I spent springs and summers nourishing. We received phone calls from worried friends, distant relatives, and forgotten high school classmates. Everyone wanted a glimpse at the woman-turned-brain.
Levi and I sat in the living room, curtains drawn to hide me from the snapping shutters of cameras. He had tarped all the furniture with that plastic found only in the houses of the elderly or manic germaphobes. The sprawling oriental rugs in each room were rolled up and put into storage to protect from my slimy tracks. No dry-cleaner specialized in the removal of cerebrospinal fluid. We switched on the television to our local station and watched the broadcast happening just outside.
“I’m reporting to you live from New Hope, Pennsylvania, in front of the home of Catherine Herman, known for her collection of short fiction, Lepidoptery & Other Tales, and her novels, The Moon and Retrospective. At just 27 years old, Herman was the recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award. Now, a bizarre occurrence, a surrealistic nightmare, that befell Catherine may forever alter her legacy: she awoke one morning and discovered that she had turned into a brain. Yes, that’s right, a human-sized brain. This continues to befuddle the scientific community who have never seen, or imagined, anything of the sort. It is, truly, a thing of fiction.”
* * *
More than anything, I wanted to be in the arms of my mother. When I could barely walk, I used to fall asleep on top of her like a frog. She didn’t want to wake me, so she tiptoed to her room and let me sleep in her bed. She relegated my father to the couch. My parents lived across the country in Santa Barbara. Though they learned of my condition (over a sober, sob-heavy phone call), I didn’t want them to see me in the flesh. Both were healthy but I feared the stress of a six-hour flight followed by the sight of their brainchild would lead to synchronized cardiac arrests. My friends called to express their sympathies and assured me they would stop by the first free moment they had. I waited and waited for the casseroles and tears.
The first person to pay me a visit, excepting the nosy reporters, was someone I didn’t want to see: Elaine Russo, my agent. A scrawny, fake-tanned older woman with a voice abraded by more than forty years’ worth of cigarettes. She joined me in the living room, sitting on our saran-wrapped couch while I situated myself across from her on the former spot of our coffee table. I should clarify here that although my movement was severely hampered, I could still move. Hopping and sloshing like a water-filled balloon.
“Catherine, listen, this could be big. Do you know what people will pay to read a book written by a brain? You could write about anything you want. People will gobble it up. Even the illiterate will buy a copy just so they can own this gross piece of history. No offense.”
“I don’t know if I even want to write anymore, Elaine. And maybe I should just write under a penname now. I’ll get a different publisher, so I won’t raise suspicion.”
“Like hell you will! You’re not listening to me. If you do this, you could be the most successful, most famous author that’s ever lived,” she said. “Imagine the money!”
My fame, until then, had been above-average, by literary standards. Well known in literary circles, but not well known enough to sustain myself off writing alone. I taught at a small, liberal arts university, which I enjoyed and which afforded me the flexibility to work on my fiction. A cushy, quiet existence. I didn’t want the frills of fame, didn’t need them. Money, the sort Elaine dreamed of, never crossed my mind as a possibility. When I chose to become a writer, I didn’t do so for the financial prospects. For one, I have always been stubborn and enjoy too much to tilt at windmills. I shunned the topics in vogue and refused to pander to fads. I was content to write what compelled me, even if it meant a potential renown only a century after my death. Just because I turned into an animate organ, I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice my morals and pawn myself off as a circus freak. I’d like to think I am a brain of integrity.
“No, Elaine, I’m sorry, I won’t do it,” I said.
“You don’t understand the opportunity you have here.”
“I do. And I reject it.”
“You know that your sales have skyrocketed,” she said and clucked her tongue. “All of a sudden, everyone wants to get their hands on your books.”
If I had eyes, I would have rolled them. And if I had lips, I would have sputtered. “What does all of that matter anymore?”
Elaine lunged forward and reached out her hands, but stopped short, remembering the slimy substance of my skin. “I know this is a difficult situation, Catherine, but you’re being foolish. You’re not making the most out of it.”
Evidently, Elaine decided that for me to come to terms with my Kafkaesque malady, I should exploit my miserable fate: “Step right up and see the Bearded Woman, the Siamese Twins, the Brain That Writes!”
“Elaine, maybe you should come back another time,” Levi said and stood. “It’s been a long day. Why don’t you let Catherine sleep on it.”
Telepathy had taken place. A brain 50 times the normal size allowed me to discover the limits of my mental capacity. Levi pulled be back to shore, rescued me from the unceasing riptide that was Elaine.
With a shrug, she exhaled and went to leave. Levi saw her out. At the door, he stopped and pulled her aside. They were too far away for me to hear their conversation. It didn’t last long and he promptly returned to my side. I asked him what they talked about and he said career advice.
“What kind of career advice?”
“I’m thinking of writing a play,” he said. “For my puppets.”
“You mean, you were serious, in the hospital?”
“Well, I haven’t written anything yet. But I’d like to try.”
Speaking exhausted me. My voice had to boom past all my flabs and folds, so it tired quickly. I didn’t like the idea of Levi writing about our lives, even though I had pilfered from reality on dozens of occasions. Our arguments lessened in frequency as I simply lacked the energy to engage in wars of words. In any case, I was in no position to refuse Levi. If he needed the outlet of his puppetry to cope, then I was willing to swallow my qualms. I assumed, too, that his planned play would never see the spotlight of a stage.
* * *
I returned to teaching. My camera remained off—I feared that my appearance would distract from the literature and would inspire my students to gawk rather than to learn. The sympathies of my students surprised me. They committed whole-heartedly to the class. Read the required and all the optional stories. Provided thoughtful feedback during workshops.
Not once did they ask about my condition.
With every day, it took longer and longer to compose lesson plans. Texts that I had pored over for years, imbibed as part of my being, became difficult to recollect. I stuttered and drew blanks as I tried to pinpoint the elements of craft that heralded them excellent literature. Trying to annotate “The Lady with the Little Dog” or extract the key, subtle moments in Carver’s “Are These Actual Miles?”, I struggled to concentrate for more than twenty minutes. Stories that I knew like the back of my hand became indecipherable, as though they were written in an unknown tongue. Even listening to Levi reading my students’ work, I drifted off after a few sentences, only to return in the middle of the stories unmoored. Naps became a necessary component of my daily routine. During those mid-day weekend lulls, Levi holed up in his workshop with his puppets. I often forgot to consider how difficult my affliction was for Levi. Countless husbands and wives watched their spouses consumed by cancer or killed in freak automotive accidents. But to witness the woman you once shared a bed with turn into a grotesque, pudgy brain? It made his efforts to take care of me seem even more heartening. Despite the abject abnormality of our situation, he did the best to retain normality.
We wanted kids. We had talked about it and planned for it, but decided to wait. My mother gave birth to me one-month shy of her 38th birthday. At 33, I was in no rush. Now, I bemoaned our lack of lineage. Our only chances were adoption or for Levi to inseminate another woman, which I unequivocally refused. No one could have predicted me morphing into an infertile brain. Perhaps it was for the best. Would I have wanted my child to see me in such a state? Can you imagine the trauma, the years and years of therapy? Not to mention the exorbitant fees that, coupled with my metamorphosis-related expenses, would run us dry. My healthcare plan did not account for that sort of psychoanalysis.
One day, after I finished slogging through another lecture, Levi came up to me.
“You don’t look so good,” Levi said.
“How can you tell?”
“You’re not as pink.”
“Maybe teaching isn’t a great idea,” I said. “I’m so tired. All the time.”
He closed my laptop and sat down on the couch. He clasped his hands.
“You need rest,” he said. “Just like any other illness, you need rest.”
Except this was not like any other illness. And I suspected Levi knew that. For both our sakes, he wanted to inspire hope. Even if our thoughts veered towards the worst, at least externally, we maintained the possibility of my convalescing.
* * *
We wrote an email to the university. Though the dean, Irving Zweig, had been amenable to my situation, I decided to reiterate its severity and likely irreversibility. While I dictated, Levi typed up a correspondence that informed Irving of my indefinite sabbatical. The reality began to sink in. Even online teaching sapped me of my energy. It pained me to think. Had I known I might have given my last lecture, I would have spent the session waxing poetically on the indispensable role of literature rather than stoking an argument on the fragility of the contemporary novel. Next, to my students, we wrote that the semester would be truncated. Two rounds of workshop remained, so I suggested they continue to meet on their own and assigned them a final 5,000-word story on the subject of transformation. In the email, I said, “Look at me if you require inspiration.”
Perhaps I could have willed myself to close out the semester, but I didn’t have the heart. I loved teaching. I loved my students—always curious, talented, and wise, so wise it often surprised me. Funny, too. But the sheer effort and subsequent fatigue of doing it made me resent the job. If I continued, I would poison all the good memories with my self-loathing and undirected rage. Better a complete severance. Easier for all involved.
When we finished the most pressing correspondences, the phone rang. Levi answered and returned with it to the living room.
“It’s the doctors,” he said. “They’d like to talk to both of us.”
He turned it on speaker.
“Catherine, I’m afraid we have some unsettling news,” one of the doctors said.
“What could be worse than this?”
She cleared her throat. “Since you’re not attached to the spinal column, to any arteries, there’s no blood circulating to your brain. To you.”
It was true. I had been feeling lightheaded and weak, and Levi remarked that my complexion looked more gray than usual. I assumed that’s how a person-turned-brain was supposed to feel.
“Eventually, your oxygen will run out and you’ll, well, decompose.”
“What does that mean?”
“If you want to live,” she said, “we’re going to have to preserve you.”
Preserve? Like a bundle of cucumbers or a lingonberry jam?
“I’m sorry we didn’t inform you of this sooner,” she said. “I suppose we got caught up in the… strangeness of it all.”
“What’s the third option?”
“Third option?”
“There’s death, preservation, and what else?”
“There is no ‘what else,’ Catherine,” she said.
“Levi, hang up the phone.”
When he didn’t, I repeated it, louder. He listened. Here’s another thing not so rosy about being a brain: forget about facial emotions or meaningful gestures. No frowning or weeping or holding my head in my hands. I had to become an oral thespian to adapt. So, I brought my voice to a hiss.
“I’m not going to be preserved,” I said. “I will not be made a mockery of. I’d rather die.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why go on living? What’s left for me?”
“Because maybe someone finds a cure for this,” he said. His tone, though strong, abounded in naivete. “Science is making great leaps every day.”
I wanted to pout and stomp my feet. I realized, though, that none of my rebuttals stood a chance. My verbal threats were powerless against him and the doctors; I could not run away, squirm free from their grasps. My best bet was that I slipped out while they carried me. What did Levi want me around for anyway? We could not make love, go to the movies together, play tennis, do anything that required an iota of coordinated locomotion. Levi is a handsome man. Deep, pondering eyebrows and grayish eyes. Tall. A delightful dimple in his chin. A well-proportioned aquiline nose. He could take one step out the door and find another woman. And my untimely, unseemly death would be the perfect pick-up line. A young widower, so devoted to his late wife, taken from him in a tragedy. The women would flock naked.
“Fine,” I said. “If that’s what you want. I’ll do this for you.”
“No,” he said and shook his head. “You’ll do this for you.”
The scientists made arrangements for a custom glass case, large enough to hold my unruly mass. Levi and I dipped into our dwindling savings to splurge on an oversized mason jar. A hipster’s wet dream. The jar, upon first sight, was impressive. Thick, shatter-proof walls of glass, culminating in a silicone-ribbed opening, for greater ease and comfort in sliding me inside. On the day of the delivery, five of the lab scientists came to monitor the entire ordeal. The deliverymen arrived and placed the jar on our patio. They strapped me into a harness and attached it to a small crane—the same method that helped bring me home from the hospital. I told Levi to turn around when they transferred me into my new container. After a bit of prodding, I was in.
The quintet of researchers stood in a row and jotted down notes. All identical, with their black-framed glasses and white lab coats. They observed me as I were an experiment, an inanimate, unfeeling object. I couldn’t blame them. The world had never seen anything like me before—they had to record it for posterity. Not once, though, did they thank me. Not at the hospital, not in my home. Their soon-to-be-published articles on my predicament would land them in the annals of medical history, but not without my contribution.
Once I sat snugly in the jar, the deliverymen raised it onto a forklift and drove into our house through the sliding patio doors. Levi had chosen a central spot for me to occupy, equidistant from the kitchen, living room, and foyer. One of the scientists attached a microphone to the glass so I could communicate. Then, another one toted over a stepladder, climbed it, and draped a hose into my jar. Cerebrospinal fluid began to fill my abode. I felt myself float.
Not only did they preserve me, but they also hooked me up to an inordinately complex machine. Wires connected me to the computer on wheels, which sent signals through my neurons, meant to mimic the functions of a brain connected to a body. What is the cerebral equivalent to an iron lung? Supposedly, that machine ensured my survival for however long a sentient brain is meant to survive. The prospect of eternal life, once appetizing, sounded then like the cruelest torture.
Finally, the horde of strangers evacuated our house. Levi and I were left in silence. I bobbed in the vat, occasionally grazing the glass encasement. Levi brought that morning’s New York Times and pulled up a chair. Our daily ritual started with coffee and solving the crossword. It was nearly evening, but he had waited to do the puzzle together.
“‘Classic name for a man’s best friend,’ four letters,” he said.
“Fido.”
“Six letters for ‘stories with morals.’”
“Fables.”
And so forth and so forth. 10 minutes later, Levi inked in the final square and we returned to our unwelcome reality. He cooked a quick dinner and retired upstairs.
However much I hated to admit it, the preservation helped. During the nights, I didn’t sleep. I nodded off when my brain waves slowed, but when I entered what would have been the REM stage, I jolted with alertness. My cerebral activity spiked. My neurons fired, glowed like millions of plankton illuminating the sea. I could not turn on the television or make myself a midnight sandwich or twiddle my thumbs. Still in the habit of being a writer, I thought of stories. Whereas once I endured a dreadful bout of writer’s block, now I teemed with ideas. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to think of plots or compelling new characters or any element of storytelling that might incite me to write. In spite of myself, I brainstormed. Thoughts I had never possessed, could not have even imagined concocting, swamped my consciousness. Two cannibal lovers torn between the desire to be with one another and the desire to eat one another. An epic Napoleonic-type war between ant colonies. A modern retelling of Macbeth from the perspective of the titular king’s dagger. Ridiculous ideas, but ideas nonetheless. I knew if I shared them with Elaine I would not hear the end of her coercions. So, I thought of the stories and I stored them in my memory banks.
* * *
Some weeks later, the press brouhaha dwindled. Occasionally, Levi discovered the rogue reporter hiding in our bushes, but otherwise, everyone seemed to have forgotten. Short attention spans worked in my favor.
I lost track of the days. Until I found myself immobilized in a glass case, I never knew the true extents of boredom. Levi worked from 9 to 5, so I had no companion with whom to shoot the breeze. In the evenings and on weekends, he spent most of his time working on his new marionette production. Though I never fully embraced his decision to tell our story in puppet-form, he claimed it would be a powerful interpretation. We didn’t have a pet, either, to run circles around me and provide entertainment. Often, Levi left the television on the TCM channel; Ben Hur, House of Wax, and Stagecoach can only keep one intrigued for so long. Never complain about boredom again. Pick up a book, go for a walk, clean out the fridge, do whatever and appreciate every mundane task!
One of my midnight stories had grown into a full-fledged plot that I narrated to myself. Gary Kozlodoyev, the protagonist, opens an underground puppet theatre where he stages plays that subvert the religious ideals of Russian society through innocuous, humorous, and often raunchy dialogue (I only later made the connection to Levi’s hobby). When a Muscovite actress arrives, Gary’s plays grow in popularity but attract the unwanted attention of government censors. I envisioned it in the vein of Bulgakov. With unbounded spare time, I would narrate for hours a day. The story began to span years, generations, into the 20th century. If I committed to paper, it would number no less than 2,000 pages. But it was nothing more than entertainment fodder. No one would know the escapades of my characters or the mellifluous lyricism of my sentences. It would live and die with me.
Everything changed on a Sunday afternoon. My existence, which, until then, had been one of sorrow and dread, would turn into an existence of spite. As I was in the middle of narrating Chapter 87, Levi entered the living room, arm in arm with another woman.
“Catherine, I’d like you to meet Scarlet. She’s been helping me with the production. She’s playing the role of you.”
What a voluptuous name, Scarlet.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Catherine,” she said. “I’ve read your books. You’re a wonderful writer.”
She wore glasses and acted all coy, naïve but she knew what she was doing. Even with my crude vision, I saw the size of her breasts, threatening to burst the seams of her sweater. I had hoped Levi was subtler than that. Both of them stood, staring at me. A duo out of “American Gothic.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Did you know Scarlet graduated from the Institute for Marionette Arts in Paris? That’s the most prestigious program in the world.”
How distasteful. It sounded as though he flaunted his pet project. Almost as terrible as those parents who drive around with “My Kid Is An Honors Student” magnets or the names of their children’s colleges on their bumpers.
“I didn’t know you finished the script already.”
“I haven’t,” he said. “Scarlet’s been writing with me, and we’ve been acting it out.”
“You didn’t want to ask me for help?”
“I thought you wouldn’t be interested.”
“Sure, I don’t have a degree in puppets, but I am a published author,” I said. “I know a thing or two about story structure.”
Scarlet squirmed. She moved a few steps away from Levi. My intimidation factor multiplied as a brain. People weren’t prepared to see in waking life what was normally reserved for dreams.
“You’re being rude, Catherine.”
“Go. Go, then, you and your concubine, and play with your puppets,” I wanted to say. What I actually said was, “I don’t want to keep you from your work.”
After shooting me a disapproving look, Levi led Scarlet out of the room. Who knows what they did in that workshop of his. What fetishistic behavior they got up to with those puppets.
He waited until I was in vitro to introduce us. Otherwise, I might have chased him down and devoured him. Somewhat like the Blob. Back then, I harbored only the faintest of suspicions. I believed in Levi’s devotion. Now, I see the errors of my naivete. Levi, after all, is a person who requires touch and intimacy and eroticism. There is nothing titillating about the brain. Were I breast, I could derive sexual stimulation from anyplace one poked. One time (B.P., before preservation), I convinced Levi to massage my pleasure center. He pulled on a gardening glove and rubbed. While I did experience a burst of dopamine, I was not aroused. Neither was Levi. Frankly, I would be worried if he climaxed from such a thing. I later learned that the hypothalamus and amygdala, the regions responsible for sexual drive, are recessed within the brain. Out of reach. Anatomically, too, there is no opening, no sheath for Levi’s sword. The malady sentenced me to a state of anhedonia.
Still, I thought Levi might first seek my approval. Surely, I, a compassionate individual, would understand his predicament. I would give him my blessings. Instead, he chose to lie to my frontal lobe, sneak around. Maybe he considered it more fun, more taboo. It would be wrong to rob him of pleasure, just because it had been stripped from me. He had stood by me up until that point. Like a dementia-riddled relative or an ailing, wailing toddler, I just started to get on his nerves.
* * *
Weeks later, Elaine showed up at our house again. By this time, Scarlet walked freely around our home as if she lived there. Brewing coffee, taking fruit from the fridge. She even opened the door when the bell rang. Her and Elaine exchanged kisses. Levi drifted in from another room. None of them acknowledged me. No wave, no nod of the head. I didn’t think a human-sized brain could ever be inconspicuous.
Sometimes, Elaine dropped by with royalty checks. She thought the personal delivery might lift my spirits. That, and the amount inked on the line. Really, why she came around was to convince me to write again. A guaranteed bestseller, she said of my hypothetical next book. Several publishers already offered a six-figure advance, without knowing anything about the plot or general conceit. Though the hefty checks assuaged some of our financial woes, I winced with the arrival of each one.
The three of them went off to what I assume was Levi’s workshop. While I waited, I watched the clock on the wall opposite me. Their rendezvous lasted two hours. No one checked in on me, asked if I wouldn’t like some company. Did they forget that Elaine was my agent? That, despite a dearth of work, she still received payments from my bank account? When they finally emerged, shamelessly, Elaine stopped by my jar. She asked how I was doing. Before I finished my sentence, she said, “That’s great. Let’s pick this up next time, I have to run.”
Levi and Scarlet were all smiles. Two giddy teenagers. They pulled up two chairs and sat in front of me.
“We have great news,” Levi said. I sensed that I wouldn’t feel the same way. “Our play is going to premiere at the Bucks Theatre. Next month.”
“And Elaine says there’s a possibility of expanding into New York,” Scarlet said.
“What play?”
“About us,” he said. “The same play I told you about.”
“You didn’t think to ask me?”
He chuckled and scoffed. “Ask you? Scarlet and I have been working on it for months. You knew.”
“I didn’t think you were going to perform it.”
“What else do you do with a play?”
“I thought it was a pet project. A hobby.”
“Why are you doing this? It’s all I’ve been talking about,” he said. “You know how much it means to me.”
“It should be ours,” I said. “You don’t need to share this tragedy with the world.”
“May I?” Scarlet said and inched forward in her seat. “I’ve been beside Levi for most of the process, and if it helps, I’ve seen your story blossom into a sincere, witty, and complex play. It would be a shame for no one to see it. For your story to go untold.”
A tear streaked down Levi’s nose. He turned to the side, so that neither of us saw him wipe his eyes. It appeared that they had planned and choreographed this little melodrama. In all the years I’d known Levi, he had never been so saccharine. I wanted to laugh. The blatant deceit of the scenario made me uncomfortable.
“Why even come to me? It’s not like I can do anything to stop you,” I said.
“Because I want your blessing,” he said. He looked right at me.
“Catherine, this play might be an important marker of our culture. For posterity.”
“You come to me and you say, ‘give me justice.’ But you don’t ask for respect. You don’t ask for my friendship.”
They uttered a simultaneous “what.”
I clarified that I would not stand in their way. Though I expressed no unequivocal pleasure or affirmation, I did enough to prove to Levi that I would not hold anything against him. Perhaps his tears were genuine. Perhaps I undervalued not only the importance of his art, but also the extent of my transformation’s effect on his psyche. I could not place myself in his shoes. I say this all after a substantial period of reflection. In the moment, I was not so clear-headed. Did you know that the brain’s prefrontal cortex, in the face of rage, switches off and the amygdala, the center responsible for emotion, takes the reins? Quite literally, we are incapable of clarity, of empathy, of reason, of moral judgment when we are infected by anger. Under the circumstances, I responded to Levi and Scarlet’s news the best I could.
* * *
Since the day I returned home from the hospital, we had not tried to transport me again. It was Levi’s opening night and I didn’t want to miss it. Don’t be fooled—my intentions were not so pure as that of a supportive wife. Sure, all those months of sitting in the living room while Levi and his concubine constructed a play based on our lives inspired a certain curiosity. Mostly, though, I wanted to show Levi that I was not at all jealous of Scarlet. And hiding behind my unflappable demeanor, that I did not care what liberties he took with our romance, my transformation. Spite replaced sorrow as my fuel for living.
We made arrangements one week before the premiere. In the afternoon of the opening, another U-Haul rumbled up our driveway. Once again, the scientists arrived to monitor my transport, lest something spoiled or destroyed their experiment. You know the drill by now. I need not detail the logistics of my passage inside the truck trailer. Besides, that was hardly an interesting spectacle. The real entertainment occurred at the theatre, where I had to be carried into the auditorium. We arrived almost two hours before curtain, but a sizeable crowd had already gathered outside. Word spread of my attendance. After being deprived of my grossness while I hermitized, people wanted to see, again, the human brain. Phones and cameras pointed at me. Clamor, shutters snapping, flashes.
Levi remained at my side as the forklift toted me into the lobby. A few months ago, I would have turned red from chagrin. Now, I stayed a placid pink. At a certain point, despite stubbornness and last-ditch hopes, you realize it’s easier to relent. None of the spectators laughed. Their stares were born out of amazement, shock. Just as the soldiers stood before Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the Egyptians admired the efforts of their completed pyramids, millions of Americans watched man take his first step on the moon to record those moments in history, so too did these lucky individuals want to involve themselves in my contribution to the evolution of human DNA. With Levi’s play, my transformation would assuredly be cemented in the minds of future generations. Art is often our best tool for glimpsing into the past, for understanding the motivations, the inspirations, the life blood of a lost society. Of course, I hoped the same would be true of the few books I eked out during my truncated career. I wanted them to be read for their own sake. Untainted by the knowledge of their author’s fate. But hasn’t that been the irresolvable debacle since fiction emerged as popular entertainment? The separation of author and text? How many of you have shunned artists for their unsavory morals, disagreeable political views, and uncertain personal choices? I am not advocating for one way or another. I am simply asking: can you still read a book—objectively, in admiration of the prose, enraptured by the story—knowing that its author is a brain?
They placed me in the orchestra. In one of the sections, the theatre crew removed a cluster of seats by the aisle to accommodate my size. They said the people seated beside me paid a premium fee. I wondered how many purchased tickets just to ogle at me and how many expressed genuine desire to view Levi’s opus.
In the throes of their composition and subsequent rehearsals, I saw little of Scarlet. Even Levi I saw only in the mornings and evenings, when he visited upon me for our “kiss.” When Scarlet walked into the theatre (sufficiently after our arrival; I implored Levi that she not be there to witness my messy delivery), I hardly recognized her. I wondered if I had not hallucinated her existence, if I had not fabricated her involvement in Levi’s work, in Levi. That was not the case. It was the same Scarlet who swept in and mystified my grieving Levi with her siren song. Maybe she was, in fact, a talented marionettist, and Levi employed her solely for that skill. After all, she had attended Pari’s renowned Institute. Objectivity evaded me then, would consistently evade me in matters related to her. Thwarted, instead, by jealousy.
Right in front of me, her and Levi embraced. They twiddled their fingers, paced, adjusted their shirts, tried to hide the irrepressible nervous energy that mounts before taking the stage. They said goodbye and trotted down the aisle to go get changed. I said, “break a leg,” but they didn’t hear.
The doctors sat in the row behind. People started trickling in. Some slowed down when they passed me on the way to their seats. Others stopped. A couple troglodytes knocked on my jar. When people tried to take pictures, the ushers and the doctors pushed them away. I wanted to admonish those boors and implore them to show some compassion, but I figured my entreaties would fall on deaf ears. They would only be more amazed by the exhibition of a talking brain. If I remained mute, my identity as Catherine Herman was left undetermined. I could have been a prop, a life-like creation shaped by the hands of a special effects artist. Out of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Everyone in their seats turned and craned their necks. Their eyes bulged. They whispered into the ears of their spouses. They were getting two shows for the price of one!
Once the houselights dimmed, the chatter stopped. A spotlight illuminated the miniature stage in the center of the larger one. Burgundy velvet curtains framed the plywood puppet theatre. A pregnant silence swept across the audience as we waited for our two marionettists. Then, they trotted across the stage. Everyone clapped. Both dressed in black turtlenecks and black slacks, they wanted to divert attentions from themselves. Assuming their places, they disappeared behind the curtains of their elevated stage and manned their puppets. The music swelled. It sounded as though it came from a live orchestra, so rich were the acoustics, but it was only a recording. One of Levi’s clients who dabbled in classical music and conducting composed the piece. A poor man’s Bernstein.
Behind Levi and Scarlet, a screen magnified the intricate movements of the wooden players. Each puppet stood 35cm high. Over the months, Levi’s carpentry skills improved exponentially. Every finger moved on its own; the head nodded, turned left and right; the facial features were distinguished with details. Surprisingly, they bore an incredible resemblance to Levi and me. Versions much more realistic than the iteration Levi showed me when he first floated the idea of the play. Hair of the highest-quality yarn to match our caramel and sandy locks. Nostrils carved into the wood, even the concaves of our ears. For the clothes, Levi used silk, lace, denim, cotton, to fashion an entire wardrobe. I saw myself in the blank eyes of my linden counterpart. The scenes elicited such potent memories that I stopped seeing the strings and the puppets. Onto the stage, I projected my and Levi’s former selves. Was that who we really were? And what had we become?
The play journeyed through the significant moments of our relationship. Our meeting, when Levi, an assistant at a literary agency, visited my MFA program. A rift in our mid-20s when I suffered from painstaking writer’s block and Levi shacked up with another woman. Marriage. His promotion and the publication of my second novel. My sister’s first child, to whom we became godparents, though none of us were Catholic, or god-believing. And, at the end of it all, that fateful, tragic day that stole my humanity.
During the play, I believed that it was I, not Scarlet, whose fingers pulled the strings. Her voice grew indistinguishable from mine. From what I remembered of its timbre and pitch. Clearly, the masters at that Parisian institute must have espoused the Strasberg method. Maybe, in all the hours she spent with Levi, in preparation, she had assumed part or all of my identity. Without a body, I was just a brain. Just a personality. She became my vessel, my replacement.
When Scarlet spoke the last line, the curtains drew, the lights dimmed, and the audience erupted in applause. The curtains opened again. Levi and Scarlet stood center-stage, bowing and placing their palms over their hearts. Once the space grew silent, Levi stepped forward.
“Thank you all for coming. You have no idea what this means,” he said. “There’s someone who I need to thank. Someone without whom none of this would be possible. Without whom I would not be the man or the artist I am today. My wife.”
The audience rose. Their claps caromed off the theatre walls and against my glass with double the force.
I cried. At least, I believed that I cried. I didn’t know, though, whether I cried from joy and pride or sorrow. The crowd remained standing. Bouquets of flowers littered at the feet of the performers. They ate up the praise. I watched Levi blow me a kiss. Smiling and waving, while I sat immobilized in my glass case, forgotten in the wake of my own life.
* * *
One year has passed since my transformation.
Levi and Scarlet’s play, which premiered at our local theatre, garnered the attention and praise of esteemed New York critics. Overnight, they became a national sensation. Elaine negotiated them into an off-Broadway contract. A theatre in Greenwich Village. Steps away from where I lived as an undergraduate. The neighborhood has soured on me since then. Soon, Levi and Scarlet outgrew the 300-seat venue. Crowds looped around the corner in hopes of acquiring last-minute tickets. That led to a Broadway agreement. 49th Street, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. More than 1,000 people peering through binoculars at the tiny puppet stage.
In one week, their play—Before and After August—will open at the O’Neill auditorium. All three of us arrived in New York a few days earlier. Elaine booked Levi and Scarlet on a late-night show. The host implored her that I be present, too. I don’t know why I agreed. For Levi’s sake, I tell myself. To shake some of the spite that has constituted the last twelve months of my gross existence. Despite the Scarlet Situation (the details of which I still have not entirely ascertained), Levi has been a devout companion. He is the only one who still treats me as human: we chat about the weather, we continue to solve crosswords, we watch the Eagles games when he is not at rehearsal or performing.
My transportation, as usual, was troublesome. Traffic and bumps worsened the two-hour drive. The continued lifting and plopping me down has put great strain on my anatomy. Every lowering results in a rattle and I collide with the walls of my tank. Imagine a headache that radiates through every inch of your being. The set up, too, is onerous. I can only spend a few minutes unplugged before I start withering away. Any delay in finding an outlet and… Kaput.
You should see the entourage that dotes on me. A crew that overshadows that of any A-lister’s or the presidential secret service. The driver who mans the truck. The four thick-necked and veiny men who help with general transport; though a crane does most of the lifting, I like the disposition of these meaty bodyguards. The scientists ensure every tube is properly connected and every change in neural activity monitored. Of course, they stick around in case I perish so that they may call out the time of death. People will remember where they were, who they were with, what they were doing when they hear news of The Brain’s demise.
After nearly two hours of labor, I am backstage at the talk show. They have situated me on a trolley of sorts. Levi and Scarlet stand on either side of me. An intern, the burliest they could find, grabs the cart’s handles and prepares to push. When we hear the faint claps and announcement of our names, the intern wheels me onto the stage. Levi and Scarlet walk ahead of us. The harsh lights blur out most of the audience. I am relieved not to see those faces, which I imagine are grimacing or smiling stupidly. The noise, though, is not lost on me. I yearn for cotton to replace the fluid of my vat.
The host is oily. His black hair crusted in gel. I can see his porous jawline and cheeks, like the surface of a sponge. The show crew has rearranged the usual set: instead of the desk and a couch for the guests, there are three armchairs positioned in a crescent. Between the first and second chair, there is a gap that I occupy. Levi sits closest to the host. We banter about subjects that the producer prepped us on.
“I imagine the three of you have gotten very close,” the host says, assuming a more serious tone.
“Very,” Scarlet says. “I feel grateful to be welcomed into Catherine and Levi’s family.”
“Levi, I understand you wrote this play as a release, a coping mechanism.”
“Well, when Catherine transformed, it took a toll on both of us. Our marriage,” he says. “I just took a page out of her book and wrote about it.”
“You didn’t think it would be too personal?”
“Of course, but in the end, I think it was a positive experience for both of us.”
“They say art is a vehicle for understanding the present,” Scarlet says.
“I don’t know that anyone will ever understand what happened to Catherine, or how,” the host says.
“Maybe not,” Levi says, “but that’s not what we’re trying to figure out. We want to know the emotions. We want to learn how to process them. How can we make sense of Catherine’s situation.”
I stay silent on matters of the play. No one seems to notice.
“And you, Catherine, your books have found a second wind, a resurgence. Isn’t that heartening?”
“The additional income’s very nice,” I say.
“Are you working on anything else at the moment?”
“No. I’ve said multiple times that I’ve retired from writing.”
“One can always come out of retirement,” he says. “Don’t you have any more stories you’d like to write?”
“Hundreds. I have hundreds of ideas,” I say. “But we’re here to talk about the play, aren’t we?”
“That’s right. What do you think of it?”
“I think it’s a fine production. I’m very happy for Levi. And Scarlet.”
Levi places his hand on my jar, in lieu of a leg to squeeze lovingly.
“I guess you don’t have a choice,” the host says, grinning.
The lights become suffocating. Bright, probing. I sense heat, despite the temperature of the studio hovering at 65 degrees. I think that I’m drowning. The silence is unnatural. Dead air. The host doesn’t do anything. Levi and Scarlet don’t do anything. I wonder if we’ve been sitting like that for seconds or minutes.
“Can I speak freely?”
“As long as you don’t run into commercial,” he says and cackles. “Go ahead.”
“I have been thinking lately of Nabokov’s biography of the writer Nikolai Gogol. In it, he spends a significant portion of the text on the meaning of a Russian word that has no suitable English translation: poshlust. Nabokov concludes that the word is best expressed as ‘cheap, sham, smutty, in bad taste,’ but even those definitions fail to capture the breadth of its meaning. There is nothing terribly egregious about the presence of poshlust in literature, in art. The worst kind of poshlust, Nabokov writes, is the one that imitates something it is not, one that attempts to claim genius where none exists, one that is ‘falsely important, falsely beautiful, falsely clever, falsely attractive.’ When the art and its artist are so cunning, the public cannot help but lap up the words, the images, the sounds, and does not stop to think what it means. As a writer, I speak for literature. Literature cannot be great, cannot cement itself in our cultural history without a discerning readership. What is writing if there is no one to imbibe the words and filter them through their emotional understanding? Words on a page, that’s all. This is true of all art. So I beg you, read not for the sake reading. Watch not for the sake of watching. Experience art so that you gain something from it, that it is not simply a one-way transaction. Be unabashedly selfish. Value your time, choose how to spend it carefully, and do not, I repeat, do not make the mistake of squandering it for the poshlust in our world.”
There is an uncertain pause. Then, the audience bursts into cheers. Though, I can’t tell if it’s really the audience or a computer-generated track.
“That’s great, Catherine,” he says and grins his big, practiced television grin. “We have to go to commercial. When we come back, we have Ziggy the zoologist who’s brought some special guests with him. Don’t go anywhere.”
There is a sign beside the camera that tells us we’re off air. The host shuffles his notecards, pays no attention to us. Levi reaches behind me to clasp Scarlet’s hand. And me, I wade there in my glass jar, a big, sloshing brain, waiting for my next cue.
Daniella Nichinson is a fiction writer from Philadelphia where she is an oft-disgruntled Philly sports fan, an avid tennis player, and an old soul. You can find more of her work at https://daniellanichinson.substack.com