AN EXCERPT FROM
JESSICA ANTHONY'S
THE CONVALESCENT.
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McSweeney's is proud to announce the release of Jessica Anthony's novel, The Convalescent. As a treat, we've posted a clip of her reading from the novel, as well as an excerpt from this sharp and hilarious debut.
The Convalescent is the story of a small, bearded man selling meat out of a bus parked next to a stream in suburban Virginia . . . and also, somehow, the story of 10,000 years of Hungarian history. Jessica Anthony, the inaugural winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, makes an unforgettable debut with an unforgettable hero: Rovar Ákos Pfliegman − unlikely bandit, unloved lover, and historian of the unimportant. Buy your copy today.
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Adrian enters the Waiting Area with her clipboard. "Pfliegman," she says. "There's been a cancellation. You're up."
The Sick or Diseased Children stop banging blocks as I limp past Mrs. Himmel's desk and down the narrow corridor that leads to Dr. Monica's office. I am going where they're going. Perhaps they're curious to see why I'm going. Perhaps they're curious to see if I'll return.
They quickly go back to the banging.
Adrian sits me down on the examining table, hands me my gown and wordlessly closes the door, leaving me to the intense privacy of Dr. Monica's office sans Dr. Monica. Some improvements have been made: white curtains now hang down each side of the window like an open robe, a brand new humidifier purrs next to the door, two small chairs with painted daisies are in one corner, the examining table is in another, Dr. Monica's swivel chair is in the third, and in the fourth all of the stuffed animals have been piled into one big amalgam of fun.
I admit that part of me does not want to have impure thoughts about Dr. Monica. But I cannot help myself. It's like Pfliegmans were born to suffer such urges. Lovely Lily, I think. Exquisite Flower! I could take you. I could take you right here, our bodies splayed across the children's examining table. It could happen − My Darling, I would beg, won't you let me sniff your soft chin? May I, if for only just a moment, squeeze the fat of your calves? Is not lust, after all, the fertile and exacting seed of love?
Adrian pokes her head in. "Everything okay?" she says.
"Get out!" I want to scream. "You're ruining the moment!"
"Undress, Rovar," she says, and closes the door.
I undress. I go to the closet and hang up my coat. My trousers fall to the floor in a pile, heavy from the caked-on dirt and the weight of my belt buckle. At home in the bus, I often let the clothes stay where they are, in the accordion shape that they fall from my body, but not here − Here, I fold the trousers and sweatshirt neatly, and place them on the floor next to a small white chairs. The boots remain on my small feet, the tongues hanging out the front as though panting. I hold the paper gown over my head. It floats on.
Dr. Monica knocks briefly, and enters the room. "Well look who's here," she says.
The red dress hangs over her body in U-shaped drapes. Pieces of blond hair decorate her face and her cheeks are pink, complimenting the dress perfectly. The low neckline exposes the full swath of her neck, her luscious pediatric bosom completely exposed, decorated with the shining cross: her body is an altar. This dress, la nappe d'autel−
New curtains? I write.
Dr. Monica beams, admiring her windows. "It makes a difference, I think," she says.
I look down. Usually Dr. Monica wears puffy white sneakers, but not today; today she flaunts these red, open-toed heels. There is no rational reason why the extra space is afforded the toes; it doesn't appear to have anything to do with comfort. The red shoes are a tease, I think. A deliberate act of vanity, and suddenly my Darling is removing her tiny white hat and letting all that hair go. She's unbuttoning her white doctor's coat and pulling low the neckline of this unbelievable dress. She climbs on top of me, straddling the examining table, and her thighs emerge from underneath the dress like two pale hams. She flips her hair over one shoulder and presses herself into me, biting the outer orbit of my ear, and me, all the while, grabbing her by the buttocks, quietly kneading −
It looks nice, I write.
"Thank you," she says, opening my folder. She brushes a leaf of hair from her face.
You look nice. Where are you going?
Dr. Monica looks at her watch. "Mr. Pfliegman," she says. "You're not being completely forthcoming with me."
Aren't I?
"What are you doing here? You don't have a temperature, and you look fine to me."
Do I?
Dr. Monica sighs, and tosses my folder on the counter by the sink. "I'm sorry, Mr. Pfliegman, but I can't stay for this. It's been a difficult day, and I really do have somewhere to be."
I slide down from the examining table and part the examining gown. I show her my back.
"That's not good," she says.
I turn around and climb back up on the table. No, I write.
"Let's have a look."
Dr. Monica stands up and snaps on the rubber gloves and begins prodding. She places her hands flat on my back and examines the skin at the shoulders, rubbing all the way down each of my arms. The full breadth of my torso. She whistles. "So this has never happened before?" she says. "Nothing happened to instigate it?" She sits down in front of me, my folder poised on her lap. "Mr. Pfliegman," she says, "Why do you have to stay in that bus? Can't you at least move back home into your old house? The farmhouse? Isn't that an option?"
No, I write. That is not an option.
"Why not?" she says.
The animals are there, I write.
"What animals? The animals you butcher?"
No.
"Then what animals?"
It's better not to discuss things like this.
"I completely disagree," she says. Her eyes flutter. "I think things like this are exactly what we should be discussing. Your parents, for example. Where did
they − "
Give me something, I write.
"What do you want?" she says. "A drug? No drugs."
I shake my head. Sugar.
"Definitely no sugar," she says. "Water."
Dr. Monica goes over to the sink to runs water into a paper cone. She hands it to me. I reach for it, and a sharp pain suddenly enters the left side of my body. It tears its way right across my abdomen, and exits on the right. It feels like I've been sliced in half. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and I start coughing in dry, fiery bursts. Dr. Monica's got me firm by the shoulders. This time it's not a ploy − the pain holds constant −
"Rovar? Are you all right?"
But I can't shake the coughing.
Dr. Monica looks at me. "I want to try something," she says.
I pick up my pen.
I thought you had somewhere to be.
She's quiet. It is a dangerous line, the line between the Creature and his Pediatrician. There are many, many unspoken rules. Certainly the Creature knows that if he confessed everything to her, if he confessed that his sicknesses are not always as terrible as he makes them out to be; if he confessed that he has spent whole hours gazing at the lines of her rump as though they were sculpted from fine marble; if he confessed that because of this rump, he has in the past helplessly suffered Thoroughly Benevolent But Nonetheless Highly Unsavory Erections in the company of Sick or Diseased children; if she knew that the car accident which killed Ján and Janka Pfliegman was not an accident at all, but something else entirely, there is no question that she would banish him from her office. If she knew what her hairy little convalescent was recovering into, she would stare at him, open-mouthed, and back away in cold fear.
She would refuse to see him at all.
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For more about The Convalescent, please click here.
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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An Excerpt from Jessica Anthony's The Convalescent
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