Epilogue: Forty Days

Abstract

Epilogue: Forty Days Cristina García (bio) Let it come, let it come,The season we can love … —Arthur Rimbaud Spring 2020 Pilar Puente Marin County, CA Day 1: March 18 It’s impossible to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time—rushing here and there with mundane tasks half-done, my anxiety spiking through the roof. It’s worst when I binge on the news; best when I switch on the classical music station. Yesterday, the Brandenburg concertos brought a fleeting sense of peace. I think of the billions of variables it took for a viral transmission from one live animal (a bat, apparently) to one human in a wet market in Wuhan, China. And now? We’re all trying to figure out how to survive. Is there anything more contagious than fear? I consider other places in the world—Italy, in particular, which is at the height of contagion— and I’m supposed to understand that this is where the rest of us will be in a few weeks. Flatten the curve. It’s the phrase on everyone’s lips. It means slowing down the virus enough to enable our broken medical system to handle the incoming sick. But people will die, possibly a million in the US alone. It isn’t war but it feels like war. Sixty-one years old. That adds up to a complete life. If I died tomorrow, nobody could say I was cut off in my prime. Day 2: March 19 Striving is everything, isn’t it? Striving for normalcy in extreme times. Striving to stay calm when your internal regulators go haywire. The [End Page 181] effort of navigating papered-over realities, personally and politically: camouflage, gas lighting, denial. Hardest of all? Acknowledging our compliance in the destruction. Day 3: March 20 Even in bucolic Marin County, the dread is palpable. California is in lockdown but my ophthalmologist husband is performing an upper and lower blepharoplasty on a patient who’s decided that a global pandemic is a fine time to get a little eyelid work done. I beg him to get tested but he isn’t entitled without full-on symptoms—even at his own hospital. Finally, he promises to work in fresh scrubs daily, wear a mask and gloves at all times, require his patients to sanitize their hands, and regularly disinfect the receptionist’s counter. In the evening we begin flirting outrageously. I whisper a quote from Didion in his ear: If we knew exactly how much time we had left, what would we do differently? Day 4: March 21 Was it just last week that I was happily in New York City with my son? We went to the theater—Cambodian Rock Band and Jagged Little Pill—and I got to meet his first official boyfriend since he came out two years ago. Our last day together was Wednesday, March 11. My gallerist and I met for lunch and she told me a crazy story about Mike Bloomberg. How before his ill-advised run for the presidency, he grabbed a handful of French fries right off her plate at a fancy midtown restaurant. He’d been meeting with Henry Kissinger (he’s alive?!), who had the minimal decency to keep his hands off her food. Afterwards I headed to the Whitney to see the Mexican mural-ist exhibit, then met Azul for a quick dinner. He arrived flushed and overheated, fearing these might be coronavirus symptoms. I stayed calm for a change, felt his forehead, led him to a nearby restaurant. He drank copious amounts of liquids and cooled down. We both ordered salads. The next day, everything shut down: theaters, museums, schools, restaurants, all nonessential businesses. I didn’t leave my apartment. The anxiety was three-dimensional—in the streets, the stores, elevators. Panicked buying was underway—hand [End Page 182] sanitizer, toilet paper, frozen foods, anything with bleach. I flew back to San Francisco on Friday, March 13, the day the first person died of the coronavirus in New York. Day 5: March 22 I’ve been teaching two graduate classes at a private university in San Francisco. We’ve been forced...