Mrs Blythe and the Unidentified Amoeba

6 Jul 2011

Mira Mattar

Mrs Blythe was a mother of two. She lived with Mr Blythe and their daughter Clara in a four bedroom house in an expensive suburb of Milton Keynes. Mrs Blythe was five foot two and naturally blonde. The tip of her small, severely upturned nose reached almost to the point between her eyes. The interior of her nostrils was clearly visible. Her narrow mouth seemed similarly to be drawn upwards to the point between her eyes and was set in a natural frown. The lower lip fitted neatly into the upper. Her eyes were blue and tidy and she had short, stubby eyelashes. She wore black, grey, navy blue, brown, white and tan. She drove a big car and had to press a button on a remote control to open the gate which let her in to the exclusive housing complex in which she and her family lived. There were a few framed photographs on the mantlepiece above the fireplace. The kitchen smelled clean and cool and the black marble surfaces were bare and shiny. Everything was out of sight. For everyday use Mrs Blythe favoured the kind of cutlery and crockery that had writing incorporated into the design: ‘knife’ was etched on the knives and ‘spoon’ on the spoons. Her bread bin said ‘bread’ in bold white letters and her mugs said ‘mug’. For special occasions she asked Mr Blythe to stand on the step ladder and reach into the back of a high cupboard for the big box of silver cutlery which they had received as a wedding gift from the Blythes. Mrs Blythe appreciated the position of a well located postbox and had several pairs of identical shoes. For her, the mark of a good home was the presence of a well used utility room.

Mrs Blythe believed in ‘deep down’. For example she knew ‘deep down’ that cats do not suffocate babies in the night while the house sleeps but she still got rid of Mable when her first child was born. She also knew ‘deep down’ that her children were not going to save themselves until their wedding nights but this did not mean boyfriends or girlfriends were permitted to spend the night. Moreover she knew ‘deep down’ that God probably did not exist but she prayed to him for protection just in case. She was an advocate of the just in case style of life and therefore always had tissues and an umbrella in her handbag.

Mrs Blythe’s daughter Clara Blythe had been my friend for a few years. Her mother approved of me because I wore a helmet when I rode my bicycle and my parents were still together. Clara had inherited the just in case philosophy as well as the intimidating blondness but carried condoms and spare black tights instead of tissues and umbrellas. The dark blue of her eyes sat like engine oil in a puddle. For Clara’s birthday one year Mrs Blythe took us out for dinner in an expensive restaurant before we went out out with our small gang of friends. We wore sober colours and filed and lacquered our nails. I asked my mother what people talk about in fancy restaurants and she said ask about the family and don’t mention money as she folded tea-towels and smoked duty frees.

The waiter – who wore a white suit – pulled our chairs out for us and placed our napkins in our laps with a flourish. He called Clara and I mademoiselle and Mrs Blythe madame. We sat on the same side of the table facing the window and Mrs Blythe sat opposite facing the restaurant. Mrs Blythe smiled without showing her teeth and said ‘lovely,’ when the waiter gave us our menus. Our view was of a bus stop and an overflowing bin outside a Costcutters.

When I asked about the family she told me Clara’s cousin had had twins and I nodded. Then she seemed to remember something else and looked happy with gossip, but also portentous and forbidding. She pushed her plate forward a little then pulled it back and lowered her voice.
‘Timothy’s not been well,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ I replied. Timothy was Clara’s older brother.
‘They thought it was appendicitis.’
‘Oh no,’ I said and Clara looked at me.
‘But that was only their first guess,’ Mrs Blythe said and licked her lips with a small movement.
‘Guess?’ I asked.
‘When Sarah called -’
‘Who’s Sarah?’
‘Sarah’s Timothy’s girlfriend. Lovely girl. They’re still in Bali but they’ll get married before they live together here. Anyway she called and said, “Mrs Blythe, Timothy isn’t well, he’s not well at all.” So I said, “Sarah tell me immediately what’s wrong or I’ll scream.” Of course I would never have screamed but it seemed to do the trick.’

The waiter came over to take our order. Mrs Blythe ordered sea bass and pancetta in a white sauce. I never order saucy things because you never know what’s really in them, so I chose fish cakes because I was nervous and you can see inside them. Clara bravely ordered seafood linguine. She said linguine and everything. She didn’t just point at the menu and say that please. After the waiter left Mrs Blythe leaned in and cleared her throat:
‘“But doctors don’t guess” I said to Sarah, “they diagnose.” She said Timothy had been feeling poorly for days and had lost his appetite.’
I nodded and frowned.
‘He’d been up the night before with a terribly high fever and awful sweats.’
‘Oh no,’ I said.

The waiter came back round to pour the water. I thought of cups of warm sweat. Mrs Blythe said thank you and nodded after each glass was filled, wincing at the abrupt splash of ice cubes. Clara crunched one with vigour against her costly orthodontistry.
‘And diarrhoea,’ Mrs Blythe mouthed elaborately.
The waiter left and she continued:
‘So he behaved as you do with a fever and had some paracetamol, drunk lots of water and tried to rest, and good thing Sarah’s there with him you know, because after he’d gotten some sleep,’ she said and broke a bread-stick in two, ‘he woke up running to the bathroom needing to vomit,’ she took a bite of one half, crunched and passed me the other half. Clara picked up her own bread-stick. Mrs Blythe spooned her ice cubes out of her glass and back into the jug. ‘Well,’ Mrs Blythe continued, ‘it didn’t stop coming, both ends now and because they’re abroad – you know, Sarah thought they ought to go to the doctor.’
‘Sounds sensible,’ I pitched in.

Clara rolled her eyes and scraped her chair back, ‘I’m going out for a fag,’ she said. Her mother knew she could not chide her on her birthday but winced just the same.
‘So when they eventually got to the hospital, which was a chore in itself because of the you know what,’ she said in a hard whisper and wiggled the fingers of one hand near her mouth and the other hand behind her at seat level.
I smiled a tight smile and looked down.
‘Well they did all sorts of tests and stool samples -’ the waiter politely put our food down and we looked up and said thank you. Clara saw and flicked her cigarette into the gutter and came in still exhaling.
‘Which bit are you on now?’ asked Clara salting her food without tasting it – another wince from mother.
‘Your brother’s stool samples Clara,’ Mrs Blythe said, ‘now tuck in.’ Clara clenched her jaw. ‘So, they thought it was appendicitis or food poisoning but after ruling them out,’ she paused for effect, ‘they discovered it was an amoeba.’
‘Oh! My cousin had one of them once!’ I said, making it sound like a designer dog or once treasured collectible.
She ignored me and said in a conspiratorial tone, ‘Now I don’t know if you know but some amoebas can be highly dangerous,’ she paused and arched an eyebrow, ‘highly dangerous.’ A piece of fish fell off her fork as she was raising it to her mouth and landed in the sauce making a flat silly splash. ‘But mostly they’re treatable,’ she continued quickly and speared the fallen fish firmly with her fork. ‘How’s your food girls?’ She asked.
‘Good,’ I replied blandly, dissecting the filling.
‘It’s OK,’ Clara said, mouth full.
‘Yours Mrs Blythe?’ I ventured.
‘Mmm, good. So, they’ve given him some standard amoeba killing antibiotics and he felt a bit better.’ I smiled ready to express relief with a kind and common phrase. ‘But a few days ago,’ I set my face back to concerned, ‘he started behaving strangely.’
‘Is that so?’ I said like a detective.
‘He’s been hallucinating,’ Mrs Blythe said putting down her fork and pursing her lips.

Hallucinating is a word I’ve never know how to react to. I took a big chug of water and looked at the ceiling. ‘Thirsty,’ I said and put the glass down.
‘Sarah called me,’ Mrs Blythe insisted, ‘in the middle of the night on Tuesday because she could not get Timothy to stop banging his head against the bedroom wall.’
‘Oh my,’ I said for the first time in my life.
‘And she said this had been going on for days, three days.’
‘Why?’ I asked, stupidly.
‘Because the brain provides the perfect environment, I read it on the web, for the amoeba to live. He’s trying to get it out.’
‘Mum –’ Clara interjected looking briefly up from her food.
‘It’s a parasite Clara which hijacks the brain.’ She lowered her voice and sat authoritatively back in her chair.
‘Not exactly -’ Clara corrected, flailing.
‘It enters through the nose from infected waters and travels into the brain and spinal cord, and begins destroying the tissue in the brain.’
‘Mum,’ Clara pleaded looking around her, ‘that’s enough.’
‘But he can feel it eating his brain,’ Mrs Blythe tapped her temple with a manicured nail. ‘He can feel it running around between his brain and his skull,’ her eyeballs bulged with conviction.
‘It was a hallucination Mum.’
‘An hallucination Clara and no, I think you’ll find it was quite real. It’s woken him up every night with its…its scuttling about. And it’s multiplying, growing.’
‘That’s unlikely.’
‘I think I know when my own son’s brain cells are being eaten Clara. And I’ve researched -’
‘A Wikipedia stub doesn’t count Mum.’
‘Nevertheless, it, the amoeba, cuts into the neurons and feasts on the nutrients that spill out. It protects itself with a coat called a cyst which is impervious, impervious Clara, to the immune system. Then, you see, it sheds the cyst,’ she slowed down, fascinated, ‘you see, it changes its shape and continues gorging on his mind.’ She paused and took a smug bite of fish. ‘Sarah said there’s a stain forming on the wall where he bangs his head.’
‘They don’t even know what type of amoeba it is yet,’ Clara said slowly.
‘He goes back to the same spot of wall every night.’
‘They said there are two types of amoeba, an intestinal one and an extraintestinal one.’
‘I know which one it is though I can’t pronounce it.’

She beckoned the waiter over and asked for a pencil and paper. Clara blushed. Obligingly he returned. Mrs Blythe forgot to say thank you this time. I busied myself with a rigorous analysis of what remained on my plate. Mrs Blythe cleared her throat and began to write. After the letter n she said to the pencil, ‘This is no good,’ and asked for the waiter to come back. ‘Do you have a pencil sharpener?’ She asked. Clara’s neck reddened. He nodded and returned shortly with a sharp pencil. Mrs Blythe said, ‘That’ll do,’ and started again, ‘N-a-e-g-l-e-r-i-a F-o-w-l-e-r-i’ she wrote and turned the paper around to face us.
‘So?’ Clara said.
‘The mortality rate for those infected with this,’ she circled the name with the pencil splintering the tip, ‘extraintestinal amoeba is ninety seven per cent,’ she quoted. ‘So let’s hope it’s the other one.’
‘It most likely is.’
‘Then tell me, why can he feel it in his head?’ suddenly innocent, and then, ‘really Clara sometimes I think you live in a fantasy world. The doctor said the types were morphologically indistinguishable.’
‘OK, but they have different effects. He would be worse if he had the brain eating one and it’s super rare so I don’t think you need to worry.’
‘Super rare? Is that a medical term? And why aren’t you worried?’
‘Because it’s unlikely he’ll die and it’s probably a side effect of the medication.’
‘No Clara. Absolutely not. Confusion, seizures, fever, disorientation,’ she rattled them off counting on her fingers, ‘are not side effects. These amoebas are primitive, the most primitive form of life.’ Her small blue eyes filled with tears. ‘They have no ethics, no morals.’
‘They’re single celled organisms Mum, they don’t have most things.’
‘They are free living organisms. Do you know what that means?’
‘No,’ I said. Clara sighed through her nose and her mouth squirmed in irritation.
‘They can survive without the host.’
I wondered where Mrs Blythe had heard a word like host and said, ‘Oh.’
‘You like etymology don’t you?’ Mrs Blythe asked me.
‘Well yes,’ I said, thinking I love etymology.
‘The word amoeba comes from the Greek for change. It was originally named after the God Proteus, a shape shifter. Isn’t that amazing?’
‘Yes,’ I hesitated.
‘It’s neat, it’s a neat explanation,’ she repeated, ‘that’s what I love about clean, honest words.
‘Mum, eat your dinner,’ Clara said looking down at hers. Fleshy bits of orange mussels squelching in the thick white ribbons of pasta. Curled prawns fat and pink to suck out of red crunchy tails.
‘It’s been days now and he won’t listen to me when I beg him to come home and go to a proper hospital.’
I scraped around on my plate.
‘If it was the extraintestinal thing,’ Clara said twirling her long fat pasta around her fork, ‘he wouldn’t be alive.’
‘But the doctor said it can take weeks to grow and even longer to identify.’
‘But he also said the medication may have severe, unpleasant side effects which can be unpredictable and no decisions can be made at this stage.’
‘Now Clara I know it’s your special day but I won’t have you paraphrasing so crudely.’
‘Would you prefer if I paraphrased more elegantly or would you rather I avoided it altogether?’

I smiled and Clara put her foot near mine under the table and squished my toes with her shoe in frustration.
‘No Clara, that’s not it. You know it’s not the medication but the amoeba,’ she gritted her teeth.
I looked at Clara. She clenched her jaw and said, ‘I’m going out for a fag,’ and tossed her napkin down on her chair.
There was a long pause. I smiled idiotically whenever Mrs Blythe caught my eye.
‘Do you remember the story about the porridge?’ Mrs Blythe said pushing her plate forward.
‘Er -’
‘You do, you must do. The poor little girl goes into the forest and is kind enough to share her little bit of food with the old man. So he gives her a magic pot in return.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said vaguely.
‘And he says all she has to do is say “cook little pot cook” and it’ll make plenty of porridge. So what did she do?’ Mrs Blythe asked me.
‘Went home and said “cook little pot cook”?’ I said hopefully.
‘Exactly. And then what?’
‘Then her poor family could eat?’ My voice increased in pitch.
‘Yes but the pot overflowed didn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And it flowed out of the pot onto the floor, into the house, out of the door, down the steps, into the town, onto the road and filled the town, almost drowning it all because the little girl couldn’t remember the magic words to stop it cooking. It was multiplying itself you see, infinitely increasing and taking over. Can you imagine how the little girl felt?’
‘Frightened?’
The waiter came over and took our plates. Mrs Blythe said, ‘the dessert please,’ and he nodded.
‘He says he can feel it like a worm, then the worm divides into two and the two halves divide into four and so on and so forth. He says he can feel it multiplying and making clusters, like a black cloud moving around his brain, getting bigger and bigger.’

Clara came back in and sat down saying, ‘Coffee?’ ‘Oh yes, and,’ Mrs Blythe nodded at the waiter behind us who brought over a small slice of tiramisu with a flickering candle in it and a sparkler. He started singing Happy Birthday and Mrs Blythe and I joined in, fumbling over the high notes. The other diners turned their heads and smiled and sang along, leaving out the bit where the name goes so Mrs Blythe and I ended up hollering Clara out flat and dumb. She blew out the candle but the sparkler wouldn’t stop, until eventually the waiter picked it out of the dessert with his long fingers and dunked it in a wine bucket full of ice.