‘Damn right, he wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t want you to give up your dream for his.’
‘I want to.’
‘Hannah, you’re too good to waste—’
She held up her hand. ‘Heath didn’t think You was a waste. Neither does Carol.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I should call Carol.’
‘Only if you’re quitting,’ he said.
‘Not until You is number one. It shouldn’t take that long.’
He lifted his eyebrows, but he didn’t argue. ‘Where should we show these photographs?’
She was so grateful he’d let the matter of You drop she didn’t bother to tell him she knew nothing about photography exhibits. ‘What’s the biggest and best venue you know?’
‘Society for the Visual Arts in Soho,’ Charley said immediately. ‘That might take you some time. I hear it’s booked for the next century. But if you have a show there, anyone who’s everyone sees it.’
‘OK. That’s where it’ll be.’
‘Where what will be?’
Hannah’s mother stood in the doorway.
‘Oh, shit,’ Hannah said.
Charley choked, but covered by continuing to take pictures. Wasn’t he out of film yet?
‘Is that any way to greet your mother? Come and give me a kiss.’ Belinda offered her perfectly powdered cheek.
Hannah did what she was told; it was easier.
Her mother appeared flawless, as usual. Platinum blond hair in a pageboy cut that framed her square-jawed face. Her eyes were as blue as Heath’s had been; she also had Heath’s height, or he’d had hers. She stood tall and slim in her navy blue pinstriped pantsuit – a white camisole just visible in the V at her neck, the waist nipped in tight.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He had to catch a flight.’
‘You said you were coming tomorrow. Both of you!’
‘Well, I’m here. Your father will have to come next week when he gets back.’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘He won’t.’
Her mother hadn’t noticed Heath’s unusual lack of chatter, nor his odd stillness. Hannah should probably tell her before she air kissed a corpse.
Or not.
‘Heath, darling, aren’t you glad to see me?’
‘He’d have been glad to see you any of the dozen times you promised to come before.’
Charley cast Hannah a quick, concerned glance.
She wasn’t acting like herself. She didn’t sound like herself. Her voice was loud. Her words were harsh. Her hands were clenched.
She kind of liked this new self.
‘Well, I’m here now.’
‘He isn’t.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Belinda marched up to the bed. ‘He’s right …’
Her breath caught. She swayed. His name came out on an exhale sounding as lost as Hannah felt.
‘When?’ Belinda asked.
Hannah had no idea. It seemed like they’d both been here forever and that they’d only just arrived.
‘About ten minutes ago, Mrs Cartwright,’ Charley said.
From the way he held the camera, fingers tightening and releasing and tightening again, he badly wanted to take a picture of her mother with the body. But, so far, he’d refrained.
‘Who the hell are you?’
The question was so rude Hannah flinched.
‘Charley Blackwell. I’m doing an essay on AIDS.’ He fired off a shot with her in it. ‘Start to finish.’
Hannah expected her mother to grab the camera, smash it, at the least demand the film and that Charley leave. Instead she nodded slowly. ‘About time someone did.’
‘Who are you and what have you done with my mother?’ Hannah asked.
Belinda’s eyes narrowed but she didn’t take the bait. ‘I’d like a minute alone with my son.’
‘Why?’ Hannah demanded. ‘You couldn’t be bothered with him when he was alive. Now that he’s dead he’s suddenly worthy?’
‘I admit, I didn’t understand him. I didn’t know why he had to be gay.’
‘It wasn’t a lifestyle choice; it’s who he is. Was.’
‘If you say so.’
Hannah ground her teeth.
‘Then when all this started …’ She waved her French manicure at the machines and tubes. ‘We told him to snap out of it. Did he want to die?’
‘Snap out of it,’ Hannah repeated. Her head had started to throb.
‘Now he’s dead, and for what?’
‘Have to agree with you there.’
‘I should have been stronger. I should have been here.’
Hannah figured agreeing again would be redundant.
‘Though I did send money. A lot of money.’
Hannah’s gaze met Charley’s. She couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘We’ll pay for the funeral, of course.’
‘No funeral.’
‘No …’ Belinda’s brow would have crinkled if the plastic surgery would have let it. ‘Well, I suppose that’s best. So many of those people in such a small place, we don’t want it to spread.’
Hannah opened her mouth, then shut it again. Why bother?
‘This essay.’ She waved at Charley’s camera. ‘Is it sold?’
‘It isn’t finished.’
She cast a meaningful glance at the bed. ‘Isn’t it?’
Hannah choked on a sob.
Charley took a step toward her, but Hannah’s mother stood in the way. ‘Could you get to the point, Mrs Cartwright?’
‘I want to buy it.’
‘No,’ Hannah blurted.
She imagined her mother making a bonfire with the film, then no one would ever see her dying son, no one would ever know she’d had one; Heath would be erased as easily from the world as he’d seemed to be from their parents’ lives.
‘It’s not for sale.’
‘Everything’s for sale.’
Charley just set his jaw and shook his head.
‘Don’t you want your work to reach the largest possible audience?’
Charley flicked a glance at Hannah.
‘What are you talking about, Mother?’
‘I’ll publish the photographs in a book. There’s nothing like it out there.’
Of course. Anything to make a hundred million bucks.
‘Charley is going to exhibit the essay.’
‘That’s a fantastic idea.’ She turned away from the bed as if what lay on it was dead to her.
Hannah fought not to laugh at her pun. If she started laughing now, she wouldn’t stop.
‘We’ll drum up interest for the book with a showing. We’ll sell the prints.’ She lifted her hands, framing air. ‘The people who can’t afford one – and believe me, there’ll be a lot of them – can buy the book. Whaddya say?’
‘I don’t …’ Charley began.
Hannah held up her hand. ‘The show takes place at the Society for the Visual Arts in Soho.’
‘That’s impossible. They’re booked solid.’
Hannah shrugged. ‘Oh, well.’
‘Wait.’ Belinda chewed on her lower lip. She wasn’t going to have any lipstick left. ‘I think I can call in a favor.’
She walked out, then almost immediately in again. She went directly to Heath, leaned over, kissed his brow, whispered something in his ear. Then she straightened, pulled the sheet over his face and left.
‘What just happened?’ Hannah asked.
‘Your mother.’
‘She bought us. It’s what she does.’
‘No, she gave us the best opportunity to display the essay of Heath in the most prominent place and with the widest medium.’
‘It’s a deal with the devil.’
‘There’s a reason the devil makes so many deals.’
‘What’s that?’
‘She’s good at it.’
Hannah released a watery, blubbery laugh that turned into a hiccup and then she was crying. She hated to cry and Heath wouldn’t want her to. But how did one stop?
�
�Sit.’ Charley urged her into the chair at the side of the bed, then pulled the sheet away from Heath’s face.
He didn’t look like Heath any more. Really, he hadn’t looked like Heath for a while now.
‘You want me to step out so you can say goodbye?’
She started to nod, then shook her head, waved at the camera. ‘Finish this.’
‘You don’t want me to photograph your goodbye.’
‘I do. Otherwise how will I remember it?’
Hannah wasn’t certain she’d remember much of today. Maybe she didn’t want to. But they did need to finish this the way that Heath had wanted it to be finished.
Hannah thought she’d be self-conscious, unable to say a true goodbye with a camera in the room. But the instant her hand touched Heath’s – the skin bag of bones texture was fading to stiff and rubbery – her tears stopped and she just said what she needed to.
‘Goodbye. I love you. Always will. You remember how I said I’d panic without you?’ She leaned over and kissed his cheek one last time. ‘I am.’
Charley lowered the camera. His eyes were a little damp.
‘You want a minute too?’ she asked.
He hesitated, then nodded and handed her his camera.
She retreated to the door, glanced back.
Charley stood at the bedside, shoulders slumped, the picture of someone who’d just lost his best friend.
Hannah lifted the lens.
‘We need to take him now.’
Hannah bumbled the camera, nearly dropping it on to the tile floor.
The orderly was back.
‘Where are you taking him?’ Her voice sounded frightened and weak.
How would she make You into the magazine Heath wanted it to be if she talked to people like that? No one would ever take her seriously. They’d eat her alive.
‘Morgue.’ The orderly did some fancy maneuver with the bed wheels. There was a click and then a clunk and he began to take Heath away.
Hannah turned so she wouldn’t have to watch him go. ‘He wants to be cremated.’
‘Have the funeral home contact the hospital.’
The rattle of the bed faded down the hall.
At the apartment, Hannah stood in the center of the room uncertain what to do first. Or maybe she was uncertain what to do at all. Her brain was empty.
‘Hungry?’ Charley asked.
Hannah made a face.
‘Thirsty?’
She shook her head.
‘Tired?’
She nodded.
‘Off to bed then.’ He herded her down the hall.
She stopped halfway to her room. ‘I should call the funeral home.’
‘It’s ten o’clock at night.’
She glanced at her watch. ‘Huh.’
‘Morning’s soon enough for phone calls.’
At the door to her bedroom he kissed her forehead and she clung.
He stiffened; she nearly spun and fled. Then his arms came around her and she laid her cheek on his chest and just let herself be held. It had been months since anyone had hugged her. Heath hadn’t had the strength.
‘What calls?’ she asked.
He jerked a little as if he’d been thinking of something else.
Hannah wished she could think of anything but how warm he was, how good he smelled, what he might taste like if she—
‘Funeral home. Medical equipment rental place. Your aunt. His friends. I’ll make a list.’
‘You seem to know a lot ab—’ She bit off the word, wished she could bite off her tongue. Of course he knew a lot about what to do when someone died. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘At least the knowledge is good for something other than nightmares.’ His arms dropped; he turned away. He’d gone into his room and shut the door before she made it into hers.
She surprised herself by falling immediately and deeply asleep. In her dream, the orderly from the hospital was in the apartment.
‘Your brother ran off. We don’t know where. Can you help us search for him?’
Her dream self knew exactly where Heath had gone – an underground tunnel, like the New York City subway system. A place that Heath would never, ever be caught dead.
Ha.
The dark, damp passageway was deserted as she hurried along to a destination both predetermined and mysterious.
A door loomed out of the darkness – heavy, iron – yet when she touched it the portal swung wide. Inside Heath lay on a bed in the corner and he beckoned for her to join him. He appeared as he had before this had all begun – golden and beautiful and so happy.
She lay down, her back to his front – spoons – the way her mother always said they’d slept as babies. His arms surrounded her; she laid her hands on his atop her stomach.
‘I’m all right,’ he whispered. ‘Everything’s all right here.’
The sorrow and pain ebbed out of her like the tide. Joy flowed in to take their place.
He was all right.
The sound of her own indrawn breath woke her, with tears trembling on her eyelashes and that feeling of joy just starting to fade.
Her brother had been there with her. She could still feel his arms around her. But that feeling of oneness she’d shared with him was fading along with the burst of joy.
They had always been a set, and now she was just one. Alone in a way no one else could ever understand.
Hannah sat up, swiped at her face. She wasn’t going to go back to sleep anytime soon.
She opened her door, stepped into the hall, heard the low rumble of Charley’s voice in his room.
‘I don’t know what you want from me, Francesca.’
Francesca. Not Frankie. Not Fancy.
‘If I could turn back time, if I could make it un-happen, if I could die instead of her, don’t you think I would?’ His voice lifted with every phrase until the final question was a cry, a plea.
Hannah didn’t realize she’d stepped toward his door, that her palm lay against the wood. There had been so much pain, so much loss. How did a person survive it?
Neither Frankie nor Charley seemed to be doing a very good job. Who did? Hannah certainly didn’t think she was going to.
His voice lowered; she could no longer hear what he was saying. She shouldn’t have been listening but it wasn’t like she’d had her ear pressed to the door. Just her hand.
She curled that hand inward, wishing she could do something more for him, but knowing she could not.
Hannah hurried into the living room, then she wanted to hurry back out. Heath’s hospital bed stood there, rumpled white sheets ghostly in the half-light. His pillow still bore the indentation of his head.
She definitely had to get all of that out of here ASAP.
She didn’t want to turn on the television. The sole place to sit and watch would be Heath’s bed, or the chair she’d sat in as she’d watched him die.
She’d get rid of that chair tomorrow as well.
The only other seat in the room was at the light table. Hannah took it, then she flicked on the bulb that lay inside. Expecting to see more shots of DC about to go up in flames, she stilled at the sight of Heath.
The majority of the photographs depicted scenes she was unfamiliar with because they’d been taken while she was at work. They’d done all sorts of things without her.
Her finger brushed a shot of Heath mugging for the camera in front of the giant panda cage at the National Zoo while Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling slept peacefully behind him. Sure, Heath had leprosy lesions and he wore a Red Sox cap because his hair was gone, but he looked happy.
She laughed out loud at the photo of him eating a hot dog at a street fair. He hated hot dogs. But many of the things he’d liked he could no longer stomach during chemo. Apparently things he’d previously hated he no longer did.
She spent hours staring at slides of her brother out and about in Washington DC. It was like he wasn’t dead, because he was right here doing new things.
Every sad photo she re
moved from the light table and stacked it out of the way.
Heath reflected in the mirror as he shaved the last remaining strands of golden, god-like hair from his head.
Heath’s beautiful blue eyes tear-filled as he held the puke bowl up to his chin; in the background brightly colored cartoon characters merrily capered across the television screen.
Heath at the bedside of one, two, three dying friends while he was still golden and god-like, their gazes on him dark, hopeless, knowing.
Heath holding up a hand covered in lesions toward the camera, his face turned away, the curve of his neck both achingly sweet and heartbreakingly sad.
There were also pictures of Hannah. She looked like crap in every one, which worked because in every one she remembered feeling like crap. She hadn’t felt any other way since Heath had been diagnosed.
She moved every photograph of herself off the light table, as well, and concentrated on the ones that mattered. She sat there all night, grouping the happy pictures one way and then another. First chronologically – oldest to newest, then newest to oldest – then she tossed them up and arranged them however they fell down, and after that she put all the black and white on the left side and all those in color on the right. Every edit revealed something she hadn’t seen before.
By the time Charley walked in, appearing as if he hadn’t slept either, she was jazzed and she hadn’t even had any caffeine.
‘Hi.’ His stubble rasped when he ran a hand over his jaw. ‘You …’
She leaped up and ran to him, grabbing his hands tightly in her own. ‘Because of you, he’s never going to die.’
He glanced at the light table. ‘Hannah, you should get some sleep.’
‘I’m fine. I’m good. I’m great.’
‘You’re not. You’re overtired and a little nuts.’
She laughed, and she did sound a little nuts. ‘I dreamed of Heath. He said he was all right.’
‘OK.’ He put his arm around her and tried to lead her back to her bedroom.
She ducked his arm and dragged him to the light table. ‘See?’ She pointed at all the happy slides. ‘He lives right there.’
‘Those are only half the story, and you know it.’ He scowled. ‘Where are the pictures of you?’
‘I’m not the story.’
‘I disagree.’
She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Heath’s the story. He isn’t truly dead because of you.’
Just Once Page 29
