Shep smiled. “Pissed off.”
“Gotta love the bitch,” Jackson said admiringly.
“You know, the word patient,” said Shep, “isn’t especially appropriate in Glynis’s case.”
“If she weren’t being impossible, you’d be worried.”
“Yeah. Though I’m still worried.”
When they drifted back toward the room, whose door was half-open, the urge to listen in was irresistible. Even with Ruby’s return, she and her mother’s pretense of conversation was halfhearted. No one wanted to talk over the show.
“I can’t believe you’re using my being laid up after major surgery to play missionary.” Glynis’s voice was a little sloppy from low-level morphine, but Jackson was pleased to recognize its traditional edge. “Talk about kicking a girl when she’s down.”
“But what if I’m right?” Deb implored. “It’s logical, Glyn. If you’re right and all that awaits us is big black nothingness, then it doesn’t matter what you believe. But if I’m right—if Jesus is right—you need to accept Him as your savior to get into heaven. It makes sense to cover yourself, doesn’t it? Just in case? It’s almost like—math, you know? Your way you definitely get nada, and my way you have a chance at eternal life. Like, if a lottery is free, why not grab a ticket? All your teachers said you were so smart.”
“My way I keep my dignity,” Glynis croaked. “And I don’t appreciate your coming all the way to New York to write me off. I don’t want to go to heaven. I want to go home.”
“It’s never too early to prepare to meet God, and to ask Jesus into your heart.”
“These days every family has one,” Shep whispered. “It’s usually the runt.”
“That broad—broad being the word—is no runt,” Jackson muttered back.
“Yeah, she’s on Atkins. Knocks out pasta back at the ranch, which is a pain in the butt. But I meant runt like, bottom of the totem pole. Never had much going for her. No career, housewife, five kids. The Christianity thing, it gives her a leg up.”
“It’s cheating,” said Jackson.
“Hey, whatever works. You’ve got two accomplished sisters you can’t beat by their rules, you change the rules. Bingo, she has spiritual superiority, and she can finally condescend to all the folks who’ve condescended to her for most of her life.”
“Do you vultures fly around the country swooping down on people too weak to put up a fight?” Glynis was saying. “You’re like ambulance chasers. Christ, even Nancy didn’t come in here trying to sell me Amway.”
“You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” said Deb. “So many people like you who pretend not to believe still use Jesus Lord and Christ almighty and good God as exclamations. Our preacher did a whole sermon on that. He said you were calling out for God’s love and redemption, even if you didn’t know it. Something in you knows that His merciful hand is close by.”
“Deb, I am damned if I can see what’s so ‘merciful’ about this last three months.”
“See, you did it again: ‘I am damned.’ You are damned if you don’t open your heart to God. Who knows, maybe this sickness is God’s way of getting you to see His light.”
“So I’m being punished for my heathen ways? You can’t possibly be claiming that your brain-dead born-again friends never get cancer.”
“… At least it’s sure made you thin,” Deb said wistfully.
“Yeah, right. The Mesothelioma Diet. The book’s not out yet, but you could still get a head start by chewing on some old insulation.”
“Shep said this has something to do with asbestos?”
“I was probably exposed at Saguaro Art. I’d ‘smite’ every stockholder of the school’s supplier with peritoneal mesothelioma this instant if I could. Screwing them out of some money is going to have to do.”
“You shouldn’t think such evil thoughts.”
“I think nothing but evil thoughts.”
“I’d have expected,” Deb said tentatively, “that mortal illness—”
“I love that expression. Ever heard of ‘immortal illness’?” The chuckle stuttered to a cough. “Come to think about it, the illness is immortal. ‘Mortal patient struck with immortal illness’ is more like it.”
“I thought that this situation would naturally bring out goodness and kindness and gratitude in a person.” Deb sounded petulant.
“What this situation naturally brings out in me is bitterness and rage. When you get cancer, you can do it any way you want.”
“But now you have the opportunity to realize how much your friends and family care for you. Shep says he’s having an awful time managing your schedule, because so many people want to see you. This is a time to feel blessed.”
“I feel cursed. If by nothing else than that kind of sad, impoverished homily from people like you who have no idea what they’re talking about.”
“You can be as spiteful as you like!” For some reason, Deb had started to wheeze.
“You bet I will,” Glynis snarled.
“I still want you to know that I’ve always admired …” Wheeze. “And looked up to you. You’re beautiful and talented and …” Wheeze-wheeze. “You’ve been a loving wife, and you’ve raised two … two … two beautiful children. Always remember …” Wheeze-wheeze-wheeze. “That I was proud to have you as my sister!”
Glynis flung, “Watch your fucking verb tense!” after Deb’s back like a near-at-hand shoe, as her younger sibling fled through the door in tears, clutching an inhaler.
“This is like doing rounds in a cockfight,” said Ruby as Hetty held and patted her sobbing youngest. “Champion bantam in Room 833 takes all comers. Wish me luck.”
“Keep it short,” said Shep.
“You can count on that, pal,” said Ruby. “I plan to escape while I still have my tail feathers.”
Perhaps mindful that it was boring in the hallway, Ruby left the door wide open. Shep having warned them off kissing, Ruby squeezed her sister’s left foot before she drew up a chair, propping her long, scrawny legs on the bedrail. “Did you have to go for Deb like that? She’s such easy pickings.”
“I’ve only got the energy for cheap shots. Besides, using this occasion to try to convert me, again, is outrageous.”
“She’s trying to comfort you. The Jesus routine is all she’s got.”
“She’s been brainwashed, and it’s like being visited by Killer Zombie Cretins of the Living Dead.”
Ruby cut a glance in their direction, and said quietly, “She can hear.”
“I don’t care.”
“But she really believes that stuff. Just because we don’t doesn’t make her insincere.”
“I loathe sincerity.”
“Great. So I’ll try to be as glib and false as possible.”
“That would be swell.”
“So—how are you?” asked Ruby. This prying, emphatic solicitation, that leaning into the words, must have been a regular tonal refrain during hospital visits, and probably backfired.
Glynis sighed. “What can I say? My whole body hurts. I can’t sleep at night. Five minutes of lying here in the dark passes as fast as the Paleozoic era. Then during the day I’m groggy. I still have to make conversation with the likes of you when there’s nothing to talk about. Because what’s going to have happened? The TV is tiny, and only gets terrestrial channels with snow. In the afternoon, sunlight from the window wipes out the picture. Being moved to tears that I can’t see The Price is Right is humiliating. But with the pain meds, I can’t even concentrate through an article on this spring’s eye shadow colors. The IV in my hand gives me the willies. I’m constantly convinced that the tape will come off, and then the needle will rip out sideways from the vein. I’ve trained myself never to look at it.”
Jackson knew what she meant, although he himself vacillated between the same not-looking-at-all-costs and inspecting obsessively.
“Food is nauseating,” Glynis continued after a sip of water. “When I keep it down it gets impacted, and they stick a hose up
my ass. When Shepherd isn’t here to help me to the toilet, half the time the nurses don’t answer my call. So I struggle with the bedpan by myself. I pee on the sheets, and all over my thighs. Did you really want to know all that?”
“Sure I do.”
“You’re lying. Pretty soon people will ask, ‘So—how aaaare you?’ and I’ll say, ‘Fine.’ Everyone will be happy.”
“When are they going to let you out of here?”
She’d doubtless answered this question repeatedly. “Little less than a week, they think” was slurred with boredom.
“Mom and Deb are going to stay. But I’ll probably have to fly back before you go home.”
“You just got here, and the first thing you do is tell me that you have to leave.” The guilt-tripping was pretty rich, given that Glynis hadn’t wanted to see her family at all, but maybe the use of her illness to the hilt was a good sign. It meant she was still Glynis.
“It wasn’t the first thing I said. But the Fourth Avenue Street Fair starts this weekend, and we have a table. Somebody’s got to be back at the gallery minding the store.”
“So never mind that your sister has cancer, if it’s a matter of making more money.”
“Glynis. Life goes on.”
“For some people.”
“Yes, Glyn, for some people,” said Ruby. “Which isn’t my fault.”
“I thought your gallery was going great guns. Raking in the cash.”
“It’s doing okay,” Ruby said moderately.
“Of course, some metalsmiths would find that a real opportunity, a sister who’s joined the enemy. Too bad for me.”
In the hallway, Shep groaned. “Not this again.”
Ruby put a hand to her temple. “You didn’t have a large enough body of work for a one-woman show.”
“Because I’m so lazy. Because I loll around my nice house popping bonbons.”
“Because you agonize over everything, Glynis. I’ve never understood why.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“But life’s too short for all that hand-wringing of yours. Maybe you can better appreciate that now. The other artisans I show just make stuff. And then they make other stuff. They don’t give birth to it.”
“I do. I give birth to it. Besides, after you’d regaled me with how urban and slick Tucson had become, and how your space wasn’t some two-bit local storefront but a respected institution in a major artistic hub? I offered to contribute just a piece or two to a group show, and you still said no!”
“We’ve been through this! By then we’d changed the name to Going Native and specialized in Pueblo and Navaho work, along with showing other, mostly Southwestern craftspeople who exhibit those influences. Your work would have stood out like a sore thumb. It’s too—severe, too—contemporary.”
“God, I hate that ethnic shit,” Glynis grumbled.
Ruby brought her feet to the floor and clapped her thighs. “Why go over this again? Doesn’t this feud seem trivial now? Doesn’t it seem stupid?”
“What do you want to talk about instead? Iraq? Terri Schiavo?”
“Maybe about how—we still love each other or something.”
“Fine. We still love each other,” said Glynis. “Got that over with. Next?”
She had a point. There proceeded an unwieldy pause during which they both seemed at a loss.
“Anyway, I don’t care about Iraq anymore,” Glynis muttered. “Or Terri Schiavo. I’m happy for them all to die. I’m happy about global warming, and nuclear proliferation, and shortage of fresh water. I’m big on earthquakes and floods and bird flu. I’d be thrilled for worldwide oil reserves to run out by 2007. I’d love to see the whole shebang go up in flames after being broadsided by an asteroid the size of Saturn.”
“God, Glyn. I guess being sick doesn’t always bring out the best in people, does it.”
“Maybe it does,” said Glynis, struggling up on the pillows. “But maybe the best in me, to me, isn’t the best in me, to you. Maybe the best in me, to me, is hateful, vindictive, and ill-wishing. In fact, that’s the perfect word. I wish everyone else were ill, too.”
“I’ve been warned not to stay too long and tire you,” said Ruby, though she was the one who sounded tuckered out. “Maybe tomorrow?”
“Great. And we can talk another half an hour about how much we luuuv each other.”
“Whatever you want, Glynis.”
“No, I get the picture. Not whatever I want. There’s obviously some script here I’m meant to be following. I’ll be sure and get Shepherd to download it from the Internet.”
When Ruby came out, Shep suggested that the four of them go across the street to the Dominican coffee shop while Hetty made, as her son-in-law stressed, a quick, low-key visit. Schmoozing with only a portion of Glynis’s clan appealed; whenever entire families convene, no one can bitch behind anyone else’s back, and there’s nothing to say.
They settled in a booth. It was a relief to sit down. Jackson had started to feel a little light-headed, and there was a hot, pounding sensation that he tried not to think about. This was not the time to dwell on his own problems; he didn’t even have a problem, not really. It was a solution to a problem, and was simply taking longer to recover than he’d expected. That weird—lumpiness, the bulge. Only swelling, normal swelling that would come down. He fought an urge to go to the men’s room and inspect it again, though he didn’t see one; in this iffy a neighborhood, restrooms attracted bums. So he sat with his knees canted for air. One ran into Shep’s leg, and when Jackson didn’t move it his friend shot him a look.
“Honestly, all that bad blood over my not showing her work in my gallery,” Ruby was putting to Shep. “Why can’t she finally let that go?”
“You two always get into some ballyhoo over Going Native sooner or later,” said Shep.
“Someday soon there could be no ‘later.’ That’s the point. It’s time to give it a rest. Also, under the circumstances, couldn’t she cut Deb a little slack, too? At least say something like, I have my own spirituality, and it may not be as different from yours as you think. You know, try to meet her halfway.”
“Well, has Glynis ever ‘met you halfway,’ Deb?” asked Shep.
“She’s never been anything but contemptuous of my faith,” said Deb.
Shep leaned back and swept the menu across the laminate. “You guys want everything to be different. To heal all the old sore points. I fight the same impulse. We all want to make sure that the relationship is put safely into, you know, what my dad would call ‘a state of grace.’ So if worse comes to worst we’ll still be able to sleep at night. But think of it this way: maybe Glynis doesn’t want everything to be different.”
“Why wouldn’t Glynis want our relationship to be left, like you said, in ‘a state of grace’?” asked Ruby. “It’s in her interests, too.”
“On some level—deeper down than you have any idea—Glynis realizes that sometime soon she may not have any interests. So the only interests she has are right now.”
“I don’t get it,” said Ruby.
“Well, haven’t you three always bickered?”
“Yes! So let’s draw a line, call it a day!”
“But Glynis is trying to hold on to what she has. And the relationship is—what it is.”
Jackson guffawed. “I can’t believe you said that.” It was a running source of ridicule that Randy Pogatchnik loved the tautology (“It is what it is, man!” or “People are people, right?”), suffering under the illusion that he had said something profound instead of absolutely nothing.
“Yeah, I know, I must be tired,” said Shep.
“I get what you’re saying, though,” said Jackson. “She’s clinging to content. Even shitty content still means something. Besides, if she soft-focuses into a Hallmark card, Glynis like Glynis understands herself disappears. Almost like dying ahead of schedule.”
“I still wish she’d think about us,” said Deb. “After what you said about those cells, Shep.” She tear
ed up again. “The … sarmacoide or something. I mean, who knows … Like, whenever we visit, it could always turn out to be the last time … And then all we’d have to remember is a lot of bile and surliness and meanness!”
“Yeah, well,” Shep said with a smile. “That just means you’d have to remember your real sister.”
“So how do you figure those cookies are going down?” said Ruby after their coffees arrived.
Shep raised his eyebrows over the rim of his cup. “Badly.”
“I was worried that all that chocolate, the Brazil nuts and butter … It’s awfully rich for someone whose digestive system is barely functioning.”
“You could say that,” said Shep.
“Like, it’s not thinking about what Glynis would really want.”
“Yes.” Shep’s eyes shone. “I think that will be the issue.”
“Mom’s always been like that,” said Deb. “She says you’re supposed to give other people presents that you’d want yourself.”
“That explains the dried flower arrangements and checkered aprons,” said Shep. “They didn’t go down too well with Glynis, either. And the potholder crafts kit was a disaster.”
“Mom didn’t want to give Glynis cookies; she wanted to make them,” said Ruby. “And I’m really sorry about all the bother.” She explained to Jackson, “Once she’d hit on this project, she sent Shep out to the store, and then for a second time because she forgot about the Brazil nuts. The A-and-P didn’t have any, so we had to go all the way to the health food store in Scarsdale. She had to ask where every spoon and bowl in the kitchen was and how the oven works, and then she screwed up the fountain over the sink. She’s not used to a hand mixer, and the dough spattered everywhere—on the appliances, the floor, and the walls. This is all to be helpful.”
“Mom wants to be seen to be helpful,” said Deb. “She wants credit. Notice that she only does the dishes when Shep is in the kitchen? When he’s at work, she leaves them to us.”
“If she really wanted to thrill your sister,” said Shep, “she’d bring a few pieces from your father’s old gem and mineral collection. Glynis has hankered after those specimens for ages. She’s always hoped to incorporate them into her work.”
So Much for That Page 17
