In the Shadow of the Bridge

by Joseph Caldwell

  Then, midway during our time together, his mother died. A major part of his grieving was his confusion. He seemed never to be sure of who he was. It may have been that his mother’s caring and her ever-present love defined him to himself. If so, now he was lost. And his sisters, who, by the way, had promised their dying mother that they “would take care of Bobby” wasted no time breaking their promise.

  When Bobby had been in St. Vincent’s, very seldom did his sisters ever come to visit. There was, however, one cousin, Mary, an attractive woman who came often and was always cheerful, but in no way able or obligated to take on Bobby’s care after his mother’s death. As for Cookie, I knew from a previous experience what her response would be about caring for her brother.

  Bobby was staying with her in their mother’s house. He had fallen in the bathroom and hit his head against a cabinet. There had been a lot of blood, and Cookie had had to clean it up—very carefully. It was infected with HIV and exposure in the smallest cut would be fatal. It was decided that Bobby should come back to the hospital. An ambulance would be sent.

  Meanwhile, Carole, the nurse in charge of volunteers, drove to his house located in the far reaches of Brooklyn and agreed to take me along, so we could offer whatever help might be needed.

  Bobby was resting in bed, his head swathed in a clean towel. Cookie had done a good job. I had been with Bobby for only a few minutes when Cookie appeared in the doorway to the bedroom. “You’re not coming back here!” she all but shouted. “You’re going to a facility!”

  Bobby went into complete tantrum mode, his fists beating the mattress at his sides, his feet kicking the air while he howled a “Nooo!!!” that began in his throat and reached into his forehead. I did what I could to calm him. I was close to succeeding when Cookie reappeared in the doorway. “You’re not coming back here!” she repeated more forcefully than before. “You’re going into a facility!” Again, she disappeared. Again the tantrum and howling returned. So much for Cookie. But who, ultimately, could blame her?

  Of the two remaining sisters, one cited her children as a reason for not bringing someone with AIDS into her house. Understandable enough. As for the third, it was Bobby who rejected the offer even before it was made. He explained to me that her husband would come on to him, wanting sex. I pointed out, “But you have AIDS.” Bobby immediately let me know that this would not be a deterrent. And that settled that.

  Bobby did go to a “facility” after all, Rivington House on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I went to see him as frequently as I could. None of my patients had been as abandoned as he was.

  At times, to relieve the monotony of the Rivington confines, I’d take him for dinner at an inexpensive greasy spoon down the block where, at some moments, remnants of his elfin self would begin to surface. Other times, at his request, I’d bring him his favorite dish, spaghetti with plain tomato sauce—a selection I never understood. Once it was from a Chinese restaurant—lo mein, whatever that is.

  The only “resource” available to him now was cigarettes. In his unit, there was a room of some size with a window for its fourth wall. It had a special vent and was offered as the one place where smoking was allowed. Almost every time I came to visit, I would find Bobby in the ventilated space. He and the other smokers were too busy puffing away to establish much comradery.

  The first few times I visited him, I would, so he wouldn’t feel neglected, join him. Soon enough I came to feel that the vent was not all that effective. Bobby and those in charge disagreed, but on further visits I’d wait in his room—sometimes for more than just a few minutes. But I persisted in visiting without complaint about the long waits, my occupation during them being my sadness. He had no one. He had nothing, except cigarettes, which, I admit without apology or excuses, I willingly provided.

  Toward the end, my visits followed a near formulaic scenario. I’d try to get a conversation going, but almost unfailingly my pauses allowed Bobby to mutter in flattened tones, “Get me out of here.” I’d try to continue the so-called conversation with more “Blah, blah, blah.” Again, like a mantra, “Get me out of here.”

  Never was I more inadequate.

  When Bobby died, Carole and I went to the funeral and his sisters proved to be genuine mourners.

  I was with my next patient, Marty, the longest: two and a half years. He was a talented young man who had designed and built in his apartment a loft bed that one reached by a winding staircase. Cabinets. Track lighting. His anger was never far below the surface—much of it at himself for what was happening, but there were others who managed to excite his wrath.

  When I was first assigned to him, his mother was visiting him from Salt Lake City. She was magnificent. “This is not going to get you! We’re not going to let it!” She prescribed a special tea which she would supply and that he must take regularly. What was happening to others would not happen to him. She went back home to Salt Lake City.

  When I commented to Marty how extraordinary his mother was, he corrected my assessment by recalling to me an event that had taken place during her stay. He and his mother were about to sit down to the dinner that she had prepared when she asked him if he had a tape measure.

  Puzzled, he said, “Yes,” and then sat down at the table.

  “Can you get it for me?”

  “Mother, we’re just about to eat.”

  “I know, but can you get it for me?”

  “It’s in the back of the closet. Let’s eat.”

  “No, get it for me. Please.”

  “What do you want it for?”

  “I want to measure your couch to see if it will fit in my den.”

  How the conversation ended, Marty never said.

  Marty had a close friend, Arnold, who did not have AIDS. Sometimes Arnold would be taking care of Marty and I’d be taking care of Arnold since Marty’s complaints, his dissatisfactions could at times be overwhelming, even to a close friend.

  He refused the professional caregiver sent to him through his insurance company. He refused him because the man was fat. He fired the nurse from the Supportive Care Program who, to this day, has not the slightest idea why. Except it’s obvious. He had to lash out at someone. Anyone. He had an unending fight with his landlord, putting his rent money in escrow until certain improvements were made to the apartment. His rages gave him energy. The money was still in the bank when he died. It went with the rest of whatever he had to his friend Arnold.

  Arnold, too, was often the object of his anger, usually for no reason. At one time, when Arnold and I were walking away after spending some time with him, he said to me wistfully, “And I used to be the difficult one.”

  And yet, of all the untimely deaths I experienced in those fifteen years, the death of my very first patient, Jeff, was the most difficult. This was probably because he, more than any of the other patients, challenged my determination to apply “no demands, no expectations.” His pride made him highly unpredictable. Once, because he felt slighted, he got dressed and left the hospital without being discharged. He was soon readmitted but had to go through all the admissions procedures—physical, X-rays, questionnaires, and more—all of which he angrily objected to. Then there was his return to drugs and his King Lear–like rage against himself. At another point he refused a visit from his mother because she’d thrown him out. Still, there was somewhere in his pride a latent dignity which I couldn’t fail to sense. And, finally, toward the end, an innate kindness managed to rise and assert itself.

  One evening during his final hospital stay I brought him the six-pack of lemonade he’d asked for. Immediately he gave one can to the patient in the next bed and another to the man visiting him. Still another went to the woman who took away his dinner tray. He did drink one himself while I was there, after I’d repeatedly declined his offer of one for me.

  Also around this time I did his laundry at my local laundromat, and while I was folding
it at home before bringing it to him, I found myself pressing a clutchful of his clothes close to my chest, holding it there for a few seconds.

  Two nights later he told me I had been like a brother to him. Then he died.

  10.

  I did take one break from the Supportive Care Program and that was to go for a residence at the MacDowell Colony. I’d come up with an idea for a new novel based on the time I spent in Rome reaping the reward of the prize I’d won.

  It had been the Academy’s policy to give each fellow an extra chunk of money along with his or her monthly stipend in the January of the fellow’s year, an encouragement to travel around Italy. We were there, after all, to acquaint ourselves as much as possible with the limitless riches of Italy’s contribution to our Western culture. I was expected not only to write my novel, but to leave my studio, get away from the Academy, even abandon Rome itself and experience as much of Italy’s cultural heritage as could be crowded into my allotted time. I needed little encouragement.

  Even in my studio, a small, cabin-like structure, two walls of which were the bricks of an ancient Roman wall, I would often ask myself: “What should I do today? Should I work on my wretched little novel or go down the Janiculum Hill, through Trastevere, across the Tiber, and take another look at some Caravaggios? Or perhaps climb the Aventine Hill and spend some time in the sixth-century church of Santa Sabina? Or head for the coffee bar in Piazza San Cosimato, where I could, undetected, play the native by having a late-morning cappuccino?

  My explorations outside of Rome were mostly to the south—to Naples, to Sicily. Eventually I narrowed them down to Naples, a city whose energy spins the world. To me, who could never decipher their dialect, the Neapolitans were objects of endless fascination, especially their physicality, their movements, their gestures. No body part was exempt from being called into service for some expressive need. Wrists and knees were particularly useful, but it was the hands, the hands that did most of the work—grabbing, pinching, groping—a finger tugging down a lower eyelid, four fingers thrust sideways into the mouth, thumb and forefinger joined, both hands given a series of shakes to let the listener know that some annoyance demanded immediate correction.

  To prepare myself for one particular visit, I read a book about some traditional Neapolitan customs, one of which dramatized their legendary concern with status, with how they presented themselves to each other and to the world at large. For an important event—a wedding, a funeral, a First Communion—a distinguished gentleman would, if no other candidate was available, be paid to attend. He would then with casual confidentiality be pointed out as “the uncle from Rome.” This would, in turn, elevate the event to a gathering of some importance. This importance was applicable to each of the guests without exception and promoted a general sense of self-approval bestowing upon the occasion a distinction that guaranteed success and earned for the host an eager approbation.

  Whether this custom is still in practice among present-day Neapolitans, I do not know. Nor do I care. I’m a fiction writer and it’s my job to create a believable world in which convincing situations are acted out by interesting and, if possible, compelling characters.

  So back to my idea. What if an American who speaks an assured Italian with an assured Roman accent would, as a favor he could not dismiss, present himself at a Neapolitan family gathering, a wedding to be more specific, and be introduced as “the uncle from Rome”?

  And so I spent a month in Naples by myself—observing, exploring, deciding very specifically where each scene would take place, even noting in which direction the traffic was moving on a particular street.

  And once I returned, I offered this idea to my imagination—the ultimate arbiter as to whether or not a novel is lurking somewhere within. I was given not just permission to proceed, but a demand. At the MacDowell Colony that spring, I went to work. My main character was a middle-aged opera singer who was having a well-respected career singing comprimario or “character” roles. Having studied and trained in Rome, his accent was perfect, a perfection made possible by the highly sensitive ear necessary to a man of his calling.

  My imagination suggested he have a longtime obsession with a long-ago-lost love. As if I were doing research, I became obsessively interested in a fellow colonist at MacDowell who remained completely unaware of my interest, no matter how much charm and wit were dispensed in the effort. That he was decidedly heterosexual was not allowed to be a consideration. An obsession is an obsession (see Proust).

  To give the unimpressionable young man one final chance to claim the prize, I decided when I got back to New York I’d get tickets to the then current Broadway production of O’Neill’s early comedy, Ah Wilderness! and late tragedy, Long Day’s Journey into Night and invite him as my guest.

  I got the tickets. Then sanity intervened—before I could take the final steps toward idiocy. I realized that the fellow colonist was actually a surrogate obsession and definitely not the true object of my impossible yearnings. That was and would always be Gale/Bill. I said to myself, “Why not take the risk? Why not invite him?” It certainly would be the more honest thing to do. So, after a fifteen-year hiatus, I phoned him. I invited him. He accepted.

  Then he said, “I should tell you. I have AIDS.” Before I could react or respond, he continued, “I’ve aged. A lot. And I’ve lost some hair. Then there are these lesions, sort of like bruises, from what’s called Karposi’s sarcoma. But they’re more aggressive. Kind of like skin cancer.”

  Obviously, he was warning me that he looked exactly like what he was: a man with AIDS, and did I still want to invite him? Which gave me a needed context to say something about what I’d been hearing. “Do you feel up to going?” I asked, then quickly added, “I hope so.”

  “Sure,” he said. Then to my astonishment, he added, “I feel fine.”

  And so it was agreed we’d go together. Because of my understandable concern I almost asked if I could come to see him before then, but some instinctive warning suggested I settle for seeing the play together and let it go at that. Which is what I did.

  A few days before we were scheduled to meet at the theater, he called to say he was going through another siege of feeling just plain lousy. I asked if there was anything I could do, not mentioning the volunteer work I was doing. He declined the offer but said he had a doctor’s appointment the following week at Bellevue Hospital, just a few blocks from my apartment. He’d stop by. I mentioned my apartment was a fifth-floor walkup—implying that this might be a difficulty. He repeated, “I’ll stop by.”

  My bell rang. I buzzed him in, then went into the hall and down one flight. A bald-headed man was on his way up. “Bill?” By no stretch of the imagination could this have been my longtime acquaintance, but I’d prepared myself for almost anything. The bald man continued up. Bill appeared on the steps below me. I had not been adequately prepared.

  Not by Bill, not by my three years of experience at the hospital. Aged he was, and he’d lost most of his hair. But it was the Kaposi’s lesions on his face that forced me to suppress a gasp. It was as if the face had been splattered with thrown mud, and, in retaliation for the indignity, he had refused to wipe it off. Any difficulty he may have had with the stairs was disguised by a measured pace. His greeting had a note of wry amusement, the exact words I’ve now forgotten—a way of saying, in effect, “What do you think of the changes?” What I answered is also forgotten, but I hope it gave no hint of how appalled I was at what I was seeing.

  In the apartment, we went into what had earlier been a living room but was now dominated by my desk rather than a couch, the cramped corner in the bedroom never having been conducive to a writer’s restlessness. He took the rocking chair. (Remember the rocker, the play I wrathfully wrote for my friend, Eddy?) I sat in my reading chair by the window.

  It was fall and the weather was a New York autumn at its best. We talked as if less than a week had passed since our la
st get-together. AIDS was not discussed. He’d bought a house on Staten Island; he’d been teaching photography at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, but not for the past semester or two—the single (and oblique) reference to his condition. Since it was lunchtime I offered to go and get some pizza in the shop downstairs. He preferred that we eat there. It was a very specific indication that proved to be a rule—that he would never avoid appearing in public. He refused to be intimidated by his splotched face.

  We had pizza. The conversation was cheerful. No matter how he looked, it was good to see him. I walked him to the subway on Twenty-Eighth Street. At Park Avenue South, he pointed across the street and said, “Look at the woman in the blue dress standing next to the green mailbox.” And there, indeed, was a woman of no distinction clad in a cotton dress of deepest royal blue, standing next to a dull green mailbox. The artist’s eye. Seeing what no one else sees.

  The Ending

  11.

  Bill was hospitalized again at Bellevue. I went to visit. I kissed him on the forehead. He had no reaction. It may have been during this visit that I mentioned my volunteer work, but it could have been later. Some still small voice warned me—in no uncertain terms—not to be more than casual in our renewed acquaintance.

  While I was there, what must have been a resident doctor came into the room with about five young interns or, perhaps, students. The doctor introduced himself and asked Bill if the intrusion was okay. It was. The doctor’s express purpose was to give his charges a glimpse of Bill’s lesions. It was, he said, the most excessive explosion of the sarcoma he’d ever seen, an example of how the cancer could run rampant and uncontrolled throughout the entire body when the immune system had been so thoroughly disabled. Would Bill please take off his pajama top?