by Green, John
The nurse left. “Is she gone?”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me nod. “Yeah,” I said.
“I’ll see? Really? Did she seriously say that?”
“Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go,” I said.
“1. Doesn’t pun on your disability,” Isaac said.
“2. Gets blood on the first try,” I said.
“Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice.”
“How are you doing, sweetie?” I asked, cloying. “I’m going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie.”
“Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?” he answered. And then after a second, “Most of them are good, actually. I just want the hell out of this place.”
“This place as in the hospital?”
“That, too,” he said. His mouth tightened. I could see the pain. “Honestly, I think a hell of a lot more about Monica than my eye. Is that crazy? That’s crazy.”
“It’s a little crazy,” I allowed.
“But I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I just wish the whole thing hadn’t happened sometimes. The whole cancer thing.” His speech was slowing down. The medicine working.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Gus was here earlier. He was here when I woke up. Took off school. He…” His head turned to the side a little. “It’s better,” he said quietly.
“The pain?” I asked. He nodded a little.
“Good,” I said. And then, like the bitch I am: “You were saying something about Gus?” But he was gone.
I went downstairs to the tiny windowless gift shop and asked the decrepit volunteer sitting on a stool behind a cash register what kind of flowers smell the strongest.
“They all smell the same. They get sprayed with Super Scent,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, they just squirt ’em with it.”
I opened the cooler to her left and sniffed at a dozen roses, and then leaned over some carnations. Same smell, and lots of it. The carnations were cheaper, so I grabbed a dozen yellow ones. They cost fourteen dollars. I went back into the room; his mom was there, holding his hand. She was young and really pretty.
“Are you a friend?” she asked, which struck me as one of those unintentionally broad and unanswerable questions.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “I’m from Support Group. These are for him.”
She took them and placed them in her lap. “Do you know Monica?” she asked.
I shook my head no.
“Well, he’s sleeping,” she said.
“Yeah. I talked to him a little before, when they were doing the bandages or whatever.”
“I hated leaving him for that but I had to pick up Graham at school,” she said.
“He did okay,” I told her. She nodded. “I should let him sleep.” She nodded again. I left.
•••
The next morning I woke up early and checked my email first thing.
[email protected] had finally replied.
Dear Ms. Lancaster,
I fear your faith has been misplaced—but then, faith usually is. I cannot answer your questions, at least not in writing, because to write out such answers would constitute a sequel to An Imperial Affliction, which you might publish or otherwise share on the network that has replaced the brains of your generation. There is the telephone, but then you might record the conversation. Not that I don’t trust you, of course, but I don’t trust you. Alas, dear Hazel, I could never answer such questions except in person, and you are there, while I am here.
That noted, I must confess that the unexpected receipt of your correspondence via Ms. Vliegenthart has delighted me: What a wondrous thing to know that I made something useful to you—even if that book seems so distant from me that I feel it was written by a different man altogether. (The author of that novel was so thin, so frail, so comparatively optimistic!)
Should you find yourself in Amsterdam, however, please do pay a visit at your leisure. I am usually home. I would even allow you a peek at my grocery lists.
Yours most sincerely,
Peter Van Houten
c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart
“WHAT?!” I shouted aloud. “WHAT IS THIS LIFE?”
Mom ran in. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I assured her.
Still nervous, Mom knelt down to check on Philip to ensure he was condensing oxygen appropriately. I imagined sitting at a sun-drenched café with Peter Van Houten as he leaned across the table on his elbows, speaking in a soft voice so no one else would hear the truth of what happened to the characters I’d spent years thinking about. He’d said he couldn’t tell me except in person, and then invited me to Amsterdam. I explained this to Mom, and then said, “I have to go.”
“Hazel, I love you, and you know I’d do anything for you, but we don’t—we don’t have the money for international travel, and the expense of getting equipment over there—love, it’s just not—”
“Yeah,” I said, cutting her off. I realized I’d been silly even to consider it. “Don’t worry about it.” But she looked worried.
“It’s really important to you, yeah?” she asked, sitting down, a hand on my calf.
“It would be pretty amazing,” I said, “to be the only person who knows what happens besides him.”
“That would be amazing,” she said. “I’ll talk to your father.”
“No, don’t,” I said. “Just, seriously, don’t spend any money on it please. I’ll think of something.”
It occurred to me that the reason my parents had no money was me. I’d sapped the family savings with Phalanxifor copays, and Mom couldn’t work because she had taken on the full-time profession of Hovering Over Me. I didn’t want to put them even further into debt.
I told Mom I wanted to call Augustus to get her out of the room, because I couldn’t handle her I-can’t-make-my-daughter’s-dreams-come-true sad face.
Augustus Waters–style, I read him the letter in lieu of saying hello.
“Wow,” he said.
“I know, right?” I said. “How am I going to get to Amsterdam?”
“Do you have a Wish?” he asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the business of granting sick kids one wish.
“No,” I said. “I used my Wish pre-Miracle.”
“What’d you do?”
I sighed loudly. “I was thirteen,” I said.
“Not Disney,” he said.
I said nothing.
“You did not go to Disney World.”
I said nothing.
“Hazel GRACE!” he shouted. “You did not use your one dying Wish to go to Disney World with your parents.”
“Also Epcot Center,” I mumbled.
“Oh, my God,” Augustus said. “I can’t believe I have a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes.”
“I was thirteen,” I said again, although of course I was only thinking crush crush crush crush crush. I was flattered but changed the subject immediately. “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”
“I’m playing hooky to hang out with Isaac, but he’s sleeping, so I’m in the atrium doing geometry.”
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“I can’t tell if he’s just not ready to confront the seriousness of his disability or if he really does care more about getting dumped by Monica, but he won’t talk about anything else.”
“Yeah,” I said. “How long’s he gonna be in the hospital?”
“Few days. Then he goes to this rehab or something for a while, but he gets to sleep at home, I think.”
“Sucks,” I said.
“I see his mom. I gotta go.”
“Okay,” I said.
<
br /> “Okay,” he answered. I could hear his crooked smile.
•••
On Saturday, my parents and I went down to the farmers’ market in Broad Ripple. It was sunny, a rarity for Indiana in April, and everyone at the farmers’ market was wearing short sleeves even though the temperature didn’t quite justify it. We Hoosiers are excessively optimistic about summer. Mom and I sat next to each other on a bench across from a goat-soap maker, a man in overalls who had to explain to every single person who walked by that yes, they were his goats, and no, goat soap does not smell like goats.
My phone rang. “Who is it?” Mom asked before I could even check.
“I don’t know,” I said. It was Gus, though.
“Are you currently at your house?” he asked.
“Um, no,” I said.
“That was a trick question. I knew the answer, because I am currently at your house.”
“Oh. Um. Well, we are on our way, I guess?”
“Awesome. See you soon.”
•••
Augustus Waters was sitting on the front step as we pulled into the driveway. He was holding a bouquet of bright orange tulips just beginning to bloom, and wearing an Indiana Pacers jersey under his fleece, a wardrobe choice that seemed utterly out of character, although it did look quite good on him. He pushed himself up off the stoop, handed me the tulips, and asked, “Wanna go on a picnic?” I nodded, taking the flowers.
My dad walked up behind me and shook Gus’s hand.
“Is that a Rik Smits jersey?” my dad asked.
“Indeed it is.”
“God, I loved that guy,” Dad said, and immediately they were engrossed in a basketball conversation I could not (and did not want to) join, so I took my tulips inside.
“Do you want me to put those in a vase?” Mom asked as I walked in, a huge smile on her face.
“No, it’s okay,” I told her. If we’d put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone’s flowers. I wanted them to be my flowers.
I went to my room but didn’t change. I brushed my hair and teeth and put on some lip gloss and the smallest possible dab of perfume. I kept looking at the flowers. They were aggressively orange, almost too orange to be pretty. I didn’t have a vase or anything, so I took my toothbrush out of my toothbrush holder and filled it halfway with water and left the flowers there in the bathroom.
When I reentered my room, I could hear people talking, so I sat on the edge of my bed for a while and listened through my hollow bedroom door:
Dad: “So you met Hazel at Support Group.”
Augustus: “Yes, sir. This is a lovely house you’ve got. I like your artwork.”
Mom: “Thank you, Augustus.”
Dad: “You’re a survivor yourself, then?”
Augustus: “I am. I didn’t cut this fella off for the sheer unadulterated pleasure of it, although it is an excellent weight-loss strategy. Legs are heavy!”
Dad: “And how’s your health now?”
Augustus: “NEC for fourteen months.”
Mom: “That’s wonderful. The treatment options these days—it really is remarkable.”
Augustus: “I know. I’m lucky.”
Dad: “You have to understand that Hazel is still sick, Augustus, and will be for the rest of her life. She’ll want to keep up with you, but her lungs—”
At which point I emerged, silencing him.
“So where are you going?” asked Mom. Augustus stood up and leaned over to her, whispering the answer, and then held a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he told her. “It’s a secret.”
Mom smiled. “You’ve got your phone?” she asked me. I held it up as evidence, tilted my oxygen cart onto its front wheels, and started walking. Augustus hustled over, offering me his arm, which I took. My fingers wrapped around his biceps.
Unfortunately, he insisted upon driving, so the surprise could be a surprise. As we shuddered toward our destination, I said, “You nearly charmed the pants off my mom.”
“Yeah, and your dad is a Smits fan, which helps. You think they liked me?”
“Sure they did. Who cares, though? They’re just parents.”
“They’re your parents,” he said, glancing over at me. “Plus, I like being liked. Is that crazy?”
“Well, you don’t have to rush to hold doors open or smother me in compliments for me to like you.” He slammed the brakes, and I flew forward hard enough that my breathing felt weird and tight. I thought of the PET scan. Don’t worry. Worry is useless. I worried anyway.
We burned rubber, roaring away from a stop sign before turning left onto the misnomered Grandview (there’s a view of a golf course, I guess, but nothing grand). The only thing I could think of in this direction was the cemetery. Augustus reached into the center console, flipped open a full pack of cigarettes, and removed one.
“Do you ever throw them away?” I asked him.
“One of the many benefits of not smoking is that packs of cigarettes last forever,” he answered. “I’ve had this one for almost a year. A few of them are broken near the filters, but I think this pack could easily get me to my eighteenth birthday.” He held the filter between his fingers, then put it in his mouth. “So, okay,” he said. “Okay. Name some things that you never see in Indianapolis.”
“Um. Skinny adults,” I said.
He laughed. “Good. Keep going.”
“Mmm, beaches. Family-owned restaurants. Topography.”
“All excellent examples of things we lack. Also, culture.”
“Yeah, we are a bit short on culture,” I said, finally realizing where he was taking me. “Are we going to the museum?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Oh, are we going to that park or whatever?”
Gus looked a bit deflated. “Yes, we are going to that park or whatever,” he said. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
“Um, figured what out?”
“Nothing.”
•••
There was this park behind the museum where a bunch of artists had made big sculptures. I’d heard about it but had never visited. We drove past the museum and parked right next to this basketball court filled with huge blue and red steel arcs that imagined the path of a bouncing ball.
We walked down what passes for a hill in Indianapolis to this clearing where kids were climbing all over this huge oversize skeleton sculpture. The bones were each about waist high, and the thighbone was longer than me. It looked like a child’s drawing of a skeleton rising up out of the ground.
My shoulder hurt. I worried the cancer had spread from my lungs. I imagined the tumor metastasizing into my own bones, boring holes into my skeleton, a slithering eel of insidious intent. “Funky Bones,” Augustus said. “Created by Joep Van Lieshout.”
“Sounds Dutch.”
“He is,” Gus said. “So is Rik Smits. So are tulips.” Gus stopped in the middle of the clearing with the bones right in front of us and slipped his backpack off one shoulder, then the other. He unzipped it, producing an orange blanket, a pint of orange juice, and some sandwiches wrapped in plastic wrap with the crusts cut off.
“What’s with all the orange?” I asked, still not wanting to let myself imagine that all this would lead to Amsterdam.
“National color of the Netherlands, of course. You remember William of Orange and everything?”
“He wasn’t on the GED test.” I smiled, trying to contain my excitement.
“Sandwich?” he asked.
“Let me guess,” I said.
“Dutch cheese. And tomato. The tomatoes are from Mexico. Sorry.”
“You’re always such a disappointment, Augustus. Couldn’t you have at least gotten orange tomatoes?”
He laughed, and we ate our sandwiches in silence, watching the kids play on the sculpture. I couldn’t very well ask him about it, so I just sat there surrounded by Dutchness, feeling awkward and hopeful.
In the distance, soaked in the unblemished sunlight s
o rare and precious in our hometown, a gaggle of kids made a skeleton into a playground, jumping back and forth among the prosthetic bones.
“Two things I love about this sculpture,” Augustus said. He was holding the unlit cigarette between his fingers, flicking at it as if to get rid of the ash. He placed it back in his mouth. “First, the bones are just far enough apart that if you’re a kid, you cannot resist the urge to jump between them. Like, you just have to jump from rib cage to skull. Which means that, second, the sculpture essentially forces children to play on bones. The symbolic resonances are endless, Hazel Grace.”
“You do love symbols,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation back toward the many symbols of the Netherlands at our picnic.
“Right, about that. You are probably wondering why you are eating a bad cheese sandwich and drinking orange juice and why I am wearing the jersey of a Dutchman who played a sport I have come to loathe.”
“It has crossed my mind,” I said.
“Hazel Grace, like so many children before you—and I say this with great affection—you spent your Wish hastily, with little care for the consequences. The Grim Reaper was staring you in the face and the fear of dying with your Wish still in your proverbial pocket, ungranted, led you to rush toward the first Wish you could think of, and you, like so many others, chose the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park.”
“I actually had a great time on that trip. I met Goofy and Minn—”
“I am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrote this out and memorized it and if you interrupt me I will completely screw it up,” Augustus interrupted. “Please to be eating your sandwich and listening.” (The sandwich was inedibly dry, but I smiled and took a bite anyway.) “Okay, where was I?”
“The artificial pleasures.”
He returned the cigarette to its pack. “Right, the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park. But let me submit that the real heroes of the Wish Factory are the young men and women who wait like Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot and good Christian girls wait for marriage. These young heroes wait stoically and without complaint for their one true Wish to come along. Sure, it may never come along, but at least they can rest easily in the grave knowing that they’ve done their little part to preserve the integrity of the Wish as an idea.
