All the Ways the World Can End

by Abby Sher

  “We should get Lenny and TinyGinsberg matching chew toys. Or do they make human-size wheels so she could just jog in one spot?” She giggled.

  “C’mon now,” Dad said. They were stretched out on his new deluxe aerodynamic mattress side by side, staring out the picture window at the backyard. Emma was rubbing some arnica cream into the bruises on his hands and arms from all the needles he’d had in the hospital. I hated that she could hold and soothe him so effortlessly. As opposed to the last time I tried to be his caregiver, which led to incredible anguish and an almost fatal fever. I didn’t dare look at his chest for lingering signs of that recent tragedy.

  “Seriously,” said Emma the next time I dropped off a bowl of crackers, “can you slow down for just a sec?”

  “Why?” I shot back bitterly. Then I saw the look of surprise on Dad’s face and tried to reword. “I mean, there’s just a lot to do right now. Mom’s interviewing another home nurse and I’m about to make supper.” I went to the kitchen and put some water in a pot to boil, just in case Emma wanted to verify my story.

  Mom’s interviews took forever—mostly because she kept asking each candidate about their hobbies and aspirations. She was a firm believer in rapport. Again, a gene I admired but couldn’t seem to access the way Emma could. I made a feast of the blandest boiled foods I knew—noodles, broth, oatmeal, hard-boiled eggs. I didn’t know if Dad could eat any of it. It was just something to do besides watch Emma and Dad snuggle and snicker while she scrolled through pictures of her dorm-mates.

  I came in one more time to deliver Dad’s seven o’clock pain meds.

  “Come join us, Len,” he said. “We just got to the Night of a Thousand Genders.” He patted the little margin of bed space next to him. “I’m getting a real lesson in anatomy here.”

  “Just a minute. Something’s burning or boiling I think.” I retreated back to the kitchen for another half hour until I heard Mom close the door on the last home health-care applicant.

  The supper I concocted was borderline inedible. “You don’t have to,” I said every time Dad tried to sip more oversalted broth. Emma and Mom poured themselves each a glass of white wine and I was ready to join them, but even sniffing the bottle brought back too many Grand Central memories.

  I did all the dishes—twice—before curling up on the couch next to Mom to watch some double-agent spy movie from the eighties that she and Dad loved. Emma popped a big bowl of popcorn and again climbed into bed with Dad. I was worried he couldn’t digest popcorn or a kernel would make him cough up whatever was left of his insides. Nobody else shared this concern. I stared at his jaw, opening and shutting, opening, shutting. And at Dad and Emma, chuckling as their hands fished through the popcorn bowl, sometimes grazing each other.

  By the closing credits, Dad and Emma both had their eyes closed. Mom tried to get her up to go to her own bed, but Emma just burrowed her nose into Dad’s pillow. He was oblivious.

  “Oh well,” Mom said. “I guess that’s fine.” She looked at me as if she was asking for my approval. Or maybe she was asking for permission to collapse in her own bed. She hadn’t slept there for more than a cumulative eight hours over the past week. The gray circles under her eyes just kept dipping lower and lower.

  “This is fine,” I told her, though I had no idea if it was.

  When I was sure her light was out and the house was quiet, I started a little chart of Dad’s nutritional intake. And how much fresh air he got. And whether or not he started talking in gibberish (something I’d read about people who were approaching death). Really, in my head it was my “Is This It?” chart. But I’d never say that out loud. Or even close to my consciousness.

  Action

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Drink water

  Yes—three glasses (filtered)

  Eat

  ½ bowl of broth Five penne noodles Popcorn

  Get fresh air

  Yes

  Good spirits

  Yes

  Lose consciousness suddenly

  No

  Speak in gibberish

  No

  Froth at the mouth

  No

  Uncontrollable screaming

  No

  Rattling sound in back of throat

  No

  I made the chart in one of those computer programs that just keeps generating more columns, so there was no visible end.

  I couldn’t get my eyes to close until almost four, and when I did, my nightmares were epic. First, I was picking out peaches at our grocery store and I spied my dad sneaking to the checkout. He was totally healthy but obviously avoiding me. When I asked him where he was going, he said, “Sorry. I have to go home to my real family now.” I watched as he got into a station wagon with Chelsea Diamond at the wheel.

  The second one was gristlier physically. He looked bone thin and could barely stand up. He kept knocking on the door, but Julian told me not to let him in. I didn’t know who to listen to. Then we all went to Yellowstone again, but we had to run from the volcano because it was spitting fire at us. When we got back to the hotel, I couldn’t find my room key. I turned my jeans pockets inside out and there was my dad. He was just a stick-figure drawing now. When I woke up from that one, I’d wet my bed.

  The sky was just turning lavender and I thought I was the first one up. I changed my clothes, pulled all my sheets off, and carried the wet bundle downstairs to drop it in the washing machine. I stopped off for a cup of coffee since the pot was already gurgling. That’s when I noticed the open box of Cheerios on the counter and the dish towel stuffed under the basement door.

  Emma didn’t even notice me heading down the creaky basement steps. All the lights were on and she was tearing through the big Tupperware of paper plates and Halloween decorations, with a pink tiara on her head that said BIRTHDAY PRINCESS. There was a laptop computer open next to her, perched on a shelf next to Mom’s case binders. A studly-looking guy with olive skin and a long nose was on the screen, singing something in Spanish.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  Emma yelped in surprise. Then she rushed over to me as if I’d just come home from the war and we were long-lost lovers.

  “Lennylennylennyloo! Oh my darling, I love youuuuu!” She tried to pick me up but I was carrying a load of wet bedding, so she could barely get her arms around me and she fell backward on her butt, cackling. She reeked of pot. The guy on the screen lifted up a blue speckled bong and started cackling too.

  “Owwww!” Emma howled. “That was my coccyx!”

  “You have a cock sex?” the screen-stud asked.

  “Coccyx,” I corrected him. “It’s a vital part of your spinal anatomy.”

  The guy looked shocked. Then he craned his head around seemingly to look at his spine and make sure he had a coccyx too.

  Emma was rolling on the cement floor of the basement saying, “Manuel, meet Lenny. Lenny, Manuel. I can’t believe you two haven’t met yet. You’re both so important to me and you both have coccyxes. Coccyx? Cocci?”

  Manuel blew me a kiss and said, “It is an honor to meet you.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. “You too.” I wasn’t a teetotaler or anything, but I really didn’t want to be around the two of them while they discussed the plural form of coccyx and floated into some altered state of reality.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be with Dad?” I asked sternly.

  “Am I?” she said, ignoring my pout.

  “Forget it.” I pushed past her and pretended to be fascinated with the process of getting my sheets into the washing machine and pouring the detergent.

  “Lenny, how long do you think I should take off from school?” Emma whined. She was on the floor, now pedaling an imaginary bicycle above her. “Manuel thinks I should come back now and finish out the semester, but I told him Dad isn’t gonna make it ’til summer break.”

  Her words hit me like a belly flop off the high dive. I spun around as fast as I could and tried
to harpoon her with my icy glare. “Emma,” I said in my lowest voice, “stop. Now.”

  “I know you don’t like talking about it, but you never like talking about anything and we have to talk about it because it’s really happening and things don’t not happen because you don’t talk about them. Plus, Manuel had this great idea that we could get out all the holiday decorations and we could celebrate all the holidays with Dad one last time or he could pick his favorite holiday and we could make it Halloween or Christmas or even Passover. I don’t know why he likes matzo so much, do you?” Emma was rummaging again through the strings of lights and wrapping her arms with streamers.

  “No!” I screamed. “No, Emma, this is not—no!” I walked over to the computer, where Manuel was watching us both while he pulled out a hair from his tongue piercing. “Goodbye, Manuel,” I said, slamming the computer shut. Emma’s head snapped at the sound, but she kept decorating herself, adding ornaments to her ears now too.

  “It’s not Manuel’s fault,” she said.

  “I know,” I spat back. “It’s yours.”

  “How is it my fault?”

  “You can’t say things like that out loud. You’re putting that energy out in the world and you’re making it like a done deal. We don’t know if—we just don’t know!”

  I was so outraged and indignant and outraged again. Emma had no right to proclaim the end was here and then flaunt her fearlessness while I cowered.

  “Hey,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She came over to me and tied some tinsel around my shoulders like a shawl. Then she pulled me down next to her, our backs against the washing machine, letting the whirr and swish rock us back and forth. “You’re right,” Emma said. “We just don’t know.”

  I couldn’t remember a single time in Rosenthal-Hermann history when Emma had told me I was right.

  “Did you really just say that?” I asked. “You must be high.”

  “Nah,” she said wearily. “I wish. I only smoked a little because Manuel wanted to.”

  “Do you really like him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. The sex is okay, I guess. We only have fun together when we’re smoking things, though. It’s certainly not love, but I guess it’s my coping mechanism of the moment.” I didn’t say anything. “What about you?” she asked. “How are you dealing, besides cleaning out all the cabinets and hiding in the shed?”

  I shrugged.

  “Mom said you had a little private meeting with Dr. Hottie. Is that true?”

  “No!” I jumped up defensively. “And even if it was true, it’s none of your beeswax.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa.” Emma stood up to look at me straight on. “You realize that you cannot say the words none of your beeswax after you hit puberty, right?”

  “I don’t say it to anybody except you!” I squawked, throwing the tinsel back in her face. This was us in a soggy nutshell. Trying to find our way to a new connection, then clicking back into our old roles of bickering. I felt like I had this choice to make—stalk off, as usual, or see what would happen if I stayed.

  Emma heard my inner debate without me saying anything more. “Before you leave, can I just show you something funny I found?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  She sifted through the streamers and party hats to unfurl a big, fuzzy picture of a Yangtze finless porpoise taped to some worn-out poster board.

  “Finian!” I yelped. Emma handed me the sad-looking artifact with a smile. For my seventh birthday party, Mom had gotten pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, but I’d just watched a nature program about endangered porpoises. (Their close relatives the Baiji dolphins were the first species of dolphin to be wiped out by human activity.) I told Mom that we needed to do pin-the-fin-on-the-finless-porpoise instead and she said, “If we have time,” which I knew was a fancy way of saying, “No.”

  So Emma walked me downtown to the library to get a picture book of porpoises. We enlarged it on the copy machine until it was so big it just looked like a sea of gray with two black holes for eyes. And then, because Emma loved adventure, she copied her bare butt and gave the image to the librarian. I was so sure we’d get carted away by the police or at least banned from the library for life that I took off running without paying for my copies. Really, that grainy porpoise mug shot marked the beginning of my life of crime.

  “What else did Mom tell you?” I asked Emma now, holding Finian to my chest. I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Vandalism, riding the train while intoxicated, and jeopardizing Ganesh’s job. Also I almost starved the guinea pig to death. Not bad for a young felon, huh?”

  “She didn’t tell me any of that,” Emma said. “She just said she was worried about you. And so am I.” She yanked me into a tight bear hug. It was so warm and quiet folded into her chest.

  I didn’t want to blubber all over her hair, so I whispered, “Thank you for finding Finian.”

  “I would do anything for you. If you let me,” Emma said.

  Prescription from Dr. Ganesh

  Chapter 19

  WHAT TO EXPECT

  Mom handed me the prescription from Dr. Ganesh while we were cooking a big Sunday breakfast. I burst into tears in the middle of the kitchen, giddy with relief.

  “What is it?” Emma asked over and over again while I clutched the note, trying to form sentences.

  “He’s a very gracious man,” explained Mom. “I’m glad no Ganeshes were harmed in the making of this story.”

  Emma helped me craft a farewell text to him. I already had a few drafts that I hadn’t sent yet—luckily.

  Thank you for your time, patience, and wisdom. I’m sorry if I made you feel …

  “Violated” sounded too harsh, but “uncomfortable” didn’t cut it.

  Thank you for your kindness. I wish you peace and light.

  “That sounds like you’re joining a nunnery,” Emma said.

  We settled on Be well. The response was silence, of course. If I was Dr. Ganesh, I would’ve traded that phone in or blocked incoming texts long ago. But it still felt good to do. I also deleted his number along with the Ambrosia selfie series from my phone and fist-bumped myself with my reflection in the oven.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, I heard a honk from our driveway a half hour earlier than usual.

  Just out of shower, I texted Julian.

  Congrats. Just out of bed, he wrote back.

  It wasn’t his Jetta outside our house. It was the Batmobile, with my mom at the wheel. When she saw me at the bathroom window she waved wildly and revved the engine.

  “Sarge, you’re nuts!” I heard Dad call from the den downstairs.

  “This is the one, right?” she yelled back.

  “Exactly,” Dad said. “Nuts,” he repeated.

  It wasn’t really the real Batmobile, of course. It was some sleek half-electric, half-french-fry-oil sports car that I guess Dad had always wanted to try. He couldn’t drive it because his legs were so weak and sitting for long periods of time was no longer an option. But Mom came in and told us she’d leased it for a month and even rigged it up with a fancy new doughnut pillow in the passenger seat. She also had a map of the Hudson Valley and she and Dad started plotting out day trips.

  I wondered how Mom had decided on a month.

  I caught her by the coffeemaker and whispered, “What happens after a month?”

  “We have the option to lease it again,” she whispered back.

  “That’s it?”

  “Or buy it, I guess. Might not be such a bad idea since it’s gonna come down in price soon.”

  It was a relief to go back to school. At least there I had to pretend to think about other things, like how to preserve my nerd status after getting a 72 percent on my Cold War midterm. Final labs were being assigned in physics, our Spanish teacher announced she was seven months embarazada (as if we couldn’t tell), and there were posters for I Have But One Desire all over the school. They were collages of iris buds and female protest marchers. By midday, every single
poster I saw had genitalia-based graffiti on it. The most imaginative was I Have But One DesireICK, YO!

  The show itself was in turmoil. Marty passed out the burlap sacks and there was a swift uprising.

  “Um, excuse me?” asked a horrified Becca. “I’m supposed to sing the most meaningful song I’ve ever written in this?”

  “Georgia celebrated the simplicity of each shape and nuance,” answered Marty. “This way we get to see how you extract her vision.”

  “Such bullshit,” Becca muttered in the locker room. “I worked hard for this body.”

  “Right?” someone agreed.

  I was happy to wear something big and formless, except it was incredibly itchy and smelled like hay and dry-cleaning chemicals. That made me think again about who would wear all of my dad’s stored suits after he was gone. And if he knew which one he wanted to be buried in. Or maybe he wanted to be cremated. These were just a few of the questions I was too timid to ask.

  I’d been watching carefully and taking notes on Dad’s behavior—four glasses of water and an Italian ice. Still no gibberish or rattling. The closest I got to a “sign” that this was really the end was when Barry—Dad’s best friend from law school—came over for a visit. He held me by both shoulders and shook me a little. “Damnit,” he said. “Damnit, damnit, damnit.” Then he pulled me in for a hug so strong it lifted me off the ground. I could feel a sob rising through his chest.

  That night, I filled in a few more boxes on my “Is This It?” chart, but I wasn’t sure what to track anymore. Dad seemed to be doing everything living people did, just more thoughtfully. He still bit his lower lip when he was thinking hard or about to break out into a smile. His teeth looked extra large to me. Maybe because the rest of him was shrinking. I was so sick of trying to figure out what was happening and nobody giving me answers. Not that I knew what to ask. And I felt guilty that I kept on wanting to know when Dad was going to die. I didn’t want to come downstairs each morning and say, “Hey, Dad. How you doing? You think today’s the day?”