“He’s been like that for a while now,” my mom said. “Can I fix you something to eat?”
“No. This is fine,” I said, claiming an overly soft red apple that probably should have been tossed.
“He’s glad you’re here, Neil. I can tell.”
“How?”
“Well, you know he asks about you all the time.”
“I guess that’s something,” I said.
Then she looked at me with her motherly concerned face and said, “Your father loves you. He’ll be fine. But you’re the one I’m worried about.”
“Me? Don’t worry about me. All the things you have to be concerned about you don’t need to be thinking about me.”
“All the same, I do,” she said. “You look like a lost soul.”
“Maybe I have a right to be,” I admitted and took a bite of the apple.
“I guess you do.” Then she asked me exactly what I didn’t want to hear: “What are you going to do now?”
How the hell was I supposed to know? “I’ve got some work to do with Baldwin before everything’s settled. He wants me to stay on a few weeks. Smooth transition. That sort of thing. He offered me a permanent job there. Kind of an operations thing.”
“He’s a wonderful man. You know that, don’t you? It means so much to your father that he’s stepped forward to buy the gallery. It’s like a cloud has vanished.”
“I know. But I can’t work there. What am I gonna do? Be a clerk? Take money? Sweep up? It wouldn’t be right. Besides, I think he’s just being courteous with the offer. I don’t think he really wants me around.”
“Of course he does.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was wrong from the very beginning. I knew it years ago. Should have stuck with that.”
“Why are you always so hard on yourself?”
“Must have learned it from somebody. Wonder who?” I smiled at her. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t know. Might take him up on the offer to tide me over until I decide my next move.”
“I think that’s wise, honey. Finally, a little sense from you.”
“And then, who knows? I can always find a job as a graphic designer somewhere, I guess. I’m not worried. Wouldn’t be happy, but I’d do it just the same. Something will come up. Always does. Do I look worried?”
“You always look worried,” she said, and gave me one of her patented hugs. “You were born worried. But I love you anyway.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
“If it gets to be a money thing, let me know. Earl’s purchase of the gallery has made everything a lot easier.”
“I won’t need any money.”
“Even if you needed it you wouldn’t ask for it. Am I right?”
“You’re always right,” I said. “That’s why you’re my mom.”
Before I left I spoke with Dad again and asked him why he didn’t want to talk today. But all he said was, “I’m fine. I have up and down days like you.”
“Well you better snap out of it, or I’m gonna put a frog on your stomach and not tell you about it.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m smiling inside. I want to rest for a while. Getting tired.”
“No problem,” I said. “Good idea. You’ll feel better when you wake up. Probably won’t be able to shut you up.”
“Yes.”
“Dad, I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I really mean it.”
“Me too.”
I kissed him on the forehead and left.
* * * *
I knew my first order of business. I needed to spend time with the kids. Quality time. Daddy time.
It didn’t immediately occur to me that taking my oldest son out on the boat was therapeutic or anything. It just seemed a good way for Jacob and me to get away and share each other for a while. But the fact that I hadn’t taken the boat out since Dad’s accident didn’t escape me. And that going with my son was a mirror image of my father and me. That was obvious. Maybe that’s why I did it.
Emily asked if it was a good idea. She expressed concern for Jacob’s safety, but I think what really troubled her was how I’d feel being back on the boat. I told her not to worry. Jacob would be zipped up with the hideously ugly ultra-buoyant life preserver. She consented.
As we drove north to the lake, Jacob hit me with an endless stream of questions.
“Are we almost there? What does that sign say? Why don’t boats sink? Do fish swim away from the boat? Do they get hit if they run into it? How do fish swim? If we catch one will we eat it on the boat?”
He was a special, precious kid. I loved him more than I can say. He was a piece of me, and it grounded me, gave me a cosmic bond with the future for as long as the world still exists. He and his brother were strong antidotes for my weightlessness.
As soon as we stepped onto the boat, I zipped Jacob up as I’d promised Emily. I sat him down in a chair and buckled him in good, then sped away into the still water.
It was a beautiful day. Like nothing I’d ever seen before. The sky was so blue and open that I found it impossible to believe the darkness of space was behind it. The water stretched out in all directions, welcoming me. I loved being on the boat. It was an incredibly freeing feeling. Like nothing else existed in the world. No worries or problems or stress. No decisions to be made. Nothing that had to be done. Time ceased to exist. It was easy to imagine that you could point the boat at a spot on the horizon and go on and on forever.
“When are we going to fish?” asked Jacob.
“Soon,” I said.
I turned the boat eastward toward the low, often shallow part of Piper Lake and the dozens of tiny hidden coves. One of these narrow waterways was marked by a tall white eucalyptus tree. Dad called it “our tree.” We were always happy to see it still standing. It showed us the way around several gnarly bends to some good fishing.
“This is where all the big fish live,” I told Jacob.
“Where?” he said excitedly.
“Shhh. You have to be quiet. You can’t see them. But they can see us. The trick is to pretend that you don’t care about them.”
I stopped the boat not far from where the accident happened. I wanted to see the place, I admit it. Now, looking at the beautiful surroundings, it seemed impossible to believe that this is where everything went to hell. What had been lurking in the water that had taken my father away? I didn’t know what I expected to feel at that moment. Strangely, I felt calm and at peace. Everything was going to be okay. Wasn’t it?
“There’s a fish!” Jacob screamed. Sure enough, something had poked its head out of the surface of the water, then back down again, leaving only expanding circles pushing out across the water.
“You need to be very quiet,” I whispered. “These fish don’t like us.”
“Why?”
“Because they know something’s up. They can see the bottom of our boat. They’re nervous.”
“Oh,” he said. “Nervous.”
“But if we stay here long enough they’ll forget about the boat.”
I took our poles out and sat next to Jacob. He wanted to play with a worm, so I gave him one to hold.
“It’s wiggling. It tickles.”
“Worms do that.”
He watched intently as I worked a hook through the center of a worm.
“Oooo,” he said. “Is it dead? What’s that gooey stuff.”
“That’s worm guts. And he’s not dead. We want him alive so that he tries to escape and the fish see him. So they’ll eat him and bite the hook.”
“Bite the hook,” he repeated.
It wasn’t long before I’d fitted our poles with yellow bobbers and cast them out into the water.
“Now hold your pole like this,” I said. “Don’t move it. Just sort of keep your hand there. You see that yellow ball out there?”
“Yes.”
“That’s yours. If you see it move, don’t get excited. All that means is that a fish is testing
the worm to see if he’s real. The secret to being a good fisherman is to remain very still. Like a statue at the bottom of the sea.”
That’s what my father told me when he taught me to fish. I don’t know what he meant by it, but I thought about that statue a lot when I was a kid. It was probably an ancient one from some lost civilization. Maybe one of those big head statues from Easter Island that had been gobbled up by the sea. I pictured a statue standing erect in the deepest depths, fish swimming around it, algae spreading across its surface. But it never moved. It sat frozen on the bottom, year after lonely year, always in the same position, always cold and anonymous. I used to think about that statue on the bottom of the sea and tried to stay as rigid as it must be during its eternal rest. I caught a lot of fish that way.
I brushed the hair from Jacob’s eyes and let my hand linger on the back of his neck.
We sat like that for a long time, hardly talking, Jacob’s eyes focused on the water.
I felt good. I smiled at the sky, leaned close to Jacob and kissed his ear.
“Shhh,” he said. “You’ll scare the fish.”
31: Sidney Bernstein
This morning, Howard told me that he had been having suicidal thoughts.
Oddly, my first thought was how lucky he was to have someone to talk to about it. It’s something I’ve thought of off and on for a while now myself. It would be a convenient way to end the headaches that have been plaguing me. But I haven’t the courage. I can’t help but think there’s a way out of this. My solution? I’ve put out feelers to European medical institutions that I feel confident will embrace me.
“Well, if you’re thinking that I’m going to help you die, you can forget it,” I said. After all I’d done to keep him alive, it was impossible for me to think about killing him.
“I’m not asking you,” he said. “But sometimes I feel like I’m already dead.”
“You’re not,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “You have a lot to give. You want to hear what I think? I’ve got a great idea for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“I think you should write a book. You can dictate it. It’ll be an important book. You’re an articulate man, Howard. That’s one of the things I admire about you. You have so much to tell the world. It would be an important contribution to science and medicine.”
“I’m not much interested in that,” he said.
It broke my heart to see him this way. I felt like a failure. I’d done him a great disservice when I offered him a new body. He knew it. I think he hated me, and I wouldn’t blame him.
“You’ll feel better,” I promised him. “This will pass. It’s natural. Just a phase. Stick with me, Howard.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I don’t want to die. Just something that I’ve been thinking about. Something I like talking about.”
Catherine was understandably very upset with Howard’s state of mind. I tried to put a positive spin on it.
“Don’t be concerned about it,” I told her. “Do you get depressed?”
“Of course.”
“So do I. That’s the point. And it only demonstrates just how healthy he is. He has the same mood swings as you and I. Today he feels lousy. Tomorrow things will be better. Get people in here to interact with him. Ask him to make some decisions, even if you’ve already made them. Engage him as much as you can. I promise, he’ll feel better. I think he knows it.”
I don’t know if I made Catherine feel better. It helped me, though. I was convinced. Honestly, I needed help, too. Since having my medical license revoked I’d lost a little of myself. No, more than a little. I had no practice. No patients. No income. What was left? A family in splinters.
Where had things gone wrong?
I called Dave Hueger. My idea was to get him to write an article focusing on the medical advances that would come from what I’d developed. Maybe it would help rehabilitate me in the public arena where I so desperately wanted to be accepted. The news didn’t begin and end with Howard’s brain transplant. There was a much larger story out there waiting to be told. It was one that talked about how what we’ve learned from Howard would help countless others. Paraplegics and quadriplegics now had real hope for nerve regeneration. Treatment of back and neck injuries would be revolutionized. Limb reattachments would be significantly improved.
We met for an early dinner high above the city in the Starcross restaurant atop the Porter Hotel. It was a revolving establishment that turned very slowly. You could sit by the window and see the whole metropolitan area in about an hour, a magnificent view that made the city seem serene and green.
Hueger was late, but I didn’t care. I sat there and let myself get lost in the patterns below. A few people in the restaurant seemed to recognize me. I heard them whisper, “Isn’t that ...” but I ignored them and faced the window. How simple life seemed from up here. How unimportant and trivial things were. But how easy it was to be caught up in it. Down there, people ran around and stabbed each other with their egos at every corner. Why couldn’t people worry about themselves? How was I a threat? What had I done that was so terrible that I must be destroyed?
When I was a very young child my mother used to take me to the park to play. She would sit on a wooden bench with the other moms, talking about this and that while I played with the other kids. We would play king of the jungle gym, fighting for position on a huge metal spiderlike structure. We would push and pull each other, scrambling to the top and crowing, “I’m on top and you are not!” Invariably, someone would fall off and get hurt. All the noise would stop and we’d climb down to see if there was any blood. A mother or two would be there, scooping up the injured child, holding him, brushing him off. Then we’d be lectured about being too wild and about how dangerous it was to play so rough. We’d hang our heads, say we were sorry and move to something boring like the swing. After a while, though, when the crying stopped and the limping kid rejoined us, we’d slowly regroup at the jungle gym and resume our competition. There was nothing quite like the feeling of getting to the top and hooking your legs around the bars. You could push challengers away if you anchored yourself just right. For a while, you were the most important person on the planet because you were higher than everyone else.
I had a similar feeling sitting at a table high above the city. Maybe that’s all it takes to find happiness—simply find a place high enough where no one could touch you. The phone wouldn’t ring. No appointments. No one to claim a piece of you, judge you or tear you down. But sooner or later you’d fall down.
Hueger appeared in front of me. I hadn’t heard or seen him come in. I must have been lost in thought out the window. We shook hands. He looked terrific. No longer the disheveled character I remembered, he now presented a visage of confidence.
“How are you,” he asked.
“Fine. Thanks for coming.”
“You don’t look fine,” he said.
“Just a little tired,” I said. “Been a long day.”
“Remember the last time we sat down like this?”
“I do,” I said. “I made some promises to you then that I didn’t follow through on. And I’m sorry for that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t blame you. It was going to come out eventually. I got involved. And probably shouldn’t have. I apologize, too. But that weasel PR guy of yours, Feasley? Him I don’t like. Where is he? I thought he’d be here.”
“Found I didn’t need him anymore. And he bugged me, too.”
We both laughed a little, and it felt good. A waitress came by, took our drink orders and told us about the daily specials.
“How’s Howard?” he asked, leaning forward with a genuine look of interest on his face.
“On or off the record?” I asked, then said, “No. Never mind. I don’t care. On or off, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“If you want it off the record, that’s fine.”
“No. Really. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Howard? I wish to hell I
knew. Physically, he’s unbelievable. All the ruckus over the ethics of the procedure have overshadowed the success. He’s alive. He thinks. He can move his arm. Sensation of sight. It’s the most unbelievable thing ever, as far as I’m concerned. I fully expect that he won’t need any mechanical life support soon. But his mind? I’m not so sure about that. He keeps a lot inside now.”
“Sounds about right,” he said. “How’d you like to be trapped inside someone else? Would you have said yes to the surgery if you were Howard?”
I couldn’t answer him. Maybe I didn’t want to. Guess it hit too close to home. Would I have let my brain be transplanted? I looked away from him and out the window. We were facing due west now and I picked out a golf course and wondered if anyone was hitting well. The sun was heading down. Off in the distance a plume of dark smoke rose against the orange horizon, probably one of those tire junkyard fires.
“Don’t ask me that.”
“I already did.”
I thought for a moment and decided to be honest with him and myself. “I don’t know. Probably not. At least knowing what I know now.”
“It’s a quality of life issue, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “I guess so.”
Our drinks came, and I gulped down half of mine without thinking. I coughed.
“I don’t mean to sound like I’m accusing you of anything,” said Hueger. “I’m not judging you. I’m just interested.”
“In what?”
“In the marvel of it,” he said. “If you think it’s lost on me, you don’t know me well enough. Don’t forget, I’ve talked with him at length. And I was a part of the story for a while.” His smile reminded me of how he’d gone berserk at the news conference. It seemed like such a long time ago.
Then I asked him if he’d be interested in writing the article that I had in mind. I volunteered to be interviewed and was sure I could hook him up with other experts.
“Sounds like a kick-ass idea,” he said. “But I’m writing a book on the whole story. Got a pretty good advance from a publisher. But I’ll tell you what. I won’t overlook that part of the story. I promise.”
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