by Susan Conley
There are two paramedics in the ambulance, and they get my brother down from the van and wheel the stretcher to the front door of the building on Avenue Victor Hugo. Then Gaird and Macon help carry him up the two flights of stairs and into the living room, where they slide him onto an electric bed I’ve rented from the hospital. There is a nurse with us, named Betty, and she straightens out Luke’s sheets and sets up his catheter bag properly and makes sure the IV line is clear. Then Dad takes out a glass thermometer and places it under Luke’s right armpit. He reads the number out loud to all of us in the room: “One hundred and one. Our challenge here, people, is to sustain a reading of ninety-nine and nothing higher. Can we all commit to that goal? Are we all on the same page?”
I’m over by the kitchen door, and I blush when he yells. But I’m so relieved again that my father’s here. Who else is going to scream like a lunatic and get everyone’s attention? Luke’s fever spikes to 104 degrees an hour after that. He talks in his dreams. Something about Gaird in an airplane. His legs keep twitching.
“I’m falling. Falling. Watch out. Watch me. Help me.” Then he says, “I am so damn thirsty.” He sounds lucid. “I’m craving lemonade. Cold lemonade. Can someone get some for me, please?”
I’m sitting next to him on one of the big chairs we’ve pulled close to the bed. I say, “Of course.” I almost don’t even have to look at Macon, because he’s already at the door, on his way to go find Luke some lemonade.
That night Macon falls asleep on the couch. Gaird lies down on his bed with all his clothes on. Dad stays up late to watch Luke’s temperature and quarrels with Betty about the medication. He thinks Luke’s getting too much morphine. Then he walks over to the cardiograph. “I don’t like it. He shouldn’t be presenting us with a fever.” Luke’s heartbeat is irregular, and Betty watches the spiking line on the machine closely. “Why are we seeing these numbers?” Dad asks. “Where is the infection that we don’t know about yet?”
It’s eleven. I go into the kitchen to slice more oranges. Luke shouldn’t have a fever with all the drugs he’s on. I’m a little bit crazed because I haven’t slept. I try to be systematic about making the juice. I finish slicing the oranges and squeeze them by putting all my weight on the handle of the juicer. I’ve believed in the drugs. All this time, I’ve thought the drugs Picard gave us would buy more time, until the vaccine was available. So why this raging fever now?
Sara told me this morning that it looks like his HIV became resistant to the AZT. It’s so toxic that they’ve taken Luke off it. I throw the used oranges into the garbage can by the sink. One misses and hits the floor. Then I throw more, aiming at the white wall under the clock. I hurl them. Some stick to the wall, and some slide down. I clench my teeth. I do that so much of the time now, this teeth clenching. Then I leave the mess and check on Luke one more time. He’s asleep, so I lie down with Macon on the couch, shaking. He opens his arms and makes room for me, like a small AGA oven giving off heat.
We get up before it’s light out because Dad is singing. He gets really loud on the last line: “We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves!” It’s zooey. I go into the kitchen and deal with last night’s orange disaster. I’m calmer. Almost removed. But the oranges remind me of this pit of sadness I’m skirting.
I bring some juice to Luke in his bed. Dad says, “It’s high time I took a shower, don’t you think, Luke?” There’s a guest bathroom off the study, and I want my father to disappear in there for a long time so I can sit with Luke.
“I’ve got something for you to drink,” I say after Dad leaves.
“The juice lady,” he whispers and takes two sips from the straw. I put the glass on the side table and read to him from yesterday’s Herald Tribune. Pieces on the anti-Communist protests in Poland, several articles analyzing the Tiananmen Square protests, and one criticizing President Bush for his handling of China relations. Every five minutes or so, I pause and try to feed Luke a cube of strawberry Jell-O. He says, “It’s my favorite flavor, you know.” I take his talking as a good sign.
Macon leaves for work. Dad announces that Luke’s temperature is down to 103. Gaird goes out and gets us baguettes and salami and cheese for lunch.
Betty washes Luke’s face and replaces the IV bag. Then she sits down again on the chair next to the monitor and reads her book. In the afternoon, Andreas arrives with a quiche. He leans down and hugs Luke’s neck and says, “Hello, my dear friend.” Luke doesn’t wake up. Andreas sits and takes Luke’s hand and doesn’t say anything else. It’s the perfect way to be around Luke right now. Because Luke doesn’t want to talk. Doesn’t want much TV. But he seems content. Almost childlike.
I close my eyes on the couch. I can hear Luke say “I’m so thirsty” to Andreas. He whispers it again: “Thirsty.”
“I can do something about that.” Andreas stands and goes into the kitchen and fills a Ziploc bag with ice from the freezer. I hear him smashing the bag against the counter to break the ice into smaller pieces. Then he sits down in the chair and slowly feeds the chips to Luke.
Macon comes back from work with more groceries. I sit up. I think I’ve been sleeping, and I help him unpack in the kitchen—bananas and yogurt and apples and bread for toast. It’s dark outside. I think September is the most beautiful and haunting month in Paris. It’s still hot out. It feels like summer, but there’s a sense of so many endings.
Andreas lets go of Luke’s hand and stands. We make a plan for him to come back tomorrow with Tommy. He’ll call me, he says, hugging me in the living room. Then Gaird walks him to the door and they embrace, and Gaird’s body shakes with sobs.
Macon warms up the quiche in the kitchen. I turn on the television in the living room, and our odd constellation of family eats and watches in the dark—Gaird and Macon and Betty and my father and me. Luke looks like he’s sleeping. But when I get up for a glass of water he says, “Willie, come back and sit with me. Don’t leave me alone in here. Don’t leave me.”
IN THE MORNING, Dad starts in on a hymn that goes, “When the roll is called up yonder.” I can’t take it. Gaird’s out, and I go into their bedroom and lie down on the bed and cover my face with a pillow. Is it Dad’s voice that’s getting to me? He never used to be so loud when he and Mom sang. My mom carried the melody and Dad took the quiet harmony underneath. I can’t begrudge him his faith. I still don’t really understand it, but we all find strength where we can. And we need strength in this apartment. We need anything we can get but maybe not the singing.
In the desert my dad was the rule maker: “No playing in waterfalls because that’s how people die in flash floods. They don’t hear the rumble coming. No hiking after dark because of snakes.” Once we walked four miles back to the truck to get more water, trying to outrun the darkness. We made it just as the sun set. Then Luke and I sat on the cooler and ate granola bars. Dad studied the map with his headlamp for where we’d go in the morning.
“The thing I like about maps is that they show us where we live.” Luke talked while he chewed.
“Live?” I almost yelled. “We live here?”
“Of course, dingbat,” Luke said. “What do you think we’ve been doing? We’re always living. Wherever we are is where we live.”
I chewed the food and tried not to cry. “I thought we lived at 46 Paso Robles, Sausalito, California. I thought we lived with Mom.”
Macon finds me crying on Luke’s bed. “Let me see your face.”
“It started as laughing.”
“What are you doing in here?” He pulls me toward him.
“Well, my brother is dying in the other room.” I’ve said it now. This is the first time, really, to myself or to Macon. “I think it takes most of his concentration. I think he’s in pain, and it’s hard to lie down all the time. Also, my father is singing gospel songs. So there’s a lot going on this morning.” I smile at him. He pulls me onto his lap and wraps his arms around me. I haven’t really seen him in days—haven’t taken him in with my eyes—a
nd he’s even more handsome now because of this. But I’ve roped off this part of my heart a little. It’s so good of Macon to be here, and I want him here. I’m sure of it. “I’m trying to keep Luke alive. But I’m planning for what’s going to happen when he’s dead, and it’s crazy-making. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“Just go back to today,” Macon says slowly. “Just worry about this hour.”
My father yells from the living room, “Luke is awake! He wants to know if Macon will go to the grocery store!”
I walk into the bathroom and splash water on my face. I look older than when I got to the apartment on Saturday. There’s such focus to the hours here—a sharpening. Sometimes it feels like we’re centering in on something. Fixing something. It can’t all be about helping Luke die, can it? Other times it’s dreamlike and hot and confusing. Maybe we’ll always live together like this: Dad and Macon and Gaird and me feeding Luke on the bed in the living room. I dry my hands on a towel, but my face is wet again with tears.
“I think I might be mixing things up in my mind,” I tell Macon in the doorway.
“What do you mean, ‘mixing things up’?”
“Sometimes I pretend Luke’s better. I decide he’s eaten something when I know he hasn’t. I pretend for him, but I’m pretending for me. I’m having trouble with it.”
“I’m glad you’re talking. It’s important to talk.”
“Then there’s the juice. Sometimes, I swear, I watch him drink it and see the juice in his throat.”
“How do you see it?”
“Sticking to infected cells.”
“But orange juice doesn’t cure disease. You know that, right?”
“It helps.” I walk toward the hall.
“It may help with hydration and vitamin deficiency.”
“It helps with the immune system. I know it does.”
We go into the living room, and Macon sits next to the bed. Luke says, “It’s so Louis the Fourteenth in here, isn’t it, Macon? But this place is all I’ve got, and I do love it so. Who is going to the grocery store?”
“Of course you love it.” Macon reaches for Luke’s hand. “It’s your home.”
“It’s been a good home. If there’s one thing that Gaird knows how to do well, it’s to make a home. She’s crazy about you. You know that, right?” Luke talks as if I’m not standing there. “You two are going to make some beautiful babies. I just wish I could be around to see them.”
“Do you have to talk like that?” I say. “What are you saying?”
“Unless there’s a drug breakthrough tomorrow, or unless you can get some of that vaccine that Dr. Picard’s friends haven’t invented yet, I’m not going to meet your babies. It’s time to be honest about this.” He tries to sit up. He’s so lucid. “It’s also time I took a walk. I’ve been in this bed so damn long. I need to get outside. Are you going to the market, Macon? I want to come with you. I want to get some pudding. Chocolate pudding.”
“Luke,” Macon says. “We have all the time in the world. You rest. You sleep. We’ll talk when you wake up, and if you want to go then, we’ll make it happen.”
“Are you good for your word?” He puts his head back on the pillow. “I am feeling sort of tired right now. I’d like some barbecue chicken. Spicy. Crispy on the outside. Can I have that, please? I’m so hungry.” He closes his eyes, and he’s gone. Out. Sound asleep. I can’t move from the bed. This part is heartbreaking. He’s with us. Then he’s not with us. It happens within seconds and I can’t see it coming.
“Let’s give him time to sleep.” Macon takes my hand and pulls me into the kitchen. There are orange halves all over the counter. “Wow,” he says. “That’s a lot of oranges, Willie.”
“You never know when you might need more fresh juice.”
“I think we’ve got enough.” He gets out a plastic garbage bag and starts sliding the oranges into it.
“Juice, you mean? Never enough.” I sit at the table in the corner and make a list of what Luke’s eaten in the last twenty-four hours: six bites of Jell-O, two spoons of raspberry sorbet, and half a glass of juice. I want to be able to show Sara this when she comes. “You’re going to put the juicer away?”
“I’m just cleaning it,” he says. But then I watch him slide it into the cupboard.
“I know what you’re doing. You can put it away. But don’t think I can’t see you. I still have hope. If you put the juicer away, then it means you don’t have any hope.”
Macon stares at me. Then he takes the juicer out of the cupboard and puts it back on the counter and leaves.
Luke wakes up an hour later. Gaird is back and sitting with him. I walk by them on my way to the couch and Luke says, “When is Mom getting here, Willie?”
“Soon,” I say. I can’t bear any of these parts about Mom. Sometimes I, too, think she’s coming. Or that she’ll send a sign. I don’t mean something concrete—but something that lets us know she’s here. This is what Luke needs.
I hold his hand all afternoon. He opens his eyes just as the dusk settles around the furniture. This is the scariest part of the day. This is how I’m afraid my whole life will feel after he’s gone. Somewhere gray between twilight and full darkness. Crepuscular. Empty. “You have to beg Dad to stop singing.” I try to laugh.
“Which one of us is lying in a hospital bed? You say something to him. I don’t have the heart to. Where is he?”
My eyes fill with tears. Macon’s gone to get Thai food for dinner, Betty has driven home for a few hours. She has a husband. Teenage boys she’s told me about who miss her. Gaird’s on the phone in the bedroom. Dad’s taking a nap in the study. “He’s resting. I’ve been waiting all week for you to make him stop.”
“You’ve got to admit it’s sort of amazing—our father singing psalms at my deathbed.”
“Stop.” I force a laugh again.
“But you have to give him a break, Willie. You get what you get. We got him. And you have to stop laughing, because it takes too much energy for me to laugh.”
“Your fingers are cold.”
“All of me is cold. I keep telling you. No one listens.”
I go into the bedroom and wave to Gaird, who’s lying on the bed with a notepad and pen, talking to Dr. Picard’s resident about whether or not Luke can have any of the new drugs in the works now that he’s been on AZT. Gaird still has hope. I grab two more fleece blankets from the closet and lay them on top of Luke. “You have three blankets now, my friend. You are very, very diva about the cold.”
“Am not.”
“We need to keep you warm, but you have to beg Dad to stop singing. Tell him you’re not feeling well. Say the doctors think you might actually have something wrong with you—some kind of condition—and that you need rest. So could he wait on the singing?” I pull the top blanket up higher under Luke’s chin and sit back down. “You have to do this for me.”
“So just in case you missed something. A lot of men with symptoms like mine lose their minds, Willie. They go absolutely nuts.”
“Will you not joke?”
“I bet I’ll get cancer of the brain. If I do, I want you to suffocate me with a pillow.” He reaches for the one under his head.
“Enough. You have to stop.”
“I’m serious.” He holds my wrist. “I’m so worried about you.”
“Me?”
“I’m so worried about what will happen to you when I’m gone.”
I can’t hear this. I put my hand on his face. “Luke. Listen to me. Please. Please don’t worry about me. I am good. I am fine.”
He nods. “You’re going to have to do something important for me.”
“What are we talking about?”
“You’re going to have to fight.”
“Who?”
“Dad.” Luke looks away.
“I always fight Dad.” I can’t believe he’s talking so much.
“No, really. You’re going to fight to keep him from burying me.”
“Don’t
.” My voice gets sharp.
“Will. Tell me you won’t let him do it.”
“I won’t. But we don’t need to go over this. Not now. Not yet.”
“He wants to bury me next to Mom. He told me yesterday about the graveyard and said he would have another bench made with my name on it. It’s cold in Hardin, Montana. I don’t know anyone there.” Tears slip down my face, and I let them fall off my chin. “So say it.”
“I get it. I don’t need to say it.” I grab Luke’s wrist.
“Please say it.” Time slows down. The ephemera float away. At first this slowing down was a comfort. Now every day it feels like it slows even more, until we’re almost not moving forward, almost not part of the great human march.
“I can’t do this. Please don’t make me.” I long for the old life, where Luke used to tease me about my cowboy boots. How is it that the passage of time has changed our lives so irrevocably?
“I’m tired, Willie. I want to sleep. Say you will not let Dad bury me.” He’s trying to get me to face the real business of his death. The preparation. Is he asking me to let him go?
“I will not let Dad bury you.” I hold my breath. It’s all there. The hurt of losing him. I’m still not letting him go. “Fuck,” I say to no one and to him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I’m crying loudly now.
“And that you will keep my ashes with you.” Luke turns his head to the side and closes his eyes. “Say that you will not let Dad fly me to Hardin.” I stare at Luke’s hand. “Please say the ashes part,” he whispers, drifting in and out. “I need to rest.”
“I will keep your ashes,” I whisper back. “I will keep your ashes, Luke Pears.”
34
Childhood: the state or period of being a child
Sara comes to see Luke that night around seven. I’m so grateful that she’s here. I meet her at the front door and hug her tightly. Then we stand in the hall together, looking at Betty and my brother in the living room. Betty is checking his vital signs and writing them down on a clipboard. “Will you make sure he’s not in pain?” I ask. “He hasn’t woken up now for an hour.”
