But she was. It’s all there, the evidence. Pre-SUTHY, this girl was seventeen million notches above me on the social scale. At least. Hell, she was way ahead of me on the whole evolutionary scale. Like I’m some sort of slump-backed ape-creature and she’s the tall straight human, already using her thumbs to make fire and wheels. I keep looking and looking, though, searching the eyes and the body and the hair and the skin in the pictures. Like maybe, even then, there was some sort of sign on her. Like a stain or something. Something to show that she was marked. Some warning that at fifteen, she’d end up here, with the likes of me. And if I could find it, then I’d be able to match my sorry self to hers. I don’t know, something like that, that’s what I’m searching for. I roll over to the bunch of roses, wanting a good long smell of their sweetness. There’s a little white card tucked into the vase. I pluck it out and read, Baby, I miss you. Get better, okay? It’s signed Chad. Wouldn’t you just figure her boyfriend would be named Chad? I mean, come on. I haven’t got a shot. I put the card back and decide to just roll myself out of there, quiet and simple. Have some dignity, man, I tell myself.
“Hey.” Her voice raises the hair on the back of my neck, it’s so sweet and low.
I swing my chair around and look at her. She hasn’t moved, still curled on her side. But her eyes are open and they shine in this little patch of moonlight that’s broken into her room. It’s amazing—how beautiful she looks, right then. There’s this little haze of dark hair growing on her head, soft and fuzzy. Her eyes are dark as night and huge in her thin, white face. “Hey,” I say.
She crooks a finger through the bars of her bed, bringing me closer. “Dad’s gone?” It’s a question.
“Yeah. I think so.” I roll closer and put my hand around one of the steel bars. It’s shining in the moonlight, all silver.
She smiles, a flash of white teeth. “Yeah, well. Don’t count on it. He’ll be back. He takes long walks, he says. Comes back reeking of bourbon. Whatever.” She reaches out and pulls my hand through the bars, curling her fingers around mine and then putting both of our hands under her sheet, against her belly. She’s wearing some kind of long, loose tank top thing. And I’m pretty sure that’s all she’s wearing. “Well, then. Let’s carpe diem, dude.”
I can feel my heart thunking against my ribs. And I can feel her heart beating against her ribs. It’s the coolest thing: they’re in sync, those two hearts. And the skin on her belly is smooth as silk. I rub my rough knuckles against it, up and down. She guides our hands a little and makes them run over a bumpy line that cuts her in half, going north and south, sternum to, I assume, crotch.
“Scar,” she whispers. “Ugly as hell. Like some hideous railroad track.”
I shake my head, trying to think of something gallant and comforting to say. I can’t. I let go of her hand and take one finger of my own, running it along the scar, up and down. Up, it starts between two tiny breasts. Down, it ends where hair might start, if she had hair. I stop there. Finally, my voice opens up. It sounds all cracked and funny, but at least I can form words. “Ugly, hell,” I say. “It’s the stairway to heaven.” There it is, I realize—the thing that puts her on my level. Or me on hers. Or something. I move my finger one squinch lower.
She makes a little sound, just a soft intake of breath, and rolls onto her back. She catches my hand and holds it to her. Then she presses it even lower and lets go. She giggles. “No need for bikini wax,” she says. “All taken care of by Dr. Chemo.” She lifts her hips, just a smidge, and her eyes close. “Go for it, Rich-Man,” she says.
And, you know, I would, I really would, except I want so bad to kiss her first. Like I can’t just grab the girl’s privates, can I, without some kind of prelude? I just can’t. My mama raised a gentleman. I roll as close as I can get to her bed and try to lean in over the bars. It’s almost impossible, though, unless you’re a giraffe. It’s awkward as hell.
She notices that my hand isn’t progressing, I guess, and she opens her eyes. She sees me looming over her, halfway out of my chair and halfway in. She snorts out a laugh. “Oh, Richard,” she says. “I’m such an ass. Sorry.” She pushes the button that lowers the side of the bed.
I stand up; I’m not really wheelchair-bound, after all. Just a little shaky in the legs. Well, a lot shaky, it turns out. I fall on top of her, and all of a sudden we’re both giggling like maniacs, our legs all knees and ankles, knocking into each other, and our elbows in each other’s faces.
She’s better at this than I am, I have to say. Without doing much, she kind of slides under me and then we’re lying chest to chest, crotch to crotch. I take a breath as she runs one hand along my chest. Then she gives a little shriek. “Oh my god. You’ve got one, too,” she says. Her small fingers play up and down what the docs call my midline incision. Been opened and zipped back up six, seven times. Her hand is cool, and I, like, just freeze as it creeps lower and lower to where hair should be and isn’t. “Oh, man,” she says, “we match! Except for this.” And, no shrinking violet she, she just goes on ahead and grabs, while I lower my face and find her mouth with mine.
And that’s exactly how we are when Edward bursts into the room and flicks on the overhead light. Then we’re blinded.
I try to pull the sheet over us. “What?” I say. “What?”
Edward is whispering, loud. “Come on, you two. Move it. Her father’s back.”
I will not dignify my exit from the room with a description. It’s too embarrassing. Let’s just say I was bundled like a baby into the wheelchair and pushed at amazing speed by Edward into the room next door. From which Edward and I peeped out like scared rabbits while Sylvie’s dad wobbled down the hallway, muttering and growling to himself. He peeked into Sylvie’s room, where I presume she had the smarts to look like a sleeping innocent, then he kept going, making one more lap around the hallway.
As we watch the man’s back recede, it takes me a minute to realize that we’re in 304, the room with the recently vacated bed. I can tell that Edward is about ready to punch my lights out, and he’s opening his mouth to start some big-time lecture when I hear something: a weird kind of humming noise. “Hey,” I whisper to Edward. “Shut up. Listen.” Maybe the bed itself is moaning? Maybe it’s haunted? I mean, I don’t believe in ghosts, not much, but I do kind of think a guy might hang around, some way or another, for a couple hours after he stops breathing. Only makes sense, right? Not like some otherworldly presence or anything, just like the guy he was. So I try to remember the old man who lived in it, the guy who liked soccer, guy who laughed, I heard, at my Halloween escape. But then I can hear the sound more clearly and I can tell it’s not coming from his bed after all.
It’s coming from behind the curtains of the other bed, a kind of mumbling snuffle. Then humming again. A melody. Dum de dum, dum de dum.
“God almighty. Taps,” Edward says on one long sigh. “That’s taps.”
Of course it is: Day is done. Gone the sun. I can hear it perfectly now. And it’s, like, completely unbearable. Saddest sound on earth. I roll over and pull back the curtain. This is entirely against hospice etiquette, I realize. But, hey, it’s been a strange night, right? And this guy can probably still smell the Grim Reaper’s aftershave and he’s humming taps, and I figure he could use a little company. “Sir? You okay in here?” I ask.
He’s sitting straight up in bed, his right hand over his right eye, bony elbow out at a sharp angle. It takes me a minute to get that he’s not holding his head in pain or something. No. He’s saluting. The man is sitting up in his bed, straight as a board, hospital gown crumpled around his neck, skinny legs hanging off the side, saluting. He drops his hand when he sees me. “The man was a soldier,” he says. “Survived Bataan, damn it.”
Well, what are you gonna say? I nod. “Yes, sir,” I croak out. I kind of want to salute, too—it would feel right. But I’m no soldier, and I haven’t earned that. I’m just a kid. So I just repeat, “Yes, sir.”
He leans forward. “Want to pl
ay some gin rummy, kid?”
Edward sits down on the empty bed and starts to laugh. At least that’s what I think he’s doing. He’s making laughlike noises, anyway, even though he keeps wiping his hands down his face.
And that’s how, somehow, five guys start playing cards in room 304. Gin isn’t really my game, I got to say. Poker, now that’s what I like. But, hey, the old guy gets to choose, right? It’s his room, after all. So gin it is. There’s four of us ranged around a bed table on plastic chairs, the old guy in his bed, propped on pillows. Me, the old guy, Mrs. Elkins’s son, Edward, and—heaven help my sorry ass— Sylvie’s dad, we all got in on it. Don’t know how, exactly, we all ended up there, but Edward said he was too tired to go home, and Mrs. Elkins’s son said if he didn’t get out of his mother’s room he was going to lose his mind, and, well, Sylvie’s dad just showed up, wearing a suit that looked like it had been on him for three or four weeks and smelling like booze and smoke, eyes two red slits in a puffy bruise-splotched face. And that man came to play, I’ll say. Showed no mercy, I’ll tell you. I mean, I expected that he’d want to beat my sorry ass into the ground, even if he didn’t know exactly what I’d been—almost—up to with his little girl. Okay, that’s fair. He could whip my butt and I’d call it even. Fair’s fair.
But the man doesn’t even have the basic decency to let the old guy win a hand. Nope. Just wipes the floor with all of us, cackling like a hyena every time he shouts “Gin.” Which he does, like, incessantly, even when he hasn’t really got it. It’s the most annoying thing you can imagine.
I get to shout “Gin” only once, and when I do, I’m sorry I ever made a sound. His eyes burn holes in my chest, sweartogod.
He takes every hand, other than that one I squeak in. Drinks all the green minicans of ginger ale and eats all the little packages of saltines, too. Prick.
Game goes on until the white-capped nurse, lips pressed shut, comes in and says, “Gentlemen. Desist. You are disturbing the other patients.”
I look up, surprised to see sunlight coming in the window. Square patches of light on the yellow walls. Morning. All Souls’ Day over. Halloween over. Cabbage Night over. So it’s already, what, November 2? Man, only ten days until my birthday. And I got things to do.
For the first time in weeks, I’m hungry. Got to build up my strength if I’m going to be able to do my duty to Sylvie—and maybe other desperate women? I roll back to my room, and when they bring the breakfast tray I swallow big mouthfuls of slimy egg. Two pieces of toast. Orange juice. Oatmeal. And then I take a long nap.
9
AND WAKE UP SO freaking sick that I can barely reach the puke basin in time. I retch for, like, twenty minutes, and then my guts knot and I know I got to get to the bathroom real quick. So I stagger my way out of bed and sit in there for what seems like an hour, sweat pouring out of my skin and pure liquid out of my butt. Finally, I’m so dizzy that I have to press the red emergency button on the bathroom wall. Cannot pass out, I say to myself while I wait. There are black smudges in my vision, with bright lights popping out around them. Will not pass out. Passing out is not an option.
I manage to maintain consciousness, but just. Insult to injury: the nurse that comes in is the white-capped one. She’s all clean and starchy, even if she has been here all night and half the day. She takes one look at my crumpled, sorry self slumped on the toilet and—I got to give her some credit here—she says not one word. No lecture, no tsking, no nothing. She just gets cool washcloths on my face and neck. And she helps me up and into the lounge chair in my room, pulling curtains around me. She whips off my T-shirt and sweatpants with, like, only three moves. She washes all of me—and I mean all, with not a peep out of Bingo—with warm, soapy cloths. She dries all of me with a scratchy towel and throws my arms into a clean hospital gown. She’s got an aide making up the bed clean and she’s got me in it in another three moves and she’s putting Puke-Away on my wrist. Okay, the woman is good at the mechanics of her job, I admit. But not exactly comforting. She manages all of this bathing without unpursing her lips once, I swear. A master of control. Without saying a word, she scares me to death.
Finally, when I’m tucked in like a three-year-old, side rails up, she speaks: “You will not get out of bed again today, young man. You will bother no one on this floor. Understood?”
I nod. “Yes, sir, ma’am.”
For the first time—maybe the first time ever—she smiles. Like a shark. “My name is Mrs. Jacobs, Richard. I raised three boys of my own. Teenage boys hold no terrors for me.”
I choke down what I want to say: So, are those three boys still in therapy? What I do say isn’t so funny, but I figure it’ll make her feel lousy, and I say it loud: “So, Mrs. Jacobs. Yeah, I guess you are an expert then. But, hey, any of those three boys end up in hospice?”
Her face gets very still. Then her eyes get wet. “No,” she says, so soft I have to lean forward to hear her. “My youngest died in a car crash. He was fourteen. He never made it to hospice.” And she walks out of the room.
“So,” I say to myself, sinking down into the clean sheets, “ever feel more like a complete and absolute shit, Richard?”
“No, sir,” I answer. “No, sir.”
***
And that state of affairs, that feeling like shit on a brick, gets even worse. I’m just sitting there, looking out into what seems like the darkest November day on record, huge gray clouds low and wet in the sky, when my mom calls. Somehow or other, she’s heard about my Halloween outbreak, and she is, let us say, a bit upset. She coughs between every phrase and she’s sort of choking and yelling all at once. “That miserable, sneaking Phil,” she keeps saying. “I can’t believe you went with him, Richard. You went out. I cannot believe it. He’s always been trouble. You know that. He is trouble. And you listened to him? You went outside with him?”
I know enough to keep quiet while the ranting goes on, and then I say, “Ma, you don’t sound so good. Nasty cough. How are you?”
And then she just starts to bawl. “My fever’s up again,” she wails. “And the tests were positive—it’s the real flu, some kind of nasty strain. I can’t come see you. Oh, Richie, they won’t let me in. I begged and begged your doctors, said I’d wear a mask. I even called the CEO of the hospital. I said I’d wear a hazmat suit. They still won’t let me onto your floor. Said if I came, security would escort me out. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.” Then she’s just sobbing—no words, only wet gulps.
Listening to her, my chest feels like it’s crushed under a load of stones and someone keeps heaping them on. Every sob, another boulder. “Ma,” I keep saying. “It’s all right, Ma. I’m fine, I swear. Come on, Ma. Don’t cry. Stop crying.” My own voice breaks, and then, of course, I’m crying like a baby, too. And then I can’t breathe and I think maybe I’ll die, right here right now. And that would be kind of a relief.
But I don’t.
So we both sit there, on opposite ends of the phone, crying until we can’t cry anymore. We both get quiet, clinging to our separate phones. Then, finally, I have an idea. “Call Grandma,” I wheeze. “I want Grandma to come up and take care of you. It’s time. Do it.”
There’s a very long silence. See, my mom and her mom don’t see eye to eye on much of anything. Not since my mom was seventeen and knocked up and wouldn’t even tell anyone who did that to her. Locked her lips. Or maybe even since way before that; maybe from when Grandma, a tough Jersey girl, was sixteen and herself knocked up, and the baby in her belly—the one that made her leave high school and miss her prom and basically ruined her life—was my mom. I mean, it’s hard to understand, for me. They talk on the phone, like, daily, but in person, they’re horrible. In person, they’re crazy, always mad, always both of them right, about everything. Both of them just constantly pissed off and throwing verbal punches. But from what I can hear, when Mom’s whispering on the phone lately, Grandma has been begging to come up, to help us, she keeps saying. For months, she’s been begging.
To be here, to see us through this. But Mom’s been saying nothing but no. No. No. Not yet. Like she’s totally terrified that when she calls her mom and lets her come up here, that’s like the signal for the end. Surrender. White flag. SUTHY wins. And maybe even Grandma feels like that, too, because she hasn’t just shown up on her own, either. I get it, I really do, but right now I just want my mom not to be alone. I want someone to take care of her, for once in her life. ’Cause if she’s all alone and she’s sick and crying, I swear to god, I’ll break out of here and take care of her myself. I’ll call a cab. I’ll walk.
And that’s what I tell her. “Ma, do it. Or I’ll come home. I’ll just fucking break out of here and come home. I mean it. No one can stop me, if I really want to go. You know what? Maybe I’ll just call Phil. He’ll come get me.”
There’s still silence. See, here’s the other thing: she’s totally scared that if I step one inch outside of this hospital, germs will pile all over me and carry me off. That’s part of why she’s so pissed at Phil. He took me outside these sacred walls. She thinks—she makes herself think—that being in a hospital keeps me safe. Maybe even that a hospital, despite all she knows about it, equals a cure. The miracle around the corner.
“I mean it, Ma. I’m on my way.” I throw off my sheets and start banging the rails of my bed, loud enough for her to hear me.
Finally, there’s just the smallest whisper. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
And what scares the holy shit out of me is her voice, giving in. Giving up.
***
Rest of the day, I lie on my side in bed, looking out into the gray sky. I keep my back to the door. If anyone comes by, they’ll think I’m asleep. Once, I think I smell Sylvie’s perfume, floating in from the doorway, and I hear a soft little, “Hey, Rich-Man,” but not even that can make me turn around.
Somebody Up There Hates You Page 7
