by Jason Good
Clement works at a graphic design firm in nearby Dayton: he’s a conventional bachelor by Goose River standards. In his spare time he collects pop-culture mementos. On the top shelf of his pantry is an unopened six-pack of Billy Beer (a hard-to-find brew made by Jimmy Carter’s hillbilly brother). Upstairs is his baseball-card collection, categorized and kept in pocket-page protectors. He used to attend twenty to thirty Cincinnati Reds games a season, but now devotes himself full time to the Dayton Dragons, a local minor league team. He sends Dad a new baseball hat occasionally, but Mom doesn’t think Dad looks good in hats. She’ll have to get over that.
In Paul and Gayle’s narrow old-frame two-story, which they recently painted electric blue, you might find a banjo or a ’60s Gibson acoustic leaning against the door of Gayle’s yoga room. Their bookshelves are filled with everything from Kierkegaard to Tom Robbins. Self-educated, they have a deep knowledge of sociology, psychology, philosophy, and Eastern religions. A healthy soup always simmers on the vintage stovetop, and together with incense and aromatic oils, the house smells of counterculture (or as they call it in Goose River, “culture”).
Bluegrass music was something Dad’s father, Edwin, respected far more than politics or art. He messed around with the harmonica, and if appropriately lubricated, would accompany Paul’s banjo or guitar on family holidays. It made everyone happy to see him enjoy something, especially later in his life, when he was disoriented and irrational. I remember seeing Dad tear up during one of these awkward hoedowns. Jealousy and regret mixed with a little love will moisten the eyes of any man.
In May, Dad calls me at home in New Jersey. Since he usually texts, “Is now an OK time to call?” I know he must have important news.
“Dr. Levine said things are looking good,” he tells me.
“Great! What does that mean, exactly?”
“Well, he called me, so . . .”
“Let’s get over this block you have with doctors and telephones. What did he say?”
“He said I’m in remission.”
“Whoa, what?” I open a web browser to find out the duration of remission for myelodysplasia, leukemia, preleukemia, or whatever the hell it is that’s been slowly killing my father.
“It’s unpredictable, though,” Dad says.
“Yeah, I just Googled it.”
“What did you find?”
“It’ll probably last for weeks or months, not years.”
“That’s what he told me, too. All this really means is that the drug is working.”
“Is he going to take you off it?” I ask.
“He didn’t say.”
“Does this mean you can get a transplant?”
“Well, he said we should start the process.”
“Where do I go to get tested?”
“No, you’re unlikely to be a match. If I have one, it would be Clement, Libby, or Paul.”
“Right.” I paused.
“Are you smoking?”
“Just those e-cigs.”
“Jace, if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s to not put weird shit into your body.”
“I know. I’m just stressed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Well, it is, and it isn’t.”
“How’s Mom?” I ask.
“She’s at Curves, working out. She never even breaks a sweat.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sweat.”
“Me, neither,” Dad says, chuckling.
“Okay, I gotta go,” I say. “This is good news.”
“Yup, get back to it. Talk to you soon.”
The cancer machine still hums in Dad’s marrow, but the chemo is tossing each bad cell into a brown paper bag. At any time it could become overwhelmed by the output, but I figure that if I am going to let all the low points get me down, I might as well let the high ones do their thing, too. It’s been six months since Dad was first diagnosed, and for the first time I’m hopeful. That hasn’t translated into joy or a greater appreciation of trees, but still, it’s nice to feel different.
A stem cell transplant is the only cure for leukemia. We’d been told Dad was too old for one, but apparently Dr. Levine had reconsidered due to Dad’s lack of “co-morbidities.” What a terrible word. “Good news, sir, cancer is the only thing about you that’s gruesome and macabre. Should you also develop diabetes or heart disease, your body would simply be too grotesque to consider further treatment.”
Dad is conflicted and nervous about asking his siblings to get tested. He has to act quickly, though, because a relapse can come at any time.
Jace,
What do you think of this email? Should I retain or delete the last paragraph?
Dad
Sent from my iPad
Dear Guys,
There is a new development in my disease. Dr. Levine wants to begin the very preliminary bone marrow transplant procedure. The first step in this process is to determine whether there is a donor match with a sibling. If you are willing, you will be sent a “kit” from Stanford University Hospital. The process is very simple, it requires that you have a small amount of blood taken. It does NOT require a bone marrow biopsy.
A successful transplant can result in a cure, not just a remission. However, Dr. Levine says that “elderly” patients are less likely to get into the clinical trials. He added that 50 years old is considered elderly.
If this is something that you are willing to do, send me the address to which you want the “kit” to be sent. If there is any financial burden to you, my insurance will take care of it.
Understand I realize how fully this is a significant request on my part and ultimately the possibility of even more involvement. If you want to opt out, I completely respect your decision and nothing will change in the close relationship we have always enjoyed.
Love,
Mick
“It’s perfect,” I respond. “Though I don’t much like the idea that I’ll be ‘elderly’ in nine years.”
“Yeah, how do you think I feel? Apparently, I’ve been near death for almost twenty.”
“You’ve made it farther than you should have, then. The email is really good. You should send it.”
“Okay, I’ll send it out now.”
Maybe as an only child I have an inflated sense of siblinghood, but how could anyone deny this request? If I received a similar plea from a “Nigerian prince,” I’d at least take some time to consider it.
Communication is unfamiliar territory for Dad, Clement, Libby, and Paul. They’d always spoken to each other through my grandma, Detta. If Libby wanted Paul to know something, she told Detta, who would pass it along. It was convenient and effective, like storing data in the cloud. Detta knew exactly how to communicate things so as to minimize conflict and maximize her utility. Had this happened a decade ago, Detta would have coordinated it all. With her gone, the Good siblings have a little learning to do.
Dad hears from Clement and Libby first. They each respond with their own version of “Of course, I will!”
Paul, who checks his email quarterly, and probably from the library, responds a few weeks later. He agrees to the test, but he’s not the kind of guy who uses exclamation marks.
Clement and Libby send their kits to Stanford quickly, and a week later, Dr. Levine calls to let Dad know that neither of them is a match. Paul hasn’t sent his sample yet, but we anticipated he would do this on his schedule, if at all. We stop talking about the idea of a transplant for a while, and Dad seems relieved. Since he’s always looked after his siblings, asking one of them to undergo a stem cell harvest is complicated for him. Maybe if doctors used a word that didn’t conjure images of alien probings, Dad wouldn’t have been quite so tentative.
A month passes, and though Dad continues to respond well to his treatment, Dr. Levine reminds him that chemotherapy is not a cure. We should try to enjoy the time it has given us, but not lose sight of the ticking clock.
Dr. Levi
ne started delaying each of Dad’s chemo treatments to let his good white blood cells recover. As soon as his white-blood-cell count reaches the low/normal range, Dad gets the poison again. That’s just how chemo works: though his leukemia is still in remission, it’s important to keep his marrow honest, to thwart any plans it has of printing out more counterfeits. This extra recovery time gives Dad and Mom an opportunity to visit us a for week in June, which is a beautiful month in New Jersey. Warm but not yet muggy, it’s perfect weather for the lizards, and we spend most of their visit outside on our back patio enjoying the sun.
“How you feeling, Dad?” I ask, as Mom sips from a Sunday afternoon glass of Trader Joe’s wine.
“I feel great!” he answers, quickly, and without further detail. I imagine he’s tired of the question. It only serves as a reminder to him that he’s still sick.
He does seem to be back to his old self. He made a solo run to Costco for steaks and is busy grilling them to perfection: four minutes on one side, five on the other. We are all enjoying this return to normalcy.
While waving smoke from his face, Dad’s phone rings. He wipes his hands on a paper towel, reaches into his back pocket and looks at it, appearing a bit confused. “Jesus, it’s my goddamn dentist again.”
“Again? You mean he’s called you many times?” I ask.
Mom laughs. “It is pretty strange.”
“I’m due for a cleaning. He calls me three times a week.”
“I’ve never been contacted by a dentist in my life,” I say.
Lindsay appears from inside the house. From what I can tell she’s been busy negotiating a disagreement between Silas and Arlo over the ownership of a mini-trampoline in our basement. When they run off to compete over the coveted yellow swing instead, she collapses onto a chair next to Mom.
I tell her that Dad’s dentist is stalking him.
“That’s random. How so?”
“Calling him all the time.”
“You mean like socially?” she asks. We all laugh.
I turn to Dad. “Okay, tell the truth. Is it really your dentist?”
Dad shows me his phone. The most recent call is from a contact named “Dentist.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. You created a contact name for that number. It could be a brothel. Let me listen to the message.”
Dad plays it for me: “Hi, Michael, it’s Dr. Freid’s office reminding you that you’re due for a cleaning. It’s very important that you call us back immediately.”
“Wow, it sounds urgent!” I say. “I haven’t had my teeth cleaned in a decade.”
“Me, neither,” Lindsay adds, and then, with a frustrated hand wave, indicates that it’s my turn to referee the yellow swing battle.
When I return, Dad’s phone rings again.
“If that’s your dentist, you need to get a restraining order,” I say, but Dad had already answered and he waves me off. “Yes, hello, Dr. Levine.” He sticks his index finger into his other ear, bending at the waist. Lindsay, Mom, and I tune in like safecrackers as Dad paces the patio.
“. . . Okay. Yes, I suppose that is great news,” Dad says. We endure a long, tortuous pause.
“Well, I’m in New Jersey visiting my son right now. Would it be okay if I call him when I return? . . . Seven days. Great. Thank you, Dr. Levine.”
Then a final pause: “Yes, you too.”
Expressionless, Dad puts his phone back in his pocket.
“WELL?” I say.
“Paul is a perfect bone marrow match.”
“YES!” Mom shouts.
“So this means you can get a transplant?” Lindsay asks. She tries to stay up on everything, but “mommy brain” still handicaps her retention of facts. I’m glad she asked, though, because Dad’s answer surprises me.
“Yes, it does. Of course, Paul has to agree to be the donor. And he has to go through a series of tests to see if he’s healthy and fit enough for it.”
“You don’t seem excited,” I say.
“We’ll have to see how it all works out,” he said, turning his attention back to the grill. “It might be too soon to get excited. I mean, this is an opportunity, but it’s also a big risk. I’ll have to think about it.”
I’m sure Dad wants to be thrilled, but his wish to be eligible for a cure comes with the emotional complication of involving his youngest brother in the process. We don’t discuss the issue much for the rest of the next week, but it’s clear from Dad’s demeanor that the decision weighs on him. To alleviate stress, he puts things off, claiming he can’t do one thing until he completes something else first. But for this, waiting is too much of a gamble.
I’m also conflicted. As real as the inevitability of him dying in nine months was, so now is the possibility that he might survive. I had mentally prepared for the worst, and as it seemed that the worst might not play out as planned, I find myself confused and, almost disappointed, somehow let down, that my father might not die as scheduled. How dare he get me all revved up for something terrible and then not deliver?
Of course, I want him to be here forever. But his illness also brought good things into our relationship. I fear that I won’t have to carry him out of a movie theater again (though he might let me as some kind of gag). I am melancholy that we’ve already stopped holding hands from time to time, and angry at the way Dad’s condition weaved itself into our emotional lives in the same way it did his physical body. Blood tests, hemoglobin, lymphocyte, and neutrophil percentages are our conversational topics now. It’s who we are.
It’s as if we had been on an airplane together and, certain that it was falling out of the sky, we expressed new intimacies and related in deeper, more meaningful ways. But as the captain regained control, we reverted to old patterns—unharmed, unchanged, and no wiser.
In the beginning of this ordeal, all I felt was panic, but Dad’s illness also gave me focus, a defined purpose, and a needed disruption in routine. In those first few months, I may have been tense, frightened, shocked, but I was also present. A sane mind can’t live in crisis mode forever, though, and the ebbing of all that adrenaline has left me feeling too much like myself again.
So, I did all I could to replace those depleted brain chemicals by focusing on the situation with Paul.
After Dad and Mom returned to California, I check in with Dad via text.
Jason
Did you talk to Paul yet?
Dad
I emailed him and told him he was a match, yes.
Jason
What did he say?
Dad
He sent a one-line response: “I knew I was because I am.”
Jason
Jesus. That’s so Paul. He’s like Mark Twain.
Dad
Or Yogi Berra.
Jason
So what’s next?
Dad
I have to decide if I want to do this or not.
Jason
Right. Well?
Dad
Honestly, I don’t know yet. If I can get five more good years by staying on this drug, why shouldn’t I just do that?
Jason
Because no one knows if you can get five more years. It could be five more weeks. Right now this is all hypothetical until we know if Paul is up for it.
Dad
He is. I got an email from him. I’ll forward it to you.
An hour later, Dad sent me this:
Jason,
For some reason, the email from Paul has disappeared. He said that he would do anything to improve the quality/quantity of my life and is definitely on board. He expressed a deep mistrust of “Western medicine.”
This disease was mine alone and that was a source of great comfort for me. Now Paul is an integral part of it and I really don’t like that. The more I learn about his role, the more I understand the depth of his commitment. I’ll know more Friday.
Dad
Sent from my iPad
I can’t let Dad go any further down this path, so I call him.<
br />
“If Paul asked you to do this for him, you would agree, right?” I ask.
“Without question,” he responds.
“And if you told him you would, but then he chose not to get the procedure because he didn’t want to make you an integral part of his illness, how would you feel?”
“I would insist,” he answers. “It’s what brothers do for each other.”
“Then how is this any different?”
“Well . . .”
“Well, what?”
“I’m not him and he’s not me.”
“You mean, you don’t think he feels protective of you the same way you feel protective of him?”
“I don’t know what I mean, but I imagine that’s probably part of it, yes.”
“He’s pure and healthy now, and you don’t want any part of possibly ruining that?”
“Hadn’t thought of it like that, but now I do,” he says, laughing.
“Sorry.”
“No, don’t be. You just said it more simply than I could have. Why should an old dying man who hasn’t taken very good care of himself even get this chance?”
“This isn’t your fault,” I say. “Would you do it if you were fifty?”
“Hell yes.”
“So it’s an age thing, too. Some people live to be ninety.”
“I’m not going to live to be ninety, Jason.”
“Clearly. I’m just saying that despite feeling like you haven’t taken good care of yourself, you’re still in way better shape than the vast majority of sixty-nine-year-old men in this country. Have you been to the mall lately? Comparatively, you’re in your mid-fifties.”
Facts, common sense, science; they aren’t getting through to him. He will have to go through with the transplant despite feeling squirrely. The role of a donor is minimal and relatively painless. I think Dad exaggerates it because he needs an excuse to put off making a decision. There is no needle thrust into anyone’s spine, no sucking out of viscous, yellow fluid. In fact, there’s no actual marrow involved at all. The “harvesting” will be no more invasive than donating blood. Paul would be given a drug to encourage his bone marrow to make more stem cells, and those extra, “peripheral” stem cells will be collected from his blood. As I understand it (albeit, in pidgin science) they will hook Paul up to Dad like jumper cables to an old car, turn the ignition, and hope for the best.
