Falling for June: A Novel (28 page)

36

I
KNEW THE DAY
would come when he could no longer visit June, I just didn’t think it would come so soon. It was the morning of my eighth day sleeping on the air mattress and I woke up late. Usually I could count on a wake-up call from across the hall as Mr. Hadley rocked his IV to the oldies. But today there was silence.

I found him still in bed, his eyes half open and his breath coming intermittently and rattling and wheezy in his chest. He had been sleeping more and more, his energy fading with each passing day, but he had always managed to rally in the morning. Not today. When he saw me he tried to smile, but I could tell he was in a great deal of pain. I cleaned his chest port with sterile gauze, as his home-care nurse had taught me to do, and inserted the IV. The methadone and morphine were supposed to keep the chronic pain at bay; the other narcotics were designed to act fast when he experienced breakthrough pain.

I spent the morning sitting on the bed with him, watching YouTube videos on my phone. He liked anything with animals. We watched a few hang gliding videos too. In the afternoon I came back from using the bathroom to find him standing in his robe holding on to the side of the bed. I didn’t want him to feel helpless so I fetched him his cane. It just wasn’t happening. He
took two steps, then stopped, spinning a slow circle around his cane until he almost went down. I scooped him up and put him back in bed. He hardly weighed anything.

“Can I get you something?” I asked.

He was pretty doped up but he looked straight up into my eyes and said, “June.”

“How about we shoot for tomorrow.”

He shook his head and made like he was going to get up again. It nearly broke my heart. Then I had an idea.

“I’ll make you a deal. You stay here and rest and I’ll walk up there and take video. Then I’ll come back and we’ll sit and watch it together, okay? It’ll be just like you’ve gone yourself.”

I’m not sure he understood me, but tears welled up in his eyes and he rested his head back on his pillow.

It’s hard to explain why, really, since I don’t normally get all sentimental and stuff, but I had tears in my eyes too as I set out across the footbridge with my phone held out in front of me. Something about seeing the empty footpath passing by there on the screen, as if Mr. Hadley had already vanished and I were filming his ghost walking up to Echo Glen.

When I got back and had recharged my dying phone, we sat on the bed and watched the entire video together. And that’s the only way he would ever see Echo Glen again until he was buried there. I thought about carrying him up once—since he was so light—but he had developed a strange fear about going much of anywhere farther than the bathroom by then. And even getting that far required my help.

He grew restless at night, staying awake and staring at the ceiling while picking at his sheets. I’d sit beside the bed and read him
Peter Pan
. I must have read the entire book three or four times through, but it seemed to help him relax.

I thought perhaps I should go home for a little while, get some things of my own to bring back, but I just couldn’t get
myself to leave. Estrella came by on the evenings she didn’t have to work, delivering more of her mother’s meals. She even brought a dandy quilt Mrs. Ackerman made for Mr. Hadley. She’d help me clean up around the house or do laundry, and then we’d eat something and sit together and play board games on the kitchen table. She brought Monopoly one night but it reminded me too much of my job. We didn’t talk too much about what was happening with Mr. Hadley; we didn’t talk too much about what was happening with us. We just hung out and made small talk mostly. And to tell you the truth, that was more than enough.

We’d hug when she got there and hug again when she left. We even kissed good-bye a few times. I knew there was more between us that needed to be explored, but everything seemed to be on hold. It’s a strange feeling waiting around for death. There’s a kind of silence that enters the house. I can’t really explain it, but you probably know what I mean.

When he asked me to open the dresser drawer I kind of knew what I would find. It was still a shock though. Maybe because it was so innocuous looking.

It was lying in the drawer by itself. A simple prescription bottle just like the others scattered about the room. The only difference was the sealed safety cap and the warning on the label. Pentobarbital, it was called. Ten grams. Just enough to end a life, I guess. I felt like I was holding a bullet or a bomb. The directions said to drink it on an empty stomach followed by something sweet to help keep it down. I put it back and shut the drawer. He wasn’t ready yet, but when he was he wanted me to know where to find it.

I sat on the edge of the bed and we looked at each other for a long time without talking. I got the feeling he was sad, but
not about dying. I think he was sad for me because he knew I’d miss him. He had not been out of bed for several days, and it had come to my cleaning him. I know it embarrassed him but it didn’t bother me at all. The home-care nurse had taught me how on one of her visits, and how to shift his position in the bed with pillows to keep him comfortable. He hadn’t eaten anything solid in a long time, but she said that was normal and okay.

The hardest thing was his breathing. I would sit in the dark in a chair beside the bed and listen to it. It sounded like he was choking or drowning. Surprisingly when he was awake this didn’t seem to panic him at all. I thought a lot about my dad while sitting in that dark room. I don’t know why. Maybe because he had died so suddenly and I hadn’t had any time to really say good-bye. They had taken him away already by the time the mill manager came out to the floor to tell me. I didn’t even get a chance to see him until I looked at him in the casket.

I was sitting in the chair beside Mr. Hadley’s bed one evening when I had one hell of a surprise.

“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

When I heard it I thought maybe I was dreaming.

“Steve,” I said. “Who’s Steve?”

“Humphrey Bogart,” Mr. Hadley replied from his bed.

He hadn’t been talking for days so it shocked me.

“It’s from
To Have and Have Not
,” he added. “It was the first film my father took me to see.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.

“I’ve got it in a box around here somewhere on VHS. You want to watch it?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Not only was he talking but he sounded like his old self again too. I turned the lamp on. He was sitting up in the bed.

“Sure. We can watch it.”

I couldn’t move the TV into the bedroom so I brought my air mattress into the living room. Then I carried him out and propped him up on it with pillows. He told me where to look for the VHS tape and I found it. By the look of the thing he’d watched it many times before.

“Do we have any MoonPies left?” he asked.

It was hard as hell not to get my hopes up. The pamphlets had done their job, though, and I knew this didn’t mean he was getting better. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the time with him either.

We sat and ate MoonPies and drank RC Colas like a couple of kids staying up beyond their bedtime because their parents are away. We both had smiles on our faces and chocolate rings around our lips. When the movie was over I asked him if he wanted to see another. I guess I didn’t want the evening to end. But he didn’t. He said he had just wanted to see Lauren Bacall one last time. Plus, he was looking tired again.

When I reached for the remote to rewind the tape he laid his hand on top of mine.

“There’s something I’d like to tell you, Elliot. Something that might not be fair of me to say, but I need to say it. When June passed it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy because I was alone.”

“You’re not alone now, Mr. Hadley.”

“I know,” he replied, giving my hand a squeeze. “Thank you.” A few quiet moments passed. “I only have one regret in life, Elliot,” he said. “And that’s not bad for a man my age. I only ever kept one thing from June all the time we were married. I had hoped that maybe someday we’d adopt a child. I always wanted a son. I never told her though. I didn’t want her to think I’d missed out. This may sound silly, but I want you to know that my one regret is not a regret anymore.”

His eyes were all wet and his chin was quivering like he might cry. He went on.

“I’m not afraid to die, Elliot. I’ve got my new best friend to see me off and the love of my life waiting for me. That’s better than any man can hope for.”

I was trying not to cry myself now. “I’m going to miss you. I really am.”

“I’m going to miss you too, Elliot Champ. You just make me a promise that you won’t be alone. I won’t feel good about leaving otherwise.”

I thought I understood, so I nodded.

“I’m in no position to lay advice on you. But I can boil seventy-nine years of experience down into this: Find yourself someone worthy of your love, and love her with all you’ve got. It’s the only thing that’s worth a damn in this life. That and maybe love like this.” He smiled and squeezed my hand again.

Now both of us were crying, but neither of us bothered to dry our eyes or pretend we weren’t. It was what it was. We lay back on the air mattress together for a while, just staring up at the ceiling, side by side. I think some people go their whole life without feeling what I felt lying there holding Mr. Hadley’s hand. It’s hard to even talk about how much I loved that man.

Nothing lasts forever, and grace in the form of a midnight reprieve was no exception. His coughing returned and so did his pain. I carried him back to his bed sometime before sunup.

The dresser drawer was closed still, but we both knew what lay there waiting. At least we had told each other how we felt.

It was a clear, cold Thursday afternoon when he finally told me he was ready. I had just returned from my walk up to Echo Glen, and I guess I kind of knew because I had told June he’d be joining her soon. When I sat down to show him the video he squeezed my hand and pointed at the drawer.

It was a heavy drawer to open. But it was harder watching him suffer. I took the bottle into June’s studio, loosened the lid, and set it on the windowsill beside the daybed that overlooked the creek and path up to Echo Glen. Then I went into the kitchen and poured a warm RC Cola into a glass and put it there beside the bottle. Each step, each movement, was a solemn one.

When everything was ready I went back and unhooked his IV, picked him up, carried him into the studio, and laid him on the daybed. I made him comfortable with pillows and blankets from his room. Then I sat in the chair to wait. He was looking off out the window at the path, almost like he couldn’t wait to get up to Echo Glen and his wife again. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to stay in the room, but then, without taking his eyes from the window, he reached out and felt for me, his hand landing on my knee. We stayed like that for a long time.

The sky grew darker, the creek and the path dissolving into the twilight. As the light faded from the room, the features of Mr. Hadley’s face faded from my view, and the last thing I saw was a remote kind of smile. I bowed my head and prayed.

I’m not sure when in the night he passed. Exhaustion caught up to me, and the relief of his decision made it okay to finally rest. I fell asleep there in that chair—the first real restful sleep I’d had in a long time. When I woke there was just a hint of gray in the sky and Mr. Hadley was gone. His body was there on the daybed, but he was somewhere just beyond the second star to the right and straight on till morning, probably flying that old hang glider into the full moon with June.

I felt like I should be sad but I wasn’t. As scary as it must have been for him, he had danced me through it like a pro. From the day his letter had arrived on my desk to this moment right now. I didn’t notice until I stood up and stretched my legs that the bottle still stood on the windowsill, untouched. He had
timed it perfectly, the sly old dodger. He’d set the stage but in the end it was June who had called him home.

Now all there was left to do was make a call of my own so that I didn’t feel alone. I’d honor my last promise. That and find his farewell binder. I was sure everything I might need was in there. After all, he used to be an accountant, you know.