Happy Family (25 page)

There is a long pause. Cheri looks down and takes a deep breath.

“That I wasn't good enough,” Cheri says quietly.

“And this other child was?”

“That's what I felt when I found out about him. Jonathan.” She rarely even thinks of her half brother by name. Nor does she wonder where he lives or if he's married or whether he has a family of his own. These things would all make him more real.

“But you also said that Sol left you his life's work, his proudest accomplishments. Not just his money, but his patents.”

“His lawyer couldn't believe I wasn't thrilled. I'd never have to work again,” Cheri says. “But it felt like a payoff for my silence.”

“Maybe it was Sol's way of making amends.”

“I don't think so. I think he knew it would piss me off.”

Dr. Vega raises an eyebrow. “You were talking about how you'd felt as a child. It was very vulnerable. Then you went right to anger about the will. Anger's a lot easier for you, but underneath the anger there's a lot of sadness, the little girl in you who doesn't feel worthy of her father's love. Growing up, you didn't feel safe. You haven't known many safe places where you can be vulnerable, have you?”

There is another long pause. “No, I guess I haven't,” Cheri says.

“Dealing with Michael's cancer puts you in a vulnerable place. You're safe here to be in that place.”

“What if I don't want to be vulnerable,” Cheri says, crossing her arms over her chest, her voice returning to its usual volume. “I feel like a child having a tantrum, but I don't want to deal with this shit. I. Don't.”

“Our work is to forgive ourselves first. For all the anger, pain, and disappointment we lug around every day. For not doing enough or being enough. Then forgive others: Michael, Sol, Cici. You know the list. And take responsibility. We create our own reality with our choices in relationships, what we say about ourselves to ourselves.”

“I can take responsibility for choosing Michael, but not for Sol. I didn't have a choice there.”

“It has no bearing from a psychological standpoint, but you probably know there's a school of Buddhist thought that says we choose our parents before birth.”

“It would be very screwed up of me to choose birth parents who gave me up, and then Sol and Cici—a real glutton for punishment,” Cheri says with a smirk.

“It could also be a perfect lens through which to view the lessons you've learned, and are learning. We can look at everything we go through without judging it as good or bad but as an opportunity for growth. Our parents all leave us in the end; we start separating from them from the moment we're born. Forgiveness won't change the past, but it can change the future.”

“‘It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,'” Cheri says. “If only it was as easy as you and Saint Francis make it sound.”

While Michael's engaged with Bertrand and his edits during the day, Cheri retreats into the solitude of her den, noodling with Peter's photocopies. Translating is an occult connection between worlds, a crossed wire that allows her to communicate with a scribe in old Babylonia, a man who, thousands of years ago, pressed his stylus into wet clay. What was he saying? She seems to have found a fragment of a letter that pertains to a funeral in the ancient city of Hebron. Genesis has Abraham born in the Mesopotamian city of Ur and being buried in Hebron. Since the discovery of these tablets eleven years ago, rumors swirled in archaeology circles that they could prove the existence of the biblical patriarch Abraham. The fragment mentions a funeral procession accorded to a man of great stature and respect with his two sons in attendance, though there are no name identifiers. Could this be the kind of evidence that fueled those rumors? The kind of once-in-a-lifetime find every scholar dreams of running across. Of course, it's all wild speculation and conjecture without the pieces of the Tell Muqayyar tablets in Baghdad.

Are you Isaac or Ishmael?
It occurs to her that in all her years of posing that question to her students, she'd never applied it to herself. Cheri has always identified with Abraham's outcast son, Ishmael. But her conversation with Dr. Vega about Sol's will has made her rethink her family mythos. She heeded her call to become a cop. Like Ishmael, she couldn't have gone farther afield from her father's kingdom. She would have cast Jonathan as Isaac. She suspected he'd be a doctor, a chip-off-the-old-Sol block in his tennis whites. The Chosen Son. Biological progeny trumps adopted misfit. But then why
did
Sol leave her his patents? Was it atonement? She remembers their lunches when she was in college, how she'd glimpsed who Sol was before he was her father. Sol had also been an Ishmael. He heeded the call to marry Cici and was disinherited, exiled from his tribe. Did he leave her his patents so as not to do to her what his parents had done to him?

It's the afternoon and she hasn't even had breakfast. Is this the soiled linen of working at home? Too much time to think, wearing the same clothes for days, forgetting to do up her belt after going to the bathroom and then thinking,
Why bother?
Soon she'll be that woman at the post office dressed in black jeans and a work shirt, middle-aged with no husband or kids, just parcels to post. She looks out the window and is startled to see Michael at the far end of the lawn. It is sunny but cold, and he's wearing sweats and a wool cap. His arms extend above his head, palms facing each other, fingertips reaching toward the sky. He goes through a series of poses: bending over in a swimmer's stance, leaning on one leg, standing with his hands folded as if in prayer. She's seen him do yoga hundreds of times, has come to think of it as yet another practice that leads to avoidance rather than integration. Yet here he is, alone on a cold winter's day, saluting the sun. He stands in this moment, on this day, in gratitude, humility, in spite of. We are capable of such great acts. We rise up even when our legs are almost too weak to hold us. We claw our way out of darkness and isolation with just the memory of light to guide us. We find ways to practice our faith even when we're hunted because of it. We are all so vulnerable, so close to nothingness, and yet we survive.

It fills her with a reverence for the terrible and beautiful experience of being alive. She closes her eyes and thinks she can see the daisy chain of all beings, trees and wind and sea, sunlight and the reflected light of stars that burned out long ago. She imagines lines like arteries and veins, the spinning helix of DNA forming an infinite superhighway of energy running through her hands and into Michael's and up beyond space. Michael loses his balance and folds himself into the child's pose. Cheri is ashamed of how quickly she goes to judgment. She's ashamed of all the conceptions—right and wrong—she's ever had about this perfectly familiar and yet still unknown man.
Oh, Michael,
she thinks,
I'm sorry.

T
he thesis of
The Palmist
was turning out to be true. Nobody was able to tell Michael when he was going to die. He had proven his doctors wrong and outlived their prediction by three months without chemo or radiation. Whether this was due to the Gonzalez regimen, an act of sheer will, or a fluke of nature was anyone's guess. But it was getting harder and harder to manage his pain—the latest episode landed him in the ICU. A foul hospital patient, Michael was sullen and snapped at the staff. He turned his frustration on Cheri, yelling, “Just get me the fuck out of here.” The doctors made it very clear that Michael had only two options: he could stay in the ICU with IV nutrition or go home with hospice care. Michael had already made his medical directives clear and given Cheri power of attorney. As much as it frightened Cheri to leave the safety net of the hospital, she knew she had no choice but to get him the fuck out of there.

Cheri was ill-equipped to be a nurse. As a child she'd fantasized about being a ninja warrior and leading underground revolutions against Orwellian forces. She was physically fearless, but being a nurse required facing very different enemies, the kind Cheri's time as a cop didn't prepare her for. Some people were natural caretakers, fluffing a pillow without disturbing the sick person, never saying things like, “Well, if I'm doing everything wrong, why don't you get someone else to wipe your ass?” But she was flummoxed by Michael's impatience and demands, all of which made her feel incompetent. In the hospital she was always in the way of someone else trying to do his job. She dropped ice chips on Michael's chest and had missed the lesson on how to properly apply a cool compress to the forehead. She wouldn't want somebody as clumsy and clueless taking care of her. So when the option of having a full-time nurse was raised by the hospice administrator “for an extra fee, of course,” she said, “Yes, whatever it costs.” Michael was right; perhaps she would have been a shitty mother. But at least she could make sure Michael had everything he needed to be comfortable. He had to know she was dipping into her trust fund for all his medical expenses, but he never asked where the money was coming from. Michael's silence on the subject was an undeniable sign of just how bad things were getting.

The nurse, Robyn, came with an electric hospital bed, an emergency kit, and a Japanese husband who was a paramedic and a former chef who worked alongside Robyn in his off-hours. Robyn told Cheri, “I've got five minutes to win your trust. That's an established fact in my line of work. I am here to make Michael comfortable and help him transition with dignity and peace. That means keeping him out of pain and managing his symptoms.” She pointed to a small silver cylinder with a black button on top—it looked like the clicker Cheri used to use to move through slides while lecturing at the university. “This pump will deliver medication at higher doses than they give at the hospital; Michael will control how much morphine he gets and when. Now I want to set things up, so show me whatever room he's most comfortable in and we'll get started.”

In no time, Michael was set up in his former office, which Cheri now dubbed HMS Sickbay. Cheri knew Michael would want to spend his last days in the place where he was the most creative, surrounded by his movie posters,
The Palmist
art, Indian rugs,
Sit with your fear and find your love
notecard, guitar, and photographs from various decades, including several of Michael and Cheri. With Robyn around and his finger on the morphine joystick, he and Cheri finally slept through the night. Robyn was Mary Poppins and Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy rolled into one six-foot-tall dreadlocked black woman. She briefed Cheri on the IV lines and the emergency kit filled with drugs to combat nausea, anxiety, fever, and pain, and told her what to expect in Michael's last days. Cheri was well aware that in other centuries people had rituals and customs for dying, written guides to
ars moriendi.
The Sumerians had a checklist of things to do before burying their family members underneath their homes; they had incantations to sing, grave goods and offerings to gather, rituals to perform. All Cheri had to rely on was
A Caregiver's Guide to the Dying Process.
She relished the irony that you would never be able to recall the two largest events of your life: your own birth and death. The descriptions of the most elemental transitions of existence were lost between worlds. There were near-death experiences of going into the light, but those sounded too much like alien abductions for Cheri's taste.

The house was now ensconced in the dome of illness; visitors—the few Michael wanted to see—seemed to automatically lower their voices. Cheri's world revolved around Michael's bodily minutiae while the rest of the world spun on and had larger life-and-death issues. The war in Iraq was days away.

Cheri has stopped waiting to hear from Samuelson about the review board's “findings”; their endless deliberations have dragged on week after week. She is in the kitchen making herself and Robyn coffee when her cell buzzes. “I only have a moment. But I wanted to be the first to tell you.” Samuelson's voice is laced with self-congratulation and muffled by sounds from an airport. “The review board did not find sufficient merit for discrimination. Your faculty suspension is relieved.” Cheri can barely process the news before Samuelson goes on. “However…” He pauses, and Cheri waits for the other shoe to drop. “You will be required to restructure your curricula and have it approved by the committee before resuming your teaching duties. We obviously don't want further complaints of this nature. A detailed report is forthcoming.” As he is rushing off the phone, Cheri just manages to ask about what's been done to protect the museum in Baghdad. “We have warned the DOD. I have told them in no uncertain terms that the museum is the number-one site they must protect. They have assured us that troops will be placed throughout the city as soon as it's been secured. The museum is closed so we aren't likely to get further communication for a while. I will keep you informed.”

This dire assessment takes a moment to sink in. What kills her the most is the timing: she's been waiting for endless months to be exonerated and now the tablets are in lockdown, behind the doors of a closed museum, in a city being bombed and invaded. But at least she was exonerated; she is not going to lose this career ignominiously, as she lost the last one. She would have expected to feel not just relief but elation. Of course, her liberation comes with handcuffs. The committee's report would be voluminous, quoting the university's bylaws to justify the censorship they'd inflict on her. She can't begin to think about the implications this has for her future as a professor. No time now to think about the news, good or bad; Michael is at the end of the end. Relief, when it comes, is a whisper.

When Cheri goes into Michael's sickbay, he's sitting up in bed working on number three on Robyn's to-do list: put your affairs in order. “What do you want to do with this?” Robyn holds up a striped cape.

“Bertrand got me that for my birthday a few years ago. It's a Tibetan snow cape. Mark that with a red sticker to give to Bertrand, please.” As Robyn puts a red sticker on the cape and sets it aside with a stack of other color-coded possessions they've sorted through that morning, Cheri remembers itemizing their wedding presents the same way. Back then they were deciding what to exchange and what to keep. Some of Michael's friends have already made their journey to say good-bye, leaving with boxes and wet eyes. Filming for
The Palmist
has concluded, so Giaccomo wrapped his visit by pulling Cheri aside and asking what Michael had done with all his drug samples from the apothecary cabinet. For a moment, Cheri wished she had a few baggies to hand out to Michael's loyal followers. Bertrand was the hardest one to watch make his final descent down the stairs. It made her throat clutch with sadness. “Thank you for taking care of him,” she'd said quietly as he leaned on her for support.

“Okay,” Cheri says now, turning to Michael. “What's next?”

Ever since Robyn arrived, Michael seemed to be doing better. Cheri had been reluctant to taper off his G-tube feedings, despite Robyn's explanation that Michael's body wasn't absorbing much of the nutrition anyway and stopping the feeding would decrease his bloating and make him more comfortable. But Cheri had done it, and Robyn had been right—the difference was notable.

Today Michael has color in his sunken cheeks, and his eyes look clear. He'd felt rejuvenated enough yesterday to sit at his desk and edit the final footage of
The Palmist.
He moved around his office holding on to chair backs and other objects for support, calling out, “Dead man walking,” and he weakly suggested going out for dinner. “Twin Anchors,” he said. “Maybe I'd have a bite of ribs just for the taste.” Cheri smiled. Until Michael got sick, she hadn't realized how attached she was to the cycle of meals. His inability to ingest pained her.

“I'll go out for my dinner break now and leave you chickens to it,” Robyn says. “While everyone's feeling good, this is the time to do number four on the list.” Robyn taps her finger four times on the table. Cheri knows this is the number for funeral preparations. Years ago, when death was purely theoretical, they'd jokingly agreed that if either of them ever became more vegetable than meat, the other one would put him or her out to sea on an ice floe. “Careful, there, don't get any ideas about committing senilicide when I'm just plain old,” Michael had said.

“Whatever you do, I am not going in Sol's plot.” Michael settles his back against pillows and rearranges his IV pole.

“Wait a second. Do you honestly think, even in your wildest imagination, I'd suggest burying you in Sol's plot?” Sol's will provided for a family plot, with spaces reserved for Michael and Cheri; they had laughed at the notion of family members who didn't like one another in life being confined together for eternity.

Michael is about to say something flippant and then stops. “Forget it. I can't get it up to Sol-bash. One thing being a dead man walking teaches you is that none of it matters. The petty bullshit, the squabbles.” He dismisses it all with a wave of his hand. “Burial is out. I don't want the whole pomp and circumstance of marble and headstone unveilings. Sign me up for fire.”

“Okay. So cremation,” Cheri says. “Do you want a rabbi or ceremony or any of that?”

“No service, no funeral. Nobody reading poetry or eulogizing. Throw me a party and screen
The Palmist
. I've gone over my cut with Jonah and Bertrand, so when they say it's ready, go with it. I made a list of the booze and food to serve; play Hendrix, and—it's all written down, along with a list of who to invite. Make it an Irish wake minus ‘Danny Boy' and the other maudlin crap. People should get loaded and have a good time.” Michael looks up at her. “That means you too, Cheri.” Their eyes meet for a long moment. Cheri offers him a sad little salute.

Michael continues: “That's all I want. The instructions are in the yellow file on the desk, along with the name of the place to do the cremation. There is something, though, that I need you to do, to promise me.”

“Sure,” she says.

“I need you to make sure that my body is really cremated and not dumped in a storage unit. This place has its own crematorium so it's not outsourced. They all claim to be ethical, but who knows what happens when nobody is looking.”

Cheri thinks that sounds a bit paranoid but bites her tongue.

Sensing her skepticism, Michael adds, “Remember that cremation scam in Georgia last year? They found bodies in an ex-con's garage, piled up like in the Holocaust.”

“How would I check? It's not like I can go in with you.”

“You watch,” he says, “from behind a window or a partition. They let you if you request it in advance. It's also good for you, by the way. Helps with closure.”

“To watch your body go into the furnace?”

“Since when are you squeamish? The door comes down so you don't see the whole crackle-crackle-crackle, pop, pop, pop. Bit of a mess if he's not quite dead.” Michael does a fair-to-middling Monty Python impression. Cheri exhales. In theory, this is something she can embrace, but looking at Michael now, propped up in bed, the leap to picturing his trip into the fiery furnace is too disturbing. “You know how they do cremations in Tibet?” he asks.

“I think I know a thing or two about that.”

“I don't mean in the ancient past, I mean now, modern day. The villagers put the body in a coffin they've knocked together out of planks they find, no lid; they put the coffin on top of logs in front of their town hall or along the riverbank and light it on fire. Everyone comes and watches. It's part of life, a continuation of the cycle. I'm dying, Cheri. That fact won't go away. It will keep getting your attention in other, bigger ways. Pebble, rock, brick. Anything you keep hidden, anything that you don't face, has power over you. Don't let it.”

“I'm confused. Is this about you being worried that your body will end up in some ex-con's garage? Or is this about me not being as—accepting—of all of this as you are?”

“Both,” he says, then pauses. “But I need you to know that acceptance is something I struggle with every day. There are times when I'm fucking terrified. Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.”

“I'm sorry,” Cheri says, searching for how to define all that she's sorry for. “I want you to know that I'm truly sorry.”

“For what?” he asks.

“For not seeing you. For pushing you into the whole baby thing. For everything…” He reaches out and touches her arm.

“It's okay,” he says. “I've forgiven you; I've forgiven myself. That was step one. You were right about how angry we'd become. Until you let go of your anger and resentment from the past you won't be able to truly move forward. We're stubborn fucks, you and I. Nothing comes easy. Whatever it is you need to find to live your life, go find it. And while you're at it, give yourself permission to spend
your
money—and not just in an emergency.” Michael pauses, eyebrows raised, to make sure she understands. She slowly nods her head.