Heft (15 page)

M
E
: All right, then.

[And there was nothing. For a very long time there was nothing. I heard her breathing and she heard me breathing and I did not want to say anything for her breathing comforted me. I could not tell if she was crying. Finally she spoke.]

C
HARLENE
: You’ll like him.

M
E
: That’s very good. I’m looking forward to talking to him.

C
HARLENE
: You will.

[Finally I could not take it.]

M
E
: O Charlene . . .

[& then she hung up. Before I could figure out why she was so upset.]

I sat with the receiver in my hand for several minutes, until its drone became part of the air around me, & then I placed it gently in its cradle. I picked it up again after taking several deep breaths, & then dialed the number she’d given me for her son. Before I lost courage.

It rang several times & then I heard not his voice but a song I didn’t recognize—like the one on Yolanda’s phone. Intimidated, I hung up before any
beep
could sound. It was just after 2 in the afternoon. A boy his age would be at school, anyway. Maybe in some fluorescent hallway, maybe clutching his bookbag and maneuvering through a crowd. I vowed to try him again tomorrow, at a likelier time of day. A thing I am looking forward to. Yes: old Arthur Opp has his hopes up, once more. That foolishness again.

Still. I feel different somehow than every time before. I have Yolanda in my life, & Yolanda has a child on the way, & Charlene has called again, & has given me a concrete task related to her son. I have a cupboard full of good things to eat & several particular favorites to watch on television tonight. I have a cleaner house than I have had in years & a more organized house. In all I feel as if my luck is turning, & as if some benevolent force has caused my life to explode, suddenly, fruitfully, to blossom into some ecstatic dream.

A Week

• • •

• • •

I
t is six in the evening on Monday and they are putting my
mother in the back of an ambulance, hooking her up to an IV. The girl paramedic runs to the front of the ambulance to drive it. I’m in the back. The man asks me questions that I cannot hear or reply to.
Just let me think a minute
, I want to tell him.

Eventually he stops trying.

It seems as if my mother is breathing now but I can’t tell. And I can’t ask. And I want to put my hand on her but I don’t because she is no longer mine, she belongs to the paramedic.

When we get to the hospital they jump out and take my mother with them and I jump out after them in time to see them running her in through the open emergency room door. I run after them. I can run faster than they can. Then they take her through swinging doors and I try to follow them but another nurse stops me in my tracks. I see the top of my mother’s head disappear as the doors close. The way the light is hitting it makes her scalp shine through her thinning hair.

Can’t come back here yet, kiddo, says the nurse, and then she looks back over her shoulder and says something to someone and then says to hang on.

Have a seat in the waiting room for one minute, she says.

I haven’t found my voice yet but I don’t want to obey her. I want to go with my mother. The nurse is a tall lady and fat and she gives me this look that’s a mix of pity and warning so I listen. I walk backwards to a seat and I put my head down on my knees. I do not want to be looked at.

Someone sits down next to me and asks me for my mother’s name and her birth date and her Social Security number and her insurance. I only know the first two. I don’t know if she has any, I say, about insurance. I never lift my head.

When a young doctor comes out and asks me to follow him I do so reluctantly. He takes me to a little room and picks up his clipboard and pen and the first thing he tells me is he’s not a doctor, he’s a med student. He’s not that much older than me. He asks me things about my mother like what medicine she takes and what sicknesses she has.

—Lupus.

He pauses. When was she diagnosed?

—I don’t know. I was little. Ten years ago maybe.

—Is she being treated?

—She was at first.

—With what?

—I forget. The name.

—Plaquenil?

Maybe, I say.

—She doesn’t take anything anymore?

—No.

—When’s the last time she saw a doctor?

I don’t know the answer to this. Five years, probably, I say.

—Why so long?

We’re poor. She’s drunk. All the time. I don’t say this. I shrug.

He is jigging his leg up and down. I think he is very new.

So, he says. Has she tried this before?

What, I say.

He’s stumped. He lifts and lowers his pen.

—Has she ever intentionally hurt herself?

I hesitate. She drinks too much, I say. She passes out a lot.

Eventually he releases me into the waiting room. I put my head down on my knees again. I stay this way for a very long time. I would like to say that I pray but I don’t, I can’t. My mind is blank and I keep it blank. When at last I lift my head I see that I am alone in the room but for one old lady sitting next to me and a couple sitting on the other side. This is the strongest I have ever wanted a family. Other people to worry with. I am the only person worrying for her and it feels to me like this diminishes her odds of recovery. To have many people praying for you suddenly seems like a necessary thing, and I consider telling the woman next to me what is happening if only to have another person thinking about my mom. She looks nice, the woman next to me. She’s a grandmother I think. She’s wearing grandmother shoes. She’s knitting. I wish I could knit. I wish I could do something with my hands.

I can’t speak, though. I can’t do anything.

It’s eight at night. I see by a clock on the wall.

My mind goes toward places I don’t want it to go. I feel superstitious about letting it go there. Skipping ahead toward scenes I don’t want to imagine. When I was a boy I did this sometimes. In elementary school I imagined her dead and then pinched myself to prevent it from happening. Always the same way: I imagined being called out of gym class, called to the principal’s office, where Mr. Carty would sit me down to give me the news. I would react stoically at first and then run from the school. These were mixed fantasies. There was some pleasure in them someplace. The pleasure of feeling sorry for myself. The pleasure of making a clean break into misery after always dangling above its canyon. Then the pinch: Stop it, I told myself. And this I also tell myself now.

The swinging doors open and everyone in the waiting room looks up. It is for none of us, it is a nurse walking out the front door. Everyone looks down.

She is what I have. I am what she has.

Just let me think a minute.

If she dies I will have to find my father. But I am eighteen and therefore don’t need a father who does not need me. I am eighteen and will be alone in this world.

Just let me think a minute.

If she dies I will live in the house by myself.

If she dies I can go anyplace I want to play baseball. Pinch.

If she dies I will be alone in this world.

I should call Trevor. I should call Lindsay. All I really want to do is call Lindsay and then put my head against her and fit her in my arms but I have never told her about my mother. Never once. Furthermore I never told my mother about her which makes Lindsay seem less real.

The doors swing open. An ancient doctor with a white lab coat and enormous gray eyebrows.

Mrs. Keller’s son? he says.

I sort of raise my hand.

—Follow me, please.

We walk through those doors. He stops just inside them and leans against the wall so I do the same. Facing him.

What’s your name? he says.

—Kel.

He raises his eyebrows again.

I’m Dr. Moscot, he says. He puts his hands behind his back and then crosses them in front. Right hand over left hand over file folder.

Let’s keep walking, he says, and we go back into the same room that the med student took me to.

Have a seat, he says.

Now Kel, he says. Do you have a father?

In Arizona, I say. We’re not in touch.

How about aunties or uncles, he says. Grandparents?

Again I shake my head. Now I know it is very bad. I am waiting to fall into the canyon. I am waiting for the plunge, for the drop.

I’m going to be very up-front with you, says Dr. Moscot, because I can tell you’re a strong young man. Things don’t look good. Your mother isn’t responding at the moment. We’re not quite sure how long she wasn’t breathing for, and I hear you’re not sure either. Her initial bloodwork seems to indicate that she consumed a large amount of Valium, and when you mix Valium with alcohol it’s very dangerous. Do you understand?

He pauses.

He says, I’m afraid it’s unlikely that she’ll wake up. She was a very sick lady.

He sort of shakes his head.

I am very very silent. I cannot breathe or move. It is not so much a drop as a slow descent.

—The neurologist will be here first thing in the morning. We’ll do some tests on her to see if her brain is working at all. You understand?

He won’t stop saying this. I do not acknowledge him. I do not move.

I noticed the rash on her face, he says.

I force myself to nod.

—I hear she has lupus.

Mild, I say. It was always mild.

Again the huge eyebrows head north.

I see, he says.

I’m not so sure, he starts to say, but then he takes pity on me and stops.

He leans toward me. I lean away. She must have been in a lot of pain, he says. As if that will make me feel better.

Tell me if she’ll wake up, I say.

—I can’t tell you that.

What are the odds, I say.

I like odds. I like statistics.

—I can’t tell you that.

But the look on his face.

Not good, he says finally. Never good in situations like these. Grim.

I can’t help it and I cry. I don’t want to cry in front of this man but I do. I cry a lot for a long time. Not loudly, I don’t let myself cry loudly, which is what I want to do. I want to wail. I put my hands on my face to try to cover it but it’s very bright in this little room and I feel as if I have a spotlight on me. I turn my back to him. I swivel around in my chair.

Do you want to see her? he asks me after a minute.

—Is she going to die tonight.

Probably not, he says. But you never know. We have her stabilized. Her brain is mainly what we’re worried about, but it seems like her other organs were probably affected as well. You understand?

OK, I say.

—OK?

—I’ll see her.

Pinch.

Dr. Moscot leads me down a hallway and up a flight of stairs. Then he swipes his ID and walks through a set of fire doors and we walk down another hallway. I walk behind him. We don’t speak.

We come to a booth with two nurses in it and they are laughing. About what I don’t know.

We walk past them and Dr. Moscot pulls back a curtain and there is my mother asleep. She looks green. She looks yellow and green. My first thought is how strange it is to see her out of the house at all. It’s been years. My next is to wake her: it is what I do when I see her asleep, when I see her drunk and asleep.

Slowly I walk toward her, heel before toe, and I put one hand on her arm, avoiding the needle and tape. She is blanketed. Her baldness is exposed. Her rash stands out on her face, very red and irritated. One bluish glint of eyeball appears beneath her lashes. There is the honeybee on her arm. There, snaking over her shoulder, is the blue-inked cord of her electric guitar.

OK, I say. OK.

I’ll leave you for a while, says Dr. Moscot.

Nope, I say. I have to go.

—Where?

I look at him. It’s none of his business.

Do you have somebody to go home to? asks Dr. Moscot.

Yes, I say. I could tell him something more—I could make up a lie to make him feel better but I don’t. I don’t want him to feel better.

I start walking. I wipe my face on the sleeve of my jacket and leave a trail of snot on it.

Young man, says Dr. Moscot. We have—

But I’m gone before he can finish, I’m through the double doors.

Walking through the waiting room is hard. The grandmother looks up from her knitting and gives me a heartbroken look. I run. I’m out the door before anyone else can see me. It’s dark and cold outside and I rode here in the ambulance and now I don’t know how to get home so I start walking.

I’m not really sure what to do. Just let me think, I keep saying. I don’t want to go back to my house. I cannot bear the thought of sleeping in my own house without my mother there. I could call Trevor but I don’t want to because I suddenly hate him. I take out my phone and I go through all the numbers in it.

I stop when I get to Dee Marshall’s name. I haven’t talked to him since he started hating me after I left Yonkers. But he was my best friend for fourteen years. I call him without thinking. I don’t know why but it feels right to do this.

Dee Marshall doesn’t answer. I leave a silent message. Five seconds long. I say nothing and hang up.

It takes me half an hour to walk to my home which is no longer a home. I do not go inside. Instead I get into the car and back out of the driveway. All of this I do unseeingly and unthinkingly. I do not look both ways. But no one hits me. This I take as a sign of something.