So Long, Chester Wheeler(18)

“Everything going okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, pretty much. I’m being tough with him, and he keeps acting like he’s in charge and can get me in trouble. But I know you’ll support me on whatever keeps him in line.”

“A hundred percent,” she said. I could hear a hesitation in her voice. A slight nervousness. “I was just thinking . . .”

Here it comes, I thought, though I actually had no idea what was coming. Just that something was.

“. . . it would just be so nice if I didn’t have to fly back there. If you could stay.”

“I’m sure it would be,” I said, trying not to laugh in any derisive way. “For you.”

“But I had that intercom installed and all.”

I mentally bowed to the cognitive powers of Dean the Installer Guy.

“That felt slightly passive-aggressive,” I said.

“Sorry. Will you at least think about it?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s how you got me into this mess in the first place.”

“Can’t hurt to think about it.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll postpone saying no till the next time you call. Hey. Mind if I ask you a question? I’m just curious as to why he’s so immobile. I had to lift him onto the toilet this morning, and, wow. I mean, I understand he’s weak, but I sort of picture someone weak from cancer as needing you to steady them by the arm while they move very slowly from place to place. This seems . . .”

“It’s in his spine,” she said.

“The cancer?”

“Yes. Among other places. His spine is all shot through with tumors.”

“Oh.”

Then I didn’t know what else to say. Something bland like “That’s too bad” only felt generic and lame.

“I’ll call again in a couple of days,” she said. “See what you decide.”

Then she quickly ended the call before I could tell her, again, that I already knew what the decision would be.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and rejoined Chester in the living room.

As I settled on the couch, he spoke. His voice sounded different than I was used to hearing it. Almost . . . humble. Or at very least, slightly chastened.

“I won’t throw any more popcorn. So . . . if you’ll pick up what’s already there . . .”

“Sure,” I said. “Now that we’ve established that it’s the last food that’ll go into that carpet on purpose, I’ll take care of it.”

I got down on my hands and knees in all that horrible shag and weeded it out one kernel at a time.

In one sense it put me in a degraded position. Almost like prostrating myself. But in another, more significant way it was a triumphant moment, because I had won that round, and we both knew it.



That night I was so tired I fell asleep straightaway, in spite of Chester’s tossing and turning, gasping and wheezing.

Then, at what the clock would later inform me was after 1:00, he woke me with a single shouted word.

“No!”

It wasn’t the kind of “no” you would shout to forestall disaster. It wasn’t like a person in a horror movie screaming to the monster, “No!” as in “No, please don’t kill me!” It sounded more like the decidedly vehement answer to a yes-or-no question I hadn’t been privy to overhearing.

I sat up and turned on the light, then stared at the intercom for a few beats. But it, and Chester, seemed to have nothing more to say.

I turned off the light and tried to get back to the task of sleeping.

Just as I was pulling the covers over my shoulder, just as I was rolling over to try to get back to my sleeping position, I heard one clear sentence from him. It was, in fact, eerily clear, and spoken in a gravely quiet voice.

“I found the letters he wrote you.”

I lay awake for an hour or two, but sleeping Chester had no more words to toss out into my once quiet and private living space.





Chapter Six:




* * *





Who Are You, and What Have You Done with Chester?

I arrived at his house at the agreed-upon time. Stuck my head through his bedroom door.

He was wide awake, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. He shifted his eyes down to my face.

Much to my surprise, he smiled.

I can’t honestly say it was a happy or genuine-looking thing. More like something he pasted on, leaving a little strain showing through here and there behind it. Still, we’re talking about Chester Wheeler, and it was a smile.

“Oh, Lewis,” he said. “Hi. Good morning.”

I only leaned there in the doorway for a moment, speechless, letting it all sink in. I could feel my forehead wrinkling with the strain of figuring it all out.

“Sorry,” I said. “Wrong house. I was looking for a Chester Wheeler. You know him?”

“Very funny. Jeez, Lewis. I can’t win with you. You want me to be nice, but then when I try to be nice, you give me a bad time.”

“I don’t mind your being nice. I just want to know why. I mean, you never were before, and this is out of the blue, and I’m just curious about the why of the thing. And you can’t say, ‘Because I’m a nice guy,’ because you’re not, and even you admit it.”