So Long, Chester Wheeler(20)

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Oh. What did you mean?”

While I was waiting for him to tell me, I draped the big towel over the front of him.

“I’ll wait out in the hall,” I said.

“Thank you. I just think I should get a last wish. It sucks that I don’t even get a last wish.”

I stepped out into the hall before answering.

“I guess . . . I agree.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean . . . a last wish sounds fair enough. Unless it’s being driven to Arizona. By me.”

“You’re going to feel bad about it after I’m gone.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I was barely on board with calling 9-1-1 or putting you back in your wheelchair if you fell out.”

But, even as I said it, I knew he might be right. One day in the future I might be lying awake thinking I’d had a chance to fulfill the last wish of a dying man. Even if the dying man in question was Chester Wheeler. Would I regret that?

“You undressed yet?” I added, wanting to get this over with.

All of this.

“Not even close. I’ve barely got my shirt off. It takes me a while.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

I leaned on the wall with my arms crossed in front of me, vaguely aware that it was a defensive pose. I was protecting my soft underbelly.

“What’s in Arizona?” I asked after a time.

“My ex-wife.”

“Ah. Looking for closure, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“The phone is good.”

“I couldn’t see her face that way.”

“We could do a Skype or a Zoom thing.”

“No we couldn’t. She wouldn’t agree to do it. If I surprised her, she’d hang up on me.”

“Then what makes you think she’d agree to an in-person visit?”

He didn’t answer. But, in his silence, the answer came through.

“Oh,” I said, drawing the word out long. “I get it now. A surprise visit. You want me to drive you to Arizona to ambush your ex-wife.”

“I’m ready,” he said, but I didn’t think he was talking about an ambush.

I stepped into the bathroom again. Chester was mostly covered with the huge yellow towel, but his bare shoulders and lower legs were exposed. They were a strange milky white, as though his skin was too thin. It was weirdly translucent, his skin. I could see veins right through it, like looking at soft, blurry details through a fogged-over window.

“Okay, I’m going to lift you up,” I said.

He wrapped both his arms around one of mine, and I hoisted. As I did, I had to use my other arm to keep the towel as far around him as reasonably possible.

I steered him backward into the shower stall and he flopped too hard into the chair, the skin of one massive white buttock exposed.

I averted my gaze and handed him the shower hose and a bar of soap.

“Now go away,” he said.

Just on my way out the bathroom door I asked a question I hadn’t felt coming.

“Is her name Sue? Your ex?”

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

I rarely lie, but in this case I did.

“Ellie mentioned it.”

I didn’t think he wanted to hear that I was piecing together a puzzle of secrets he’d been exposing in his sleep.

I left him and walked into the living room, where I called Ellie yet again.

“Everything okay?” she asked. Immediately. Breathlessly.

“He wants me to drive him to Arizona.”

She didn’t sound the least bit surprised.

“Oh, that,” she said.

“I guess he wants some closure with his ex.”

“I’m sure that makes one of them.”

“I’m not going to do it.”

“I understand. I didn’t expect you to. I never meant that you should do that much. Just the basics is all I ask.”

“So, listen. I didn’t know people with lung cancer couldn’t fly.”

“Neither did I,” she said. “But you should probably know that my father has a deathly fear of flying.”

“Oh. So that might have been a lie.”

“Might’ve been. I don’t know. Did you tell him no?”

“About driving him, you mean?”

“Right.”

“Of course I did.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

That caught me off guard. I stammered a little, trying to express the answer and figure out what the answer was, all at the same time.

“I guess,” I said when I’d straightened out my tongue, “maybe I feel guilty. I said no and now I feel guilty. I mean . . . it’s the last wish of a dying man. You know?”

“I wouldn’t feel too bad about it,” Ellie said. “You’re already doing more for him than anybody else is willing to do.”

Just then I heard the water shut off in the bathroom.

“Wow, he takes short showers,” I said.

“If you can get him to take one at all.”

“I should go,” I said, forgetting that he would want to dry off in privacy.