We Are Not Ourselves(185)

A few days before Valentine’s Day, she was wheeling him down the hall to his room. The home was decorated with pink streamers and heart-shaped cardboard cutouts, as though it were not a facilitator of human expirations but a middle school full of yearning adolescents. She had to walk close to the wall to avoid someone being wheeled in the other direction, and in that instant, Ed had reached out to one of the hearts on the wall and plucked it off. Reached was too strong a word; likely it brushed against him and his hand closed around it reflexively. He clutched it the whole way down the hall and into the room. It was only when she wheeled him into place and sat beside him that he dropped it and it fell on the floor between them. His hand twitched after it; he could almost have been pointing. She picked it up. She was on the verge of asking if it was for her when she realized she didn’t want to hear the lack of an answer, so she just placed it on the nightstand.

Glue pooled in the corners of his mouth and a pasty spackle of plaque sat on his teeth, which could no longer be cleaned effectively and which had darkened so considerably that they had gone past yellow to a necrotic shade of blue.

She wet a paper towel and wiped his face. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said, and when she kissed him on the mouth for the first time in longer than she liked to remember, she was surprised at how sweet he tasted.





93


Something in his mother’s message compelled him to return her call right away and not merely resolve to do so before the weekend was over. She would never have delivered bad news on an answering machine, but there must have been a hint, a subtle quaver, and a hint was all he needed. For years, he had been tuned to the peculiar frequency of disaster. It was irrational, he knew; his father’s disease augured no sudden change in fortune, only a long decline; nevertheless, whenever the phone rang in his sleep, he awoke with a start and sprang to his feet.

“Your father is sick,” she said when he reached her.

He looked around at his apartment. Papers were strewn everywhere; a thick layer of dust had settled on every surface. Neither he nor his roommate had done any cleaning in weeks. It was their last stretch in college, and each of them was responsible for wringing as much as he could out of the dwindling days. He considered the smells: the faint ammonia reek of dirty clothes, the mildew musk that drifted out from dishes in the murky sink, which only got washed when his roommate’s girlfriend complained.

“He’s not going to make it through the night,” his mother said, with none of the bluster that entered her voice when she knew she was right. She sounded vulnerable. It might have been the first time he’d ever heard her sound that way.

“Are you sure?” he asked, but it was an idle question; she’d watched hundreds of people die.

“He has pneumonia,” she said calmly. “That’s bad for someone in his situation.”

“Why didn’t you call sooner?”

“I was waiting to see if he’d make it through. I didn’t want to pull you away unnecessarily. Anyway, I’m calling now.”

“How is he?” It was a dumb question, but he hoped, even half expected, that his mother’s answer would be different this time—modulated, hedging.

“Everything’s quiet,” she said. “I’m by the bed. I’m trying to make him comfortable.”

He could see the nursing home shrouded in darkness, the hallway dark but for the sliver of light shining out under his father’s door. He could see his mother’s hand on his father’s chest, the labored breathing, the terror in his father’s eyes.

“We’ll have to hope he lasts until you get here,” she said. “Call JetBlue. Put it on the American Express.”

He didn’t have a credit card of his own. His mother had given him the Amex the day he left for college. It listed his name in full caps, CONNELL J. LEARY, and above it, Member Since 67. “In case of emergencies,” she’d said as she handed it over before she headed to work that morning. The very last thing she’d said, as always, was “Be careful.”

? ? ?

It was with a sense of ceremony that he packed for his trip. The nervous excitement that attended any travel filled his chest, but he was preparing for a greater journey. They said that a father’s death was a defining moment in a man’s life, perhaps the defining one. He was about to be ushered into an immense and silent club of men who shared the knowledge of one of life’s singular passages. He was humbled by the possibility of waking up a different person, one with the stamp of legitimacy on him. Every shirt he folded into the bag, every pair of socks he picked out from the rest, he envisioned outfitting the better self that was, perhaps, being born into the world. A solemn suit, sensible slacks, his best shoes: the destiny for which he had been preparing was coming into focus. There were matters to attend to: taking out the trash, washing the dishes in the sink. He dispatched them with an intensity he had never been able to summon before. They were the precursor to the larger duties he was about to perform, as son to his mother and ambassador for his family—in short, as the man of the house. Every move he made had the imprimatur of purposefulness. There was no time for sentiment, only for the handling of tasks that a man ought to do well and uncomplainingly.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking out, for perhaps the last time with eyes of an adolescent, at the view of the street from his place. He breathed deeply the evening air, the smell of trees and car exhaust. His apartment seemed suddenly quaint; he felt a tremendous affection for the life he had been leading. He would leave it all behind. He would begin anew. Nothing could stop him; nothing could hurt him; he could walk on coals and get to the cool other side.