“A couple of days.”
This will please Brian, but it makes me tired, thinking of her in this house. Jess turns on a sitcom that she, Brian, and Lettie like to watch about four old women living in Miami. Each episode focuses on a different dilemma, and after they argue and trade insults, they gather around the kitchen table late at night to eat cheesecake: problem solved, friends again, a family.
Brian coughs, moans, and goes back to sleep. One TV show blurs into the next, one perfect family after another. Lettie and I take turns checking on him. I put my hand on his forehead. Warm, but no fever. In the last couple of days, he’s stopped eating any solid foods. Instead, he subsists on the diet of an invalid: Jell-O, popsicles, vanilla-flavored protein drinks.
Later, upstairs, I pull the door closed behind me. This is the room where Brian used to sleep whenever he stayed at Lettie’s. It’s a plain, simple room with a full-sized bed, dresser with a mirror, a book case. The wood floors creak under my weight. On the dresser, Lettie has arranged her collector Avon bottles—a glass horse, Little Bo Peep, a vintage car, and a unicorn with a gold horn. Nothing in here particularly reminds me of Brian, except that everything does.
My neck and back ache. Everyday helping him into the wheelchair or into bed, and all the nonstop chores, are taking a toll on my body. But what is a little pain compared to what he suffers?
I look awful. My hair hangs dismally around my face. Puffy eyes. Lines around my mouth. I haven’t worn makeup in weeks. I’m ugly but it’s okay—I want to look ugly. I want people to look at me and feel guilty about how they treated my son. I want them to see how I wear my own guilt.
I get in bed with no expectations of sleeping. I rarely do these days. On the other side of the wall, Lettie sleeps, or maybe she’s awake too, fretting and worrying. These past few weeks she has hardly spoken to her sons or her other grandchildren. Everything is about Brian now, it has to be.
Lettie and I have not spoken about the future. She hovers and fusses, and jumps at Brian’s every beck and call. I tried to tell her what Brian told me. DNR. I needed a witness. Lettie’s face whitened. Then she began unloading the dishwasher. “Oh, he’s going to get stronger,” she said. “He’s going to come back to us.”
I could pray. Should pray. The words won’t come. The house groans. My muscles burn. Last week, Reverend Clay came by, but Lettie wouldn’t let him in. She told him Brian was sleeping. “Lettie, is he right with the Lord?” he asked urgently. Lettie said she wanted to spit in his face. Furious, she told him her grandson was more right with God than most people in Chester, including him and his son. I don’t ask God to forgive Brian anymore. I ask him to forgive me, to forgive his father.
I hear her before I see her, and something in me sinks. Brian’s sitting up in bed, pillows propped behind him. Annie, Jess, and Lettie gather around in chairs they’ve brought in from the dining room. For a second, I think about slipping out the door before they see me, but Lettie looks up.
“Well, come on in, Sharon, don’t just stand there.”
Annie gives me a big, confident smile, but her eyes look red and washed out. “We’re doing makeovers.”
“Mom, what do you think of my nails?” Brian sounds weak, but he’s still here. He holds out his thin, delicate hands and wiggles his fingers, showing off pearly orange polished nails.
“They’re nice,” I say.
Lettie’s nails are newly painted too, fire engine red. Jess waves hers at me, dark purple, and she’s wearing lipstick and eye makeup, dolled up like a prostitute.
Annie rummages through bottles of fingernail polish cluttered on the end table. She holds one up. “I bet this color would look good on you, Sharon. It’s called seashell.”
I hesitate. All of them looking at me. It’s Brian I want to please.
“Okay, I’ll try it,” I say.
I sit next to Annie and hold out my hands. She seems surprised. “You sure?”
“It’s now or never.”
“Okay.” Annie takes my hand in hers, steadying it, and I suddenly feel hot tears in the corners of my eyes. I hold them back. Conversation goes on around me. I sit very still. Annie dips the tiny brush in the bottle and runs it over my thumbnail, turning it a glossy pink. “Pretty,” she says.
“Can’t sleep either?” Annie asks.
I shake my head. I’m trying to get used to her being here. She makes Brian happy, I tell myself. Still—it irks me, seeing her so comfortable in Lettie’s kitchen, like she’s here to take my place. I know Brian relies on her, trusts her more than me.
But when she offers to make me a cup of tea, I find myself nodding. She points to the chair, as if the house belongs to her. Of course he trusts her—Annie has never turned her back on him.
She busies herself with putting on the kettle. She wears a pair of very short shorts and a loose fitting sweatshirt torn at the neck. Her hair sticks up in all directions.
After the kettle whistles, she pours the hot water over a teabag. “All I could find was Lipton,” she says. “Sure this won’t keep you up?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I can’t sleep.” Then, trying to be nice, I share a memory with her about how Brian loved to drink hot tea when he was little. “The sweeter the better.”
Annie snips a smile—there, then gone. “I know,” she says. “He told me.”
We sit across from each other under the glow of the stove light and sip our tea. I have no idea what else to say, and for a moment, I think she won’t say anything either, a relief. We’ll sit here peacefully. But then she opens her mouth, of course.
“I quit my job so I can stay here as long as Brian needs me. Patty—that’s my girlfriend—told me to go. She said, if you don’t go, you’ll regret it.”
Does she mean girlfriend like a friend, or something else? I don’t ask.
“When Shawn died, it was so fast,” Annie continues. “He went into the hospital, and then he was dead. They treated him terribly.”
“What happened?”
“Well, first, he had to sit in the waiting room for hours because he didn’t have insurance. By the time he was seen by a doctor, he was half out of his mind with fever. And, you know, the usual. Nobody coming in to touch him, the staff avoiding him. His parents didn’t visit.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Happens all the time,” she says. “One guy I knew, his family, who hadn’t talked to him in years, swooped in after he died to take over his apartment and claim all of his things. They wouldn’t let his boyfriend have any of it.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” I say, refusing to react to the word boyfriend. Annie wants to make me as uncomfortable as possible.
“That’s how it goes. The lover isn’t even allowed to go the funeral. This other guy I heard about, a friend of a friend, his mother wouldn’t let anyone in his hospital room. Said she didn’t want any faggots in her son’s room.”
“Oh,” I exclaim.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Annie slurps her tea. “You know, I’ve got to tell you, I wasn’t happy about Brian coming back here. I mean, New York was a hard place for him, especially after Shawn died. And I just thought, why come back to this place, and these people, who rejected you? But, he wanted to. He missed you.”
She’s not accusing me, not exactly, but she’s not offering me forgiveness either. And why should she? I drink the tea she made for me. We don’t have to like each other. All we have to do is show up and take care of Brian. Andrew was right. It’s the only thing.
“And, now, he’s here,” Annie says. “He’s still here.”
The next morning after Jess leaves for school, Brian wakes up moaning, then screaming. He’s drenched in sweat, burning up.
“We should call an ambulance,” Annie says.
“It’ll take too long,” I tell her.
Annie drives Lettie’s car because Lettie is too nervous. She rides in the back with me, and we hold Brian. Cradled across our laps, he hardly weighs anything. We stroke his head
, his chest, his face. He trembles and gnashes his teeth, and I think there can never be anything as bad as this, my son dying in my arms.
But he does not die.
At the hospital, Annie runs in for help, and it seems to take a long time, too long, before two EMTs come out with a cart. They’re lifting him, they’re taking him away. The automatic doors close.
A nurse hands me a stack of forms. “Fill these out,” she says.
“DNR,” I tell her. “That’s what he wants. DNR.”
Lettie breaks down in tears. Annie puts her arm around her, speaks to her in a soothing voice. Others in the waiting room look away. They don’t know who we are, why we’re here, not yet. But one of the nurses knows and she glares, irritated we’ve brought him back.
I go over to the pay phone. My hands shake as I stick a quarter in the slot, another one slick in my hand. I don’t cry. I feel surprisingly numb. I punch the numbers I know by heart. First, I call Andrew. Then I call Travis.
I don’t know how much time passes. I pace the waiting room like an anxious father waiting on the birth of his child. Then, Dr. Patel calls me in to his office. I invite Lettie to come in too, but she holds onto the arms of the chair as if it might launch her like a cannon. I don’t even have to ask Annie—she leads me to the office. The doctor closes the door behind us. He’s slim and neatly dressed, and his lab coat is immaculately bright.
“He’s very, very sick,” he says.
He’s on fluids and oxygen, and pain medicine and antibiotics. He has an abscessed tooth. His teeth will have to come out, so that the infection doesn’t spread—his immune system is terribly weak. Annie asks questions, and the doctor answers rapidly. I miss most of it. He’s alive, is all I’m thinking. He’s alive.
“He’ll need to be here a few more days,” Dr. Patel says. “Then he can go back home. But he must have home health care.”
“They won’t come.”
“They’ll come,” he says matter-of-factly, and shows us out the door.
Travis stands in the waiting room, along with Wayne, Paul, and Gus, wearing their dirty, greasy uniforms. Their healthy, enormous bodies take up too much space.
“Is he okay?” Travis asks.
I walk past him and punch the button on the elevator. No, he’s not. He’ll never be okay. When I step in, I see Travis watching me, his hat crumpled in his hands. The doors close.
For the next five days, Annie, Lettie, Travis, and I make trips back and forth from the hospital and home. They won’t let Jess see him yet—no one under eighteen—and we all have to wear gloves, gown, and mask when we go in. Annie complains about the hospital treating him like a leper, even now, in 1986, almost 1987. They should know better, she says. But we don’t put up a fight. We’re too tired, and every shred of our energy goes toward Brian, wishing him to stay alive.
As I sit by his bedside, he sleeps or stares at the wall. My beautiful boy. His missing teeth—it hurts to look at him. Brian sobbed when the doctor told him they had to come out—a braying, ugly sob—and I tried to reassure him it would be okay, but nothing I said would ease his angst.
“Where is everyone?” he asks.
“They were just here,” I say. “Everybody’s been coming to see you.”
Which is not exactly a lie. Liz brought carnations. A few cousins came by. Gus, without Pam, stayed for a few hours, crying into his hands. I no longer care about who comes to see him and who doesn’t. I wish everyone would leave us. I want to spread open my arms like giant wings and enfold my son, so it’s just the two of us.
Travis never stays long. He stands too far away from the bed. He looks out the window at the parking lot. He fiddles with the remote. He couldn’t look at Brian before because of his earring, but now he can’t look at him because there is no more pretending. He is a creature with only the slightest resemblance to our son.
As Brian sleeps, Travis and I sit in chairs on either side of his bed, suited up in our masks and gloves and gowns. Mindless commercials flash on TV, the sound turned off. We watch without speaking. We don’t have anything to say to each other.
“I guess I better go.” As Travis stands, the yellow paper gown crinkles. Brian opens his eyes.
“Dad.”
Travis stands at the edge of the bed, nervously, looking at me for guidance. Brian mutters something. His lips flap together like an old person’s, then open to expose red gums and darkness. I could have stopped it from happening. I worked at a dentist office. I should have demanded it. Now, it’s too late.
“What did you say, honey?” I lean in closer.
“Dad,” he says faintly.
His lips are dry and chapped, and the hideous, painful herpes sores have returned. It hurts him to talk. He licks his lips, tries again. I motion for Travis to come closer.
“You think this my fault,” Brian says.
“What? No,” Travis says.
“Brian, he doesn’t think that,” I start, but before I can smooth things over, Brian continues—he’s speaking quietly, but there is no mistaking his words.
“I’m queer, Dad.”
Travis’s face scrunches, like he’s going to cry or yell. Because of the surgical mask, only his eyes and his forehead are visible. I hear him breathing through the paper.
“Don’t say that word,” Travis says sharply.
The hushed sound of the IV. Travis’s face, what you can see of it, drained of all color. Brian closes his eyes.
“Just go,” he says.
“Travis, wait,” I call, but he’s already heading toward the door, his work boots clicking loudly on the linoleum. His back fills the doorway, then he’s gone. Moments later, a nurse, one of the nicer ones, pops her head in.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I say.
Brian’s eyes are closed, but I’m not sure if he’s sleeping. I want to crawl into bed with him and keep him warm.
“He loves you,” I tell him. “Your father loves you, Brian, he’s always loved you.”
Annie joins me for a cigarette. We stand outside in an area designated for smokers and turn our backs to the wind. I’m wearing a flimsy jacket, and the sharp cold cuts through me. Oak leaves rattle. A crumpled McDonald’s sack rolls by.
“I’m so tired,” Annie says.
“Go back to Lettie’s,” I say. “Get some sleep.”
“Not just tonight. I mean, tired. Tired of hospitals, tired of watching my friends die.” Annie stops, and her voice catches. “It’s hard, you know. All my friends. I mean, I seriously thought of not coming back here to see Brian. But, of course, I have to be here.”
I don’t know what to say. I shiver, stamp my feet, and put the cigarette between my lips. It’s colder than I thought it would be, and I wish I had a scarf.
“Goddamn it,” Annie says. “I hate this fucking disease.”
I don’t react to her language. It’s just us tonight. I made Lettie go home and get some rest. Travis hasn’t come back, he won’t. I remember after the miscarriages, how I sunk deeper into some dark, quiet place, how easy it was to shut everyone out. But Travis stood by me. He cooked for me, took care of me, and coaxed me back into the land of the living.
“Sharon, listen, I have to tell you something,” Annie says. She’s wearing her hood up, loose around her small, pale face. She looks so young, she’s just a child, I think. “I brought pills,” she says.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Brian said he didn’t want to suffer.” She looks at me with urgency. “I’ve got enough.”
I stare at her. I don’t understand. And then I do.
“No,” I say. I want to tear my fingers into the grass and the dirt and the weeds and the cement. I want to dig until my fingernails are bloody, until my hands stop working. “No, no, no.”
Jess
From bed, Brian stares out the window at the bare trees. I put on David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane. We try to keep music playing for him around the clock. My mother, grandmother, and Annie are in th
e kitchen. I move the needle to the “The Prettiest Star.” Brian used to play this song for me when I couldn’t sleep. It’s different from the rest of the tracks—jaunty, upbeat, sweet, almost like a jazzy show tune.
Even though we’re inside and the heat is cranked, Brian wears the hunting coat that belonged to our grandfather. He’s always cold. The evening sun coming through the window makes him look like he’s glowing under an orange halo like a saint.
“Shawn, turn this up,” he mumbles.
Brian got home from the hospital yesterday. He doesn’t have any teeth. At first, I felt embarrassed to look at him. I still haven’t gotten used to it, but I don’t cringe anymore when he opens his mouth. His top lip curls down, and whenever he smiles, which is rare, you just see gums and tongue and a dark space. When he remembers, he covers his mouth, mortified. “My teeth, they took my teeth,” he cried.
“I wish you could have met him,” Brian says, realizing now that Shawn isn’t here. “You and Mamaw. You would have liked him.”
My brother doesn’t look young or pretty anymore, but I still can’t think of him as ugly, even with his toothless mouth. His eyes are dim and cloudy. Sometimes it’s like he’s vacant, staring at nothing. Other times, he’s looking at something nobody else can see.
In movies, in a situation like this, there would be a conversation about death, but nobody talks about it, even when it’s happening right in front of you. When Annie came back, I knew. I thought my mother would want to have a talk, but she looks like a hunted animal. Scared, she goes outside to smoke. My grandmother still talks about Brian bouncing back, getting better. My father stays away.
It can all but break your heart in pieces—
The camcorder sits on the table. Brian hasn’t used it in weeks. He told us to shoot footage, but Annie is the only one who does. Now I pick up the camera and turn it on. I look through the viewfinder and watch him, his eyes closed and the light around him dimming, and I tell myself he’s going to die, remembering I already knew this the day he came back. But I still don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that somewhere there is a door and when he walks through, the sickness will disappear, and he will be healthy again, like the kids on TV who have cancer but always go into remission and live long lives. The light outside darkens, changing to purple, and the halo disappears.
The Prettiest Star Page 26