The End As I Know It

by Kevin Shay

  “It was a pleasure, Charles. Thanks very much.” Rick hangs up and lets the handset fall onto his lap. “That’s it,” he says. He closes his eyes for a couple of seconds, gathering his strength, then with an effort pushes himself up out of the chair. Once he’s up, though, standing his full six-two, some of the old vitality seems to come back. “O where the hell have you been, Lord Randall, my son?” He draws me in for a hug. My face next to his, I notice his breathing, louder and quicker than it should be for someone who’s just been sitting in a chair.

  “Great to see you, man. Nice place.”

  “Through no fault of my own. I’m glad you finally made it.” We let go of each other. He coughs, a deep, rattling series of coughs, his face contorting in discomfort, then shakes it off with an apologetic smile, regarding me with watery eyes. “You hungry? I’m famished. Let’s see if the lady can rustle us up some lunch.”

  “You sure I can’t help with that, Bonnie?” She’s running back and forth from the kitchen with food, dishes, utensils, laying them out on the table in front of Rick and me.

  “Everything’s under control. Thank you.” To an assortment of cold cuts, rolls, and tubs of deli salads she adds a huge bowl of fruit salad. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to cook anything.”

  “No, don’t be silly. This looks great.”

  “Bonnie is a marvelous cook,” Rick says. “Which is good, because what I’m allowed to eat lately, it takes a hell of a cook to make it edible. There’s a list as long as your arm of dos and don’ts.” He shoves the plate of cold cuts in my direction. “These are all yours, I’m afraid. She’s vegetarian, and I can’t have any protein.”

  “A little protein is fine,” Bonnie clarifies. “But strictly limited.”

  “What she means is I can have, what, a spoonful of yogurt on my iceberg lettuce? A lot of good that does me. No, my steak-and-potato days are behind me. Although what’s wrong with potatoes again?”

  “Potassium,” Bonnie says.

  “Jack Sprat can eat no potassium.” He serves himself heaping portions of macaroni salad and coleslaw. “But he can eat all the mayonnaise he wants, apparently. I’m living on fucking mayonnaise.”

  Bonnie finishes setting up and joins us at the table. “Fat is fine,” she tells me. “Well, it’s still bad for him, the same as for anyone else. But not in terms of the special diet.”

  I fix myself a sandwich. When I spoke to Rick a few weeks ago to let him know I’d be in town, he mentioned he was having some new health problems, above and beyond the early-stage emphysema diagnosed last year. “I’m informed my kidneys are not in it for the long haul” was how he put it, but he didn’t give any details or mention a special diet. Doesn’t seem like a good time to pry, though. I’ll get the prognosis from Bonnie in private. I take some fruit salad. “You made this, Bonnie?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “It’s beautiful. The fruit out here is amazing.”

  “What you don’t know,” Rick says, chewing slaw, “is with what delicate care that fruit was selected. Some fruit’s good, some fruit’s bad. Can you beat that? That’s where they try to trick you. How do they expect you to keep track?”

  “‘They’ being the sinister cabal of nephrologists,” Bonnie says.

  “Melons will kill me, allegedly.”

  “I’m sure your guest would love to hear your produce woes,” Bonnie says good-naturedly. “But for my sake, will you put a sock in it? Randall, please tell me—does that fruit seem like a hardship?”

  “Not at all.”

  Rick hasn’t quite finished griping, though. “And bananas. I love bananas. Tell me again why I can’t have a goddamn banana?”

  “Potassium,” Bonnie and I say in unison.

  Rick throws up his hands. “Oh, I see how it is!” Then sulks, pushing macaroni around his plate. I half expected a real explosion, but he’s mellowed remarkably, maybe thanks to Bonnie’s even keel. Between him and Bobbie, mediated by a couple of bottles of wine, a tiny conflict over something like a fruit salad (not that a fruit salad would ever find its way onto Bobbie’s table) was prone to degenerate into World War III.

  For the first few years I knew Rick, I had no idea about the short fuse, the drinking, or, for that matter, the Bob Dylan connection. I just knew him as my guitar teacher, a voluble guy who told endless tall tales in his Brooklyn accent and could fingerpick better than anyone I’d ever seen, better than I could even aspire to at age eight. Until I saw Rick play, I was a piano kid and had only dabbled a little on guitar, thanks to a student teacher who worked in the after-school program my parents warehoused me in. He’d bang out Beatles and Eagles tunes to keep us sane on rainy days after Monopoly wore thin, and he taught me a few chords. Meanwhile my piano teacher, Mr. Schein, was dragging me quickly but vervelessly through the standard course of study. I’ve since come to think he taught so impersonally out of paranoia about what people would think if he bonded with his male students—I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was fairly obviously gay. There was no playfulness, no preliminary chatter, no historical digressions about the composers. Mr. Schein communicated only in instructions and in measured words of critique and praise. And then I saw Rick, opening for Pete Seeger at a theater on the Harvard campus. I didn’t know from Pete Seeger—my parents dragged me there—but Rick’s playing and singing hooked me instantly. Something about his repertoire—the creepy ballads with archaic words, the hellbent and seamy sixteen-bar vaudeville blues—connected with me in a way Chopin and “Nowhere Man” never had. A little while later we found out he was taking students. He should have been teaching master classes, not a third-grader who didn’t own a guitar yet, so I can only guess he was especially tapped out that month. But after some begging by me and some cautious vetting by my parents, Rick showed up at our door one Saturday for my first lesson.

  So for ninety minutes a week I soaked up his encyclopedic knowledge of musicians and folklore and history along with his fingerstyle technique. But I couldn’t have told you where he went or what he did after I handed him Dad’s check and he drove away. It was only after the separation, three years later, that I started going to Rick’s house for lessons, and met Bobbie, and started to get to know the dysfunctional, volatile guy behind the guitar and the stories. After I switched to twice-a-week lessons and started dropping by on other days to hang out and listen to Rick play, I was a frequent enough guest that they stopped trying to be on their best behavior around me. A mixed blessing, given their other behavior.

  “So, I hear you’ve been on sort of a nationwide tour,” Bonnie says. “Do you need some more ginger ale? I’ve got another bottle.”

  “No, I’m fine for now, thanks. Yeah, I’ve been traveling for about five weeks.”

  “That’s great! Where have you gone so far?”

  “Yes, tell us—where have you been, Lord Randall, my son?” I look at Rick, taken aback. Unlike most incessant talkers, he’s always been able to keep track of what he already said to whom, and he never used to repeat himself. Certainly he wouldn’t repeat a line he used half an hour ago.

  I start to tell them about the various stops on my trip, leaving out the doomsaying. We’re finished with lunch by the time I come around to my Denver family and their business-building. Rick will love that one. He reserves a special corner of his personal inferno for cultists, especially since Bobbie flew off to be with her yoga guru. Just as I’m entering Colorado, the phone rings.

  “Where’s the phone?” Bonnie follows the ringing to the bedroom, where Rick left the phone, and answers it. She stays in the hallway, talking. Rick takes off his glasses, screws up his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose.

  I stand, start to clear the table. “Tired?” I ask gently.

  He exhales with a grunt. “Tired, yes. I can’t remember not being tired, though, so that’s not a diagnostically useful question. It’s a matter of degree at this point. How tired? That is the question.” He puts his glasses back on. “I don’t even know which makes me so ti
red, the kidneys or the lungs. My liver I won’t even let them pry into. A man has to have some secrets. But my heart, my heart is in great shape! They tell me I have the heart of a man your age. It’s only everything else that’s shot to hell. Who’s she talking to?” He peers toward the hallway.

  I rebag the leftover rolls, relid the coleslaw. “Are you finished?” I point to Rick’s plate.

  “With lunch, or with life?”

  “Rick!”

  “Yea on both counts.”

  “Oh, come on.” I grab the plate. “You’re not gonna go all cynical and morbid on us now, are you?” This is a joke. He’s been cynical and morbid since the womb.

  He sings, quietly, his voice a rueful rasp: “And if it be true, as I have heard tell. When he was sick, he was not very well. Derry down, down, down, derry down.”

  Bonnie comes back in, her hand over the mouthpiece. “Rick, I’m talking to Scott Hamlin about the fund-raiser.”

  This news seems to raise Rick’s hackles. “Jesus Christ.”

  “The club is available the fourteenth. That’s a Saturday. Does that sound all right?”

  “Gosh, I’ll have to check with my social secretary.”

  She rolls her eyes and uncovers the phone. “The fourteenth is perfect, Scott…Great. Thank you so much for taking care of it…Mm-hm…Oh, that’s wonderful. He’ll be thrilled to hear…Thank you. Talk to you soon.” She hangs up. “He’s booking it for the fourteenth.”

  “Spectacular.”

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Rick didn’t tell you? No, I’m not surprised. So, some other musicians Rick knows found out he has all these ongoing medical expenses and no insurance. And they’re organizing a benefit concert.”

  “That’s fantastic!”

  “They’ve already got about a dozen people who want to play. Some big names, too, not just local. It’s really a tribute.”

  Rick snorts. “It’s a eulogy, is what it is. Is it too late to cancel the whole thing?”

  “Oh, don’t be an ungrateful ass.”

  “I always said I’d rather die than end up a charity case. Well, now that I’m presented with that very option…”

  “Listen to you—‘charity case.’ This is your friends, Rick, wanting to show they care about you. You’d do the same for any of them.”

  “And when they pass the goddamn hat at the show? You’re telling me that’s not charity? It’s humiliating.”

  “There won’t be any passing a hat. People will pay to get into the show, not because they feel sorry for you but because they want to see the performers. Same as any other concert. That’s how a benefit works.”

  “Fine. But I’m not gonna be there.”

  “Of course you’ll be there.”

  “Tell them I’m too sickly to attend. That’ll get ’em to cough up a few extra bucks. Maybe you can grab me some castoff overcoats while you’re at it.”

  Bonnie ignores this. “Randall, thanks for clearing up. You didn’t have to do that. I’ll make some coffee.”

  Rick lifts himself to his feet, using the table for leverage. “I think I’ll lie down for a minute. Please route all my calls to the Salvation Army.” He sings his little tune again, off-key and bitterly, with an exaggerated sea-shanty accent, reminding me of Robert Shaw in Jaws. “And when he was sick, he was not very well!” With that, he derry-downs himself into the bedroom.

  Bonnie and I stroll around the neighborhood while Rick naps. “You have no idea how guilty I feel to still be smoking.” She frowns, puffing on a Camel Ultra Light. “I don’t do it around him, of course. But I know I need to quit. I almost managed to, a few months ago. Things are just too much of a strain right now.” She looks at me as if for absolution.

  “No, I understand.”

  “You know, he’s not as miserable as he likes to make out.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He’s flattered by this fund-raiser, even if he won’t show it. It’s just a blow to his pride to ask for money.”

  “So if you don’t mind my asking, what are his expenses for, specifically?”

  “Well, first of all about a hundred doctor visits and tests and follow-ups. But dialysis is the biggie.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know it had gotten to that point.”

  “They say it’s not urgent to start right away, especially if he sticks to the diet. But the sooner, the better. He’s having a fistula put in next week.”

  A fistula sounds like something you want removed, not installed. “Which is?”

  “Oh, they sort of graft some veins in his arm together in a certain way, then that’s where you put the needles to and from the dialysis machine. Apparently it makes it a lot easier.” She shakes her head. “I’m really not looking forward to any of this. I hate needles. I’m not wild about blood, either.” She expertly flicks her butt into the gutter. “Well, I’ll get over it,” she says bravely.

  An unexpected lump rises in my throat. The thought of this caring, loyal woman helping her husband filter his blood through a machine, pinching pennies to pay for his survival—and then, out of the blue, Y2K. Everything caves in. An earthquake everywhere at once. The machines turn off, turn on us, just plain turn, like milk—they’ve passed their expiration date. Will Rick’s dialyzer be compliant? Hardly matters. The number of cogs that break will be more than enough to halt the wheel. Healthy people in the prime of life will be lucky to come through the years of chaos, so where does that leave the Ricks and Bonnies of the world? So unfair, so heartbreaking. I have to make them see. That’s clear and imperative. Even if it means staying here for weeks, breaking all other engagements, I’ll make them see.

  I fall a step behind Bonnie and collect myself.

  “Bonnie. Can I talk to you about something?”

  And then I give her the works. I don’t even know this woman, but that turns out to help. With Mom, with Damien, I not only had to get the facts across but play a long-established role as son or friend. With Bonnie I can just spell it out as effectively as I know how, like I’m onstage and she’s an anonymous audience. I make a strong case.

  And she Gets It! I watch it emerge in her face as I babble on. We’ve reached a little round park, its fields and playground nearly empty, and my lecture takes us around its perimeter over and over, probably several miles in all, Bonnie too engrossed to lead us to a more interesting route. Each time I look over, her jaw is a little tighter with worry, her forehead more creased with tension. Behind her eyes I see her mind running a mile a minute, trying to assimilate this radical new data. By our dozenth time around the park I can tell the sale is made. I have no dotted line to sign on, but she’s ready to become a distributor.

  “I mean, I’m sorry to lay all this on you from out of nowhere. But I wanted you and Rick to know. So you can get ready.” Then I shut up, let it all percolate in her head. We sit down on a bench. She lights a cigarette and smokes it halfway down before breaking the silence.

  “I have to quit these things,” she says. “Even though, hey, if what you say is true, why bother?”

  I’m about to correct her, tell her that getting into good physical shape is one of the easier preparations you can make between now and the rollover. But given Rick’s health, that would be a cruel observation.

  “Randall, everything you’ve said just makes so much sense to me.” She flicks ash onto the ground, narrowly missing her sandaled toes. “It absolutely fits with so much of what I’ve been thinking about all this technology out there, how much we depend on it. It isn’t only this one, you know, code bug. If it wasn’t that, it’d be something else. We’re all so out of touch with each other and with living things, you know? Our relationship to the planet is completely off-kilter.”

  So it’s the New Age angle that’s caught her. Among Y2K believers there’s a granola-ish subculture that sees the whole phenomenon as Mother Earth’s way of getting her own back from the industrial interlopers. When the computers blow themselves out, the survivors can make a harmo
nious green fresh start. That interpretation doesn’t appeal to me in the least—I like western civilization, thank you very much. But to get Bonnie on board, I’ll go along. “Definitely,” I say. “It’s like we’re living in a huge house of cards.”

  “House of cards, exactly! So what I mean is, this comes as really no surprise to me. You know, it’s a shock that it’ll happen so soon. But we’ve all been fooling ourselves to think this so-called progress will keep going and going without consequences.” She looks at her watch. “Rick’s probably awake.”

  “Speaking of Rick. What’s your instinct about the best way to talk to him about all this?”

  She looks at the sky, thinking. “I’ll talk to him,” she decides. “You know, I think with you he’d just try to make jokes or brush it off. I should explain it to him alone. That’s the best thing. If it’s OK with you.”

  “Of course.”

  “He’ll listen to me,” she says, maybe trying to convince herself. “He listens to me.”

  While Bonnie talks to Rick, I sit outside on the steps with their cordless phone and try to call my sister. Her number is busy for twenty minutes, and redial doesn’t work with the calling card, which means laboriously pressing the same two dozen digits and pound signs on each attempt. The mindless task helps keep me from speculating about what might be going on in there. Knowing nothing beyond what I just told her, can Bonnie really turn around and lay it out effectively for Rick? On the eleventh try, I finally get through.

  “Yes, hello!” Boyd picks up on the third ring.

  “Hi, Boyd, it’s Randall.”

  “Randall! How are you?”

  “Not bad, thanks. Yourself?”

  “Nicole, it’s your brother. Randall, sorry if the phone was tied up. I’m in impeachment hell.”

  “I can imagine.”