by Homes, A. M.
“You should,” Jane’s father says, stabbing his finger towards me. “It’s all on you.”
Nate and Ashley are taken to a conference room; they ask me to come with them. We sit, waiting and waiting, and then, finally, the doctor comes in. He’s got scans, charts, and graphs.
“Your mom is very sick,” he says.
The children nod.
“The damage to her brain can’t be fixed. So we’re going to let her body help other people whose bodies can get better. Her heart can help someone whose heart isn’t working. Does that make sense?”
“Daddy killed Mommy,” Ashley says.
There isn’t much more to say.
“When are you going to pull the plug?” Nate asks.
The doctor braces. “We’ll take her to the operating room and remove the parts that can be transplanted.”
“When?” Nate wants to know.
“Tomorrow,” the doctor says. “Today all the people who are going to be helped by your mom will get phone calls, and they’ll go to the hospitals near where they live, and their doctors will start to get ready.”
“Can we see her?” Ashley asks.
“Yes,” the doctor says. “You can see her today, and again in the morning.”
Somehow the police are notified and a cop shows up with a photographer, and they ask us all to leave the room, and they pull the curtains around her bed and start taking pictures. The white flash explodes again and again behind the curtain, lighting up the silhouettes of the cop and the photographer. I can’t help but wonder: Are they taking close-ups, are they pulling back the blankets? Are they photographing her nude? The flashes of light attract attention; the other families look at us strangely but silently. Stroke, heart attack, burn—MURDER—we are known to each other by ailment and not by name.
When the cops finish, we go back in. I look at the blanket. If they pulled it back, what did they see? What does a brain-dead woman look like? I fear I know the answer: like a dead woman.
Rutkowsky the lawyer and I meet in the hospital parking lot and go in together to talk to George. “He’s never asked how she is,” I tell the lawyer.
“Let’s assume he’s out of his mind,” the lawyer says.
“George,” Rutkowsky and I say simultaneously, as the nurse pulls the curtain back. George is in a bed, curled into a ball.
“Your wife, Jane, has been declared brain-dead; she’ll be taken off life support, and the charges against you will be raised to murder, or manslaughter, or whatever we can get them to agree to,” the lawyer says. “The point being, once this happens, wheels will be put into motion and your options become more limited. I am negotiating to have you sent someplace, to a facility I have worked with in the past. When you arrive, there will be a period of detoxification and then, hopefully, they’ll be able to address your underlying psychosis. Do you see what I’m saying, do you hear the direction I’m going in?” The lawyer pauses.
“She was sucking my brother’s cock,” George says.
And nothing more is said for a few minutes.
“What will she look like?” George asks, and I’m not sure exactly what the question means. “Well, no matter, I’m sure they can make a nice hat for her.”
The nurse tells us she needs a moment alone with George. We take the cue and leave.
“Have you got a minute?” the lawyer asks me.
In the lobby of the hospital, the lawyer asks me to take a seat. He places his enormous bag on the small table next to me and proceeds to unpack a series of documents. “Due to the physical and mental conditions of both Jane and George, you are now the legal guardian of the two minor children, Ashley and Nathaniel. Further, you are temporary guardian and the medical proxy for George. With these roles comes a responsibility that is both fiduciary and moral. Do you feel able to accept that responsibility?” He looks at me—waiting.
“I do.”
“You are conservator of assets, real-estate holdings, and other items that transfer to the children upon their majority. You have power of attorney over all transactions, assets, and holdings.” He hands me a small skeleton key; it’s like being indoctrinated into a secret society. “It’s the key to their safe-deposit box—I have no idea what’s in the box, but I suggest you familiarize yourself with the contents.” And then he hands me a new bank card. “Activate this from the home phone at George and Jane’s house. The accountant Mr. Moody also has access to the accounts and will monitor your usage. It’s a system of checks and balances: Moody checks on you, you check on Moody, and I check on the two of you. Got it?”
“I do,” I repeat.
He hands me a manila envelope. “Copies of all the related paperwork, in case anyone should ask.” And then, weirdly, the lawyer takes out a little bag of gold chocolate coins and dangles them in front of my eyes.
“Gelt?” I ask.
“You look pale,” he says. “My wife bought a hundred of these, and somehow it’s fallen to me to get rid of them.”
I take the small bag of chocolate coins. “Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”
“It’s my job,” he says, as he’s leaving. “My occupation.”
Where is Claire?
She has been lost in transit, was heading home and then rerouted. Along the way, she started hearing from her friends. I get a hostile call from Hawaii, where the aircraft has mechanical trouble. Accusatory.
“What are your comments based on? Hearsay?” I ask.
“The New York Post,” she says.
“And that’s the new paper of record?”
“Fuck you,” she says. “Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you.” And she smashes her phone into the wall. “You hear that, that’s the sound of me smashing my BlackBerry into a wall. Fucking asshole.”
“I’ve got you on speakerphone,” I say, even though I don’t. “We’re all here at the hospital, the kids, Jane’s parents, the doctor. I’m sorry you’re so upset.” I’m lying. I’m alone in what used to be a phone booth that’s now been stripped of its equipment; it’s a denuded glass booth—powerless.
“FUCK YOU!”
The day of limbo. There is the oddity of knowing tomorrow Jane will be dead. When the phone in the house rings, Jane’s voice answers: “Hi, we can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number we’ll call you back. If you’re trying to reach George at the office, the number is 212…”
She is here, still in the house; I run into her coming around the corner, unloading the dishwasher, running the vacuum, folding laundry. She was just here—wait, she’ll be back in a minute.
The next day, at the hospital, Jane’s mother collapses at her bedside and everything is delayed until she is revived. “Can you imagine having to make a decision like this about your child?” she asks as they take her down the hall in a wheelchair.
“I can’t imagine, which is why I don’t have children. Correction, I can imagine, which is why I don’t have children.” I say this thinking I am talking to myself, silently in my head, not realizing that in fact I’m talking to everyone.
“We thought you couldn’t have children,” Jane’s sister says.
“We didn’t even try,” I say, even though that’s not exactly the truth.
The family takes turns saying goodbye to Jane privately. I am the last. On her forehead there is a mark from her mother’s lipstick, like the blood-and-earth dot of a Hindu. I kiss her; Jane’s skin is warm but uninhabited.
Ashley walks with the stretcher down the hall. As they wait for the elevator, she whispers something in her mother’s ear.
We stay, even though there is nothing to stay for. We sit in the ICU Family Waiting Room. Through the glass I see a housekeeper stripping the bed, washing the floor, preparing for the next patient.
“Let’s go to the cafeteria,” I say.
In the hallways, people hurry past. They carry Igloo coolers marked “Human Tissue” or “Organ for Transplant—Human Eye.” They come and they go. Through the large glass window of the c
afeteria, I see a helicopter flying in, landing in the parking lot, and then taking off again.
Her heart has left the building.
On one end it’s like time has stopped, and on the other, time is of the essence, people are gearing up. Where do you go when it is over, when it is done? With every hour, with every part taken, she is a little further gone. There is no going back. It’s over. Really.
“It’s good she can help others, she’d like that,” her mother says.
“Her heart and lungs shouldn’t go to waste,” her father says. “Her eyes were good, so beautiful, maybe someone can use them; maybe someone can have a good life even if hers turned to shit.”
“Don’t talk like that in front of the children,” her mother says.
“I’m hardly talking at all. If anyone wanted to hear what I’d really like to say, I could give them an earful.”
“I’m listening,” I say.
“I’m not talking to you. You are a shmuck, as much responsible for this as your son-of-a-bitch brother. Slime balls.”
And he’s right—it’s unfathomable that this is how it ends.
The sister’s husband is going to pick out a coffin. He wants me to ask Nate if Nate wants to come along, to help make the arrangements. I ask, but he doesn’t hear me, he’s got his headphones on. I tap his shoulder. “Do you want to be part of the arrangements?”
He looks at me blankly.
“Arrangements. It’s another word for funeral plans. Susan’s husband is going to the funeral home to pick out the coffin—do you want to go? I did it for my grandmother,” I offer, as if to say it’s not so bad.
“What do you do?”
“You look at coffins, you pick one, and you think about what your mother should wear as her final outfit.”
Nate shakes his head no. “Ask Ashley,” he says. “She likes to pick out things.”
That night Nate comes to visit me on the sofa. “Have you Googled Dad?”
“No.”
“He didn’t just kill Mom, he killed a whole family.”
“He had an accident. That’s what started this whole thing.”
“Everyone hates him. There are postings about how he ruined the network, about what a bully he was at the office—especially to women. It says that there were numerous claims settled quietly with regard to harassment of female employees.”
“It’s not new,” I say to Nate. “People have always had strong feelings about your father.”
“It’s hard for me to read about it,” Nate says, almost hysterical. “It’s one thing when I think he’s a jerk, but another when strangers say mean things.”
“Do you want some ice cream?” I ask. “There’s half a Carvel cake in the freezer.”
“It’s from Ashley’s birthday.”
“Does that mean it can’t be eaten?”
Nate shrugs.
“Would you like some?”
“Yes.”
Using an enormous serrated knife, I saw off chunks; the ice cream is old and gummy and hard as a rock, but as it melts it gets better, and by the time we’re done, it’s delicious. When we’re finished, Tessie licks our plates clean.
“She’s the prewash,” Nate says.
Nate lies with me on the sofa, his head on the opposite end, his stinky feet near my face. When he’s asleep, I turn off the television and put the dishes in the washer. Tessie follows; I give her a biscuit.
A long black limo pulls up to the curb outside the house. The children gather, dressed in their best. I stuff my pockets with Kleenex and snacks.
“I’ve never been to a funeral,” Ashley says.
“I went once, when the kid of someone Dad worked with killed himself,” Nate adds.
At the funeral home, two men hold the doors open for us. “The immediate family is receiving to the left,” one says.
“We are the immediate family,” Nate says.
The man leads us down the hall. Jane’s parents are there, the sister and her husband.
There’s something excruciating about this part. Strangers, or, even worse, friends, crouch at the children’s knees, touching them, hugging them, stressed faces one after another pressing into theirs, faces like caricatures. There is the awkwardness of people feeling the need to say something when there is nothing to say. Nothing.
I’m sorry for your loss. Oh, you poor babies. What will become of you? Your mother was such a wonderful woman. What does your father have to say for himself? I can only imagine. Is your dad going to get the electric chair?
They feel the liberty or the obligation to say whatever the hell comes to mind.
“I’m sorry, I am sorry, so, so sorry,” people keep telling the children.
“That’s okay,” Ashley says to them.
“It’s not okay,” Nate says to Ashley. “Quit saying it’s okay—it’s not.”
“When people say they’re sorry you can just say thank you,” I say.
We are led into the chapel for the service and sit in pews like at a wedding, Jane’s family on one side, us on the other. Behind us are people who know Jane’s family, people who the kids went to nursery school with, people who knew Jane from the gym, friends and neighbors. The anchorman from Thanksgiving is there, as is George’s assistant, a gay guy who did favors for the kids. He was the one who got them good tickets, backstage passes.
The coffin is at the front of the room.
“Is she really in there?” Ashley asks, nodding towards the coffin.
“Yes,” I say.
“How do you know they put the right clothes on her?” Ashley asks.
“It’s a question of trust.”
Susan’s husband comes up to me. “Do you like the coffin?” he asks. “It’s top-of-the-line. In a situation like this it seems cruel to be cheap.”
“Are you asking for my approval?”
I think of Nixon’s funeral. He had the stroke at home in New Jersey on a Monday night, right before dinner. His housekeeper called an ambulance, and they drove him into New York City, paralyzed but conscious. The initial prognosis was good, but then his brain swelled; he went into a coma and died. Nixon’s coffin was flown from New York to Yorba Linda, where people wound through the quiet streets on a chilly night, waiting for hours to see him. I was going to go, make a kind of pilgrimage the way Mormons flock to the mountain or groupies to a Grateful Dead concert.
Instead, I watched on TV.
Forty-two thousand people viewed Nixon’s coffin over a twenty-hour period. The fact that I was not among them is something I regret. I watched on television, but I felt nothing. I didn’t have the actual experience, the shared night out in the cold. I only made it to Yorba Linda once, years after Nixon’s death.
“How do I tell people at school?” Ashley asks.
“They probably already know,” Nate says.
“That’s not fair,” Ashley says.
I pass Ashley some Gummi Bears.
Jane’s sister sees and hurries over from their side of the room. She sits in the pew right behind me, leans forward, and whispers.
“Since when do you know about things like snacks?”
“I don’t,” I say without even turning around.
I don’t like kids, but I feel guilty; worse than guilty, I feel responsible; worse than that, I think their lives are ruined.
And me, under stress I reminisce about the stories of a life that is not my own. I suck on a sweet; I pop a couple of Gummis into my mouth, without offering any to Susan.
“Where are the twins?” I ask Susan.
“With a sitter,” she says, her Botox so fresh her face doesn’t move.
An older woman leans in and tugs on Ashley’s hair. “You poor children and your beautiful hair.”
Music begins to play.
The rabbi appears. “Friends, family, parents of Jane, her sister, Susan, and her children, Nathaniel and Ash.”
“No one calls her Ash,” Nate says flatly.
“How does one make sense of a death suc
h as this, a life interrupted? Jane was a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend—and she was also the victim of a crime, denied the natural course of life.”
“I never liked George,” her mother says loudly during the service. “George was an asshole from the first date.”
The rabbi continues: “Out of Jane’s death comes a break with tradition; when a Jew dies, no one questions if there will be a ritual washing or a funeral, but what of the body? Jane’s family chose organ donation, so that the parts of Jane which remained strong, viable, could save the lives of others—they did the mitzvah of giving Jane to others. One of the purposes of the funeral ceremony is to help the friends and family adjust to the finality of their loss. And while the circumstances of Jane’s death leave us searching for logic, we celebrate her life and the life she will now give others. HaMakom yinachaim etchem batoch shar avlai Zion v’Yerushlayim. May God comfort you together with all the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem,” the rabbi offers. “This is the traditional Jewish expression of condolence.”
“Are we orphans?” Ashley asks.
“Kind of.”
“Yit-gadal v’yit-kadash sh’mey raba, b’alma di v’ra hirutey, vyam-lih mal-hutey b’ha-yey-hon uv’yomey-hon uv’ha-yey d’hol beyt yisrael ba-agala u-vizman kariv, v’imru amen.” the rabbi intones.
“Were we always Jewish?” Ashley asks.
“Yes.”
The ceremony concludes, and one of the guests turns to me and says, “Given the circumstances, I think the rabbi did a very good job. What did you think?”
“It’s my policy not to review funerals.”
“If the guests would stay in their places until the family has had a chance to exit it would be appreciated,” the rabbi says.
Jane’s casket is rolled past us; the anchorman from Thanksgiving is one of the pallbearers.
Jane’s parents exit with Susan between them. I notice that when she cries her expression doesn’t change—tears of a clown.
Nate, Ashley, and I follow after the coffin, climbing into the limo as Jane is lifted into the hearse.
“I hope I never have to do this again,” Nate says.
“Can we go home now?” Ashley asks.