Kill Me

by Stephen White

  “Big market,” he said. “Literally, and … well, literally. What nerve are you focusing on? Vagus?”

  “Yes.” How would he know that? When I was his age I couldn’t have identified the vagus nerve unless possessing that knowledge would somehow help me get into some girl’s underwear.

  “Do you have a prototype?” Adam asked.

  I nodded. “Not implantable, but the technology’s mocked up.”

  “Doing any animal studies?”

  I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with a fifteen-year-old. I routinely dealt with investment bankers with Wharton MBAs who needed the paint-by-numbers version.

  “Yes, sheep.”

  “Sheep. Huh. Sheep are a good model?”

  “Turns out they are.”

  “Who knew?” he said.

  Holy shit, I thought. Holy shit.

  He came to work with me the next day, and every day after that until he left town again. When what I did at work bored him—basically when I went to meetings—he read one of the classics he kept stuffed in his daypack, or he played the latest computer games on our company network, or he followed our IT girl from machine to machine as she made her rounds. I guessed—I even hoped—that he was tailing her because she was gorgeous, but she pulled me aside and told me that Adam was a natural with Java and that she’d learned a few things from him about hardware firewalls and open-port vulnerability.

  By then, I wasn’t surprised.

  Everybody in the office seemed to like having Adam around. Although far from gregarious socially, he had an endearing way with people and usually left smiles in his wake.

  When he was asked, he told my colleagues that his mother and I had once been close, and that he was doing an internship with me for school. He said he was “shadowing” me.

  The third day at the office he took over an unused workstation and began playing with an idea for an implantable device that would irritate the common duct every time a person’s stomach reached a certain degree of fullness. He began to familiarize himself with our CAD software and he peppered our engineers with questions about precisely what fraction of a volt would be sufficiently irritating without being debilitating, and challenged them about the reliability of available mechanisms for objectively measuring gastric fullness.

  Adam’s mother suffered from recurrent gallstones and he knew from observing her agony that the pain of having a stone in her common bile duct was a stunningly successful appetite suppressant. I suggested to him that there might be some ethical considerations he would have to contend with in regard to the commercial applications of his proposed device.

  Torturing people in order to get them to avoid Burger King and Krispy Kremes might be looked down upon by the FDA.

  I also grabbed the opportunity to reveal that he had an uncle at Yale with whom he might want to discuss his ideas. An ethicist.

  “Yeah? I have an uncle at Yale? A teacher?”

  “Professor. Yeah.”

  “Does he know about me?”

  Try honesty. “No.”

  Without any obvious bitterness, he asked, “You’re embarrassed about me, aren’t you? How come you haven’t told him I exist?” The questions were half-tease. Only half.

  “Anybody ever tell you you’re kind of blunt?”

  He tried not to smile, but he smiled.

  Inadvertently, I’d just complimented him.

  I said, “I’m no more embarrassed about you than you are about me, Adam. What are you telling people here? That I was ‘close’ to your mother? That you’re an intern? My shadow? Please. Who’s embarrassed about whom?”

  “Consider it an act of generosity on my part. I’m sparing you having to deal with the whole bastard question among your employees. That can’t be a good topic for the lunchroom or the water cooler.” He watched me open and close my mouth before he went on. “You were explaining your rationale for hiding my existence from your Bulldog brother. Go on, I’m waiting.”

  He was better at sarcasm and irony than I was, which simultaneously troubled me and filled me with pride. His skill had an additional side effect, one I was certain he intended—half the time I couldn’t tell whether or not to take him seriously.

  “I didn’t tell him about all of …” Try honesty. “My brother—your uncle—has ALS.”

  He exhaled in a solitary poof . “Well then, there you go. Now—now—it makes perfect sense. Everybody knows that suddenly finding out you have an illegitimate nephew is like a death sentence for people with ALS. Say no more.”

  “Adam,” I said. I said only his name because I didn’t have any idea how to rationalize my secrecy any better than I already had. His focused mockery had left me without ammunition.

  “How sick is my uncle?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to tell him he had an uncle, and in the next breath tell him that his uncle was dying. That’s why I hadn’t told him he had an uncle.

  “You know about ALS? Lou Gehrig’s disease?”

  “Football, right?” He waited a moment for me to stick my foot in my mouth by going into a paternal rap about the maudlin legend of the baseball Hall of Famer. When I didn’t bite right away, he said, “I’m more of a fan of Stephen Hawking, actually. If you’d been paying attention, you might have been able to guess that.”

  Okay, Adam knew about ALS. “Your Uncle Connie is pretty sick.”

  He looked at me sideways. “I have an uncle named Connie?”

  After Adam had been with us a few days Thea came to the not-too-surprising conclusion that his visit was an audition. “He’s thinking of moving here, into our house. He is,” she insisted that night in bed. “Isn’t that exciting? That he might come live with us?”

  Thea’s enthusiasm for my son was heartwarming and felt supremely generous. His relationship with Cal—he did indeed call her “Broadway”—was a joy to watch. And although it was my nature to focus on the inevitable bumps that would certainly be found on that road, the prospect of having him come to live under our roof was exciting to me. The possibility also left me struggling with echoes of feelings that I probably should have been struggling with that night in Buckhead with Bella when I was twenty-three years old: What would be the consequences of this for her?

  I wondered out loud to Thea whether she thought Bella was aware that Adam was testing the waters in Colorado. Thea assured me that such a thing wasn’t possible. I tended to agree. I’d only known him for six months, had spent fewer than ten days with him, and I was admitting to myself that I loved the boy in some essential way that I couldn’t explain by anything I’d ever experienced before in my life except the birth of my daughter. Bella had known Adam since before his birth and had been an active, caring parent to him for fifteen years. Could she really tolerate sharing him with a man who, for that entire time, hadn’t known either of them had even existed?

  No, I couldn’t believe she could.

  Adam left before dawn the morning after he’d spent nine nights in our home.

  Thea stared for a long moment at his empty bed in the guest room before she pulled her bathrobe tight around her, set her lips into a flat line, and nodded as though she’d expected his exit to come in the dark. She marched into the kitchen and phoned Bella and told her that Adam was once again on the road.

  I’d purchased him a mobile phone while he was with us, and I tried the number repeatedly in the first few hours after we discovered that he’d left. I wanted him to turn around. Accepting that his immediate return wasn’t in the cards, I wanted to say good-bye to him and I wanted to offer him transportation wherever it was he wanted to go next. Each time I called I was routed to his voice mailbox. I suspected that he didn’t even have his phone’s power turned on. His voice-mail message was “Hey, this is Adam. Odds are I won’t ever pick up your message, but if you feel better leaving one, please go right ahead. Hello.”

  I felt better leaving a message. I said, “It’s your dad. Have a safe trip. We love you. I love you. Come back anytime. If you
need some money, check the zippered pocket on the side of your daypack. If you need anything else, I’m here.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “We getting anywhere yet?” I asked my therapist as the session wrapped up.

  Dr. Gregory said, “Somewhere. Yes, I think. But it’s a big country, a lot of ground to cover. Mostly though, that’s going to be your call.”

  I ignored the qualifier. “Good,” I said. “I’m beat. Next time.”

  He responded without looking at his calendar. “I can do the same two times on Monday.”

  “I was thinking later in the week.”

  “Monday,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. I was tempted to argue just for appearances. But I didn’t. Monday was fine. God I was tired.

  “That’s when you’ll talk about how Adam has hurt you?” he asked. He was scribbling in his appointment book.

  I kept expecting things to wind down so I could get out the door with some sense of peace. Instead he kept raising the volume. “You’re that sure that he did? That Adam hurt me?”

  “It doesn’t matter how sure I am. I’m wrong a lot.”

  I laughed. “Ah, I see. That’s why I pay you so well? Because you’re wrong a lot?”

  “You pay me so well because my persistence—some do call it stubbornness—is a decent match for your resistance. The surprise about all this? About psychotherapy? I don’t always have to be right to be helpful. I just need to be able to help you be right.”

  “I’m too tired to make any sense of what you just said.”

  “No, you’re not. But if you want to leave under that illusion, there’s not much I can do about it.”

  I felt like flipping him off.

  But mostly I felt like getting the hell out of his office. I made it almost to the door before he spoke again.

  “I think you know why you’re here, why you’ve come to see me for psychotherapy. I don’t.”

  I was using the doorknob for support. He was absolutely right. I did know why I was in psychotherapy, and if I wasn’t going to trust him with knowing, I was wasting my time.

  “Let me think about that,” I said. I didn’t wait for him to reply. I closed the door behind me as I left.

  Once my extra-innings psychotherapy session was over, I found the Prius where I’d left it at a meter on Ninth Street across from the St. Julien Hotel. The meter, of course, had expired. A parking ticket under the windshield wiper reflected the efficiency of downtown Boulder’s parking patrol officers. I grabbed the citation, threw it onto the floor of the backseat, and promptly forgot it existed.

  Parking tickets are one of the many things in life that become less consequential for people who are dying.

  The kid who worked at the FBO at the airport seemed to be waiting for me. He told me the plane was ready. Fuel tanks were full. I gave him another twenty bucks and asked him to keep an eye on the car for me.

  “Your pilots are inside the office. You want me to get them?”

  “Please.”

  “Want the car covered up again?”

  “You bet. Trunk’s open. Cover’s in there.”

  “Back soon?”

  “Couple of days. Tell me something: How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Adam’s age.

  “You fly?”

  “I have my license. This is how I get money for flight time. I like being around planes.”

  I nodded and gestured toward the airplane that was ready to take me back over the Divide. “You want to fly it sometime?”

  “You serious?”

  “Right seat, but yeah, I’m serious. I’ll talk to Mary—she’s the pilot—see what I can do.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  I could argue that I ran out of time that day in therapy. Or I could argue that I ran out of energy. Both statements are true. But what is also true is that I left Gregory’s office that afternoon with some things left unsaid.

  Important things. Crucial things. Next time, I told myself. Next time I see him, I’ll tell him.

  He’d known I was holding back, which truly pissed me off.

  Next time.

  Here’s the prologue to some of what had gone unsaid:

  The phone rang late the night that Adam had left our house after his second visit. After a bumbling response to her series of questions about why her brother was gone and why he wasn’t doing that night’s bedtime routine with her, I’d read that evening’s stories to Berk and tucked her into bed. Thea was in the master bath enjoying a soak in the tub.

  The caller ID lit up on the tiny screen on the portable phone. It read “Wireless Caller.” Could have been anybody, but I knew it was him.

  “Thanks for the money,” Adam said after I answered. “It helps.”

  The money’s easy, I thought but didn’t say. I have all you need. Ever.

  “My pleasure,” I said, forcing calm into my voice. “You okay? You make it home?”

  “Tomorrow, I think. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Where are you tonight? Right now. Are you safe?

  I didn’t ask. I played it fatherly cool. “It was great seeing you, Adam. Terrific. I hope you come back soon.”

  Silence, hollow and cold, filled the territory between us for five seconds or so before he said, “I told you my stepfather was killed by a drunk driver.”

  The sudden change in direction jolted me like unexpected turbulence during a flight. I checked the tautness of my seat belt and fumbled a reply that I hoped would keep him talking. “When you were seven, yeah.”

  “Well, he was. Killed by a drunk driver, I mean.”

  I’m quick on my feet when skis are attached to them and I’m being forced to read a fall line on a hillside dotted with moguls. In relationships, I’m not quite so nimble when I’m forced to read subtle lines of communication. All I could manage for my son right then was, “I’m sorry, Adam. It had to have been … awful for you to lose him. It’s a tough age.”

  I could hear him breathing into the cell phone that I’d given him. The signal was strong and consistent; I suspected he was stationary someplace while he was talking with me. Where? Down the block? Across the country? In the parking lot of a bus station in Omaha? I didn’t know.

  “He was the drunk driver,” Adam said.

  I didn’t get it at first. My son’s words were a simple declarative, but I couldn’t make sense of the sentence. “What?” I said in confusion.

  “My stepfather was the drunk driver. He killed himself. Ran into a tree.”

  Oh shit. I got it. “Adam, I—”

  He terminated the connection.

  I held the dead phone to my ear for most of a minute, hoping that some magic would allow the conversation with my son to resume.

  I was feeling that I’d done something terribly wrong, but I wasn’t wise enough to know what.

  For the rest of the evening I felt the resonance of Adam’s revelation about the circumstances of his stepfather’s death deep inside me, but I couldn’t put what I was feeling into words.

  Thea could.

  An hour later, she and I were in bed. She was lying prone between my legs propped on a couple of small pillows. Her head was resting on my lap so that I could rub some knots out of the firm muscles on her upper back. Her flesh was still warm and supple from her bath. She was moaning—nothing sexual—she was just letting me know I’d found the right place. I was finishing describing the short, poignant phone conversation I’d had with Adam.

  “He was telling you what a huge risk he’s taking with you,” she said, almost immediately.

  “How so?” I asked, simultaneously wondering how some people—specifically my wife—could come to confident conclusions about other people’s motives so easily. I didn’t get it.

  “He’s vulnerable,” she said.

  There was that word again.

  “To us? We’ve been great. Terrific, stupendous. Given the circumstances, I give us an A. Or I give me an A. You get an A plus.”

  I felt her
body quake with the force of a short, ironic laugh. The laugh said, “You don’t get it.” She said, “We have been great—you’ve been great—but that’s not the point. Adam’s vulnerable to you. You’re the important one here. He just told you that the only father he has ever known left him suddenly. Carelessly. Selfishly. The women in his life have proven to be a little bit more reliable.”

  Was she including herself? Of course she was.

  “What’s his message, though? I don’t know what he was saying. Why did he hang up? When he decided to come here and reach out to us, it was risky for everybody. You, me. Adam, Bella. Even Cal. Everyone’s affected by it. Everyone will be affected by what happens next.”

  Thea sat back on her knees and pulled the comforter around her waist. Her breasts were at my eye level and her nipples seemed especially pink.

  The bath. Right.

  She placed her left hand on top of mine and squeezed. “Last night, late, when I got up to see why Berk was awake? Remember? Adam was up, too. I sat with him for a bit. He was watching all your old Memorial Day–weekend DVDs. All the crazy stuff you’ve done with your friends. He asked me if you still did … things like that. I told him about the trip you’ve been planning to the Bugaboos next spring.”

  “That’s fine. So what?”

  “Don’t you see? Adam told you that his stepfather was reckless. Driving drunk? Remember? And he’s letting you know what an impact that had on him. Think about his loss. Go ahead.”

  I thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “It must have been awful for him,” I said.

  My wife sighed at me. “Extrapolate, babe. He sees what … you do. With your life. That call? He’s telling you how frightened he is. He’s asking you not to be reckless.”

  “Reckless? What kind of reckless? I know what I’m doing.”

  She sighed. “You take lots of risks, babe. He probably suspected that about you. Now he knows that about you. And the truth is that it scares him. That’s what he’s saying.”

  “I don’t drive drunk.”

  “Not drunk, but you drive sometimes after you’ve had something to drink. But that’s not what worries him, that’s not his big fear. Look at your life, babe. You race cars on Friday nights with your buddies. You dive wrecks. You take your mountain bike places no sane person would go. You’re about to heli-ski the damn Bugaboos—again. You fly into weather you should fly around. He knows all that about you. He’s seen the pictures all over the house of you and your friends and all your macho adventures. Adam’s idea of the great outdoors is taking a walk on the High Line or fly-fishing in the South Platte. He doesn’t understand all the X Games crap you guys do. He’s not a kid with any spare testosterone. Risk for Adam was walking up to our front door that first time and knocking. He took that risk and now—now—he’s vulnerable to you and he wants some assurance that it’s safe to put his heart in your hands. He’s scared to death that he’s going to lose you the same way he lost his stepfather. Think about it; it makes perfect sense.”