Chris went to emergency in the hospital and they put some temporary “casts” on his legs, gave him a walker. I didn’t feel any real, deep-down, emergency-room pain, so I just went along with him; Bernadete came over from the pathology department and stayed with us.
Then the next day I went back to Zuckerman’s for my x-ray and when Zuckerman looked at it said something I never wanted to hear in my life.
“I see the stone. It’s been knocked down in the ureter. Probably the accident. You must have gotten a real bang. But I see something else, too . . . what I suspect are cancer cells.”
“What?”
“Cancer cells.”
“How can I have cancer? I stopped smoking my pipe thirty five years ago; no beef. Chinese food, tons of broccoli, dried peaches, pears, cranberries, pecans, mega-doses of Vitamin C every day, soy beans all over the place . . .”
“Sorry. I see what I see. We’ll do a biopsy.”
“OK.”
Did a biopsy, and while he had me up on the table, went in and did a little more laser gaming around . . . more blood, more knife-life stabs at the end of every piss.
But he was right. It was cancer.
Immediately gave me a Lupron shot.
The single most devastating shot I’ve ever had in my life.
Lupron works on the brain, prevents the formation of androgyn. Shrinks the prostate. So that within a month it had gone from huge, to Tiny Tim-ish. But that’s the end of sex. All desire goes. You’re post-sexual, the Buddha sitting on an ice-floe floating around in the Arctic Ocean, St. Augustine at the end of his life after having successfully wrestled with and subdued all his sexuality.
“What are we going to do for sex?” I asked Bernadete two weeks after my first Lupron shot—that, incidentally, lasted for four months no less.
“Just forget about it. I’m peri-menopausal anyhow. It won’t change anything between us.”
“OK.”
But I was worried that the black cat in her might just start wandering the nights looking for a little action. And she could find it. Fifty-four, but in the right light, with the right makeup, she looked twenty-five with her little frog-legs and perfect Portuguese-Jewish face.
But there were all sorts of side-effects from Lupron. Like swollen ankles.
Hugh/Connie Fox with swollen ankles?!?!?!
Something I’d always hated in my grandmother, her swollen ankles and legs and wrap-around elastic bandages that she’d twist around her ankles and legs every morning.
Connie had the slimmest, most beautiful ankles in the world.
Had had.
What was the difference, though? With the disappearance of Androgene, it was interesting that Connie totally vanished, too. I’d go into Penny’s or Jacobson’s or Marshall Field’s, not a glance at corsets, pantyhose, shoes, dresses . . .
And the swelling in my legs went into the joints, so I was suddenly semi-crippled. Once I got walking, OK, but getting up, those first few steps—big agony—and during the Friday night services at the synagogue you had to stand up four or five times. I was tempted to just sit there like the oldest geezers around me, but struggled to my feet when I had to, and somehow made it.
The big question now was what kind of treatment I was going to have.
Surgery was a possibility, especially now that the prostate was smaller. But then you cut the nerves; that’s the end of sex forever. Well, with Viagra, maybe, but it always had to be a big production number.
Then there was cryosurgery, using liquid nitrogen to freeze the areas where the cancer cells were. But sometimes you froze too much and ended up with your colon sticking out of your side with a bag attached to it for you to shit into.
I thought I’d bypass that.
And the radioactive needles they put into the prostate that kept their radioactivity just long enough, and then went dead and you just left them in you.
I wrote around to all kinds of places, read everything I could find, browsed through the Internet, got advice from Al Winans in San Francisco, Jerry Dombrowski in Boston . . .
And finally decided to just go for radiation at Sparrow Hospital where my wife works.
Remember Lucia, wife number one? Well, her 80 year old husband saw me one day when I was over at the house picking up my daughter, Cecilia, and he told me, “The best route is radiation. I went to Sparrow. And I’m fine now, look at me.”
I looked at him standing with his shirt off, Mr. Yoga, Mr. Meditation, Mr. Alternative Medicine, slim, muscular, the body of a twenty-five year old—although his face . . . 110, 120—some sort of mystic monster who descended from the mountains of mysticism where he’d been Buddha-ing for a couple of eons . . .
“OK.”
So I went over and talked to Dr. De Carlo, Dr. All-Smiles, and started therapy.
3 PM, five days a week for two months.
Lupron still in effect for four months.
So I became totally sexless. And in a way I loved it.
Bernadete and I would take endless rides into the slowly-becoming-spring Michigan countryside, fallow farm fields, endless forests, creeks, rivers, lakes, undulating countryside, up and down, up and down, abandoned, or almost-abandoned farmhouses dating from the nineteenth century. Houses everywhere on the most obscure, out-of-the-way dirt roads, some of them brand new, some dating back to the fifties, some going back more than a century; trying to imagine farmers living out in the middle of nowhere before TV, radio, electricity, cars, just horses and wood stoves, five or six months of wintery weather: talk about pioneers.
We started taking photos, getting them enlarged, covering whole walls with the enlargements.
Started immersing ourselves in concerts at the Michigan State University music department.
Like Johnathan Holden, the clarinetist in a graduate recital. Originally from London, a bachelor in music from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (2000) where he also got his master of music (2001), now getting his DMA from MSU.
Brahms’ “Sonata in E-flat major,” Bartok’s “Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet and Pianoforte.”
Perfect.
Another day Wuilton K. Elder III in a saxophone recital (graduate, working for an MM): some Villa-Lobos (“Fantasia, 1948”), some Evan Chambers (“Deep Flowers”).
Another day Yong Hi Moon in a faculty recital (piano), a little Albeniz (Iberia), a Schubert sonata (D major).
All kinds of plays over at the Arena Theater at MSU, down at Lansing Community College, over at the Boarshead in downtown Lansing, a super-professional company that made you feel you were in L.A. or New York. The Boarshead presenting off-the-beaten-track plays like Stop Kiss by Diana Son or Bees by Coralle Cederna Johnson.
Plays, plays, plays . . .
Sometimes they really got to me . . . me . . .
Like Sean O’Casey’s I Knock at the Door, all about children dying in Ireland, children and fathers, young boys going blind, the Irish, the Irish, the Irish . . . bringing me back to my Irish childhood: two Irish grandfathers, Irish Catholic schools, the cold, my always with a cold. My father’s side, his father dead, but his father’s brother still alive, Uncle Frank, and his rheumatic fever, his daughter’s husband, Jim Vincent, driving a meat truck for Armour. My mother’s Irish father, the streetcar conductor . . .
Streetcars and sides of beef, the endless Chicago winters . . .
I Knock at the Door was two hours long, but Bernadete and I escaped at the intermission, after the first hour.
Death hanging over me.
Cancer? Me?
With all my broccoli and dried fruits, Lo Mein, Chow Mein, vitamin C? Mr. No Beef . . . practically totally vegetarian . . .
All the ease I’d always had with sex, and now I had to take Yohimbe and work at it. And I kept remembering Hal Currie over at the university, assistant chairman in my department, with his prostate cancer spread into his bones, and finally into everything, everything, everything.
Then one day I was out driving around and saw
a For Sale sign on this house in East Lansing. An ordinary ranch-house, I thought, until I looked at the side and saw it was two stories, walked into the backyard and discovered that the entire back “wall” wasn’t a “wall” at all but long, two story windows.
I’d been studying architecture at Lansing Community College with mad genius Professor Perkins, and my eyes had become educated.
“Yes,” I thought to myself, “this is special, special, special . . .”
I called the real estate woman selling the house and found out it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright disciple, Alden Dow, who had designed the administration building at the super-snobby U. of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and also the Ann Arbor city hall, etc. etc. etc. etc.
The woman selling it was asking $220,000 for it, I offered $210,000 and she took it. And I told Ms. Logan, the real estate woman that I’d like to sell one of our downtown houses, the one on Sycamore Street. Great house, crappy neighborhood.
All this activity mainly on my own. I didn’t consult Bernadete much at all, just did instead of discussing. Because Bernadete is the maestra of indecision: Não sai/I don’t know, acho que, ñao sai/I think that, I don’t know . . .
It should be inscribed on her gravestone:
Ñao Sai—I don’t know.
But this was one time I KNEW. So we bought the place for $210,00 me very aware that if Mrs. Roulet had fixed up the bathroom in the basement a little, put on a new roof, etc., put another $20,000 into the house, she could have sold it for $350,000.
The neighborhood was perfect. Elegant. Cambridge-Massachusetts-ish, like Evanston, Oak Park in Chicago, Mission Hills in Kansas City; East Lansing a snobbish college town, and the house in the best, best, area. All Tudor half-timbered places, imitations of English country houses, some neo-colonial, Federal style places; all quiet and nice. Just two blocks away from student housing, in fact just two blocks away from where I’d lived for twenty years at 756 Forest: only just far enough away from student madness to turn it into heaven on earth.
My daughter, Marcella, was having trouble with her husband, Kevin. He’d moved to Holland (Michigan) and she’d refused to move, insisted on sticking it out in Ann Arbor, and now, suddenly, they decided to meet on weekends in East Lansing.
They’d go to some hotel like the Marriot in downtown East Lansing, nice pool and all, and then Kevin would take us out for Sunday lunch-brunch someplace nice like Pistachio’s or Cheddar’s, then come back to the house and actually take walks through the neighborhood as I gave little lectures on the architecture, additions, revisions, history, etc. All thanks to James Perkins and LCC, although all my life I’d been architecture-obsessed, house-obsessed; stuck in Chicago apartments and always longing for a house, a house, a house, especially in an elegant neighborhood like this.
Marcella then started calling me during the week when she was going to pick up Gabrielle at school: it became “I love you, Dad” instead of “SCREW YOU, ASSHOLE!”
Very nice.
Love my little granddaughter, Gabrielle, who looks exactly like me. And is just as bright.
Like, remember the Saturday night that I took them over to the Wharton Center on the MSU campus to see Hair? A music and theater department co-production.
And found myself crying . . . the Age of Aquarius, Let the Sun Shine In . . .
What the fuck, how had I ever gotten to age 70? What happened to Berkeley in the 60s? If the devil appeared (if there were any such thing as a devil) and offered to give me a week back in Berkeley in the 60s for my immortal soul (as if there were any such thing as an immortal soul), I wouldn’t have hesitated: “YES, YES, YES, when do we leave?”
All the long hair and the Hindu print shirts and pants and dresses, all the earrings and happy drugs, people sleeping in parks, in trees, let the sun shine in, the sunshine in, in, in . . .
I kept looking at Gabrielle during the whole play. She didn’t miss a word, sat there staring at the stage like she was doing brain surgery. Seven years old and totally intense, focused, on the ball, on the stick, on the line . . .
I was on my son Hugh’s e-mail list from Taiwan, and I started answering his letters. I explained that I had cancer and was going to begin radiation, told him how inspired his letters were, descriptions of Cambodia, Taiwan, discussions about world politics and economics, way up there in the speculative clouds somewhere, but infused with genius.
And he wrote back one day, a letter all about marijuana in the food in Cambodia, “You get the right bowl of soup and you’ll never have a more relaxed, anguishless day in your life.”
Signed the letter “Love, Hugh.”
The first time ever.
Love, Hugh.
Were we reconciled after decades of friction, tension, distrust?
The next day Marcella called me up (as usual) on her cell phone on her way to pick up Gabrielle: “I just got a letter from Hughie. He says he wants to have kids . . . wants to pass his genius on to the next generation. Wants the name Fox to continue on in ‘history.’”
“I think it’s because we’ve reconciled; he signed his last letter to me with ‘Love.’”
She wasn’t sure.
“Could be.”
Reconciling with parents, getting it all right, getting it all together. The center of sanity. And now another break because I played around with him about not sending me a HAPPY FATHER’S DAY message. Back and forth, forth and back.
Playing psychoanalyst every night on the phone with Alexandra in Kansas City, supporting her so she could start working for an M.A. in psychology. Talking to Margaret in Boston every week, her and her new baby, Alexander, still teaching at Harvard; her husband, Johann, still at MIT. Seeing Cecilia every day over at the nuthouse, Charter House, listening to her endless paranoias about everyone who surrounded her, “They don’t like me anywhere, everyone hates me. People in the mental health system always die young, what is in the hamburger at Kroger’s, you don’t really believe it’s all beef, do you, when I went to church last Sunday the preacher, during his sermon, was totally unhappy, down, and there I was right in front of him, it was me, me, me: I can’t go back there.”
But always leaving her with an “I love you;” with an “I love you” from her. Spending some hours with Christopher every day, driving him wherever he wants to go. My baby. $400 a month spending money. Too much smoking. On the edge of 21 . . . years and years away from getting any sort of associates degree from Lansing Community College, wanting to make horror films but afraid he won’t be able to support himself making films, talking about becoming an x-ray or radiation therapist technician by day, making films at night. Or maybe going into computer graphics, that’s how much he loves video games. Living in the top floor of our house downtown, within walking distance of Lansing Community College. And when he has his friends over on weekends, Bernadete and I going to the East Lansing house to sleep. As spring moves, we in start working on the garden, planting pines and Japanese maples; whatever flowers and spreads its beauty out into the perennial spring-summer air . . .
And then I began my radiation therapy.
Zuckerman, my urologist, had finally told me, “I think that’s the best route, given the size of your prostate and everything . . .even after all the surgeries, radiation, and Lupron.”
They give you a special pass that opens the gate that guards the ramp up to the parking area in the Oncology-Radiation area at Sparrow Hospital.
Shove it, the gate opens, and up you go. Then use the same gate-opener to pass under an I.D. scanner that lets everyone know you’ve arrived. All very super modern. Very much on purpose. You’re supposed to be impressed. Then into the waiting room: one for men, another for women.
Just opposite the waiting room an ancient volunteer at a little desk behind a counter filled with cookies, canisters of coffee and juices. It’s already a festive air before you even sit down.
Walk in and there’s Alfonso, this 74 year old Chicano who was born in the U.S., whose parents went to Mexico (Puebla) w
hen the Depression hit in 1929. A degree from the University of Puebla, then became a big-shot in the forestry industry in Yucatan.
“Que tal, Hugo?” (Howya doin’, Hugh?)
“Mejor, ainda con problemas con las tripas.” (Better, still with bowel problemas.)
Tripas in Spanish like “tripes” in English. A couple of weeks of radiation and my bowels have taken on a life of their own. When they want to move, they want to move, no matter what I may want. And you never know exactly when they’ll take off, these horrible spasms that push the shit out. Running to a toilet; sometimes making it, sometimes not . . .
“Normal. Tienes que aguantarlo para matar todo el cancer.” (Normal. You have to endure it in order to kill all the cancer.)
Darlene, Alfonso’s daughter, is there with him. She’s taken off work, temporary “leave of absence,” in order to take care of him full-time. She’s his stepdaughter, and her mother is on another floor in the hospital, on the edge of death, too.
Good-looking woman. Fortyish. Used to be a cop. Now into cosmetology. Starting with herself. You’ll never see a more beautifully made-up face than hers, lipstick, eyes, hair: parfait, perfect.
“So how you doing, Hugo?” she asks me, all vivacity and life, life, life.
“OK, pal, and you?”
“Hanging in there.”
When Alfonso was in the radiation room getting treatment she told me that “He’s not going to survive. Period. The cancer has spread into the bones—everywhere—all they’re doing is alleviating the pain, holding the cancer back a little . . . little . . .”
Two weeks ago he was in a wheelchair, but no longer. In fact he looks about twenty years younger today. Nice ranchero/cowboy shirt, a string tie, cowboy hat.
“Pareces como veinte años,” (You look like twenty,) I tell him.
“Estoy getting better....”
A little linguistic salad. Too many years in gringoland.
“Estoy mejorando,” (I’m getting better,) I correct him.
He laughs.
Who, Me? Page 26