In the Shadow of the Bridge

by Joseph Caldwell

  Bill got out of bed most willingly and, as if to treat the spectators to the sight of a rare and astonishing marvel, he took off his top. The students failed to disguise their horrified amazement. Bill’s back, chest, and arms were covered with a mass of lesions. There seemed to be no space left for even one more. The doctor did not comment. He thanked Bill. They left. Bill put the pajama top back on and got into bed. We resumed our conversation.

  When I got up to leave, I made a movement toward giving him another forehead kiss by way of farewell. He put up his right hand to fend me off. “One kiss per customer,” he said. I accepted the admonishment with a half laugh.

  Not long after, I went to his home on Staten Island, an uphill walk from the St. George ferry. The house was set on a double lot, meaning that there was a side yard equal in length and width to the space taken up by the house and its own backyard, which extended to what I judged to be over a hundred feet. The house itself was a two-story frame, painted tan with brown trim. A small grape arbor separated the front side yard from the back, providing shade as well as grapes (in season) for the birds to feast on. All of this was presided over by a cherry tree, huge for its species.

  Originally Bill had intended the second floor of the house to be a rental apartment providing a reliable income. With his native skills he’d renovated the space and, for a short time, had had a tenant. No one lived there anymore. He didn’t like the footsteps over his head.

  Because he’d concentrated on refurbishing the upstairs, his own quarters on the first floor and in the basement were still in a primitive state. What was meant to be the living room was a warehouse, a depository for the countless boxes of his books, odd pieces of furniture, some still unpacked clothing, and a five- by five-foot chest of shallow drawers suitable for stowing what I think were oversized sheets of treated paper that probably related to his photography. Somewhere in the jumble his invaluable cameras were hidden away in places never to be revealed, even to me. (I was invited to guess, and failed—which made him very proud.) There was also a cot-sized mattress on the floor. Near it, against the wall, was my Hague Street Franklin stove, no longer in use.

  Called into service as an impromptu living room was a space less than half that given over to storage. It managed to accommodate a glass-fronted bookcase, well stocked, one easy chair plus another chair less capacious but comfortable enough, and a sturdy table with legs ornamented by what looked like swollen kneecaps. The table was large enough to hold the radio/stereo, a digital clock, and a cleared area big enough for writing. In a corner near the doorway to the bedroom was a cardboard carton strong enough to support a stereo speaker. The carpet was of a forgettable design and the two windows faced the backyard, actually the garden, planted mostly with tomatoes and shaded by the outsized cherry tree.

  The bedroom was given over almost completely to a double bed (which, incidentally, the Italians, with an uncharacteristically straight face, call a matrimoniale). Shelves tightly lined with books rose from the bedside to the ceiling. A television set partly blocked the window overlooking the yard.

  In the basement were a refrigerator, a stove, a washing machine and dryer. Also, stacked lumber that would never become a fence separating the side yard from the sidewalk, household implements including a vacuum cleaner shaped like a huge bass drum (which sounded, when in use, like a low-flying jet), and jumbo-sized bags of dry dog food for the stray dog Bill had semi-adopted and respectfully named Mr. Dog.

  Nowhere did I see any evidence of a darkroom.

  On my second visit I must already have mentioned my St. Vincent affiliation and described what it involved because, at one point, he asked, “Am I a project?”

  I was thrown by the question. Was he? I recovered sufficiently to arrive at an acceptable truth. “No. You’re my old friend Bill.” He was satisfied.

  My then-current St. Vincent’s patient, Marty, was going through an encouraging period of fairly good health and had his friend, Arnold, who would let me know of any reverses. I was therefore completely available to Bill for what would be the eight-month duration of his illness—and made myself not so much “available” as simply present, like a friend enjoying his companionship.

  Careful not to be too importuning, I would phone ahead and ask if it would be all right to come visit. Very rarely did he say he’d prefer I come another time. After a few of these rather soft-spoken requests he finally said, “You ask so timidly. Why not just tell me you’re coming—and then come?” Newly resolute, I did as instructed, and seldom did he decline.

  Soon my sense that he was adamantly opposed to any emotional involvement with any of the people around him became a certainty. Very, very definitely, under no circumstances whatsoever, was I to declare my deeper feelings. The last thing I would be allowed to say was “No matter the ravages of the sarcoma that disfigures your entire body, you’re still the most desirable man on the face of the earth.” I came to this realization about overt emotional statements through his disdainful comments about a woman who had been a student of his at Pratt, Marilyn. “If I were to ask her to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, she’d jump.” Marilyn was desperately in love with him.

  From all this, I was forcefully informed that to declare one’s love for Bill was to invite a scornful contempt, as if an unforgivable demand was being made by some hapless suppliant. With reference to my own experience, my thinking was this: It was allowed for Bill to initiate an intimacy. If initiated by someone not of his choosing, the rejection was infused with ridicule, his contemptuous dismissal absolute and beyond appeal. Applied to my own case, going back all those years, I could finally understand why any effort I might have made to rekindle his interest would have been doomed from the start. I would be making a demand. One did not make demands. I was reminded of the advice given at the start of my volunteer training: no demands, no expectations. This was quickly put into practice, and Bill, as the evidence suggests, seemed to remain none the wiser.

  And we did have projects from time to time, each demonstrating distinctions and differences between our two natures: his extremely competent and mindfully patient, mine completely unskilled and impetuously heedless.

  The tomatoes had already been harvested, the freezer stocked with enough zip-lock bags of spaghetti sauce to feed a family extending two generations past and two generations to come. One day, in among the denuded stalks, the two of us were doing something or other preparing for the colder months ahead. There were planks between the planted beds. Bill explained that he had aerated the soil, digging down a couple of feet, the better to nourish the vegetables. So as not to tamp down the laboriously aerated earth, I was instructed to walk only on the planks. I nodded. I understood.

  Within minutes I heard Bill say rather calmly, “You’re stepping on the soil.” I moved onto the planks. Not that much time had passed before I again heard Bill’s voice, “You’re off the planks again.” We finished our task, but not before Bill’s admonishment, patient and resigned, was repeated at least one more time.

  The roof leaked. We went up to repair it. To get there we had to shove open a ceiling trapdoor on the second floor, reached by climbing a not especially reliable ladder, get through a crawl space, and hoist ourselves onto the roof—a flat slant, higher at the front of the house. Bill went first. I handed up the bucket of tar, the tar of a consistency that made possible spreading rather like frosting a cake. I handed up the sheet of tarpaper and an exceedingly aggressive scissors. I then hoisted myself onto the roof.

  “Don’t step on the bubbles,” he told me. This, I gather, was so I wouldn’t get tar on the soles of my shoes and bring it into the house.

  Bill located the place where he thought the leak was coming from, identified by judging where the rain water had been coming through the ceiling of the upstairs apartment. Gray plastic trays that looked like oversized dish pans that he had used in his darkroom, had collected the water. Scissors and tar paper in hand, I wen
t to join him.

  “You’re stepping on the bubbles.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He nailed down the tar paper and sealed it with the tar. I watched. The job was soon finished and seemed expertly done. Bill had a competence that I truly admired. He decided that the trays would stay in place, checked after every rainfall. Not a single drop ever appeared.

  On the way back to the trapdoor, I gave Bill the opportunity to say one more time, “You’re stepping on the bubbles.” I took off my shoes before stepping onto the ladder.

  There was the fence to be built along the sidewalk. We began by sinking the posts that would be held in place by some stones reinforced with poured cement. We each had a spade. The posts were already shaped according to the design Bill had decided upon.

  Bill dug his posthole. I dug mine. His was neatly done, each side of the hole straight down, forming a perfect cubic space. Mine looked like a hole a dog might dig to bury a bone, as if I’d clawed away the earth with my paws. The hole’s circumference at the top was twice the measurement needed, the sides uneven slopes, the bottom a tiny point that could accommodate little more than a pin tip. I dug deeper to provide adequate space for the actual post. But then my post would rise to a lower height than Bill’s.

  With a few well-placed shoves of his spade, Bill made right all I had done wrong. Surely we were meant to be the perfect couple. (The two planted posts were all that we would get to do to build the fence he’d so handsomely designed.)

  Later that fall Bill was back in Bellevue. He was having gastrointestinal problems. Around this time he explained why he was being treated at Bellevue and not at a Staten Island hospital. He’d had no health insurance at the time of his diagnosis. If he’d been tested for the virus a few months sooner, his predicament would have been quite different. At that time he would have been covered by the benefits accorded the full-time faculty at Pratt. But that was then, and the time had come when he should have been put up for tenure. He had been advised, however, by some administrative staff member, not to apply that year. As I understand it, he was told that it was Pratt’s policy to accept no more than two applicants a year for tenure. The two other faculty members eligible were both women, and affirmative action, more or less at that time, assured their acceptance.

  Bill was advised to revise his status to adjunct for the following academic year, then revert to full-time the year after, when his chances would be sufficiently improved. This meant a reduced salary and no benefits. It was a sensible proposition and he made the necessary arrangements. The rest of the story needn’t be told.

  As far as I could tell, Bill felt no bitterness or, if he did, he kept it to himself—just as he kept any bitterness about his illness a private matter. He seemed incapable of self-pity, and the reconciliation of himself to what had happened, what was happening now, and what would eventually happen was, and quite possibly would remain forever, known only by William Gale Gedney. Up to a point.

  When Bill was discharged from Bellevue, a young and attractive nun from a Staten Island convent, Sister Kate, was there to drive him home. She was a “buddy” assigned to Bill through Gay Men’s Health Crisis (Peace, Bill Hoffman!). I was on hand. Sister Kate was bright and cheerful. We were enjoying the ride to the island over the Verrazano Bridge when Bill, in the back seat, warned that an attack of diarrhea was coming on. Sister Kate picked up speed, but it was too late. Bill suffered the indignity of soiling himself and the back seat of the car. (Later he commented: “I’ve never done that in a nun’s car before.”) He was distressed; Kate and I managed to be unfazed professionals. I got Bill inside; Kate said she’d take care of the back seat.

  Another person I met was an Englishwoman, Recenda Kramer, a Staten Islander and another GMHC volunteer. Her sense of humor was crisp and to the point. Before I’d been initiated into the domestic chores requiring instruction, such as operating Bill’s washing machine, she insisted on doing Bill’s laundry. He was reluctant to impose and claimed that it wasn’t necessary, even though he was bedridden at the time. Her reply: “I’ve seen your sheets.” She was allowed to proceed.

  Sometime in November, Bill went through an exceptionally tough time: fever, and nausea. He was being given Bactrim. I was staying over, sleeping on the mattress in the storage room, my nose twelve inches from my defining Hague Street relic, the Franklin stove. If Bill needed anything during the night, he would knock on the wall. Sometimes he would complain of dry mouth. From that time on, an ice bucket with a can of ginger ale was at his bedside.

  His fever got worse. 104. A Staten Island doctor came. He lowered the dose of Bactrim. The nausea disappeared. The fever was gone.

  For me, some of our better times were when we’d go in Bill’s van to an enormous supermarket (measured in acreage) a few miles away. The shared domesticity pleased me. One of the items Bill would buy was a wheat something-or-other that one bought in bulk, measuring for oneself with a scoop, pouring it into a bag. This gave him a wicked pleasure. Although he never touched the wheat, he enjoyed the notion that other customers might be horrified if they’d seen him—sarcoma and all—scooping up the exposed wheat.

  He cooked. I cooked. Once I made a pasta and, not being sufficiently attentive to the recipe, I put the tablespoon of salt intended for the boiling water in which the pasta would be cooked, into the sauce, which already had olives and capers. It was inedible. Other times I was more efficient, with meatloaf, a noodle casserole, other recipes for pasta. (About the meatloaf: Bill instructed me in tones firm and resolute that, at the butcher, I was to order stew beef. After the man had cut the beef into chunks, only then should I ask that it be ground up. The butcher was not to be trusted. I complied. But once I put in too many bread crumbs. We had crumb-loaf.)

  Bill on another occasion made what he called a Swedish pancake. I watched. As he proceeded, I told him it was really Yorkshire pudding. I was told that I was wrong. It was a Swedish pancake. Our competitive natures asserted themselves briefly, and I gave in. For the time being.

  For Christmas, Recenda invited us over for dinner. There were other guests and none seemed bothered by Bill’s appearance. One odd moment, however, a pleasant woman, ample and blond, of a few more than middle years, was talking to me about Staten Island. She mentioned the neighborhood where she’d grown up. It was Bill’s neighborhood. I asked her the address. It was Bill’s address. We asked her if she wanted to come to the house. “No,” she said. “It would only make me cry.”

  The dinner itself was very enjoyable. Cheerful conversation, wine (which Bill and I declined), a superfluity of vegetables and, Recenda being English, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. In tones of simple curiosity I blandly asked, “What’s the recipe?” She listed the ingredients and the method of preparation. We were eating a Swedish pancake. I glanced at Bill. He managed to be otherwise engaged.

  From our shopping excursions I learned of Bill’s attraction to a bargain. It boosted his morale to find something at a reduced price. He felt somewhat cheated to have to pay the full amount. The value of everything was determined by how big a bargain it was. He read newspaper ads, something it had never occurred to me to do. He found that Altman’s, the respected but then failing department store on Fifth Avenue, was offering flannel sheets at a price close to theft. Gleefully, I was dispatched. I bought the requested sheets and delivered them with the receipt—evidence of his triumph.

  Once I bought some shrimp. Bill liked shrimp but thought them too expensive. To assure his enjoyment, I lied about the price. He was most approving. So pleased was he that he mentioned the shrimp—and the price—to a visiting colleague from Pratt. Impressed, she asked where I got them. A practiced liar, I told her they were a one-day special.

  Make fun of his parsimonious nature as I may, he’d managed to buy a house. And he owned a van. And any number of valuable cameras. I had a typewriter, a television, and a stereo.

  Bill’s condition deteriora
ted. No great crisis, just diminished energy and high fevers requiring more bedrest. A few months into the New Year, 1989, a decision had to be made. If the deterioration continued, would he have to be hospitalized, at some point permanently? The alternative was hospice care at home under the auspices of Staten Island’s Richmond Hospital—available when the patient was judged to have entered the final six months of life. Only palliative treatment would be given.

  There would, of course, have to be a qualified home caregiver. In that circumstance, his health would be monitored by an assigned doctor and nurse who would make scheduled visits. Because of my training at St. Vincent’s I was qualified. No matter his condition, Bill could stay at home in his own house. I would live with him. I would be there full-time, sleeping on the mattress, watched over by the Franklin stove.

  Easily we occupied ourselves. A voracious reader, he was working his way through Dickens, having arrived at Dombey and Son. I would work on the Neapolitan novel I’d begun at the MacDowell Colony the previous summer. At first I used Bill’s typewriter, but when I began to worry about it being noisy and disruptive, I switched to longhand in a notebook. It made a difference to Bill that he could see me writing, that he wasn’t keeping me from my work.

  Bill wasn’t all that much of an invalid at the time of the hospice assessment. Shared tasks and an occasional excursion were still possible. There was a show of paintings by Courbet at the Brooklyn Museum. Some other friends of Bill’s, including his Pratt associate Nina Prantiss, arranged, with the help of Sister Kate, to get about six of us there to see the exhibition. The dominant painting was a huge canvas of two women on a tousled bed, one lying down, the other kneeling near her on the bedclothes. To me it suggested the moment immediately after lovemaking, the two of them seen in a state of placid satiety. To Bill I said, “Yes. That’s the way it’s supposed to be”—expecting him to elaborate on the subject. I could then refer to lovemaking, to its satisfactions, to the languorous moments that might follow. It was my hope that this, in turn, would lead to some reference, some reminders of our own time together. Until then, I had, as I’ve mentioned, never introduced the subject.