Setting Free the Kites

by Alex George

  Meanwhile the rest of the world continued without us. People wandered up and down the hospital’s corridors at all hours of the day and night, befuddled by the never-changing, neon-bright gleam, like guests at a drab casino. It was a place where time had no purpose or significance. Sickness held to no schedule. The slow drag of hours and days was of no consequence to the profoundly ill. Either they would get better, or they would not. It was just a matter of waiting it out, seeing which way the thing would go. But no matter how slowly the minutes drained away, it was never slow enough for us.

  Finally my father and I went home. It was almost midnight. My mother promised to telephone if there were any developments. We stopped for hamburgers and ate them in the car. I did not taste one mouthful. I climbed into bed, sure that I would never sleep. And then the next thing I knew my father was nudging me awake, promising eggs and bacon before we returned to the hospital. I crept downstairs into the new morning, ashamed of my sound and dreamless sleep.

  When we pushed open the door to Liam’s room, the first thing I saw was my mother, sitting up in her chair and leaning toward the bed. There were tears streaming down her face, and she was gasping for breath. I immediately assumed the worst, until I took another step into the room and saw that Liam was awake, and talking.

  “And so the daddy air mattress says to the baby air mattress, ‘Son, you’ve let me down, and you’ve let your mother down.’” My brother paused. “‘But most of all, you’ve let yourself down.’”

  My mother threw herself back against the chair, laughing so hard that she couldn’t speak. Liam looked at my father and me and grinned. He had always been a wonderful joke teller.

  It was another long day. Doctors came and went, but mostly we were left alone. Every so often I stepped out of the room and walked to the soda machine, grubby quarters warm between my fingers. Someone had taped scrawny lengths of silver tinsel along the corridors, and a miniature plastic Christmas tree stood on the counter of the nurses’ station. I sat on a chair and sipped my drink. The cold bubbles bit deliciously at the back of my throat.

  I knew the quiet rhythms of the ward by then. Doctors strode purposefully back and forth. Patients limped by in their bathrobes. And then there were those neither caring nor cared for—the families of the sick, hovering anxiously, locked in an eternity of waiting. I learned to calibrate the broken hope on the faces I saw. I watched as people came and went, happy to be just a spectator in other people’s dramas.

  As the day drew on, Liam began to fight for every breath. His oxygen saturation was low and had not moved upward since the previous day. He was stable but rarely conscious. As evening approached my father went downstairs to buy us some sandwiches from the cafeteria. While he was gone, my mother held Liam’s hand tightly. Her eyes were shut, and she did not open them until my father stepped back inside the room.

  Finally she spoke. “We should call Father Astor, Sam.”

  I saw the words slam into my father like bullets. “It’s not time,” he said. “It’s too early.”

  “You don’t know that.” Her voice broke then. “We’re close,” she said. The words seemed to come from unimaginable depths within her.

  My father glanced at me. I kept my eyes fixed on Liam’s sleeping face, wanting no part of this. “Can’t we wait a little longer?” he pleaded.

  “But what if we leave it too late? I would never forgive myself.”

  “Mary, listen. We’re through the worst of this, I can feel it.” My father paused. I could see how badly he needed to believe it. “Liam’s coming home,” he said.

  My mother could not speak for a while. “You’re wrong,” she finally whispered. “He’s ready, Sam.”

  “No.”

  “He’s ready, and so am I.”

  My father stared at her. “Mary.” His voice was remote, an echo.

  “I’m ready for him to go, Sam. I don’t want to watch him suffer anymore.” She gently brushed her fingers across my sleeping brother’s hair. “He’s been through enough.”

  “We’re not giving up now.”

  “No, we’re not giving up. We never gave up. We’re letting go.”

  My father looked at her helplessly. “What’s the difference?”

  “There’s all the difference in the world,” said my mother. “Why do you think he refused the tracheotomy, Sam? He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He’s done.”

  My father turned to look at Liam.

  “Call Father Astor,” he said.

  —

  ONCE THE PRIEST HAD COME and gone, we agreed that nobody would be going home that night. My parents slumped in their chairs, keeping their vigil by Liam’s bedside. We borrowed some blankets and fashioned them into a makeshift bed on the floor for me. I lay there, blinking in the half darkness. On the other side of the door, the hospital went about the noisy, messy business of saving people’s lives. Inside the room, the four of us were completely silent. The only sounds were the dull whir of the respirator as it pumped air in and out of my brother’s body and the raw wheeze of his laboring lungs. I did my best to keep my eyes open. There would be time for sleep later. But try as I might, I could feel oblivion wrap itself around me. As I was drifting into unconsciousness, my mother began to whisper under her breath—so softly that I could not make out her words, but I recognized their rhythm and cadences.

  She was praying.

  I remembered the conversation that I’d overheard through my parents’ bedroom door last Christmas and thought of what my father had said then, in the middle of the night, when he thought nobody else was listening.

  The answer to most prayers is no.

  SIXTEEN

  Liam died that night.

  The end, when it came, was quick and violent. The room’s silence was shattered by a hellacious squeal from one of the machines that surrounded the bed. It was joined by other warning buzzes and beeps, a deranged chorus of alarm, all of it too late. I had barely lifted my head off the floor when a team of nurses and doctors barreled through the door, and suddenly the room was a riot of light and movement. Liam disappeared behind a wall of white coats.

  I struggled to my feet and stood next to my parents, a few steps from the scrum around the bed. My mother was covering her mouth with her hand. One of the doctors stepped away from the melee and approached us. “Liam’s unresponsive,” he said. “He’s failing fast. A trach would really help him right now.”

  My mother leaned into my father but said nothing.

  The doctor had no time to waste. “Please,” he said. “Can we intubate?”

  My mother closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Mary,” said my father.

  “He never asked for much,” she said. “Let’s at least give him this.”

  “But it’s too—”

  She turned on him. “Too what? Too soon? I thought that was the one thing we were never allowed to say! That Liam died too soon!”

  “I was wrong.” My father had begun to cry. “I can’t let him go. Not yet. Please. Not yet.”

  My mother laid her fingers on his chest.

  “There’ll be no going back,” my father whispered.

  “Oh, Sam. I don’t want to go back.”

  My father looked at the doctor. “No trach,” he said.

  The doctor’s eyes darted between my parents. “You understand there’s really no more—”

  “We understand.” The words barely escaped my father’s lips.

  The doctor nodded. “All right.” He returned to Liam’s bedside and spoke quietly to the other doctors and nurses. At once there was a collective dissipation of tension. People who had been hunched over the bed stood up straight and took a step or two back. I glanced up at the green neon digits. They were in freefall.

  We moved forward as one. Acting as if the doctors and nurses were invisible, my mother climbed onto the bed
and covered her dying son with her body. “Oh, Liam,” she whispered. “You were the best boy there ever was.” She kissed his cheek, breathing him in, baptizing him with her tears. But no matter how tightly she squeezed, how fiercely she clung, she could not hold on to him.

  —

  SOME TIME AFTER THAT, we stumbled out into the rest of our lives.

  It was the middle of the night and freezing cold. My father somehow managed to drive us home. Nobody spoke a word. Liam and I had bickered and squabbled and laughed and cried for thousands of miles in the back of that station wagon. I stared at the empty space next to me.

  When we arrived home, my mother walked into the kitchen and looked around blankly, as if she didn’t recognize the place. I climbed into my bed and switched off the light. I stared into the darkness.

  Some hours later I went downstairs to the kitchen and drank a glass of milk. Then I tiptoed to Liam’s bedroom. By force of habit I stopped outside for a moment and listened before I pushed open the door.

  I half-expected to find my mother asleep on the bed, but the room was empty. Nothing had changed. The same posters were still on the walls. Liam’s records were neatly arranged. On the window shelf was a half-drunk bottle of Gatorade and a paperback of The Great Gatsby. On the cover of the book there was a misty-looking photograph of Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. They seemed sad, remote. I flicked through the book until I found Liam’s bookmark. He had only made it halfway through. I wondered whether he had given up on it or if he’d been planning to finish it when he returned home from the hospital.

  There were unfinished stories everywhere.

  I was filled with a terrible, wordless sadness then, and sat down on the edge of my brother’s bed and began to cry. Liam was gone, and every day of the rest of my life, every single day, he would remain gone. I could miss him and love him, I could talk to him, shout at him, fight with him, but he was never coming back. I thought of all the questions I still wanted to ask him, all the jokes he still had to tell, all the songs we still had to argue about—but it was too late, too late now for everything.

  Finally, my tears exhausted themselves. I picked up Gatsby again. The Haverford Public Library crest had been stamped on the title page. I thought of my mother making one final trip to return the book. I slipped it into the pocket of my bathrobe. I could spare her that pain at least. I lay down on Liam’s bed and stared at the ceiling.

  —

  SLEEP CAME FOR ME in the end. When I woke up, the sun was streaming in through my brother’s bedroom window. My parents were both in the kitchen. When I appeared in the doorway, my mother stepped toward me and wrapped me in her arms. I felt her squeeze my back and shoulders, as if she were checking I was really there. I cautiously put my arms around her.

  “How are you, Robert?” she said.

  It had been a long time since my mother had asked me that. Now it was the only question she had left.

  My father put his coffee cup in the sink. “I have to go,” he said.

  I could not imagine anywhere he needed to be on this morning, except here, with us. “Where are you going?”

  “The hospital,” he said. He saw my baffled face. “There are forms to fill out, Robert. Things to take care of.”

  “Right now?”

  He nodded. “Liam can’t stay in the hospital,” he said.

  My brother’s absence already felt so absolute that I hadn’t considered that there were practical things to attend to, arrangements to be made. “I’ll be back soon,” said my father. He picked up the car keys off the kitchen table.

  Once the front door had closed behind him, my mother looked at me. “I haven’t slept yet,” she said. “I’m going to bed for a while.” She reached out and touched my shoulder. “Will you be all right on your own?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “You could call Nathan.”

  I shook my head. Solitude was what I needed right then. It was the only way I could begin to fathom how lonely my brotherless life was going to be. I needed to confront my loss, not run away from it. I wanted to wade in with my eyes open and all my senses alert. I wanted to register everything, from giant waves of sorrow to the tiniest ripples of remorse. I didn’t want to miss any of it.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t alone for long. My father must have called someone at St. Mary’s with the news, because the morning was punctuated by the ringing of the doorbell, announcing a procession of church members bearing food and sympathy. I stood at the front door and numbly took delivery of a small mountain of Tupperware. My mother remained in the bedroom, the door firmly shut.

  Every dinner came with written instructions for reheating and promises to pray for us. Some notes were decorated with hand-drawn hearts. The less appetizing meals—there were one or two pot roasts and a vegetarian ragout—I put straight into the freezer. Everything else I stuck in the fridge, arranging the ones that sounded tastiest at the front. By the time my father returned from the hospital, the shelves were full. I opened the door to show him. I had crammed boxes into every available inch of space. The fridge’s neon glow illuminated every line on my father’s tired face, as if he had stepped into the spotlight on a tiny stage. He stood in front of all that food, casting his eyes up and down the wall of plastic, and tears began to fall down his cheeks. I didn’t know if he was overwhelmed by the kindness of others or dismayed at the futility of the gesture. No amount of homemade lasagna would ever bring Liam back.

  Finally my father closed the refrigerator door and went upstairs. Minutes later he reappeared and sat at the kitchen table with a yellow folder I had never seen before. Inside the folder was a neatly typed list. I watched as he made one call after another. Funeral home, florist, newspaper. Hymns had already been chosen, the brief obituary composed, the tombstone selected. Just the date had needed to be filled in.

  My parents had been ready for this for far, far too long.

  Each time he picked up the receiver and dialed the next number, my father seemed to wilt a little more. After the practical arrangements had been made, he took a new piece of paper out of the folder. He stared at it for a moment and then shook his head. “I need a drink,” he said. He went to the cupboard where the liquor was kept and poured himself a slug of bourbon. He sat back down and looked at the glass in front of him. Then he looked up at me. “Sometimes,” he sighed, “bad news doesn’t travel fast enough.”

  On the second piece of paper was a list of family and friends, and my father began to work his way down it. These conversations all had the same sad rhythm of regret. He did not bother with pleasantries. He reported the news, a sober recital of date, time, and place, and then waited in silence as the person on the other end of the line tried to articulate their sorrow, as if my father needed to be told how sad this all was. His eyes remained shut as he listened to these desperate condolences. There would be a few questions about how we were bearing up. Just fine, considering, he would reply, not looking at me, and then gave details of the funeral. After each call he took a sip of whiskey and waited for a few moments. Then he dialed the next number.

  I watched him deliver the news over and over again. There were friends, acquaintances from church, members of the bridge club. So many people to tell, so many hearts to break. I could see my father willing himself on after each call. Sometimes nobody would pick up, and he let the unanswered phone ring on for longer than necessary, grateful for the temporary respite. That mechanical tone was easier to bear than the next chorus of well-meaning sympathy.

  By the time he had finished, it was dark outside.

  —

  WHAT I REMEMBER MOST about the days after Liam’s death is the silence that settled on our house. There was no more whirring of the motorized wheelchair as Liam between rooms, no more screeching guitar riffs so loud that the door frames rattled. My parents and I hardly spoke. Perhaps there simply wasn’t anything to say. My brother’s
absence swamped us completely. When he left us, he stole all the words.

  The funeral took place on a bitterly cold December morning. I sat between my parents in the front pew of St. Mary’s. I don’t remember much about the service itself. The incense made me sneeze, like it always did, although I found comfort in its familiarity even as it tickled the back of my nose.

  Liam’s coffin was carried out of the church on the shoulders of my father and five of his friends. It looked as if the whole town had shown up to pay its respects. As my mother and I followed the pallbearers down the aisle, I spotted both Lewis Jenks and Moira in the congregation.

  The cemetery was blanketed in week-old snow. We stood in silence as the coffin was lowered into the ground and Father Astor said the final prayers for my dead brother. Before I knew it people were turning away, shivering and rubbing their hands together to stay warm. I watched the retreating tide of gray and black and envied these people the carefree existences they were returning to. They could drive away from all this, but we would be looking down on Liam’s grave for the rest of our lives.

  Just then I heard a familiar voice call my name. I turned and saw Lewis standing behind me. He was wearing a tattered overcoat, buttoned up high against the cold, and a dark brown fedora. It was the first time I’d ever seen him wearing anything other than his dungarees and work boots.

  “Robert,” he said. We shook hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  I wanted to hug him then. I wanted to tell him how much I missed my brother. I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t wait for the summer season to start, that I was looking forward to working with him again. But I said none of that. Instead I just said, “Thanks, Lewis.”

  “Look.” Lewis glanced across to where my parents were standing, staring down at the ground where Liam’s coffin now lay. “There are times when there’s so much sadness in a place, you can’t hardly breathe. Am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I reckoned so. Well, listen. If you ever need to get away, come and see me.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a small piece of paper. To my surprise, Lewis’s handwriting was a neat, elegant cursive. I did not recognize the address. “It’s fine if you never come by,” he said. “But the offer’s there.” Before I could respond, Lewis patted me on the shoulder and strolled away.