Going for the Record

by Julie A. Swanson

  I turn the page and there’s a big picture of Dad and me standing in the parking lot of Pete’s Place. I’m in uniform holding up a trophy, and Dad’s arm is slung over my shoulder. It’s from when we won the Kick-Off Classic my freshman year. We look so young! And so happy. I wonder who gave it to them.

  I read the last bit of the article under the picture:

  Pfeiffer praised Weiczynkowski for her decision to forego playing to stay at her father’s side, however. “It just goes to show what kind of a kid Leah is, that she would give up something she loves so much to be with her family. I hope she reads this and sees we’re all behind her. We’re dedicating this season to her dad, to Pete Weiczynkowski. All our efforts go in hopes that he’ll beat this thing. Pete’s one of our most loyal fans and supporters. We’d love nothing better than to see him feeling better, to get him back on his feet and out here to one of our games.”

  It makes me feel good to know they’re thinking of Dad and me. But some of their comments irritate me, too. Like the part about Dad getting back on his feet again. As if there’s any chance of that.

  I guess they can’t help it. Everybody’s just trying to be nice. It’s my fault I don’t talk to any of them, or they’d know how Dad’s really doing.

  CHAPTER 25

  Thursday, September 4

  Jennifer’s coming to spell us for a couple hours so Mom and I can take Gram to get her hair done this morning. While she’s in the beauty parlor, as she calls it, Mom and I are going to take a long walk on the beach, and then we’ll pick her up and go to the grocery store. Jennifer comes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from ten until noon. It’s the only chance we have to get away from the house.

  As we’re getting ready to leave, Jennifer undresses Dad for a sponge bath. She does it very slowly because it’s painful for Dad to raise his hands high enough to pull the nightshirt off over his head. He hasn’t been out of bed in a week now, not since the haircut, and his big shoulders have atrophied away to nothing more than ball and socket joints covered by skin. I can’t believe the amount of muscle his frame was carrying. His barrel chest is gone now, too. He’s all ribs and a sunken-in stomach with hipbones sticking out.

  When Jennifer touches the warm washcloth to his chest, he recoils in pain.

  “Sorry,” she says, “I’ll try to be gentle.” He grimaces the whole while, tight-lipped, eyes closed.

  Mom and I leave without interrupting to say goodbye. We drop Gram off at Ruth’s Beauty Salon and head for the beach.

  We move out, matching each other step for step, left, right, left, right. I’m dying to break into a run, but I get the sense this is supposed to be a mother-daughter thing, so I decide to chill out and enjoy it.

  A deserted beach lies in front of us. No people, no boats. No footprints, no trash, all the sand washed smooth by the rains. The sun is high and warm, and it feels like August. The only sound is a seagull squawking high overhead. Our own private, pristine beach.

  “Mom, promise me we won’t move.”

  She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Of course not. This is our home.”

  “I don’t have to go to college right away. I can stay home and work at the restaurant for a while. I can help out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to college.” Mom marches straight ahead. “Leah, let’s not plan too far ahead, okay? Everything will work out.”

  Mom doesn’t like talking about the future.

  We stride along the water’s edge. Mom’s pumping her elbows at her side, really putting her elbows into it, like she means business. I amble along leisurely next to my spazzy mother, my arms long and swinging.

  It’s so refreshing to be outside instead of cooped up in that house.

  “Mom, you should ask Jennifer to come more often.”

  “No. If you were dying, you wouldn’t like being taken care of by a stranger. I feel bad enough leaving him for just these couple hours. But if you’re needing to get out more, I can find people to take you places. Mandy’s mom would be more than happy to help. She’s offered to come get you so you can—”

  “No way, Mom.” Mandy’s this girl who goes to our church. We carpooled to catechism, made our First Communion together, got confirmed together. So Mom thinks we’re old buds, and whenever we see them at church, she and her mom are always trying to set something up between us. “Want to go to a movie Friday? Want to go bowling?”

  “Well, what about Clay, then?” asks Mom. “He’d come get you and take you out. You haven’t seen him at all lately, have you?”

  “No, I told you, Mom, he’s really just a training partner. If I’m not working out, I don’t have a reason to see him.”

  “But you like him, right? Maybe you should give it a chance to be more.”

  “Listen, Mom. I wasn’t asking you to figure out my social life for me. I just meant that I was enjoying this—this walk with you. Getting out of the house with you.”

  Mom tucks her chin and smiles. She blinks and wipes a tiny tear from her cheek—the woman is an absolute sieve. “Thank you, Leah. I’m enjoying it, too.”

  My arms are full of groceries and the screen door slams before I can catch it.

  “What the hell!” Dad’s glaring at me from the hospital bed. “I was fast asleep. How many times have I told you not to slam that door?”

  “Sorry, Pops,” I say. “It was an accident.”

  Loud noises really bother him. So do strong smells and tastes. Some are not so loud or so strong, and still they bother him. He complains about the way I walk. “When you walk, the whole house shakes. I don’t know why they call you Weasel; you walk like a herd of elephants.” He doesn’t like the sound of the mixer, either, or the smell of perfume. He says our water tastes funny.

  “We got you some raspberry ginger ale, Pop,” I say, trying to redeem myself. “Want some?”

  “Yeah, get me a glass, would you, Weez?”

  Dad may not eat, but he certainly drinks. A lot. Water, juice, ginger ale, Coke.

  I bring him a glass of ginger ale with a couple ice cubes and a straw.

  “Thanks.” He props himself up on one elbow and takes the glass from me.

  I keep my hand under it for a second because he’s shaky and it looks like the glass might slip out of his hand, but he manages to keep hold and get the straw to his lips. His lips are tacky, though, and the tip of the straw sticks on his lip instead of going in far enough to drink. He reaches up to redirect it with his finger. I want to help, but he likes to do things for himself. When he finally gets the straw in right, he sucks long and hard, the fibers of his neck straining.

  Friday, September 5

  Heather takes the stethoscope out of her ears and stands up. She sighs and motions for us to follow her out in the kitchen.

  I feel so morbid when Heather pulls us aside. It’s like goody, goody, goody, what kind of gore have you got for us today? I can’t get enough of these graphic updates and almost feel let down when she has nothing dramatic to tell us. It’s so boring. Don’t tell me he’s the same; tell me awful things are oozing from his pump stoma and that he has a fever of a hundred and six and practically zero blood pressure. Now that’s something to tell people when they call.

  Don’t get me wrong—I don’t want Dad to suffer. I want him to get better, to feel good again, to be my old Pops. But that’s not going to happen, and when day after day he lies in the same stale, unchanging state, it gets old. We’re hanging in limbo, doing the slow torture. If something bad is going to happen, maybe we should get it over with.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s kidney failure now,” Heather says. “It’s not a classic case, but the lingering disorientation seems to indicate that the kidneys aren’t filtering the wastes out of his blood like they should be.”

  “What about the ureter?” Mom says. “At one time you thought there might be a blockage there.”

  “No, the urine is getting out, so we’re not worried about a blockage anymore. It’s a filtering problem, which
means it’s the kidneys. But we still can’t account for the blood in the urine. It could be that the tumor is ulcerating.”

  Ulcerating. The word paints an ugly picture.

  “Do you think I should I call the kids home?” Mom asks. She bites her lip. “I guess Mary couldn’t really come right now, but Paul could.”

  “I would. I don’t imagine Pete has many lucid days left. They won’t be able to carry on much of a conversation if you wait.”

  “I think Paul’s said his goodbye, don’t you, Leah?”

  I nod, but I roll my eyes. Why is Mom being so cold? I can’t believe she wouldn’t call Paul and give him one last chance to talk face-to-face with Dad.

  She must realize how she sounds because then she adds, “Last time they said goodbye it was so draining for him and Pete. I’d hate to see them go through that all over again.”

  “If you feel they’ve already said goodbye,” says Heather, “and they just want to be here to support you and the family at the very end, then you can probably wait. You’ll know when it’s time. He’ll put out amazing amounts of urine, and then it will decrease drastically, less and less until he slips into a coma. Then it’s just a matter of days.”

  We watch the urine bag like a barometer. It’s the first thing I look at when I walk into the sunroom. Is there more than usual? Less? Is it getting redder? Thicker?

  Mom whispers to me when we’re in the bathroom getting ready for bed. “Heather’s notes in the hospice folder describe it as looking like tea. It’s definitely deeper red than that now, opaque and thicker, too, don’t you think?”

  I gag as I spit out my fluoride rinse. “Yeah.”

  In her nightgown, Mom drains Dad’s bag a final time for the night and dumps it in the back hall toilet. When she gets back, she jots down the time and amount in her notebook: 9:30 pm, 700-ml.

  She sits at the glass table and figures the totals for the day, her pencil working carefully. I watch over her shoulder, anxious to see the results. Digit by digit, they appear as she adds the columns. No drastic increase, no drastic decrease; input matches output.

  I approach the hospital bed, hesitant, wondering if this is my last goodnight, and what I should do if it is, what I should say to him that I haven’t already said. Should I resist being maudlin, think positive, and plan on a hundred more goodnights? This is my nightly decision.

  Dad’s eyes are closed, but that’s never a guarantee he’s sleeping. I can’t just skip saying goodnight. He’d notice. And though it seems callous to give him a quick kiss, like, So the urine still looks like tomato juice—I’m not going to get worked up about it, he knows what I’m doing if I linger or say anything beyond “I love you.” He hangs onto my hand, squeezing it, and turns his face away so I won’t see him cry.

  Poor Dad. There’s no place for him to hide anymore.

  I hurry over, bend down, and give him a quick peck on the cheek. “See you tomorrow morning, Pops.”

  His eyes stay closed, but he smiles. “Night, Weez. Love you.”

  “Me, too,” I say. And I’m real proud of how well this goodnight went.

  CHAPTER 26

  Saturday, September 6

  Mom and I are sitting at Dad’s side, reading to him. He says he can’t focus his eyes anymore; they skip all over the page. We hear footsteps outside and through the wall of windows we see Mrs. Kreegan coming up the back porch steps. Dad is lying here with just his nightshirt on, knees drawn up so that all of him is exposed from the waist down. Mom takes the sheet from where it lies crumpled at his feet and pulls it over him.

  Dad kicks the sheet aside. “I know my body disgusts you,” he says, grabbing at the emaciated ruins of his thighs, his big-boned mitts encircling them almost completely, “but I’m hot.”

  Doesn’t Dad see Mrs. Kreegan coming up the walk? He’s looking that way. But who knows what he can see anymore.

  “Oh, Pete, your body doesn’t disgust me,” says Mom, gently rubbing his thighs.

  His legs are very thin, but not at all disgusting. There’s still a lot of muscle hanging on them, lean and sinewy now, rather than thick and rounded. And the way it hangs in tight, shrunken bundles on those long thin bones, there’s a certain grace about them, like a track star’s legs.

  “Mrs. Kreegan is here,” says Mom, covering him again. “I don’t know how comfortable she’d be with seeing so much of you.”

  During the visit, Dad is restless. Whether he means to or not, he squirms until he’s kicked the sheet down, until he’s lying there with everything hanging out again. But he’s more comfortable. And it’s okay how it happens; it’s such a slow, painstaking effort, him reaching down and fumbling to move the sheet lower, kicking at it with his stiff legs, that I think Mrs. Kreegan has time to get comfortable with it—with his nakedness, with the pump stoma, the catheter, and the trickle of red urine dripping into the bag.

  Somehow it’s not gross. It just seems natural. This is the way Dad is. There should be no secrets anymore.

  Sunday, September 7

  We hear Dad whimpering and run over to his bed. He’s holding his lower back and writhing.

  “What is it, Pete?” asks Mom. “What’s wrong?”

  “My back.” Dad grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. “The pain …”

  Dad rolls in bed, moaning. “I don’t know what to do! Help me.” He tosses and turns, face scrunched, head back, grunting and holding his breath like a woman in labor. It’s terrible to watch, like something is eating him from the inside, taking big, cruel bites.

  “Leah, get the Roxanol.” Mom points me to the kitchen.

  “But he just had some.”

  “I don’t care!” Mom’s face is screaming even if her voice isn’t.

  “No.” Dad shakes his head. “No drugs. Just get me a cigarette.”

  “A cigarette? You haven’t smoked since Leah was born.”

  “Go get me a cigarette! In the hutch. Top drawer on the right.”

  Mom raises her eyebrows at me, and I run to get the cigarette and some matches.

  His body’s frozen, but he’s rolling his head from side to side, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain. I light the cigarette and put it between his trembling fingers. He takes a hard, desperate drag on it. But his nostrils curl and he hands it right back to me. “Take this away. Pray with me. See if that helps.”

  Mom and I hold his hands. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name …”

  When we’re finished with that, Mom opens the Bible and leads me with her finger through Dad’s favorite passages, which we read fast and furiously.

  We read and read.

  The prayers seem to help. Dad calms down and his face relaxes.

  “That was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Burning, stabbing.” His voice is a whisper. He doesn’t even open his eyes. “It lasted so long.”

  “You must be exhausted,” says Mom. “That was at least ten minutes. Leah, go get him a glass of water.”

  I do. He drinks the whole thing at once and opens his eyes to look up at us for the first time.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do to speed up this process?” he asks, eyes pleading.

  Mom sighs. “Well, you know about Kevorkian,” she says matter-of-factly. “And you know that it’s a common but illegal practice that some doctors advise family members on how to turn up the morphine drip if their loved one wants to go. They do it quietly when no one is in the room. The person just drifts off, and no one is the wiser.”

  I’m afraid Mom is going to ask Dad how he feels about that, but she doesn’t. She tells him how she feels instead.

  “I think that, hard as it is, suffering has a purpose and ought to be endured to the natural end. What purpose, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s for you, the person suffering, to come to terms with the pecking order of the universe, to reach a certain level of spirituality that you never would otherwise. And for us, the ones watching you suffer; we’ve learned so much from how you’ve handled this, Pete. You’ve
been so brave, so uncomplaining and selfless, worrying about what’s going to happen to all of us instead of dwelling on your own pain and fears. I’ve grown spiritually just watching you.”

  I grab Dad’s hand and nod. I’ve grown, too.

  When Dad falls asleep, Mom and I look at each other like the parents of a colicky baby who has finally dozed off.

  “Go running,” Mom whispers. “Get out while you can. It’s so beautiful out. I’ll stay with Dad.”

  “What about you? Why don’t you get a walk in?”

  “I’ll go when you get back. Go. Don’t waste this chance.”

  I steal away and go for a run on the peninsula.

  It’s a shimmering afternoon—the sun, the water, the breeze in the leaves—and I head for the hills. The peninsula has these great rolling hills covered with orchards, open meadows, patches of woods. I like to follow the farmer’s tire ruts in the meadows between the orchards. This is what Laura Ingalls Wilder’s prairie must have looked like. A rippling, undulating sea of grass, bleached golden from the summer sun, all heathered and feathery like it’s been painted with an airbrush.

  It’s more than just grass, though. As I leave the tire ruts to head straight for the peak of the hill, I see that it’s also milkweed, thistle, wildflowers, and old berry canes gone dry and prickly. I have to high-step it or my shins get scratched.

  But it’s glorious—the wind in my hair, the golden sea of grass against the cloudless blue sky. I can’t believe someone hasn’t built a house up here. At the top of this hill you can see for miles: West Bay, Leelanau County, Lake Michigan again. Lake, land, lake. Blue, green, blue. My house is the third white speck north of the red speck on East Bay. I stop and take it in.

  It’s an awe-inspiring view. I wish Dad could see this.

  I throw my head back and hold my arms out wide.

  Take him, Jesus, I think. Take him. Don’t make him go through any more of this. I mean it. When I get home, I hope he will have died. I really do. That is my prayer. No more suffering for him, please.