That same day, a woman requested “Clementine” for her comatose father. She said he had sung this to her as a girl, and she smiled a little as she told them that her father had taken guitar lessons, but that he never progressed beyond a few songs. “But he had ‘Clementine’ down cold,” she said, with a soft chuckle. Julia thought that Adrian would be stumped for sure. How could someone growing up in Puerto Rico know that old American folk song? But he knew it. “I don’t believe it, Adrian. You’re like a human jukebox,” Julia told him.
When Adrian got to the line, “You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine,” the woman’s face had crumpled up and she reached over to hold her father’s hand. Adrian had helped move her along the long and difficult road of saying good-bye not only to her father, but to her childhood. And it was through this intense and focused attention on the grief of total strangers, that Adrian Vega became a little more like his father. He stepped into a new maturity; an expansion of the spirit that, by necessity, hurt.
“Keep it up and you’ll be famous, kid!” shouted an old lady in a wheelchair who had been listening to him sing from the hallway.
Adrian kept a constant river of warm Spanish sounds flowing over his brother. Sometimes David surprised them by stopping his thrashing and mumbling long enough to listen, or even mouth a few of the lines. One morning, a week after he’d been admitted into hospice, Julia had buds in her ears and was singing along with her playlist of favorite songs. She was lost in thought as she shaved David’s face. “Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs,” she sang out loud. She was rinsing the razor when David turned his head and sang, “What’s wrong with that?”
After that, she prompted him all the time, trying to get him to communicate his needs by introducing songs that could help him express thirst, hunger, or pain. When Marcia cracked open a Diet Coke, David started humming the jingle to the latest Coca-Cola commercial. Julia asked Marcia for the can and gave it to David, who happily sucked up the entire drink. The doctor on duty explained that the human central nervous system doesn’t process musical sounds the same way it does the auditory patterns of speech. Musical ability isn’t necessarily affected by damage localized in areas that control language. This is what Kathy and Sister Juana had discovered all on their own in working with speech-delayed children at the orphanage. “If one avenue to or from the brain is blocked, you try another. The brain isn’t a road, it’s a labyrinth,” Kathy added when Julia explained it on the phone. Soon, they could only communicate with David through sign language and music, first popular music and then through nursery songs in both Spanish and English. It was as if, through the songs, Adrian was able to take his brother to a safer place, and still keep him close.
Adrian and Julia’s first kiss was in the elevator of the Connecticut Hospice. There had been ample opportunity, up in the master bedroom of the Griswold house, the night that Julia had nursed Adrian’s wounded head. But they had agreed that it would be disrespectful to start something right under David’s nose. Their resolve was emboldened by the fact that Adrian had a colossal headache, and a few hours later, they were jumping out a window to escape a fire. They had fallen in love again during the trip to Casa Azul—and once that happened, the rest of the trip had been an exercise in torturous self-restraint. They would have dropped everything to be together after the trip, but then David started seeing imaginary little girls and they all knew that it was the beginning of the end.
David had been at the hospice for two weeks when they all gathered out on the lawn. Adrian and Julia were alone in the elevator, standing face to face as it descended to the ground floor. When the doors shut, Adrian took her face in his hands, closed his eyes, and kissed her on the lips. His kiss was so tentative, so restrained, their lips barely touched. “I love you,” he said, and he marveled at the sound of those strange words coming out of his mouth.
“Am I crazy? David doesn’t even understand what’s going on,” Julia said, clutching a pearl on her necklace. “Why am I doing this again?”
“You’re doing it for David,” Adrian replied. “Choosing to honor his parents’ faith, even though faith eluded him, is in itself a kind of faith.” The doors opened and Adrian led Julia out to the lawn. Taina, Doug, Holly, Ray, Julia’s mother, and her three brothers and their spouses were all waiting. David’s bed had wheels, and the staff had rolled him out to the patio, as they often did when patients wanted to get fresh air. The O’Farrells’ parish priest presided over the ceremony. Adrian, handsome in a gray suit, walked Julia down the path to where David was waiting. Adrian gave Julia away and spoke David’s wedding vows for him. Julia wore a white dress and the stud earrings that David had given her for her birthday.
“My daughter-in-law,” Marcia said as she placed her mother’s diamond ring on Julia’s finger. “You were right. Symbols of belonging are powerful.” The priest pronounced David and Julia husband and wife. Julia leaned over David’s bed and kissed him on the lips.
Julia watched over David that day and the next and the next until his pulse slowed by half a beat beneath her touch. Soon, he was no longer able to sing, eat, or drink. Even the flecks of Italian ice that the hospice supplied just sat on his tongue and melted, making him cough. There was a rattle inside his lungs and a bad smell emanated from his mouth. Adrian made the decision to withhold life support. Ray lobbied for, and won, an increase in David’s dose of morphine, and David didn’t recover any awareness after that. He wasted away in a matter of a few days. His jaw became razor-sharp. He got that waxy, candlelit look. But the varying expressions on his face convinced Julia and Adrian that he was on a great adventure. “Not too much fun,” Adrian teased, fussing with his brother’s blanket and combing David’s hair with his fingers. “Remember you’re a married man now, Flaco.” Outside, the still-cold May wind picked up and rattled the glass of the windows. When Adrian looked out and down to the ground level, he saw a blue lady’s hat tumbling across the lawn of the hospice. It danced and floated and spun like a Frisbee before it finally got hooked by the wiry branch of a high tree. When the wind moved the limbs of the tree just so, it looked as if there was someone in it, an old lady perhaps, with her legs dangling off the branches. Adrian noticed that the limbs kicked to a quicker beat than the melancholy gusts of wind would have them move. It was as if they were dancing to the sound of a distant music that no one else could hear.
Chapter 48
David
I’m thinking about the women in my life: grateful, ardent thoughts of mothers and nuns and sisters and friends and lovers; even about the daughters and granddaughters I might have had. There’s this bony, pony-tailed girl who won’t leave my side. She’s wearing shorts and t-shirt but her head is covered with a first communion veil and a pair of white gloves, fastened at the wrist with pearls. Through the veil I can see that she has my eyes, but with Julia’s blonde hair and small, fine nose, so I know she’s the daughter we would have had. She offers her hand to me, and says, “Papa, I have to show you something.” I take it and suddenly we’re at Griswold Island, standing before that terrible fire, and I have to close my eyes as the wind stirs up the smoke and ashes of Julia’s destroyed history. I pull the girl back from the heat, down to the beach, because I don’t want the smoke to hurt her eyes.
What happened during my brain surgery is happening again. I must have encoded the last moments of the fire and stored the scene away somewhere inaccessible to the conscious mind. I know perfectly well that I’m dying, and that I’m getting access to the classified stuff. Only now am I able to process, interpret, and remember the secret things that happened during the fire. Or maybe it’s just that the closer death is, the stronger life can be felt, seen, and heard. In this rush of energy, in this process by which we release our spiritual light, time simply has no place. What I can see now is this: as the house went up in flames, every dead Griswold rose in a great funnel, like a waterspout. There was literally a Griswold explosion, an exuberant stampede of souls that b
ounded across the lawn like a herd of buffalo across a plain.
I’m seeing it, as I linger in this porous in between place. The Griswolds scatter across the lawn, some stand, some sit, some lie flat on their backs. They crush hydrangea bushes and knock over the geraniums in their terra-cotta pots. They’re unharmed and strangely unconcerned by the fact their homestead is being consumed in flames. They are all barefoot. Several of them have binoculars, telescopes, spyglasses, opera glasses, and I suspected that they have been watching us all along. At first, they wait patiently for a man to mount what has to be the infamous “water unicycle.” It looks like a combination between a unicycle and a hay-cutter; a wide contraption that allows the cyclist to pedal his way on top of the water. Then he rises up into the air and glides across the Sound like he’s one of the Wright brothers. Once he reaches a comfortable cruising altitude, the crowd cheers and they rush across the lawn toward the beach, shouting and shoving each other to get ahead.
“What took you so long?” barks a stooped man who has to squint in order to keep a monocle in place. I think it’s Uncle Jim, the one buried in the garden. We’re shaking hands when a tall, bald man in a yellow satin baseball jacket holds a black mop of hair in the open palm of his hand. “Thanks for finding my hairpiece,” he whispers in my ear. He flops it over his dome. He parts the bangs so he can see.
“It looks good, man,” I lie. I know it’s his “Italian Stallion” wig, because I remember seeing the packaging it came in. “Eye of the tiger,” I say, and hold my fists up to my face. He does the same, like were going to spar, but then he rushes off into the crowd. The girl at my side covers her mouth and giggles.
“They’re nuts,” I tell her, shaking my head. “But you gotta love ’em.”
I turn to see John Crew Griswold, Julia’s father. He slaps me on the back and peers at me from behind his mustache. “You kids have been a breath of fresh air. We enjoyed every minute with you. Only you could have done this,” he said, pointing at the house on fire. “You set us free!”
“But we burned down your house!” I say. “Aren’t you angry?”
“Our need to have every one of our quirks remembered has reached a point of saturation. There is a time to let go. It’s been way too long for some.” He holds up a wrist, and I see that he has reclaimed his wristwatch from the bowl in the parlor. The metal band gleams in the sun as he gives me a quick salute, then he runs off toward the beach.
A group of Victorian ladies circle us. A pretty lady in her forties, who was probably the original Mother Griswold, leans down to kiss my daughter, whom, I suppose, is one of her descendants. “Javier es el mas fuerte,” the lady says, and she puts her index finger to her lips.
I’m amazed to see that all the women have green starfish tattoos on their hands. I take one lady’s hand and examine it. “I’ll be damned,” I say, and the woman says, “Bite your tongue, young man, we hope not.”
They put their hands on my back. It’s so comforting, so nice. I have a thousand mothers now. And I have a wife. Julia and I are bound in a way that is deeper, stronger, stranger, and more meaningful than any definition of love that I could have invented on my own. We were married last week on the lawn of the hospice; I knew what was going on the whole time. It’s so great to be able to say that one of the last moments of my life was also one of the best moments of my life.
The Griswold women crowd into my hospice room. They pull my hand, urging me to get up and follow. “No, I’m not ready. I like it here. Just look at that view,” I say, pointing at the window, at the wide yard, rocky shoreline, and blue water. But the matriarch steps forward. She has this really serious look on her face, and suddenly I’m scared shitless.
She puts one hand on the top of my head, like a queen, and says, “No tengas miedo. Todo lo que te ha pasado te ayudará. You’re ready. Don’t be afraid.”
“¿Ustedes hablan español?” I ask. They didn’t bother to answer, because obviously they can speak whatever language they want, they’re dead. I take one small, hesitant step forward, but I’m so, so scared. I close my eyes and gradually I feel myself leaving the indoor space of the hospice. The chorus of “shhhhhh” blends into the hiss of the wind all around me, and the branches, heavy with leaves, tremble and dance in the sky. The Griswold ladies give me one last shove and I tumble forward. I fall though space until I am in a beautiful forest. I hear the crunch of sticks and leaves beneath my feet. I smell moss and rotting wood in the cool air. The path is lined with all the trees I have saved in the course of my short life, my good deeds standing in formation, like an honor guard. I recognize them, the hickory, the elm, a whole lot of white birches that escaped that terrible fungal rot of a few years ago. Bright sunlight flashes through the canopy of leaves now and then as I walk. I catch pine needles in bunches of five, “Great Eastern Pine,” I inform no one in particular. The trees shade me from the sun, and I walk until the landscape becomes tropical and the air grows moist and warm. Mangroves are clustered like an arthritic tribe, with tangled limbs intertwining in a nearby swamp. Bird of paradise flowers dot the landscape with orange, yellow, and red, like small fires ablaze in the forest of green. I stand waiting for the leaves to part; for the magnificent beast of death’s forest to show himself. I hear something stirring nearby. My heart muscle pumps inside my chest, an insistent fist banging on a door. I scan the landscape and wait, motionless.
I sense that I’m being watched. So I turn around and I see Julia, my parents, my siblings, my friends and relatives, all crouching up in the branches of the trees, waving. They’re just a flickering presence now, as the dead Griswolds once were to me. I want to say some final words, something to comfort them, but I know they can’t hear me. My girl takes her place next to the grandest tree, and I suddenly understand her role in all this. She’s my final guide, my last love. She pulls back a branch, and the leaves part. A world opens up. I hear water. I see the eerie blue glow of souls zipping through a dark lagoon and I realize that I’ve come to the place where all things begin. I hear voices, and laughter. I see that my birth mother is waiting for me. I wave to let her know that I see her, that I’m coming at last. The girl rips off her veil, plucks the gloves off tip by tip, and tosses them into the bushes. She runs inside ahead of me.
I turn to the ones I’m leaving behind. I wish I could tell them this: in the end, we return to our most elemental state, which for me is simply playfulness and curiosity.
“See you on the other side!” shouts Julia. “I love you!” I feel wind on my face. I turn, and step inside.
Chapter 49
Julia kissed him slowly, on the lips. “See you on the other side. I love you!” is all she could think to say. David’s skin was cooling, so she dug her face deep into the cavity between his neck and his shoulder blade, inhaling his smell so as not to waste a single bit of it, even as it began to evaporate. His scent took off on wings and flew up in bursts, like butterflies, and then he was gone. David’s days released the last of their light, and went dark.
David was cremated, as per his wishes. Once again Julia went through a kind of post-traumatic shock when she asked the funeral services director to detail the process. They had placed him in a wood box, she was told, and a conveyor belt rolled him into a flaming oven. He was reduced to ashes. They put them in an urn and later spread the ashes in the forest near his parents’ home. David had agreed to every last Catholic sacrament, including a mass in his honor. His three nephews looked miserable in their tiny black suits and slick hair, and they stumbled around, alternately proud and uncomfortable in their fancy clothes. At the celebration of life, Julia was the one who remembered to pass the boys the microphone when everyone was talking about the impact that David had had in their lives. The boys said that they would never forget their Uncle David, because he had been their captain, and together they had fought and won a war against a pirate ship called the Summer Salt.
Epilogue
Late 2009
David had a life insurance policy through
his employer, and the payout, after funeral expenses, was close to two hundred thousand dollars. The marriage to Julia had been symbolic, not legal, because of David’s compromised mental state. Julia wanted none of the money, not even as retribution for the damages to the house. They had worked out the formula together. Half of it went to his parents in a trust for elder care, a portion was put into a college fund for Holly’s boys, and the rest went to the orphanage. Ray got David’s Jeep and his books. Adrian got his hiking and camping equipment. Julia wanted only his collection of hats.
Inside the “Pandora’s Box” that David had managed to pry open, Holly found the one thing that was missing in her life. She and Erick began the process of adopting the “brown-eyed girl” that she had bonded with so quickly at the orphanage. The Dominican Republic has a ninety-day residency requirement for adoption, so Raymond, who was between jobs, volunteered to stay with Holly and her boys near the orphanage for the required time period. Holly was concerned about Ray being away from his rehab for so long, but they worked out a plan that included ways to make Ray feel productive. He helped out at the orphanage, took Spanish lessons, and began what for him was a highly spiritual endeavor—mastering Dominican cooking. He found some ladies in the village who let him look on as they prepared a traditional sancocho, a stew made with pork and a variety of starch vegetables like yuca, ñame, yautia, potato, and plantain. Since he had so much time on his hands, he began to read the books that David had left him. He struggled with Walden and the essays and the poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it made him feel closer to David, so he read just a few paragraphs a day. In the second month of their stay, he met a buxom young lady who cooked him a meal of stewed goat and mashed green banana mangú. In a day she had him smitten. In a week he was wondering how he could ever stand to go back home to Arizona. In three weeks, she agreed to marry him someday.
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