The Living End

by Lisa Samson

  These people challenge me every day.

  I take a drag on my cigarette and look out over the water, wondering if Joey’s watch is buried in sludge yet. Probably.

  Well, there’s more work to be done inside. More crafts to be made. I know Yolanda will love one of those lighted Mason jars, but I want to do something else for her, in gratitude for showing me how it’s done. Maybe I should drag my camera out. Oh, yeah, it’s in Havre de Grace. What a relief.

  “Peta! Why do you keep bringing all these jars over? We’ve got enough for Christmas presents for the next ten years!”

  Peta, while still gray and watery, looks like a new woman. Cheeta took her shopping down at White Flint Mall near D.C., and despite her escort, Peta managed to come home with some tasteful outfits. They almost got thrown out of Saks Fifth Avenue for arguing over a pair of mules with gold coins on them.

  Today she wears black slacks, a red turtleneck sweater, and a wonderful pair of chunky-heeled black boots that would actually go well with the gold corduroy skirt I have on. Peta plans on cutting her braid off after the new year, but in the meantime, she rolls it up into a sleek bun. I told her she might want to reconsider the haircut, she looks so good like this. She just informed me I should mind my own business, which, if she only knew, I’m much too good at to begin with.

  She plucks jars from inside a cardboard box. “I found these in the cellar and washed them up. They’re ready to go.”

  “What am I going to do with all these?”

  “Let Harry paint them.”

  “And then what?”

  Peta’s face widens. “You really don’t get it, do you, Pearly?”

  “I guess not.”

  “It doesn’t matter what the heck’s done with the jars!” Her gray face turns pink. “Goodness gracious and a loaf of bread, Pearl! Must everything come to some glorious, world-saving conclusion? Isn’t the action itself ever enough? Isn’t that purpose enough? Doesn’t the expression of a human being possess a dignity found beyond salability or some wider purpose? Does everything have to be overblown or not at all?”

  I feel the heat rising with each sentence. “Okay, then, Miss Smarty-Pants. Give me one good example.”

  “Your picture-taking.”

  “Photojournalism, Peta.”

  “See? That’s exactly what I mean! Because you couldn’t fulfill that photojournalism thing to the letter, you gave it up entirely. You could be an awesome photographer by now, Pearly. Who knows what kind of pictures you might have taken, the places Joey would have escorted you to if you’d shown the interest? You blew it!”

  I blew it.

  “I think you’d better go now, Peta.”

  “I’m sorry, Pearly.”

  “I know.”

  “Someone has to tell it to you like it is.”

  “You’ve always been rather good at that.”

  “I’m dying, cousin. I’ve got some inside information about what it feels like for it to be too late.”

  Is it too late for me? Is there is a reason I so desperately want to end things but so desperately can’t?

  What needs to happen? I am pregnant with something, but have no idea what grows inside me and if the birth will be still and quiet or clamorous and large. Or if I will die in childbirth.

  Dear God. And I mean exactly that.

  So now I know. The Norwalk virus. I always heard a woman could get cervical cancer from promiscuity, but now I know why. Of course, they didn’t know all this when I got it. A virus. A sexually transmitted virus stole my children from me. It seems so easy, the sex thing. Those women told me to take control of my own body, to enjoy sex like men do, to satisfy a natural appetite without making a big to-do about petty things like commitment and love. So here I am, midfifties, no kids, no life, no courage, and a portion of that which makes me a woman gouged out by a scalpel’s blade.

  Oh, yeah! They had all the answers! They thought they had it sewed up with more stitches than a man’s business suit. They spoke with compassion and authority. They spoke as if it wasn’t really in the stages of a grand experiment. They spoke as if it was time-tested fact.

  The wenches.

  The Norwalk virus.

  A virus! Not some sort of genetic, predestined occurrence. Something I elected to contract when I elected to believe someone I placed in authority over me.

  “Question Authority”?

  Remember that one? Well, who is anyone to tell anyone else to question authority? Now, if the saying was “How About Questioning Authority?” or “A Suggestion: Question Authority,” that would have made sense. But by telling someone to question authority, you immediately set yourself up as an authority to be questioned.

  What a messed-up bunch of kids we were. What we really were saying was that we were our own authority. To which I now say, “Big Deal!” So I made my decisions, lived by my own creed. Now I am thick into middle age, alone and drifting like a piece of ice on a river, and because I set myself up as my own authority, I have no one to blame but me.

  And I can’t even kill myself now. I’ve no strength for either living or dying. I’m stuck in this limbo. I want to crack open, peel away this turgid scab that has entombed my spirit like some crusty brown sarcophagus. I never did like to pick scabs. That first lift was too painful, and no place ever looked good enough to begin.

  I don’t know where to begin.

  Yolanda and Peta have taken over. I’m stuck out here with the kids. How did it come to this? We’re celebrating at the farmhouse; the cabin just can’t take this much humanity at one time.

  “Okay, what do you guys want to do? Do you have any Christmas Eve traditions?”

  Yolanda’s four children sit in a row along the old floral sofa. The oldest, a very dark thirteen-year-old girl named LeeLee, says, “We like to watch a Christmas movie. But usually that’s after church. We going to church?”

  “Well, normally I don’t.”

  The next in line, an eleven-year-old named Ireland, says, “Not even on Christmas Eve?”

  “Well, yes. On Christmas Eve. But that’s about it.”

  “Only on Christmas Eve! And you weren’t even going to do it this year?” LeeLee again. The third child, a little girl named Kate, says nothing. She’s too busy hugging Pumpkin, who came down with Maida and Shrubby. Yolanda’s six-year-old son, Clay, the only white one in the bunch, stomps around in cowboy boots, clicking his tongue more loudly than any human being should.

  “I guess I just forgot to plan.” I feel silly apologizing like this to a teenager.

  “Mom!” Ireland, not as dark as her sister and a bit more stocky, stands to her feet. “What about church?”

  “What about it?” Yolanda yells back.

  “We going tonight?”

  “Ask Pearly!”

  “I did. She’s noncommittal.”

  Noncommittal? Where’d she get a word like that?

  Yolanda appears dressed in an ivory caftan and head scarf. “Where’s the nearest church?”

  Harry rocks back and forth a bit and starts singing “Jesus Loves Me.”

  “Down the road. A United Methodist,” I say.

  Peta yells, “They’re practically all United Methodist around these parts.”

  “We’ll go there,” Yolanda says and turns toward Maida, Peta, and Cheeta, who are working at various kitchen tasks. “How about it, girls, you game?”

  “Not me!” says Cheeta. “I doubt Peta is either.”

  “Oh, I’m game, and I’ll thank you not to speak for me, Cheeta.”

  “All right, all right. Maida and I will hold down the fort. We’ll clean up the dishes while you all go and do your church thing.”

  Peta walks through the doorway into the living room, grimacing. “Gee, you make it sound so attractive.”

  “Something’s burning!” Maida yells.

  “My beans!” Yolanda spins around and heads back in. The kids start looking through the video bin.

  Peta sits on the arm of my lounge chai
r. “I’m tired.”

  “Why don’t you stay home and rest?”

  “No. Could be my last chance to go to a Christmas Eve service. Lord knows I missed enough of them.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Can’t help it. I’m going on dialysis in three weeks. It’s hard on the heart, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well it is. I could die from heart failure before the disease kills me.”

  I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want Peta to leave me.

  “You coming to church?” she asks.

  “I guess I might as well.”

  “Dont sound so thrilled.”

  “Suffice it to say …”

  The chefs clatter and joke in the kitchen, Shrubby and Matthew mumble man-talk out in the dining room where they and their checkers game are soon to be shooed away, and the children have narrowed it down to A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Little Drummer Boy.

  “Look around, Pearly. A dozen people gathered here because they love you. I’d say Christmas has come to you with bells on, and you can’t even go to church to say thank you?”

  “Peta, I liked you better before you got God. What’s with this anyway? Where are you getting this faith from? Who have you been talking to?”

  She shrugs. “Harry. He’s the most innocent source I’m gonna get it from. But I’ve been going to church Sunday mornings. If you got up early enough, you’d see me leave for the first service.”

  She sighs. “I’m not going to get angry with you, Pearly. It’s your soul, and if you want to throw it away like you’ve been doing all these years—”

  “Oh yeah right, Peta. You find a little faith to see you through your illness after having ignored God all your life, and you think you have a right to tell me anything?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I’d like to know why.”

  “Because I love you.”

  Oh.

  “You know, Pearly, Joey was a gentleman and played by different rules than most of us do. Joey was in love with you. Your love was even more important to him than you were.”

  “Thanks, Peta.”

  “It’s true. We both know Joey was a man of great faith, and he was a man of great expression. He allowed you to squelch those things when it came to your marriage. Well, I’m not married to you. I’m family, and I’m not going to let you go on like this, smoking yourself to death, moping around—”

  “I don’t mope!”

  “Oh yes you do. You sit out on that deck all day long now. You weren’t doing anything until Harry got sick and came back to recuperate. What are you going to do with him after the New Year?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Figures.”

  “Stop it, Peta. I don’t answer to you.”

  “You don’t answer to anybody, Pearly, and maybe that’s your biggest problem.”

  “Who are you to tell me anything?”

  My home in Havre de Grace is looking better and better these days.

  “Nobody. That’s the point. I’m a big fat nobody who’s done nothing much with her life.”

  I can see where this is going. “Okay, I’ll go to church.”

  “Good.” She heads back into the kitchen.

  Shoot, I thought she’d say something like “I don’t want you to go if it’s just to keep me quiet.” Joey would have said that, but then, Peta doesn’t play by Joey’s rules. She’s not a gentleman at all.

  Each sill displays a burning candle surrounded by greens. The contrasting temperatures of inside and out breathe condensation onto the window panes. They’re calling for snow, but it would be just too perfect for the sky to drop flakes on Christmas Eve.

  The lights dim, the church now lit only by the gauzy strips of candlelight, soft in the hushed sanctuary. We collectively catch our breath at the beauty of it all, and silence stills us further, for at least a minute, as expectation rises. I’ve heard Christmas Eve called the holiest night of the year.

  A flute breaks the quiet, the clear melody line of “Once in Royal David’s City” floating down from the rear balcony. A young child’s voice blends in from beside the wooden baptistery.

  And I cry.

  Oh, Joey.

  Yolanda holds one hand, Peta the other, as the service continues and a story like no other is told. Something stands out to me this time, though, as the young preacher talks about the courage of the Christ, the Savior born to die.

  Shepherds quake at the sight.

  Glory streams from heaven afar.

  Sleep in heavenly peace.

  I sit still while the others partake in communion. As the service closes, the choir sings “Silent Night,” and we light the slender tapers in our hands. I remember the way Joey’s face would shine with anticipation at this moment.

  “Behold, I am the light of the world,” the pastor says. “May we shine the love of Christ into the darkness. Go in peace.”

  Go in peace.

  “Thanks be to God.”

  “Go in peace. I am the light of the world.”

  The others file into the farmhouse, but Harry and I continue our trek to the cabin.

  “Sleep in heavenly peace,” he sings.

  “Sleep in heavenly peace,” I say, and I kiss my brother on the cheek before he climbs into his loft.

  So I do love people. I’ve come to this conclusion with the holidays now ended. This is all about the courage to go on. It’s about a reason to go on. It’s about building a new life.

  I just don’t know how to go about it. But I’ll find a way. I’ll find a purpose, and it may not be grand or important, but it will be my own.

  I’m glad I threw that watch into the Bay, because most likely it would have stopped by now, and I would have felt compelled to down all those sleeping pills in my cabinet.

  Harry’s back at the boarding house, and Peta, her home dialysis machine, and I are on board a Norwegian cruise ship bound for Alaska. I can’t believe we’re well into the month of May.

  No whales yet.

  I’m executing the two-minute scrub just in case Peta needs help hooking herself up to the unit. Sometimes she has a hard time piercing the solution bag with the pointed end of the tubing. They claim this home method is much easier on the heart, and this comforts me. It’s eight o’clock. We’ll take her off tomorrow morning at eight and go have a nice breakfast. Oh, the food on these ships. I think I’ve already gained back all the weight I’ve lost and then some. But what lovely hips I’m getting. Very womanly. Very maternal.

  Peta tries to open the Baxter solution box. I swear, you’d think these medical supply people who send these perforated cardboard boxes would include their own Arnold Schwarzenegger!

  “Pearly, I just don’t have the strength tonight. Can you do it?”

  “Of course.” I guess I’ll have to do another two-minute scrub after opening the box. After several months of these scrubs, my hands are drying out like crazy. If you judged me by my hands, you’d peg me for a ninety-year-old. And wouldn’t you know it, I forgot my hand cream? The samples on the ship actually pour out of the bottle.

  Peta asked me to take the lessons with her so that I can learn the machine. Cheeta wanted nothing to do with it. It frightens her, I know. And it ties me down, but how could I say no? Family is family, both my parents always said.

  I dry my hands and grab the opening on the box. I pull. Oh great, this is a tough one. So I lift the box with a sudden jerk, the cardboard gives way, and the box tumbles onto the bed. “There.”

  Peta shakes her head. “You’d think, wouldn’t you?”

  “There’s got to be a better way than these boxes.”

  “I guess they’d have thought of it by now if there was.”

  “Well, I wonder how many people who work for this company actually have to do this every night?”

  Yes, this is Pearly Laurel’s newest pet peeve.

  I place one bag of dialysis solution on the unit’s heater bed and another o
n the side table. It’ll be a while before it reaches her body temperature, so I sit next to Peta, who has removed the tubing from its bags. She snaps opens the blue clip she needs to keep the fluid from flowing into her peritoneal cavity until it’s time.

  “So, what are you going to do tonight, Pearly?”

  “Go hear some music, I guess. Get a glass of wine.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “You got your books ready?”

  “Yep. And the remote.”

  “Good thing the bathroom’s so close.”

  She nods. “I hate being so dependent on this thing. But I do have to admit, I feel a little better now that I’m on it.”

  “I’ll give you your shot tomorrow.” I should have given her the Procrit today, but we were having such a lovely time on deck we forgot, and Peta, not much good with needles, never wants a shot right before bed.

  “Lets do it before breakfast,” she says. “Get it over with first thing.”

  “All right.”

  Back to the two-minute scrub. I look over her dialysis log. Every night and morning she jots down her weight, her blood pressure, whether or not she’s holding water, how the exit site looks. She’s slowly but surely losing weight. “How does your catheter feel?”

  She flops the end of the rubber tubing protruding from her abdomen. “Fine.” She lifts her nightgown and examines the exit site. It’s pink and healthy. No crust.

  “Looks good.”

  “Yeah. I hate this thing, Pearly. It grosses me out so much, I don’t know what it must do to you.”

  “Don’t begin to think that. It’s not that way at all. Really, Peta.”