The Living End

by Lisa Samson

  I scrub my hands a minute later, sit back down next to her, making sure I touch absolutely nothing. “Think we’ll see a whale tomorrow?”

  “I sure hope so. I’d hate to think we went to all this trouble, and no whales.”

  In bed that night, I listen to Peta’s soft breathing, hear the machine click as the old solution drains into a bag in a tub on the floor. The fresh solution fills her cavity, ready to suck out the impurities in her system via the peritoneal lining. I remember her words. It would be a bummer to go through all this trouble and see no whales.

  And I realize that’s life. Imagine going through all this trouble to survive, and not only just survive but do so graciously, with love and kindness and perseverance, and see no whales.

  I am convinced. This life is about more than just the face value. It has to be. There have to be whales at the end.

  A wild cheer erupts from all the people gathered on the deck.

  “There it is, Pearly! There’s our whale!” More color suffuses Peta’s cheeks than I’ve seen in many months. “Oh, Pearly! It’s …”

  “Magnificent.” Oh God, yes.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

  The whale surfaces, its bumpy skin glistening in the Alaska sunshine. It spins, showing off its flippers, rolling in the Pacific soup, white belly gleaming.

  “Do you think it will jump?” she asks. “Do you think it will jump and show us its big tail and flap it down on the water?”

  “Yes, Peta. I know it will.”

  I am sure of this! I am sure without any reason but faith.

  I watch with full expectation, ready for the tail, for the accompanying splash.

  “Take a picture, Pearly, when it happens. Please.”

  I lift the heavy body of my old camera. I center the viewfinder in front of my eye, and I wait, afraid to breathe. Oh yes, God. Please. Please.

  Half a minute later, the whale breaches. I follow his movement. I press the button. And I press again as he descends, his giant cloven tail directly in front of us, pounding the cold water. And we stand with the spray from his gigantic mass dotting our faces, hair, and parkas.

  I caught it all on film. The first pictures I’ve taken on this camera in years.

  “Oh, Cousin! Did you see?”

  “Wonderful!”

  “Did you get the picture?”

  “I did, Peta. I really did.”

  She hugs me. I return the embrace so hard I fear we both may break.

  The next day I throw a picture of Joey and me, taken in front of our cabin by my mother after it was built, right into the sea. Our faces swim on the waves for several seconds, then we go under, the water distorting the focus as it washes over the photo. Finally, nothing remains but the dark blue-green of the ocean. And I stand alone, moving forward into waters I’ve never navigated.

  I’ve fulfilled the list. Except for Haussner’s, and I’ve got plans for that! I can hardly believe it. We are flying back East, and I’m writing a new list. Things I want to accomplish while I’m still living. Sell the Havre de Grace house for starters. My life is elsewhere now. My life. Goodness, that sounds positively wild, doesn’t it?

  We land at BWI. Cheeta isn’t there.

  “Let’s get a cup of coffee while we wait,” I say.

  “Okay. Decaf for me.”

  Hours go by. We call the farm. The phone rings and rings.

  Peta looks pale again.

  “Let’s get a cab.”

  She raises her brow. “That will be expensive, Pearly.”

  “Let’s go. You can’t miss your dialysis.”

  Cheeta lies there looking more peaceful than she ever did in life. We decided, and rightly so, to bury her with her jewelry and her turban. Her hair, completely white, had thinned to a ghoulish sparseness. We found her in her bed.

  The coroner said she’d been dead for at least five days. And I thought I was alone. Poor Cheeta, kept the world at arm’s length, always playing the part of the angry young woman.

  Peta weeps, grasping my hand as we stand looking down at the body. “I really thought I’d be the first to go. In fact, I was counting on it.”

  All Cheeta’s Democrat friends gather with us at the funeral home. They’re sad to see one of their warriors gone from the fray. Peta knows only a few of them. “I never liked Cheeta’s friends,” she says, then laughs. “Of course, that wasn’t anything Cheeta didn’t know.”

  “I don’t think Cheeta really liked them much either.”

  We smile into each others eyes.

  “Life has really changed for us, Cousin,” I say.

  She nods and cries some more.

  On the way home from the burial she tells me, “All I’ve got is you, Pearly.”

  “And I’ve got lots of others. We’ll all make it through. Somehow.”

  “There’s a lot to this life, isn’t there, Cousin?”

  “More than we ever bargain for, that’s for sure.”

  “So, I guess, in the end, it’s worth it … What are we doing for my birthday, Pearly?”

  “Let’s have everyone over. Yo and the kids, Matthew, Maida, and Shrubby. Just everyone.”

  “It’s going to be the best birthday ever, don’t you think?”

  “I really do, Peta.”

  “You know people can live for years on dialysis.”

  “We’ll break some records. I can tell you that.”

  The whale splashes his tail, and we feel the spray on our faces, and we hold hands, confident the mist will never dry.

  I’ve begun a new hobby. An old-lady hobby. I started identifying wildflowers this past spring. Peta and I are spending two weeks at a cabin in Maine. Who knows, maybe it’s near the spot where Joey and his father summered all those years ago.

  I run down to the shore of the lake where Peta sits in the sun reading a book called Surprised by Joy. She looks up at me, and the sun turns her eyes from chocolate to caramel.

  I plop onto the beach chair and open up my wildflower field guide. “Look here.”

  She examines the flower on which my thumb is placed. “Pearly Everlasting.”

  “Yes. It’s a lovely flower, isn’t it?”

  I pull out the specimen I found by the pathway near the lodge. Its flower, tightly knit white petals, reminds me of a large pinhead. The stems and leaves are downy and silver-green. I hand it to her.

  She runs a finger tenderly across the blossoms, down the stems and over the leaves. “A hardy looking plant.”

  “Yes, extremely so. I always wondered why Yolanda calls me that.”

  “Guess she pegged you from the beginning.”

  I guess she did.

  A bank of dark clouds slides in from the east. “Looks like a storm is coming in, Cousin,” I say.

  She takes my hand. “Nothing that you, me, and God can’t handle.”

  I laugh. “That’s the truth.”

  “Yep.” She gazes across the waters of the lake. “That’s exactly right.”

  It’s a good day to live. Last night I took out those sleeping pills and crushed them one by one. Joey smiled at that, I’ll bet.

  “We building a campfire tonight, Pearly?”

  “Of course.”

  “Take some pictures of it, won’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  My darkroom is backed up for months, and that’s okay. Will I sell my photos? Probably not. I might just pin them all up around my potpourri Mason jars and pronounce them good simply because they are.

  And that will be enough. Not because it has to be.

  Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

  Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

  … where there is injury, pardon;

  … where there is doubt, faith;

  … where there is despair, hope;

  … where there is darkness, light;

  … where there is sadness, joy;

  O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek … to be consoled as to console;

  …
to be understood as to understand;

  … to be loved as to love.

  For it is in giving that we receive;

  … it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

  … and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

  I seek to live up to the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. I fail every day and I wonder if it’s so far from the nature of the normal male as to be unattainable. No, I do not wonder, I know. And it stands to reason that the man deserved sainthood to even think up the prayer in first place. I’ve been reading about the Christian mystics and their experiences of God. I yearn, but I am too attacked to this world, I fear.

  I can’t shake the look that filled Peta’s face after we saw the whale. It lasted for two days, this shining peace. She talked about it constantly, excited to view the photos later on. But honestly, the way she described everything about that whale in such detail, I knew her mind captured the whole thing more completely than my camera ever could. The pictures, however, are thrilling. And beautifully done, if I do say so myself.

  Peta deserves to live. Peta deserves life more than ever, now that she’s awakened to the world around her and the Holy Spirit that Joey talked about so much. Cheeta, God love her, did nothing but drag her sister down. I have to wonder about her death. I have to wonder whether it really was just a sudden occurrence.

  I feel terrible for even thinking that. But some people are just too much work on the world. Not at all like Saint Francis.

  I found the book Joey had been reading on the mystics. While I am now pursuing an understanding of faith, realizing this is important, an ingrained part of being human, I’m even farther from Saint Francis’s ideal than my husband ever was. I have cast aside forever the idea of suicide. My search has become paramount; and I’d like to just fall head first into love with Christ as Joey did, but I know so little as of yet. Who was He really? Why did God need to sacrifice Him for the sins of the world? It all seems a little strange to me, maybe because I grew up with very little training. I read Joey’s writings voraciously now, and I see Christ’s fingerprints on each page, even as I hear Him in each note of Matthew’s music and each gleam in Peta’s and Harry’s eyes.

  “Greater love has no man than this, than he would lay down his life for his friends.” Now that I can understand.

  I remember again the look on Peta’s face. She deserves to live, and I am ready to make the sacrifice. I am able to do this. I can do this. It’s not suicide if you really don’t want to die, is it?

  “This is ridiculous, Pearly,” Peta says. She shakes her head, her signature smirk attached.

  “I don’t think so at all. The least we can do is see if we’re a match for a transplant. We’re family, so there’s a better chance.”

  “Just when I got used to dialysis.”

  So Peta and I are a match. Now comes the hard part: finding a surgeon who will do this for us. Of course, Peta can know nothing about the present state of my kidneys or the whole matter will crumble. I have a feeling we’ll have to go overseas for this, to Holland or some country that allows assisted suicide and the like. Yes, there are definite moral implications to this, I know. I’m dealing with them day by day, as they surface. Is it moral for a healthy person to die for the sick and suffering?

  Jesus did.

  But … but …

  I hear all the arguments against this. First of all, I’m not Jesus. I can provide no mass redemption. I am fully aware that only the actual death is what I would have in common.

  Second of all, if this became common practice, we would all be in a mess. I admit that, too.

  But my heart tells me this is right. I love Peta. I love her more than anyone else here on earth now, and she’ll do more with her life and health than I ever will. Even now, I still have no real purpose. At least my dying would serve the greater good. And what a great way to go! They put you under the anesthesia, and then, poof you’re gone. No pain. No suffering. Nothing.

  “I have the power to lay down my life, and I have the power to take it back up again.”

  And there’s the difference between me and the Lord on this matter.

  Richard King is going to have a fit, but he said if there was anything he could do …

  “Miss Pearly, this is ridiculous! You can’t do this.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Not with my help.”

  “So my life is more important than Peta’s?”

  “Not in the grand scheme of things, but to me, yes.”

  We’re sitting over coffee at the Greek Family Restaurant. Richie requested the nonsmoking section. I guess I’ll forgive him.

  He reaches out and takes my hand. “Miss Pearly, are you actually considering this? I mean, for real? This isn’t one of your plots?”

  “One of my plots? When have I ever had a plot in my entire life?”

  He shakes his head. “No time that I can think of really, but no one is ever too old to start.”

  “I guess I’m living proof of that.”

  He is silent. He removes his hand and takes a sip of his coffee. “You’ve got a lot to live for.”

  “Name one thing.”

  “…”

  “See? You can’t think of anything. Not now that Joey’s dead.”

  “Oh, surely Dr. Laurel wasn’t your whole life!”

  “…”

  “This is craziness!”

  “I know. I’ve always been a little crazy.”

  “No you haven’t. So don’t even go there.”

  He must be upset, using vernacular and all. Good. I’m glad he realizes I’m serious.

  “Have you thought about this from all angles?” he asks.

  “I believe so.”

  “Have you thought what this will do to Peta?”

  “Yes. She’ll go on. Peta always does.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “She has to.”

  “No, Miss Pearly. Nobody has to. You’re living proof of that with this scheme.”

  “Seems I’m just the living proof of a lot of things. But Peta still deserves this. I do know that.”

  “Maybe. But she’s on the list for donation, right?”

  “Yes. But she’s almost seventy, Richie. I imagine she’s pretty far down. And I’m a perfect match.”

  “Would you do this for anybody else?”

  “Probably. Anybody’s life is worth more than mine.”

  “See there?” He flat-hands the table. “You’re depressed. If I get you on Lexapro or Paxil, I bet you’d change your mind as soon as the medication kicks in.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Will you give it a try? For me?”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “Then you can go on with your scheme. Just give it a try.”

  I look up at the ceiling, wondering if he’s right. Is it depression that’s leading me to even consider something like this? What could it hurt? Peta’s fine on the dialysis for now. We do have a little time. “Okay. I’ll try it.”

  He blows a sigh of relief. “Good. I’m calling the prescription in and having it delivered, so you have no excuses. Eckerd’s. Right?”

  “Yes.” I roll my eyes. “You’re still a piece of work, Richie King. You still don’t know how to take no for an answer, do you?”

  “Never have.”

  This time I reach for his hand. “I do love you, Richie.”

  “Then show me you do by abandoning this plan.”

  “I can’t do that. I love Peta more.”

  Well, I traded in my old Escort for a sporty little MG. Mustard yellow. I figure with the limited time remaining I’ll live it up. Joey would approve.

  I pick up Matthew at Lafayette. The school year is over. Oh, his graduation stirred us all. Peta and I, Maida, Shrubby, and Yolanda sat there and cried together.

  “I’ve decided to have a big yard sale next month,” I tell Matthew as we zip down Route 13. “I have so much stuff I’m not using. Then I’m going to sell th
e house in Havre de Grace.”

  “Staying at the cabin for good, then?”

  “Yep.”

  “Great. That’s where your life is anyway.”

  “I know.”

  What he doesn’t know is that I’m leaving everything to him, for his education. I’ll die much better knowing Matthew’s all set.

  “So,” I say, “you want to stay at the cabin all summer? You’re more than welcome to.”

  “I think so. I’ll need to visit Luray a couple of times, but I really need a job. I gotta make some bucks for school.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that. I want to pay your tuition for this year.”

  “Mrs. Laurel! Really?”

  “Yes. I find myself feeling awfully responsible for your welfare.”

  He grins. “Well, thanks. That’ll make it a lot easier. Now I’ll only have to make enough for room and board.”

  He’s going to Towson State to major in music. I told him to try for Juilliard or something, but he refused. I wish he possessed more confidence, but he still sees himself as the boy living in a hovel. Hopefully the confidence will come.

  “So what’s on for tonight?” he asks.

  “Dinner with Peta and Harry.”

  “Cool.”

  The wind ruffles our hair. “There’s a little present for you right there in my tote bag.”

  He reaches into the compartment at the back and pulls out the small, gift-wrapped box.

  “It’s not your graduation present, mind you. It’s more of a welcome-to-summer present.”

  “You’re too much, Mrs. Laurel.”

  “I try.”

  He pulls open the paper, opens the hinged box. “Sunglasses! Wow, these are cool.”

  “The guy at the mall assured me they’re the latest thing.”

  “They’re great!” He slips them on and looks at me. “What do you think?”

  “Fabulous. I couldn’t have you tooling around with me in the MG without cool shades.”