by Melanie Mah
“I was holding his hand,” I said, “and I could feel him holding me back.”
She said that was a muscular reflex. Trina asked if there was any chance Gene could come back. The doctor said it was highly unlikely. Once she left, Trina and I explained it all to our parents to make sure they understood, and then we sat in silence. A few minutes later, Trina got up.
“Are you sure he can’t come back?” I asked as she left Gene’s bedside.
I left, too, and saw Trina in the hall with the doctor. She asked about the chances. She wanted numbers. I wanted to know and also didn’t, but I stayed to hear the doctor say there wasn’t any chance at all.
We weren’t halfway back to Gene’s bed when my dad asked, “What if we keep him alive?” My mom looked up at us. She wondered, too.
“He’s not really alive,” Trina said. “He can’t think or talk. He’ll never wake up.”
“No chance?”
“I don’t think so, Ba.”
We couldn’t stay there forever. I thought of Gene connected to machines in Calgary while we went back to Spring Hills. Lonely. People talk about a light at the end. Do we all see that, or is that just if you’re in between? Maybe Gene saw that light now. He couldn’t pull back and he couldn’t go towards it, so long as we didn’t let him. It seemed wrong, somehow, to keep him alive. He tried killing himself, after all.
“I wouldn’t want to be kept alive by machines,” I said. “Like, if there was a chance I’d come back, then fine. But don’t say no just because you’re not ready.”
My dad didn’t understand, but my mom did. Gene was her baby, her favourite.
“I understand if you need time, but this is a choice we have to make.”
“Why?” my dad said, angry.
“Because he’s not coming back,” I said. I was angry, too.
No one said anything after that. All together in that big blue room under artificial light, each of us was nonetheless alone. I looked at the floor, at my knees. I thought of Gene. What does a person need to feel in order to choose that? Could we have done something else, something more?
Trina said to our mom and dad, “I don’t want to tell the doctor to unplug him, either. It’s gonna hurt. A lot. It’s gonna hurt if you tell her in an hour and it’s gonna hurt if you tell her in a month or a year. You might need time to say goodbye, but you’ll have to say it. He’s not coming back.”
Gene was lying right there. Could he sense our depleting hope?
“It’s gonna be okay,” I said to him, but I didn’t believe it. I was horrified by what he’d done. I couldn’t understand it at all. It was disgusting. Still, if he was in there, I wanted to comfort him, tell him I loved him and wanted the best for him. “Whatever needs to happen’s gonna happen.”
I stroked his arm, and tried to think of something else. I remembered a time at the dinner table. Gene’s spot was across from my dad’s. One night, their eyes locked. My dad has this way of not turning away sometimes, even when you look back. Was it curiosity or a challenge? In the wild, the lesser animal is the first to look away. They stared at each other for three seconds — then the soup came, shot like fountain water from Gene’s mouth. It was a weird way to ease tension but it worked. Soup in the fish and chips, my dad rat tat tat swearing in Chinese, though he wasn’t really mad. It was funny, and I’ll always remember it.
“Remember his drawings?” Trina asked. “Garfield?”
Garfield was his favourite when he was young. “Yeah,” I said.
We went on like that. My mom cried, talked about how much he liked corn when he was young. I thought about his fifty-dollar allowance — I only got ten — and about how my mom, all through August, would say, “Happy birthmonth,” to Gene, even though he was born August 29.
Finally, my dad said, “If there no chance for him come back, I think we should unplug. I feel so sad see him lie there.”
We all stopped talking then. Trina watched her own feet kick forward over and over. Then she nodded and looked at me. What could I do? I nodded, too. My mom needed more time, but eventually, she agreed. Trina told the doctor what we’d decided, and our parents signed some papers. We went back to Gene with the doctor. It was morning. I thought of people waking up, padding through their morning routines. I tried to feel like we hadn’t just betrayed him.
“We need time,” Trina said to her.
When she left, I put my arms around Gene, careful not to disturb the tubes in his nose and arms. I put my ear to his chest, heard a sound like hydraulic brakes in reverse, a slow ascending kshhh, and after each forced inhale, a passive exhale, air rushing out on its own. He smelled like b.o., farm, chemicals. I whispered in his ear, “Gene. Wake up.” Then, more urgently: “Come on, man. Get up. We’re gonna unplug you.” But I wasn’t dumb. I knew how things worked. I just said it to say it.
Everyone had a moment with him. Trina lifted the sheets, looked at his hands: swollen, bigger. He would’ve liked that. His long, skinny, flat feet. No one else has feet like that.
“Goodbye, Son,” my dad said. His last son. He put his hand on Gene’s head to shove it around, and almost dislodged some tubes.
“Ba, careful!” Trina said, rushing in to rearrange them.
My mom held Gene’s hand in both of hers. “Wah, jong nuen,” she said, hopeful, to my dad. He’s still warm. We had to tell her that’s just what bodies do, and it didn’t mean what she thought it did. It hurt to say. She started crying again. “I’ll miss you,” she said to Gene.
Trina and I gripped each other and wondered what was wrong with our family that we kept dying like this. We watched the monitors, the numbers — heart rate, blood pressure — that peaking green line.
A nurse came in. There was nothing else to do. She asked if we were ready. All the hinges and metal on the bed, which was not like a bed at all. Your body is a fortress of life. Most of what it does — breathe, eat, fight disease, remove wastes — is to protect against death. In the room where Gene died, each unplugged machine pulled away a barrier. We crowded around him, watched as numbers on the monitors slowly dropped. Every time they went up, we cheered, out loud but quietly. We thought he was rallying. We’d seen enough reprieves in movies and on tv to think it might be possible. We didn’t touch him or interfere in any way.
A rustle of curtains. The nurse showed up, muted the monitors before he flatlined, and then she left the room. Trina started singing, didn’t care who heard. The song was “Babe” by Styx. It was cheesy but appropriate. Plus, who am I to shit on someone else’s way of grieving? My dad stood stone-faced. My mom, by Gene’s head, bawled. I went over and held her. Trina held my dad’s arm. Every time I felt the tears subside, I looked at Gene. Though he was paler and skinnier than before, he was still handsome. The nurse came back in and said she’d never seen such a strong family. I couldn’t see it.
GENE HAD WRITTEN in his journal about how he felt bad, both for making us go through his shutting us out, and for the times we had to take care of him. He wrote of how bad things got sometimes. Imagine not having control of your body during what should be the prime of your life, always wondering how bad your next bout would be and when it would come, and on top of that, losing your family confidante, the only one who really got you. He wrote of how it didn’t seem worth the effort for us to knock on his door and for him to open it. That was something he felt sad about. He wrote of feeling like he was at the bottom of a well. Above him, people were going about their lives. He could sometimes see their shadows move, and he sometimes wanted to call out to them, but he knew there’d never be enough rope, and he doubted two young girls and two old people would have the strength to pull him out. And why should he rely on us anyway? There was nothing that could be done, he knew that death was on its way. It was he who came up with the idea that we would all die at eighteen and out of town. If that was true, time was ticking. He felt sorry for us not knowing, and at the same time envious that we could live our lives unfettered. He hadn’t known what to do with the r
est of the time he had, though. He wasn’t sure he was living the right way. How do you choose to live when you know your time is running out?
21
*
SCHOOL FINISHES FOR the year. I study like crazy because departmentals count for half my final grade. I write a few, do okay. Mike Brown still pipes up with his old Trina chestnut but no one laughs. In the middle of it all, envelopes with university logos on them find their way into the mail.
I’m carrying the first few upstairs when my mom sees me, her eyes bugging out with curiosity. I tell her what they are, and I love myself a little bit for making her smile so wide. I open the letters with her, give her the play by play. One single-page reply, the rest acceptances. I can’t believe that they want me. Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Hunter College. u of a wants to give me a scholarship. My mom tells me how great this is.
I try to picture myself somewhere else. New York. Brownstones and fire escapes, corner stores, that accent. Lots of crime, but the sun’s on me as I walk down the street. Toronto is good but not as good as New York. Vancouver would be okay, except it rains. Edmonton or Calgary to be close to my parents. Edmonton, so I could visit their graves. I imagine my parents alone after I’ve moved out, working till they can’t, then selling the store or trying to give it to me. No pressure. It’s only every-thing they’ve worked for their whole lives. I imagine them upstairs, watching tv all day long, my dad making two sandwiches and a can of soup for lunch, them never leaving town, no one phoning them but me.
Maybe no one, period.
“Mom, what should I do?”
Her pink cheeks. Limp bangs on her forehead, and the rest of her hair looks crooked. “Go.” Her eyes are filling.
“If it’s gonna make you sad, I won’t go.”
“I’m not sad. I’m proud.”
“You’re not sad?”
“No.”
I go to my room, call Conrad. We both want to go to New York, but it’s expensive, so we settle on Toronto, though it’s not really settling. Toronto.
“We’ll need to go this summer,” he says. “Look around, find an apartment.”
“I’ve gotta tell my parents first.” Knocking on the door. My mom. “Hey, I gotta go. Call you later?”
“Sure.”
She takes me to the bank to set up a joint account. She saved money for five kids to go to school and now only one of us might be going. In the teller line, I say, “What would you think about me going to Toronto?”
Her eyes open extra wide. “So far?”
“It’s the best school in Canada, the biggest.”
She knows. Her first deposit’s ten thousand dollars.
It’s lunch when we get home. My dad’s complaining again about how much work it is to cook an extra set of meals for me. Then he asks what I want on Thursday.
“First you complain, then you ask me what to cook? I don’t know.” I want to tell him about schools, about how I’ve been accepted and wonder if I should go, and all he can think about is food.
“Well, it’s your birdday,” he grumbles, defensive. “You choose.”
My birthday. I guess it will be. Thursday is four days from now.
Later on, I bike down the hill towards Pudgee’s. I’m thinking of Toronto and I’m sailing, the road like a parabola with individual houses on one side, gone before you even realized they were there, and it’s sunny, bumpy, fun. Almost the edge of town: on the left hand side are fields and the railroad tracks. Gravel. I skid once by accident, the most fun on three wheels, but still I slow it down. Skidding’s not a safe thing to do. The turn at the bottom of the hill comes faster than I expect. I push back on my brakes and my front end starts to slide. I realize what’s happening three seconds too late to do anything other than panic. I fly through the air, hit the ground so hard my sinuses clear. I’m Wile E. Coyote, punished by a giant anvil for hubris, for hatching a complex plan. Straw poking through my clothes, at my face. I’m on my side. Stay down.
A voice. It hurts. Bruises, worse. A truck on the side of the road.
“You all right?” he says again.
I don’t know. I wanna stay down.
“You were biking pretty crazy. I didn’t know whether to stop or go. Are you hurt?”
Yes.
“Did I hit you?”
I don’t know.
“You need a ride?”
My mom runs out when she sees me. Toronto — what the fuck was I thinking? I go upstairs and lie down. Blood on the sheets when I get up. I wash my stinging leg in the tub, my head full up with cotton and worry.
GHOSTS AND REBIRTH and heaven, oh my. What happens to us when we die? What I want is for the spirits of the people we love to remain on earth, not in a haunting, horrible way, but in a way that they can see what you’re up to sometimes and still exist and not be nothing. Maybe they could give you signs of their presence — flicker lights or play significant songs on the radio. Maybe but probably not. What if the only way we live on is in the memory of others?
SO HOW DO you prepare for what might be your last birthday?
That night I go through all my stuff, the shoeboxes under my bed. Trina’s letters, pictures, old stories and poems, clothes that belonged to my siblings. I make lists: favourite colours, songs, moments in life. I write eighteen poems, one for each year, even the ones I don’t remember. My parents down the hall, watching tv, are oblivious. I clean, go downstairs and get boxes to pack away the rest of my stuff, everything but essentials, just in case. I call Conrad three nights in a row and tell him everything he might not already know about me, starting from the top.
Wednesday night, Conrad drives into town, asks me to come over. His mom opens the door. Suitcases sit in the living room overflowing with stuff. She and Bob are going off to Tanzania to be missionaries. She says they’re leaving tomorrow. “Conrad didn’t tell you?”
“No.” He must have forgotten to say. “How long are you gone?”
“Just under three months. Don’t worry, we’ll be back to see you off for university.”
I ask about the trip while she fumbles around, holding up shirts and asking me which ones are nicer. She’s excited, lists off the shots they had to get: tetanus, diphtheria, the hepatitises, some others. Imagine going somewhere so dangerous you need shots. She mentions cholera. My dad’s mom died of that when he was young. I didn’t think people got it anymore.
“All these shots and pills,” she says. “I tell you, people better appreciate what we’re doing for them.”
“Shouldn’t the grace of God be enough?” Conrad says as he comes into the room.
“Here he is,” she says. “You invite your girlfriend over and leave her waiting?”
The word, like a halter, I accept without argument. Girlfriend.
“There’s pizza in the deep freeze and little quiche things,” she says. To me: “You can come over anytime.”
“Oh, Mummy.” He takes her in his arms. “Can I throw a party?”
“No parties,” she says. She’s already uncomfortable leaving him behind. He’s only allowed to be in Spring Hills a couple of nights a week for his summer job at the Double Scoop. His dad agreed.
“It’s Chrysler’s birthday tomorrow.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I would have got her something.” She hugs me, soft and fragrant. “I hope you get a car, a Chrysler. Wouldn’t that be perfect?”
She thinks she’s being smart. I don’t mind.
“Don’t be dumb,” Conrad says.
“A car is a great gift,” she says. “I wish my parents had got me one.”
“You don’t need a car in Toronto,” he says. “There’s bikes and transit and —”
“Biking in Toronto. Good grief. Can you believe this, Chris? Promise me you’ll take care of him.”
“I’ll do my best,” I say.
Later, in Conrad’s room, he turns down the light, and we kiss.
“Sorry about my mom,” he says.
“I don’t mind.
I like her.” There’s music, slow and sad. We hold each other awhile, then I pull away, put on a brave smile. “It’s my last day of seventeen.”
“Yep.” His eyes are a little sad, too.
“So I probably can’t stay long. Sorry you came all this way.”
“You apologize for the dumbest things, I swear.”
“Yeah? Fuck you,” I say.
“Fuck you, too.”
He lifts me onto his desk. I wrap my arms and legs around him. I’m wearing jeans, he’s in khaki shorts. So much fabric between us. I breathe him in, vanilla, eggs, sugar, musk.
“Wanna do it?” I say.
“Play Parcheesi?”
“Backgammon. It might be your last chance.”
“That’s some pickup line,” he says.
“I cut my nails today. They say your nails keep growing after you die.”
“Morbidity. I like that in a girl.”
“You should date Jess Henry. She’s the goth in my school. She’ll probably be at my funeral, if you wanna meet her.”
“Is she cute?”
“In a Victorian kind of way.”
“I’ll think about it,” he says, and starts kissing me. Random places on my face. “I love you,” he says. “Please don’t worry.” To distract me, he asks about my brothers and sisters, wants to know what I like about my mom, what I’d build a house with given the choice of sticks or cardboard boxes.
I ask him again if he wants to do it. He doesn’t say outright that he doesn’t, but we don’t, not even when I put my hand on it. The first time I do, he sings a funky seventies song and thrusts into my hand as a joke. The second time, we’re talking about whether or not I’ll ever want kids, and I stroke till he pulls my hand away.
I leave his house around nine. He asks if he can come, but I tell him I should be alone. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. He’s made a plan for after dinner, but who knows if I can make it.