“Andy? It’s Bobby. Remember me, Bobby? Yeah, I thought you did. You look freaking great, man. Awesome. How’re you feeling, Andy? Bobby. It’s Bobby. I’m psyched to see you, you know why? It’s already been two weeks. And you know what? World of difference …”
Perry rolled his eyes at Scott. He looked better, Scott noticed, but was spending energy unnecessarily expressing the irritability factor. Relax, Scott telepathed, but Bobby was so loud.
“World of difference, between here and Stony Brook? Awwe-some. What’s that? I can’t do that, sweetie, okay? I don’t think they’d be too happy if I took these mitts awffa-you.”
Andy whimpered, gathering his anger and muttering to Bobby about his imaginary brute.
“I’ll go ask, dude. I’ll go ask Matthew. You say his name is Matthew. What? You want me to do it instead? Okay, get awffa him, get awffa him now! Done! You need anything, Andy? Anything from the outside world? Blondies? Blondies from the Golden Pear? Done. Done!”
Scott said to Perry, “How’s the food?”
“It’s all right,” said Perry, eating methodically and not without some relish, “not shitty.”
Lunch was tuna salad, mashed peas, whole-grain roll, and fruit cup. Perry ate it, and Scott was glad though he wondered if Perry wasn’t just being brave. He could do that in a pinch. His courage could be unstoppable and clobber away at Scott’s heart and even shame him. Everyone was so nice here, too. It was heartbreaking, it seemed so effortless as long as you had insurance.
Perry said, “I was talking to the physical and occupational therapists today, who said I’m doing a wonderful job, and they said I might not have to take the four weeks but could go home after three. I got a note from a fan today who’s doing my bibliography. And he’s offering to transcribe my Paris memoir. And I told him how much better, especially with the encouragement I get from you, I’m doing, and he said, ‘Scott must be a really great guy.’ I wrote back, ‘Without Scott, nothing!’ And I meant it, too. I cried. Sweetie, I wrote three pages today!”
Scott was not going whole-hog with the sentimental today. If Perry was coming home so soon, rather than on the originally projected date, he was not getting the cushy, sugary treatment.
“And didn’t get tired?” he said.
“Tired, a little. But I’m really starting to get restless.”
Then Perry quietly grinned at Scott. The curtain was drawn. The Long Islander prattled.
“But Andy, you know what? The stock’s doing beautifully. And you know what’s flying awff the shelves? You were right—it’s the Vapor Sneakers.” He said it Vapah Sneakahs. “They cannot stay on the shelves, I swear to God! My friend Georgie, you remember Georgie?—by the way, everyone says to tell you hello—Georgie came in and bought two pair. What, sweetie? No, I can’t do that, they’ll kick me out. Get awffa him! Done! But seriously, Andy, sales are boffo.”
After Andy had been assured of sales in the pro shop, Bobby left. Scott could see around the curtain as Bobby got up—he was an attractive, youngish man—and leaned over the helpless-looking patient, who wheezed and prattled against the exhaustion and no doubt the drug doses.
“You want what, sweetheart?” Bobby lowered his ear to Andy’s lips. “You want what?”
Andy’s eyes gazed moribundly. With the helmet off, a deep dent that extended from his right forehead nearly back to his shaved crown shined with scar tissue as white as a fish’s belly. Andy clutched a plush bunny that Bobby pulled from his grip and repositioned between the right side of Andy’s head and the bed railing. Bobby kissed the undented side of Andy’s shaved head.
That night, Andy startled Perry awake, calling, “Sir, where’s Zach? Have you seen Zach, my boyfriend? Do you know if he came and went already? I miss Zach. He’s my boyfriend.”
“I haven’t seen him, Andy.”
“Sir, can I ask you a question? I have this boyfriend Zach. He was supposed to come see me, but I fell asleep. Did a guy named Zach come while I was asleep? Did he leave already?”
“I haven’t seen him, Andy. No one’s been in here but the nurses, okay? Try to sleep.”
“But if you see Zach, tell him to wake me up, okay? Make sure he wakes me up?”
“If Zach comes, I promise I will not let him leave without first waking you up.”
“I miss him. Do you think he’ll come?”
“It’s already late. It’s four in the morning.”
“Means the bar’s closed. Fuck! Sir?”
“Good night, Andy. Good night. Good night.”
Before Scott had left that evening, Andy had asked his friend Bobby for a Cap ’n’ Coke.
“Can’t do it, sweetie, but you know what? Amber and Ray and all those guys in the shop and club and around the courts, they all said to wish you the best, and tell you they’re rooting for you. So you see, everybody’s rooting for you, sweetie—and I think that’s awesome, don’t you?”
After Bobby was gone, Matthew the nurse came in and said, “So you’re a tennis pro?”
“Fuck that,” said Andy, his pronunciation coming and going. “Doesn’t mean shit.”
“Do you know how you got here, Andy?”
Andy waited. He smacked his lips, breathing hard as though his chest were collapsing.
“Hi had-huh car-haccident, hand-huh stroke. Hi-had three stroke—hin—three-hweek!”
The next day when Scott returned, Andy had just been hauled off for his swallowing test.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Perry, keeping his voice low. “All night, he wouldn’t shut up.”
Scott wondered if Perry was refusing to modulate his voice or if it was another symptom.
“Should I be whispering?” said Scott. “I mean, should we be holding our voices down?”
“Is she out there?”
Scott looked into the hallway, and there was a woman he’d passed coming in. She was sitting in one of the wheelchairs they kept lined up near the elevator until they needed one. She looked fashionably soignée, on a course of Zumba or something. She had a bright, steady smile.
“That’s his best friend.”
Scott said, “So he’s gay, like I said.”
“But he has a daughter, I think, with some kind of weird name.”
“Coach. That’s his dog. He was asking Bobby to go check in on it. Well, we all say it too much, and it must mean less and less to you each time we say it—but you look great.”
“I just hope you’re taking care of yourself, getting enough sleep and eating enough.”
“This is a vacation for me compared to the first time,” said Scott. “It’s not a country club for you, I know, but you’re getting full service. I don’t have to worry, just leave and go home.”
“I did deep squats today, and some stairs with a cane. I walked a yard without a walker.”
“You’re kidding! And did they at least hold your hand?”
“They were on either side of me ready to catch me the instant I might start to fall.”
The nurse whose name he couldn’t remember came in and said, “You see how he looks?”
“I sure do,” said Scott, always more cheerful here than at home. “Are you Molly?”
“No, that’s my friend. You’re confusing me with my girl Molly. Now Molly’s my girl.”
“And what island are you from?” he said, wondering if this sounded racist. “Aruba?”
“That’s Molly,” she said, staring theatrically away. “No way, I’m from T and T.”
“Trinidad and Tobago. That’s where they make the famous bitters, Angostura.”
“You know that?” she said, readying the wheelchair for Perry. “That’s exactly right.”
She took Perry off for forty-five minutes of occupational therapy, and the woman who had been sitting in the hall saw Scott, got up, and came in with a tired smile and one raised eyebrow.
“You taking care of yourself?” she said. “It’s important, it’s what we have to do.”
He didn’t bother to get up. In
fact, he couldn’t sleep, so he sat up every night listening to Joni Mitchell and Al Stewart. He’d just started playing Seals & Crofts’ Greatest Hits and he was nostalgic and weepy, but Perry was losing his weepiness. Some of those songs transported Scott.
“Hello,” he said, already too friendly and too familiar—and she moved kittenishly farther into the room. For no reason, he winked at her. It was like he was flirting. He got so sweet here.
She said, “Perry’s doing well, isn’t he? Is he naturally hale?”
Scott wondered if “hale” wasn’t a euphemism for what used to be called portly.
“He’s amazingly strong, always has been. But how’s Andy doing? Is he getting better?”
“Hard to say.” She had her hands on her hips as though gearing up for a whole run-down.
“Have a seat,” he said. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“I’m Marsha,” she said—as though he must have heard already of this famous Marsha.
“I’m Scott, nice to meet you. Marsha?”
He pointed at her, as though they were at a class reunion, sending out gossamer signals.
“When do you two plan to tie the knot?” she said. “You guys planning a big one? I plan weddings. I’ll be planning my daughter’s, I’m sure. The thing is, simple invitations is what I’ve learned, simple Crane’s plain cream stationery, nothing too cutesy-pie or cutting-edge or fancy.”
“We haven’t talked about it. He needs to get well. But what about Andy? Will he—?”
“You’re asking the wrong person,” she said, slumping into a chair on Andy’s side of the room. “Four weeks ago, I said goodbye to my best friend. I knelt at the side of my friend’s bed to tell him I loved him, to say goodbye to him.” She shrugged one shoulder pad. “And now?”
“Amazing,” said Scott. “Yesterday I noticed Andy’s voice kept— wavering—good, bad.”
“It’s up and down, it’s up and down. But I tell you, when he was at Stony Brook …”
“Where his dog Coach is now, right?”
“When he was at Stony Brook—night and day between here and there. I did not see how Andy could—well, if you’d just seen him. A piece of his skull’s in a hospital basement freezer.”
“In a freezer.”
“Just the one part. It was a hemorrhagic stroke,” she said quite insouciantly, with a touch of sparkle in her eyes. “You can’t have pressure on your brain. Happens all the time, apparently. If they take a smaller piece, you know where they put it? In your abdomen, so it stays with you.”
Perry’s stroke hadn’t been hemorrhagic, which is why they could give him the clot-buster and not have him bleed to death in his brain. Scott had already stopped writing it all down. He’d stopped being angry. Perry was getting better—the only important thing now. Perry would live.
Scott thought, I’ve never been less happy or hopeful, and I’ve never been calmer.
As a kid in Sunday school, Scott had had a favorite Bible verse that went something like, “When you pray, do not be ostentatious and pray so that others may see you praying, but go into your closet and pray by yourself,” although he didn’t know why he should recall this suddenly.
Perry didn’t have afternoon therapies and Scott came in early. Marsha was already there with Andy. She sat on the other side of Andy’s bed by the wall—comfy, as though she’d just enjoyed several peaceful hours of needlepoint. Andy and the plush bunny stared at the bathroom door.
“Get you some sleep, Scottie?” she said, stretching deliciously.
He knew he looked awful. He hadn’t trimmed his beard since things had started up at the other hospital. He knew he needed to make more of an effort, but morally he was slumping. He was waiting, not so much in terror as in a state of loathing, slumming, vacationing even, before a predicted storm, a clear and present meteorological and inevitable danger, wiping them all away. Oh yes, he’d finished a bottle of the pinot the night before, and smoked a whole pack, dumbass.
“That’s a face that hasn’t slept,” Marsha said as Scott glided by stupidly. “Am I right?”
Then she went back to cooing at Andy—telling him she’d like to cook him some lentils.
“Intolerable,” Perry hissed as Scott came around the curtain. “‘Nurse, nurse!’ Big baby.”
“They’re right there, honey.”
“You know what I miss?” said Perry. He was ready to check out, restless. “Bread. Oh, I get bread here, but the good bread, the deli across the street from Balthazar’s? Yum-yum.”
“Bread, and more bread, is part of what got us here, darling.”
“Oh, I know.”
The oppressiveness of the hospital atmosphere came home to them both. They were in a hospital, an institution that said you were either gravely ill, vulnerable, or dying. When Scott was in his twenties and had little infections, he thought he had AIDS, although he hadn’t done enough to get infected, he’d hardly fucked around at all, and this in a small college town. No matter how much sex you’d had you were supposed to be leery. Later it turned out according to others you’d been scared into thinking you were vulnerable, you were a saint, acting out your natural instincts, and shouldn’t people be worshipping you? Porn sometimes depicted pretty young men as angels with actual snowy-feathered wings. From gothic perches beside gargoyles the angels looked into the camera poetically, then turned to look out over the ancient city full of hidden possibilities.
My mother, he thought, used to say, “Never be ashamed of your body. Nude is natural.”
She was coming out of the shower toweling off, and then she began powdering her pubes.
Perry pressed his call button and said into the handheld console’s mic, “I have to go to the bathroom. I need to poop,” and Scott got up and made maneuvers clearing the path of hurdles.
“Yes, Mr. Knight. Hold it a little, be right there.”
“I can’t, I swear I’ll shit,” said Perry, then to Scott: “It’s all these fucking meds.”
In came the team. Scott removed himself, not wanting to shame Perry or smell his shit.
In the hall Marsha said, “Have you met Andy’s mom? This is Madame Sullivan.”
Scott shook the hand of Andy’s mom, a small woman who he now knew was French.
“Oh, hello! You are?”
“Hi, I’m Perry Knight’s, the other guy’s, partner. Actually his fiancé.”
“I’m André’s mom. Hi. He is doing well, no, Monsieur Knight?”
“Yes, I think he is. But what about your son?”
“We wait. It’s all we can do. When the Lord decides, this is when we know.”
“But you’re from France?”
“I’m from Bordeaux, yes! I am lost—my son André—without André, I am lost.”
Scott thought, Jesus fucked his mother in the ass. Andy’s mom is French!
Her son had been working too hard, paying too much attention to his businesses and not enough to his health. He now had three pro shops but in the course of minding his finances had neglected his health. He’d stopped taking his hypertension medications. He had three pro shops but no coverage, which made Scott feel lucky to have coverage through Perry. He didn’t feel the sweet pangs of schadenfreude, only fear—not for others, but for himself and his own, far future.
Scott said, “I like Marsha. She seems so devoted, so—”
“Marsha is merveilleuse, very marvelous. But I’ve known her all this time, Marsha.”
“And she seems to have a special connection with Andy, which I find very touching.”
Whenever he spoke to French people in English he began overusing the intensifier very.
She was small and had enormous glasses. Unlike the French Scott had known when he’d lived with Perry in Paris, Madame Sullivan wanted to talk about her personal life, and money.
She said, “No, Marsha I love. But you know, she’s very, very wellzy.”
“She went to Wellesley?”
“No, she lives on Park Avenue! She has a lot of
money, a house out in the Hamptons!”
Scott was ashamed of himself. He’d thought unkind, ungenerous thoughts about Marsha, although actually in the end he’d enjoyed talking to Marsha. Marsha was selfless, a true martyr.
Now he said, “Not to mention, Marsha’s here every day.”
“Listen, I live in Connecticut. It’s not easy getting here with the trains.”
She seemed very nice but a little confused about Connecticut’s proximity to New York.
He’d been living on the edge so long, he understood when others seemed to be living on their own version of the edge. It was time for him to go. They went back to the room together.
Marsha told Madame Sullivan, “You have to go to Grand Central. It’s a simple cab ride.”
Scott said, “I’m going out now, too. I’ll take her and direct her.”
“See? A handsome young escort,” said Marsha. “Who could ask for more?”
Scott leaned over Perry’s bed and said, “I’ll be back in the morning. Okay if I go now?”
“Go,” said Perry. He looked comfortable. It was hard to know if he felt lonely.
Scott felt lonely, but the city was beautiful. So much work was being done on New York that it couldn’t help being beautiful, continuous rows of greenery. They’d had so much rain, the plants and trees in the parks and along the streets were green and fecund. It was hard to feel bad about life with all this outrageous fecundity. He’d never imagined while watching Woody Allen films as a kid that Manhattan could be such a garden. He liked living here suddenly, after years of resenting its expensiveness and snobbery just as Perry was talking about retiring to a cheaper state like Texas or Florida, but Scott had this pimple under his left nipple that wouldn’t go away. He tried not to let Perry see him scratching but it was a warm spring and he’d reach up under his shirt and slick his hand around the sweaty tit-area and feel the bump’s itchy persistent hardness.
He made an appointment. Seeing a professional was hard for him. He saw the insurance policy he got through Perry as ballast for Perry’s own health problems. Perry was HIV-positive and his complications were not as serious as for other AIDS sufferers, but there were the odd little things, the appointments you had to make at the periodontist, dermatologist, cardiologist, to keep him afloat. You never knew in this age of corner-cutting medicine when you would be told, “We are sorry but we don’t see the need for this so you owe us thousands of dollars.” And in no other country in the world! Still Scott defended America to angry liberal New Yorkers who laughed at the backward place he’d come from, redneck and racist northern Florida. They were partly right.
Little Reef and Other Stories Page 21