by Dale Peck
There’s a traffic jam. Cars are backed up to Broadway and everybody’s honking. A couple blocks away a moving van is trying to turn onto a narrow street. People at the crosswalk are getting impatient. They look around for cops and when they don’t see any, start crossing Madison between the cars.
“I’m cold,” says Jim.
He puts his free hand under his blanket. I lean down to tuck the cover more closely around his legs. His face is white.
“I’m cold,” he grumbles again, “I wanna go back in.”
“In a minute, Jim. We can’t go yet.”
“But I’m freezing.” He looks up. “Where’s the fucking sun anyway?”
I take my jacket off and wrap it around his shoulders. The cellophane of the cigarette package crinkles. I take care not to hit the drip feed tube.
People start laying on their horns. The poor stupid van ahead is moving forward then back, inch by inch, trying to squeeze around the corner.
“It’s moving, Jim. The truck’s going.”
“About time,” he says loudly, “Doesn’t the driver realize what he’s holding up here?”
Then the truck stalls. There’s the gag of the engine, silence, the rev of the motor, the sputter when the engine floods.
“Someone go tell that goddamn driver what he’s holding up here.”
People in their cars look out at Jim.
“I’ve got to get back in,” he screams, “Go! Go!” He starts shooing the cars with his hands. The drip feed swings.
I grab his arm. “Jim, the IV.”
“Fuck the IV!” he yells, “Fuck the traffic. I’m going back in. I have to get back in.”
“We’re going, Jim, the traffic’s moving now,” I lie. “We’re going in. Settle down, OK?”
He pushes himself up a couple of inches to see the truck. “The truck isn’t moving, Tonto.”
He kicks his blanket awry and tries to find the ground with his feet. “I’m walking.”
“Jim, you can’t.”
“So what am I supposed to do. Fly?”
“You’re supposed to wait. When the traffic clears—”
“I’m sick of waiting. You said it was clearing. You lied to me. I’m sick of everyone lying. I’m sick of waiting. I’m sick—” His voice cracks.
I put my hand on his arm. “When the traffic clears I’m going to push you and Silver across the street.”
“It’s not a horse,” he screams, “it’s a goddamn wheelchair!”
He starts to tremble. He grips the arms of the chair. “It’s a wheelchair full of goddamn croaking faggot!” He slaps his hands over his face and whispers, “Tonto, I don’t wanna. Don’t let me—I don’t wanna—I don’t wanna—”
I put my arms around him and pull him to me. His head is against my collarbone. His cap falls off his sweaty head. I try to hold him. He lets me a couple of seconds then he tries to pull away. He isn’t strong enough. But I know what he means so I pull back. He grabs my shirt, one of his.
“I don’t wanna—” he cries, “I don’t wanna—”
I put my hands on his back of his head and pull him to my chest.
“I don’t wanna—I don’t wanna—” he sobs.
His hands and face are wet. I hold his head.
He grabs me like a child wanting something good.
When we get back to his room he’s still crying. I ring for Dr. Allen. Jim asks me to leave.
I pace around in the hall. When Dr. Allen comes out of his room, she says, “He’s resting. He isn’t good but he’s not as bad as you think. He won’t want to see you for a while. Now we can’t pretend he’s not afraid. You can call the nurses’ station tonight if you’re concerned, but don’t come see him till tomorrow. And call first.”
I want to tell her to tell him a story, to make him not afraid.
But I don’t. I say, “I’m going to call his parents.”
She looks at me.
“Our parents,” I mumble.
“He hasn’t wanted his family to know?”
“Right.”
“Call them.”
I call his parents that night. They say they’ll fly out in the morning and be able to be with him by noon. I tell them I’ll book them a hotel a five minute walk from the hospital. They want to take the airport bus in themselves.
I call him in the morning.
“Hey, buddy.”
“Yo Tonto.”
“Listen, you want anything special today? I’m doing my Christmas shopping on the way down to see you.”
“No you’re not.”
“Who says?”
“Santa says. I called Jean and Ange this morning and you’re going down there for the week. That remodeling you were supposed to help them with way back is getting moldy. So it’s the bright lights of Olympia for you, Sex-cat.”
“Jim . . .”
“You have to go. They’re going to pay you.”
“What?!”
“They said they’d have to pay somebody, and they’re afraid to have a common laborer around the priceless silver. So they want you. And it’s not like you’ve been earning it hand over fist since you’ve been playing candy-striper with me.”
“Jim, they don’t have any money.”
“They do now. Jeannie managed to lawyer-talk her way into some loot for her latest auto disaster and Ange is determined to spend the cash before Jeannie throws it away on another seedy lemon. So, Tonto, you got to go. It’s your sororal duty.”
It was impossible to talk Jim out of anything.
“Give my best to the girls and tell Trudy the Sentinal Bitch I said a bark is a bark is a bark.”
“Doesn’t Alice get a hello?”
“Alice is stupid. I will not waste my sparkling wit on her.”
“OK . . .”
Were we going to get through this entire conversation without a mention of yesterday?
“So Tonto, the Ranger is much improved today . . . My folks called a while ago from DFW airport. They’re on their way to see me. Thanks for calling them.”
“Sure.”
“We’ll see you next week then.”
“Right.”
He hangs up the phone before I can tell him goodbye.
I drive to Olympia. Ange is outside chopping wood. When I pull into the yard she slings the axe into the center of the block. She gives me a huge hug, her great soft arms around my back, her breasts and belly big and solid against me. She holds me a long time, kisses my hair.
“Hi baby.”
“Ange.”
She puts her arm around my back and brings me inside. The house smells sweet. They’re baking. Jeannie blows me a kiss from the kitchen.
“Hello gorgeous!”
“Jeannie my darling.”
I warm my hands by the wood stove. Ange yells at Gertrude, their big ugly German shepherd, to shut up. She’s a very talkative dog. Jeannie brings in a plate of whole wheat cookies. I pick up Alice the cat from the couch and drop her on the floor. She is a stupid cat. She never protests anything. I sit on the place she’s made warm on the couch. Jean hands me the plate. The cookies are still warm. I hesitate. It always amazes me they can, along with Jeannie’s law school scholarship, support themselves by selling this horrible homemade hippie food to health food joints.
I take a cookie. “Thanks.”
“How’s Jim?”
“OK . . .”
“Bad?”
“Yeah.”
“He sounded incredibly buoyant on the phone, so we figured . . . we told him we’d come up to see him next week when we’ve finished some of this.” She nods at the cans and boards and drywall stacked up outside the spare room.
“Let’s get to work.”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
Ange puts an old Janis Joplin on the st
ereo. We knock the hell out of the walls.
They cook a very healthy dinner. As she’s about to sit down, Jeannie says, “Hey, we got some beer in case you wanted one. Want one?” Ange and Jean haven’t kept booze in their house for years.
“No thanks.” There’s a jar of some hippie fruit juice on the table. “This is fine.”
They look at each other. We eat.
I sleep on the couch in the living room. Gertrude sleeps in front of the wood stove. I listen to her snort. She turns around in circles before she settles down to sleep, her head out on her paws.
Jim and I used to flip for who got the couch and who got the tatami mat on the floor next to the dog. I lean up on my elbow to look at Trudy the Sentinal Bitch. Only Jim could have re-named her that. In the bedroom Ange and Jean talk quietly.
All the junk has been moved from the spare room into the living room. Some of it is stacked at the end of the couch. I toss the blanket off me and sift through the pile. Rolled-up posters, curling photographs. There’s a framed watercolor of Jim’s, a scene of Ange and Jeannie by the pond, with Gertrude, fishing. They look so calm together. They didn’t know Jim was painting them. They didn’t know how he saw them.
I find one of all of us, three summers ago when we climbed Mount Si. Jim is tall and bearded, his arms around the three of us, me and Jeannie squished together under his left, Ange hugged under his right. All of us are smiling at the cameraman, Scotty.
Two nights later the phone rings late. I’m awake, light on, blanket off, before they’ve answered it. When Ange comes out of the bedroom I’m already dressed.
“That was Dr. Allen. His parents are with him. You should go.”
They won’t let me drive. We all pile into the truck; Jeannie driving, Ange in the middle, me against the door. Jeannie doesn’t stop at the signs or the red lights. She keeps an even 80 on the highway. For once, Ange doesn’t razz her about her driving.
I-5 is quiet. The only things on the road are some longhaul trucks, a few cars. We see the weak beige lights of the insides of these other cars, the foggy orange lights across the valley. We drive along past sleepy Tacoma, Federal Way, the airport.
“Look, would you guys mind if I had a cigarette?”
“Go ahead baby.”
Ange reaches over me and rolls down the window. I root around in my jacket for Jim’s cigarettes. I’m glad I didn’t make that promise to him.
We pull into the hospital parking lot. My hand is on the door before we stop.
“You go up. We’ll get Bob and Dale and meet you on the floor in ten minutes.”
In the elevator is a couple a little older than me. Redeyed and sniffling like kids. We look at each other a second then look at the orange lights going up.
When the elevator opens I run. But when I see the guys in white taking things from the room in plastic bags, I stop. The man at the nurses’ station looks up.
“Your parents are in the waiting room.”
“My what?”
“Your parents.”
Then I remember how that first night, a million years ago, when Dr. Allen had told me she couldn’t tell me about Jim unless I was in his family, I had told the story of being his sister.
“Oh Christ.”
“They told me to send you in when you came.”
“Oh Jesus.”
They’ve left the waiting room door open a crack. I look in. His father is wearing an overcoat. His hands lay loose around the rim of the hat in his lap. His mother is touching her husband’s arm. Neither of them is talking.
I knock on the door very lightly. They look up.
“You must be Jim’s friend. Come in.”
I push the door open. They both stand up and put out their hands. I shake their hands.
“Mary Carlson.”
“Jim Carlson.”
I introduce myself.
“The young man at the desk told us that, before she went into surgery, Dr. Allen called our daughter and that she was on her way. But we don’t have a daughter.”
“I’m sorry, But I—the first night Jim was here I told Dr. Allen—”
Mr. Carlson is still shaking my hand. He squeezes it hard.
“You have nothing to apologize for. Jim told us what a good friend you’d been to him. Both after Scotty, and more recently.”
“Jim was a good friend too. I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner.”
“We know he asked you not to. We had a few good days with him. I think he wanted to get better before he saw us,” says Mrs. Carlson. “He didn’t want us to have to see him and have to wait the way he had to wait with Scotty.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know Scotty?”
“Yes.”
“He was a lovely young man.”
“He was good to Jim,” says Mr. Carlson. “There were things about Jim it took us a long time to understand, but he was a good son.” He says this slowly. “He was a good man.”
“Yes.”
“We loved him.” Mr. Carlson’s mouth is open like he’s going to say more, but then there’s this sound in his throat and he drops his face into his hands. “Dear God,” he says, “Oh dear God.”
Mrs. Carlson pulls her husband’s head to her breast. His hat falls to the floor.
I pick the hat up off the floor and put it on the table. I leave the room. When I close the door, I hear his father crying.
Ange and Jean and Bob and Dale are standing at the nurses’ station. The boys are in pj’s and overcoats and houseslippers. They look at me. I look at them. We all look at each other. Nobody says anything.
Dale walks over to the wall and puts his forehead against the wall. His shoulders shake. Bob goes over and puts his hand on Dale’s back. Nobody says anything.
We get in the truck to go back to Bob and Dale’s. We all insist Bob sits up front with Jean and Ange. Dale and I sit in the open back. We haul the dog-smelling woolly blanket over our knees and huddle up next to each other. I can feel the cool ribbed metal of the bottom of the truck through my jeans. Jeannie pulls us away from the bright lights of the hospital onto Madison.
It’s dark but there’re enough breaks in the clouds that we can see a star or two. The lights are off at Rex’s, the streets are empty. Jean drives so slow and cautiously, full stops at the signs and lights, and pauses at the intersections. There’s not another car on the road, but I think she hopes if she does everything very carefully, things might not break apart.
Jean stops at the light on Broadway. Dale and I look into the back window of the pickup and see their three heads—Jeannie’s punky hairdo sticking up, Ange’s halo of wild fuzz, Bob’s shiny smooth round scalp. The collar of Bob’s pj’s is crooked above his housecoat. He’s usually so neatly groomed, but now he looks like a rumpled, sleepy child.
Dale begins to tremble. I put my hand on his knee.
“Jim was a great guy, the greatest, but now it’s like he was never here. What did he ever do that’s gonna last? It’s like his life was nothing.”
“Jim was a good man,” I say.
Dale nods.
“And he loved a good man. He loved Scotty well.”
“And that’s enough?”
“It’s good,” I say, “It’s true.”
Dale takes my hand. He holds it hard. It’s the first time I notice he wears a ring.
He takes a breath. “Bob . . . you know Bob . . . I’m afraid maybe . . . I think Bob . . .”
He can’t say it. I see his eyelashes trembling, the muscles in his jaw as he tries to keep from crying. He swallows and closes his eyes.
“Bob is a good man,” says Dale.
“Yeah Dale, I know. Bob is a good man, too.”
So we all go back to Bob and Dale’s. I call the Carlson’s hotel to leave Bob and Dale’s phone number. We drink tea and sit aro
und in the living room until someone says we ought to get some sleep.
“Well, there’s plenty of pj’s,” says Bob. “We can have a pajama paaaaaaar-tay.”
He says it before he realizes it’s a Jim word. Ange and Jeannie and I try to laugh. Dale closes his eyes.
Bob and Dale get pj’s for us. They wash the teacups as Ange and Jean and I change. We all look really silly in the guys’ flannel pj’s. When the boys come out of the kitchen and see us, they laugh. It’s a real laugh. It sounds good.
Ange and Jean are going to stay in the guest room. Ange says to me, “You wanna stay with us, babe?”
Dale says, “Or you can sleep on the couch in our room.”
“Thanks guys.” I plop down on the living room couch. “This is fine with me.”
Dale goes to the linen closet to get some sheets and blankets.
If I lie next to someone I will break apart.
I wake up first. I put the water on to boil. When Jean and Ange come out of the guest room, I say “The Katzenjammer twins.”
They look at my pj’s. “Triplets,” Jeannie says.
“Quads,” says Ange when Dale comes into the kitchen.
He gives us each a scratchy, unshaven kiss on the cheek.
“Good morning lovelies.”
Jeannie nods towards the guys’ room. “Our fifth?”
“Bob’s asleep now. He was sweaty last night. I don’t think we’ll go to Jim’s.”
He goes to phone the bank and Janet, Bob’s business partner. Jean and Ange and I look at each other.
“You want me to stay with you?” asks Jean when Dale gets off the phone.
“Naaaah,” he smiles like nothing’s wrong. “Bob’ll be alright. You guys go help the Carlsons.”
We take turns in the shower while we listen for the phone. We hear Bob coughing in the bedroom.
The Carlsons call. They want to meet at Jim’s about ten to clean out the apartment. We say OK, and plan to get there a half an hour early in case there’s anything we need to “straighten up.” Not that we expect to find anything shocking, but if we were to run across something, even a magazine or a poster, it might be nicer if the Carlsons didn’t see it.
We leave Dale sitting at the kitchen table, his hands around his coffee mug. He looks lost. He looks the way he’s going to look after Bob is gone.