Sensing Light

by Mark A. Jacobson

  “That’s what he called it. He would imagine a hypothetical world in which a single virtue was missing. Then he’d think through the possible consequences. Though how he could be certain he had worked through every scenario was sketchy.”

  “Huh? You lost me.”

  “Kevin told you about Marco’s lab experiments, right? The ones with gene-knockout mice?”

  “Yes,” she answered dubiously.

  “He was trying to do the same thing, like eliminating a gene from a stem cell and then seeing what happens when it grows into an adult mouse. He would delete a virtue, say beauty, from his imaginary world and think through what it would be like to live in this world where nobody would care whether the things they made, their environment, even the people themselves were ugly or beautiful. And the whole point was to figure out if enough redeeming features remained to make living in such a world worthwhile. It seemed clever to me. He claimed he’d discovered there are only eight absolutely essential virtues.”

  “Oh, Herb, no one could possibly think of every consequence of deleting a virtue from a hypothetical world. That’s textbook mania—flight of ideas, grandiosity.”

  “I know, but it was wonderful that he wanted to be creative and productive to the very end.”

  “Yeah, though it’s strange because at the same time he was trying so hard to accept death.”

  “Right! And he was doing both with the same intensity. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “For sure. Hey, the philosophy stuff had to be delusional, but what about letting go? Do you think he pulled that off? Was he at peace at the end?”

  “I bet he got closer than I will.”

  “Me too.”

  They cradled their china cups, each lost in their own thoughts. Gwen broke the silence.

  “Herb, I’m curious. How did you and Kevin become so close? I mean there are lots of people I’ve enjoyed working with for years and only know the most superficial details of their lives.”

  “It happened right after his father died. I was always fond of Kevin, but I do tend to compartmentalize work and intimacy. Anyway, he told me about their relationship, which was as tortured and unresolved as mine with my father. So I reciprocated. Knowing we had that in common was huge. It made me comfortable sharing other private things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, family issues, like the difficulty I’ve had connecting with my kids. Hearing his viewpoint was helpful. Incredibly helpful, actually.”

  Gwen’s eyes widened. She cautiously slipped Kevin’s letter out of her purse.

  “Herb, what were Kevin’s eight virtues?”

  “All I remember is that he had the three core principles of bioethics—autonomy, beneficence, and justice. Hmm, I think authenticity, too.”

  “Did he have a hierarchy, I mean for when there were conflicts, say between beneficence and privacy?”

  “Privacy?”

  “No, autonomy,” she said, flustered. “No, I meant authenticity.”

  Her lips tightened. Herb shifted uneasily in his chair.

  Gwen composed herself.

  “What about the conflict between beneficence and authenticity?” she asked.

  “You want to know what Kevin thought?”

  “No. What you think.”

  Herb returned her gaze.

  “Authenticity has to win.”

  “OK, then there’s something you ought to see.”

  She set the letter on the table. He immediately recognized Kevin’s handwriting and looked up at her. She was biting her lips. Her eyes were red.

  “What’s going on, Gwen?”

  “I don’t know what the right thing to do is. Katherine, Kevin’s sister, gave me this. He sent it to her just before he died. It’s about me…and you, too. Reading it was hard but so…so worthwhile.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Herb, reaching for the letter. “I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.”

  As he read, she saw Kevin’s letter reflected in his face. Wistful when Kevin let go of his books and clothes. Sympathetic when he wrote about her loss of affection for Rick. Humiliated when he described Herb bringing Martin to his apartment. Stunned at the end by the possibility his son might be reckless enough to have unprotected sex in a bathhouse.

  Staring down, shoulders sagging, Herb slowly shook his head. He let Gwen hold his hands.

  “Kevin was right. You know that, don’t you? Believing in your son’s judgment is the solution, the only solution.”

  Herb nodded yes.

  “That would be Martin,” he said with a glimmer of hope, “having to see for himself.”

  They finally stopped talking at dawn while huddling in a passenger line on the Tegel tarmac. It was biting cold. Orange, gelid sunlight emerged from the east. At last, a perfectly clear Berlin sky. In the flat asphalt bottomland, silver fuselages waited expectantly. They watched jets depart, one after another, ascending into ether. Sleek, free, without a net. There was nothing to protect them from falling to earth and nothing to keep them from reaching their destination, except air.

  Epilogue, 1991

  I

  ON AN EARLY SEPTEMBER morning, Herb was orienting two new pulmonary fellows to their City Hospital rotation. As soon as he mentioned that aerosolized pentamidine would be part of their responsibilities, their smiles disappeared. They cringed when he said an average ten new AIDS patients would have to be evaluated each week for the treatment. They cringed again when he told them there were two hundred patients currently on pentamidine who would need monthly labs checked and orders rewritten. It was implicit this would be on top of the consults and bronchoscopies pulmonary fellows were always required to do.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen the New England Journal article. Breathing pentamidine mist for just thirty minutes once a month significantly reduces the risk of developing Pneumocystis pneumonia,” said Herb. “We’re already seeing the effect. The number of new cases diagnosed every month at City Hospital is dropping. It likely improves survival as well, though we don’t have the data to prove that yet.”

  “By how long, do you think?” asked one.

  Herb thought he heard the subtext, “Why are we bothering to do this?” He was tempted to ask the fellow if he would be more enthusiastic if the procedure was handsomely reimbursed by private insurance plans.

  Herb stifled the retort. He had been asked a reasonable question. It wasn’t fair to assume the young man’s motivation was crass materialism. His answer was upbeat.

  “I don’t know, but data we gather from the work you do here will answer that question.”

  That afternoon, Gwen had a clinic devoted exclusively to women. She peeked into the waiting room and waved to familiar faces, mostly black and Latina. Fewer of them were emaciated than a year ago when she started having these women meet to support each other in getting sober and taking medication regularly. Seeing them gain weight kept her stubbornly optimistic. She believed antiretroviral drugs with long-term efficacy would become available in time to save some of their lives.

  Moments later, her sunny mood was challenged. The new patient in her exam room was a Guatemalan immigrant already consumed by the infection, her body little more than bones wrapped in skin. As Gwen entered, the woman drew her lips back in fear. Gwen gave her a well-practiced, reassuring smile.

  After clinic, she met Herb in the parking lot. They drove to the large open square in front of City Hall, covered temporarily by four massive quilts. The riot of colors and textures in the usually drab, concrete plaza was jarring. They had expected something funereal. Bright reflections from rhinestones, sequins, and bits of metal made them squint.

  Herb looked dismayed. Attempting to encourage him, Gwen pointed at panels made of yarn, denim, lace, leather, and taffeta. But he noticed their uniform dimensions, three by six feet.

  “They’re each the size of a grave,” he whispered.

  She lowered her head and paid attention to details. A panel at a time, she thought, will be easier to han
dle than this sea of death surrounding us. They began a systematic inspection. Rather than hoping to be uplifted, they simply searched for memorials to those they had known.

  Gwen succeeded first. She found Hubert Wilson’s name penned in large flowing letters, surrounded by Polaroid photos of his drawings. At the four corners of the panel were paperweights, the kind sold to tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf, little models of Coit Tower. She guessed this was as close to publication as Hubert’s work would get. His sister told Gwen at his funeral that she had talked to a number of small presses. None were interested.

  Herb found Laurie Hampton next. A snapshot of her in scrubs, with a stethoscope around her neck, was set in a mosaic of popular music—original forty-five discs of It’s My Party and Respect, album covers of The Beatles and Bonnie Raitt, scraps of sheet music from a fake book. She must have played the piano, he thought, which only made him sadder.

  Having paid their respects, they were ready to give another try at viewing the quilts as a whole. They climbed up City Hall steps but stayed less than a minute. The sum of these panels, each capturing the quirks of someone’s personality and the senselessness of his or her death, was too much.

  As they were leaving, an object caught Herb’s eye—a green, gabardine sash mounted on a yellow throw rug.

  “Look,” he called to Gwen.

  Sewn on the sash were embroidered discs. Gwen knelt down to touch the threaded shapes—a moccasin, a tent, a life preserver.

  “Merit badges!” they exclaimed in unison.

  II

  THE RINGING OF IRON chisels on Carrara marble filled a third story loft in Oakland’s waterfront district. Nan’s rhythm was faster, a swift down-stroke of the mallet followed by a sharp peal at two second intervals. Gwen’s cycle took three seconds. Everyone wore ear plugs, including Rick, who lounged on a couch nude except for the small cloth placed decorously over his groin.

  Classical music blasted from a tape deck. Nan and Gwen had discovered the sound of iron on marble could complement certain concertos and symphonies. Their choice of chisels depended on the key.

  Nan was carving a Madonna, using a plaster reproduction of a sixteenth century work as her model. She needed to maintain so much focus on angles, distances, and symmetry that just to copy was daunting. Gwen, though slower at cutting stone, had a surer feel for the right depth. She had moved on to a live model.

  “Anyone want tea?” Nan yelled.

  “Yes, please,” Gwen and Rick sang out.

  On her way to the kitchenette, Nan paused at Gwen’s block, cut roughly in the form of a reclining man. Separate limbs were becoming visible.

  “I like the calf.”

  “His calf is hot! Hope I get it right.”

  “I’d like some tea,” Rick appealed.

  “Oh, you’re cold,” crooned Nan and Gwen.

  Nan bustled to the burner, and Rick returned to his book, a history of the ancient Greek Olympic Games. Gwen stopped hammering to study his leg. He gazed at her. She met his eyes. Her lips made a kiss. The echo of her hammering continued to mark time. After three beats, Rick’s attention drifted back to his book and Gwen’s to chipping away grains of marble, smoothing surfaces, and turning the stone block into a statue of her lover, one that might last a thousand years.

  Later in the afternoon, Herb sat with Martin and seventy thousand other spectators in a stadium nestled in the hills above the Berkeley campus. They had said little during the first half of the game. The contest, compelling initially, was boring Herb now that Cal was three touchdowns ahead of the visiting team. He realized he had never seen his son watch sports on television or read the sports section of a newspaper.

  “How long have you been a football fan?” he asked.

  “Since freshman year. I go to every home game.”

  Herb was perplexed. Why would Martin, who lost interest in soccer before high school because jostling for the ball had become too physical for him, enjoy a game in which people intentionally bashed into each other?

  “Hey, Dad. There are a lot of good-looking guys out there.”

  Herb contemplated the linemen, their bulging thighs tensed in anticipation. Suddenly, the players were in motion. The quarterback lateraled the ball to a trailing running back while a receiver and a defensive back sprinted downfield. A perfect spiral fell inches beyond their outstretched fingers. With a stealthy glance, Martin saw his father’s faint smile.

  At halftime, they talked about the campus gay rights group Martin led, the work he did advocating against discrimination.

  “You can tell where this is going, can’t you?” said Martin. “I might have to become a lawyer like my weird sister. It’s probably the only way I can make a difference.”

  “I suppose there are worse fates. Maybe you should consider yourself lucky.”

  “Actually, I do, Dad.”

  Herb hadn’t expected this response. As it sank in, his mind was deluged with questions. He couldn’t sort through them all, let alone choose which one to ask. Martin grinned and punched him affectionately. Herb draped an arm over his son’s shoulders. Martin didn’t pull away.

  III

  DE LAVEAGA DELL IN Golden Gate Park was empty at dusk on the last Sunday of September. Two hundred volunteers had been there earlier in the day, weeding, clearing dead wood, and digging out brambles. Before leaving, they planted a dozen redwood saplings and placed an engraved bronze plaque at the base of each one.

  Herb reached the dell as the sun was setting. He sat down by a plaque that read, “Kevin Bartholomew Memorial Tree.” Five minutes later, Gwen joined him.

  “I brought tools,” she said and handed him a trowel from her bag.

  They dug holes at the four cardinal points surrounding the slender trunk, taking care to shape curved, perpendicular walls, a trowel-length deep. When Herb finished, he leaned back on his elbows. In the distance, he recognized Katherine. He had met her at the wake after Kevin’s funeral. She was wearing a sleeveless summer dress. Her long auburn hair was lifted by a sea breeze. The pale freckles on her neck were just like Kevin’s.

  “There she is,” he said.

  Gwen jumped up and shouted, “Here we are.”

  The two women waved excitedly then stopped, simultaneously aware that gravitas was more appropriate at this moment. Both bit their lips to keep from laughing. They stared at each other in wonder over the identical sequence of their reactions. They had already spent hours talking since Katherine flew in from Boston. Gwen now felt she could tell her anything. The self-restraint she occasionally needed to exert with Nan and Rick, even with Kevin when he was alive, was unnecessary. Katherine had become the sister she never had.

  After hugs, Katherine reached into her purse for a plastic bag. She emptied tiny portions of Kevin’s ashes into each of the four holes. Gwen and Herb backfilled their excavations with loose earth and tamped it firm.

  Katherine poured the remaining ashes into the trowels which Herb and Gwen held skyward. Another sea breeze arrived. They all watched as black swirls rose and disappeared into the twilight.

  Afterword

  There is no testimony that does not structurally imply in itself the possibility of fiction, simulacra, dissimulation, lie, and perjury—that is to say, the possibility of literature.

  JACQUES DERRIDA

  FICTION AND TESTIMONY

  FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN learning more about how the AIDS epidemic unfolded in the 1980s, two excellent sources are And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts and Virus by Luc Montagnier.

  The impetus for writing this book was the curiosity of my students and residents, as well as my children, Sarai and Mike, about the early days of the epidemic. I am deeply grateful to Ray Riegert, Leslie Henriques, and Jim Vaccaro for their steadfast encouragement and to Tom Jenks, Jennifer Walsh, Bonnie Carton, Edith Reisner-Newton, Jessica O’Dwyer, Jonas Jacobson, Susan Light, and Barbara Wright for their immensely helpful feedback. I’m indebted to the following family and friends for their suggestions and sup
port: Ilona Frieden, Steven, Susan, Ann, and Craig Jacobson, Jesse Carton, Sarajo, Susan and Gabe Frieden, Lorraine and Anita Robinson, Hazel Becker, Felicia Liu, David Gary, Jeff Curtis, and Jim Chanin. Without the mentoring of John Mills, Merle Sande, Lowell Young, Paul Volberding, Connie Wofsy, and Donald Abrams, neither my career as an HIV clinician/researcher nor this book would have been possible. Lastly, I want to acknowledge Hopkins Stanley, Lawry Kaplan, Karena Franses, and the many other nurses, doctors, and social workers at San Francisco General Hospital who have been my role models for compassion.