Paris Was the Place

by Susan Conley

  “You’d know if he was in pain, sweetness.”

  “How would we know? How do we know that Betty really understands what she’s doing?”

  “We know because this is a qualified nurse sent from my hospital.”

  “But this is not cancer, Sara. This is not juvenile diabetes, and people aren’t trained. We don’t know how it might turn here at the end. Do you, Sara? Do you know what he might be feeling right this very minute? He’s counting on me. Can you see that? We’ve got to do this right.”

  “You’d know if he was in pain because he would cry out, and he hasn’t. I can see he’s sleeping peacefully. So I’ll check his morphine drip and his pulse. We’ve seen a lot of AIDS at the hospital, Willie. Too damn much. Every case has its own story. I’ll go sit with him. And you.” She fingers my hair and smooths some of the bangs that hang across my eyebrows. “You should take a shower while I’m talking to him. And I can tell you’re not eating.”

  Sara holds Luke’s hand and occasionally touches the stubble on his head. She cries sometimes. Sometimes she talks to him. A lot of the time she’s quiet. After a while, I go to nap in Luke and Gaird’s bed. When she’s done being with him, she finds me and lies down next to me and puts her arms around me. There’s nothing for us to say. I thought there would be, but really there’s nothing except to be with my friend.

  When she stands up, she says very quietly, “He’s leaving us now, you know. It’s the start of a coma, I think, Willie. Long, peaceful sleep. How lucky for him that it may end this way. I want you to try to think like that if you can. About the luck of a peaceful ending. Think about Luke. Think about making this easy for him.” I nod at her and nod again and I can’t really speak, but that’s okay because I understand.

  THAT NIGHT Gaird paces the apartment and looks for things to question Betty about—the IV drip, the occasional spikes on the EKG machine. Macon goes to sleep in the den. Dad stays up, and comes into the kitchen for a glass of water around midnight. I’ve run out of things to do, so I’m scouring the top of the stove. “How are the numbers?”

  Dad fills his glass from the faucet. “A hundred and one degrees and holding. It’s where I thought he’d be tonight. It’s good it hasn’t gone up. But overall, the numbers are not where I’d like. They don’t tell a good story and the fever never abates, which means the body is working too hard. It feels like Luke’s slipping from us, Willow.” I stop scrubbing. “I want to go over things,” he says. “Luke may not know anymore what he wants and doesn’t want. I’d like to make some plans.”

  I stare at my father’s bare feet. He has very small toes. I want to watch Luke sleep in the living room. It’s relaxing to see his lungs fill with oxygen. “He knows what he wants,” I say. “He told me yesterday.”

  “I know what the Lord wants for him. So let’s stay calm here.” He takes a white hankie from the back pocket of his jeans and pats his forehead. “I’m trying. I don’t pretend to understand my son. He’s a homosexual, yes, and I don’t fully understand that either, but I don’t hold it against him, irrespective of what certain people think the Bible says. I’m too much of a scientist to believe all that. I just believe in forgiveness.” He wipes his face with the cloth. He looks old and weak and vulnerable.

  This is the first time I can imagine what it’s like for him. His wife dead. His son dying. I know how much he loves Luke, and the pain of that has to be swallowing him. “I want to honor him.” Dad starts to weep. “It’s one of the few things we can actually do for the dying. I think it would be nice if your brother could be buried next to your mother. What is so horrible about that, Willow?” His voice rises. “What is so wrong about a son being buried next to his mother?”

  Luke made me promise. But what would be so wrong about Montana? Dad is trying. He never turned his back on Luke. He’s standing in his dying son’s kitchen in the middle of the night, trying to figure out where to bury him. My anger at him at the cemetery last year seems so inconsequential. So small. It’s another one of the things that float away. Dad was just terribly, terribly sad when Mom died. I see that now, but how can I explain that I’m sorry?

  Luke forgave Gaird for leaving. Macon forgave me for lying about Gita. Gita wasn’t angry with her mother or Morone for not realizing what Manju was doing to her. She taught me about this openhearted kind of love. I grab the dish towel off the fridge and dry my hands. “Dad,” I say, “he doesn’t want to be buried. It’s just the way Luke feels about it. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. He loves you. He adores you.” I don’t want to hurt him. He’s already hurting so much. It has got to be the very worst hurt of all.

  He scratches his beard and fills the glass again and drinks. Then he nods and doesn’t say anything, because we don’t have any more words for what this is. I walk out of the kitchen and run into Betty in the back hall, coming out of the bathroom. “He’s having a good night, Willie,” she says. “He’s not in any pain.” I smile at her and go sit down next to Luke.

  This isn’t how I imagined it, even though I have no fixed idea in my head because I’ve never gotten to this point. What I hope is that he’s peaceful. Gaird sits and rubs Luke’s hand and talks to him very quietly in Norwegian. Betty sits in her own chair and watches over the room. Dad comes in and stands at the head of the bed. It’s one o’clock in the morning now.

  I have to convince myself all over again that my mother isn’t on her way. Dad looks so tired. He moves over to the couch and falls asleep. Gaird says he’ll lie down for an hour in the bedroom. I stare at Luke’s breathing. Then I’m in India and there’s the smell of creosote. I felt so alive in that country, but so far away from my brother.

  He’s my history. I don’t have a childhood without him. It’s erased. Because he had my parents first, and they were his touchstone—his world order. Then he had me. But I had him first and then my parents. His chest moves up and down rhythmically for two hours. Then his breathing changes. Without any warning, it becomes labored and thicker. There’s a rasping sound—in and out and in and out. I stand and lean as close as I can over his mouth and watch and listen. Then his arms and legs twitch under the blankets. I call to Betty. She jumps up from her sleep and checks Luke’s pulse.

  Each of his breaths is hard now and comes slowly. Part of me knows what’s happening, and part of me is too removed. It’s been such a sharp decline. Oh God, he’s leaving. Our childhood’s a lie now. The camping trips a lie. Because if it ends here in a hospital bed on Avenue Victor Hugo, then that’s terrible. That’s awful. I stand next to Betty in the dark and hold Luke’s hand and I’m completely with him. Twinned to him. Then I’m separated from him and there’s no way to articulate it. It’s more than sadness. It’s the emptiness that I’ve been terrified of. I feel completely dry. The EKG machine plays one long, extended high note. I look over at the nurse—the stranger I’ve come to trust—and I say, “Tell me. Tell me, Betty.”

  “You loved him. I could tell that the minute I met you. That you two were good for one another. I saw how you took care of him.” She gently places Luke’s arms down at his sides and stands for a minute with her head bent in prayer. Then she turns off each of the machines and walks toward the kitchen and leaves me alone with my brother.

  It’s happened so quickly and quietly that my father hasn’t even woken up. I stand and don’t say a word. It’s too soon. I want more time. I have things to say, if I could just be given more time, please. Betty will come back from the phone, and Dad and Macon and Gaird will wake up. “Can you hear me?” I whisper close to Luke’s ear. “I’m saying good-bye now. I’m saying it, and I know you can hear me.” He’s still warm—still with us partly. His face has gone slack and peaceful. His jaw is finally relaxed.

  I climb up onto the bed and lie with my weight on my right hip so I don’t press down on his body. My lips touch the skin on his left ear. “This is the part we didn’t talk about, so you’ve got to help me out. Tell me you’re okay.” I can’t stop the tears. “I’m missing you and y
ou’ve only just left and you didn’t tell me what to do when this part came.” I close my eyes and push my face into his shoulder. “Don’t leave without telling me.” I cry out a little more loudly. I try to swallow the sobs by clenching my teeth, which makes my chest heave. The whole bed shakes. The grief is raw, and it comes for me.

  When I open my eyes, my father takes my arm and pulls me up slowly. I sit on the edge of the bed and kiss the top of Luke’s hand where the veins run. I kiss it. Then I kiss it again. Dad pulls me so I’m standing in his arms and I make a moaning sound. No words, just the sound.

  Macon runs into the living room and gets me to lie down on the rug near Luke’s bed. The moaning stops just as quickly as it began. Gaird walks in next, half-asleep, and cries out, and doesn’t stop crying.

  THE PARAMEDICS DON’T come back until after dawn. They wear purple latex gloves this time and move around the living room, packing things up. Then they wheel Luke away on a stretcher. I watch from the living room window while they put my brother in the ambulance. Two vans pull away from the curb. One carries my dead brother, and the other carries the EKG machine, the metal IV pole, three cardboard boxes of unused saline, and the hospital bed.

  Luke shouldn’t be alone on the way to the morgue. So I get my bag. “I’m going with him.”

  “No, you’re not,” Macon says.

  “No, I’m going to follow the ambulance, because he shouldn’t be in there alone. What were we thinking, letting him go by himself like that?”

  “You’ve said good-bye, Willie. Please don’t do this.” He takes my arm.

  “How do you know I’ve said good-bye? I haven’t even begun to say good-bye, and please take your hand off me!” I’m yelling now. “My brother’s alone with strangers driving to a morgue I don’t even have the address for, and I’m following him there!”

  “You don’t need to go to that place!” Macon’s yelling now, too. “It’s not what you do now! Goddamnit! Just stop! What you do now is let me make you something to eat. Then you lie down on the couch and you rest.”

  “Then what? And then what?” I can’t stop myself. It’s the part after this that terrifies me.

  “Then I will still be right here.”

  By now the vans are gone. I go and stare at the street for a minute. “Okay. You’ve made me miss them. Okay,” I whisper. “You win. But I still want to go out. I haven’t been outside in days.”

  “I’ll come with.”

  “I’m just getting flowers. I’ll just have a quick walk alone. Please.”

  “Promise?” He looks at me. “Promise I can trust you.”

  “It’s fine.” I stare back at him. I walk to the flower market on Rue St. Didier and ask for calla lilies. I go back to the apartment and cut the stems under the faucet and place them in a glass vase on the mantel. I call Luelle at the academy and explain that Luke’s dead and that I won’t be coming in to teach next week or the week after or maybe ever. I’m scarily efficient. I call Sara next. She answers right away.

  “Luke’s gone.” I don’t cry. My voice is flat. “He’s gone. He died in his sleep. I’m so glad you got to say good-bye. I’m so glad you came yesterday.”

  “Oh, Willie, he was such a good brother. Such a good friend. Oh Jesus, I’m so damn pissed off at this disease. Is Macon there?”

  “He is. He’s right in the kitchen, cooking.”

  “Do you want me to come over? Lily and I could come over right now and be with you.”

  “I’m okay. I’ll call you soon. I just wanted you to know. I couldn’t live with the idea that Luke was dead and you didn’t know.”

  I put the phone down. I’m not okay. But the whole time I’m floating somewhere above my body, and none of it’s real. Macon has scheduled the cremation for Friday. At any moment Dad might sneak a call to the Paris morgue and change the instructions, so I guard the phones. I’m in the sadness entirely. Then I’m observing it from somewhere above and it’s crazy-making. To be in it is better than to be observing it, I decide. My mind can’t slow down. Can’t help circling and circling. I know this feeling of losing Luke—really losing him—is just settling in now deep in my bones and in my bloodstream and in the web of veins around my heart and that it will get worse before it ever gets better and I observe this cliché and see it for what it is—a sickening thing. Worse before it gets better. I’m observing again. Better to be feeling. But I can’t control my mind like that. It’s much stronger than me today. Playing tricks.

  Dad comes out of the den before lunchtime, looking like he’s been crying. “Do you want lunch, Dad? You should really eat something. Macon’s making chicken soup. It’s important that you eat. Why don’t you have something with us?”

  “I’m fine. I had toast. I’m not hungry. I think I’ll go to church. Then on to the airport. I have a flight home tonight.”

  “That soon? You’re leaving? I thought we’d have more time.” I mean this but I’m also the tiniest bit relieved. Or maybe even more relieved than that. Maybe I’m glad he’s going, because Dad requires an effort. Too much. I’m not capable. And I wish I could reach him. I wish we could prop each other up, but that’s not our history. Maybe we’re too much alike in ways I never knew before. Maybe we each need to be alone.

  “There’s nothing left for me to do here right now. I’d like to go home. I want to be in the house. I want to be around your mother’s things.”

  I stand up from the couch and hug him. It’s a long hug, and he’s crying quietly—an old man crying in the hall by his dead son’s front door. Then I cry, too. He says, “Say good-bye to Macon and Gaird for me. I’ve never done good-byes. I’ll call you when I land.”

  “You never call, Dad,” I laugh. “I’ll call you. How about that? I’ll call you and see how you’re doing.”

  “That would be fine. That would be good.”

  Then he leaves, and I go back to the couch and I don’t get up the rest of the day, except to pee. I don’t want to eat, either. I’m not hungry, no matter how many times Macon tries to serve the soup. Down on the street, a mother uses her arm to herd her two daughters into the back of a waiting car. My mother could have made Luke better. She would have known things to say to him. She would have known what to do, and he would have lived longer.

  Gaird comes home. He’s been with Andreas and Tommy all day. Then he takes a nap in his bedroom. When he wakes up, he walks into the living room and embraces me on the couch. He says his friend Clarisse—the one with the stiletto heels at Andreas’s party—is cooking dinner for all of them. I nod from the couch and say, “That’s good. That’s nice.” But inside I’m thinking, How could you leave us? Leave the apartment? How could you be with anyone else but Luke and me and Dad? And still another part of me is thinking of how much I don’t want Gaird to stay. And how relieved I am that he’s going. I don’t want to talk to him. I just want this unspoken thing. This shared grief. Then he’s gone and I’m alone and it’s better.

  Macon finally doesn’t ask me about the soup; he just brings two bowls into the living room, and we eat on the couch. “We shouldn’t sleep here,” he says. “I think it would be better if we went home. It’s been a long time since you were in your own bed.”

  I nod. When I finish the soup, I stand and get my coat from Luke’s bedroom. “Let’s go home. I want my mother.”

  Macon turns out the lights. “I know you do.” He takes my arm, and we walk down the hall.

  “You didn’t know my mother, did you?” We’re out on the sidewalk, Luke’s sidewalk, and I’m confused. It’s such a warm September night. The air is soft and sensual, even, and bitter with all this sadness.

  “We can take a taxi.” He leans into the street to hail a cab.

  “I remember now. You never met my mother. She died first.”

  35

  Homecoming: a return to one’s home; an arrival

  My mother took to her bed when she missed my dad. I’ve always thought that’s what you do when you’re sad. So I go to bed for most of S
eptember. I grieve for Luke every day. Sometimes I’m still so surprised he’s gone missing that I want to get up and look for him on the street or over at his apartment. Where is he? It’s almost been my undoing—this need to find him. My grief is private. It’s not something I can fully describe to Macon, and in a way that makes it scarier. It’s a leveler. My brother’s dead, and I’m not.

  I like to be in bed because I’m lower to the ground and somehow this makes me feel closer to Luke. I keep the fan on and read on top of the sheets. Sometimes I try to smoke in Luke’s honor, even though I hate the taste of cigarettes. Macon wants me to go to my office at the academy and teach and work on the Sarojini, but nothing has made me get up yet. The academy was my old life, where I read small notes from Luelle on bits of scrap paper that told me my brother was dying.

  Will I drive Macon away for good? Sara calls every day and asks me if I’m angry. She thinks anger will help. She wants me to punch something. A pillow or a wall. I can get angry at politicians who’ve slowed down the research and doctors who may be in over their heads. But my anger doesn’t last, because I’m really just sad. A long sadness has moved in, and it doesn’t surprise me except how pervasive it is. His dying is this physical, visceral thing to me now. A long O of sadness. I used to think about getting sick when he was sick, but now I seem to be really sick. Feverish. Sweaty. I have the dream that we’re climbing the rock face together again, except this time it’s Luke who’s falling. He can’t hold on. And I’m not asleep dreaming the dream. I’m wide awake.

  Did I say “I love you” enough to my brother? That’s what makes me crazy—all the looking back. Where is he now? I want to know much more about his dying. Some days I honestly think he will appear, and I let the rest of the world go. I don’t feel indebted to anyone, and on these days I retain only the thinnest connection to Macon and Sara. I can’t reattach the different parts of my life. My mother. My father. My brother.