by Jim Hanas
City life had never been Robert Eaton’s bag. The air was bad, and it was too loud. He was also an idealist, a fancy word he used in place of anti-social. So as soon as he had managed to save five thousand dollars, he bought several acres up north, near the town of Pine, built a fence out of stones around the entire perimeter (an undertaking of approximately two and a half years), and started building his dream cabin.
He built the entire cabin with his own bare hands, even drew up the plans and, for a small cash fee, convinced a certified architect who had fallen on hard times since the housing market crash to claim he had legally authored them. Then he took the plans to the closest local municipal authority in Payson, had them examined, and filed for his building permit and septic approval. The next spring, he started clearing the site of trees and large rocks, purchasing a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle and a length of chain to drag them to the nearby escarpment.
The soil was highly acidic from decades, if not centuries, of human neglect, so untouched and pristine, with the tree canopy creating so much shade that, even in Arizona, annual rainfalls nearly always exceeded their own evapotranspiration, depleting the natural soil cations like calcium, magnesium, and potassium and replacing them with iron and aluminum, which made the land great for growing blueberries and strawberries, maybe even potatoes. He had to make sure to grade the land around the proposed site to guide water away from the house instead of into his foundation, which was the last thing he did before the next winter, pouring a simple insulated concrete floor instead of a full basement. Trying to fight all that moisture just wasn’t worth it. The building inspector didn’t even bother taking a trip out. Just stared at Robert Eaton for a moment, folded up his check and took his word for it. The next spring Robert hired a lumber company to drop materials as close to the site as the trucks would go. He personally assembled the joists and set the plywood floor. Because he had no one to help him lift the pre-made walls into place, he built them vertically, in place, which ultimately took a lot longer but left him with a boisterous pride. Once the walls were braced securely and squared, he brought in trusses from Patric Ballard in Payson (better for the environment, cheaper, and better engineered) and raised them into place. The night he finished laying the roof, he slept under it.
His daughters couldn’t understand why he’d spend so much time working on something like this when, due to the powerful union of the tool and die industry, he could easily afford to hire professional contractors to complete it in a month. Then he could just enjoy it, retire, and move up there for good, just like he’d always wanted. But that, for him, would have been cheating. He had set out to do it himself, and that was how he was going to finish it. Anything else just wouldn’t be as satisfying. And two years later, he dug the well, and the hole for the sewage tank, just like they would have done it in the old days, with a pick, shovel, and occasional dynamite.
And he looked at what he had done and smiled.
Then Chris Eaton’s father took ill. He came back from the bar one night with his breath crackling like playing cards in bike spokes. Nothing major; in the morning it was gone. But a few days later, he collapsed climbing the stairs up to the observation floor at the machinery. He had severe chest pain that the factory doctor initially thought was a mild arrythmia but then was re-diagnosed by a doctor independent from the company as a mild pneumonia due to a mild fever.
Patric Heran called Chris directly and she grabbed the first flight she could find, told Julian she’d be back soon, that her father just needed someone to look after him until the fever broke. They agreed to consummate their relationship on her return. Her sister had said she’d pick her up at the airport but then canceled at the last moment, saying she couldn’t get away from New York, so Chris grabbed a cab directly to the hospital and spent at least a half hour being reassured by the attending physician — they weren’t sure, to be honest, the chest X-rays looked completely normal — then sat with her father until he fell asleep again. She went to the lobby and bought a cola, waited another hour or more while watching television, then called her sister and said everything seemed fine, everything was looking up, and when there was a pause on the other end, added that there probably wasn’t any need for her to be there after all. Thank God, her sister said.
Chris Eaton returned to her childhood home, telephoned St. Hecarion, said many of the same things but with more technical details, and assured them she’d only be gone for a few days, the rest of the week at the max, and they told her to take her time, to make sure her father was doing all right, that in the interim some of the nurses could bring toys to the children’s rooms instead. The important thing was her father’s health.
Then she called Julian, said many of the same things but with fewer lies, then told him that she missed him, that she hadn’t realized how much strength she got from him, that she wasn’t a whole person without him. She wanted him to touch her, she wanted to lie down beneath him and have him enter her slowly, so she could savor every second, and while she told him, she reached down to touch herself for the first time, and if she wasn’t already wet she was pretty close, so she told him that too. She wanted to grab his cock, she said, then felt silly, but she could hear his breathing getting heavier on the other end so she kept going. More clichés and more inner humiliation. More stuffing and filling and hardness and good, until she couldn’t really touch herself anymore. Then she told him she was tired, hung up, and for several hours tried to fall asleep.
By the end of the week, Robert Eaton was not okay. His breathing was getting marginally better, but increased head pain and dizziness seemed to indicate some sort of tumor. X-rays provided the doctors with clear evidence of brain swelling, but no one could tell them why. To be safe, they placed him on a program of mannitol and dexamethasone, and hooked him up to a ventilator to increase his breathing rate and capacity. If the swelling continued, they said, they’d want to explore the option of stereotactic radiosurgery, resisting the third option as long as possible, which was to remove one of his occipital lobes. Chris made her phone calls again. Another week, she said. No problem, St. Hecarion said. That sounds about right, Julian said. Seems like you’re in good hands, Julian said.
I still can’t make it, her sister said. People are coming to see the house on Tuesday.
He started coughing things up. Dark things. He couldn’t eat. Or didn’t want to. The top respiratory specialist in Los Angeles was not answering their calls, so they sent samples, along with vials of his blood and urine, to Dallas. Chris told them she knew someone in Houston, but they still sent the samples to Dallas. Her sister wanted to know if they were doing everything they could. Her sister wanted to know if the doctors seemed competent. To her, they did not seem competent. Chris Eaton wanted to hang up. At St. Hecarion, they were now getting concerned, not that they couldn’t hold the job for her but that, if this continued much longer, she might have to take unpaid compassionate leave. She said she understood. The specialist who was not in Houston said he had performed an immunoassay and a polymerase chain reaction on her father’s blood and discovered several antigens that concerned him. He was concerned. He was testing the phlegm for traces of spores. The results ended up inconclusive, but indicative enough to warrant, he felt, a partial lung biopsy. Chris started to call her sister, then called Julian instead. He said he wanted to hold her. He said he wanted to help her. He said he felt powerless. She told him she loved him and he told her to hurry home.
Her sister wanted to know why she hadn’t been consulted on the biopsy option. Her sister wanted to know why this was the first she was hearing about “blasted psychosis.” Blastomycosis, Chris Eaton said. Whatever, her sister said, what are we going to do? The case was severe, and could take weeks or months to fight, a fungal infection that he had likely contracted when disturbing the soil to dig his well — the final step to his retirement — and while it had stayed fairly dormant throughout the cold, dry winter, the damp spring had caused th
e infection to spread through his blood and lymphatics to his brain. The specialist who was not from Houston said it was common in AIDS patients, then waited for her to respond. The doctor who was from Phoenix nodded. Chris said, Do you mean my father has AIDS? And they both said no together, no, they just wanted her to realize the severity of the situation. She said she understood. To get them to stop talking.
They wanted to place him on an oral treatment of itraconazole immediately, but the pills were huge and difficult to swallow, and several hours after the first dose, he couldn’t stop vomiting, his urine had grown dark and pungent, and the doctors grew even more concerned about dehydration than the original fungus, so they switched him to the more controversial ketoconazole, which seemed to fare much better. By the fifth dose, it seemed clear he was getting better. He was laughing and joking, able to make light of the fact that he was basically eating the same stuff they put in anti-dandruff shampoo. But the doctors warned that the increased joviality might actually just be a side-effect of the medication, which was also occasionally used to fight depression, and that the full treatment could take months. Julian tried to distract her with stories of life in Houston. He’d gone to a party at Jen’s and everyone was asking about her. The party was a lot of fun, he said. Jen made some spectacular hors d’oeuvres and they played a game all night where everyone had to guess the identity of everyone else just by looking at them, and he and Jen were always killed early so they spent most of their time talking in the kitchen. It went way too late, too. Before they knew it, it was four in the morning, but poor thing, he stayed and helped her do the dishes before heading home, unlike all those other ingrates.
The connection was bad and made him feel far away, or like he was buried beneath her house, trapped there and muffledly calling for help.
She hadn’t worked for two months. She called her sister. Dad was doing better, how was the East Coast, had she managed to sell the house yet? No, her sister replied. And the stress of it was really starting to get to her. There weren’t enough hours in a day. Chris Eaton felt uncomfortable asking her about money.
Stoic Heran called and asked if there was anything he could do: buy her groceries or take some more shifts sitting with her dad at the hospital? He’d been dropping in on her father more and more often, and every few days they would pass each other in the hallway. Then Chris would see a woman she thought was his wife looking at magazines in the gift shop, or waiting outside in the car, as if she were afraid of sick people.
Chris called the elementary school where her mother had taught before the cancer and spoke to the principal, who had always liked her mother. To be honest, the principal said, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do, they had a long list of dependable supply teachers, but if Chris didn’t mind overseeing gym . . .
He started vomiting again. Another bad reaction to the ketoconazole. The dehydration was so severe he could barely lift himself up to talk to her, just lay there in bed with his mouth hanging open, trying to swallow. They switched him to an intravenous treatment of amphotericin B, which made him delusional to the point that he didn’t even recognize her and once, when she was the only one in the room, he told her it was so long since he’d been with a woman and would she be a dear nurse and help him out manually. She cried on the phone with Julian but couldn’t tell him about it. I’m sorry, I have to go, he said. There’s someone at the door.
Stoic dropped by with another meal and stayed to eat it with her. She asked him why his wife was afraid to come into the hospital, and he said he wasn’t sure what she was taking about.
She called Julian and the connection was bad again. Where are you? she said.
Just out.
It sounds like you’re at a party.
A bus just drove by, he said.
I could really use another week of work, Mrs. C.
I’ll see what I can do, the principal said.
Another month went by. Her father was getting better, to be sure, but the doctors still weren’t sure what was the original infection and what was merely a side-effect of the medication. I’m sure you can see how difficult this might be, the doctor’s assistant — also from Phoenix, but not originally — said. Treatments like this can be highly toxic. It’s not easy.
He broke his hip tripping over a dodgeball, the principal said. We could really use you for the rest of the year, at the very least.
I’m sure you understand our dilemma, St. Hecarion said. Good luck in all of your future endeavors.
This has been so hard on both of us, her sister said.
I’m sorry, Julian said.
Neither of us meant this to happen, he said.
I’m sorry.
Three weeks later, the doctors said the infection was gone. Within a week of being released from the hospital, however, he died of severe nephrotoxicity and acute liver failure. After consummating their relationship in the cloakroom of the funeral home, Chris Eaton moved in with Stoic Heran.
Letter to Chris Eaton
(The Christian Rock Musician) from Chris Eaton (The Nun)
Dear Chris Eaton,
This is a letter from my fifteen-year-old self to you. The fifteen-year-old who never knew you, and who might have been saved a lot of heartache and hassle if she had. This is a letter from a girl who had no idea who she was, or where she was going, or even where she’d come from (if you consider the Bible, as I do, to be the accurate explanation for why we’re all here). Most importantly, this is a letter to thank you for saving my life.
For Jesus. (The real one! More on that later!)
My goal in those days was to get gloriously and irretrievably shit-faced. Imagine that. Me, a nun. Although not a nun yet, no sir, this none-nun, nunsuch, nunbody, none. My goal was to get as drunk as possible, repeatedly, and perhaps even with great relish, on a park bench with some friends, while maybe getting felt up by my boyfriend or whoever else happened to be around, and possibly eating Smarties, which I tried once on a trip to Canada and discovered they went much better with alcohol than M&M’s, but I could be assured of not finding any back in Cali. My goal was to go numb, to drift outside myself, to wash away the middle-class-ness of my parents by murdering my brain cells in large quantities. Whatever I was, they had put it in me, my parents. They had laid me in a basket and set me adrift with their current. And the only way I could see to solve this — I was fifteen, for goodness’ sake — was to try swimming in the opposite direction. I didn’t even bother drinking vodka to hide the smell. My parents wouldn’t care. Or at least they wouldn’t notice. Sometimes I wouldn’t even go home. Sometimes I would sleep in the car in the driveway, just so they would get a scare when they woke up in the morning. Where is our daughter? Has she been killed in a car accident? Has she been abducted by a biker gang? Has she OD’d on the bed of a rusty pickup, while her friends are off giving blowjobs to their dealers in the bushes? Instead they poured their coffee and hustled off to work, my mother in her Honda Insipid and my father in his Suburban Landfiller. My father would manage to do this without seeing anyone. For years, even when I showed myself at breakfast, I failed to discover how the man actually got out of the house.
My sister, maybe, would drop a Pop-Tart through the window on her way to school.
I was in love, I thought. His name was Jesus, too. He had a car. I still can’t get over the fact that his name was Jesus. I mean, of course he pronounced it “Hey Zeus,” like he was some kind of other God (maybe, being from England, you wouldn’t know that . . . it’s Spanish), but it was still pretty much the same thing, right? And I would have done anything for him, for sure, except swallow, and practically did that too the time he forgot to tell me he was cumming. He was so sorry. I didn’t give myself up right away though. I wasn’t any slut. Just going down or jerking him off in the park. Kept my pants on for the first four months, until the night when I decided enough was enough, whatever that meant. I thought maybe we’d get a bot
tle of Crown Royal or Canadian Club — I guess there’s something about that trip to Canada that stuck with me — and then mix it with a Coke from McDonald’s, in the park like usual, rubbing Jesus through his pants, perhaps kissing a little, and then, with my breath held tightly, allowing him to slide a hand onto my stomach, leaving it there until it was clear I would not protest, feeling one finger of movement, and then two, in scratching motions under the elastic band of my Japanese animé underwear. Letting him touch me. Wanting him to touch me. Then pulling my Dookie T-shirt up over my head (Do you know them? Green Day?), and pushing him back onto the grass, I managed to position myself so the tip of his penis was right against my vagina, which felt more spectacular than I ever would have imagined, him resisting because he didn’t have a condom, but me insisting, sliding my hips back and forth on top of him, my lips sliding teasingly along him, and he was in, because that was my plan all along: to get pregnant so someone would have to marry me. Me! A fifteen-year-old alcoholic, with no more ambition than a large order of French fries and a Coke. Raising a child of my own so I could escape being the child of someone else.