Of Stillness and Storm

by Michele Phoenix

  “You just … had to?”

  He frowned. “I didn’t want to. You know me—all I could think of was getting to the village, but then this … thought—urge—whatever it is struck me so strongly …”

  “An urge?”

  Sam shook his head in bewilderment again. “That’s what it felt like,” he said. “So—I got off the bus, told Prakash to go on without me, explained that I needed to head home, and rode another bus back to Kathmandu. Then you walked through the gate and made me wonder if I’d gotten the message wrong.” He smiled.

  “This is … this is pretty revolutionary, Sam.”

  “I know!” he agreed, a perplexed look on his face.

  “Next thing we know, you’ll be taking a vacation.”

  “This weekend,” he said. “Nagarkot.”

  “Right!” I smiled despite the tension building in my mind. He smiled too. We sat across from each other and smiled. He was home. He’d moved up our trip. It all felt foreign.

  This was the point at which I’d normally ask him about his three weeks away. But he’d only been gone two days and had spent those on a bus. It was also the point where he’d usually ask me how Ryan was doing. I cringed at the thought. Instead, we talked about our upcoming trip to the mountains and the e-mails I’d received. We talked about the weather and construction delays with the gym at Ryan’s school.

  I got up to heat supper, and Sam went upstairs to unpack. I stood in the kitchen, disoriented.

  Sam came downstairs when he heard Ryan pushing his bike through the gate. He seemed as surprised as I’d been to see his dad standing on the porch as he walked up. He didn’t sound like it, though, when he said, “What are you doing here?” That bored tone grated.

  “That’s what your mom said.”

  From inside the house, I saw Ryan stop short. “I bet.”

  Sam gave him a hug, which Ryan visibly resisted. “I decided not to do the trip this time. We’ll watch your game tomorrow night, then Mom and I are going away for the weekend.”

  “Whatever,” Ryan said.

  “Any new grades today?” Sam called to Ryan’s retreating back.

  “Nope.” He walked right past me on his way to the bathroom, neither looking at me nor speaking to me when I said hi to him.

  “Ryan, say hi to your mother,” Sam instructed in his firm daddy-voice.

  Ryan went into the bathroom and locked the door.

  “Ryan.”

  “Let him be,” I said. “We’ll figure it out later.” I had a feeling we wouldn’t.

  I removed my laptop from the table and laid it on a shelf in the kitchen. My hand lingered on it—longing. When the bathroom door opened, I said, “Ryan, can you set the table?” He turned and walked upstairs. Sam wasn’t paying attention. He was reading the news on his laptop in the living room, looking more relaxed and at ease than he’d been in a long while.

  I squared my shoulders and breathed a prayer. Please, God. Please.

  I was fairly sure he didn’t hear it.

  i’m scared, ren. that’s the bottom line. been trying to focus on making the calls and filling out the online forms, but the only clear thing in my mind is this voice saying, ‘this is it, dennison. over and out.’ it’s never been this strong before—the gut feeling that i’m staring at my ending.

  i try to control the images that rush my defenses … but i never know they’re coming until they’re there. i see myself in a hospital bed as my brain shuts down. seizures. loss of speech and sight. crapping myself. thrashing. i see my parents next to me while nurses whisper that it’s almost over. in the good scenarios, i’m unconscious and unaware. but in others, i can see and hear everything. i’m trying to scream or speak or let them know somehow that i’m still in there, but they don’t know and there’s nothing i can do.

  it’s hard to put your mind to medical forms when you’re envisioning death. not some far-off, when-i’m-old last breath. one that could happen next month, next week, or in a minute. i’ve got to tell you there are moments when i just want to yell. scream. wasting energy i should be sparing on telling death that i’m not ready. i haven’t said a whole lot of ‘why me?’ since this all started, but ren … why me? i’m forty. and, god, i don’t want to die … then i think why not? and i try to comfort myself with ridiculous attempts at quantifying things. at least no wife will be losing a husband when i die, right? at least no children will have to go on living without a father. it would be so much worse if i had people who depended on me, but since i’m single and childless … it’s less of a tragedy, right?

  but it’s my life. it’s my life, damn it. and call me selfish, but i just don’t want it to be over. i’ve never been able to imagine who i’d be past forty. felt like a downhill kind of ride from there on. but i’d give a lot right now to make it to forty-one. fifty’s out—i’m not an idiot. but forty-one? c’mon, god, i say. i’ll be a good little boy if you give me just a little bit longer.

  and that part of me that always distrusted him thinks, ‘that’s what you’re getting, buddy. a little bit longer.’ truth is, i do want to see fifty. i want to learn to snowboard. i want to take a hot air balloon ride over the smoky mountains at sunset. i want to make it to france and sit in a quaint little bakery with a beret on my head and a croissant in my hand. and you. i want you to be there too. maid costume optional.

  i know. seize the day, right? be happy for each sunrise. call me greedy, but i’m not satisfied with ten. or fifty. or five hundred … and then i ask myself how many would be enough.

  sorry to dump on you. i just need somebody to know that i’m not this heroic optimist facing my demise with courage and serenity. i’m freaked out, ren. and, geez, i’m sad. sad is a weak word for it, but i know you’ll understand.

  and amid the bleak, dark hues of the morbid painting in my mind, you waft in like a dancing shimmer of gold. just as you did when i thought i was immortal all those years ago. i don’t know if i’ll be alive tomorrow. or the day after. but i know that finding you again has been … resurrecting. thank you for staying close.

  I read Aidan’s message twice. I begged for a miracle. I begged for more time. And I ranted against the distance and the lost years and the inevitability of all he dreaded. I had never yearned more powerfully to be in another place. To wrap his terror in my faith. To lay my hope over his fear.

  Thank you. For your honesty and your emotions. I’m heartbroken and wanting so badly—so desperately—to be close. Is there anyone there you can go to when things get so dark? Any flesh-and-blood person who can receive your pain? How I wish it could be me …

  It’s nearly midnight here. The day has been … surprising. It’s completely irrelevant in light of what you’re experiencing, but it might affect my ability to communicate with you, so I guess you need to know. Sam came home. For the first time in our years here, he cut short a trip and returned to Kathmandu. I found him waiting for me when I got back from Bhaktapur. No reason. He just … I don’t know … felt the urge. Just writing the words feels odd. So unlike him. But he’s home—that’s the bottom line. He went up to bed a little while ago to read and catch up on some sleep.

  I’ve got to tell you that walking by this laptop when I don’t have time to get on is a delicate form of torture. I find myself calculating the time of day in Pennsylvania, imagining what you’re doing and wondering how you’re processing this ache.

  I don’t know when you’ll see this …

  AD: well, if this is any indication …

  LCC: Aidan.

  AD: fancy meeting you here.

  LCC: How are you feeling?

  AD: you mean after the mildly macabre message i sent earlier?

  LCC: Yes.

  AD: i’ve got to tell you, ren. if there were any exit off this ride other than death, i’d take it.

  I strained for something positive to write. Something healing or redemptive. I thought of sayings that were too trite and of song lyrics that were too sappy. I scanned the comfort-verses in my memo
ry and found none that would appease Aidan’s sober grasp of reality. My inability to help felt like a flaw.

  AD: i know what you’re doing.

  LCC: I’m not doing anything.

  AD: you’re beating yourself up for not having anything to say.

  LCC: Maybe.

  AD: go ahead and admit it, ren. i’m the boy genius who can read your mind from seven thousand miles away.

  LCC: Seven thousand?

  AD: i may or may not have looked it up …

  LCC: Boy genius indeed.

  AD: i don’t expect you to make this go away, you know.

  LCC: The distance?

  AD: the cancer. or whatever’s going on with me. i don’t write those things to you because you’re supposed to fix it. i know what this is.

  LCC: I know you do.

  AD: so if i tell you i’m struggling, don’t twist yourself into a pretzel trying to make it better. knowing that you know is good enough.

  LCC: Okay. But you know I’ll still try, right?

  AD: knock yourself out. can you skype?

  LCC: Maybe not tonight?

  AD: no lipstick necessary.

  LCC: It’s not that. I think I should tell Sam that we’re communicating before he stumbles on us having a Skype conversation.

  AD: like ryan?

  LCC: Still need to deal with that too.

  AD: see how quickly i revert to being a selfish jackass? i meant what i wrote, ren. if this is harmful to you or to your family …

  LCC: Hush. I’m dealing with it.

  AD: such an attitude.

  LCC: Is your head still hurting?

  AD: not as much as it will be in a few days. got the call. surgery’s on monday.

  LCC: That’s fast. Were you able to make some headway with insurance?

  AD: still working at it. but … they can’t collect from a dead man, right?

  LCC: No, but they will if you live all those years I’m predicting! There’s a guy in Oregon who’s made it fifteen years!

  AD: look who’s googling now. my doc is on the insurance snafu. she’s got a few strings she can pull with my hmo.

  LCC: I’m praying, Aidan. For all of this.

  AD: prayer. i’m still wrestling with that one.

  LCC: Just took me several seconds to figure out how to answer that. Bottom line: so am I.

  AD: listen, i’m willing to throw all i’ve got at this. don’t get the prayer vs. medical thing, but that’s not stopping me.

  LCC: It made more sense to me a few years ago. Before … before a lot.

  AD: speaking of a lot, sam’s home, huh?

  LCC: Yes.

  AD: and you’re … ?

  LCC: I’m not really sure, actually. I guess I’d gotten more used to our three-week separations than I realized. It all feels a little off-kilter right now.

  AD: you’ll figure it out.

  LCC: Your confidence in me is daunting.

  AD: just poured myself a bit of jack daniel’s. you should be here.

  LCC: Tell me you’re not going to light up a cigarette too.

  AD: you know me so well.

  LCC: Aidan.

  AD: lauren. do the math.

  LCC: Got it.

  We chatted for a few minutes more before the awkward business of signing off. He assured me he was doing okay and I assured him I was praying. Then the messiness of my life overwhelmed me. I sat at the dining room table and let the lights and shadows whisper through my mind. Ryan, Aidan, and Sam. Anger, fear, and strength. Aidan would know how to weave them into art. All I could do was contemplate how completely they’d swirled into impossibility.

  fifteen

  IT SEEMED FITTING THAT A STORM BREWED ABOVE Kathmandu on the day we left for Nagarkot. The sky turned to roiling slate, and a cloak of atmospheric pressure hung heavy over the city.

  Inside our home, a precarious life-as-usual teetered. I knew the faintest of emotional shoves would topple it altogether. I spent every waking moment trying to manage dynamics and predict outcomes, all while my mind and heart reeled from the life-and-death face-off playing out on another continent.

  I snuck upstairs with the laptop when I could, confronting guilt with compassion. Aidan needed me. Aidan was dying. I would not walk away from him. I knew I had to explain the situation to Sam, but in every dry run I’d conducted in my mind, the words had come out wrong, more indictments than rationales.

  Ryan continued to live around me. The darkening of his countenance was a nearly tangible force. His usual frustrated frowns had turned to glares. His disinterest had become distaste. His sullen words had been replaced by acidic, monosyllabic retorts. His entire demeanor spoke of emotions stretched too thin.

  I knew I should address the untenable tension—try again to release Ryan from the assumptions stooping his shoulders and hardening his expression—but I didn’t know how to contradict his conclusions. I didn’t know if I honestly could. I realized it was a fear of my own reality that kept me from confronting Ryan’s.

  As we walked away from the soccer field after his game, heading home, Sam laid his hand on Ryan’s shoulder to give it a congratulatory squeeze. He flung it off immediately, twisting out from under it.

  “Ryan—” Sam began, bewildered.

  “Leave me alone!” Ryan yelled, sprinting off in the direction of our house.

  “What’s gotten into him?” Sam stopped and stared at the spot where Ryan had veered off the street to take his usual shortcut through a parking lot.

  “He’s been on edge,” I said.

  “Any idea why?”

  It was an open door to a conversation I didn’t want to have. “I don’t know,” I said, panicking. “Maybe something going on at school? Give it a couple days. It will probably blow over. Usually does.”

  “Well, it had better blow over quickly, whatever it is, or there will be consequences.” Sam shook his head and resumed walking. “How long until he’s out of his teen years?” He smirked.

  “And you only get to live with this for a few days out of the month.” I wondered if he could hear the sarcasm souring my words.

  “I’ll talk to him. This isn’t acceptable behavior.”

  I stifled a retort about despair’s tendency to stymie civility. “Give him a little longer,” I suggested, though I knew Ryan needed much more than that.

  For the first time since the light had gone out of Ryan’s spirit, I found myself reassured by his silence. As long as he wasn’t talking … But in those moments when Aidan drifted just beyond the center of my concerns, in those brief instants when I could see with a little more perspective, I felt the broadening distance between Ryan and me like the evisceration of my motherhood. I wondered how many causes one child could be sacrificed to. And I berated myself for becoming one of his tormentors.

  Sam had grown increasingly bothered by the tension between Ryan and me. I saw the frowns that crossed his face when he didn’t realize I was watching. He’d begin to scold Ryan for ignoring or disobeying, but I’d stop his diatribe with a glance or a hand on his arm, assuring him that it would pass. I wasn’t sure what casualties it would take with it when it did.

  “Come in here, Ryan,” Sam said on the evening before we left for Nagarkot. We were cleaning up from dinner, and Ryan was on his way to his bedroom with a stack of textbooks under his arm.

  He paused at the base of the stairs. “Why?”

  “Because I asked you to.”

  “I have homework.” His head was lowered. He didn’t even bother to turn toward the kitchen.

  Sam put his towel down and took a step toward Ryan. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you, son.”

  He looked around at his dad without moving an inch more than he had to. “Happy?”

  I stepped in. “Ryan …”

  Sam put up a hand. “You need to smarten up, young man. I’ve had enough of your attitude.”

  “Yeah?” He flashed his dad a challenging half smile.

  Sam’s hands went to his hips. “Wha
t has gotten into you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ryan said in a voice so devoid of respect or remorse that I barely recognized it. I felt fear seeping into my blood as I waited for the words he’d utter next. He looked right at me, then he looked at Sam. I braced myself. “Maybe I just don’t give a crap anymore.” He turned to climb the stairs as relief weakened my knees.

  “Ryan!” Sam barked.

  He kept climbing.

  “Ryan, get back down here this minute!”

  He stopped at the landing. “What, so you can lecture me? Saint Sam and his stupid sermons? I’m done with those, Dad.”

  “Ryan Coventry, if you don’t—” He took a step toward the stairs.

  I grabbed his arm. “Let him go, Sam.”

  He looked at me dumbfounded. “I will not let him go.” He squared his shoulders. “I have never—”

  “We’re going away tomorrow.” I moved to stand between him and the stairs, feeling the urgency of that moment like an electrical current. “Let him cool off a bit. Maybe a few days away from us will do him good. Please, Sam.” I squeezed his arm and tried to insert myself into his frame of vision. “Don’t get into this before our trip. It can wait. Can’t it?”

  He pursed his lips and thought for a moment. “No. This needs to be dealt with now.”

  He tried to move past me, but I wouldn’t let him. “Please, Sam.” Unexpected tears flooded my eyes. Tears of fear. Tears of guilt. Tears of anger. Tears of helplessness. “Can we please not do this tonight? Please. I don’t want to leave for Nagarkot in the middle of a crisis.” I swiped at a tear on my cheek. “Please? Sam. Let’s not make this worse than it already is tonight.”

  He frowned at me. “Lauren …”

  “Please.”

  Sam stared long and hard. I could tell he was torn. He’d never been one to put off confrontations. He liked to lance the abscess and move on. But this particular abscess threatened my world in too many ways to address it just yet. After a moment, he let out a long sigh and covered my hand where it still lay on his arm. “Okay,” he said reluctantly, as if the concession were costing him dearly. “Fine, we’ll wait until we’re back.” He looked at me questioningly. “Are you okay? You’re … are you okay?”