Advocate

by Darren Greer

  “And what happens if I don’t take it?”

  “It goes to the town,” Dalton says.

  “I can’t believe this!” I say. I turn to my mother and Jeanette. “Are you okay with this? She cuts you and Jeanette out entirely, and makes mine conditional?”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” says my mother. “We’re not cut out entirely. We’re well provided for. What do we, at our age, need with three million dollars? Are you upset about it?”

  “Of course I’m not,” I say. “I don’t care about her money. I’ve never wanted it. But she’s being just as controlling in death as she was in life! What does she want me to say? She was a great person? To forgive her for what she did? I can’t!”

  “I can’t tell you what she was thinking,” says Dalton. “She also stipulated that a further ten thousand was to be used to do something here.”

  “Do what here?” I say.

  Dalton shrugs. “That’s all she asked me to write down. Do something here. I believe she figured you would know what she meant.”

  I don’t. I can’t fathom my grandmother, now that she’s dead, any more than I did when she was alive. And right now I have trouble seeing the largesse past the manipulation.

  “I have to get back to the office,” says Dalton. “I’ll see you at the funeral. The decision is entirely yours, Jacob. But if you don’t mind me making a personal comment. It’s a small thing she’s asking, weighed against the benefit of all that money channelled into the right causes.”

  “And what do I have to sacrifice to get it?” I say.

  Dalton shrugs. “It’s your decision.”

  He adds, rather insensitively I think, that this is the first funeral he will attend as a work requirement. He means, of course, he has to be there to make sure I give the eulogy in order to become trustee of the money. I wonder if he will bill the estate for the hour.

  2

  as my mother had guessed, living in the same house as my dying uncle that year did scar me. The process of suppression I learned then, I have practised ever since. After my uncle died, I found no relief. I was scared. My fear of the virus became pathological as it translated into an equally powerful fear of intimacy. I became overly sensitive to the injustices of the world, tutored as I was by the hostility of our town. This grew into a reasoned fear of the world at large, where evidence of such prejudices was abundant. I chose a job that reinforced my childhood experience that human beings are cruel. I identified with the struggles of my clients in a world opposed to them. I was still locked in combat with my own fear, and my resentment of my grandmother.

  Though it has cost her three million dollars, money she will not be needing, my grandmother has in one swift, broad stroke mastered me. She has pitted my personal life against my public one, my general passions against my specific principles, my past against my present. If I get up and speak about her life I will be betraying the men I’ve worked with. If I don’t, I will regret the loss of the money, and all the good it would have done.

  The day before the funeral, I try a technique I have often used with my clients. I tell them to write a letter to the object of their resentment, to get out on paper what they can’t, or won’t say, in person. What often happens in these letters, I am informed, is what starts out as resentment or invective ends up in tenderness, understanding, and forgiveness. I am not such a bad counsellor that I encourage my clients to retain resentment the way I do — another reason I feel I am a hypocrite.

  The process of writing things down somehow makes things clearer. Though I am not necessarily ready to give up my resentment towards my grandmother, I do want to see things more clearly before I go to her funeral.

  Dear Grandnan, I write. I have resented you for a long time. For what you did to Uncle David. For what you did to me. For how you ruled our lives with an iron fist and never let us be who we wanted to be. You always needed to be in control. You always put the needs of the town above those of your own family, and when uncle died you abandoned us completely and showed a side of yourself I had never seen before. Complete disloyalty. Utter inconsideration.

  I do not soften my letter. In a way, I think, I am writing her eulogy. The one I would give had I the guts to say it in front of the church and the townspeople.

  I read the letter to my aunt.

  “For God’s sake Jacob, don’t be silly.”

  “You write it then,” I say.

  “She didn’t want me to write it,” says Jeanette. “Dalton was very clear about that.”

  I realize with some excitement that this isn’t entirely true. “I’m to give the eulogy, not necessarily write it.” I say. “There’s nothing in the will that says the eulogy couldn’t be written by someone else. Come on, Aunt Jeanette. I really am blocked.”

  I am like a child again, begging for help with my homework.

  My aunt sighs. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll write the goddamned thing. Get a pen.”

  I come downstairs an hour later and my aunt, who is smoking at the kitchen table, hands me her letter. My grandmother’s eulogy. She asks me to read it over. I do. It is standard and uninspired. Perfectly suited to the occasion.

  “It’s fine,” I say. And then, just as I am about to hand it back, I see something. I pull it back and scan through it again. My aunt continues just sitting at the table. “You don’t mention Uncle David,” I say.

  “No,” says Jeanette. “I don’t.”

  “Jeanette! You can’t not mention him!”

  “I don’t know what to say,” says Jeanette.

  “Well, say something, for God’s sake. This goddamned town has ignored him for twenty-two years. Surely you’re not going to leave him out now.”

  “That’s the thing Jacob,” she says. “None of us know how to do it.”

  My mother is standing in the hall, listening. She steps in. “Why do you think she asked you, Jacob? You would be the only one to do it. She knew that. Even at the end she knew it.”

  I hand the papers back to my aunt. “I know what you’re doing,” I say, “and it’s not going to work.” I leave them, and go back up to my room. Before I get in the door my phone rings. The call display says it is Anne, my boss.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  my uncle gave me school lessons until mid-September, but he had to give them up. He started forgetting things. His breathing became more laboured. Sometimes he’d look at me after I’d been sitting with him like he didn’t know who I was. He was taken to the hospital for three days when his breathing became too difficult. It was no better while he was gone. The sound of laboured breathing had stopped, but its absence was almost as bad. It reminded us of the final absence that was to come.

  My grandmother, at this time, went into heavy denial. She forced cheerfulness. She baked, and made meals, and cleaned the house as if nothing at all was wrong upstairs. One day she decided the church needed to ensure that Uncle David receive Extreme Unction. He’d been christened and confirmed. He was Catholic. He needed the last rights, including final confession, then all would be forgiven and he’d be on his way.

  Suddenly the idea obsessed her. This too was denial, just a different form of it. Her daughters tried to tell her Uncle David wasn’t lucid enough for confession. And if the priest managed to get one out of him, would it count? Who would know if he was really contrite?

  “Everyone wants to be saved,” said my grandmother. “If you had a choice between heaven and damnation, which would you choose, right mind or no right mind?”

  “Attention K-Mart shoppers,” said Jeanette pointlessly.

  “It’s the choice that matters, Mother, not the end. David is in no position to make it.”

  But my grandmother would not give up. She used the fact that he had not, even in the worst of his illness, removed the St. Jude’s medallion from around his neck as proof that my uncle still had vestiges of the religion in which he had been raised. Neither my mother nor Jeanette had the heart to explain to her that it was an irony. My grandmother called Father Orlis an
d asked him to receive David’s confession and provide the last rights.

  He refused.

  This should have been my grandmother’s breaking point. She pleaded with Father Orlis, but he declined. Extreme Unction involved touching and getting very close. It was my aunt and mother’s opinion Father Orlis was afraid to touch Uncle David.

  “Some priest,” said my mother.

  “Some religion,” said Aunt Jeanette.

  Even in the face of such damning evidence, my grandmother refused to believe Father Orlis was afraid. My mother and Jeanette could have asked Deacon Harry. They were sure he would have come. But my grandmother did not want the deacon because, though he could hear the confession, he wasn’t qualified to give the unction. One without the other, she told them, was useless. “Bread without butter,” she said.

  “As I remember it,” countered Aunt Jeanette, “Jesus ate bread without butter all the time.”

  My aunt and my mother did not care about the last rites. They were both certain if there was a heaven David would go to it, with or without the Catholics.

  Now that he could no longer give me lessons, my mother once again wanted to keep me out of David’s room — this time for his sake. But he insisted I be allowed in. Deanny and I went almost daily.

  I know, from my experience now, and my observations then, what he was suffering from. He had Pneumocystis pneumonia. He had candidiasis, also known as thrush, a fungal infection of the throat and mouth and bronchial tubes. Another fungal infection of the feet and hands. His toenails and fingernails were practically eaten away. Guillain-Barré syndrome, which paralyzed part of his body. Retinitis, hairy leukoplakia, splenomegaly, stomatitis, toxoplasmosis, and tuberculosis.

  He had neuropathy in his hands and feet that caused him pain. The Kaposi sarcoma lesions were now over his body and face. The harmful bacteria in his gut were multiplying; it was hard to keep anything down. A fungus was eating his stomach lining. His eyesight began to fail due to the cytomegalovirus.

  I went into his room to watch him struggle for breath, his chest rising weakly up and down, his eyes closed, his gaunt frame on the bed. I counted lesions. I looked at his toenails. I was horror-struck, in part because I was certain I would end up like him. I stood for a half hour or more, marking the progression of the disease. I felt terribly sorry for him, and sometimes wanted to shake him and ask him to get up and walk again as my grandmother told me Jesus had done to a cripple.

  When he was awake, David tried to smile at me. Sometimes, he’d ask me for a drink of water. When I gave it to him, he would talk to me. He spoke of his childhood. Picturing Uncle David as a boy who would one day grow into a man of this description was especially sad. I didn’t like to hear it, but I let him go on. I became, in a sense, his confessor, and I noticed he stopped talking as much to my mother and Aunt Jeanette. He seemed to reserve his reminiscences for me. Sometimes he would fall asleep, mid-sentence, and then wake up to continue where he left off. I had to move close to his bed, as his voice became softer and softer. He no longer sat up. The life was slowly leaking out of him. It was both fascinating and horrifying to watch.

  Once, my mother found Deanny standing quietly beside his bed, holding his hand. Deanny was, despite her experience, just a child; she saw nothing wrong with this, nothing taboo. But the reaction of the adults around her, even my usually phlegmatic mother, was swift and unequivocal.

  “Deanny!” my mother cried. “Don’t do that!” It wasn’t just the health risk that alarmed my mother. There was something more to it, related perhaps to Deanny being a healthy young child so near to my doomed uncle. But Deanny was adamant.

  “I won’t get anything,” she said. “And someone needs to hold his hand.”

  Deanny would not let go.

  My mother gave up. Later, she discussed the possibility of keeping Deanny out of David’s room with my Aunt Jeanette. They decided that, for as much risk there was to Deanny if she continued to touch my uncle, it would be worse if she no longer kept him company. And so they let her stay, but suggested if she wanted to touch my uncle that she wear gloves. This seemed unnatural to Deanny. She continued to hold his hand in hers. And as much as this worried my mother, it ensured, paradoxically, that Deanny would forever remain close to her heart. For this, if for no other reason, Deanny is always welcome at the house on Tenerife Street, and they consider her a part of the family.

  My grandmother thought it was morbid a little girl should daily be visiting the bedside of a dying man, and told my mother so.

  “Hush!” my mother said. “At least she does visit him.”

  My grandmother didn’t enter David’s room. She kept up her charade, her forced good nature. She baked and cleaned and listened to the radio and would not engage in any discussion that might “bring her down.”

  Jeanette and my mother ignored her, but Deanny said my grandmother was like a rat deserting a sinking ship.

  “Problem is,” said my mother, “it’s her ship. She owns it.”

  Deanny shrugged. She did not much care about the machinations and goings on of the adults in our house. But she was fascinated with my uncle. She never said how her parents were taking all this, and when my mother asked her about this she said they hardly even noticed. “Dad’s drunk all the time,” she said, “and Mom is busy taking care of him. They never ask me about it.”

  “But aren’t they afraid you might catch something?” Jeanette asked.

  Deanny shrugged again. “I guess not. Mom asked me once what Uncle David looks like, and I told her. She said she was sorry for you folks.”

  “That’s refreshing,” said Jeanette.

  “Having people feel sorry for us is refreshing?” said my grandmother, who had been doing her best to ignore the conversation. “In my day that was a tragedy.”

  “Clearly,” said Jeanette, “we’re no longer in your day.”

  But out of this my grandmother cultivated a respect for Deanny. Though she was a “little urchin,” mannerless and coarse, she and Henry Hennsey were the only townsfolk who darkened her doorway. It was as much for this reason as for any other that, after everything was over, my grandmother became her champion and helped put Deanny through law school.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  my uncle had his good days, mentally at least, and my mother and Jeanette took these opportunities to spend as much time with him as possible. He asked Deanny and me to read to him, as his vision was no longer good. He had given up on War and Peace, and asked us to read To Kill a Mockingbird instead. My uncle’s favourite novel would be the last one he would hear, and perhaps he knew this. Deanny read slowly, stumbling over the bigger words. My uncle didn’t seem to care. Sometimes he called us Jeb and Scout, and this designation pleased Deanny. She liked Scout. My mother and Jeanette also read to him. When my mother choked up at certain points in the book, David would ask her to stop.

  Deanny spent hours telling my uncle what was going on in her school and in the wider world. He talked to me seriously about math. He asked me once what I would like to do with my future. I had no good answer for him. I was not like other boys. I didn’t want to be a fireman or astronaut or police officer. I had no idea one could wrangle mathematics into a career other than being an engineer like Cameron’s dad, and I couldn’t see myself being a teacher. I told him in words I’d never spoken that I’d like to become a physicist like Einstein and discover a new theory, like relativity. My uncle did not laugh.

  “A noble goal,” he whispered, because it hurt his throat to talk loudly. “You’re a purist, Jacob. Whatever it is you choose, be sure you have a passion for it.” On the afternoons and evenings he was feeling up to it, he spoke like this to me. I wonder now if my uncle was not trying to pass on some kind of legacy, to expound his philosophy to me before he died, never having had any children of his own.

  I listened readily.

  I too held his hand, once, when he had drifted off. I was terrified, but felt compelled. I wanted to let him know that I loved him. For lo
ve him I did. I had come to love him, not as the healthy robust man he had been, and who I had never known, but as this sick, dying person, helpless in his bed. His hand was warm, and though my heart was pounding at the thought of the germs transferring from his hand to mine, I needed to do it. It was a test of mettle, an initiation or rite of passage, only with much more at stake. I held Uncle David’s hand for five minutes — it twitched lightly in his sleep, and it was sheathed in hot sweat — but I did not let it go.

  I spent half an hour in the bathroom afterwards scrubbing my hands; in the end they were pink and almost raw. But it made me feel good later on to know I had touched him, perhaps when he needed to be touched. I could deport myself with honour later on in my life just knowing I had done this. That, for some reason, meant more to me than almost anything.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  my first thought when Anne calls is that it is Randy. I would like to think I am being alarmist, but I can hear in Anne’s voice I am not. She says she is sorry to bother me at this time. I ask her what the problem is. “It’s not Randy, is it? Did he tell his lover? Did he get kicked out?”

  “Worse,” Anne says. “He tried to kill himself yesterday. We just got the call.”

  “What?”

  Randy, Anne tells me, left a note. He had ultimately decided he could not tell John about the hiv and he couldn’t live with it. He had been hoarding Ativan for anxiety from his doctor and had taken them all in the morning, after his lover left for work. John found him when he came home at noon, comatose but fortunately still alive.

  “He had been planning it for months,” Anne says. “John knows now. He’s devastated. Randy has been asking after you. He’ll be in hospital until Monday, then likely he’ll be moved to a facility.”

  The sense of guilt I suddenly feel, knowing Randy had been planning his suicide the entire time he’s been seeing me, is overwhelming. I am enraged, inwardly railing against my own stupidity and lack of insight. How could I have been so blind? Suddenly, I am doubly angry at my grandmother. If it wasn’t for the money I would get on a plane immediately. I tell Anne about the eulogy and the money. I tell her all the problems I am having fulfilling my grandmother’s request. “I have half a mind to just come,” I say, “and forget about the money.”