“Mom—”
“Don’t make me be the one to say it. This is your moment, Jake. You need to say it.” She pulled the chair from my desk over to the bed and looked at me intently. When I didn’t say anything, she went on. “Everything is going to be okay. Nothing’s going to change.”
“This isn’t what I wanted Dad to talk to you about.”
“This what, dear? Go ahead. You can say it. You’re...”
“You think I’m coming out? That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
Maybe it was time. Maybe I should just tell her. If I was dying soon there wasn’t any harm in telling her the truth, was there? But then we might never talk about what I really wanted to talk—
“Yes. You’re coming out. Finally. I’ve known for years. I hope that’s not offensive. Not being surprised. What did your father say? I’m sure he was clueless. You and I have always had a much stronger bond.”
“I didn’t come out to Dad.”
“You didn’t? Then why did he call me and leave that message?”
“Look Mom, I’ve been sick for a really long time. I mean, yes, I’m gay but that’s not what’s important.”
“Of course, it’s important! How can you say it’s not important. It’s the most important thing in the world.”
“Mom, it’s not. There was something else I wanted you to talk about with Dad.”
“Something else? I don’t understand. You’re being very strange.”
“It’s time.” My mouth went dry when I said it.
“It’s time for what?”
“It’s time for you to let go. It’s time for me to die.”
She burst out laughing. I wondered if she’d completely gone over the edge. I really hoped she hadn’t. Giving my mother a nervous breakdown and dying in the same week would really suck.
“Jake, I said I have good news. And I do have good news. I have wonderful news. You’ve been accepted into a new clinical trial just starting up.”
“I don’t want to do it.”
“I haven’t even told you about it.”
“I don’t care. I’ve been through enough.”
“You always do this. You have to trust me, Jake. I’ve gotten you this far. We need to keep going. We need to keep fighting.”
I wanted to tell her she wasn’t fighting at all. I was the one fighting. Except even that wasn’t true. I wasn’t fighting. I was just taking a lot of shitty medicines and hoping they didn’t kill me before the cancer did. And now she wanted me to take more shitty medicine that would make me feel sicker, which in itself would be an accomplishment because I really didn’t know how I could feel sicker.
“No,” I said softly.
“The research institute is in Michigan. We leave in the morning.”
THREE
I suppose I should have put up more of a fight, chained myself to the bed or, at the very least, dug my fingernails into the doorjamb and clung for dear life when my mom came to get me. But I’d known her long enough to know when she decided something was going to happen, she made sure it did. Fighting her would only make a miserable situation miserabler. I know that’s not a word, but I like it. Miserabler. I woke up miserabler. It sounded like you had marbles in your mouth when you said it. The English language needs more words like that.
Anyway, sorry. Wandered off track again.
The trip to Michigan was supposed to take less than seven hours, but it took more than twelve because I had a seizure outside of someplace called Big Rapids. I’d had a headache pretty much the whole time since we left Cook County. Maybe I should have told my Mom to stop and give me something. Maybe it would have warded off the seizure. Or, maybe it wouldn’t have.
I’d been haunting WebMD on and off for years—my mom wasn’t the only one who googled. Seizures are a symptom of acute blah-blah-blah leukemia. They are also a side effect of half the chemo I’d had. Plus I’d had seizures before, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Well, the ones I had before weren’t like this. The ones I’d had before were your basic lost-in-a-daydream kind of seizure which might not even be noticed if they didn’t sometimes happen mid-sentence. This one was big. This one was the kind where you get stiff as a board and can’t move but can’t stop moving either. It’s like whatever you want your body to do—being still and sitting in the passenger seat like a normal person—it just won’t do. Suddenly, it has got a mind of its own, and the front seat of the car turns into a mosh pit.
Slam dancing while on a long-distance drive is embarrassing but nowhere near as embarrassing as pissing your pants while you’re at it. That’s what took most of the extra time: finding a place where I could change my clothes and my mom could try to figure out the best way to save the piss soaked seat in her Rav-4.
We found a Biggby Coffee by some University I’d never heard of and spent a lot of time going back and forth between the car and the rest room. I tried to feel bad about the car, but I had a little trouble. It was only two years old, so I kind of figured it was my mom’s own fault. I mean, she bought a new one every three years. When she got this one, she already had a kid with leukemia who was likely to piss or shit or puke or bleed at a moment’s notice. You’d think she would have figured out that saving a few bucks and not getting the washable leatherette seats was just a bad idea. I did manage not to tell her that.
I changed my clothes in the men’s room while my mother snuck a roll of toilet paper past the barista and went to work on the seat. I was groggy and only marginally aware of what had happened. The seizure made me feel kind of stoned. I’d managed to do my share of crappy weed when I was thirteen and fourteen, in case you’re wondering, and I felt like my mother had slipped me a roofie somewhere along the way. In my stoned way, I spent half the time I was putting on my clean pants trying to figure out why my mom would roofie me. I was too out of it to realize that taking me someplace I didn’t want to go was actually an excellent reason to drug me.
I tried washing my face, and it turned into a freak-fest because there was this complete stranger in the mirror. I mean, I guess it was me but not a me I recognized. And it definitely wasn’t Other Jake. No, this guy was like the opposite of Other Jake. This guy was wearing the knit cap I’d put on that morning. The same funky mottled blue one my grandmother had sent me from New Jersey. My mother’s mother who we never saw partly because she lived so far away and partly because of some teenage trauma that sort of wrecked their relationship and no one ever told me about. I always wanted to know what that was about.
Oh shit, I’m off the rails again, aren’t I? Sorry.
Back to the can at Biggby Coffee where I was looking into the mirror. The guy I saw there was gaunt and gray and needed a shave and looked more like a hundred and nineteen than nineteen. His mouth kind of hung open, and he looked unhappy and tired. Really tired. Looking at him made me angry with my mom because the person in the mirror, the me in the mirror, was going to die. No doubt about it. She’d been looking at him a lot longer than I had. How could she not see it? How could she pretend this wasn’t happening?
When I got back to the car, she’d put two bath towels on the seat so I could sit down and not get myself wet all over again. The fact that she’d had the forethought to bring a couple of bath towels with her was even more humiliating than pissing on the front seat.
As we pulled back out onto the highway, I said, “I should be in hospice.”
“People go to hospice to die.”
“No shit.”
She ignored that and began to talk about our destination. We were going to The Godwin Institute. “They have an amazing reputation. They’re doing cutting edge work.”
I was dubious. In five years of having leukemia, I’d never heard anyone mention the place. And it was in Michigan. Nowhere, Michigan. Medical research happened in San Francisco or Chicago or Washington DC or just about anywhere except Nowhere, Michigan.
“Where did you hear about this place?” I asked, not bothering to keep the suspicion
out of my voice.
“It was in a chat room.”
“A chat room? They still have those?”
“Of course they still have those. I think. I mean, it seemed like a chat room. I may be using the wrong terminology.”
“It was probably an app.”
“See, a hipster like you knows how to explain things to an oldster like me.”
It was weird when my mom called herself old. She’d been just a couple years older than me when I was born. So she was barely forty. It was tough to think about her being my age, though. She was like twenty-two or three and she had a baby. I was nineteen, and all I had was an impending death. Oh God. Maudlin much? I know, I know, feeling sorry myself is unattractive but hey, if not now, when?
Wow, I’m doing it again. Leaving shit out.
Okay, here’s the deal with my mom. Cheryl Rogers-Margate is a small woman. Five two. She’d have to finish off an entire chocolate cream pie if she wanted to hit the scale at a hundred pounds. And she’s pretty. And tough. And doesn’t even look thirty-five, which is considered a big plus when you’re over forty.
She should have married again. It should have been easy for her to snag some rich guy except, well, she’s got that Napoleonic thing. They say it about men, Napoleon-complex. You know when guys get real aggressive just to make up for the fact that they’re short. FYI: Napoleon was this crazy dictator guy who conquered Europe to make up for being height-challenged. See, home-schooling doesn’t completely suck. Anyway, don’t let anyone tell you it’s just men with this Napoleonic issue. My mom had it bad.
“So we’re going to this place based on what someone told you in a not-exactly-a-chat room?” This thought flashed, Abandon hope all ye who enter chat rooms. God, she would have exploded if I’d said that.
“Take the judgment out of your voice, Jake. I’m not going to talk to you if you’re going to be like that.”
At that particular moment, I didn’t know how else to be, so I shut up. I didn’t do much but look out the window for forty miles or so. We were on a narrow two-lane highway going north. Everything I could see was green. Trees seemed to rush the highway and then recede. I could feel them, waiting, hoping for humanity to fall on its collective face so they could grow wherever they damn well pleased. Every movie about the apocalypse is gray and dead, but I don’t think the end will be like that. I think the apocalypse will be green. Fertile. Fecund. The revenge of the plants.
I’d calmed down enough that I could say, “So, tell me about this place.”
“It’s called The Godwin Institute, which I think I said. And yes, I heard about it in on the Internet, but I’m not an idiot. I’ve researched it, and I’ve been emailing with the doctor there about your case. Dr. Harry. He’s absolutely brilliant. He’s been researching for decades and is up on the latest—”
“Hairy? His name is Hairy?” This was getting worse by the minute.
“No. Harry.”
“You mean like Tom, Dick and...that Harry?”
“It’s his last name.”
“What’s his first name, Harold?”
“You’re making jokes. That means you feel better.”
The grogginess had worn off, and the headache had dialed down. Still. “I feel like I’m dying. If there’s a better version of that, I guess I feel it.”
As though I said something else entirely, she said, “Good. I’m glad you feel better. I sent Dr. Harry your records.”
“How many trips to the post office did that take?”
It was a semi-serious question. I’ve seen my file. Well, files. After about three inches, they start you a new one. Still, my joke earned a frown from my mom. “I sent the records digitally. Now who’s living in the dark ages?”
She was very proud whenever she one-upped me about the latest technology. She loved when she knew things I didn’t. Which wasn’t exactly fair since I’d been stuck in bed for the last few years while she had an entire IT department to teach her shit.
“I’ve told Dr. Harry all about you. He can’t wait to meet you.”
“So this is social? We’re just going for tea?”
“Go ahead, make jokes. You don’t have to take this seriously. I’ll take it seriously for you.”
For a minute, I wanted to scream. This was not the first time she’d shouldered the burden of a dying son all on her own.
“Do they specialize in cancer?” I asked, a bit sheepish.
“Mostly.”
I had no idea what she meant by mostly. If she was another kid my guess would be that meant, No, but I don’t really want to tell you that. She was an adult, though, so it might mean that or it might actually mean mostly. I could have questioned her more. Tried to get to the bottom of it, but I was fading. I was that kind of sick tired where you don’t just want to lay down, you want to sink into a bed and let your body spread until it’s doing a Salvador Dali thing over the edges.
“I’m going to put the seat back and close my eyes.”
I got the seat back and tried to roll over as best I could while wearing a seatbelt and sitting on two fluffy towels. Just as I was letting the exhaustion grab hold of me and pull me into sleep, my mother began to sing “I Will Always Love You.” That was her idea of a lullaby, which probably explained more things than I had the energy to think about. The song had been a hit back when she was a kid, I guess, and she used to put me to sleep with it. Her singing it to me now was sweet and creepy and really, really off key.
FOUR
Comfy. I was at home and cozy in my own bed. It felt luxurious, silky, and warm. But then I began to float off it, to float away. I knew I would miss my cozy bed, but it didn’t matter. Wherever I was going was comfy, too. I’d be happy there with all of this behind me. I floated up around the stupid yellow stars I’d come to hate. Wanting to get away from them, I looked over at the window. That’s where I wanted to be, and then I was, slipping out my bedroom window. Pouring out the window as though I were soup. A soupy kind of a person.
It was night. The moon-bright neighborhood was still, sleeping. I walked down the street, my feet on the ground now, toward the end with the cul-de-sac. Why was I walking down there? It was a dead end. There was nowhere to turn. Then the front door of one of the houses opened. I think it was a family named Meyer who lived there. But it wasn’t one of them who came out onto the stoop. Instead, it was a tall, thin man wearing a black, hooded robe and carrying a sickle.
The grim reaper. I giggled. It was ridiculous. I’d seen this character all over the place: in ancient Woody Allen movies, in memes, on greeting cards, hell, whole TV shows starred the grim reaper. I knew he wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. I laughed again. Then laughed some more. The reaper began to ring like a cellphone. He opened his mouth and out came the melodic little tune. It struck me as hysterically funny. I woke in the middle of a “HA!”
“You’re laughing,” my mother said. “That’s a good sign.”
“I had a really lame dream.”
“It doesn’t matter why you’re laughing, Jake. It just matters that you laugh.” Laughter was the best medicine. One of my mother’s mantras.
The melodic tune that told me I had a text played, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was from my dad.
Hey Buddy, tried to get your mom a couple times… she didn’t call back, sorry.
I began to text him back: I’ve been kind of—
“Who are you texting?”
“Dad. He wanted to talk to you. Remember?”
She snatched the phone away from me. I should have been focused on why she would do something so weird and random, but I wasn’t. No, I was focused on the fact that my not quite a hundred-pound mom who practically needed a booster seat to drive the stupid car had grabbed the phone out of my hands, and I was too tired and weak to even attempt to resist. That’s who I was now, someone a Munchkin could push around.
“Give me back my phone.”
“No.”
“You don’t pay for it. Dad does. So you can
’t take it away.”
“Jake, this needs to be about you and me. No one else.”
That was weird. I’d never thought of cancer treatment as a mother-son bonding experience. But then I thought, maybe it’s not so weird. The way she’d always been about my dad, it kind of made sense she didn’t want me talking to him. She’d always wanted me to herself.
For the first time I wondered if maybe their marriage didn’t fail because she had ambitions for him. Maybe it failed because she didn’t want him around, because she wanted me all to herself. God, that was disturbing to think about. My family was a freaking Greek tragedy.
“You need a therapist,” I told her.
“If you live for the next six months, I’ll go see one.”
“If I don’t live six months, you’ll need one a lot more.”
“But I won’t care. I won’t want to get better.”
“That’s really screwed up, Mom. Don’t be screwed up.”
She laughed. “I wish things in life were that easy. Tell people not to be screwed up, and then they’re not.”
“Could you at least try not to be screwed up?”
With a shrug, she said, “I’ll do what I can.”
I felt exhausted, which made no sense since all I’d done was sit in a car for like a gazillion hours. “Are we almost there?”
“I think we’re getting close. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
In my mind, The Godwin Institute was a complex with at least a half-dozen two-story buildings. The fantasy buildings had high windows, were faced in granite, and created an impressive U around a well-kept parking lot. Or better yet, a fountain. I had imagined medical minions parking their cars then going inside to do magical things with syringes and Petri dishes in laboratories the size of football fields. In my mind, The Godwin Institute was the kind of place that needed its own zip code. Given the way my mom was acting, I should have known how wrong I was.
Never Rest Page 2