“I think your clock is fast,” Yale said as they headed south down Lake Shore. 7:49. Eleven minutes left, but he’d be okay for a few more if the oxygen ran out. Everyone was driving cautiously; there was no way for Cecily to get around them.
“That clock is slow,” she said. “And you’re not even wearing a watch.”
He closed his eyes, leaned the seat back a few inches.
It was 7:56, according to the clock, when they pulled up outside Masonic.
Dr. Cheng was standing out on the sidewalk in the snow, freezing in his white coat, with a fresh tank of oxygen.
2015
On Monday, November 23, exactly one week after it was supposed to, Richard’s show Strata finally had its preview at the Pompidou. It would open to the public on Wednesday, a week late, despite the giant canvas sign hanging outside the museum with the original dates positioned on top of a photo of a rather young Richard holding a Kodak Brownie to his eye. The name “CAMPO” stretched across the whole thing.
Fiona had convinced Claire to attend. She’d have loved to believe Claire’s acquiescence was about her, about making amends and spending time together, but on the other hand Claire had known Richard since she was little, and she was still an artist, or still wanted to be one. And she had a sitter: Cecily had insisted she’d rather watch Nicolette than put on heels and try to speak French.
Fiona arrived forty nervous minutes early. She’d cleared out of Richard’s at lunchtime, wanting to give him space to get ready, and had parked herself at a café; and now she wandered the Pompidou gift shop, where she’d told Claire to meet her, looking at bright silicone spatulas and chunky necklaces and art books. She wanted to find something for Nicolette.
She was inspecting a striped water bottle when she felt a chin on her shoulder. Julian. He hadn’t done this to her in thirty years, but that was his stubble, his way of coming up from behind and just nuzzling you.
She turned to hug him. She said, “Well isn’t this something.”
He said, “You look radiant!” Then he whispered: “Serge told me you were getting laid here, but wow.”
Fiona swatted him with the bottle. She said, “I’m just radiant with nerves.”
She had spent the weekend looking into rental properties in Paris, ones that would let her stay one month, two, three. She could sublet her Chicago place easily.
Yesterday morning at breakfast with Cecily she said, “What if we both moved here? As roommates? What if we—I don’t know, Grannies in Paris. It sounds like a movie! We could do it, we really could. Why should all that study abroad stuff be wasted on the young?”
“No,” Cecily had said, and shook her head definitively. “Are you really considering this?”
“I mean, until she agrees to come home. Or until—I don’t even know. But listen, when we were young, we’d just plunge into the future without worrying. Right? At least I did. I don’t know when that stopped.”
“Don’t you have a dog?”
“And a job. I mean—I’ll figure it out.”
“Are you sure you’d even be welcome?”
“No.”
She explained then all the things she’d halfway worked out, lying awake. That she could work for Richard—didn’t he say he needed an assistant? That she could watch Nicolette, help Claire out financially, get her to a better neighborhood. Claire could work for Richard, for that matter!
She didn’t explain to Cecily the other things she was thinking: how it would be a fresh start, a hugely overdue one. How she’d never really left Chicago. Madison hardly counted, what with her constant trips back, her tethers to the city. How thirty years after Nico died, it was finally time to let things go. How maybe she could throw her fate out into the world as easily as Jake dropped his wallet onto a bar, knowing it would always come back to him.
Cecily had sighed and laughed and tapped her fork on the edge of her plate. “Well, I’ll come visit you,” she said.
Last night she’d written Claire a long email laying out the idea. “Don’t write back,” she’d begun. “We can talk tomorrow.”
So now on top of the social anxiety inherent in walking into this opening, and on top of the anticipation of seeing Richard’s footage of the ’80s, she was standing here in the gift shop waiting to be roundly rejected by her only child.
Julian said, “I need this pillow! What is this, Kandinsky?”
Fiona never saw what he was talking about, because here was Claire, in a black cotton dress and black boots, her hair in soft waves. She seemed more relaxed than she had in the bar or the park. Perhaps this felt less like an invasion, or maybe she’d just gotten used to the idea of seeing her mother. In any case, she adjusted her purse, gave Fiona a quick hug, scanned the housewares section as if she expected something else to happen now.
Fiona said, “I want you to meet Julian Ames.”
Claire bobbed her head and shook his hand.
“Julian was a friend of your Uncle Nico,” she said.
How strange to call him that when he’d never been anyone’s uncle. But she’d tried it throughout Claire’s childhood. This was your Uncle Nico’s drawing table. Your Uncle Nico didn’t like egg yolks either. And now, she supposed, Nico was a great-uncle. Dear God: Great-Uncle Nico. Who the hell was that? Some old man with bifocals.
Julian said, “Your mama took care of us all.”
Fiona saw Claire’s shoulders draw back.
“I’m aware,” she said. “Saint Fiona of Boystown.”
Julian glanced at Fiona. She wondered suddenly if the cult had made Claire judgmental of homosexuality, had taught her that AIDS was the wrath of God or something. She couldn’t imagine Claire falling for that, but then who knew anything at all about this stranger?
Claire picked up one of a set of melamine plates with Magritte images on them, this one his pipe-that-wasn’t-a-pipe on a spring-green background. She rotated it, stared at it.
Julian said, “I’ve been telling stories about your mom for years. She thought I was dead, and the whole time I was talking about her like she was Paul Bunyan. And for a long time I didn’t even know the half of what she did. I left Chicago, and she kept on going.”
Claire smiled up drily at Julian. “Well, I’m what stopped her.”
Fiona tried to puzzle out what she meant.
Claire said, “I was born the day her friend died. Did you know that?”
Fiona whispered, although it didn’t need to be whispered. “She means Yale.” And then aloud she said, “No, that’s wrong. You were born the day before. Claire, listen, did you tell Kurt that I said that was the worst day of my life? Because I never—”
“It always killed me,” Claire said. She was talking only to Julian, as if Fiona weren’t there. Julian, to his credit, didn’t look panicked at being in the middle of this. Maybe he knew what he was: a void, a sounding board, a necessary presence. “There was always—when I was a kid, there was part of me that thought if only I’d been born after he died, she’d believe I was him, reincarnated or something. Then I could believe it, even. I wished I’d been born that exact instant.”
Although Claire wasn’t looking at her, just at Julian and the Magritte plate, Fiona said, “It was never a competition, honey.”
“Ha!” It was too loud, but no one else was listening. “That is hilarious.”
Maybe this was good. Claire needed to say the meanest things she could, so they’d be out in the room instead of inside her. Still, all Fiona could think to do was cry, which wouldn’t help anything, so she managed not to. Julian took a step toward Fiona, put a hand on her back.
Claire put the plate down and picked up another, this one bright sky blue with that bowler hat. Usage Externe, the hat’s label said.
Julian said, “I know she did her best.”
“I’m trying to do my best now,” Fiona said. “Now that you’re a
mother, don’t you—”
But Claire cut in. “She only wants to move here because there’s been a disaster. She wants to swoop in and be near the drama.”
Julian looked confused.
Fiona said, “What I’d like to be near is my daughter and my granddaughter. I’d like to make up for maybe being a depressed, shitty mother by being a decent grandmother. I’m not asking anything in return.”
Claire flipped the plate over as if she were checking the price. A thoughtful, resigned silence.
“You might not resolve this all in the gift shop,” Julian said.
Claire said, “I can’t control where you live. If you move here, you move here.”
It was as good as Fiona could hope to get from her, for now.
“Can I interject something,” Julian said, “as we head for the escalators? Because it’s probably time to head for the escalators.” Claire blinked and put the plate down, and they walked out across the broad lobby. He said, “Everyone knows how short life is. Fiona and I know it especially. But no one ever talks about how long it is. And it’s—does that make sense? Every life is too short, even the long ones, but some people’s lives are too long as well. I mean—maybe that won’t make sense till you’re older.”
He stepped onto the escalator first, and he rode backward to face them.
He said, “If we could just be on earth at the same place and same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together and die together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But listen: You two are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That’s a miracle. I just want to say that.”
Claire was behind her, so Fiona couldn’t see her face, but she could feel her energy—she’d had so much practice, and it was all coming back—and at the very least, she could feel that Claire wasn’t annoyed, wasn’t rolling her eyes and wondering who this asshole was with his motivational speech. As for herself, she was grateful. She hadn’t remembered Julian being this smart, but she hadn’t been smart back then either. Thirty years could do a lot.
They were nearing the top. “Turn around,” she said, “before you trip.”
1992
For the first time in three weeks, he could breathe. Not well, but well enough that he could get out whole strings of words, whole thoughts and sentences. When he’d been so certain, only yesterday, that this was it, that each breath had only one or two more behind it. Part of him thought he should hoard each breath, save it for tomorrow, but mostly he wanted to talk while he still could, say things he wouldn’t be able to say later.
Fiona was in the chair beside the bed. Eight months pregnant, barely, and still so small—if she’d worn a baggy enough shirt, you wouldn’t have known. When she got to nine months, she’d promised him, she wouldn’t risk the drive from Madison. But it had become increasingly clear in the last week that she might not go back up there at all before he died.
The cannula was tickling his nose and he managed to adjust it without sneezing; sneezing would hurt. It was pizza night—Pat’s donated every week—and Fiona was eating a slice of pepperoni. Yale hadn’t had solid food in weeks, but this was the first time he felt a bit jealous watching someone else eat—a good sign. Or it would have been a good sign if he didn’t know full well that he was only feeling better because they’d changed his meds and were pumping him full of pentamidine and amphotericin again—backing off those was what had let his lungs get so bad—but these treatments would end up doing his kidneys and liver in. Dr. Cheng hadn’t pulled any punches on that. One of the volunteers had told him a long time ago that whenever someone had a good breakfast, that was it—the patient only had a few hours left. He wasn’t about to have a good breakfast, but these full breaths felt as nourishing, as ominous. The haircut guys had come through today, and he’d even sat up for that, with their help, and they’d shaved the back of his neck, massaged his temples with something that smelled like mint.
Fiona said, “Your eyes look so much better.”
“What did they look like?” He didn’t want to know, though, because soon they’d look like that again, or worse.
“Your pupils were just so dilated. It was like watching someone trapped in a tank of water. That’s probably what it felt like too.” She sighed, leaned down awkwardly to massage her swollen ankles. “You want the relaxation channel?”
Rafael came in then, getting his walker stuck on the doorway so Fiona had to get up and unwedge his wheel.
“I’m making a delivery,” Rafael said. “I lacquered it for you, so it’s shiny.” He was talking about the small birdseed mandala he held against the walker handle with his thumb, the one Yale had made a month ago in the art room. There was no space for Rafael’s walker between the bed and wall, so he handed it to Fiona to hand to Yale. “The art room isn’t the same since you aren’t there to play your terrible, sad British bands. That guy Calvin commandeered the stereo and it’s all fucking techno now.”
Yale held the mandala, although holding anything made his arms ache. He didn’t know what he’d do with it. Send it to Teresa, maybe, in California. She still wrote him cards once a week.
Rafael said, “Tonight’s the night. I’m cleared, and Blake’s picking me up in an hour.”
Fiona clapped enthusiastically, and Yale didn’t know how she had it in her. “Are you ready?” she said. “Are you set up?”
“Open Hand is already over there stocking the fridge, and I’m doing great off the IV.”
Yale appreciated that Rafael didn’t say it apologetically. He’d been a perfect roommate. Before Rafael, Yale had shared a room with a tall man named Edward, who kept saying in a sad voice that this was the happiest he’d been in his life, that unit 371 was the first place he’d ever fit in. Prior to Edward there’d been an uncomfortable straight guy, Mark; before Mark was a man named Roger, whose enormous Irish Catholic family surrounded him as PML took his motor control and his speech but left his brain function intact, at least for a while. On an early stay, Yale had roomed with a guy who had ten Dixie cups lined up on the windowsill, each with an acorn planted inside. He was trying to sprout them before he died so he could give oak trees to ten of his friends.
And after all this, Yale had been lying in bed one day recovering from a lumbar puncture when they wheeled someone in on the other side of the curtain, and he heard the normal sounds—nurses explaining things about IVs, call buttons, something about the smoking deck—and then he heard someone say, “You know what I want on my Quilt panel? Just a giant pack of Camels!”
Even before he called Rafael’s name and the nurse pulled back the curtain, Yale knew it was him. It had to be the most cheerfully anyone had ever checked into unit 371, but Rafael had his routine down, his favorite nurses. He knew which volunteer would read your tarot if you asked. This time he’d packed a bag of VHS tapes for the lounge, a stack of photos for the wall. It was a homecoming for him, or at least he played it like one, and Yale had the sense that if Rafael weren’t tethered to IVs, he’d have leapt out of the bed to come bite Yale’s face.
For the few weeks they were together while Yale could still breathe, they’d talked every night. Old gossip, new gossip, politics, movies. When old staffers from Out Loud came to visit Rafael, they’d pretend they were there to visit Yale too. But then one morning Yale had a dream that he was swimming at the bottom of the Hull House pool, looking up but unable to surface—and when he awoke, it was to struggle for breath in a room devoid of air.
“I’ll miss you,” Yale said.
Rafael shrugged and said, “I mean, it’s not like I won’t be back.”
Yale was tired after he left, but he’d been afraid, for the last couple of days, of falling asleep. He didn’t fear dying in his sleep—he’d take it, at this point—but waking up under water again. He wasn’t afraid to close his eyes to his last day but to close them to his last good day. And so for now he kept them open, kept Fio
na talking. He asked her to sing him “Moon River,” and she said, “I still don’t know the words!” but she managed anyway, laughed her way through it.
She said, “Nico would have loved it here. The art room! Can you imagine? I guess I’m picturing a version of him that would live a little longer. Like, if he got sick now and had good meds and everything. I mean, his nurses wouldn’t touch him. And here you get massages.”
“Well, I used to. Before I had tubes everywhere. But yeah. He would have liked it.”
She looked so tired. Her hair was limp and greasy, her face swollen. She should have been home taking care of herself, resting up before the baby came—not sleeping on her side on a cot in his room. Most people’s own families didn’t do that for them. He asked if she was okay.
“My back just hurts,” she said.
“You don’t have to sleep here.”
“I want to.”
He said, “Fiona, I hate that I’m putting you through this again. I’m worried what this is doing to you.”
She rubbed her eyes, made a feeble effort to smile. “I mean, it’s bringing back memories. And it’s killing me that it’s you. You’re my favorite person. But I’m pretty tough.”
“That’s what I mean, though. I keep thinking of Nora’s stories about the guys who just shut down after the war. This is a war, it is. It’s like you’ve been in the trenches for seven years. And no one’s gonna understand that. No one’s gonna give you a Purple Heart.”
“You think I’m shell-shocked?”
“Just promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”
“I’ll find a shrink in Madison. I will.” Then she said, “Is there anyone—is there anyone you wish would come here that hasn’t? I could call your dad, if you want. If you have any relatives, any old friends—even if it were awkward. If I had a magic wand. Is there anyone?”
The Great Believers Page 48