As Mom and I hugged each other, I asked if Hugette had called. “She did. And she got your message. Monique’s having a rough time. Hugette wants you to call when we get home.”
I left my suitcase in the trunk when we pulled into the driveway and I raced down to the house. Amiga darted to the front door, greeting me with a wagging tail and a red rubber chew toy. I ignored her and rushed to the nearest phone. Mom wasn’t far behind me.
“Jeff,” Hugette said, sounding relieved.
“Is Monique okay?”
“Can you come down to the hospital?” Hugette asked.
My heart sank. She would’ve told me if she had good news.
* * *
•
The plastic barrier that normally separated visitors from a transplant recipient in the ICU had been taken down, and when I saw that, I felt like I was going to collapse. A bunch of Monique’s friends and family were scattered in small groups around the room. Hugette saw me and hurried over, burying me in one of her hugs, and then she started to cry. Norman came over and put his hand on my shoulder, and when Hugette pulled back, he hugged me himself.
“What…happened?” I asked. I was doing everything I could to maintain my composure.
“They’re not exactly sure,” Norman said. “She went into shock from the toxicity of the treatment, something they’d told us was a risk, and now her whole body has been overwhelmed with a terrible infection.”
Hugette touched my shoulder. “Would you like to say goodbye to her?”
I closed my eyes, trying to grasp the situation. After several seconds, I nodded.
Hugette walked me over to Monique’s bed, patted my back, and stepped away. Others cleared the immediate area as well, so it was just the two of us. Monique was alive, but barely. She labored through each breath. Her face was badly swollen, to the point where it was hard to even recognize her. She had rashes all over, and her lips were severely chapped. Everywhere I looked I saw a tube protruding from her—God only knows how many. For several minutes I said nothing, but finally I drew close and stroked her fingertips.
“Monique, it’s Jeff. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I want you to know what I feel for you.”
I leaned down. With our heads inches apart, I whispered into her ear. “I love you, Monique. I love you with all my heart. And you’ll always be with me. I swear that—I’ll never let you go.” Gently, I kissed her cheek and her forehead. Then I stood. For several seconds, I cried, trying without success to clear the tears from my face. I turned then to Hugette, who quickly walked over and wrapped me in another hug, handing me a tissue when I let go.
Monique hung on for another few hours, until her best friend, who got the message late, arrived and said goodbye. All of us gathered around the bed and held one another’s hands, with Monique’s parents holding hers. Her pulse steadily declined, and she died.
We stayed in the room for an hour or more, with most people, at least at first, weeping. Some people were praying. Conversations began after a while, people chatting about this and that, the road they’d take home, how life was so delicate, if only they had the next day off from work. One person approached me—Beverly, Monique’s friend who came with her to the inaugural meeting of our cancer support group. She said a few words and I think she hugged me, but I wasn’t there for any of it. It was like I had died, too.
To the extent that I was thinking, it was all about the fact that there was a corpse lying a few feet away from us, the dead body of a person I loved, my partner on a shared path to recovery and being normal and living the way everyone else does. There was anger building inside me, first toward the people in that room who had the nerve to start up some godforsakenly stupid conversation about how at least there wouldn’t be any traffic on the road at this time of night, and then my anger went internal, at myself, for running away from Monique because of my selfish fear of losing her, and finally to God, whom I’d knelt before and begged—pleaded with the full force of my soul—to let Monique live. The anger was smoldering, consuming me from the inside, while on the outside I was motionless, like a corpse myself, with my body slowly stiffening.
The tapping I felt on my forearm brought me back to consciousness. Hugette was standing in front of me, her face full of worry. “Jeff, are you okay?”
I blinked several times. “Me? Why? I’m fine.” She was the one who had just lost her daughter.
“Listen, you drove alone, no? All the way from Pasadena? We don’t want you driving by yourself. You come home tonight with us.”
I needed to be alone. “Thank you, Hugette. I’m fine, though. Real good. I’ll get home. No problem.”
“Are you sure, Jeff?” Hugette had so much concern in her eyes, like my mom the night before my surgery. I was close to losing it, but I hated breaking down in front of people, so I looked straight at Hugette and lied.
“I’m really fine. But I should get going.” I gave her and Norman a hug, said goodbye to the other people I knew, and left.
Sitting in my car a few minutes later, my hands tightened. I formed a fist and slammed it into the steering wheel, screaming at God. “Why did you take her?” I cried out. Then I hit the steering wheel again before slamming my fist into the passenger seat. I started to weep, softly at first, but soon I was sobbing. The pain and anger in me built, along with a sense of abandonment, and the certainty that I would always feel alone. If God didn’t exist, then what was the point of life in the first place? If he did, then I hated him. He’d taken Monique away. If this was the fate he’d chosen for me, giving me a taste of love and then ripping it away, then I’d make my own choice: ending my life.
I started the engine. It was nighttime. I raced down the freeway on-ramp and accelerated until my car maxed out at 120 miles an hour. I contemplated where and how to die. After a few minutes, I settled on the concrete wall near the exit to Dodger Stadium.
Then I yelled at God.
“If you even exist, then fuck you!” There was rage inside me. It was in my hands, gripping the steering wheel, and in my foot, pressing the accelerator hard into the floor. I’d never been so angry, not at my brother when he beat me up, not at the English teacher who hated me so, or at my father who thought his Jeep was more important than his son. But there was a deeper emotion inside me, a powerful yearning that Monique be more than just the memory of her I held in my head.
I saw Monique then, on the beach in Hawaii, scrunching her toes in the sand and smiling and listening to “Kokomo.” “Put that song on the radio,” I said to God. My foot was still pressed to the floor, and the stadium exit was close. The freeway began to curve, and I skidded across two lanes. The exit was in sight. With total conviction, I said, “Put ‘Kokomo’ on the radio or I swear to you I’ll kill myself.”
I started singing the song, just like I had for Monique in her hospital room, as I hit the button on my radio. The Beach Boys, in perfect synchrony, were backing me up.
I jammed on the brakes, slowing to 55. A smile burst across my face. I looked at the moonlit sky and started laughing.
A month after Monique’s death, I showed up in a Pasadena courtroom to testify against the guy who’d shoved the machine gun in my stomach and stolen my father’s Jeep. His name was Harold Woods, I found out, and the circumstances of this meeting were pretty different from our first. He sat next to a public defender as I answered questions from the witness stand. He didn’t once look at me, and he spoke only when he had to. Otherwise, he was dead to the world, seemingly resigned to his fate, which one of the assistant attorneys told me was likely to be many, many years in prison.
“How’d it go?” Mom asked when I got home from the trial. She had wanted to come, but her father needed a favor, and I insisted she help him. Now she was in the kitchen, with three cookbooks open and every inch of counter space taken up with ingredients and mixing bowls and utensils.
“It was intense. Turns out I wasn’t the only victim. Four other people testified against him—all pretty much the same story as mine. He’s gonna get locked up for a long time.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” she said.
I wasn’t all that comfortable with it. Mom could tell from the expression on my face.
“Honestly, Mom, it’s depressing. I’m glad they caught him and all, but that’s like the end of his life. And nobody cares what got him into that kind of world in the first place. You think he had some nice, nurturing dad? Not a chance.”
Mom smiled. “You’re very thoughtful, Jeff. But he did point a gun at you—and others. Thank God none of you were hurt. It could’ve been a very different outcome.”
“It doesn’t make it any less dreary.”
She looked away for a second, then turned back.
“Well, perhaps a Caesar salad, followed by garlic roasted chicken and creamy white rice, and finishing, perhaps, with apple pie, might put you in a better mood?”
My mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. With the exception of someone’s birthday, Mom hardly ever made real desserts.
“What the heck got into you?” I said with an eyebrow raised. “Weren’t you busy helping your dad anyway?”
She put her hands on my shoulders.
“I was, but I looked at my calendar this morning. I don’t have you that much longer. Can you believe you’re heading to college in eight months? Then this place becomes an empty nest.”
I smiled at her. I honestly couldn’t imagine how she could stand living here with Dad, but that was her thing. I gave her a big hug, took a step back, and, after putting a serious look on my face, pointed a finger at her.
“There’d better be vanilla ice cream next to that apple pie. And that frozen yogurt crap doesn’t count.”
“Jeff,” she said, faking offense.
“You heard me,” I said, winking at her, and walked to the stairs.
* * *
•
The first time I’d stepped into my bedroom after returning home from the summer program at Boston College, I felt as if I’d gone back in time. On my bookshelf, fluorescent orange light was beaming out of a glass bottle filled with rhodamine 6G, an organic dye I’d acquired for my failed laser project. There were kids’ books all over the place, like The Swiss Family Robinson and Island of the Blue Dolphins, and everything Mark Twain ever wrote. There were stacks and stacks of notebooks, one for every class I’d ever taken, and every crazy project I’d come up with, and blank ones waiting for the next great idea.
My intention right when I came home from Boston was to go through everything, get rid of the stuff I no longer needed, and save the things I never wanted to lose. I got into it right away, boxing up and storing every part of the laser project that had owned the space in front of one of the windows for the previous three years.
I soon came upon the letters from the USSR, tucked into a desk drawer. The deep chill I felt when I learned the title of the article that had triggered them hadn’t left me. My own mortality, intertwined with those letters, had kept me from returning to them.
And that was where cleaning out my room had stalled, months ago.
When I went downstairs after Mr. Woods’s trial, still thinking about his dismal future and also incredulous that Mom was making an actual dessert, my eyes went directly to a model rocket that had been sitting in the same place on a shelf, collecting dust, for several years. I didn’t know what drew me to it, but I picked it up nevertheless, examining it in the light. There were two parts to it, the main rocket and the booster unit. Of all the rockets I’d ever constructed, this one was the most special, and not just because of its build.
Early one morning in the summer of 1983, at the beach condo my parents had rented in Marina del Rey, I woke to the alarm on my wristwatch. I quickly shut it off before Ted was disturbed. I’d gone to sleep fully dressed the night before—I had a plan—and after slipping out of bed I reached under it to grab that same rocket, along with my launch kit, and quietly snuck out of the room. I tiptoed to the front door, and as I opened it and stepped outside, I practically ran into my father.
“You’re up early,” Dad said. He was tying the laces on his running shoes.
“Yeah,” I said, sounding as grumpy as possible.
“Where are you headed?” I couldn’t believe he was asking me that. In one hand I was holding my Porta-Pad and launch controller, and in the other, inches away from him, I was gripping the rocket he’d promised to build with me six months before. I was deeply irritated. At least he figured out which rocket it was. “Ah, you’re going to launch your special rocket today?”
“Yeah,” I grunted.
“I see,” he said. He paused for a second. “I thought we were going to do that together.”
“We were going to launch it together after we built it together, something you gave me your word we would do six months ago, and which I reminded you of four times since then. So I built it,” I said, tapping my chest, “and I’m gonna launch it.”
“I was really hoping to do that with you, Jeff. I just got caught up in a case. I’d certainly like to join you now, if you’d be willing.” I stared him down for a full five seconds. Part of me wanted to punish him for breaking his promise, but I figured it might be pretty cool for him to see what I’d accomplished without any of his help.
“Okay,” I finally said.
The deep blue sky had a smear of pink along the horizon line, and the cool air moved in a gentle breeze. Perfect conditions. The beach was mostly empty, save for a few runners at the water’s edge and a guy with a bunch of bags stacked around him who seemed to be asleep. Otherwise, we had our own version of Cape Canaveral.
We rigged up the rocket on the launch pad, inserted an ignitor into the engine, and rolled out ten feet of ignition wire.
“Are you ready?” I asked Dad. I couldn’t keep myself from grinning. This was my favorite part, and I was just dying for him to see this thing fly.
“I most certainly am,” he said. His grin was twice the size of mine, like a kid’s.
I pulled the safety key out of my pocket, inserted it into the launch controller, counted down from ten, and pressed the button. The engine lit instantly and the rocket raced skyward, a perfect takeoff.
Dad’s jaw dropped, which I’d hardly ever seen before. And the amazing part hadn’t even happened yet. When the rocket reached a thousand feet, it jettisoned a rear assembly that tumbled back to Earth, and a pair of hidden wings popped out. The rocket became a glider, slowly circling back to us.
“Yes!” I shouted, making a fist and pulling my elbow downward to my waist.
Dad tried to respond, but his mouth just hung open as he shook his head and clapped. He was blown away.
During the rocket glider’s second loop on its way back to Earth, Dad and I realized the same thing: we hadn’t compensated for the ocean-bound wind when we set up the launch pad. My glider was going to touch down at sea.
That was when Dad took off, as if he were a rocket himself. He raced toward the water and didn’t stop when he got there, kicking up ten-foot-high saltwater splashes with his brand-new running shoes. The rocket was still ahead of him, certain to be swallowed by the waves, but he stretched his body, extending one arm as far in front of him as he could, and caught it just before it splashed. He came back toward the sand and started jumping when he reached it, up and down, up and down, only stopping when I finally got there. He gave me a hug, something he practically never did, and handed me my rocket. I looked up at him and smiled. “Well done, my son,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Very well done.”
While dust-covered now, the rocket was intact. With some new rubber bands to pop out the glider wings, I was sure it could be made to work again. But did I want to fix it and fly it once more? Not really. I
hadn’t launched a rocket in years. In fact, I’d gotten rid of the other ones. So why did this one still occupy a space on my shelf? How much longer would it stay there? What was I waiting for?
The answer to that question was simple: I was waiting, as I had my entire life, for the father I’d wished for. He would spend time with me. He’d listen to my worries. He’d help me explore my interests. To the extent that a father could, he’d help guide me on my own path through life.
What struck me in that moment, as I slowly turned the rocket glider in my hand, was that the father I actually had would never become the father I longed for.
Dad didn’t deny me everything. He gave me the things he thought were necessary. And there were moments, difficult if not impossible to anticipate, when I’d receive a snippet of something I deeply desired from him. But the satisfaction would be fleeting. What he gave me—what he chose to give me—was never enough. It would never be enough.
I contemplated that for a while longer. Then I walked over to the couch and set the rocket on the floor in front of it.
I walked down the hallway to the basement and found a pile of broken-down U-Haul boxes. In a nearby closet, I grabbed some extra-sturdy trash bags and a roll of packing tape. I came back to my room and divided it into three areas—Toss, Keep, and Give Away—and quickly got to work sorting my stuff.
All my notebooks went straight to the Toss pile. I didn’t even open them. The last thing I needed was to read about how to become an astronaut. Some kid would want my rocket kits, and maybe his dad would take him out to launch one, so they, along with the rocket glider, went to the Give Away pile. The coins Dad had given me when I was much younger were definitely going to Keep, but I resolved—if I ever had a kid who was interested in coins—that we’d collect them together, even if it meant we had to travel all the way around the world to find them.
I was deep into arranging the room’s contents when a shadow appeared on the wall in front of me. “Impressive,” Dad said, just as I spun around. The Toss and the Give Away piles were knee-high by now. “I should undertake a similar endeavor in my office downtown.”
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