by Bill Hayes
_____________________
7-25-13—In Rhinebeck:
O: “I’m going to write a little piece about the book I never wrote, and then let’s take a swim.”
He sits at his desk with a yellow pad, takes up his fountain pen, and sets to work. I go into the main house.
Four hours later:
Pouring rain, no other sound but the hard rain, and then I hear the porch screened door slam, and footsteps: It is O, who walked from the cottage in his swimsuit, cane in one hand, umbrella in the other, a big smile on his face: “I finished my piece!”
I strip off my shorts and underwear and we walk, I naked, Oliver in his suit, through the pounding rain to the pool. We swim in the rain, the surface of the pool like a choppy sea.
“Nothing like it,” I say.
“Yes! Lovely!” says O.
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8-1-13:
How vulnerable O seemed this morning, frail almost. I could feel it and see it from across the room. He said he woke with a thick head and a queasy feeling. He nuzzled his head into my belly. He asked if I’d run a bath.
_____________________
On Frailty
It is not incapacity
Not yet
Nor that one cannot do
As one needs to for oneself
But that thought enters every step taken
Lest the next one be the one
That takes one at last
Vigilance is one’s best defense
Against debility’s imminence
And what was once so simple
Getting out of a tub
Requires a higher mathematics
Advanced knowledge of biomechanics
To solve in advance
But it is also this
The knowingness of senses
So finely tuned to the sensuous
That nothing
Nothing
Is more beautiful
Than being in a bath
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10-16-13:
I, soaking in the bath, O on the toilet, talking, talking about what he’s been thinking and writing—short personal pieces, for a memoir perhaps. He had brought with him two pillows to sit on and a very large red apple. He opens his mouth wide and takes a gigantic bite. I watch him chewing for quite a while. After he finishes, “Bite me off a piece,” I say. He does so, dislodges the apple from his mouth, and puts the piece in my mouth. We keep talking. I add more hot water. Every other bite, he gives to me.
There is a quiet moment and then, seemingly apropos of nothing, O says: “I am glad to be on planet Earth with you. It would be much lonelier otherwise.”
I reach for his hand and hold it.
“I, too,” I say.
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12-9-13:
On a brief visit to San Francisco: How pretty and clean and uncrowded by comparison with New York—and how small—it seemed.
On Monday night I stopped by my old apartment (now occupied by a friend of a friend named Christian, though I still store things there), a place I had not visited in several years. I felt such a strange flush of sensations—familiarity mixed with forgotten-ness, if that’s a word—something akin to déjà vu.
I tried keeping a conversation going with Christian while at the same time tiptoeing room to room, trying to remember what this place was, what it meant—the life Steve and I had lived here—and recognizing objects and furniture I had left behind in my haste to move to New York: Oh, that was our table, our kitchen table. And that was our lamp—the lamp we bought at Ikea. And there, on the wall, that was my photograph.
I said aloud, surprising myself: “I took that picture.”
Christian nodded, as if he knew this better than I did.
“And this couch—this was mine too.” I didn’t mean to be reclaiming it. I was just recognizing it.
Christian opened the hall closet. All those books! Those were my books (are they mine still?) and those—all the sci-fi—were Steve’s. Part of me just wanted to close the door, but I felt an obligation to keep looking. I went to the other closet next to the door; it was terrible, a jammed, chaotic mess of boxes and files. So much life, so many years, shoved in there, the door closed.
I went to the bedroom. It was tidy and quite empty except for a bed—again: “That was my bed” (is it mine still?). It was a nice bed, the bed I’d bought for myself about a year after he’d died, and for a moment I wanted it, wondered how I could get it to New York, and at the same time, amazed—really very amazed—that I had left it here, just left it. As if I’d committed a crime. As if I’d run for my life. I suppose I had.
I regretted it later (I shouldn’t have said anything), but without thinking I found myself explaining to Christian how Steve had died—had died in that room. Christian was sweet, gentle, kind-faced. He’s Mormon. Very young. Blond and tall, handsome. When I had come in, he was drinking a glass of milk. He’ll probably have nightmares now. He could not be more different from me, yet there he was, somehow inhabiting the life I had led. Was I his age when I moved in? I don’t remember.
I looked at the full-length mirror on the hall closet door, where at night, after Steve died, I used to watch myself dancing, dancing in place for song after song after song, very stoned, the music loud so I didn’t think any bad thoughts. I could feel it in my body still.
We went to the garage; Christian wanted to know what was mine and what wasn’t, in case he wanted to get rid of things, make room for his own. There wasn’t a lot there—a drafting table, an old wicker chair with the wicker broken through, shelving, a broken Xerox machine. It was all mine (was it mine still?).
I didn’t hesitate. “You can get rid of it all.”
I returned two days later when Christian was at work: I had to deal with some of my stuff before leaving. It felt not just sad but terrible, to be there alone, not only because of Steve’s absence but also knowing that Jim and Vicki were not upstairs, nor Conrad downstairs, nor Robin and his wife down the hall, nor Jeffie or Elena on the third floor. Everyone had moved—or died.
I threw away books and left a box full in the lobby for neighbors to take. I threw out Steve’s remaining clothes—clothes I couldn’t part with at the end, clothes that reminded me so much of him—his boxers, his gym shorts, his flannel shirt. But now? What would I do with them? I didn’t want to imagine other people wearing them.
Reluctantly, I took down from the shelf a big brown grocery bag marked “Steve’s urn and personal effects.” I sat on the couch that used to be ours and went through the bag. Tears fell. I didn’t clearly remember this, but after scattering his ashes I had turned the urn into a kind of time capsule, filled with personal items (Steve’s hairbrush, watch, eyeglasses …).
Seeing Steve’s photo over and over: driver’s license, passport, family photos, snapshots—seeing how handsome he had been, and how he had changed, aged, how HIV and meds had changed his face—and thinking, “This used to be mine, he used to be mine” (is he still?).
It all seemed so delicate, fragile, like I might break these things with my thick, clumsy hands, even the photos—especially the photos. I felt half afraid, but also infused with tenderness. I opened a little plastic case that Steve used to keep in his gym bag. There, as if not a day had passed: his gym lock, some gum, his gym card. I remembered how he had worked out the night before he died. I didn’t know what to do. Throw it all away? Keep it? I couldn’t decide, so I didn’t decide.
I packed the urn back up, placed it back in the paper bag, and returned it to the closet. I closed the door. I went to the kitchen and filled a tall glass with water. I drank it in one gulp. I placed it in the dishwasher and left. I called a taxi to take me to the airport.
Trees in Winter
A YEAR IN TREES
Shortly after I returned from San Francisco, someone happened to ask me how I had managed to get over losing Steve, whom I’d loved so much and been with for so long. I gave a rather
vague answer. What I had really wanted to say but found myself unable to explain (for it would have sounded too strange) was that I learned a good deal about moving through grief from some trees I once knew. They were not my trees. I didn’t plant them. They stood right outside the windows in my first New York apartment. The only tending done was to give them my full attention over the course of four seasons.
When I moved in it was April, still cold, and the branches were bare. Facing northeast from the sixth floor, my view of Manhattan was unobstructed, seen through a latticework veil. There were five trees, each distinct. They were not beautiful. My next-door neighbor, a landscape designer, told me that the species, Ailanthus altissima, is an urban weed. But I never expected beauty. That they were tall and strong and present was enough. I found that Ailanthus derives from an Indonesian word meaning “tree of heaven.”
I didn’t cover the windows with shades or curtains. I would wake with the sun and lie in bed and watch the tree limbs for a minute. Some mornings, the branches looked as if they were floating on wind drafts, as light as leaves. With a stormy sky, they turned black and spindly, like shot nerve endings.
Two years had passed since Steve’s death, and though I had largely adjusted to his absence, I still experienced intense pangs of grief—painful unpleasure, in Freud’s exquisite phrase. At times, I’d be tempted to take out old photos, just to look, just one picture, just for a minute, like a junkie on the verge of relapsing. But I resisted. I had seen the trees stand up to strong winds and hold their own against the elements.
By the end of May, buds had sprouted and turned to leaves. I lost my view completely but gained a lush green canopy. Along with the leaves came another development: rustling, in countless variations, soft, sharp, gentle, syncopated—like a quintet doing vocal exercises in anticipation of a command performance. Privy to melodies out of earshot to those on the street below, I tried transcribing the rustling but to no avail, the letters of the alphabet proving insufficient somehow.
The summer was a rainy one, perfect for watching Tree TV, as I came to call it. Once, during a ferocious thunderstorm I’d just managed to escape, I found the boughs being tossed about like rag dolls. The branches thrashed violently—whipping back and forth, slamming against the windows with a thud, then sliding down slowly before being lifted aloft again. I was riveted. The trees, clearly overmatched by the combination of winds, rain and lightning, were not fighting this storm but yielding to it.
This is just how they were built, how the species had evolved: to survive.
I am hardly the first to note that trees are at their loveliest when the leaves die. Correction: can be. My trees’ leaves turned a sickly yellow and emitted an odor reminiscent of cat urine. In a way, having a new frame of reference was for the best. Steve had died on an October morning, and even if I were somehow to forget the actual date, I will always associate it with walking home from the hospital under a bright blue sky, the air crisp, trees lining the streets in their full glory: autumn, unmistakably. When it came time to scatter his ashes, my five sisters joined me at a forest preserve where the trees were ablaze in gold and russet. I buried his ashes at the base of a redwood.
With winter, the trees finally began shedding leaves. Background became foreground; my view returned. One morning as the sun rose, I caught the Chrysler Building casting its shadow on the MetLife building, a slim dusky finger drawn across the striated facade, as if tickling it awake. I felt I must be the only person on the entire island of Manhattan seeing this.
The trees took weeks to shed completely. Their limbs were covered till Christmas with what looked like dried corsages from a hundred high school proms. Birds came. Whether or not they were actually migrating, I don’t know. I wanted to think so. They rested and preened, reminding me of myself finding refuge here.
That the trees were resilient no longer surprised me. Still, I marveled at how they took blows during the season’s first serious snowstorm. The wind boomed like kettledrum rolls, the snow fell hard—hard—piling on limbs till they threatened to break. How is it that snowflakes, tinier than tears, can carry such weight? By midnight, Manhattan was gone. In its place, a peaceful new world, camouflaged as a cloud. Ailanthus, I would call it.
My lease-renewal letter arrived that February. I found a bigger, cheaper apartment on the East Side and made plans to vacate. I had a good cry the night before leaving; I would miss this place. When I woke the next day, I found the trees outside my bedroom window not moving at all, as if frozen solid in the night, an eerie reminder of my last image of my partner. I pushed the thought away. I threw back the bedcovers and put my hands to my stomach. I want to be as still as that tree, I said to myself, and stayed there until the feeling took: limbs not moving. Trunk barely rising with each breath. Neither yielding nor resisting. Just being still. Just being.
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
1-6-14:
It is my birthday: fifty-three. The day started with a gift. Oliver sang Happy Birthday to me, joy in his voice (and amazingly in tune), and hugged me in the wonderful way he does, nuzzling his head into my shoulder and melting into me as I scratched his back.
He had a handwritten card for me, and, as is his tradition, a new element, Element 53, iodine, in a small bottle. He opened it carefully. “Take a whiff of that and it will clear your senses.”
“In every meaning of the word, I hope,” I said.
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1-9-14:
O, while having a migraine, not bothered but fascinated by it, walking around the apartment: “I’m always surprised that the aura doesn’t illuminate the whole room.” (He once told me that the aura colors are as bright as flashing lights on a police car, which almost made me wish I could have one.) O looks at me, and smiles: “I’m sorry, but you are sort of covered in a Technicolor scotoma…”
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2-1-14:
Dropping by O’s at 4 P.M. to see if he wanted to go with me to the gym, and finding him curled up in bed, under the blue blanket, sweetly and peacefully sleeping. I waited several minutes, in case he might wake up. I cleared my throat a few times but he didn’t stir. He looked so tranquil; I felt a huge rush of love and—I don’t know why—sadness. I almost got choked up. I left him a note and went to the gym. Later, when I came out of my yoga class, I saw him on the second floor of the gym, and he looked so refreshed. He told me he’d slept for an hour. “Thank you for your sweet note,” O said.
ON FATHER’S DAY
When I went to visit my father in Seattle, he didn’t recognize me. He thought I was a fellow soldier in his division. I didn’t mind. I was glad to think we were at Fort Benning and not at the dementia care facility that’s been his home for the past few years.
“Lieutenant Hayes!” I said. “Nice to see you.”
“Nice to see you too.” He reached out his hand, and we shook. Dad, ninety years old, was slumped in a wheelchair.
This visit was very last-minute. He had been hospitalized with pneumonia and a small stroke. He was better now, my five sisters had told me, but changed; he slept all the time, a deep silent sleep, even though he is off all medications. Comfort care, they call this—a step before hospice.
I had just arrived from New York. It was six o’clock, after dinner. Staff had put residents into their pajamas and begun to get them ready for sleep. Sophie, a bright-eyed ninety-seven-year-old, wore a long silky nightgown with a high collar and long sleeves, as silvery white as her hair. She looked like an angel you’d put on top of a Christmas tree. Dad was in boxers and a T-shirt—he never did wear pajamas—and a robe he’s had for sixty years. It’s made from a blanket he’d had at West Point—class of 1949—and covered with military badges.
He had slept through dinner, one of the aides told me. She warmed up some food and brought it to the table next to the TV area. It was a sloppy joe. He looked at it for a moment. “Split it with you?”
I was going to say that I was meeting my sisters later for dinner
, but instead I said, “Sure,” and I took a half. The hamburger bun was soft and warm. He ate his in three bites. He grimaced when I suggested he eat the vegetables, as if he were thinking, “Are you out of your mind?”
The staff scurried about, bringing nighttime meds and sleeping pills to each resident, the drugs tucked into a spoonful of ice cream. They were very gentle with them, and the residents responded gently and gratefully. One of the staff nurses stopped and spoke with Dad for a minute. She didn’t have pills for him, but she gave us a carton of vanilla to share. “John and I have known each other a long time, haven’t we, John?”
She was pretty, with strawberry-blonde hair and lots of eye makeup. Dad didn’t respond but as she walked away he said, loudly enough so she could hear, “You called me by my first name.” And then more to himself: “My reputation must be spreading.”
He always had an eye for attractive women. He’d flirt with waitresses, cashiers, even nuns. I used to find this mortifying. On the other hand, I always had an eye for the guys. When I finally told my parents this news thirty years ago, Dad found it shocking, bewildering. I was his only son, for god’s sake. There was a long time there, back when I was in my twenties and living in San Francisco, when we didn’t see each other or speak. We conducted a war of words via letters by mail. Eventually, we found neutral ground.